The media could not move faster to support the impeachment of Donald Trump and to place the responsibility for inciting a “violent insurrection” at his feet.
Whether it was the progressive magazine The Nation, the conservative newspaper the Wall Street Journal, or the revolutionary socialist website WSWS, the conclusion about Trump was the same: he had organized and led an armed group of dangerous extremists to seize control of the Congress with the intention of subverting the Constitution, overturning the election and attacking liberal politicians.
The view being promoted in the media is that Trump and his ignorant followers, claiming a stolen election without any evidence, spouting conspiracy theories about COVID19, are universally assumed to pose an immediate threat to the security of the United States.
CNN announced that Trump was “ isolated and wallowing in self-pity in the White House” as he awaited trial, and even possible imprisonment. The possibility that some part of the claims of fraud in the election might have grounds in fact, that some conspiracies about COVID19 are real, did not cross anyone’s mind.
It is true that hostile forces have taken control of Washington D.C.
But they were not wearing MAGA red hats or waving Confederate flags. No, the takeover was at a much higher level.
The Federal government, the production of money by the Federal Reserve, the educational system and the corporate media from which citizens get all information has been taken over definitively by the multinational corporations Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and SpaceX (and others), and those companies, and the banks that fund them, have taken home some ten trillion dollars from the Federal Reserve through a series of COVID19 bailouts that remain opaque, if not explicitly classified.
But that real takeover of the Capitol has not been mentioned in the press. All attention is on a selfish, ignorant, racist and dangerous Donald Trump who stands in contrast to a rational, scientific and compassionate Biden administration.
Yet any careful consideration of this “armed attack” on the Capitol suggests that rather than a failed insurrection by dangerous right-wing forces trying to destroy democracy, it was closer to Grand Guignol, to sensationalist theater.
That attack, documented for us in carefully posed scenes, was but the first act of “Operation Lipstick on a Pig,” a move to decorate the radical crackdown on freedom of expression and of assembly to oppose corporate tyranny with the trappings of a multicultural, progressive, feminist, scientific and rational administration.
Over the last few days, Posse Comitatus has been buried in a shallow grave. The military takeover was passed over for talk about whether or not Kamala Harris would wear a sari to the inauguration.
Source: Emanuel Pastreich
9/11 at a fire sale price
When EU Commissioner Thierry Breton referred to the “attacks” as “Capitol Hill — the 9/11 moment of social media,” he was not kidding. He spelled out precisely what is going to unfold over the next few months as “Operation Lipstick on a Pig” swings into overdrive.
In effect, the Biden administration, loaded up with minorities and women at the highest levels, will use this ethnic PR as a sweet syrup to help Americans swallow down the launch of the most repressive regime in American history. As Naomi Klein famously stated, bringing about such a shift requires the “shock doctrine” a deep trauma for the entire nation that will force acceptance of a “new normal.”
Breton explicitly refers to this attack as a “paradigm shift for global security” like 9/11.
“We are all still shocked by the images of protesters storming the U.S. Congress to halt the certification of the next U.S. president. The attack on the U.S. Capitol — a symbol of democracy — feels like a direct assault on all of us.”
Just as 9/11 marked a paradigm shift for global security, 20 years later we are witnessing a before-and-after in the role of digital platforms in our democracy.
The paradigm shift he is suggesting is one in which social media companies are made responsible for whatever people post (even though the hyped up COVID19 pandemic is the reason people have been forced to be dependent on social media corporations) and therefore those corporations have a responsibility to ban anything that they deem dangerous.
He claims we need a Digital Markets Act that will allow us to shut down misinformation immediately and ban those who engage in such threats. There is of course some legitimacy to this argument. But the article assumes that the “truth” can be determined by for-profit and morally bankrupt companies like Twitter and Facebook, or by billionaires, or by the government agencies that now function as own subsidiaries of investment banks.
In any case, the analogies between the Capitol attack and 9/11 are not random; they are intentional.
Just like after the 9/11 incident, everyone who has institutional authority has been called in to testify as to the horrific nature of the attack—before anyone has had a chance to think deeply about what actually happened. Moreover, the enemy is decided for us early on by a series of journalism scoops, Islamic terrorists in the first case, conservative white nationalists in this case, to make sure that we don’t think too much.
In the case of the insurrection at the Capitol, Wikipedia (which did not exist back in 2001) has decided that it was “a riot and violent attack” “carried out by a mob of supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump.” Case closed.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, without exception, signed a letter without precedent stating that was “a violent riot” and “direct assault on the U.S. Congress” that was led by the president of the United States.
The executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists Kathleen Rest condemned the attack as “a violent intimidation of our elected representatives and by extension all of us. It is not a peaceful protest. It is insurrection.”
In other words, if you have any doubts as to what happened on January 6, you should increase your dosage of antipsychotic medication because people will just think you are crazy. Even worse, thinking in a scientific manner could lead to you being associated with right-wing domestic terrorists.
But what happened on Capitol Hill on January 6, and why is it not being subject to a rigorous analysis?
Already, there have been extensive discussions on the Internet about how the photographs and videos fail to document any form of “violent insurrection” and how most photographs appear staged.
The protestors held no weapons in the photographs and videos released at the time. The terrible violence was only fed to us later through media reports of dubious reliability.
The videos of the protestors pushing against the Capitol Police are pure keystone cops. No one could possibly engage in that sort of roughhousing with the police and not end up on the ground handcuffed in a few seconds unless both sides were in on the game.
The strangest footage was that of the protestor Ashli Babbitt being shot in the neck by a Capitol Police officer (she reportedly died soon after). In the video, Babbitt is shot by a revolver that we are told was held by the police officer and falls to the ground. Some nearby attend to her while others mill around, checking their smart phones and calling out, “shots fired.”
Such a scene is improbable. If a police officer shot into a crowd of protesters and someone fell to the ground, the rest would run for cover as fast as they could, or hit the ground immediately. Unless they were battle hardened soldiers, the only thing in their mind would be avoiding being the next one shot.
But everyone seemed to know that only one person would be shot. That scene, most the scenes, just smell phony, like a low-budget 9.11 aimed at stirring up fear in preparation for a massive clampdown.
Stage set for a granola-flavored version of the “Patriot Act?”
Whereas the 9/11 incident served as an opportunity to induce national trauma and prepare for the reduction of civil rights and for the march towards foreign wars, the attack on the Capitol is being used to pave the way towards a massive crackdown on domestic political opposition and possibly the use of the military to suppress any resistance.
Whereas Al Qaeda and the threat of Islamic nationalism and terrorism were presented as the threat after 9/11, and then used as an excuse to secure massive budgets for military and intelligence contractors while restricting the activity of citizens, this time “domestic terrorism” is the new threat on the block.
Whereas terror after 9/11 was presented by CNN and the New York Times as Arabs wearing turbans, this time it is white men wearing MAGA hats are the target.
The isolationist white militias that have nominally supported Donald Trump are dangerous and a real threat. They have carried out real attacks on multiple occasions.
So also the Islamic military groups that worked out of Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001 were serious threats. But the relationship between those extremists and the 9/11 incident was never made clear and there was nothing to justify those foreign wars, or the end of civil liberties, that resulted. So also, today, the relationship between the MAGA “white nationalists” and the Capitol incident is far from clear. What we do know is given to us by the corporate media, not trustworthy sources of scientific analysis.
We can already detect in editorials and news briefings the outlines of a new version of the Patriot Act taking form, this time focused on “domestic terrorism.”
The original Patriot Act cleared away all the limits on the spying on foreigners, starting with those accused of the 9/11 attacks, and opened the doors for general spying on the entire world, and spying, not by an accountable government, but by private intelligence contractors who sold their trawl catch to the highest bidder.
This new “Patriot Act,” dressed up as a progressive effort to reign in intolerant, violent and ignorant Trump followers, aims to strip American citizens of all legal defenses against the authority of Federal Government and to allow for the deployment of the military within the United States to defend against domestic terrorism, real or trumped up.
The hyping of the Capitol incident goes beyond a drive to cement into place the Biden administration before its legitimacy can be questioned. The argument driven home to all Americans by the media coverage is that those who have doubts about the lockdown on personal freedom taking place, or about the COVID19 vaccine regime that Biden has made his highest economic, security and social priority, are in the same camp as these domestic terrorists.
The COVID19 task force has expressed its intention to work with the military domestically to disperse vaccinations to the public (perhaps by force). At the same time, DARPA has suddenly entered the medical field with a broad range of new medical tools, including vaccines, related to COVID19. That militarization of medicine has ominous implications.
The spread of dangerous misinformation and “conspiracy theories” is treated, post-Capitol attacks, as the equivalent of war. By extension, anyone who suggests that COVID19 is not a pandemic at all, but a scheme by the rich and powerful to destroy civil society and to push for needless vaccines using modified RNA and microchips can be considered now a domestic terrorist.
Tech giants will be justified, in the interests of national security, in shutting down, or punishing, without any legal due process, those who spread information that they have determined to be “false.” Already Facebook and Twitter are banning medically supported reports by qualified doctors questioning COVID13 policies.
As large parts of the intelligence community have been sold off to Facebook, Google and Amazon over the last year, the nature of the true threat should be clear.
Remember that it was quarantine and distance learning that has made it difficult to meet with friends and family in person. We are forced to communicate via social media, or platforms like WhatsApp, Zoom or Skype that are run for profit, and over the policies of, we have no say. We can be placed in cyberjail, or banned, at the whim of these corporations at precisely the moment they we are allowed no other means to communicate with others except through them.
It was no surprise that the politician groomed as the face of the youthful left, Alexanderia Ocasio-Cortez, was chosen to lay the groundwork for military rule and the end of free expression in social media.
She rushed to The Guardian to express her terror about the Capitol attacks,
“I myself did not even feel safe going to that extraction point because there were QAnons and white supremacist sympathizers and, frankly, white supremacist members of Congress in that extraction point who I know and who I had felt would disclose my location.”
The comments seem far removed from the actions of the rowdy crowd who entered the Capitol on January 6. But then again, the fact that the occupation was for show does not mean that it was harmless.
Ocasio-Cortez pinned the responsibility for this “violent insurrection” on big tech, stating, ” Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook bear partial responsibility for Wednesday’s events, period.”
Interestingly, she argues that Facebook the corporation helped these dangerous domestic terrorists organize their attack and therefore it is responsible. But she does NOT suggest that Facebook be broken up, or run as a public monopoly, or that the decision as to what is true and what is false should be subject to rigorous external review. She is pressuring Facebook to be more aggressive in shutting down any communication, that it deems to be dangerous.
In other words, she is giving a progressive stamp of approval for the control of public communication by multinational corporations.
It is fine with her if Twitter blocks Donald Trump without any legal process, or Facebook blocks Press News for giving Americans too much truth.
Politico used the favorite “9/11” term “intelligence failure” to refer to the investigations of the Capitol incident scheduled for no less than four house committees. The formal letter announcing investigations, states,
“This still-emerging story is one of astounding bravery by some U.S. Capitol Police and other officers; of staggering treachery by violent criminals; and of apparent and high-level failures — in particular, with respect to intelligence and security preparedness.”
We are being set up for another series of dishonest committee meetings like those of 2001 and 2002 in which politicians will drone on and on about intelligence failures while the criminals stand unmolested in plain view.
What we need now is not show trials, or the takeover of Washington D.C. by the military, but rather an objective, international, scientific investigation of what happened in the Capitol on January 6 that does not involve any media players linked to the global financial forces that stand to benefit from the militarization of American governance.
It was too easy to reduce Donald Trump to a dangerous caricature, a new Osama bin Laden who can be used to justify a crackdown on domestic dissent at precisely the moment that a dangerous vaccine regime is being rolled out with the cooperation of the military.
And by the way, an international investigation of the 9/11 incident might be helpful too.
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More than a hundred candidates who ran in municipal elections last November in cities across Brazil’s Amazonian states are on the environmental regulator’s “dirty list” for violations committed over the past decade.
That’s the finding from an analysis by Agência Pública, a nonprofit investigative journalism agency in Brazil. It found 118 of the candidates for mayor and deputy mayor in the Nov. 15 polls had previously been fined for deforestation, illegal burning, exploitation of native forest located in reserves, or providing false information to environmental agencies to cover up illegal activities. The politicians include 51 who were in office at the time of the election, and 28 who ran for reelection.
Among those fined by IBAMA, the federal environmental protection agency, were four mayors and two deputy mayors of the six municipalities in the state of Pará notorious for the Aug. 10, 2019, “day of fire” — a series of blazes set by the agribusiness sector to clear land. The politicians are Valmir Climaco, the mayor of Itaituba, who was reelected; Raimundo Batista Santiago of Jacareacanga; Valdinei José Ferreira and his deputy, Maurício de Lima Santos, from Trairão, both of them reelected; and Ubiraci Soares Silva and his deputy, Gelson Luiz Dill, of Novo Progresso. (Dill ran against Silva in the election and won.) Together, the six men have racked up fines of 7.8 million reais ($1.5 million) for environmental violations, though none were accused of having participated in the burning during the “day of fire.”
These four cities, plus Altamira and São Félix do Xingu, were responsible for 79% of the fire outbreaks detected in the state of Pará on Aug. 10 and 11 last year, according to a survey by Greenpeace.
Itaituba’s Valmir Climaco, a former gold miner and cattle rancher, was last year sentenced to four years and nine months in jail for destroying 746 hectares (1,843 acres) of native forest in neighboring Altamira between 2002 and 2004. He was found to have laundered the timber through Madeireira Climaco, a company that appears on the declaration of assets he submitted to electoral authorities.
He also has three charges against him for damage to vegetation and for carrying out works without the requisite license. Two of these charges, dating from 2012 and 2015, are still pending trial.
In 2019, the Federal Prosecution Service (MPF) sought the removal of Climaco as Itaituba’s mayor after he apparently threatened officials from Funai, the federal agency for Indigenous affairs. The officials were slated to inspect Climaco’s ranch, which sits on land claimed by the Munduruku Indigenous people, but in June 2019 the mayor said he would only receive the inspectors “at bullet point.” The following month, the Federal Police (PF) found 583 kilograms (1,285 pounds) of cocaine on the ranch.
In total, Climaco is the subject of 45 federal criminal citations, according to his declaration to electoral authorities.
Cattle graze next to burning vegetation in Lábrea, Amazonas state. Politicians with business interests in cattle ranching have been fined by IBAMA for deforestation, illegal logging and infractions within conservation areas. Image by Christian Braga/Greenpeace.
From miner to mayor
A two-hour drive south of Itaituba lies the municipality of Trairão, whose mayor is also accused of deforestation. Valdinei José Ferreira, known as “Django,” was convicted in April 2020 for destroying 1,300 hectares (3,200 acres) of Amazon forest. He has denied the charge, despite IBAMA detecting the deforestation on his farm in 2012.
Ferreira has been embroiled in other environmental crimes. He was recently ordered to pay more than 43,000 reais ($8,300) in fines imposed by IBAMA in 2011 and 2012, after he was caught operating an illegal sawmill. He has also been accused by prosecutors of illegal logging inside a conservation area in Itaituba in December 2007. A verdict is pending in that case.
Ferreira’s deputy at Itaituba City Hall, Maurício de Lima Santos, has also been accused of deforestation by the Pará state Attorney General’s Office. The alleged violation occurred in Itaituba II National Forest, in neighboring Novo Progresso municipality.
Santos has also been accused by prosecutors of illegally entering another national forest, in Trairão, in 2014 with machinery intended for logging, without the required authorization.
In Novo Progresso itself, where the mass burning of the “day of fire” was likely coordinated, the mayor and deputy mayor have also been fined by IBAMA for environmental violations.
His deputy, Gelson Luiz Dill, recently elected the new mayor, was fined a total of 4.3 million reais ($825,000) on two charges of destroying a combined 198.4 hectares (490 acres) in the same park in 2017 and 2018, according to the NGO Repórter Brasil.
Dill claims the fines are a form of retaliation for his actions in defense of farmers and ranchers in the region. “It’s because I denounce the irregularities of these environmental agencies that are burning producers’ machinery and producers’ properties,” he said.
Dill is himself a rancher, with 2,473 head of cattle valued at 1.9 million reais ($366,000), according to his declaration to electoral authorities.
Agribusiness and slave labor
Twelve of the 28 mayors and deputy mayors of municipalities in the Brazilian Amazon who ran for reelection are farmers, ranchers or loggers.
Fernando Gorgen, who was reelected as mayor of Querência in Mato Grosso state, declared 17.2 million reais ($3.3 million) in assets to electoral authorities. This figure includes his shareholdings in two cattle-breeding companies in the state of Tocantins and a farm in Querência. His wealth grew 260% in the four years he was in charge of the municipality.
Gorgen and his brothers were fined in 2018 by the Mato Grosso state environmental office for defrauding deforestation permits. IBAMA accused them of responsibility for the clearing of more than 5,000 hectares (12,400 acres) of the Amazon forest. Gorgen claimed he wasn’t the owner of the farm where the illegal deforestation had occurred, saying he was “mistakenly pointed out as one of the [land clearing] protagonists by Operation Siriema,” a law-enforcement operation carried out by IBAMA and the Mato Grosso state prosecutor’s office.
In Nova Canaã do Norte, another municipality in Mato Grosso, the reelected mayor, Rubens Roberto Rosa, was also fined for an environmental violation while in office in 2017. Like Gorgen, he is a cattle rancher and a millionaire: for last year’s election, he declared an inheritance of 25.9 million reais ($5 million), which includes 7,334 head of cattle and five farms.
In 2013, he was named on the “dirty list” of employers using slave labor, following raids by prosecutors on two of his properties. In a lawsuit, the MPF alleged that Rosa kept the workers “in conditions analogous to slavery, since they were subject to sleeping in shacks under the protection of plastic tarpaulins, had precarious food and no drinking water, sharing the environment with venomous animals, living without any conditions of hygiene, and staying several kilometers away from their places of origin.” A verdict is pending in the case.
Contacted by Agência Pública, Rosa claimed there were no criminal charges pending against him, and that the slave labor lawsuit was the result of a “setup” by a former worker. On the fines and allegations levied against him by IBAMA, he said he had paid all the compensation required for the deforestation he had caused, and that there were no recent charges pending. Rosa also said he carried out forest clearing before the Forest Code came into force and tightened the permissible area of land allowed to be deforested.
IBAMA personnel with seized timber from an illegal logging site within an Indigenous reserve in Brazil’s Roraima state. Candidates with links to logging were among those who ran in municipal elections across Brazil last November. Image courtesy of IBAMA.
The most fined mayor, and the most mayors fined
Among all the politicians fined for environmental violations in the Amazon, the record holder is the current deputy mayor of Alto Araguaia in Mato Grosso state: Freud Fraga dos Santos. A cattle rancher, he has been fined 13 times between 2012 and 2019, yet was still reelected alongside the city’s mayor, Gustavo Melo.
Freud was denounced in 2014 by the MPF in the state of Pará as a member of a gang of deforesters and land grabbers in Novo Progresso. According to the MPF complaint, the group invaded public lands, deforested and burned the areas to establish cattle pastures, and then sold the lands as ranches. According to the investigation, at least 15,500 hectares (38,300 acres) were deforested, resulting in environmental damage equivalent to at least 500 million reais ($96 million).
At the time, the Federal Police, IBAMA, the Brazilian tax authorities and the Attorney General’s Office considered the gang one of the most destructive in the Amazon.
“We don’t recognize his involvement in anything,” said Marlon Arthur Paniago de Oliveira, the deputy mayor’s lawyer in the case. “It is important to clarify that the judicial process is still in the court, and it is certain that he has never had any conviction in criminal proceedings of any kind, in any degree or jurisdiction,” he added.
Mato Grosso, besides having the politician with the most fines, is also the state with most candidates fined. In Colniza, on the border with Amazonas state, five of the 10 mayor-deputy mayor tickets in the November election had candidates with environmental fines. Most of these were for violations against vegetation and environmental control.
The problem isn’t just confined to municipalities in the Brazilian Amazon. The Agência Pública report found six candidates for mayor and deputy mayor in municipalities in other parts of the country were fined by IBAMA for violations committed in the Amazonian states. In total, 11 mayors and deputy mayors currently in office outside the Amazon have been hit with a fine in the region at some point.
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Featured image: IBAMA personnel carrying out a raid in 2018 on an illegal mining operation in Tenharim Indigenous Territory in the state of Amazonas. The region is home to extensive forest massifs that are under pressure from criminal groups. Five politicians fined for environmental crimes were elected in the state in 2020. Image courtesy of Vinícius Mendonça/IBAMA.
On Nov. 9, 2020, Pfizer, Inc. announced that the experimental messenger RNA (mRNA) BNT162b2 vaccine for COVID-19 it developed in partnership with Germany’s BioNTech SE had an efficacy rate of 90 percent, based on the results of human clinical trials on the vaccine.123 This news was followed up a week later with an announcement by Moderna, Inc. on Nov. 16 that its experimental mRNA mRNA-1273 for COVID-19 showed an efficacy of 94.5 percent.456
Seemingly not to be outdone by Moderna and perhaps in anticipation of an impending emergency use authorization (EUA)—not “approval”—by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the first COVID-19 vaccine to be distributed to the U.S. public and used, Pfizer revised upward the efficacy of its BNT162b2 vaccine to 95 percent on Nov. 18.789 The FDA granted an EUA for the BNT162b2 vaccine on Dec. 11. It followed with an EUA for the mRNA-1273 vaccine on Dec. 18.1011
During the past two months, other pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have revealed efficacy rates for COVID-19 vaccines they have developed. On Nov. 23, the United Kingdom’s AstraZeneca plc announced that its experimental AZD1222 COVID-19 vaccine, developed in partnership with Oxford University, had attained an efficacy of 70 percent during clinical trials. On Dec. 14, Russia’s Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology announced its Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine was 91.4 percent efficacious. On Dec. 30, China’s Sinopharm Group Co. Ltd. announced its COVID-19 was 79.34 percent efficacious.121314
Many other pharmaceutical companies, universities and government agencies are continuing to work on their own COVID-19 vaccines that they hope to submit for governmental approval or at least EUAs over the next year. They are proceeding with clinical trials to determine the safety and efficacy of their products. The market for COVID-19 vaccines has begun to take shape and some of the early leading manufacturers have become apparent. Additionally, a bar has been set for the range of effectiveness expected of a COVID-19 vaccine. An efficacy rate of 95 percent is currently considered to be the gold standard for COVID-19 vaccines.
What is Meant by “Efficacy” of COVID-19 Vaccines?
But what exactly does “efficacy” mean when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines? Does it mean that the vaccines will prevent people from becoming infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus? Does it mean that they will prevent people who have the virus from spreading it to others? Based on clinical trials, there is no evidence the vaccines will prevent either. In an interview last month with NBC’s Lester Holt, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla acknowledged he didn’t know if the BNT162b2 vaccine would prevent the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. “I think this is something that needs to be examined. We are not certain about that right now with what we know,” Bourla said.15
Bourla’s comments were echoed by Moderna’s chief medical officer, Tal Zaks, MD. In an interview with Axios on Nov. 23, Dr. Zaks noted, “When we start the deployment of [the mRNA-1273] vaccine, we will not have sufficient concrete data to prove that this vaccine reduces transmission.”1617
“These COVID vaccines are preventing clinical disease, we don’t know if they prevent transmission [of the SARS-CoV-2 virus],” says infectious disease expert Chris Beyrer, MD of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. According to vaccines expert David Diemert, MD of George Washington University, it is not known if the COVID-19 vaccines will prevent the SARS-CoV-2 virus from entering the body or leaving a vaccinated body.181920
Preventing Infection is Not “Primary Endpoint” of COVID-19 Vaccines
Similar views were expressed last year by Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) which partnered with Moderna on the development of the mRNA-1273 vaccine. At Yahoo Finance’s All Markets Summit on Oct. 26, Dr. Fauci was asked the following question by reporter Anjalee Khemlani:
I wonder about the effectiveness. That’s something that has been a topic of conversation, and I’ve heard a broad range of commentary, from… it will block the virus entirely to it will simply diminish the most severe cases. And if anyone experiences the virus, it will actually be a milder version. So based on what you know right now and what you’re seeing, do you anticipate that the first sets of vaccines out the door will be more of a less effective blocker of the virus?1922
Dr. Fauci responded:
That’s the primary endpoint of most of the [vaccines] is to prevent clinical disease, to prevent symptomatic disease. Not necessarily to prevent infection… that’s a secondary endpoint. But the primary thing you want to do is that if people get infected—prevent them from getting sick. And if you prevent them from getting sick, you will ultimately prevent them from getting seriously ill. So that’s what we want to do. The first, which we call the primary endpoint, is that.2122
He added:
If the vaccine also allows you to prevent initial infection, that would be great. But what I would settle for, and all of my colleagues would settle for, is the primary endpoint—to prevent clinically recognizable disease. And that’s what we hope happens.1922
More recently, Dr. Fauci was asked specifically by Newsweek if people who get a COVID-19 vaccines could still pass on the SARS-CoV-2 to others. He answered: “That’s a good question. We don’t know that yet. We do not know if the vaccines that prevent clinical disease also prevent infection.”2324
Finally, the World Health Organization (WHO) is also not particularly bullish on the ability of COVID-19 vaccines to control the SARS-CoV-2 contagion. “I don’t believe we have the evidence on any of the vaccines to be confident that it’s going to prevent people from actually getting the infection and therefore being able to pass it on,” said the WHO’s chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, MD.2325
In short then, what has been measured in the trials on the BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 vaccines, as well as other experimental COVID-19 vaccines, is not whether they prevent infection with and transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus but how well they can prevent or minimize symptoms of COVID-19 disease that can be caused by the virus. There is no evidence to suggest the vaccines will have any effect in terms of protecting people from getting the virus and spreading it.
It doesn’t look like these COVID-19 vaccines are going to come anywhere close to being the proverbial ‘silver bullet.’
Marco Cáceres is managing editor of the weekly journal newspaper The Vaccine Reaction established and published by the non-profit National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), which launched the TVR website in 2015.
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Covid 19 is a phantom. Slaying a phantom is what the mythic Spanish hero Don Quijote attempted to do by ‘tilting at windmills’ he imagined to be monsters. But now almost everybody has got into the act, because they have been ordered to follow Quijote’s example by the perpetrators of the grand hoax called Covid -19.
The more one slashes at the phantom with one’s trusty sword, the more tired one gets, because a phantom is a phantom – and a sword does no more harm to it than shooting bullets at a hurricane does to annihilate the eye of a storm. Nevertheless, a large percentage of mankind – under instruction – is doing just that, and after a while it gets tiring.
Yes, phantoms are phantoms. One can try to concrete them in or wall them out. One can try to ‘isolate’ one’s self against them; wear masks to scare them away; avoid others who may be harbouring phantoms under their clothes, all this and more – but do they care? No, not one iota!
People get scary feelings when talking about ghosts. Especially on cold winter evenings when the lamps burn low and the last embers of the fire are dying-away with the clock creeping up to the witching midnight hour. And this ghostly virus called Covid-19 is inciting the same kind of feelings in susceptible people all over this planet – even when the sun is up and the sky is blue. A particularly menacing apparition, wouldn’t you agree?
However, those who invented this chimera are not phantoms. Nor are they stupid. They saw a big chance to scare the pants off people and took it. They needed to scare the pants off people to get them to ‘obey’. A scared person will do almost anything he/she is told to do if they think their life is threatened. And what the perpetrators did was to take an existing viral infection called ‘flu’, give it a new fancy name and get governments and global media bosses to agree to run with the deception.
It wasn’t that difficult to do, because most of those involved in these professions already live in a phantom world themselves. This was just one more scam to sell to the great listening/watching passive public.
The ‘master perpetrators’ thought this ruse up decades ago. They only needed to give a small tweak to the old flu causal agent to make it seem like a new ‘deadly strain’ and get most of the medical profession hopping around like kangaroos in the arctic circle, searching desperately for the source of something that had become instantly labelled ‘a global pandemic’, but whose real title was ‘global hoax’. A ‘plandemic/scamdemic’ as others have astutely observed.
My God, how the spooks got running once this ‘pandemic’ thing took-off. It seemed like all the lascivious news editors of the world’s media (6 corporations own 90% of it) fell on ‘the pandemic’ as a free gift from hell. One could almost see their eyes turning red with glee at this unprecedented chance to scare their followers witless.
But the stats tell the real story. The flu ‘with a twist’ – unpleasant and occasionally dangerous as all flu’s are – comes up with the same morbidity numbers as the standard winter flu. Statistically they are as near as damn’ it identical. And there lies the nature of the phantom. Even when there is a small variation, it’s because the number of (deeply flawed) PCR tests have increased, thereby upping the false positives.
With Ministers of Health, Economics, Digitalisation and who knows what more – all equally devoted to adhering to the divide and conquer advice of the deep state placement at the head of the World Health Organisation, ‘we the people’ had almost nowhere to turn to get a handle on this madness. All ‘traditional’ sources of information – already steeped in the role of printing and broadcasting lies rather than truths – remain to this day wedded to government edicts, regardless of how utterly fatuous and devoid of reason they are.
Fortunately, a smallish percentage of the populace can still smell a rat once it’s out on the loose. Fortunately this includes real doctors, real scientists, the occasional mainstream news columnist, broadcaster/publisher and really quite a lot of individual entrepreneurs committed to genuine investigative journalism.
However, since the deep state control system has its minions placed in all social and economic key positions of authority, those ready and able to convey truth are forced to find other ways of getting their messages out.
This brings me to a prescient point: since ‘mainstream’ is locked into making phantoms seem real, and since most of the human race are addicted to their mainstream lie machines, the emergent ‘movement for truth’ is going to have to self organise in order to form the foundations of a de-politicised and de-corporatised society/community which completely parts company with the poisoned status quo.
We pursuers of truth are presently on our life-rafts, dazed by the rapidity of the phantom’s progress in barring our very real freedoms of speech, movement and thought, while simultaneously performing a further turn of the fascist screw on our capacity to remain sane and healthy in body, mind and spirit.
While Klaus Schwab and fellow trolls at the World Economic Forum announce the dystopian details of the Six Great Falsifications known as ‘The Great Reset’ : Zero Carbon, Green New Deal, Fourth Industrial Revolution, Agenda 2030, Transhumanist Smart Cities and New World Order – we are rowing our life rafts through the rip-currents towards solid land.
A land destined to serve as the fresh foundation from which to kick start (once again) the evolution of truth, trust and global human emancipation. The real evolutionary dynamic of humanity, presently cut off from its true path by the predators of chaos, destruction and fear.
The nearer we get to that promised land the clearer our sense of direction becomes; the more settled our emotions, the more calm our thoughts and the more lucid our vision.
It becomes possible to recognise, quite clearly, the darkly malevolent nature of the power structure we have been, wittingly or unwittingly, contributing to for much of our lives. We can begin to understand how it is actually the direct expression of a demonic state of mind, reinforced by Satanic and Masonic initiates whose rituals are played-out in all the main capitals of the world, many centres of government, the church as well as at corporate banker elite secret society gatherings.
It is this explicitly anti-human cabal which has ‘been in charge’ for as long as one cares remember and long before that.
What the Covid phantom did was to bring it all out in the open. Unable to resist the tantalising ‘control prize’, the forces of darkness have – maybe for the first time – come out ‘en masse’ into the open. Now they are throwing their weight around mercilessly, resorting to genetically modified vaccines and enforced home imprisonment in an attempt to wrap-up their mission to capture the planetary soul and to achieve a permanent lockdown of the insuppressible power of love and light.
There are many tiers to the darkside pyramid of course. Many on the lower tiers know not what goes on above them. Our political figureheads are not at the top end. They are simply ever open to being manipulated by those that are.
For example 33% Masons have the ability to manipulate dark power, but many masons think they are part of an organisation dishing-out benevolent gifts to those in need. It is this type of ‘unknowing’ that keeps mankind in slavery to the masters of deception. The largely hidden puppet-masters who tweak the strings of the unknowing and the uncaring.
‘The darkest hour is just before dawn’ and that dawn is closer than most think. We can already see the outlines of the shore beckoning beyond the stormy sea. We must be bold in our determination to reach that shore – and to blow aside all the phantoms that try to obscure our innate capacity to be united – as creative masters of our own destinies.
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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.
The visit of Moldovan President Maia Sandu to Ukraine last week is the first interaction between the two neighboring countries at the highest level in recent years. For Sandu, this trip became her foreign policy premiere since she became president on December 24, 2020. We could observe in her meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that there is a good level of personal interaction between the two leaders.
The Three Seas Initiative project was discussed in relation to the implementation of a partnership with the EU. The Three Seas Initiative is a forum comprising of twelve European Union members located between the Baltic, Adriatic and Black Seas and has the aim of fostering closer cooperation. Both Moldova and Ukraine want to be involved in the Three Seas Initiative despite not being European Union member states.
Both Sandu and Zelensky are radically opposed to Russia in the belief that it will help their countries prospects into becoming European Union and NATO members. The Moldovan and Ukrainian leaders discussed “mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity” and their willingness to face “geopolitical challenges” together with the traditional allusion of a common “aggressor.” They never directly named Russia, but given their known position against Moscow, it is obvious who their statement was directed towards.
Sandu and Zelensky are oriented towards the same circles in the West. Both aim to integrate their countries into Euro-Atlantic structures, despite the unlikeliness that Moldova or Ukraine will become member states of the European Union or NATO in the foreseeable future. As a result of their willingness to appease Western interests in Eastern Europe, Russian influence in the post-Soviet space is being challenged. But now that the political situation in the United States is showing signs of instability, it is not convenient for them to make openly direct statements against Russia.
The issue of Crimea and the Crimean Platform was deliberately avoided by both presidents in the part of the meeting that was revealed to the public. This is likely because such maneuvers require consultation with the incoming Joe Biden administration. Sandu and Zelensky most likely considered it premature to make such statements regarding Crimea. This decision is despite Ukraine launching the Crimean Platform just a mere few months earlier as part of their strategy to “de-occupy” the peninsula after it reunited with Russia in 2014 in a referendum that adhered to all international norms and standards.
When the new administration in Washington stabilizes, it will become clearer whether Moldova’s and Ukraine’s Western partners are ready to use them against Russia. Although they will likely find support from Biden if they continue their opposition to Russia, there will be elections for a new German Chancellor on September 26 and Angela Merkel will not be running. The victor could determine whether Berlin, the de facto leader of the European Union, will continue to loyally follow Washington’s foreign policy or pursue an independent one.
Away from the public eye and ear, it is likely that Sandu and Zelensky privately discussed possibilities of joint pressure against Russia in Transnistria and Donbass. Although Donbass is well known to Westerners, Transnistria is almost unheard of. The small territory is wedged between Ukraine and Moldova. It has a de facto independence but is internationally recognized as a part of Moldova despite the majority of the population being either Russian or Ukrainian.
It should be remembered that during last year’s election campaign, Sandu announced that she will focus on “eliminating the Russian military presence” without mentioning a political settlement in the Transnistrian dispute, thus threatening to warm up a frozen conflict. Given the geography, Ukraine and Moldova are able to blockade Transnistria. This would sever transport links and economic flows.
During the meeting between Sandu and Zelensky, only two public initiatives came to be known – the creation of a certain transportation corridor between the capitals of Ukraine and Moldova, and the organization of a presidential council of the two countries. However, regarding the first initiative, it must have a strong economic justification to be attractive to potential investors. Given the current state of low economic interaction between Ukraine and Moldova, as well as their economic crises, such a justification will be very difficult to find.
The Presidential Council is a more realistic initiative, although the idea itself is not new. The statement about it is a sign that Moldova and Ukraine have agreed to pursue certain policies together. Even if those policies are not clear yet, it will undoubtedly include how they can collectively counter Russian influence in Transnistria and Donbass.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
“We just want the facts, please.” –Detective Joe Friday, Dragnet
“You notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room?” The question boomed by Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof may have never been more urgent than today.
We should all be asking this question and demanding straight answers. The sense of smell provided us by nature in our self-protection toolbox is indispensable when dangers are invisible and inaudible – denied view and voice by those empowered and trusted by the public. This leaves us to follow our noses, and when investigations are met with obvious stonewalling and gaslighting we are probably on the right track.
CIA Document 1035-960 referred to nose-following investigations of the dubious Warren Commission report on JFK’s assassination as “conspiracy theories,” a dismissive term repeatedly invoked ever since to discredit challenges and evade honest examination of evidence of unspeakable crimes by the powerful. The same tactic was employed after 9/11. Searches for truth and justice by determined private citizens meet with long delays, multiple roadblocks, and buried hope. I see this script again in the covid-19 pandemic declarations and radically destructive responses by power wielders in the US and worldwide. We cannot allow similar delays and obfuscation this time around.
Is theory an impermissible word? Of course not. A theory is a conceptual model developed to account for evidence, connecting identified data points. This is the fundamental method of science. In behavioral theory construction, complex social and political events obviously involve multiple participants. When the events are criminal or otherwise need to be hidden, participants must necessarily plan and prepare secretly. When official explanations from government and its compliant media stenographers are highly suspicious, empirically unlikely or obvious nonsense, we have the duty as citizens to inquire independently and build our own theoretical models. In crime as well as science, multiple theories typically arise before the final breakthrough in empirical demonstration or courtroom proof.
The “theories” immediately proclaimed by government sources following each of the four seminal assassinations of the 1960s, and of 9/11, involved no scientific method. Each warped the course of history without valid empirical foundations. By the time citizen investigators have uncovered and assembled enough evidence to construct realistic storylines, it has been much too late. Massive damage to our rights and freedoms grounded in official stories have already been institutionalized. We have inflicted mass-murderous wars on other peoples. Wrongs remain unresolved, often exacerbated and simply better disguised. Evidence is cold, and perpetrators have died or disappeared voluntarily or involuntarily.
The official lies become enshrined as history. Our government, “news” media, educational curricula and cultural legends have relentlessly lied and betrayed us about everything – the congenial Thanksgiving feast between Pilgrims and their targeted genocide victims, about anti-colonial independence movements as “international communism,” about Iraqi WMDs, about Israeli innocence in the face of Palestinian “terrorism.” Why should we believe them now about anything that doesn’t match the obvious or easily discoverable facts? There is a conspiracy, a very big one, obvious by now to everyone seeking the pieces missing from the covid-19 jigsaw puzzle. I encountered an example when submitting this seditious composition through my gmail account to which I was directed by the submission portal provided. Almost all the hyperlinks were “unable” to access their sites, so I switched to a private account and they all reappeared. By reading further, you too may experience the now-designated-guilty pleasure of sedition.
Many Americans, over 50,000 health and bioscience research professionals, and common-sensible people worldwide are questioning whether the government declaration of a covid-19 pandemic and “public health emergency” permitting state suspension of civil rights were justified. These indefinite suspensions include violation of our 1st Amendment right to freedom of assembly, potential threats to 4th Amendment security of our homes and persons, 6th and 7th Amendments due process rights, as well as rights to liberty, privacy, freedom of movement, work, and education specified by Universal Declaration of Human Rights Articles 3, 9, 12, 13, 20 and 26.
Considering the severe impacts of government actions upon employment, small businesses, public mental health, opportunities for vulture capitalism transferring massive assets from everyday citizens to multinational banks, massive corporations and the wealthiest citizens through the deceptive CARES Act, We the People are owed a thorough and fully independent investigation of this economically catastrophic management of a perceived public health threat amplified by alarmist reporting before necessary facts were available.
Specifically, we must demand investigation of the following documented events and questionable policies brought to public attention during this crisis. These questions are central but by no means comprehensive. More emerge every day.
Origins
Two exercises precisely anticipating this pandemic were held in 2019. Event 201 sponsored by Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was held in NYC in October. Crimson Contagion, a series of DHHS simulations envisioning a pandemic outbreak beginning in China, had previously been held in Washington between January and August. These are not only de facto suspicious, but why was our public health system so unprepared?
The federal government failed to obtain prevalence data to provide a valid denominator in morbidity and mortality rate assessments, data provided by Stanford University and USC studies in late April, some six weeks after a “pandemic” was declared without these necessary parameters.
These California studies based on indices of ongoing or recent infection in subject samples from Santa Clara and Los Angeles counties estimated prevalence rates of 3-4%, with case morbidity risk of about 1.5% and case fatality risk of .15%. Since business closures are the prevention modality causing the most economic hardship and exacerbation of other health problems, I did a further analysis in late May comparing covid-19 fatalities (from NYT reports over 90 days between January 21 and April 21) of the 13 states that did not close “non-essential” businesses with 13 neighboring states that did (identified by USA Today), which show an indistinguishable difference slightly favoring the open states, with both reporting about three deaths per 100,000 population. As of mid-January, 2021, the worldwide population fatality rate is currently .00026 – with deaths of some two million in a population approaching eight billion. Do epidemiologists define these fatality risks as a “pandemic” or “public health emergency”?
NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci had information from China in January that reflected these modest predicted rates, but failed to notify the public, publishing this only in a Feb. 28 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine. In this paper he anticipated an infection death rate of less than 1%, comparable to a “severe seasonal influenza,” including China’s report of “higher morbidity and mortality among the elderly and among those with coexisting conditions.” This would have suggested simply protecting the vulnerable elderly.
Nevertheless, a society-wide lockdown has continued into January 2021, inflicting severe economic, social, psychological and collateral medical hardships on millions that have caused far more deaths than covid-19. But following nine months of this lockdown the worldwide CFR is even below Dr. Fauci’s early expectations, yet Fauci et al. still decline to blow the “game over” whistle.
Can Drs. Fauci, Redfield and Birx be trusted?
U.S. military documents show that Redfield and Birx—both military HIV research science officers at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in 1992—knowingly falsified scientific data published in the New England Journal of Medicine and the AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses journal, engaging in “a systematic pattern of data manipulation, inappropriate statistical analyses and misleading data presentation in an apparent attempt to promote the usefulness of the GP160 AIDS vaccine.”
An Air Force tribunal on Scientific Fraud and Misconduct agreed that Redfield’s “misleading or, possibly, deceptive” information “seriously threatens his credibility as a researcher.” Dr. Redfield admitted that his analyses were faulty and deceptive, agreed to publicly correct them, but continued making false claims at three subsequent international HIV conferences and perjured himself in testimony before Congress, claiming that his vaccine cured HIV to secure $20 million support for his research program. Public Citizen stated in a 1994 letter to Henry Waxman’s Congressional Committee that this money induced the Army to kill the investigation and “whitewash” Redfield’s offenses.
Also hunting the HIV golden goose, Dr. Fauci blocked publication (see minutes 12-18 of this video) of Dr. Frank Ruscetti’s study confirming French Dr. Luc Montagnier’s identification of the HIV virus to buy time for Dr. Robert Gallo’s American team to catch up and force the Pasteur Institute to share lucrative patent rights. Fauci then succeeded in transferring the research program from Gallo’s National Cancer Institute to his own NIAID, gaining massive revenue allocations by Congress including long-ongoing collaboration with DARPA on gain-of-function bioweapons research disguised as “biodefense” thereby evading bioweapons treaty prohibitions.
There is credible evidence that this virus has been lab-modified from SARS 1. If so, this likely originated from collaborations including US and Chinese bioweapons laboratories at the University of North Carolina BSL3 lab, the Wuhan BSL4 lab, and Harvard. Dr. Charles Lieber, a nanotechnology expert and ex-chair of the Harvard Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, was arrested and indicted in 2020 for lying to federal investigators about unreported $50,000 monthly income from China.
These collaborations are documented in joint authorship of scientific articles by University of North Carolina, Harvard and Wuhan scientists, and by two $3.7 million grants to Wuhan from the NIAID in 2014 and 2019 through EcoHealth Alliance, an NIAID pass-through organization. Their collaboration apparently moved from UNC to Wuhan in 2014 following Congressional disapproval of our thinly veiled bioweapons research and a 2013 SCOTUS judgment confirming a previous decision that genetic material cannot be patented.
The presumed pandemic has been used in the US and worldwide to justify state infringements on freedom and privacy and in some places police abuse, and there is now a movement within government health agencies to condition certain civil rights on mandatory vaccinations.
With tens of thousands of small, independent businesses squeezed or ruined as “non-essential,” big box, chain and online businesses have taken over much of the economy. Wealth of the world’s billionaires has increased obscenely while the entrepreneurial middle classes, working classes, and poor struggle and sink.
Corruption, Fraud and Deception
Doctors report being incentivized to hospitalize ($13,000) and to ventilate ($39,000) covid-19 patients although ventilation may often be the wrong treatment, even causing iatrogenic death. Inappropriate use of ventilators despite early warnings by conscientious physicians competent in emergency and infectious disease medicine appear to have killed [yet to be fully confirmed and investigated] hundreds or thousands of patients.
A long-established, safe, inexpensive drug – hydroxychloroquine – when combined with zinc and prescribed at the early outpatient stage has been demonstrated highly effective in multiple studiesworldwide including prominent advocacy and publication by NY Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, but has been prohibited for use by American physicians and fraudulently demonized by studies that administered it at inappropriate, hospitalized, late stages of treatment in potentially lethal dosages, a criminal effort to discredit an effective, inexpensive outpatient treatment that obviates the need for $3000 remdesivir and desperately rushed development of new and dangerous vaccines. The shocking, coordinated campaign to deceptively discredit this low-cost, very effective prevention and early intervention medication is described by Dr. Simone Gold in her short, very readable book, I Do Not Consent.
Many leading molecular biologists, virologists, epidemiologists, and infectious disease specialists have explained that masking, social distancing, business restrictions and closures, and touch avoidance prolongs rather than prevents spread of a viral infection since these measures delay “herd immunity” among the large low-risk majority whose immunity will subsequently protect the high-risk minority. Sweden followed this model with no lockdown or draconian social interaction modifications to permit development of herd immunity, had a somewhat higher CFR than neighboring Norway due largely to failure to protect nursing home residents, but had a lower rate than any major European country other than Germany and has now returned to normalcy with none of the collateral damage widespread elsewhere. Our government and media have only cited comparison with Norway, which has much lower population density than Sweden spread along its long, fjord-divided coastline communities.
Denmark also followed a permissive model, with masking optional and infrequent. This facilitated a nationwide randomized controlled study of masking effectiveness with experimental and control subjects instructed to wear or not wear masks in public, with social reactions neutralized as a contributing factor. With its large sample size (c. 6,000), stratified random sampling design controlling for regional variations, 30-day exposure window during the height of the pandemic, use of 3-layer surgical masks, satisfactory (80%) subject completion rate, and multiple outcome criteria, the study findings are conclusive to the naked eye irrespective of the statistical analysis necessary for scientific publication. The best comparison sample with unmasked controls were about half the treatment subjects who masked consistently as directed, where the infection rates were 2.0% (masked) and 2.1% (controls), with inconsistent maskers leading the others at 1.7%. These findings have been wholly ignored by our government and press.
Vitamins C and D are effective for both prevention and treatment, and well-established anti-inflammatory drugs such as budesonide and ivermectin have proven highly effective in preventing and reducing the immune system overreactions that account for respiratory distress and collateral organ damage. Simple antibiotics such as azithromycin prevent opportunistic bacterial pneumonia. These effective, inexpensive, well-established preventive and treatment protocols have been ignored by our public health establishment and its captive press. Instead, newly minted vaccines promising massive Big Pharma development subsidies and projected profits have been relentlessly promoted as the only solution from the beginning. The low death rate – almost exclusively confined to the elderly with significant co-morbidities and virtually zero among the school-aged – has been concealed along with the absurdity of health-compromising masks, social distancing and touch avoidance in the very low-risk populations.
The Vaccine Rescue Plan
The declared “pandemic” has been prolonged to await rescue by vaccine through a frantic interweaving of contact tracing and PCR testing – a method its inventor, Nobel Prize laureate Kary Mullis, has explained only identifies viral molecules that are often inconsequential and does not identify disease. A positive finding may simply indicate virus encountered and subdued with immunity acquired, leaving some battlefield detritus. Compounding this, there are many false positives. The public has been terrorized into readiness to seek safety exclusively in a vaccine – a highly suspicious agenda of the NIAID, CDC and WHO.
There is widespread concern that covid-19 vaccinations could be mandated or made a condition of certain civil rights (e.g., assembly, access to public spaces) despite use of experimental technologies, very inadequate safety testing, and a long record of vaccine injuries documented by decades of court records.
The 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act should be repealed, which immunized vaccine manufacturers from liability due to many business-ruinous lawsuits for lifelong disabilities, thereby removing the necessity of thorough safety testing in their business model and leading to a proliferation of highly profitable vaccines without sufficient risk/benefit evaluation. Following this legislation, vaccine injury claims have been defended by the U.S. Department of Justice in a Vaccine Court with some $4.2 billion in judgments paid through 2019 plus court costs at taxpayer expense despite denying most claims by parents. The 2020 PREP Act should also be repealed, which extended immunity from vaccine liability to the US government as well, leaving vaccine-injured citizens with no legal protection or recourse. Restoration of both these rightful consumer-protection liabilities has become increasingly important as bizarre and alarming reactions producing irreversible autoimmune conditions are already reported in response to novel-technology mRNA vaccines that may better meet the definition of genetic engineering than vaccination – what Dr. Simone Gold calls insertion of “experimental biological agents” into our cells perhaps including penetration of the blood-brain barrier (see minutes 55-1:05 in this video).
There are worrisome institutional conflicts-of-interest as well. Bill Gates has stated his ambition to establish a global system and production capacity to vaccinate the entire world for this and future pathogens. His dystopian vision of a technocratic health safety regime fits seamlessly into the very disturbing Agenda 20-30 and World Economic Forum visions of centralized world control, which would increase rather than broadly redistribute the power and wealth of the .001%, and would disempower situational, local, regional and national approaches to this and all other challenges to human welfare and survival while smothering individual, organizational and cultural identities. This is an agenda of which the covid-19 measures imposed upon us across the globe are an obvious harbinger.
In addition, Gates has undisclosed conflicts-of-interest with the massive looming vaccine profit center. The Gates Foundation, Gates-established/controlled GAVI Alliance, and Gates-funded CHAMPS program through Emory University provide indispensable funding to the CDC and WHO. Following US withdrawal of WHO support by President Trump, the Gates Foundation and GAVI now provide more funding to the WHO than any of the 192 nations it serves. To mesmerize public acceptance through news propaganda, the pharmaceutical industry provides enormous TV advertising revenues, about equivalent to the fast food industry and exceeded only by the automotive industry.
Requiring covid-19 vaccination as a condition of school attendance would be not only unjustified but arguably criminal. Oregon pediatrician Paul Thomas, who has scrupulously provided parents with informed choice whether or not to vaccinate their children, performed a review of his clinical records over 10 years comparing health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated children. Collaborating with research analyst Dr. James Lyons-Weiler, Dr. Thomas found striking differences in overall health with the unvaccinated children far healthier across all illness outcome measures.
Resistance
These facts are now being introduced into evidence in lawsuits across the world where most jurisdictions do not provide liability immunity to pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Attempts to investigate these essential questions, scrupulously fact-based, have been ignored or casually dismissed as “conspiracy theories” by the mainstream press. Alternative web-based and social media reports and assertions by hundreds of physicians, medical research scientists, independent and citizen journalists, civil rights attorneys and everyday fed-up citizens challenging the official narrative have met smothering censorship by the dominant internet platforms. Due in no small measure to this blatant censorship, public opposition is growing, rejecting mainstream propaganda and responding to emerging counter-narrative revelations with dismay, anger and aroused will to resist.
The urgent need to mount vigorous resistance goes far beyond the current health-panic-induction agenda – possibly an intended checkmate – by obviously coordinated world power managers. The methods, motives and orchestration of this dark global theatric that we are not allowed to dig into, identify and examine lead us back toward the sponsors of Crimson Contagion – the vaccine-obsessed Gates Foundation, the Great Reset vision of World Economic Forum Davos denizens, and Big Pharma as their instrument and beneficiary. Or would that just be another ridiculous conspiracy theory?
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Jack Dresser, Ph.D. is a retired psychologist and NIH-funded research scientist associated with Oregon Research Institute, where he served as Principal Investigator on projects developing and evaluating high-risk behavior prevention and early intervention programs. Before these studies he directed several projects funded by the U.S. Department of Education developing drug and alcohol abuse prevention and early intervention programs for school districts in northern and southern California and Oregon. He began his professional career as a U.S. Army psychologist during the Vietnam War, and is national vice-chair of the Veterans for Peace working group on Palestine and the Middle East. For several years he has co-hosted a weekly radio show titled “Racism, Empire and Survival” on www.kepw.org in Eugene, Oregon that focuses on the propaganda fueling and maintaining violent U.S./NATO/Israeli imperialism and the false histories packaged as education that provide the framing into which government and media propaganda is seamlessly fitted.
Liberals may be able to argue with Fox News or even Republican politicians. But what happens when a peer reviewed study comes out of one of their coveted and prestigious universities in California potentially showing that their collective reaction to Covid may have been completely worthless and, as a result, may have done exceptionally more harm than good?
Along those lines, it seems like a good idea to point out that a new peer reviewed study out of Stanford is questioning the effectiveness of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders (which it calls NPIs, or non-pharmaceutical interventions) to combat Covid-19. The study’s lead author is an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at Stanford.
“The study did not find evidence to support that NPIs were effective in preventing the spread,” according to Outkick, who published the report.
The study, co-authored by Dr. Eran Bendavid, Professor John P.A. Ioannidis, Christopher Oh, and Jay Bhattacharya, studied the effects of NPIs in 10 different countries, including England, France, Germany and Italy.
And, when all was said and done, it concluded that: “In summary, we fail to find strong evidence supporting a role for more restrictive NPIs in the control of COVID in early 2020.”
In fact, the study found “no clear, significant beneficial effect of more restrictive NPIs on case growth in any country.”
From the study:
“In the framework of this analysis, there is no evidence that more restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions (“lockdowns”) contributed substantially to bending the curve of new cases in England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, or the United States in early 2020. By comparing the effectiveness of NPIs on case growth rates in countries that implemented more restrictive measures with those that implemented less restrictive measures, the evidence points away from indicating that more restrictive NPIs provided additional meaningful benefit above and beyond less restrictive NPIs. While modest decreases in daily growth (under 30%) cannot be excluded in a few countries, the possibility of large decreases in daily growth due to more restrictive NPIs is incompatible with the accumulated data.”
The study even looked into the potential of stay-at-home orders facilitating spread of the virus:
“The direction of the effect size in most scenarios point towards an increase in the case growth rate, though these estimates are only distinguishable from zero in Spain (consistent with non-beneficial effect of lockdowns). Only in Iran do the estimates consistently point in the direction of additional reduction in the growth rate, yet those effects are statistically indistinguishable from zero. While it is hard to draw firm conclusions from these estimates, they are consistent with a recent analysis that identified increase transmission and cases in Hunan, China during the period of stay-at-home orders from increased intra-household density and transmission. In other words, it is possible that stay-at-home orders may facilitate transmission if they increase person-to-person contact where transmission is efficient such as closed spaces.”
It continues:
“We do not question the role of all public health interventions, or of coordinated communications about the epidemic, but we fail to find an additional benefit of stay-at-home orders and business closures. The data cannot fully exclude the possibility of some benefits. However, even if they exist, these benefits may not match the numerous harms of these aggressive measures. More targeted public health interventions that more effectively reduce transmissions may be important for future epidemic control without the harms of highly restrictive measures.”
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The Higher Planning Council (HPC) of the Civil Administration approved today plans to build 780 housing units in settlements, most of them deep in the West Bank (714 units (92%) in settlements that Israel will have to evacuate under a peace agreement, according to the Geneva Initiative model). Among other things, the HPC approved for deposit the legalization of two illegal outposts: Havat Yair with 96 units of which 82 units are already (illegally) built, as a “neighborhood” of the Yakir settlement, and the outpost of Nofei Nehemiah with 118 units, as a “neighborhood” of the Rehelim settlement which itself was an illegal outpost that was legalized in recent years.
The plans advanced include:
Earlier in the day, the HPC discussed several housing plans for Palestinians in Area C, although according to reports, the Prime Minister’s Office today asked to cancel the hearing due to settlers’ pressure. This is in addition to the pressure put by settlers last week which led to the removal of three plans for Palestinian villages from the committee’s agenda.
No decisions were made during the discussion and the committee is expected to publish its decisions in the coming days, but the spirit of the discussion shows that:
1. There is an intention to approve the plan to legalize 70 existing housing units in the Palestinian village of Hizma + an addition of 70 new housing units.
2. The HPC is intending to condition the approval of the plan for the Palestinian village of Walajeh, with the approval of a new bypass road for settlers (which will “be compensated” by the construction of the plan for about 1,000 housing units for settlers in the new planned settlement of “Givat HaGamal” in Har Gilo). It is important to note that the discussion of the plan of Walajeh was forced on the HPC following the High Court’s decision that the plan should be discussed.
3. Apparently the HPC did not approve the plan to legalize a school in the Bedouin community of Wadi A-Sik in the western slopes of the Jordan Valley.
4. Apparently the HPC approved two hotels and an amusement park on the outskirts of Area B, and a 200 square-meter cooling building for a Palestinian farmer in the Jordan Valley.
These approvals are almost insignificant in terms of the true needs of the Palestinians in Area C. It should be mentioned that in 2020 alone, 12,159 housing units were approved for Israeli settlements, while only 245 housing units, many of which already exist, were approved for Palestinians (note that 245 units for Palestinians is a lot compared to previous years).
Peace Now: “By promoting hundreds of settlement units, Prime Minister Netanyahu is once again putting his personal political interests over those of the country. Not only will this settlement activity erode the possibility for a conflict-ending resolution with the Palestinians in the long-term, but in the short-term it needlessly sets Israel on a collision course with the incoming Biden administration.”
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Two frogs no more than four centimetres in length: they seem so insignificant. But much is riding on them, namely a constitutional court case that could stop mining development in most of Ecuador.
The Long Nose Harlequin Frog, last seen in 1989, was thought extinct until it was rediscovered inthe LLurimagua mining concession in 2016. The much rarer Confusing Rocket Frog, last spotted in 1985, was also written off until its rediscovery in the same mining concession in 2019. Both have been enlisted to stop a large-scale copper mining project that has been promoted by eight different Ecuadorian governments.
In years past, community opposition forced a Japanese and a Canadian mining company to abandon the project. Since 2014, Chilean-owned Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer, has funded advanced exploratory activities. The company has the full support of the Ecuadorian government through Enami, Ecuador’s state-owned mining company.
Tactics
This government support enabled the two companies to access the mining site in May of 2014. They did it with the help of nearly 400 members of three different elite police units backed up by the military, and by occupying not only the mining site, but most of the Intag area.
Other tactics of intimidation included incarceration of a local opposition leader, plus an outrageous smear campaign, spearheaded by then president Rafael Correa.
This is a only small sampling of the tactics used to try to neutralize the opposition to mining. And, if it sounds like fodder for a cinematic drama, it’s because it is. Several documentaries have been made on the 25-year long struggle.
The issue, of course, is not only about frogs, although saving species from extinction shouldn’t need further justification. The frogs live in some of the last remaining cloud forest on the western slopes of Ecuador’s Western Andean range. Over 80 percent of these forests have been transformed into pastures, banana, cacao and oil palm plantations, sugar cane fields, and dismembered by illegal logging. Mining now severely threatens what is left.
Most people haven’t heard of cloud forests, yet they are much more biodiverse and more threatened than the better-known Amazonian lowland forests. Worldwide they make up less than 2.5 percent of rainforests, but these forests also protect watersheds that give life to hundreds of rivers and thousands of streams, and provide safe drinking water and livelihoods to hundreds of thousands of Ecuadorians.
Rights
As important as species extinction and watershed protection are, Intag’s struggle is also about defending collective and human rights.
A preliminary environmental impact study by Japanese experts in the mid-1990s predicted 100 families from four communities would have to be relocated to make room for what was then thought to be a small copper mine. Other impacts included heavy metal contamination of rivers, plus “massive deforestation” which would lead to a “process of desertification”.
Today, Codelco suggests the ore deposit could be 53 times larger. If Codelco’s estimate is confirmed, besides impacting more communities, the large-scale mine would generate anywhere from 3,829 million tons, to twice that amount of subsoil contaminated with heavy metals. All for just 17 million tons of pure copper.
The Confusing Rocket Frog and the Long Nose Harlequin are only the tip of the biodiversity iceberg. Hundreds of species on the IUCN and Ecuador’s Red Lists depend on Intag’s forests for continued existence. These include the Brown-headed Spider Monkey, the Spectacled Bear, the critically endangered Coastal Jaguar, several glass frogs, an extremely rare fish, and a tree so rare it has only been reported in another patch of forest hundreds of kilometers away. The full list is depressingly long.
Lying beneath all this stunningly beautiful landscape lies a massive copper deposit. Intag’s communities, supported by local, national and international organisations have done everything possible to prevent this environmental and social catastrophe from happening over the past 26 years.
We sued the Toronto Stock Exchange for human rights violations, created dozens of community- and local government-owned forest and watershed reserves, and got local environmental ordinances approved, all the while supporting sustainable economic activities.
We based the legal action on the inevitable violation of Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature. To date, Ecuador’s Constitution is the only one that recognises nature as a holder of rights independent from environmental rights that may benefit humans.
It’s such a novel concept that I and others involved in the legal action had doubts the lower court judge would comprehend it. The judge not only grasped the concept but did so with a clarity that should be heartening to people all over the world fighting for the adoption of the rights of nature.
Pressures
The win at the lower court set an important precedent for Ecuador. Other communities will be able to use this case to liven their opposition to mining because the country has over 2000 endangered species in a territory the size of the US state of Nevada.
The defendants – in this case the Ministry of the Environment and the State Attorney General – immediately appealed. The case now proceeds to the Provincial Superior Court of Imbabura. But for the appeal several other heavyweights will join in, including lawyers from the Ministry of Energy and Non-Renewable Resources, CODELCO and ENAMI.
The appeal will likely take place at the start of the new year. However, the pressure to annul the decision before it gets to the higher courts has been mounting.
It shouldn’t be difficult to imagine the kinds of pressure that judges hearing mining cases are being subjected to in countries like Ecuador, especially in times of pandemic. The government and companies paint apocalyptic scenarios: negative rulings will scare away foreign investments; they will break the economy more than it already is and rob the government of rents.
The companies will invoke international agreements that protect their investments and sue the country in International tribunals. And so on. My hat off to judges that can withstand these pressures and choose to uphold Constitutional Rights over thug intimidation, especially rights so novel as the rights of nature.
Energy
Here we come to an uncomfortable but key aspect of the issue. Copper is one of the basic metals for the “clean” energy transformation, so what are we to do if we don’t mine enough of it?
Shouldn’t the question be, how can we contain runaway climate crisis without being complicit in human rights violations, the devastation communities, and the decimation of forests harbouring threatened species?
Why aren’t we carrying out an independent cost-benefit analysis of mining projects that may impact endangered species, water sources, indigenous and non-indigenous peoples as well as the rights of nature?
What will happen to ecosystems and the climate itself, if we keep placing a higher value to what is below ground than the richness above it? That wealth includes a region’s clean water, productive lands, biodiversity, and cultural and social wealth. It is the type of wealth that can also help drive sustainable economic activities.
Exclusion zones can be set aside to keep mining out of places like Intag’s forests and key watersheds around the world. For exclusion zones to work, companies and government must include in their calculations all external costs to objectively determine a project’s true benefits versus its social, environmental and cultural costs. These costs are normally undervalued or left out of equations all together.
Some of the guidelines should include zero extraction of minerals where endangered species are found, nor ore bodies exploited which can release heavy metals into the environment. Above all, mining companies and governments must respect a community’s right to Free Prior and Informed Consent concerning activities that may impact their environment or their culture.
Given the expected increased demand for copper, cobalt, lithium and nickel, there will be a dangerous rush to find and exploit new mining sites. But, if on the way to solving one crisis we create a much more dangerous one, we will be guilty of unforgivable environmental crimes against nature and, thus, future generations.
If the frogs should win the appeals, a crucial precedent will be set. Preservation of wildlife and environments should always trump corporate interests. This precedent would mean that hundreds of families will not be forced off their lands or lose their livelihood. It will assure that the habitat of critically endangered species will not be decimated, and that pristine rivers and streams will not be poisoned.
Winning the upcoming appeals will go a long way to supporting a change of paradigm that just might help humanity save itself.
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Carlos Zorrilla is a full-time resident of Intag, co-founder of DECOIN, the environmental organization on the front lines of the resistance to the Llurimagua mining project since day one. In 2017, DECOIN was a recipient of the prestigious Equator Prize for its conservation work. The award is only given out every two years by the United Nations.
Featured image is from Medium, Luis Coloma, Jambatu Center
Over the last few months have seen a number of significant developments in relation to the increasing proliferation of armed drones. The most significant of these have been the use of Turkish Bayraktar TB-2’s in the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh which turned the military engagements in Azerbaijan’s favour and, secondly, the Trump administration’s decision to unilateral reinterpret the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) agreement in order to allow it to export more armed drones.
This latest update details new operators and other significant developments around the proliferation of armed drones. For our complete list of states operating, or close to operating, armed drones see Who Has Armed Drones?
Turkey
Azerbaijan and Turkey’s partnership
In the long running conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh, Turkey provided military support for Azerbaijan. The most noteworthy arms transfer was the Bayraktar TB-2, the use of which was said to have provided Azerbaijan with an advantage that Armenia could not match.When violence has flared up in the past, Armenia usually had the upper hand, but this time Azerbaijan was able to cause more devastation. Questions remain over whether the Turkish drones were actually operated by Turkey or Azerbaijan given the short turnaround between the sale and operational use.
The use of Bayraktar TB-2’s led campaigners to step up pressure to have sales of various imported parts in TB-2 suspended. Armenian activists have photographed these parts and built up a media campaign. US manufacturers have supplied transceivers, antenna, fuel filters and reservoirs, GPS units among other things, whilst the UK is said to have supplied fuel pumps and bomb racks, and Canada, sensors and antenna radio transmitter.
In December Turkish Aerospace were reported to have signed a deal to export 3 Anka-S drones to Tunisia in an $80m deal, the first export of Anka drones.
Other Turkey drone news
Turkey have also announced the successful flight test of a second Akinci drone prototype. The Akinici – an armed High Altitude, Long Endurance (HALE) drone with an endurance of 24hrs – will be able to fire various indigenously built rockets and laser guided bombs on 6 underwing hardpoints. As imposing as this sounds, commentators judge it is merely papering over the cracks of the ageing Turkish aircraft fleet. Turkey has been frozen out of a US F-35 programme and has little option but to develop indigenous alternatives. The Akinci seems to be the flagship of this new generation.
Selcuk Bayraktar, the chief technology officer of Baykar, recently indicated that Turkey are ready to mass produce their own drone engines which will be used in the Akinci and Bayraktar TB-3. However, it was previously understood that Akinci engines were part of a deal with Ukraine. It’s possible that the Ukrainian engines will be of a higher horsepower, as this commentator suggests.
Turkey is said to have around 75 TB-2 drones already in operation with their armed forces, engaged in operations in Syria, Libya, Iraq and, within Turkey itself, operating against Kurdish fighters. In the last few months, several articles have exposed the toll this drone war is taking on local Kurdish populations.
US exports
As Turkey and China’s armed drones exports expand, the Trump administration (prodded by lobbyists from some of the world’s biggest arms companies) unilaterally announced its reinterpretation of the MTCR rules on exports, in order to be able to sell Category 1 systems (that is drones capable of carrying a 500-kilogram payload at least 300 kilometres) to more countries. After unsuccessfully trying to persuade other signatories of the Missile Technology Control Regime to loosen restrictions on what constitutes a ‘Category 1’ system, the Trump administration announced that it will treat systems that fall in to Category 1, but travel less than 800km/hr as Category 2, allowing these systems to be sold beyond close allies.
In response to Trump’s loosening of the MTCR restrictions, a cross-party group of senators introduced a bill that would mean only NATO members, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan fell under the new rules drawn up by the administration. All other countries would continue remain under the existing MTCR rules.
In the short space of time since this announcement in July, the State Department has approved sales of armed Reapers to the UAE and Taiwan, as part of larger packages of weapons transfers to both countries, and is in discussions about potential sale to Morocco.
The sale to Taiwan is less controversial within the US as many members of Congress and the Senate support arm sales to Taiwan as part of geo-political moves to deter China. China, who regard Taiwan as a wayward province rather than an independent responded immediately saying it “strongly urged” the US to withdraw its plans and “cease US-Taiwan military contacts.”
Finally, in less good news for US arms companies, Japan is said to be rethinking its purchase of Global Hawk, for two reasons. Firstly, the US is retiring its Block 30 fleet, the model the Japanese intend to purchase. This would make maintenance costs rise significantly for Japan. Secondly, that Iran were able to down a Global Hawk in July has raised questions about the drone’s efficacy.
Europe News
The debate in Germany on whether or not to arm its drones took a surprising turn in mid-December. As part of their coalition agreement, the Social Democrats (SPD) and Chancellor Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) had agreed that the Bundestag would only decide on whether or not to arm its drones after a comprehensive debate on the issue. The German Ministry of Defence set up a series of carefully controlled panel discussions and events during 2020 which aimed to fulfil this requirement and the MoD published a policy document on the use of armed drones. A vote was scheduled for mid-December in the budget committee to provide funds to arm the Heron drones that Germany lease from Israel, and it seemed to many commentators that this would be approved. However, a few days before the vote, the SPD said that they would in fact vote against the resolution as there had not be sufficient public debate. In the end, the resolution was withdrawn and discussion on the issue is likely to continue in the run up to German elections in September 2021.
Meanwhile, Spain received two more Reapers from General Atomics, taking the total ordered to 6 aircraft. Spain have also committed to purchasing “at least” 12 of the Euromale drones. These will be received in 2029. Presumably the Reapers will be in service until then. The Euromale is currently moving in to Phase 2 of development with contracts now signed for work on production.
The Euromale and the UK and Belgium’s MQ-9B drones are intended to gain certification from civil regulators to fly in European airspace, opening up a whole new set of regarding safety and privacy. Drone Wars has previously commented on this and has recently launched UK Drone Watch a project that will to monitor developments.
United Aircraft Company (UAC) who are manufacturing Russia’s other armed drone, the (reportedly) stealthy Okhotnik, have been ordered to accelerate production and have the drone delivered to the army by 2024. It is said the Okhotnik has a range of 6,000km, a 59,000ft ceiling and can deploy air-to-air missiles.
Nigeria
Nigeria’s fleet of CH-3 armed drones are to be joined by more Chinese armed drones. Reports are that this new deal includes four CH-4B, two Wing Loong II and two CH-3B. The CH-4B have arrived in Nigeria and two are deployed to a new Combat Reconnaissance Group in Gombe state. This makes Nigeria only the third country, after China and UAE, to operate the Wing Loong II, China’s most deadly drone. It is likely that the drones will be used immediately they are ready in Nigeria’s ongoing battles against counter-insurgents and “armed banditry” in the north west of the country.
India
India’s quest to acquire armed drones continues amid growing tensions in the disputed border area with China. The army submitted a proposal to the Defence Acquisition Council seeking to arm the 90 Heron drones in service across the three services. Project Cheetah, has been in existence for a decade but a decision on whether or not to go ahead was sped up in August of 2020 although there is no confirmation of the outcome at the time of writing.
In the meantime, the Indian Navy has leased two unarmed MQ-9B SeaGuardian drones, presumably for training purposes ahead of a larger acquisition of armed drones which has been subject of long, on-going discussions.
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan has had two Wing Loong I since 2017, although it is unclear whether they are fully operational. Nonetheless, since Azerbaijan’s use of the Turkish armed drone against Armenian forces in the recent conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, Kazak military figures have begun to consider acquiring TB-2 drones. Reports have surfaced that a delegation from Kazakhstan visited the UAS base in Batman, Turkey, in November. One news agency suggested that Kazakhstan is looking to acquire “several dozen” TB-2.
The need for controls
In light of the developments in 2020, not least the Trump administrations undermining of the MTCR and Azerbaijan’s widely reported use of Bayraktar TB-2 in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, there has been renewed discussion about the need to develop effective international controls on the proliferation and use of armed drones.
In October, NGOs and rights groups, including DWUK, delivered a statement to the First Committee of the UN General Assembly in which they stressed the need for accountability on the use of armed drones that, in many cases, have ignored standards of humanitarian and human rights law.
The Stimson Centre and Pax held an online discussion that can be viewed here. It pulled together different voices on the topic of drone proliferation and made for an interesting discussion that included representatives from producer country, a non-producing country, the NGO sector and Agnès Callamard, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. An event summary is available from EFAD.
Lastly, a new report was published by the Geneva Centre for Security Policy that outlines the existing mechanisms for control and suggests ways of strengthening each of them, noting that all avenues need to be pursued as militarisation in general and the use of armed drones in particular, increases across the globe.
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Featured image: CODEPINK protests killer drones at DC home of Jeh Johnson (Credit: CODEPINK)
Seven months after Bayer AG announced plans for a sweeping settlement of U.S. Roundup cancer litigation, the German owner of Monsanto Co. continues to work to settle tens of thousands of claims brought by people suffering from cancer they say was caused by Monsanto’s weed killing products. On Wednesday, one more case appeared to find closure, though the plaintiff did not live to see it.
Lawyers for Jaime Alvarez Calderon, agreed earlier this week to a settlement offered by Bayer after U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria on Monday denied summary judgment in favor of Monsanto, allowing the case to move closer to a trial.
The settlement will go to Alvarez’s four sons because their 65-year-old father, a longtime winery worker in Napa County, California, died just over a year ago from non-Hodgkin lymphoma he blamed on his work spraying Roundup around winery property for years.
In a hearing held in federal court Wednesday, Alvarez family lawyer David Diamond told Judge Chhabria that the settlement would close out the case.
After the hearing, Diamond said Alvarez had worked in the wineries for 33 years, using a backpack sprayer to apply Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicides to sprawling acreage for the Sutter Home group of wineries. He would often go home in the evenings with clothing wet with herbicide due to leaks in the equipment and weed killer that drifted in the wind. He was diagnosed in 2014 with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, undergoing multiple rounds of chemotherapy and other treatments before dying in December 2019.
Diamond said he was happy to settle the case but has “400 plus” more Roundup cases still unresolved.
He is not alone. At least half a dozen other U.S. law firms have Roundup plaintiffs they are seeking trial settings for in 2021 and beyond.
Since buying Monsanto in 2018, Bayer has been struggling to figure out how to put an end to the litigationthat includes more than 100,000 plaintiffs in the United States. The company lost all three trials held to date and has lost the early rounds of appeals seeking to overturn the trial losses. Juries in each of the trials found that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicides do cause cancer and that Monsanto spent decades hiding the risks.
In addition to efforts to resolve claims currently pending, Bayer also hopes to create a mechanism for resolving potential claims that it could face from Roundup users who develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma in the future. Its initial plan for handling future litigation was rejected by Judge Chhabria and the company has yet to announce a new plan.
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Featured image is from Global Justice Now /Flickr/CC BY
[T]his view rests on … mistaking or confusing what is real with what is imitation; literal meaning with metaphorical meaning; medicine with morals… – Thomas Szaz
Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years. – R.D. Laing
The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, by Joel Bakan, dissects the modern corporation in terms of psychopathology, ticking the boxes of Dr. Hare’s famed scale of psychopathy.
Lately, in the furious fever of viral hysteria–what one might call a “panic-demic”–the word “psychopath” has become ubiquitous. Certainly, seen from the everyday point of view of decent people, “normal” people, it makes sense to label as crazy the senseless cyclone turning our lives upside-down. We want to get back to the old normal as possible: not to the “new normal” being thrust down our throats and up our noses.
But since the iron fist is showing ever more clearly through the threadbare shreds of the formerly plumply furry velvet glove, perhaps it would be more useful to approach an analysis in terms of the politics of power. Or in terms of sin, evil, and moral corruption. Or simply in terms of an old-fashioned warrior ethic of the dog-eat-dog, might makes right encounter of the conquering hero kind.
The American Psychiatric Association’s “bible,” the DSM, is neutral in relation to the etiology of mental disorders, making the point that these are defined in terms of social norms.(1) In other words, while one may be considered mentally ill in some social contexts, one would be considered normal in others.
In the same way, the world-view of the warrior honours the virile virtues of a code that may be maladapted to a more “civilized” norm. Hobbes’ “cardinal virtues” of war, “force and fraud”(2) would seem to have no place in a polite drawing-room. “All’s fair in love and war” implies that “nothing is off the table,” even that there is no such thing as evil in a world where there is no moral compass. Indeed, the very word “moral” seems, more and more, a quaint anachronism.
This is the world where a public figure can claim with apparent pride to an appreciative audience chuckling in approval: “We lied, we cheated, we stole.” Only missing is “we murdered.”
Perhaps this is a world of moral, not mental, illness. A sickness of the soul. And it is easy to sell one’s soul to the Devil if one has no moral sense, if it is a shrivelled appendage like a spiritual appendix. No longer needed, surplus to requirements, a useless eater of our body energy. Better to cut it out in one clean, surgical strike.
Can a whole culture fall prey to a collective soul-sickness, poisoned with the Kool-Aid of a warrior death cult? Can “this is war!” lose its power to thrill in the boardrooms, sports stadia, and fields of battle? Can Veblen’s “predatory culture” evolve past the need for “full spectrum dominance?”
Surely we are at the point where, in W.H. Auden’s poem, September 1, 1939, writing about a “psychopathic god” he says: “We must love one another or die.”
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S. M. Smyth was a founding member of the 2006 World Peace Forum in Vancouver and organized a debate about TILMA at the Maple Ridge City Council chambers between Ellen Gould and a representative of the Fraser Institute.
This past Thursday, January 14, 2021 Biden announced his ‘American Rescue Plan’ (ARP), a list of programs and proposals purported to generate a robust economic recovery in 2021, just as the US economy continues to deteriorate as a growing list of recent economic data now indicate.
US Economy Faltering Fast
New filings for unemployment benefits have been rising rapidly. From a ‘low’ of about 1 million/week in December last week’s initial claims for benefits topped 1.4 million—when both benefit programs, State administered and the Federal PUA, are counted .
Another red flag indicator is consumer spending (70% of the US economy) and retail sales, its largest component. The latter fell -1.4%% in November and another -0.7% in December, according to just released US Commerce data. These are typical months during which they rise the fastest. Another indicator of consumer spending in growing trouble, credit card spending fell an even larger -2.7% in December, according to Chase Bank’s database of 30 million credit and debit card holders. Still another red flag is trade. The US trade deficit based on recent months is now running $85 billion a month and close to $1 trillion a year. Deficits mean US exports, and thus US production for exports, is trailing imports to the US badly—and thus contributing to US GDP contraction in 2021 still further.
The severe weakening in the private sector of the US economy now underway can only be offset by increased government spending and stimulus. The much vaunted recovery of manufacturing activity represents only 11% of the US economy and, furthermore, has already increased most of its potential growth. It cannot continue at past rates or carry the general recovery from here. Only massive government spending at this point can do that.
The $900 Billion December 2020 Non-Stimulus
As the economy has weakened in the latter months of 2020, the US government injected a paltry stimulus in last December’s $900B (actually $866B per the Congressional Budget Office). But that will have minimal stimulus effect the current sagging real US economy. Here’s why:
Last December’s $900 billion emergency stimulus passed just after Christmas continued levels of $300/week in unemployment benefits for 12 million jobless.
First, it just continues the level of unemployment benefits of $300 per week. That’s not a net new stimulus. The economy was already slowing fast in November-December despite that $300 level of benefits. Discontinuing the $300 in 2021 would have made the economy worse but continuing it is not make it a further net stimulus. Moreover, that $300 extension in benefits is good for only 11 weeks. It will run out by mid-March 2021.
Then there’s the $600 checks part of the December $866B/$900B. That’s a net stimulus but a minimal one at best. It injects only $166 billion into the real economy which is miniscule relative to the more than $20 trillion size US economy. Not even 0.01% of the $20 trillion US GDP. And even that assumes the entire $166 billion will actually be spent and not hoarded for future emergencies or used to pay down debt.
The $284 billion for direct small business grants is the largest part of the $900/$866 billion. It will have some net stimulus effect but won’t start hitting the economy for weeks and maybe months—first it must be applied for, then distributed, and then actually spent. And we all saw how that process dragged on with the Cares Act small business PPP program last March 2020—and how larger businesses scammed off a good deal of it and then sat on the scammed dollars.
In short, as an economic stimulus funding of the sagging US economy, the $900/$866 billion is a DOA effort to stimulate the economy this first quarter 2021 in particular. It might keep the slowdown now underway from being even worse than otherwise a little. In that sense it’s a ‘mitigation’ package, not a stimulus.
Overlaid on the futile December mitigation package now is Biden’s government $1.9 Trillion stimulus proposals announced this past week. But that’s still just a proposal—not an actual stimulus spending Act passed by Congress. Moreover, for it have any appreciable effect stimulating the economy, there are three reasons why the $1.9 trillion will almost certainly end up much less.
First, the problem remains how much of the $1.9T will get cut as Republicans, and corporate Democrats, in Congress attack it. Already political forces are organizing to slash billions from the $1.9 trillion, including Democrats. A second reason why the stimulus will not amount to $1.9T net new actual stimulus to the economy is that a large part of it just continues prior spending levels. And that spending level that hasn’t been able to prevent the current US economy’s slowdown. Third, there’s the question of how soon some of the actual stimulus spending will actually be spent and thus actually get into the US economy. Certain programs and their spending will be delayed until well after the current January-March critical period.
So let’s describe in detail what’s in Biden’s ‘American Rescue Plan’ (ARP) and consider those programs that are likely candidates for cutting by Republican and corporate Democrats in Congress; that constitute just continuation of prior spending; and that will likely experience significant delay before the spending actually hits the economy.
Larry Summers: Corporate Shill Takes the Lead
Forces in and out of government and within both parties are coalescing to roll back the $1.9T Biden ARP proposals. Once again in the lead for corporate Democrats, is former adviser to Barack Obama in 2009, Larry Summers—now also advisor to Biden. Summers is appearing everywhere on corporate and mainstream media outlets declaring that the $1.9T is too much. He’s especially attacking the $2000 checks for families earning less than $75K per year in income, saying it’s too much. Summer’s message is even the $1400 in checks will expand government deficits and will overheat the economy causing inflation.
But there’s been no inflation for the past two decades despite adding $15 trillion to deficits and the national debt. The claim that deficits cause inflation in real goods and services is empirical nonsense, not because of some worn out neoliberal economic theory but because the facts don’t support it. But that old fake economic bogeyman of ‘excess spending leads to deficits that cause inflation’ is being peddled once again by Summers in the lead, on behalf of his corporate Democrat buddies, and of course most of the Republicans. They’ll seek to cut at least $500 billion from the $1.9 trillion.
For Summers this isn’t the first time he’s given fake and dangerous advice to presidents in time of economic crisis. It was Larry Summers who, back in early 2009, as key advisor to Barack Obama on how much to spend on Obama’s January 2009 economic recovery plan at the time, convinced Obama to reduce his 2009 stimulus by $120 billion that the US House of Representatives was prepared to spend. As a result the US recovery lagged badly in 2009-10. Congress had to make up the loss in spending by passing emergency measures like ‘First Time Homebuyers’ and ‘Cash for Clunkers (autos)’ subsidies for households. But by then it was too late. During Obama’s recovery package—amounting to way too little too late now acknowledged by most economists—it took more than six years to recover jobs lost in 2008-09. And then those recovered were at pay levels much less than those that were lost. Meanwhile as well, 14 million of the 48 million mortgages were foreclosed. And tens of millions more were added to the list of those workers without health insurance between 2009-15.
The Biden proposals are numerous and detailed. The ARP is a very detailed set of proposals. But if readers think they understand it by reading the Washington Post, New York Times, or other mainstream media summaries of it they are wrong. What that media has provided thus far is just bits and pieces of information, packaged up with very little analysis as to how much of the spending will actually get into the economy, how soon might it get there, and whether the $1.9 trillion will yet be gutted and reduced—as the ARP ‘wish list’ hits the Republican buzz saw in Congress.
What follows is a breakdown of the spending elements in Biden’s $1.9T ARP proposals, as well as where and how it will likely be attacked and rolled back by Senate Republicans, Corporate Democrats, and Business Interest lobbying friends of Larry Summers.
Part 1: $400 Billion Covid Relief, School Reopening, & Emergency Paid Leave
To begin with, there’s 4 Categories of spending in Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion ARP. The first is $400 billion for Covid measures, Vaccine distribution, and for reopening the schools. In this group corporate forces and their political allies will likely attack measures for spending $170 billion to reopen the schools as well as the roughly $70 billion more to provide for 14 weeks paid emergency leave for workers who have to leave their jobs due to schools or child care center closings, to care for family members sick or to quarantine themselves. The measure also extends such paid leave for the first time to the 2 million federal employees and to reimburse state and local governments for the cost of the leave. The paid leave maxes out at $1,400/week and for workers earning $73K per year in annual income. In other words, it covers roughly 75% of all US workers.
Opponents like Summers and Senate Republicans will argue the $170 billion is too much and should be reduced. It’s really money not needed for schools costs of reopening. It’s really money Democrats want to push to local government—a source for which Republicans and Mitch McConnell have vowed not to allow funds since last June 2020. Anything appearing to help fund state and local governments will be opposed in their push back, and there’s a lot of that money in the $1.9T in various forms of funding.
The other big target in this $400 billion is the above $70B for emergency leave pay for anyone earning less than $73K per year. Even though the money will be paid to employers to offset the costs of the paid leave, it will be attacked by conservatives and corporate Democrats, like Senator Mnuchin, in West Virginia and other corporate interests in Congress. Again, a main reason is its extension to federal and state-local government workers. They also don’t like the fact Biden’s ARP expands paid leave well beyond the minimal provision in the March 2020 Cares Act. That Act exempted big corporations with more than 500 workers from providing paid leave, as well as very small businesses with fewer than 50 workers. Now the measure covers all workers impacted by Covid who have to care for sick family members, or fill in for child care closings, or leave their jobs to provide schooling at home for their K-6 children, or have to quarantine themselves. Equally important, business interests fear the long term effect of providing such leave. They fear it will legitimize more permanent paid leave in future legislation. Better not to allow the precedent now, rather than fight it later.
Other proposals in the $400 Billion will be more difficult for corporate interests to roll back. The remainder of the roughly $160 billion (after $170B for school reopening and $70B for emergency paid leave) goes to a national vaccination program ($20B), testing ($50B), the Disaster Relief fund to replenish stocks of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), pandemic supplies like developing more therapies. A further amount, not specified, is allocated to International Health Groups (presumably WHO) which conservatives will fight to remove. There’s also calls for OSHA to issue Covid protection standards and grants to organizations that implement them that Congressional Republicans will likely also oppose.
A second major category of ARP spending is called Direct Family Relief. It allocates $1 trillion more in spending in addition to the $400 billion for Covid, Schools, and Paid Leave. Here the opposition will be intense, centered around the $1400 checks per person to help working households cover back rents, mortgages, keep the utilities on, and, most important for tens of millions now to provide food for their families. Biden’s ARP also extends the checks to adult dependents of households who were left out of the Cares Act 2020 $1200 check disbursement. The checks are a large cost item, amounting to $464 billion (for $2,000 which includes the $600 recently authorized this past December). Here the Republicans will argue it’s ‘deficit busting’.
Yet these are the same Republicans and corporate Democrats who quickly approved $650 billion in deficit busting tax cuts for businesses and investors in the March 2020 Cares Act. Then approved another $100 billion more in the December 2020 Defense Bill. Not to mention their approval of $429 bill in tax loopholes in 2019 for investors and corporations, which followed Trump’s notorious $4 trillion January 2018 business-investor tax cuts. In other words, they had no problem passing more than $5 trillion in tax cuts the past two years but now they’re crying wolf over spending for working families, students, renters, and local governments approaching bankruptcy.
Part 2: $1 Trillion Direct Family Relief Proposals
Another major element of the $1 trillion proposed for Direct Family Relief is the restoration of unemployment benefits. This is the $300/week supplemental unemployment benefits just passed in December in the $900B emergency ‘mitigation’ Act. Biden’s ARP raises it a modest $100, to $400. The December 2020 bill, however, provided the extra benefits only until March, a mere 11 weeks after its authorization in December. Biden’s ARP extends that to December 31, 2021. It’s important to remember, however, this is not a net new stimulus but a continuation of prior spending. It may help prevent a further slowing of consumer spending and its effect on the economy, but it will not constitute a ‘stimulus’, or net new spending. Nevertheless, Corporate interests in Congress will argue it should not be extended through next December. They may agree to a few more months this spring, past March, instead. They’ll argue that will save hundreds of billions of $ as deficits to the US budget this year.
Other proposals within the $1 trillion for Direct Family Relief are subject to reduction in amount of spending most likely. That includes the additional $35 billion for rent and mortgage relief; the $13 billion more for SNAP and food assistance; and the $40B for assistance to child care providers and for assistance to families of essential workers, caregivers, unemployed, and women who had to leave the labor force to care for children schooling. Like creating a precedent for paid leave, Republicans and others will fight to reduce the ARP Child Care funding out of concern it will legitimize more permanent spending in these areas later.
One area that opponents won’t likely try to reduce is the further $20 billion allocated in this category to Veterans Health needs. Nor probably the provisions that subsidize COBRA health insurance payments for 3 million workers forced to leave their jobs due to Covid. These payments will ultimately get into the hands of the employers and their health insurance companies, so that’ll be ok with the Republicans and friends no doubt.
The remainder of the $1 trillion takes the form of small funding increases for cash assistance for women on welfare ($1B for TANF program), for substance abuse ($4B), and for programs to address domestic violence due to Covid family stress. While the amounts are small, the idea of providing more funds for such programs will be viewed as adding non-Covid crisis related ‘wish list’ Democrat spending to the total ARP.
The $1 trillion also includes four tax cutting measures that impact working family households in particular: funds to help essential workers, caregivers, and jobless to pay for child care expenses; funds to expand for one year the child care tax credit for households that would allow a tax credit up to half the cost of child care expenses for each child under 13 years old, up to $4k per child (max $8K); an increase in the general child tax credit up to $3.6k per child including now children up to 17 yrs old; and increases in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for child-less adults, from $530 to $1,500 for those with incomes up to $21k per year. While the total cost of these 4 consumer focused tax cuts is not exactly known, the idea of raising tax credits for families will be viewed by conservatives as threatening their business and investor tax credits. They will oppose these four measures or, in exchange, demand a further increase in their business-investor existing tax credits.
Finally, there is another element in the call to spend $1 trillion that opponents will fight against tooth and nail. It’s the proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. And the call to pay essential workers retroactive hazard pay. Neither of these proposals contribute to the cost of the $1.9 trillion, their actual costs unknown at this point. Nor are they probably serious proposals for passage by Biden and the Democrats. They will almost certainly be withdrawn. At best they may constitute ‘markers’ for where future legislation may go. It will be important for opposing politicians to get Biden and the Democrats to drop these ideas from negotiations quickly, which most likely they will.
Part 3: $440 Billion Struggling Communities Support Proposals
The third major category of Biden’s $1.9T ARP is for ‘Struggling Communities Support’. It calls for another $440 billion in spending—in addition to the $1 trillion and $400 billion noted.
Just as in the case of the $1,400 Checks, Unemployment Benefits extension, Schools Reopening and Emergency Paid Leave costs, the $440B in part 3 of Biden’s ARP targeting communities will be among the main targets attacked by conservative, Republican, and corporate lobbying interests. The big target for rollback will be the $350 billion of the $440 billion allocated for an emergency fund to state and local governments to pay for more 1st responders and essential workers needed immediately to attack the spread of Covid and accelerate the vaccination of millions before much feared new and more infectious strains of the virus accelerate among the population. These funds are targeted to ensure faster vaccine distribution, more serious testing, help school reopenings, and to provide EDA grants to local governments, higher education institutions, churches and non-profits. In addition to the $350 billion, additional $20B each is earmarked for local public transport needed to keep essential workers in big cities are able to get to work and for pandemic response costs by tribal governments.
Opponents will see this as just another way to get money to state and local governments. They’ll argue there’s already funds in the $400 billion for Covid response and the $350B is duplicative. The same argument will be levied for the $20B for local transportation support.
Ever since Mitch McConnell made funds for state and local government the ‘bete noir’ of stimulus spending proposals, Republicans in particular have been adamantly against any aid whatsoever to such local governments. They’ve preferred that States and big cities go to the municipal bond market and borrow more if they need it instead. In other words, let the blue states and big cities get more in debt than they already are. Let them lay off public workers more. The McConnell strategy was to let those states and cities suffer and make them turn on their Democrat politicians. This political bias and prejudice is not gone in the US Senate. It is led by McConnell, with the Senator Paul Rand ‘deficit hawks’ faction of around 20. That critical mass is likely to succeed in rolling back most, if not all, the provisions in the $1.9T ARP proposals associated with providing aid to states, cities, local agencies, and tribal governments.
The amounts related to state-local government assistance in the $1.9T are probably around $500 billion of the $1.9T. So the fight over them in Congress once Biden’s proposals hit the floor will be intense. And likely drawn out. And that is bad for getting government spending and stimulus into the economy promptly in order to offset the likely decline continuing in consumer spending, especially in the first quarter of 2021 when it is desperately needed.
The fight in Congress over the $1.9T stimulus could actually be a long, drawn out affair—unless the Democrats and Biden want to retreat quickly on key provisions to get some kind of an agreement. That is quite possible, especially if the economy continues to deteriorate noticeably in the first quarter. If Biden and friends do not reduce their $1.9T, the actual economic stimulus effect will be delayed and with it the economic stimulus effect. And if the $1.9T is significantly reduced, that too will reduce the economic stimulus effect.
Some commentary is already arguing that the Democrats in the Senate can bypass the Republican opposition and quickly pass the $1.9T by reverting to what’s called the ‘Budget Reconciliation’ rule. This allows the passage of legislation by a simple majority instead of the Senate’s otherwise archaic 60 votes rule for passage. But Democrats have a 50-50, with the Vice President voting for a 51-50 outcome. That assumes, however, that all 50 Democrat Senators will vote in support. There are a number of them, however, who are closer to Republicans in their corporate affinities than to their Democrat colleagues. It is no guarantee that a budget reconciliation strategy will succeed.
Part 4: Modernize US Government Technology & CyberSecurity
A final part 4 of Biden’s $1.9T ‘American Rescue Plan’ addresses spending to upgrade and improve federal government use of technology, especially where cybersecurity is involved. Amounting to a couple tens of billions of dollars and the remainder of the $1.9T it is clearly an ‘add on’ unrelated to the Covid, Family, and Community Relief proposals. It is more a matter of infrastructure spending which Biden promises will come in a subsequent set of proposals for government spending and investment later this spring. Republicans and opponents of the ARP will no doubt argue such and move to have it considered in that later legislation.
Based on the preceding possibilities it’s reasonable to assume as much as $500 billion could be cut by Congress once conservatives, Republicans, and Corporate Democrats in the Senate get their claws into the $1.9 trillion package. What remains moreover will almost certainly be delayed well beyond February. In short, very little of the ARP will come in time to slow the US economy’s current first quarter trajectory.
Addendum: What’s Actually Net Stimulus in the $1.9T
Apart from the Congressional cuts likely coming, there are still other reasons why the $1.9T impact will not be the full $1.9T.
A good part of the $1.9T is not really net new or additional economic stimulus in the first place. A significant part of the $1.9T represents just a continuation of prior spending levels. At best it can serve to help mitigate an even more serious economic slowdown.
For example, the unemployment benefits in the ARP don’t kick in until after March and just represent a continuation of the benefit spending levels. The extension continues until the end of 2021. That’s probably around $300 billion of the $1.9 trillion. Then there’s the four consumer tax credits. That effect won’t be felt until households filing their 2020 taxes start to get tax refunds. Those refunds will be late this year. Households will wait until the passage of the ARP before they file tax returns in order to see if in fact they can claim the tax credits and get the refunds reflecting them. Refunds will not flow into households until later this year as a result, especially if the passage of the ARP Act is delayed in Congress. That could amount to another $100B or more.
So the actual stimulus effect of the ARP might be as little as half the $1.9T. $500 billion cut by Congress. Another $300B that’s just continuation of benefits. $166B that will have already entered the economy as the initial $600 checks. And $100-$150B in consumer tax credits.
In short, the actual stimulus to the economy could amount to barely $1 Trillion, not to Biden’s announced $1.9T.
Will that be sufficient to generate a sustained economic recovery in 2021. Not even close!
Biden and the Democrats are thus confronted with making the same error that the Obama administration did in early 2009—not providing a sufficient fiscal stimulus to generate a sustained recovery. Having failed in that objective in 2009-10, Obama turned to even more tax cuts for business. That did little to reverse the recession for tens of millions of working families and small businesses in the US. The direct consequence of that was the Democrats severe loss of members in the US House of Representatives in the mid-term election in November 2010. And then the loss of the US Senate. And that led to policies that fueled the discontent and rise of opposition throughout the US to Democrat government—paving the way for Donald Trump.
Biden and the Democrats don’t even have the same time in which to prevent the repeat of the last decade. They must turn the economy around quickly. They must put the Covid threat to bed by this summer 2021. They must somehow neutralize Trump, Trumpism and the proto-fascist radical right that is not going away the next four years. They must address the growing discontent with institutional racism. And they better hope that all this doesn’t eventually lead to a recurrence of a financial crisis—as debt loads accelerate in the private sector in 2021 due to a slow recovery and in turn lead to defaults and bankruptcies that precipitate a new financial instability event!
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Dr. Jack Rasmus writes on his blog site, Jack Rasmus, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
This is the second in a series of 4 posts about propaganda. The title of the previous post is ‘You are Surrounded by Propaganda’. The title of this post is taken from the book of the same name by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton.
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“The 20th Century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance. The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy” (Alex Carey(1)).
Public Relations (PR) – The Scale of Corporate Propaganda
Whilst government ‘spin’ is sometimes mentioned in the media, there is much less discussion of corporate spin. In practice, a huge amount of propaganda comes from corporations.(2) One of the leading critics of our economic and political system, Jonathan Cook, wrote that when corporate activities are particularly harmful:
“it becomes necessary for a company to obscure the connection between cause and effect, between its accumulation of profit and the resulting accumulation of damage caused to a community, a distant country or the natural world – or all three. That is why corporations – those that inflict the most damage – invest a great deal of time and money in aggressively managing public perceptions…Much of the business of business is deception, either making the… harm invisible or gaining the public’s resigned acceptance that the harm is inevitable.”(3)
Much of what we see on TV, hear on the radio, read in newspapers and magazines, and see on mainstream internet sites has a bias in favor of big corporations, and economic ideas that help those corporations make immense profits. One of the leading experts on propaganda, Alex Carey, once said that:
“One of the great achievements of business propaganda has been to make us believe that we are free from propaganda”.(4)
Most people are simply unaware of the scale of the manipulation, and the extent to which businesses influence governments and their citizens. The key to success is that propaganda is ideally delivered through multiple channels targeted at multiple audiences. This includes lobbying aimed at political leaders and decision-makers; influencing (or ‘capturing’) regulators; controlling or influencing the media; manipulating academics, grass roots activists and members of the public; and advertising.(5)
A long-term example is the US National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). This was formed by a group of the biggest US businesses in 1895. They have bombarded the public with propaganda for over a century. In one year alone NAM broadcast on the radio for 1,350 hours.(6) That is 4 hours per day. They placed stories in newspapers and magazines throughout the country. They distributed millions of leaflets in schools. They provided briefings to editors, journalists and radio commentators. All of this is intended to increase public acceptance of corporate power. This was described some time ago as “a 75-year-long multi-billion dollar project in social engineering on a national scale”.(7) A similar UK organisation, Aims of Industry, has bombarded British media with corporate propaganda for many years.(8)
In the US, the number of people employed in the PR industry now outnumbers the people employed in the media, and estimates in the UK suggest that there are 3 times as many PR people as journalists.(9) It is impossible to know how much is spent on PR because there is an overlap between PR and advertising. One estimate in the US is $14 billion each year,(10) but as the annual advertising budget is almost $250 billion,(11) the true figure is likely to be much more. The biggest PR firms operate globally:
“In 2015, three publicly traded mega PR firms—Omnicom, WPP, and Interpublic Group—together employed 214,000 people across 170 countries, collecting $35 billion in combined revenue”.(12)
Much of this activity is secret. In the same way that intelligence agencies have connections with the mainstream media, former insiders from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have admitted that offices of PR companies have provided useful cover for CIA agents to operate overseas.(13)
Crisis Management and Whitewashing Reputations
One of the specific roles of PR companies is called crisis management. This is where a corporation or a government has made a big mistake and wants to cover it up, or has a bad reputation in general and wants to polish its image. The PR company’s job is to convince you that Union Carbide (now part of The Dow Chemical Company) is a caring corporation after an explosion at one of their plants in Bhopal, India has killed thousands of people; to convince you that the military dictatorship in Argentina in the 1970s were reasonable people, while they were murdering their citizens; or to convince you that torture in Turkey, Guatemala, Nigeria, Kuwait, Indonesia, Egypt, Peru, Columbia or Pakistan is not so bad.(14) Whitewashing the reputations of foreign governments is a major source of revenue for some PR companies.(15) They were even employed by the Saudi Arabian government after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 because many of the attackers were Saudis.
Whitewashing reputations is not just something carried out by governments and global corporations. It happens on a more local level too. For example, following an incident where campus security personnel pepper-sprayed peaceful protestors, the University of California Davis spent $175,000 trying to eradicate mentions of the incident on the internet in 2011.(16)
No ethical standards in PR
PR companies have sent spies into campaign organisations and political groups to find out what they are planning. If these groups are thought to be a threat to a client then PR companies will try to undermine them, using smears, legal intimidation and other forms of manipulation. For example they have tried to set up animal rights protestors by becoming members and then persuading other members to commit acts of violence, which ends up generating bad publicity for the genuine protestors.(17)
PR companies also employ people who appear to be independent experts, when their true role is just to support the PR company. There is a huge amount of junk science being put out by people paid by corporations. In the 1960s there were claims that chemicals like DDT, and materials like asbestos, were safe. We now know this was not true. The corporations knew at the time that they were unsafe, but they paid experts to lie.
Astroturf Lobbying – Fake Organisations
One of the main techniques used by PR companies is to create, train and finance fake grassroots movements and other campaign organisations to influence policymakers, journalists and the public.(18) These are known as front groups or ‘astroturf’ lobbying.(19) They post fake information on the internet, send fake letters to politicians, and make advertisements that look like news programs, or articles in newspapers. These fake groups are usually given misleading names, like the ‘American Council on Science and Health’, which was a front for many companies, and has defended poisonous chemicals such as asbestos.(20) The ‘Campaign for Creativity’ was a front for Microsoft and other companies trying to get stronger patent laws in Europe.(21) The ‘Save Our Species Alliance’ was a fake group representing the cattle and timber industries trying to weaken the Endangered Species Act.(22)
Kuwait’s leaders are one of the most repressive regimes in the world, yet before the first Gulf War began, a huge propaganda campaign was undertaken to present them as a reasonable government. A fake organisation called ‘Citizens for a free Kuwait’ was set up. They made-up a story about Iraqi soldiers taking babies from incubators and murdering them, in order to convince US politicians to invade Iraq.
Bell Pottinger – Fake everything
One of the UK’s biggest PR firms, Bell Pottinger, collapsed in 2017, after revelations that it was involved in serious corruption, and deliberately exacerbated racism, in South Africa.(23) Among other activities the firm were paid $540 million by the Pentagon to make fake terror videos and other propaganda. They used a wide range of internet manipulation techniques. They used networks of fake bloggers and Twitter accounts to spread misleading information. They changed content on Wikipedia to make their clients look good by adding favourable comments and removing negative ones. At the same time they maliciously altered other people’s Wikipedia pages. They manipulated search engines so that positive articles about their clients would come first, and negative comments would appear much further down the rankings. The firm had close connections with senior British politicians, and they polished the reputations of countries accused of human rights violations.
Tobacco – The Best Weapon Is Doubt
The tobacco industry set up one of the most notorious fake organisations – the ‘Council for Tobacco Research’.(24) This was a front for the tobacco companies making sure that they could cast doubt on anyone who criticised them. They had no interest in genuine tobacco research. Where there is evidence of something that corporations do not want you to accept, such as ‘smoking is bad for you,’ the standard ploy used by PR companies is to cast doubt and create confusion. If there is any doubt in the mind of the public, they will believe whatever they choose. If they want to believe that smoking is not bad for their health, they will. This is much easier for PR companies than actually denying or disproving anything. The tobacco industry has a long history of using PR. In the 1920s, women did not smoke very much. The tobacco companies were keen to encourage them, so they set up one of the earliest examples of corporate PR – a smoking stunt during the 1929 Easter parade in New York. Lots of debutantes who marched in the parade were given cigarettes to smoke while they marched. This was hyped as an example of female emancipation.(25) The taboo against female smoking had been broken.
Deny, Doubt, Delay, Discourse
Sugar, alcohol and gambling companies (sometimes called addiction industries), together with industries that contribute to climate change, now use the same tactics as the tobacco companies to resist legislation. First they deny that there is a problem. At the same time, these companies will ‘attack’ their critics, accusing them of being anti-business, or nanny state. They make false claims about how regulations will cause job losses, or affect the economy.(26) When they can no longer deny the problem, they create doubt using misleading data. Then they present themselves as a responsible industry that is trying to deal with the problem, so they are invited to help draft legislation. They set up industry-funded research organisations so that they control our understanding of the problem. They focus on ineffective solutions such as ‘education’ and ‘awareness’ programs. This long-term strategy is sometimes described as ‘deny, doubt, delay, discourse’(27) and is deliberately intended to block effective legislation for as long as possible.
Nuclear Industry
A good example of an industry that has used PR for many years is the nuclear industry. When nuclear energy first became a possibility, its supporters realised that the total cost would be much greater than the cost of coal. Despite that, they came up with slogans like “energy too cheap to meter”(28) and persuaded governments to build reactors. Third world governments spent large sums on these ‘white elephants’(29) (this means something that appears valuable but whose costs exceed its usefulness). Studies showing how unsafe nuclear reactors are have been kept secret. Many nuclear accidents, some very serious, have never been reported in the mainstream press.
It’s Getting Worse
Corporate propaganda is very complex. It includes issues such as misrepresenting their activities, corporate social responsibility, covering up unethical and criminal activity, and fraudulent accounts. Some of this will be examined in more detail in future posts. The extent of manipulation by PR companies is growing. For example, if you’ve ever attended a public consultation, perhaps about a planned supermarket in your area, it is quite likely that the consultation was a sham, organised by a PR company.(30) The consultation gives the impression of the company engaging with the local population, but in practice the company is intending to go ahead with its plans whatever local people say.
The truth is out there
The availability of information on the internet has enabled ordinary people to begin to see through propaganda more easily. Wikileaks provides many documents that expose government and corporate crimes, and show what decision-makers in government and business are actually saying to each other when they are lying to the public. Some genuine campaign organisations (listed below) are now trying to expose the deceptions of the PR industry by explaining misleading activity, by creating databases showing which groups are funded by which companies, and other databases showing how networks of individuals are connected to each other.
Propaganda aimed at ordinary people to manage public opinion is sometimes called grassroots propaganda, but the really important work is treetops propaganda, which is used to manage politicians and other policymakers; journalists, editors and broadcasters; economists, academics and anyone else who might influence your opinion. In particular, a considerable amount of PR effort goes into systematically targeting and manipulating politicians and journalists behind closed doors. If they can persuade these two groups to repeat corporate propaganda, they are more likely to be successful. Manipulating politicians is usually called lobbying and is discussed in a later post.
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Rod Driver is a part-time academic who is particularly interested in de-bunking modern-day US and British propaganda. This is the fourteenth in a series entitled Elephants In The Room, which attempts to provide a beginners guide to understanding what’s really going on in relation to war, terrorism, economics and poverty, without the nonsense in the mainstream media.
Notes
1) Alex Carey, Taking The Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty, 1996, p.18
2) John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, 1995
I have made slight changes to the quote to make it easier to read.
4) Alex Carey, Taking the risk out of democracy, 1996. The exact quote is “The success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that we are free from propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century”
5) Jeff Connaughton, The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins, 2012, p.125
6) Alex Carey, Taking The Risk Out Of Democracy, 1996, p.28
7) Alex Carey, Taking the risk out of democracy, 1996, p.20
8) Tamasin Cave and Andy Rowell, A quiet word: Lobbying, Crony Capitalism and Broken Politics in Britain, 2014, p.28
13) Robert T. Crowley, cited in Johan Carlisle, ‘Public Relationshipe: Hill and Knowlton, Robert Gray and the CIA’, Covert Action Quarterly, No.44, Spring 1993,
21) Corporate Europe Observatory, ‘How the Campaign for Creativity morphed into the Innovation and Creativity Group: habits of deception die hard’, Nov 2006, at http://archive.corporateeurope.org/c4c-icg.html
26) Simon Capewell and Ffion Lloyd-Williams, ‘The role of the food industry in health: lessons from tobacco?’, British Medical Bulletin, Vol.125, Issue 1, March 2018, at https://academic.oup.com/bmb/article/125/1/131/4847358
Miami medical examiner is investigating the death of 56-year-old Dr. Gregory Michael who reportedly died from a rare autoimmune disease 15 days after being vaccinated. Michael’s wife wants her husband’s death to serve as a warning to others.
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The wife of a Florida doctor who died 15 days after receiving Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine told reporters at USA Today and the Daily Mail that her husband was “perfectly healthy” before he got the vaccine.
Heidi Neckelmann said her husband, 56-year-old Dr. Gregory Michael, “sought emergency care three days after the shot because he had dots on his skin that indicated internal bleeding.”
Michael received the vaccine on Dec. 18 at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, where he’d worked for 12 years as an OB-GYN. He died on Jan. 3 after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke related to a lack of platelets, a condition called thrombocytopenia, or as the Daily Mail reported, acute idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP).
Neckelmann told the Daily Mail:
“He was in very good health. He didn’t smoke, he drank alcohol once in a while but only socially. He worked out, we had kayaks, he was a deep sea fisherman.
“They tested him for everything you can imagine afterwards, even cancer, and there was absolutely nothing else wrong with him.”
Pfizer, in a statement to USA today, said the vaccine maker was aware of and “actively investigating” the death, but also added “we don’t believe at this time that there is any direct connection to the vaccine.”
Pfizer also told USA Today:
“There is no indication — either from large clinical trials or among people who have received the vaccine since the government authorized its use last month – that it could be connected to thrombocytopenia.”
But Neckelmann told the Daily Mail that in her mind, her husband’s death was “100% linked” to the vaccine.
According to Redwood, a study comparing adverse effects following influenza vaccination found that ITP was the third most common autoimmune condition (after Guillain Barre and rheumatoid arthritis).
As Neckelmann told the Daily Mail, Michael suffered no immediate reaction to the vaccine, but three days later he noticed petechiae — spots of red indicative of bleeding beneath the skin — on his hands and feet.
After checking himself into the hospital, doctors confirmed Michael was suffering from an acute lack of platelets. According to Neckelmann:
“All the blood results came back normal except for the platelets which came back as zero.
“At first they thought it must be a mistake. So they did the test again and this time did a manual count which is supposed to be more accurate. This time it showed just one platelet.”
Doctors told Michael his condition was “incredibly dangerous” and could lead to a brain bleed and/or death, Neckelmann said.
Neckelmann told USA Today that a team of doctors tried unsuccessfully for two weeks to raise his platelet count. She told the Daily Mail that her husband had no prior history of acute idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, the illness her husband was diagnosed with. The disorder causes the immune system to mistake platelets for foreign objects and instructs the spleen to destroy them.
In a Facebook post, Neckelmann wrote that her husband was a pro-vaccine advocate. But, she said:
“I believe that people should be aware that side effects can happen, that it is not good for everyone and in this case destroyed a beautiful life, a perfect family, and has affected so many people in the community
“Do not let his death be in vain please save more lives by making this information news.”
According to the Daily Mail, children can get acute ITP after a viral infection such as the flu or mumps, while in adults, triggers can include HIV, hepatitis or H. pylori, a type of bacteria that causes stomach ulcers.
On hearing of Michael’s death, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., CHD chairman and chief legal counsel said:
“We need to stop regarding these tragedies as acceptable collateral damage. We need to step back from this giddy exuberance and make a cold hard risk assessment about these experimental medical interventions. And we need to recognize that these zero-liability vaccines are risky and that where there is risk, there has to be choice.”
So far there is no confirmation of any deaths directly related to either vaccine, though a 41-year-old woman in Portugal died two days after getting the Pfizer vaccine, and a 75-year-old Israeli man reportedly died of a heart attack two hours after receiving the vaccine.
There are, however, a growing number of reports of severe allergic reactions to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. According to the Wall Street Journal, at least 29 people have had severe allergic reactions in the U.S. to date.
In a news conference Wednesday, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told the media:
“The known and potential benefits of the current COVID-19 vaccines outweigh the known and potential risks of getting Covid-19. That doesn’t mean, however, that we couldn’t see potential serious health events in the future.”
To date, the only explanation offered for the allergic reactions to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines is that they were caused by PEG.
In September, Children’s Health Defense warned the FDA and Dr. Anthony Fauci about the potential for PEG to cause anaphylactic shock, but as previously reported, neither took action.
Immediately after the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were rolled out in the U.S. and UK, reports of severe allergic reactions began to surface in the media. In some cases, the reactions were severe enough to require vaccine recipients be hospitalized.
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On Tuesday, the U.S. Army General Staff issued a memorandum strongly condemning the violent riots in Washington on January 6 and announcing that the U.S. military will “obey lawful orders of civilian leadership” and “defend the U.S. Constitution against all external and internal enemies.”
In addition, the document states,
“On January 20, 2021, in accordance with the Constitution, confirmed by the states and the courts, and certified by Congress, President-elect Biden will be inaugurated and will become our 46th Commander in Chief.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt: “In politics, nothing happens by accident.”
The memorandum marks the preliminary culmination of a development which might well end with the assumption of power by the military in Washington. In order to understand this development, one has to recall the words of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who once said, “In politics, nothing happens by chance. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”
The politics of both Democrats and Republicans have for months been dominated by their dispute over the outcome of the U.S. election in November. Neither side misses an opportunity to systematically stir up emotions. Thus, both parties are deliberately inflaming the mood amongst a population whose living conditions have recently deteriorated drastically.
US unemployment is currently the highest since the Great Depression. The state as well as companies and private households are suffering from the heaviest debt burden of all time, infrastructure is crumbling, the middle class is being driven to ruin by ever harsher pandemic measures, poverty and hunger are on the rise, while at the same time the increase in wealth of the ultra-rich is breathtaking.
This historically unprecedented explosion of social inequality has created social tensions that will almost certainly erupt in violence. The events of January 6 are most probably only a foretaste of what can be expected in the weeks and months ahead.
Instead of de-escalating tensions, both parties have done exactly the opposite for weeks now, with Republicans ranting about election fraud (from which they themselves benefited in 2000), inciting protesters to commit acts of violence, and then condemning them. The Democrats have initiated impeachment proceedings, which will not shorten the president’s term of office by a single day, but which do serve to systematically fuel the anger of his supporters. The tech corporations, in turn, are adding fuel to the fire by imposing ever harsher censorship on their social platforms.
Taken as a whole, these measures are nothing more than deliberately lit fuses that are helping to explode the U.S. social barrel. If Roosevelt is right and this development is not accidental, then the goal is clearly to ignite a civil war, or at least massive civil unrest.
The true center of power is Cupertino & Wall Street
To understand why such violence is to be unleashed, one must look to the true center of power in the U.S, the digital-financial complex headed by Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook, as well as the major asset management firms BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, and Fidelity.
This digital-financial complex has usurped more power in recent years than any force in the entire history of the United States. But even this power has its limits, and one such limit is currently being reached by the foundation on which this power rests: the global monetary system, which is built around the dollar.
After having been revived several times over a period of 12 years by the central banks, this system is showing increasing signs of decay and cannot be kept alive very much longer.
The collapse of the stock markets at the turn of 2018/2019, the problems in the U.S. repo market in September 2019 and the renewed near collapse of the global financial system in February/March 2020 have clearly shown that the central banks’ options for future bailouts have largely been exhausted.
For this reason, a radical solution has apparently been opted for: According to reports from Washington, President-elect Biden will announce a total lockdown lasting several months immediately after taking office and, together with his designated Treasury Secretary, former FED head Janet Yellen, will fuel the largest monetary injection to date, amounting to almost two trillion dollars. Following the lockdown, the banking system in its traditional form will be ended and money creation will be placed solely in the hands of the central bank. U.S. citizens are to have only one account directly with the FED in the future.
Why is social unrest needed?
Why is social unrest needed for this restructuring of the monetary system? For one simple reason: Because the new monetary system is nothing short of the complete subjugation of the entire population to the interests of the digital-financial complex. The latter will not only be informed about every single transaction of every single citizen, but will also be able to withhold payments, bind them to deadlines or even restrict them geographically. It will be able to arbitrarily charge negative interest rates, favor selected occupational groups, disadvantage others, make payments dependent on behavioral codes, and completely cut off individual citizens from access to their money.
Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) no longer has anything in common with the money the world has so far known. Regardless of how democratic a constitution may be, the introduction of CBDC marks the end of all democracy, because it hands citizens over to the unlimited arbitrariness and total control of the central bank and the tech corporations that cooperate with it.
Under normal circumstances, no population would accept the introduction of such a monetary system without considerable resistance. Therefore, the digital-financial complex has obviously chosen a strategy of deliberately triggering the worst recession in a century, creating mass unemployment, promising aid payments but failing to meet the deadlines, and, in addition, creating political upheavals, setting different population groups against each other and triggering social turmoil.
By allowing the military to intervene and afterwards allowing the central bank to distribute the new money as a ‘universal basic income’ via emergency decrees, the unholy trinity of central bank, tech corporations and financial institutions will even manage to make its actions appear not as an act of coercion but as an act of humanity. The past nine months of the ‘war against the pandemic’ have proven how well this strategy works: The measures, which have lowered the standard of living of nearly two billion people, driven 130 million into hunger and destroyed millions of livelihoods forever, are still presented to the world as a “protection against a disease”.
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At a virtual press conference held by the World Health Organization officials warned there is no clear evidence COVID-19 vaccines are effective at preventing asymptomatic infection and transmission.
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At a virtual press conference held by the WHO Dec. 28, 2020, officials warned there is no guarantee that COVID-19 vaccines will prevent people from being infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and transmitting it to other people.
In a New Year’s Day interview with Newsweek, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, reinforced the WHO’s admission that health officials do not know if COVID-19 vaccines prevent infection or if people can spread the virus to others after getting vaccinated.
Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted Emergency Use Authorization in December 2020 for Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna to release their experimental mRNA vaccinesfor use in the U.S., the companies only provided evidence from clinical trials to demonstrate that, compared to unvaccinated trial participants, their vaccines prevented more mild to severe COVID-19 disease symptoms in vaccinated participants.
The companies did not investigate whether the vaccines prevent people from becoming asymptomatically infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and/or transmitting it to other people.
COVID-19 vaccines designed to prevent severe disease
According to WHO officials, while it appears the vaccines can prevent clinically symptomatic COVID-19 clinical disease, there is no clear evidence COVID-19 vaccines are effective at preventing asymptomatic infection and transmission. During the press conference, WHO chief scientist and pediatrician Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said:
“We continue to wait for more results from the vaccine trials to really understand whether the vaccines, apart from preventing symptomatic disease and severe disease and deaths, whether they’re also going to reduce infection or prevent people from getting infected with the virus, then from passing it on or transmitting it to other people.
I don’t believe we have the evidence on any of the vaccines to be confident that it’s going to prevent people from actually getting the infection and therefore being able to pass it on.”
Swaminathan said the COVID-19 vaccine was designed to first prevent symptomatic disease, severe disease and deaths. Dr. Mark Ryan, MPH, who is executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, agreed with Swaminathan and added:
“So the first primary objective is to decrease the impact the disease is having on people’s lives and, therefore, that will be a major step forward in bringing the world back to some kind of normal.
The second phase is then looking at how will this vaccine affect transmission. We just don’t know enough yet about length of protection and other things to be absolutely able to predict that, but we should be able to get good control of the virus.”
SARS-CoV-2 eradication via mass vaccination is a ‘moonshot’
Ryan also pointed out that the decision by WHO to try to eradicate the SARS-CoV-2 virus “requires a much higher degree of efficiency and effectiveness in the vaccination program and the other control measures” and that it is likely the new coronavirus will “become another endemic virus, a virus that will remain somewhat of a threat but a very low level threat in the context of an effective vaccination program.”
Ryan cautioned that, like with measles and polio, there is no guarantee of eliminating the SARS-CoV-2 virus through mass vaccination programs. He said:
“The existence of a vaccine even at high efficacy is no guarantee of eliminating or eradicating an infectious disease. That’s a very high bar for us to be able to get over. First, we have to focus on saving lives, getting good control of this epidemic, and then we will deal with the moonshot of potentially being able to eliminate or eradicate this virus.”
Azar says get vaccinated but still mask up
In a Dec. 22, 2020 interview, HHS Secretary Alex Azar told Fox News that the current “consensus” among health officials is that people who get two doses of COVID-19 vaccine should still mask up and practice social distancing. He said:
“We’re still studying some fundamental scientific questions though, such as, once you’ve been vaccinated, do you still need to wear a mask to protect others, could you still be carrying the virus even though you’re protected from it …
“If you’re getting vaccinated right now, still social distance, still wear a mask, but all these [recommendations] have to be data and science-driven, so we’re working to generate the data there so that as we go forward, we’ll be able to advise people on a foundation of data.”
COVID-19 vaccine passports and mandates may be coming
In an interview on CNN in early April 2020 when most states were in some form of a coronavirus lockdown, Fauci told Alyson Camerota, “It’s very likely that there are a large number of people out there that have been infected, have been asymptomatic, and did not know they were infected.”
Eight months later, on New Year’s Day 2021, Fauci told Newsweek that in his role as the new administration’s chief medical adviser, there is a possibility the federal government will eventually introduce “COVID-19 vaccine passports” and that some city, county or state governments and businesses will make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory, including in schools.
“Everything will be on the table,” Fauci declared. A week earlier, Fauci told The New York Timesthat between 70% and 90% of the U.S. population would need to get COVID-19 vaccinations in order for the country to reach vaccine-acquired herd immunity. He explained why he has continued to shift the “herd immunity” goal post over the past year:
“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent. Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85 … We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.”
Even as Fauci discussed vaccine passports and mandates in Newsweek, he admitted that proving that COVID-19 vaccines do more than prevent clinical disease but also block infection and transmission has been elusive. He emphasized that persons who get vaccinated still must wear masks:
“We do not know if the vaccines that prevent clinical disease also prevent infection. They very well might, but we have not proven that yet … That’s the reason I keep saying that even though you get vaccinated, we should not eliminate, at all, public health measures like wearing masks because we don’t know yet what the effect [of the vaccine] is on transmissibility.”
Fauci added, “We don’t know what we don’t know.”
Immunity passports: suggested soon after the pandemic began
Government health officials in Israel are getting ready to issue a COVID-19 “green passport” to citizens who have received two COVID-19 shots, which will exempt them from travel restrictions and testing for infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus or being required to quarantine after exposure to an infected person.
Technology companies have been working on creating a digital certificate, which contains personal medical information giving evidence that an individual has been vaccinated and can be used as a screening tool by employers, businesses and owners or operators of services and public venues, such as airlines, theme parks, concert halls, hotels and other places where people gather in groups with other people.
Immediately after the coronavirus pandemic was declared by the WHO last winter, Silicon Valley businessman Bill Gates began talking about the need for issuing digital certificates proving immunity to the virus and, once a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available, proof of vaccination.
In a comment posted on Reddit in March 2020, Gates said, “Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it.”
That same month in a TED Talk, Gates explained how lockdowns and resulting “economic pain” will prevent people from getting naturally acquired immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and that immunity “certificates” will eventually be required. Gates said:
“Now we don’t want to have a lot of recovered people, you know. To be clear, we’re trying through the shutdown in the United States, to not get to one percent of the population infected. We’re well below that today, but with exponentiation you could get past that three million. I believe we will be able to avoid that with having this economic pain.
“Eventually, what we’ll have to have is certificates of who is a recovered person, who’s a vaccinated person, because you don’t want people moving around the world where you’ll have some countries that won’t have it under control, sadly. You don’t want to completely block off the ability for people to go there and come back and move around.”
In an April 9, 2020, interview on National Public Radio, Gates returned to the message that some “social distancing” measures have to stay in place “until we get a vaccine that almost everybody’s had.” He said:
“What I’m saying, what Dr. Anthony Fauci is saying, what some other experts are saying, there’s a great deal of consistency. We’re not sure yet which activities should be resumed, because until we get a vaccine that almost everybody’s had, the risk of a rebound will be there.”
As of Jan. 3, 2021, the CDC had recorded over 20 million COVID-19 cases and nearly 350,000 related deaths.
Lasting immunity after mild, asymptomatic COVID-19 infection
A study was published Dec. 24, 2020, in Science Immunology by scientists from Queen Mary, University of London, in which they analyzed antibody and T cell responses in 136 London health care workers and reported that there was evidence of protective immunity up to four months after mild or asymptomatic COVID-19.
A press release issued by the university stated that mild or asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections represent the largest infected group and noted that researchers found T cell responses tended to be higher in those with the classic, defining symptoms of COVID-19, while asymptomatic infection resulted in a weaker T cell immunity than symptomatic infection, but equivalent neutralizing antibody responses. One of the researchers commented:
“Our study of SARS-CoV-2 infection in healthcare workers from London hospitals reveals that four months after infection, around 90 percent of individuals have antibodies to block the virus. Even more encouragingly, in 66 percent of healthcare workers we see levels of these protective antibodies are high and that this robust antibody response is complemented by T cells which we see reacting to various parts of the virus.
“This is good news. It means that if you have been infected there is a good chance that you will have developed antibodies and T cells that may provide some protection if you encounter the virus again.”
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As Trump’s term comes to a dramatic close, the administration’s last minute effort to rush through multiple mining projects that pose a grave environmental risk is lost in the headlines
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Buried deep in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2015, section 3003 calls for the expeditious facilitation of a land exchange agreement between Resolution Copper Mining, LLC and the United States government to create one of the largest and deepest copper mines in the country, spanning nearly 11,000 square miles of national forest terrain and penetrating 7,000 miles into beneath the surface of the earth.
The land swap specifically targets approximately 2,500 acres that are not already owned by the mining concern and which rest inside Apache hallowed ground known as Oak Flat in the Tonto National Forest in central Arizona. Considered sacred by the Apache and other First Nation peoples who still use the land they call Chich’il Bildagoteel for important ceremonies, food, and a vital link to their heritage, Oak Flat has been at the center of a decades-long battle between the San Carlos Apache Tribe and Resolution Copper, comprised of extraction industry behemoths Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton.
Closed to mining activities by President Eisenhower in 1955, Oak Flat has since flourished as a significant habitat for wildlife, including several endangered species of fish, snakes, and birds, as well as a popular campground and world-renowned rock climbing destination. Reaffirmed in the early ‘70s the protective regulations have nevertheless been incessantly targeted by UK-based Rio Tinto, whose lobbying efforts to obtain burrowing rights to the land have been rebuffed 13 times since.
In 2014, John McCain – the largest recipient of Rio Tinto political contributions in Congress that year – inserted the aforementioned rider in the 2015 NDAA, effectively reversing 66 years of environmental protection law and betraying his own history of advocating for indigenous rights as a ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs in 1989, when he led a Republican minority in the fight for the religious freedom of First Nations and the protection of sacred lands.
More than 30 years later, as President Trump leaves office, his administration looks to finish this act of duplicity initiated by his biggest political enemy in yet another demonstration of the hypocrisy that runs through the American political system and pervasive history of broken treaties and disenfranchisement of Native peoples.
Rushing into destruction
The U.S. Forest Service will release the final version of the environmental analysis for the Resolution Copper Project and Land Exchange in three days’ time and a full year ahead of schedule as a result of pressure from the Trump administration, according to local officials.
Members of the San Carlos Apache Nation have been camping out at Oak Flat since January 2020 as part of their continued effort to halt the mining project. Tribal member Wendsler Nosie Sr, interviewed by The Guardian in November described the urgency of their plight as the “fourth quarter with two minutes left in the game,” adding that Trump’s move to push the approval process forward by a year meant they now only “have one minute left.”
Oak Flat is just one of several large-scale mining and energy projects the outgoing administration is looking to approve before the proper assessments and consultations with affected populations are made. Other projects include a lithium mine in Nevada; a helium extraction project in Utah and an oil and gas drilling venture in Alaska, among others.
Virtually every one of these projects is facing opposition from Native tribes, whose very survival is threatened by the relentless advance of the extraction industry. That industry not only represents a catastrophic menace to their sources of clean water and food but also poses a direct risk to their safety as the proliferation of so-called “man-camps” or the temporary labor sites, plays a central role in the ongoing tragedy of missing and murdered indigenous women.
In the case of Oak Flat, Native communities have found an unlikely ally in their fight against Rio Tinto and BHP. A British government pension fund group with a stake in both companies has requested more information from their subsidiary, Resolution Copper, as to the potential impacts the proposed mine would have on Native American cultural and religious sites.
Ally or cover?
Local Authority Pension Fund Forum (LAPFF) Chairman, Doug McMurdo, has voiced his opposition to the mining method Resolution Copper is expected to use in Oak Flat, should the project move forward. The head of the £300 Billion pension investment fund echoes the concerns of the indigenous communities who oppose the “block caving” method planned, which consists of blasting beneath the surface to extract the copper ore through tunnels and inevitably cause the collapse of the rock above, taking ancient burial grounds, petroglyphs, and medicinal plants with it.
LAPFF has advocated for communities affected by Rio Tinto’s irresponsible mining practices in other parts of the world as well. Last year, Rio Tinto faced an official inquiry from the Australian government after the company blew up 46,000-year old caves in Western Australia that were part of the country’s Aboriginal heritage. McMurdo participated in the parliamentary inquiry that found Rio Tinto culpable of knowingly destroying the Aboriginal cultural heritage site. The LAPFF Chair pointed to the conclusions as the reason why the fund “has increased its call for companies to engage meaningfully with affected communities. The fact that Rio Tinto’s senior management had not reviewed a critical report about the site itself calls into question the company’s governance and oversight processes.”
But, at the end of the day, the question arises whether such remonstrations are enough to curtail the irreparable damage the extraction industries have done and continue to do to the environment and to the indigenous communities who are not only fighting for their own survival but the survival of the entire planet.
The legend of Oak Flat
One of the most significant areas of Oak Flat threatened by Resolution Copper’s project is a place called Apache Leap. The 400 foot-high cliff is the site of a historic incident of Native American resistance, from which 75 Apache warriors leaped to their death rather than be captured by the U.S. troops that surrounded them after a sneak attack that took the lives of 50 Apache warriors within minutes.
The Legend of Apache Tears is an enduring account of defiance against an enemy that keeps coming. When the wives and children discovered the bodies of their brave men at the bottom of the precipice, the legend states that their tears turned the white earth at their feet into black stones (obsidian) and, henceforth, anyone who acquired any such stones would never have to cry again since so many tears had already been shed by the Apache women on that tragic occasion.
If we stand with our Native American brothers and sisters against the destruction of their sacred sites, we might realize that they are sacred to us as well and then we might be able to arm ourselves with obsidian to begin the hard road back to living in harmony with nature and avert the creation of the Legend of Oak Flat.
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Raul Diego is a MintPress News Staff Writer, independent photojournalist, researcher, writer and documentary filmmaker.
Seeking prestige and power within the military, CENTCOM chief Gen. Kenneth McKenzie has deployed a series of bureaucratic and PR moves to drive the latest episode in US-Iran tensions.
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During the final two months of the Trump administration, a series of provocative U.S. military moves in the Middle East stirred fears that a war against Iran was being hatched. The atmosphere of crisis was not the result of any threat posed by Tehran, but rather the product of a campaign manufactured by the head of US Central Command (CENTCOM), Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., to advance his interests.
In a bid for prestige and power within the military, and the influence over policymaking that it guarantees, McKenzie has worked to accumulate military assets. The general’s thirst for influence has been a driving factor in the latest episode of US-Iran tensions. To advance his self-serving agenda, McKenzie has deployed a calculated series of political-bureaucratic moves, combined with a PR push in the media.
A four-star general who previously served as director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, McKenzie is regarded as the most politically astute commander ever to lead Middle East Command, according to journalist Mark Perry. He has also shown himself to be exceptionally brazen in scheming to defend his interests.
Almost immediately after taking command at CENTCOM in March 2019, McKenzie launched his campaign of political manipulation. By requesting additional forces to contain a supposedly urgent Iranian threat, McKenzie triggered the dispatch of an aircraft carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East. A month later, he told reporters he believed the deployments were “having a very good stabilizing effect,” and that he was in the process of negotiating on a larger, long-term U.S. military presence.
As a result of his maneuvering, McKenzie succeeded in acquiring 10,000 to 15,000 more military personnel, bringing the total in his CENTCOM realm to more than 90,000. The rapid increase in assets under his command was revealed in a Senate hearing in March 2020.
During the remainder of 2020 some of those troops were shifted to East Asia or Europe, in line with the new Pentagon priority on “major power competition.” McKenzie’s determination to resist the loss of military assets was a crucial factor in artificially manufacturing the recent Iran crisis.
McKenzie has fought to keep thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq, ostensibly to fight ISIS, but more fundamentally to maintain a long-term military presence in the country. But the U.S. military presence has been extremely unpopular in Iraq. In January 2020, following the U.S. assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iraq’s legislature passed a resolution demanding the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the country.
In the meantime, Iraqi militias aligned with Iran have escalated attacks on U.S. forces, beginning with a major rocket attack on coalition forces at Camp Taji in March 2020 that killed two U.S. servicemen. McKenzie exploited the Camp Taji attack to reclaim some of the assets he had lost, successfully requesting that a second aircraft carrier strike group remain in the region. McKenzie asked for the additional forces, according to the Wall Street Journal, to “signal to Tehran that it would be held responsible” if the Iraqi militias continued to attack U.S. forces.
But that ploy was quickly shown to be a failure: Iraqi militia attacks on bases occupied by U.S. forces soared to 28 between March and August 2020. McKenzie was thus forced to begin withdrawing from bases in Iraq and turning them over to Iraqi forces. In September, McKenzie even acknowledged, while announcing the planned reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq from 5,200 to 3,000, that militia attacks were a major reason for the withdrawal.
After Trump’s mid-November decision to reduce troop numbers in Afghanistan and Iraq to 2,500, McKenzie and his allies in Washington constructed the illusion of a crisis with Iran by promoting the idea that Iran might be planning attacks on U.S. forces.
The New York Times reported on November 16 that officials were “especially nervous about the January 3 anniversary of the U.S. strike that killed Soleimani….” And a Washington Post story the following day cited “people familiar with the matter” stating that U.S. intelligence had recently been “monitoring potential threats by Iran to U.S. forces in the region”.
Then came an even more serious move: on November 21, two Air Force “Stratofortress” B-52 bombers flew directly from the United States to the Persian Gulf.
The flight was announced in a statement by the spokesman for McKenzie’s Central Command, which offered no specific justification. It declared that the Soleimani assassination in January 2020 precipitated the last deployment of long-range B-52 flights to the Gulf, creating the sense that the new flights were linked to a potential military crisis. In fact, the bombers made a round-trip from their U.S. base to the Gulf and back without stopping.
On December 7, McKenzie was back on the PR offensive, speaking to a small group of reporters who were allowed to identify him only as a “senior U.S. military official with knowledge of the region.” As theAssociated Press and NBC News reported, he said the risk of miscalculation by Iran “is higher…right now,” because of the U.S. pulling troops out of the region, the U.S. presidential transition, the COVID pandemic, and the anniversary of Soleimani killing. He emphasized that military leaders had determined that the Nimitz must remain in the region “for some time to come,” and that an additional fighter jet squadron might also be needed.
Three days later, another squadron of B-52s flew from the U.S. to the Persian Gulf, flying provocatively close to Iranian airspace before returning to their home base. Then, on December 21, the U.S. Navy publicly announced that the guided-missile submarine USS Georgia, along with two guided-missile cruisers, had just transited the Strait of Hormuz and entered the Arabian Gulf. The announcement was highly unusual: the Navy, normally tight-lipped about the movements of its ships, stated publicly that the Georgia could carry up to 154 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles.
In an interview with ABC News on December 22, McKenzie was asked about the risk of an Iranian attack on US and allies in the region. “I do believe we remain in a period of heightened risk,” he said, even though he also suggested that Iran did not want war with the United States.
A third flight of B-52s was dispatched to the Persian Gulf on December 30. This time, CENTCOM quoted McKenzie directly: his intention was to “make clear that we are ready and able to respond to any aggression directed at Americans or our interests.”
A “senior military officer” subsequently told the Associated Press that U.S. intelligence had supposedly detected “indications that advanced weaponry has been flowing from Iran into Iraq recently and that Shiite militia leaders in Iraq may have met with officers of Iran’s Quds force.” This was said to suggest plans for possible rocket attacks against U.S. interests in Iraq, in connection with the one-year anniversary of the Soleimani killing. CNN echoed the Pentagon claims, alleging that Iran had moved short-range ballistic missiles into Iraq, and that Iraqi militias were planning “complex attacks.”
But a “senior defense official” who had been directly involved in the discussions of those issues insisted to CNN that officials circulating such reports were deliberately exaggerating the threat of an attack. The CNN story strongly implied that acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller’s December 30 decision to bring the Nimitz back home was based on his belief that McKenzie and his allies were hyping a potential Iranian-sponsored attack to advance their command’s interests.
Neither the Associated Press nor CNN explained to readers that the additional Iranian short-range missiles would have been been necessary precautions to strengthen deterrence in light of the series of the provocative U.S. shows of force involving B-52s and missile-carrying ships. Nor did they mention explicit statements by Iran that revenge for the Soleimani killing would be aimed not at U.S. troops but at the officials responsible for his assassination.
In the end, Miller was forced to reverse his decision and keep the Nimitz in the Middle East — a significant win for McKenzie. And although the anniversary of the U.S. assassination of Soleimani came and went without incident, yet another flight of B-52s was carried out on January 7 — a bold demonstration of McKenzie’s bureaucratic victory over Miller.
The political-bureaucratic power struggle that played out in the final weeks of the Trump administration suggests that McKenzie’s power and interests are likely to be a major influence on the Biden administration’s Iran policy.
Still resisting the shift of military assets away from the Middle East, McKenzie will have a strong motive to oppose and obstruct any effort at easing tensions with Tehran. To achieve his aims, his ties with the military services and media will be among the most useful weapons in his arsenal.
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Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist who has covered national security policy since 2005 and was the recipient of Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2012. His most recent book is The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis co-authored with John Kiriakou, just published in February.
Featured image: US General Kenneth McKenzie, commander of CENTCOM (Source: The Grayzone)
Ever since at least the Iraq War of 2003, the fundamental alternatives facing North American and European elites have been constant. One alternative might have been to accept a certain loss of global power so as to share global influence peacefully in a multi-polar world with China, Russia and other regional powers. Instead, the Western elites chose the other alternative: an ultimately futile, globally destructive effort to defend their accustomed power and privilege.
Accompanying that abject, absurd strategic failure, the self-evident decline of their power overseas bears an inverse relationship to the clear and increasing repression and exploitation of their own peoples at home. The traditional motto of Western foreign policy and diplomacy has always been “do what we want, or else…”. Now, domestically, the underlying, unspoken but still extremely clear variation on that message Western elites now offer their own peoples is “don’t worry, our sadism is good for you…”
Large numbers of people in North America and Europe are being denied adequate health care, in some countries like the US, even completely. In other countries, years of austerity cutbacks have meant hospitals struggle to attend to numbers of patients very similar to those they would have treated in earlier years with little difficulty. Financially, North American and European corporate elites have benefited from yet another unprecedented upward transfer of wealth, the most egregious example being the CARES Act in the United States.
By contrast, the current, mostly self-inflicted, global crisis has seen payments of various kinds being made to large numbers of people very similar to a pauperizing universal basic income. The official pandemic narrative has served to suppress debate on the far more equitable and democratic policy choice of a jobs guarantee. Despite official affirmations of a uniquely deadly global pandemic, North American and European governments are generally failing to commit to radical reform and investment to improve their public health systems.
Similarly, those same governments refuse to cooperate internationally with other major regional powers to ensure equitable treatment for vulnerable populations elsewhere. The US and its allies continue imposing illegal coercive measures against the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela, Yemen and Iran, for example. Even tiny Nicaragua is subject to similar illegal unilateral measures despite being recognized by international bodies for its model social and economic policies. Those illegal coercive measures seem to represent the unmistakable shadow of imperial decline.
In 2008-2009, the European and North American ruling classes patched up a phony resolution of their economic crisis, transferring, until then, unprecedented wealth from their populations in order to rescue their corporate elites. Shortly afterwards, they undertook a desperate global offensive aimed at firming up their control and influence in resource rich regions around the world. In 2011, the Western powers allied with terrorist proxies to overthrow vulnerable governments in Libya and Ivory Coast regarded as threats to their control in Africa.
They also allied with similar diverse terrorist proxies in Syria, in Thailand and in Ukraine, for example, seeking to stymie perceived threats to their control in those countries’ respective regions. That desperate offensive failed in various ways, especially perhaps from the point of view of the European Union. In any case, essentially, those years confirmed the decline of US and allied power and influence. Internationally, the murder of Qasim Soleimani set a cruel, sinister, criminal seal on that decline. Domestically, this year’s brief, contrived, tragicomic January 6thoccupation of Washington’s Capitol has served as a pretext for the US ruling classes to drop their masks and openly acknowledge their well established fascist union of corporate and State power, applying selective censorship with the general approval of most progressive opinion.
For over 200 years, US elites learned from their European forebears how to exploit crude racism to co-opt revolutionary class resistance. A central feature of European and North American politics throughout the 20th Century was how Western ruling elites traded modest socio-economic concessions in exchange for their peoples’ complicity in genocidal conquest, domination and exploitation of the majority world. Now ruling class driven identity politics manipulates both race and gender to cloak the savage class realities of contemporary Western societies and culture, signaling that imperialism’s long standing material class trade off with their own peoples is over.
Its replacement is a post modern ideal-virtual identity trade-off denying an increasingly pauperized majority basic material rights but assuring them that this economic sadism will transform their lives with virtue. It will be an anti-racist, gender equitable, alert-to-climate-change virtue, rendering material needs crass and deplorable. By apparent coincidence, environmental destruction of the planet is revealing with ever more urgency the limits of economic growth driven by corporate consumer capitalism which is what until now has ensured the North American and European elites their dominance and wealth.
Currently, Nicaragua is commemorating Nicaragua’s national poet Ruben Darío, who practically single-handed dragged Spanish literature into the modern age. Last week, President Daniel Ortega noted Darío’s analysis of how the US initially presented the Monroe Doctrine as intended to defend the integrity of Latin America’s newly independent republics from European intervention. President Ortega also noted how Darío pointed out very quickly the way the US ruling elites’ manipulated the Monroe Doctrine into a continent wide mechanism of systematic extortion.
Similarly, in his remarks on Rubén Darío, Daniel Ortega also recalled that, after all, it was highly cultured European elites who invented and implemented the genocidal horrors of imperialism. Subsequently, the world’s imperialists and fascists extended those horrors both to their own peoples in Europe and to even more nations around the world. Now that world domination by the US elites and their allies is practically over, increasingly they are imposing on their own peoples the shock of domestic post-imperial conquest. All the time they tell people in the West not to worry, they mean well and their sadism is good for you.
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A new radicalism is rocking the foundations of modern politics, rapidly destroying venerated but defunct notions about our political systems and replacing them with new activism and political configurations of astonishing sophistication and power. Though there remain unresolved problems and tensions arising from this new political subject, the excitement amongst radicals worldwide is considerable and leading critics of empire are claiming that we are witness to a new age of dissent.
This activism is called “leaking” and though the activity and its marriage with “scientific journalism” is hardly new, a number of astonishing breakthroughs in the technological apparatus of whistleblowing at the turn of the new millennium have culminated in its evolution, suggesting that maybe we are finally perfecting investigative journalism: a comprehensive, secure framework that would unite whistleblowers and citizen journalist worldwide to expose corruption and reform, transvaluate obsolete politics.
Advocates of digital leaks even claim that the invention, with all credit to Aaron Schwartz, could even represent a renaissance or revolution in publishing.
Although publishers are generally conservative in their approach to new ideas, the backlash against the new media and its spokespeople has proven a point they will continue to dominate the publishing agenda for the foreseeable future. “If wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth”, said Julian Assange, progenitor of Wikileaks. At several conferences, he astonished traditional journalists by declaring a new means of organising the media, a new means of informational production, one with a distribution of labour between whilstblowers and citizen journalist that undercuts the need for fake news dictated by unelectable boardrooms. He added that as a great internet library, Wikileaks would lead to a new understanding of what history and society and politics really are, which is arguably the most dramatic change in civilisation since the printing press.
Even John Pilger, ever cautious not to hype the claims of journalists, compared Wikileaks’ work to Orwell’s. This genesis, he declared, may be no less profound than the transition of working class reality from the illusion of equality to 1984.
Two of the project’s researchers, Sarah Harrison, an investigative journalist, and Birgitta Jonsdottir, a radical anti-corruption parliamentarian in Iceland and bard represent – beneath the surface of media cartoons of a dictatorship – a project that spoke through many people and spoke to many.
At the heart of this endeavour is the knowledge that the internet, cryptography and computer science may provide a comprehensive framework to support the quick verification, dissemination of information and protection of a source. The project even embraced startlingly modern techniques of decentralisation and assymetric warfare when in combat with enemy lies, beginning to change the playing field.
Historically, whistleblowing has developed rather fragmented.
The great work of Tom Paine and George Orwell, for example, who computed the facts of the motion of Machiavellian politics with their critical reason and sharp, acid pens, differ significantly from the actions of Reality Winner, Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning, Jeremy Hammond, Edward Snowden, John Kiriakou and countless other selfless individuals who revealed the workings of deep state corruption with their publication of repressed information. Moreover, the virtues and principles required for contemporary whistleblowing seem unalike to Solzhenitsyn’s literary portrait of totalitarianism, which described the grim Gulag system, dissidents’ repression, and the absolute power of Stalin.
With developments in the technological apparatus of whistleblowing, however, it now becomes possible to apprehend these separate pieces of the puzzle and see them whole, as something bigger than the sum of their individual efforts. Although the quest for repatriation of truth is a recent one, with most of the pioneering work done in the past ten years, in retrospect it is easy to remediate the great works of whistleblowing in society in terms of the coherent concept of scientific journalism.
Due to the momentum created by Wikileaks, the history of journalism is fast being reshaped – beginning with the man who globalised cryptographic journalism, Julian Assange, and his discovery of the applications of computer science to source verification and protection, arguably the most impressive journalistic development in several hundred years of human history.
In the Age of Revolution, the journalism and publishing world was thrown in to seismic turmoil by a series of incendiary writings that challenged centuries of colonial rule. Earth was bearing witness to the genesis of a new consensus forming the ruins of the old Empire’s order. Out of this maelstrom, however, emerged not one, but two legends.
Tom Paine fired the first canon and focused his work on understanding how the nature of elitist power such as royalties and dynasties corrupted the natural impulse of reason and democracy. The foundation for the criticism of how power works and manipulates the human species on a psychological level, however, was fired by the second legend, George Orwell, who virtually governs the world of modern radicalism. He was an Eton dropout and sought to collaborate with comrades in the international.
Interestingly, the fates of Paine and Orwell were analogous, though they stood aeons apart. Both of noble origin, they were renegades and iconoclasts who battled the orthodox wisdom and dogmas their contemporaries took for granted as operative truth. They continue to dominate and determine the course of dissidence for centuries beyond their own times.
Socrates was and remains an accomplished hero who went beyond the perimeters of the known world on a brave voyage for knowledge and returned with a new story to preach to the world. He was also a critic of power’s corruption. According to the story of Socrates, both the hero and whistleblower are skilled at destroying seemingly stable illusions about reality and piecing together the facts of a given matter to piece together answers to seemingly invisible problems.
Since Chelsea Manning, politicians have been consumed by the futile task of cracking the whistleblower’s staying resolve and finding the means to roll back the successful establishment of a technological infrastructure to support data age dissidence. Only in the past few years, however, have establishment actors realised the possibility of power over official, incriminating secrets can be found in manipulating the data about these renegade’s work by systematically excluding their stories from representation in the media, except for where the facts can be manipulated for propaganda.
Commentators and politicians of different persuasions have expressed an authentic range of divided views on how the information released by Wikileaks can support democracy and maintain global peace. But at the same time, ostensibly partisan lawmakers and establishment staff are coordinating a unilateral response to reports in the libertarian press in which they, the elite, are implicated in or identified as conspirators in crimes that may push the US and world at large to withdraw support for the contemporary world order in exchange for genuine freedom.
Wikileaks’ work is likely to make people demand an alternative to the dominant political and economic system after it failed in its promise to spread freedom, justice and prosperity through the world in exchange for individual and collective surrender to the liberal ideology. Significantly the publisher has quoted secret conversations between states, intelligence, transnational lobbies and diplomats, as saying they acknowledge and work to ensure success for the US empire’s strategies and objectives worldwide because such deals are an obligation under the code of honour reified in the norms of power and world order—the dynamics that regulates the global balance of power, in the suppression and near absence of meaningful democratic internationalism.
According to the establishment, Wikileaks real target is to support terrorism against and collapse within America, a strategically important asset of modern empire in the North-Western hemisphere, at the centre of the core of the capitalist economy and the territory of neo-conservatism. Because America occupies a unique opening in history, the neoconservative establishment says, it can serve an evangelist and missionary role in the world and could help enforce a world order based on its political system. Given its special strategic role, America has been built into a fortress to safeguard itself against communism, and as much is evident from the flurries of communist repression.
The UN noted that policies America enforces have generally tried to cut support for human rights even as it reduces states and outlying satellites to rubble to bring it under psuedo-democratic control and conform to human rights obligations. The UN said it has never recognised legitimacy of any recent US, NATO led force in the East which has led to wholesale atrocities. Thomas Carothers, director of the Carnegie Endowment Program on Law and Democracy, in his recent book Critical Mission: Essays on Democracy Promotion says:
“Where democracy appears to fit in well with US security and economic interests, the United States promotes democracy… Where democracy clashes with other significant interests, it is downplayed or even ignored.”
America has significantly reduced the number of individual and united opposition groups stationed in outposts the world around to less than a critical mass, it is possible to conclude, and it is time for resistance to reciprocate the offensive by rejecting empire’s propaganda targeted at captive minds and the hollow ceremony of establishment democracy.
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A coalition of big tech companies, including Microsoft is developing a COVID passport, with the expectation that a digital document linked to vaccination status will be required to travel and get access to basic services.
The US health provider Mayo Clinic is also involved in the project, which is being described as “the most significant vaccination effort in the history of the United States.”
The idea is now a familiar one. Anyone who has been vaccinated will receive a QR code that can be stored on their mobile phone in the wallet app. Those without phones will have access to a printed version.
We have previously reported on the development of this so called ‘CommonPass’, which also has backing from the World Economic Forum, and now more details have emerged.
Screenshot: ‘CommonPass’ outline
“The goal of the Vaccination Credential Initiative is to empower individuals with digital access to their vaccination records,” said Paul Meyer, CEO of non-profit The Commons Project, also involved in the project.
Meyer said that the document will allow people “to safely return to travel, work, school, and life, while protecting their data privacy.”
Meyer said the coalition is working with several governments, and expects standards to be adopted that will see mandatory negative tests or proof of vaccination, in order to re-engage in society.
“Individuals are going to need to have to produce vaccination records for a lot of aspects of getting back to life as normal,” he added. “We live in a globally connected world. We used to anyway — and we hope to again.”
The Rockefeller Foundation has previously touted its plans for a ‘Covid-19 data and commons digital platform’ as well as a desire to “launch a Covid Community Healthcare Corps for testing and contact tracing.”
“Coordination of such a massive program should be treated as a wartime effort,” the foundation states on its website, adding that there should be “a public/private bipartisan Pandemic Testing Board established to assist and serve as a bridge between local, state, and federal officials with the logistical, investment and political challenges this operation will inevitably face.”
Screenshot: Rockefeller Foundation ‘Covid action plan’ website
Screenshot: Rockefeller Foundation ‘Covid action plan’ website
— The Commons Project Foundation (@commons_prjct) January 14, 2021
The group also wants to see a global standardisation of the so called vaccine passports, noting that “The current vaccination record system does not readily support convenient access, control and sharing of verifiable vaccination records.”
The coalition of big tech firms is looking to “customize all aspects of the vaccination management lifecycle and integrate closely with other coalition members’ offerings, which will help us all get back to public life,” said Bill Patterson, an executive vice president at Salesforce.
“With a single platform to help deliver safe and continuous operations and deepen trust with customers and employees, this coalition will be crucial to support public health and wellbeing,” Patterson claimed.
Mike Sicilia, executive vice president of Oracle’s Global Business Units added that “This process needs to be as easy online banking. We are committed to working collectively with the technology and medical communities, as well as global governments.”
Ken Mayer, founder and CEO of Safe Health also stated that the VCI “will enable application developers to create privacy-preserving health status verification solutions that can be seamlessly integrated into existing ticketing workflows.”
Put more simply, it will “help get concerts and sporting events going again,” Mayer said.
The context seems clear. Those without the COVID passport will not be allowed to travel or engage in social events.
As we reported last month, the IATA, the world’s largest air transport lobby group, expects its COVID travel pass app to be fully rolled out in the first months of 2021.
A further ‘COVID passport’ app called the AOKpass from travel security firm International SOS is currently undergoing trials between Abu Dhabi and Pakistan.
We have exhaustively documented the privacy and rights concerns associated with the move toward adoption, and more importantly the global standardisation of so called COVID passports.
UK based human rights group Privacy International has warned that if “immunity” passports are issued by some governments, it could signal a creep toward “digital identity schemes” and other mandatory ID schemes.
“Once you have multiple uses (e.g. access to services) in multiple domains (i.e. public sector, private sector), in multiple countries (i.e. travel), then we are approaching a global identity document needed to live your life,” the group warned.
Sweden based human rights group The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) warned recently that 61 per cent of countries have used COVID restrictions “that were concerning from a democracy and human rights perspective.”
Anna Beduschi, an academic from Exeter University, commented on the potential move toward vaccine passports by EU, noting that it “poses essential questions for the protection of data privacy and human rights.”
Beduschi added that the vaccine passports may “create a new distinction between individuals based on their health status, which can then be used to determine the degree of freedoms and rights they may enjoy.”
A report compiled last year by AI research body the Ada Lovelace Institute said so called ‘immunity’ passports “pose extremely high risks in terms of social cohesion, discrimination, exclusion and vulnerability.”
Sam Grant, campaign manager at the civili liberties advocacy group Liberty has warned that “any form of immunity passport risks creating a two-tier system in which some of us have access to freedoms and support while others are shut out.”
“These systems could result in people who don’t have immunity potentially being blocked from essential public services, work or housing – with the most marginalised among us hardest hit,” Grant further warned.
“This has wider implications too because any form of immunity passport could pave the way for a full ID system – an idea which has repeatedly been rejected as incompatible with building a rights-respecting society,” Grant further urged.
Gloria Guevara, CEO of the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), has also slammed the passports as “discriminatory”, saying “We should never require the vaccination to get a job or to travel.”
Speaking at a Reuters event, the head of the WTTC also condemned airline Qantas for their previous assertion that unvaccinated people would not be allowed on their aircraft.
“It will take a significant amount of time to vaccinate the global population, particularly those in less advanced countries, or in different age groups, therefore we should not discriminate against those who wish to travel but have not been vaccinated,” Guevara noted.
Nevertheless, the spectre of so called ‘immunity passports’ is looming globally.
As noted above, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has penned a letter to EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, demanding that the Commission should ‘standardise’ a vaccine passport across all member countries, and that it should be required for people to travel throughout the area, further outlining that “Persons who have been vaccinated should be free to travel.”
Vaccine passports have previously been touted by the EU, with officials suggesting back in April that visa applicants would also be required to be vaccinated.
EU countries including Spain, Estonia, Iceland, and Belgium have all indicated that they are open to some form of vaccine passports, as well as sharing the data across borders.
Denmark recently announced that it is rolling out a ‘Covid passport’, to allow those who have taken the vaccine to engage in society without any restrictions.
Poland has also announced plans to introduce vaccine passports, which will allow those who have taken the COVID shot greater freedoms than those who have not.
Having left the EU, Britain would not be part of any standardised European scheme, however it has now confirmed that it is rolling out vaccine passports, despite previous denials that it would do so.
Recently, the government in Ontario, Canada admitted that it is exploring ‘immunity passports’ in conjunction with restrictions on travel and access to social venues for the unvaccinated.
Last month, Israel announced that citizens who get the COVID-19 vaccine will be given ‘green passports’ that will enable them to attend venues and eat at restaurants.
Insurers have also indicated that they will fall in line with any standardisation of vaccination passports, and may demand to see proof of vaccination before covering those wishing to go on holiday.
EU news website Schengenvisainfo also reported on the likely move by insurers, pointing out that anti-vaxxers will likely be specifically targeted by the mandates.
“Even if anti-vax travellers find a loophole in the requirement and manage to enter any of the Member States, travel insurance providers may refuse to cover them,” the report states.
It continues, “With the high volume of fake news and conspiracy theories that have been going on for months now on the pandemic and vaccination, the real challenge for the EU will not be to purchase the necessary vaccine doses, but rather to convince people to be vaccinated.”
The report adds that “Conspiracy theorists, in Europe and further in the world, have targeted Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who is known as a supporter of vaccination, claiming he is responsible for the Coronavirus pandemic.”
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Michael Hudson: Well, I’m honored to be here on the same show with Pepe and discuss our mutual concern. And I think you have to frame the whole issue that China is thriving, and the West has reached the end of the whole 75-year expansion it had since 1945.
So, there was an illusion that America is de-industrializing because of competition from China. And the reality is there is no way that America can re-industrialize and regain its export markets with the way that it’s organized today, financialized and privatized and if China didn’t exist. You’d still have the Rust Belt rusting out. You’d still have American industry not being able to compete abroad simply because the cost structure is so high in the United States.
The wealth is no longer made here by industrializing. It’s made financially, mainly by making capital gains. Rising prices for real estate or for stocks and for bonds. In the last nine months, since the coronavirus came here, the top 1 percent of the U.S. economy grew by $1 trillion. It’s been a windfall for the 1 percent. The stock market is way up, the bond market is up, the real estate market is up while the rest of the economy is going down. Despite the tariffs that Trump put on, Chinese imports, trade with China is going up because we’re just not producing materials.
America doesn’t make its own shoes. It doesn’t make some nuts and bolts or fasteners, it doesn’t make industrial things anymore because if money is to be made off an industrial company it’s to buy and sell the company, not to make loans to increase the company’s production. New York City, where I live, used to be an industrial city and, the industrial buildings, the mercantile buildings have all been gentrified into high-priced real estate and the result is that Americans have to pay so much money on education, rent, medical care that if they got all of their physical needs, their food, their clothing, all the goods and services for nothing, they still couldn’t compete with foreign labor because of all of the costs that they have to pay that are essentially called rent-seeking.
Housing in the United States now absorbs about 40 percent of the average worker’s paycheck. There’s 15 percent taken off the top of paychecks for pensions, Social Security and for Medicare. Further medical insurance adds more to the paycheck, income taxes and sales taxes add about another 10 percent. Then you have student loans and bank debt. So basically, the American worker can only spend about one third of his or her income on buying the goods and services they produce. All the rest goes into the FIRE sector — the finance, insurance and real estate sector — and other monopolies.
And essentially, we became what’s called a rent-seeking economy, not a productive economy. So, when people in Washington talk about American capitalism versus Chinese socialism this is confusing the issue. What kind of capitalism are we talking about?
America used to have industrial capitalism in the 19th century. That’s how it got richer originally but now it’s moved away from industrial capitalism towards finance capitalism. And what that means is that essentially the mixed economy that made America rich — where the government would invest in education and infrastructure and transportation and provide these at low costs so that the employers didn’t have to pay labor to afford high costs — all of this has been transformed over the last hundred years.
And we’ve moved away from the whole ethic of what was industrial capitalism. Before, the idea of capitalism in the 19th century from Adam Smith to Ricardo, to John Stuart Mill to Marx was very clear and Marx stated it quite clearly; capitalism was revolutionary. It was to get rid of the landlord class. It was to get rid of the rentier class. It was to get rid of the banking class essentially, and just bear all the costs that were unnecessary for production, because how did England and America and Germany gain their markets?
“We’ve moved away from the whole ethic of what was industrial capitalism.”
They gained their markets basically by the government picking up a lot of the costs of the economy. The government in America provided low-cost education, not student debt. It provided transportation at subsidized prices. It provided basic infrastructure at low cost. And so, government infrastructure was considered a fourth factor of production.
And if you read what the business schools in the late 19th century taught like Simon Patten at the Wharton School, it’s very much like socialism. In fact, it’s very much like what China is doing. And in fact, China is following in the last 30 or 40 years pretty much the same way of getting rich that America followed.
It had its government fund basic infrastructure. It provides low-cost education. It invests in high-speed railroads and airports, in the building of cities. So, the government bears most of the costs and, that means that employers don’t have to pay workers enough to pay a student loan debt. They don’t have to pay workers enough to pay enormous rent such as you have in the United States. They don’t have to pay workers to save for a pension fund, to pay the pension later on. And most of all the Chinese economy doesn’t really have to pay a banking class because banking is the most important public utility of all. Banking is what China has kept in the hands of government and Chinese banks don’t lend for the same reasons that American banks lend.
(When I said that China can pay lower wages than the U.S., what I meant was that China provides as public services many things that American workers have to pay out of their own pockets – such as health care, free education, subsidized education, and above all, much lower debt service.
When workers have to go into debt in order to live, they need much higher wages to keep solvent. When they have to pay for their own health insurance, they have to earn more. The same is true of education and student debt. So much of what Americans seem to be earning — more than workers in other countries — goes right through their hands to the FIRE sector. So, what seems to be “low wages” in China go a lot further than higher wages in the United States.)
Eighty percent of American bank loans are mortgage loans to real estate and the effect of loosening loan standards and increasing the market for real estate is to push up the cost of living, push up the cost of housing. So, Americans have to pay more and more money for their housing whether they’re renters or they’re buyers, in which case the rent is for paying mortgage interest.
So, all of this cost structure has been built into the economy. China’s been able pretty much, to avoid all of this, because its objective in banking is not to make a profit and interest, not to make capital gains and speculation. It creates money to fund actual means of production to build factories, to build research and development, to build transportation facilities, to build infrastructure. Banks in America don’t lend for that kind of thing.
“So, you have a diametric opposite philosophy of how to develop between the United States and China.”
They only lend against collateral that’s already in place because they won’t make a loan if it’s not backed by collateral. Well, China creates money through its public banks to create capital, to create the means of production. So, you have a diametric opposite philosophy of how to develop between the United States and China.
The United States has decided not to gain wealth by actually investing in means of production and producing goods and services, but in financial ways. China is gaining wealth the old-fashioned way, by producing it. And whether you call this, industrial capitalism or a state capitalism or a state socialism or Marxism, it basically follows the same logic of real economics, the real economy, not the financial overhead. So, you have China operating as a real economy, increasing its production, becoming the workshop of the world as England used to be called and America trying to draw in foreign resources, live off of foreign resources, live by trying to make money by investing in the Chinese stock market or now, moving investment banks into China and making loans to China not actual industrial capitalism ways.
“China is gaining wealth the old-fashioned way, by producing it.”
So, you could say that America has gone beyond industrial capitalism, and they call it the post-industrial society, but you could call it the neo-feudal society. You could call it the neo-rentier society, or you could call it debt peonage but it’s not industrial capitalism.
And in that sense, there’s no rivalry between China and America. These are different systems going their own way and I better let Pepe pick it up from there.
Pepe Escobar: Okay. Thank you, Michael, this is brilliant. And you did it in less than 15 minutes. You told the whole story in 15 minutes. Well, my journalistic instinct is immediately to start questions to Michael. So, this is exactly what I’m gonna do now. I think it is much better to basically illustrate some points of what Michael just said, comparing the American system, which is finance capitalism essentially, with industrial capitalism that is in effect in China. Let me try to start with a very concrete and straight to the point question, Michael.
Okay. let’s says that more or less, if we want to summarize it, basically they try to tax the nonproductive rentier class. So, this would be the Chinese way to distribute wealth, right? Sifting through the Chinese economic literature, there is a very interesting concept, which is relatively new (correct me if I am wrong, Michael) in China, which they call stable investment. So stable investment, according to the Chinese would be to issue special bonds as extra capital in fact, to be invested in infrastructure building all across China, and they choose these projects in what they call weak areas and weak links. So probably in some of the inner provinces, or probably in some parts of Tibet or Xinjiang for instance. So, this is a way to invest in the real economy and in real government investment projects.
Right? So, my question in fact, is does this system create extra local debt, coming directly from this financing from Beijing? Is this a good recipe for sustainable development, the Chinese way and the recipe that they could expand to other parts of the Global South?
Michael: Well, this is a big problem that they’re discussing right now. The localities, especially rural China, (and China is still largely rural) only cover about half of their working budget from taxation. So, they have a problem. How are they going to get the balance of the money? Well, there is no official revenue sharing between the federal government and its state banks and the localities.
So, the localities can’t simply go to central government and say, give us more money. The government lets the localities be very independent. And it is sort of the “let a hundred flowers bloom” concept. And so, they’ve let each locality just go the long way, but the localities have run a big deficit.
What do they do? Well in the United States they would issue bonds on which New York is about to default. But in China, the easiest way for the localities to make money, is unfortunately they will do something like Chicago did. They will sell their tax rights for the next 75 years for current money now.
So, a real estate developer will come in and say; look we will give you the next 75 years of tax on this land, because we want to build projects on this (a set of buildings). So, what this means is that now the cities have given away all their source of rent.
Let me show you the problem by what Indiana and Chicago did. Chicago also was very much like China’s countryside cities. So, it sold parking meters and its sidewalks to a whole series of Wall Street investors, including the Abu Dhabi Investment Fund for seventy-five years. And that meant that for 75 years, this Wall Street consortium got to control the parking meters.
So, they put up the parking meters all over Chicago, raised the price of parking, raised the cost of driving to Chicago. And if Chicago would have a parade and interrupt parking, then Chicago has to pay the Abu Dhabi fund and Wall Street company what it would have made anyway. And this became such an awful disaster that finally Wall Street had to reverse the deal and undo it because it was giving privatization a bad name here. The same thing happened in Indiana.
High School marching band in Chicago’s 2008 Bud Billiken Parade. (Curtis Morrow, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Indiana was running a deficit and it decided to sell its roads to a Wall Street investment firm to make a toll road. The toll on the Indiana turnpike was so high that drivers began to take over the side roads. That’s the problem if you sell future tax revenues in advance.
Now what China and the localities there are discussing is that we’ve already given the real estate tax at very low estimates to the commercial developers, so what do we do? Well, I’ve given them my advice. I’m a professor of economics at the Peking University, School of Marxist studies and I’ve had discussions with the Central Committee. I also have an official position at Wuhan University. There, we’re discussing how China can put an added tax for all of the valuable land, that’s gone up. How can it be done to let the cities collect this tax? Our claim is that the cities, in selling these tax rights for 75 years, have sold what in Britain would be called ground rent (i.e. what’s paid to the landed aristocracy).
Over and above that there’s the market rent. So, China should pass a market-rent tax over and above the ground rent tax to reflect the current value. And there they’re thinking of, well, do we say that this is a capital gain on the land? Well, it’s not really a capital gain until you sell the land, but it’s value. It’s the valuation of the capital. And they’re looking at whether they should just say this is the market rent tax over and above the flat tax that has been paid in advance, or it’s a land tax on the capital gain for land.
Now, all of this requires that there be a land map of the whole country. And they are just beginning to create such a land map as a basis for how you calculate how much the rent there is.
What I found in China is something very strange. A few years ago, in Beijing, they had the first, International Marxist conference where I was the main speaker and I was talking about Marx’s discussion of the history of rent theory in Volume II and Volume III of Capital where Marx discusses all of the classical economics that led up to his view; Adam Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, John Stuart Mill, and Marx’s theory of surplus value was really the first history of economic thought that was written, although it wasn’t published until after he died. Well, you could see that there was a little bit of discomfort with some of the Marxists at the conference. And so, they invited for the next time my colleague David Harvey to come and talk about Marxism in the West.
Well, David gave both the leading and the closing speech of the conference and said, you’ve got to go beyond volume I of Capital. Volume I was what Marx wrote as his addition to classical economics, saying that there was exploitation in industrial employment of labor as well as rent seeking and then he said, now that I’ve done my introduction here, let me talk about how capitalism works in Volumes II and III. Volumes II and III are all about rent and finance and David Harvey has published a book on Volume III of Capital and his message to Peking University and the second Marxist conference was – you’ve got to read Volume II, and III.
Well, you can see that, there’s a discussion now over what is Marxism and a friend and colleague at PKU said Marxism is a Chinese word; It’s the Chinese word for politics. That made everything clear to me. Now I get it! I’ve been asked by the Academy of Social Sciences in China to create a syllabus of the history of rent theory and value theory. And essentially in order to have an idea of how you calculate rent, how do you make a national income analysis where you show rent, you have to have a theory of value and price and rent is the excess of price over the actual cost value. Well, for that you need a concept of cost of production and that’s what classical economics is all about. Post-classical economics denied all of this. The whole idea of classical economics is that not all income is earned.
Landlords don’t earn their income for making rent in their sleep as John Stuart Mill said. Banks don’t earn their income by just sitting there and letting debts accrue and interest compounding and doubling. The classical economists separated actual unearned income from the production and consumption economy.
Well, around the late 19th century in America, you had economists fighting against not only Marx, but also even against Henry George, who at that time, was urging a land tax in New York. And so, at Columbia University, John Bates Clark developed a whole theory that everybody earns whatever they can get. That there was no such thing as unearned income and that has become the basis for American national income statistics and thought ever since. So, if you look at today’s GDP figures for the United States, they have a figure for 8 percent of the GDP for the homeowners’ rent. But homeowners wouldn’t pay themselves if they had to rent the apartment to themselves, then you’ll have interest at about 12 percent of GDP.
And I thought, well how can interest be so steady? What happens to all of the late fees; that 29 percent that credit card companies charge? I called up the national income people in Washington, when I was there. And they said well, late fees and penalties are considered financial services.
And so, this is what you call a service economy. Well, there’s no service in charging a late fee, but they add all of the late fees. When people can’t pay their debts and they owe more and more, all of that is considered an addition to GDP. When housing becomes more expensive and prices American labor out of the market, that’s called an increase in GDP.
This is not how a country that wants to develop is going to create a national income account. So, there’s a long discussion in China about, just to answer your question, how do you create an account to distinguish between what’s the necessary cost to production and what’s an unnecessary production cost and how do we avoid doing what the United States did. So again, no rivalry. The United States is an object lesson for China on what to avoid, not only in industrializing the economy, but in creating a picture of the economy as if everybody earns everything and there’s no exploitation, no earned income, nobody makes money in their sleep and there’s no 1 percent. Well, that’s what’s really at issue and why the whole world is splitting apart as you and I are discussing in what we’re writing.
“When people can’t pay their debts and they owe more and more, all of that is considered an addition to GDP.”
Pepe: Thank you, Michael. Thank you very much. So just to sum it all up, can we say that Beijing’s strategy is to save especially provincial areas from leasing their land, their infrastructure for 60 years or 75 years? As you just mentioned, can we say that the fulcrum of their national strategy is what you define as the market rent tax? Is this the No. 1 mechanism that they are developing?
Michael: Ideally, they want to keep rents as low as possible because rent is a cost of living and a cost of doing business. They don’t have banks that are lending to inflate the real estate market.
However, in almost every Western country — the U.S., Germany England — the value of stocks and bonds and the value of real estate is just about exactly the same. But for China, the value of real estate is way, way larger than the value of stocks.
And the reason is not because the Chinese Central bank, the Bank of China lends for real estate; it’s because they lend to intermediaries and the intermediaries have financed a lot of housing purchases in China. And, this is really the problem for if they levy a land tax, then you’re going to make a lot of these financial intermediaries go bust.
That’s what I’m advocating, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. These financial intermediaries shouldn’t exist, and this same issue came up in 2009 in the United States. You had the leading American bank being the most crooked and internally corrupt bank in the country, Citibank making junk mortgage, and it was broke.
Its entire net worth was wiped out as a result of its fraudulent junk mortgages. Well, Sheila Bair, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) wanted to close it down and take it over. Essentially that would have made it into a public bank and that would be a wonderful thing. She said, look Citibank shouldn’t be doing what it’s doing. And she wrote all this up in an autobiography. And, she was overruled by President Obama and Tim Geithner saying, but wait a minute, those are our campaign contributors. So, they were loyal to the campaign contributors, but not the voters; and they didn’t close Citibank down.
And the result is that the Federal Reserve ended up creating about $7 trillion of quantitative easing to bail out the banks. The homeowners weren’t bailed out. Ten million American families lost their homes as a result of junk mortgages in excess of what the property was actually worth.
All of this was left on the books, foreclosed and sold to a private capital companies like Blackstone. And the result is that home ownership in America declined from 68 percent of the population down to about 61 percent. Well, right where the Obama administration left off, you’re about to have the Biden administration begin in January with an estimated 5 million Americans losing their homes. They’re going to be evicted because they’ve been unemployed during the pandemic. They’ve been working in restaurants or gyms or other industries that have been shut down because of the pandemic. They’re going to be evicted and many homeowners and, low-income homeowners have been unable to pay their mortgages.
There’s going to be a wave of foreclosures. The question is, who’s going to bear the cost? Should it be 15 million American families who lose their homes just so the banks won’t lose money? Or should we let the banks that have made all of the growth since 2008? Ninety five percent of American GDP of the population has seen its wealth go down. All the wealth has been accumulating for the 5 percent in statistics. Now the question is should this 5 percent that’s got all the wealth lose or should the 95 percent lose?
Worker installs security panels over windows after police evict woman from her foreclosed home in South Minneapolis, 2009. (Tony Webster, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The Biden administration says the 95 percent should lose basically. And you’re going to see a wave of closures so that the question in China should be that, these intermediate banks (they’re not really banks they are sort of like payday loan lenders), should they come in and, bear the loss or should Chinese localities and the people bear the loss? Somebody has to lose when you’re charging, you’re collecting the land’s rent that was paid to the creditors, and either the creditors have to lose or, the tax collector loses and that’s the conflict that exists in every society of the world today. And, in the West, the idea is the tax collectors should lose and whatever the tax collector relinquishes should be free for the banks to collect. In China obviously, they don’t want that to happen and they don’t want to see a financial class developing along US lines.
Pepe: Michael, there’s a quick question in all this, which is the official position by Beijing in terms of helping the localities. Their official position is that there won’t be any bailouts of local debt. How do they plan to do that?
Michael: What they’re discussing, how are you not going to do it? They think they sort of let localities go their own way. And they think, well you know which ones are going to succeed, and which ones aren’t, they didn’t want to have a one-size-fits all central planning. They wanted to have flexibility. Well, now they have flexibility. And when you have many different “let a hundred flowers bloom,” not all the flowers are going to bloom at the same rate.
And the question is, if they don’t bail out the cities, how are the cities going to operate? Certainly, China has never let markets steer the economy, the government steers the markets. That’s what socialism is as opposed to finance capitalism. So, the question is, you can let localities go broke and yet you’re not going to destroy any of the physical assets of the localities, and all of this is going to be in place. The question is how are you going to arrange the flow of income to all of these roads and buildings and land that’s in place? How do you create a system? Essentially, they’re saying well, if we’re industrial engineers, how do we just plan things? Forget credit, forget property claims, forget the rentier claims. How are we just going to design an economy that operates most efficiently? And that’s what they’re working on now to resolve this situation because it’s gotten fairly critical.
Pepe: Yes, especially in the countryside. Well, I think, a very good metaphor in terms of comparing both systems are investment in infrastructure. You travel to China a lot so, you’ve seen. You’ll travel through high-speed rail. You’ll see those fantastic airports, in Pudong or the new airport in Beijing. And then you’ll take the Acela to go from Washington to New York City, which is something that I used to do years ago. And the comparison is striking. Isn’t it?
Or if you go to France, for instance, when France started development of the TGV, which in terms of a national infrastructure network, is one of the best networks on the planet. And the French started doing this 30 years ago, even more. Is there……, it’s not in terms of way out, but if we analyze the minutia, it’s obvious that following the American finance utilization system, we could never have something remotely similar happening in United States in terms of building infrastructure.
So, do you see any realistic bypass mechanism in terms of improving American infrastructure, especially in the big cities?
TGV 2N2 Lyria train at Paris’ Gare de Lyon station. (CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Michael: No, and there are two reasons for that. No. 1, let’s take a look at the long-term railroads. The railroads go through the center of town or even in the countryside, all along the railroads, the railroads brought business and all the businesses had been located as close to the railroad tracks as they could. Factories with sightings off the railroad, hotels and especially right through the middle of town where you have the railway gates going up and down. In order to make a high-speed rail as in China, you need a dedicated roadway without trucks and cars, imagine a car going through a railway gate at 350 miles an hour.
So, when I would go from Beijing to Tianjin, here’s the high-speed rail, there’s one highway on one side, one highway on the other side. There’ll be underpasses. But there it goes straight now. How can you suppose you would have a straight Acela line from Washington up to Boston when all along the line, there’s all this real estate right along the line that has been built up? There’s no way you can get a dedicated roadway without having to tear down all of this real estate that’s on either side and the cost of making the current owners whole would be prohibitive. And anywhere you would go, that’s not in the center of the city, you would also have to have the problem that there’s already private property there.
And there’s no legal, constitutional way for such a physical investment to be made. China was able to make this investment because it was still largely rural. It wasn’t as built up along the railways. It didn’t have any particular area that was built up right where the railroad already was.
President Donald Trump visiting China in 2017. (PAS China via Wikimedia Commons)
So certainly, any high-speed rail could not go where the current railways would be, and they’d have to go on somebody’s land. And, there’s also, what do you do if you want to get to New York and Long Island from New Jersey?
Sixty years ago, when I went into Wall Street, the cost of getting and transporting goods from California to Newark, New Jersey, was as large as from Newark right across the Hudson River to New York, not only because of the mafia and control of the local labor unions, but because of the tunnels. Right now, the tunnels from New Jersey to New York are broke, they are leaking, the subways in New York City, which continually break down because there was a hurricane a few years ago and the switches were made in the 1940s. The switches are 80 years old. They had water damage and the trains have to go at a crawl. But the city and state, because it is not collecting the real estate tax and other taxes and because ridership fell on the subways to about 20 percent, the city’s broke. They’re talking about 70 percent of city services being cut back. They’re talking about cutting back the subways to 40 percent capacity, meaning everybody will have to get in — when there’s still a virus and not many people are wearing masks, and there was no means of enforcing masks here.
So, there’s no way that you can rebuild the infrastructure because, for one thing the banking system here has subsidized for a hundred years junk economics saying you have to balance the budget. If the government creates credit it’s inflationary as if when banks create credit, it’s not inflationary. Well, the monetary effect is the same, no matter who creates the money. And so, Biden has already said that President Trump ran a big deficit, we’re going to run a bunch of surpluses or a budget balance. And he was advocating that all along. Essentially Biden is saying we have to increase unemployment by 20 percent, lower wages by 20 percent, shrink the economy by about 10 percent in order to, in order for the banks not to lose money.
“You’re going to price the American economy even further out of business because they say that public investment is socialism.”
And, we’re going to privatize but we are going to do it by selling the hospitals, the schools, the parks, the transportation to finance, to Wall Street finance capital groups. And so, you can imagine what’s going to happen if the Wall Street groups buy the infrastructure. They’ll do what happened to Chicago when it sold all the parking meters, they’ll say, OK, instead of 25 cents an hour, it’s now charged $3 an hour. Instead of a $2 for the subway, let’s make it $8.
You’re going to price the American economy even further out of business because they say that public investment is socialism. Well, it’s not socialism. It’s industrial capitalism. It’s industrialization, that’s basic economics. The idea of what, and how an economy works is so twisted academically that it’s the antithesis of what Adam Smith, John Stewart Mill and Marx all talked about. For them a free- market economy was an economy free of rentiers. Free of rent, it didn’t have any rent seeking. But now for the Americans, a free-market economy is free for the rentiers, free for the landlord, free for the banks to make a killing. And that is basically the class war back in business with a vengeance. That blocks and is preventing any kind infrastructure recovery. I don’t see how it can possibly take place.
Pepe: Well, based on what you just described, there is a process of turning the United States into a giant Brazil. In fact, this is what the Brazilian Finance Minister Paulo Guedes, a Pinochetista, as you know Michael, has been doing with the Brazilian economy for the past two years, privatizing everything and selling everything to big Brazilian interests and with lots of Wall Street interests involved as well. So, this is a recipe that goes all across the Global South as well. And it’s fully copied all across the Global South with no way out now.
Michael: Yes, and this is promoted by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. And when I was brought down to Brazil to meet with the council of economic advisers under Lula, [Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former president of Brazil], they said, well the whole problem is that Lula’s been obliged to let the banks do the planning.
So, basically free markets and libertarianism is adopting central planning, but with central planning by the banks. America is a much more centrally planned economy than China. China is letting a hundred flowers bloom; America has concentrated the planning and the resource allocation in Wall Street. And that’s the central planning that is much more corrosive than any government planning, could be. Now the irony is that China’s sending its students to America to study economics. And, most of the Chinese I had talked to say, well we went to America to take economics courses because that gives us a prestige here in China.
I’m working now, with Chinese groups trying to develop a “reality economics” to be taught in China as different from American economics.
“America has concentrated the planning and the resource allocation in Wall Street. And that’s the central planning that is much more corrosive than any government planning, could be.”
Pepe: Exactly, because of what they study at Beijing University, Renmin or Tsinghua
is not exactly what they would study in big American universities. Probably what they study in the U.S. is what not to do in China. When they go back to China, what they won’t be doing. It’s an object lesson for what to avoid.
Michael, I’d like to go back to what the BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] had been discussing in the 2000s when Lula was still president of Brazil and many of his ideas deeply impressed, especially Hu Jintao at the time, which is bypassing the U.S. dollar. Well, at the moment obviously we’re still at 87 percent of international transactions still in U.S. dollars. So, we are very far away from it, but if you have a truly sovereign economy, which is the case of China, which we can say is the case of Russia to a certain extent and obviously in a completely different framework, Iran. Iran is a completely sovereign, independent economy from the West. The only way to try to develop different mechanisms to not fall into the rentier mind space would be to bypass the U.S. dollar.
Occupy Wall Street picket of HSBC, midtown Manhattan; Feb. 14, 2013. (Michael Fleshman Via Flickr)
Michael: Yes, for many reasons. For one thing the United States can simply print the dollars and lend to other countries and then say, now you have to pay us interest. Well, Russia doesn’t need American dollars. It can print its own rubles to provide labor. There’s no need for a foreign currency at all for domestic spending, the only reason you would have to borrow a foreign currency is to balance your exchange rate, or to finance a trade deficit. But China doesn’t have a trade deficit. And in fact, if China were to work to accept more dollars, Americans would love to buy into the Chinese market and make a profit there, but that would push up China’s exchange rate and that would make it more difficult for her to make its exports because the exchange rate would come up not because it’s exporting more but because it’s letting American dollars come in and push it up.
Well, fortunately, President Trump as if he works for the Chinese National Committee, said, look, we don’t want to really hurt China by pushing up its currency and we want to keep it competitive. So, I’m going to prevent American companies from lending money to China, I’m going to isolate it and so he’s helping them protect their economy. And in Russia he said, look Russia really needs to feed itself. And, there’s a real danger that when the Democrats come in, there are a lot of anti-Russians in the Biden administration. They may go to war. They may do to Russia what they tried to do to China in the ‘50s. Stop exporting food and grain. And only Canada was able to break the embargo. So, we’re going to impose sanctions on Russia. So immediately, what happened is Russia very quickly became the largest grain exporter in the world. And instead of importing cheese from the Baltics, it created its own cheese industry. So, Trump said look, I know that Russians followed the American idea of not having protective tariffs, they need protective tariffs. They’re not doing it. We’re going to help them out by just not importing from them and really helping them.
Pepe: Yeah. Michael, what do you think Black Rock wants from the Chinese? You know that they are making a few inroads at the highest levels? Of course, I’m sure you’re aware of that. And also, JP Morgan, Citybank, etc. What do they really want?
Michael: They’d like to be able to create dollars to begin to buy and make loans to real estate; let companies grow, let the real estate market grow and make capital gains.
The way people get wealthy today isn’t by making an income, it’s been by making a capital gain. Total returns are current income plus the capital gains. As for capital gains each year; the land value gains alone are larger than the whole GDP growth from year to year. So that’s where the money is, that’s where the wealth is. So, they are after speculative capital gains, they would like to push money into the Chinese stock market and real estate market. See the prices go up and then inflate the prices by buying in and then sell out at the high price. Pull the money out, get a capital gain and let the economy crash, I mean that’s the business plan.
Pepe: Exactly. But Beijing will never allow that.
Michael: Well, here’s the problem right now, they know that Biden is pushing militarily aggressive people in his cabinet. There’s one kind of overhead that China is really trying to avoid and that’s the military overhead because if you spend money on the military, you can’t spend it on the real economy. They’re very worried about the military and they say, how do we deter the Biden administration from actually trying a military adventure in the South China Sea or elsewhere? They said well, fortunately America is multi-layered. They don’t think of America as a group. They realize there’s a layer and they say, who’s going to represent our interests?
“There’s one kind of overhead that China is really trying to avoid and that’s the military overhead because if you spend money on the military, you can’t spend it on the real economy.”
Well, Blackstone and Wall Street are going to represent their interests. Then I think one of the, Chinese officials last week gave a big speech on this very thing, saying look, our best hope in stopping America’s military adventurism in China is to have Wall Street acting as our support because after all, Wall Street is the main campaign contributor and the president works for the campaign contributors.
The politician works for the campaign contributors. They’re in it for the money! So fortunately, we have Wall Street on our side, we’ve got control of the political system and they’re not there to go to war so that helps explain why a month ago they let wholly-owned U.S. banks and bankers in. On the one hand, they don’t like the idea of somebody outside the government creating credit for reasons that the economy doesn’t need. If they needed it, the Bank of China would do it. They have no need for foreign currency to come in to make loans in domestic currency, out of China.
The only reason that they could do it is No. 1, it helps meet the World Trade Organization’s principles and, No. 2, especially during this formative few months of the Biden administration, it helps to have Wall Street saying; we can make a fortune in China, go easy on them and that essentially counters the military hawks in Washington.
Pepe: So, do you foresee a scenario when Black Rock starts wreaking havoc in the Shanghai stock exchange for instance?
Wall Street, Nov. 21, 2009. (Dave Center, Flickr)
Michael: It would love to do that. It would love to move things up and down. The money’s made by companies with the stock market going up and down; the zigzag. So of course, it wants to do a predatory zigzag. The question is whether China will impose a tax to stop this, all sorts of financial transactions. That’s what’s under discussion now. They know exactly what Black Rock wants to do because they have some very savvy billionaire Chinese advisers that are quite good. I can tell you stories, but I better not.
Pepe: Okay. If it’s not okay to tell it all, tell us part of the story then.
Michael: The American banks have been cultivating leading Chinese people by providing them enough money to make money here, that they think that, okay they will now try to make money in the same way in China and we can join in. It’s a conflict of systems again, between the finance capital system and industrial socialism. You don’t get any of this discussion in the U.S. press, which is why I read what you write because in the U.S. press, the neocons talk about the fake idea of Greek history and fake idea of the Thucydides’ problem of a country jealous of another country’s development.
There’s no jealousy between America and China. They’re different, they have their own way. We are going to destroy them. And if you look at the analogy that the Americans draw —and this is how the Pentagon thinks — with the war between Athens and Sparta. It’s hard to tell, which is which. Here you have Athens, a democracy backing other democracies and having the military support of the democracies and the military in these democracies all had to pay Athens protection money for the military support and that’s the money that Athens got to ostensibly support its navy and protection that built up all of the Athenian public buildings and everything else. So, that’s a democracy exploiting its allies, to enrich itself via the military. Then you have Sparta, which was funding all of the oligarchies, and it was helping the oligarchies overthrow democracies. Well, that was America too. So, America is both sides of the Thucydides war if the democracy is exploiting the fellow democracies and is the supporter of oligarchies in Brazil, Latin America, Africa and everyone else.
So, you could say the Thucydides problem was between two sides, two aspects of America and has nothing to do with China at all except, for the fact that the whole war was a war between economic systems. They’re acting as if somehow if only China did not export to us, we could be re-industrialized and somehow export to Europe and the Third World.
And as you and I have described, it’s over. We painted ourselves into such a debt corner that without writing down the debts, we’re in the same position that the Eurozone is in. There’s so much money that goes to the creditors to the top 1 percent or 5 percent that there is no money for capital investment, there is no money for growth. And, since 1980 as you know, real wages in America have been stable. All the growth has been in property owners and predators and the FIRE sector, the rest of the economy is in stagnation. And now the coronavirus has simply acted as a catalyst to make it very clear that the game is over; it’s time to move away from the homeowner economy to rentier economy, time for Blackstone to be the landlord. America wants to recreate the British landlord class and essentially what we’re seeing now is like the Norman invasion of England taking over the land and the infrastructure. That’s what Blackstone would love to do in China.
“There’s so much money that goes to the creditors to the top 1 percent or 5 percent that there is no money for capital investment, there is no money for growth.”
Pepe: Wow. I’m afraid that they may have a lot of leeway by some members of the Beijing leadership now, because as you know very well, it’s not a consensus in the political arena.
Michael: We’re talking about Volume II and III of Capital.
Pepe: Exactly. But you know, you were talking about debt. Coming back to that, in fact I just checked this morning, apparently global debt as it stands today is $277 trillion, which is something like 365 percent of global GDP. What does that mean in practice?
Michael: Yeah, well fortunately this is discussed in the 19th century and there was a word for that — fictitious capital — it’s a debt that can’t be paid, but you’ll keep it on the books anyway. And every country has this. You could say the question now, and The Financial Times just had an article a few days ago that China’s claims on Third World countries on the Belt and Road Initiative is fictitious capital, because how can it collect?
Well, China’s already thought of that. It doesn’t want money. It wants the raw materials. It wants to be paid in real things. But a debt that can’t be paid, can only be paid either by foreclosing on the debtors or by writing down the debts and obviously a debt that can’t be paid won’t be paid.
“Fictitious capital — it’s a debt that can’t be paid, but you’ll keep it on the books anyway. And every country has this.”
And so, you have not only Marx using the word fictitious capital. At the other end of the spectrum, you had Henry George talking about fictive capital. In other words, these are property claims that have no real capital behind them. There’s no capital that makes profit. That’s just a property claim for payment or a rentier claim for payment.
So, the question is, can you make money somehow without having any production at all, without having wages, without having profits, without any capital? Can you just have asset grabbing and buying-and-selling assets? And as long as you have the Federal Reserve in America, come in, Trump’s $10 trillion Covid program gave $2 trillion to the population at large with these $1,200 checks, that my wife and I got, and $8 trillion all just to buy stocks and bonds. None of this was to build infrastructure. None of this $8 trillion was to build a single factory. None of this 8 trillion was to employee a single worker. It was all just to support the prices of stocks and bonds, and to keep the illusion that the economy had not stopped growing. Well, it’s growing for the 5 percent. So, it’s all become fictitious. And if you look at the GDP as I said, it’s fictitious.
Pepe: And the most extraordinary thing is none of that is discussed in American media. There’s not a single word about what you would have been describing.
Michael: It’s not even discussed in academia. Our graduates at the university of Missouri at Kansas City, we’re all trained in Modern Monetary Theory. And as hired professors they have to be able to publish in the refereed journals and the refereed journals are all essentially controlled by the Chicago School. So, you have a censorship of the kind of ideas that we’re talking about. You can’t get it into the economic journals, so you can’t get it into the economics curriculum. So, where on earth are you going to get it? If you didn’t have the internet you wouldn’t be discussing at all. Most of my books sell mainly in China, more than in all the other countries put together so I can discuss these things there. I stopped publishing in orthodox journals so many years ago because it’s talking to the deaf.
“None of this $8 trillion was to build a single factory, employee, a single worker.”
Pepe: Absolutely. Yeah. Can I ask you a question about Russia, Michael? There is a raging, debate in Russia for many years now between let’s say the Eurasianists and the Atlanticists. It involves of course, economic policy under Putin, industrial capitalism Russian style. The Eurasianists basically say that the central problem with Russia is how the Russian central bank is basically affiliated with all the mechanisms that you know so well, that it is an Atlanticist Trojan Horse inside the Russian economy. How do you see it?
Michael: Russia was brainwashed by the West when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991. First of all, the IMF announced in advance that there was a big meeting in Houston with the IMF and the World Bank. And the IMF published all of its report saying, first you don’t want inflation in Russia so let’s wipe out all of the Russian savings with hyperinflation, which they did. They then said, well now to cure the hyperinflation the Russian central bank needs a stable currency and you need a backup for the currency. You will need to back it with U.S. dollars.
“Russia was brainwashed by the West when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.”
So, from the early 1990s, as you know, labor was going unpaid. The Russian central bank could have created the rubles to pay the domestic labor and to keep the factories in place. But, the IMF advisers from Harvard said, no you’ll have to borrow U.S. dollars. I met with people from the Hermitage Fund and the Renaissance Fund and others. We had meetings and I met with the investors. Russia was paying 100 percent interest for years to leading American financial institutions for money that it didn’t need and could have created itself. Russia was so dispirited with Stalinism that, essentially, it thought the opposite of Stalinism must be what they have in America.
They thought that America was going to tell it how America got rich, but America didn’t want to tell Russia how it got rich, but instead wanted to make money off Russia. They didn’t get it. They trusted the Americans. They really didn’t understand that, industrial capitalism that Marx described had metamorphosized into finance capitalism and was completely different.
And that’s because Russia didn’t charge rent, it didn’t charge interest. I gave three speeches before the Duma, urging it to impose a land tax. Some of the people I noticed, Ed Dodson was there with us and we were all trying to convince Russia, don’t let this land be privatized. If you let it be privatized, then you’re going to have such high rents and housing costs in Russia that you’re not going to be able to essentially compete for an industrial growth. Well, the politician who brought us there, Viatcheslav Zolensky was sort of maneuvered out of the election by the American advisers.
The Americans put billions of dollars in to essentially finance American propagandists to destroy Russia, mainly from the Harvard Institute of International Development. And essentially, they were a bunch of gangsters and the prosecutors in Boston were about to prosecute them.
The attorney general of Boston was going to bring a big case for Harvard against the looting of Russia and the corruption of Russia. And I was asked to organize and to bring a number of Russian politicians and industrialists over to say how this destroyed everything. Well, Harvard settled out of court and essentially that made the perpetrators the leading university people up there. (I’m associated with Harvard Anthropology Department, not the Economics Department.)
So, we never had a chance to bring my witnesses, and have our report on what happened, but I published for the Russian Academy of Sciences a long study of how all of this destruction of Russia was laid out in advance at the Houston meetings by the IMF. America went to the leading bureaucrats and said; look, we can make you rich why don’t you register the factories in your own name, and if you’re registered in your own name, you know, then you’ll own it. And then you can cash out. You can essentially sell, but obviously you can’t sell to the Russians because the IMF has just wiped out all of their savings.
You can only cash out by selling to the West. And so, the Russian stock market became the leading stock market in the world from 1994 with the Norilsk Nickel and the seven bankers in the bank loans for shares deal through 1997. And, I had worked for a firm Scutter Stevens and, the head adviser, a former student of mine didn’t want to invest in Russia because she said, this is just a rip off, it’s going to crash. She was fired for not investing. They said look, we know that’s going to crash. That’s the whole idea it’s going to crash. We can make a mint off it before the crash. And then when it crashes, we can make another mint by selling short and then all over again. Well, the problem is that the system that was put in with the privatization that’s occurred, how do you have Russia’s wealth used to develop its own industry and its own economy like China was doing. Well, China has rules for all of this, but Russia doesn’t have rules, it’s really all centralized, it’s President Putin that keeps it this way.
Well, this was the great fear of the West. When you had Mikhail Gorbachev beginning to plan to do pretty much what is done today, to restrain private capital, the IMF said hold off. We’re not going to make any loans to stabilize the Russian currency until you remove Mr. Primakov.
The U.S. said we won’t deal with Russia until you remove him. So, he was pushed out and he was probably the smartest guy at the time there. So, they thought [President Vladimir] Putin was going to be sort of the patsy. And he almost single-handedly, holding the oligarchs in and saying, look, you can keep your money as long as you do exactly what the government would do. You can keep the gains as long as you’re serving the public interest.
But none of this resulted into a legal system, a tax system, and a system where the government actually does get most of the benefits. Russia could have emerged in 1990 as one the most competitive economies in Eurasia by giving all of the houses to its people instead of giving Norilsk Nickel and the oil companies to Yukos. It could have given everybody their own house and their own apartment, the same thing in the Baltics. And instead it didn’t give the land out to the people. And Russians were paying 3 percent of their income for housing in 1990. And rent is the largest element in every household’s budget.
“Russia could have emerged in 1990 as one the most competitive economies in Eurasia by giving all of the houses to its people.”
So, Russia could have had low-price labor. It could have financed all of its capital investment for the government by taxing, collecting the rising rental value. Instead, Russian real estate was privatized on credit and it was even worse in the Baltics.
In Latvia, where I was research director for the Riga Graduate School of Law, Latvia borrowed primarily from Swedish banks. And so, in order to buy a house, you had to borrow from Swedish banks. And they said, well, we’re not going to lend in the Latvian currency because it can go down. So, you have a choice; Swiss Francs or German Marks or U.S. Dollars. And so, all of this rent was paid in foreign currency. There came an outflow that essentially drained all the Baltic economies. Latvia lost 20 percent of its population. Estonia and Lithuania followed suit.
And of course, the worst hit by neo-liberalism was Russia. As you know, President Putin said that neo-liberalism cost Russia more of its population than World War II. And you know that to destroy a country, you don’t need an army anymore. All you have to do is teach it American economics.
Pepe: Yes, I remember well, I arrived in Russia in the winter of 91 coming from China. So, I transited from the Chinese miracle. In fact, a few days after Deng Xiaoping’s famous Southern tour when he went to Guangzhou and Shenzhen. And that was the kick for the 1990s boom, in fact a few years before the handover, and then I took the Trans-Siberian and I arrived in Moscow a few days after the end, in fact, a few weeks after the end of the Soviet Union.
But yeah, I remember the Americans arrived almost at the exact minute, wasn’t it, Michael? I think they already were there in the spring of 1992. If I’m not mistaken.
Image on the right: Russian 1992 privatization voucher. (Wikimedia Commons)
Michael: The Houston meeting was in 1990. But all before that already in, 1988 and 1989, there was a huge outflow of embezzlement money via Latvia. The assistant dean of the university who ended up creating Nordex, essentially the money was all flying out because Ventspils in Latvia, was where Russian oil was exported and it was all fake invoicing. So, the Russian kleptocrats basically made their money off false export invoicing, ostensibly selling it for one price and having the rest paid abroad and, this was all organized through Latvia and the man who did it later moved to Israel and finally gave a billion dollars back to Russia so that he went on to live safely for the rest of his life in Israel.
Pepe: Well, the crash of the ruble in 1998 was what, roughly one year after the crash of the baht and the whole Asian financial crisis, no? It was interlinked of course, but let me see if I have a question for you, in fact, I’m just thinking out loud now. If the economies of Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia, the case of South Korea and Russia, were more integrated at the time as they are trying to integrate now, do you think that the Asian financial crisis would have been preventable in 1997?
Michael: Well, look at what happened in Malaysia with Mohammad Mahathir. Malaysia avoided it. So of course, it was preventable, and they had the capital controls. All you would have needed was to do what Malaysia did. But you needed an economic theory for that.
And essentially the current mode of warfare is to conquer the brains of a country to shape how people think and how they perceive the economy. And if you can twist their view into an unreality economics, where they think that you’re there to help them not to take money out of them, then you’ve got them hooked. That was what happened in Asia. Asia thought it was getting rich off the dollars inflows and then the IMF and all the creditors pulled the plug, crash the industry. And now that all of a sudden you had a crash, they bought up Korean industry and other South Asian industries at giveaway prices.
That’s what you do. You lend the money; you pull the plug. You then let them go under and you pick up the pieces. That’s what Blackstone did after the Obama depression began, when Obama saved the banks, not the constituency, the mortgage borrowers. Essentially that’s Blackstone’s modus operandito pick up distressed prices at a bankruptcy sale, but you need to lend money and then crash it in order to make that work.
Pepe: Michael, I think we have only five minutes left. So, I would expect you to go on a relatively long answer and I’m really dying for it. It’s about debt, it about the debt trap. And it’s about the New Silk Roads, the Belt and Road Initiative, because I think rounding up our discussion and coming back to the theme of debt and global debt.
The No. 1 criticism apart from the demonization of China that you hear from American media and a few American academics as well against the Belt and Road is that it’s creating a debt trap for Southeast Asian nations, Central Asian nations and nations in Africa, etc…. Obviously, I expect you to debunk that, but the framework is there is no other global development project as extensive and as complex as Belt and Road, which as you know very well was initially dreamed up by the Ministry of Commerce. Then they sold it more or less to Xi Jinping who got the geopolitical stamp on it, announcing it, simultaneously, (which was a stroke of genius) in Central Asia in Astana and then in Southeast Asia in Jakarta. So, he was announcing the overland corridors through the heartland and the Maritime Silk Road at the same time.
At the time people didn’t see the reach and depth of all that. And now of course, finally the Trump administration woke up and saw what was in play, not only across Eurasia but reaching Africa and even selected parts of Latin America as well. And obviously the only sort of criticism, and it’s not even a fact-based criticism, that I’ve seen about the Belt and Road is it’s creating a debt trap because as you know Laos is indebted, Sri Lanka is indebted, Kyrgyzstan is indebted etc. So, how do you view Belt and Road within the large framework of the West and China, East Asia and Eurasia relations? And how would you debunk misconceptions created, especially in the U S that this is a debt trap.
Six proposed corridors of Belt and Road Initiative, showing Italy inside circle, on maritime blue route. (Lommes, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Michael: There are two points to answer there. The first is how the Belt and Road began. And as you pointed out, the Belt and Road began, when China said, what is it we need to grow and how do we grow within our neighboring countries so we don’t have to depend upon the West, and we don’t have to depend on sea trade that can be shut down? How do we get to roads instead of seas in a way that we can integrate our economy with the neighboring economies so that there can be mutual growth?
So, this was done pretty much on industrial engineering grounds. Here’s where you need the roads and the railroads. And then how do we finance it? Well, The Financial Times article, last week, said didn’t the Chinese know that [with past] railroad development, they’ve all gone broke? The Panama Canal went broke, you know, the first few times there were European railway investment in Latin America in the 19th century, that all went broke.
Well, what they don’t get is China’s aim was not to make a profit off the railroads. The railroads were built to be part of the economy. They don’t want to make profit. It was to make the real economy grow, not to make profits for the owners of the railroad stocks. The Western press can’t imagine that you’re building a railroad without trying to make money out of it.
Then you get to the debt issue. Countries only have a debt crisis if their debt is in a foreign currency. The first way that the United States gained power was to fight against its allies. The great enemy of America was England and it made the British block their currency in the 1940s. And so, India and other countries, that had all these currencies holdings in sterling, were able to convert it all into dollars.
The whole move of the U.S. was to denominate world debt in dollars. So that No. 1, U.S. banks would end up with the interest in financing the debt. And No. 2, the United States could, by using the debt leverage, control domestic politics.
Well, as you’re seeing right now in Argentina, for instance, Argentina is broke because it owes foreign-dollar debt. When I started the first Third World bond fund in 1990 at Scutter Stevens, Brazil and China and Argentina were paying 45 percent interest per year, 45 percent per year in dollars debt. Yet we tried to sell them in America. No American would buy. We went to Europe, no European buy this debt. And so, we worked with Merrill Lynch and Merrill Lynch was able to make an offshore fund in the Dutch West Indies and all of the debt was sold to the Brazilian ruling class in the central bank and the Argentinian bankers in the ruling class, we thought oh, that’s wonderful.
We know that they’re going to pay the foreign Yankee Dollars debt because the Yankee Dollars debt is owed to themselves. They’re the Yankees! They’re the client oligarchy. And you know, from Brazil client oligarchy is, you know, they’re cosmopolitan, that’s the word. So, the problem is that on the Belt and Road, how did these other countries pay the debt to China?
Well, the key there again is the de-dollarization, and one way to solve it is since we’re trying to get finance out of the picture, we’re doing something very much like, Japan did with Canada in the 1960s. It made loans to develop Canadian copper mines taking its payment, not in Canadian dollars, that would have pushed up the yen’s exchange rate, but in copper.
So, China says, you know you don’t have to pay currency for this debt. We didn’t build a railroad to make a profit and you want, we can print all the currency we want. We don’t need to make a profit. We made the Belt and Road because it’s part of our geopolitical attempt to create what we need to be prosperous and have a prosperous region. So, these are self-reinforcing mutual gain. Well, so that’s what the West doesn’t get — mutual gain? Are we talking anthropology? What do you mean mutual? This is capitalism! So, the West doesn’t understand what the original aim of the Belt and Road was, and it wasn’t to make a profitable railroad to enable people to buy and sell railway stocks. And it wasn’t to make toll roads to sell off to Goldman Sachs, you know. We’re dealing with two different economic systems, and it’s very hard for one system to understand the other system because of the tunnel vision that you get when you get a degree in economics.
“We’re dealing with two different economic systems, and it’s very hard for one system to understand the other system because of the tunnel vision that you get when you get a degree in economics.”
Pepe: Belt and Road loans are long-term and at very low interest and they are renegotiable. They are renegotiating with the Pakistanis all the time for instance.
Michael: China’s intention is not to repeat an Asia crisis of 1997. It doesn’t gain anything by forcing a crisis because it’s not trying to come in and buying property at a discount at a distressed sale. It has no desire to create a distressed sale. So obviously, the idea is the capacity to pay. Now, this whole argument occurred in the 1920s, between [John Maynard] Keynes and his opponents that wanted to collect German reparations and, Keynes made it very clear. What is the capacity to pay? It’s the ability to export and the ability to obtain foreign currency. Well, China’s not looking for foreign currency. It is looking for economic returns but the return is to the whole society, the return isn’t from a railroad. The return is for the entire economy because it’s looking at the economy as a system.
The way that neoliberalism works, it divides the economy in parts, and it makes every part trying to make a gain, and if you do that, then you don’t have any infrastructure that’s lowering the cost for the other parts. You have every part fighting for itself. You don’t look at in terms of a system the way China’s looking at it. That’s the great advantage of Marxism, you’ll look at the system, not just the parts.
Pepe: Exactly and this is at the heart of the Chinese concept of a community with a shared future for mankind, which is the approximate translation from Mandarin. So, we compare community with a shared future for mankind, which is, let’s say the driving force between the idea of Belt and Road, expanded across Eurasia, Africa and Latin America as well with our good old friends’, “greed is good” concept from the eighties, which is still ruling America apparently.
Michael: And the corollary is that non-greed is bad.
Pepe: Exactly and non-greed is evil.
Michael: I see. I think we ran out of time. I do. I don’t know if Alanna wants to step in to wrap it up.
Michael: There may be somebody who has a question.
Pepe: Somebody has a question? That’ll be fantastic.
Alanna: There is a question from Ed Dodson. He wanted to know why there are these ghost cities in China? And who’s financing all this real estate that’s developed, but nobody’s living there? We’ve all been hearing about that. So, what is happening with that?
Michael: Okay. China had most of its population living in the countryside and it made many deals with Chinese landholders who have land rights, and they said, if you will give up your land right to the community, we will give you free apartment in the city that you could rent out.
So, China has been building apartments in cities and trading these basically in exchange to support what used to be called a rural exodus. China doesn’t need as many farmers on the land as it now has, and the question is how are you going to get them into cities? So, China began building these cities and many of these apartments are owned by people who’ve got them in exchange for trading their land rights. The deals are part of the rural reconstruction program.
Alanna: Do you think it was a good deal? Vacant apartments everywhere.
Pepe: You don’t have ghost cities in Xinjiang for instance, Xinjiang is under-populated, it’s mostly desert. And it’s extremely sensitive to relocate people to Xinjiang. So basically, they concentrated on expanding Urumqi. When you arrive in Urumqi it is like almost like arriving in, Guangzhou. It’s enormous. It’s a huge generic city in the middle of the desert. And it’s also a high-tech Mecca, which is something that very few people in the West know. And is the direct link between the eastern seaboard via Belt and Road to Central Asia.
Pepe Escobar at the Khunjerab pass, China-Pak border, on New Silk Road overdrive.
Last year I was on an amazing trip. I went to the three borders, the Tajik-Xinjiang border, Kyrgiz-Xinjiang border and the Kazakh-Xinjiang border, which is three borders in one. It’s a fascinating area to explore and specially to talk to the local populations, the Kyrgiz, the Kazakhs and the Tajiks. How do they see the Belt and Road directly affecting their lives from now on? So, you don’t see something spectacular for instance, in the Xinjiang – Kazakh boarder, there is one border for the trucks, lots of them like in Europe, crossing from all points, from Central Asia to China and bringing Chinese merchandise to Central Asia.
There’s the train border, which is a very simple two tracks and the pedestrian border, which is very funny because you have people arriving in buses from all parts of Central Asia. They stop on the Kazakh border. They take a shuttle, they clear customs for one day, they go to a series of shopping malls on the Chinese side of the border. They buy like crazy, shop till it drops, I don’t know for 12 hours? And then they cross back the same day because the visa is for one day. They step on their buses and they go back.
So, for the moment it’s sort of a pedestrian form of Belt and Road, but in the future, we’re going to have high-speed rail. We’re going to have, well the pipelines are already there as Michael knows, but it’s fascinating to see on the spot. You see the closer integration; you see for instance Uyghurs traveling back and forth. You know, Uyghurs that have families in Kyrgizstan for instance, I met some Uyghurs in Kyrgyzstan who do the back-and-forth all the time. And they said, there’s no problem. They are seen as businessmen so there’s no interference. There are no concentration camps involved, you know, but you have to go to these places to see how it works on the ground and with Covid, that’s the problem for us journalists who travel, because for one year we cannot go anywhere and Xinjiang was on my travel list this year, Afghanistan as well, Mongolia.
These are all parts of Belt and Road or future parts of Belt and Road, like Afghanistan. The Chinese and the Russians as well; they want to bring Afghanistan in a peace process organized by Asians themselves without the United States, within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, because they want Afghanistan to be part of the intersection of Belt and Road and Eurasian Economic Union. This is something Michael knows very well. You don’t see this kind of discussions in the American media for instance, integration of Eurasia on the ground, how it’s actually happening.
Michael: That’s called cognitive dissonance.
Alanna: To try to understand it gets you cognitive dissonance.
Pepe: Oh yeah, of course. And obviously you are a Chinese agent, a Russian agent. And so, I hear that all the time. Well, in our jobs we hear that all the time. Especially, unfortunately from our American friends.
Alanna: Okay. I know you have other things to do. This has been fabulous. I want to thank you so much, both of you, uh, with so easy to get attendance for this webinar. There were 20 people in five minutes enrolled and in two days we were at capacity. So, I know there are many more people who would love to hear you talk another time, whenever you two are so willing. And I think you both got much out of your first conversation in person. Everybody listening knows these two wonderful gentlemen, they have written more than 10 books, and they have traveled all over the world. They are on the top of geopolitical and geoeconomic analysis, and they are caring, loving people. So, you can see that these are the people we need to be listening to and understanding all around the world.
So, thank you so much. Ibrahima Drame from the Henry George School is now going to say goodbye to you and will wrap this up. Thank you again.
Pepe: Michael it was a huge pleasure. Really, it was fantastic. Really nice, we’re on the same website. So, let’s have a second version of this.
Ibrahima: So, let’s have a second version of this two months from now. Thank you very much for participating and I really hope you liked this event. And, we also want to ask for your support by making a tax-deductible donation to the Henry George School. I believe I shared the link on the chat. Thank you. And see you soon.
Pepe: Thank you very much. Thanks Michael. Bye!
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Michael Hudson is an American economist professor of economics at the university of Missouri Kansas City and a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. He’s a former Wall Street analyst political consultant commentator and journalist. He identifies himself as a classical economist. Michael is the author of J is for Junk Economics, Killing the Host, The Bubble and Beyond, Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire, Trade Development and Foreign Debtand The Myth of Aid, among others. His books have been published translated into Japanese, Chinese, German, Spanish and Russian.
Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture in Moscow. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok.
Featured image: High-ended retailer Saks Fifth Avenue added private security, fencing and barbed wire ahead of a Black Lives Matter protest in New York, June 7. 2020. (Anthony Quintano, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
There were delays and some people were turned away at San Diego’s new “Vaccination Super Station” near PetCo Park on Wednesday after, in a short time period, six people had allergic reactions after receiving their experimental coronavirus vaccine shots.
In addition, the unused portion of the lot of the vaccine from which the shots came was pulled from distribution. That suggests thinking that there may be something particularly dangerous about that lot.
This gives a whole new meaning to “drawing lots.”
Watch and read here an NBC 7 report on the vaccination trouble.
In the video report from NBC 7, a woman who had an allergic reaction and a four-hour hospital stay after receiving the first shot of the two-shot vaccination regimen on Wednesday at the Vaccination Super Station is interviewed. She says she feels fatigued and sore. She also says she does not want to have a second shot even though she has taken other vaccines throughout her life, including a flu vaccine recently. “I can’t go through that again,” she states.
Who could blame her? Initial studies from drug companies that created the experimental coronavirus vaccines indicate side effects tend to be worse after the second shot.
Information from the vaccine injury reporting system of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates the first dose alone of the experimental coronavirus vaccines is causing many times more adverse events than flu shots cause.
Interestingly, there seemed to have been some evasion when NBC 7 sought information about the delay at the Vaccination Super Station. Here is how that is described in the TV station’s written report:
Just after 11 a.m., NBC 7 confirmed that some people waiting for their vaccines at the site at Tailgate Park were experiencing delays. Others said they had been turned away.
NBC 7 reached out to those running the station; a representative said the delay was about an hour long due to logistical issues having to do with more doses of the vaccine arriving at the location.
During the county’s weekly COVID-19 briefing, Dr. Eric McDonald, Director of Epidemiology for the county, said vaccinations were slowed down after allergic reactions were detected in six vaccine recipients.
Fortunately, more of the story of the vaccination problem did come out. It makes one wonder how often similar problems are successfully hidden from media and the public.
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What’s going on in the nation’s capital is unprecedented.
Around 25,000 troops, unknown numbers of secret service agents, other federal security forces, and local police turned the city into a blockaded armed camp ahead of illegitimate transition of power on January 20.
The nation’s capital resembles occupied Baghdad’s Green Zone that’s half-way around the world from Washington DC.
Seven-foot-high non-scalable barricades topped with razor wire surround the Capitol and various federal buildings.
Thousands of heavily armed National Guard troops and other security forces — with orders to use lethal force against alleged threats — guard the city’s perimeter and virtually everything important inside.
Bridges into the city and National Mall will be closed ahead of Wednesday’s transition of power.
At checkpoints, IDs of occupants in cars, no other modes of transport, or on foot entering or leaving the city are checked.
The Military Times reported that “National Guard troops from (virtually all US (states) continue to pour into DC for…security.”
Army General Daniel Hokanson, head of the National Guard Bureau, is commanding what’s going on.
Deployment of troops was authorized for up to 30 days for transition of power preparations, what’s planned for January 20 and its aftermath.
The Washington Post, located in the city on K Street NW, said it’s “closed off like never before,” adding:
“(T)he Secret Service has launched a massive security operation.”
“Vehicle traffic in much of the city will be prohibited or limited to residents and businesses only.”
“Metro is shuttering stations in the city’s core and near the Mall.”
“Street closures will continue through Thursday, and are subject to change at the discretion of the Secret Service.”
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser noted the unprecedented interruption of daily life for city residents and businesses while all of the above continues.
Saying “we are in unchartered waters” greatly over-dramatizes preparations for alleged threats that are highly unlikely to happen unless one or more state-sponsored false flags are planned to further vilify Trump and his supporters.
No reported intelligence or other information suggests a serious enough or any threat to warrant over-the-top preparations — notably 25,000 National Guard troops from all states.
No explanation was given for what’s going on at enormous taxpayer expense — other than non-specific remarks.
The best FBI director Christopher Wray would offer was saying the following:
“We are seeing an extensive amount of concerning online chatter — that’s the best way I would describe it — about a number of events surrounding the inauguration” with no further elaboration.
His remark suggested no organized or other planned threat(s) to inauguration day events — likely because there are none expected.
According to one observer who walked around the perimeter of barricades twice this week, it’s nearly impossible for any unauthorized vehicle or person to get anywhere near close to where inaugural ceremonies will be conducted.
At Secret Service discretion, closures, barriers, and other preparations are subject to change.
A Final Comment
On Friday, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser’s remark was an Orwellian shot across the bow for what may be coming ahead nationwide, saying:
“(O)ur entire country is going to have to deal with how our intelligence apparatus, security apparatus at every level deal with a very real and present threat to our nation (sic).”
Her remark indicates a new abnormal for the city that perhaps is coming to the US nationwide.
The only “threat to our nation” is state-sponsored.
A free and open society appears on the chopping block for elimination — totalitarian rule enforced by police state harshness appears coming to replace it.
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Brave new world dystopia is unfolding in plain sight, freedoms as once known fast eroding.
Are they heading for elimination altogether in the West and elsewhere?
Is totalitarian rule enforced by police state harshness becoming the new abnormal?
Is the US land of opportunity/land of the free and home of the brave a distant memory?
Eroding for years, life as once known in the US and West are on a fast track for elimination if not challenged to halt what’s underway.
Seasonal flu/influenza that occurs annually with no mass hysteria fear-mongering, house arrest by lockdowns and quarantines, face masks that harm health instead of protecting it, social distancing and all the rest have done infinitely more harm to most people than any number of illnesses combined.
Renamed (made-in-the-USA) covid, it’s a vehicle for transforming free societies into totalitarian ones — complementing what’s gone on up to now following the US state-sponsored 9/11 mother of all false flags.
What’s happening and hardening is what no one yearning to breathe free should accept.
But it’s going on and advancing, supported by Big Media.
It includes a diabolical scheme to silence dissent by eliminating truth-telling divergence from the falsified official narrative.
America’s Bill of Rights are fast disappearing.
October 2001 Patriot Act legislation trampled on them by greatly eroding the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, 8th and 14th Bill of Rights amendments to the US Constitution.
Calling for Patriot Act 2.0, Biden/Harris want the draconian 2001 law hardened for greater police state control to further weaken/then eliminate a free and open society.
Their stimulus plan calls for nationwide mass-vaxxing with high-risk, experimental, DNA-altering, hazardous to health mRNA vaccines that provide no protection and likely harm to countless numbers of people if taken as directed.
What’s planned includes issuance of digital vaccine passports — an unacceptable Big Brother intrusion into and for control over our lives.
Will they be required ahead for air travel and free movement, along with access to employment, education, and other public places?
Will daily lives and routines no longer be possible without proof of covid immunity — not gotten from vaxxing?
Will what was inconceivable not long ago become reality ahead by what Biden/Harris and likeminded US hardliners have in mind?
Is the scheme a diabolical depopulation plot to eliminate maximum numbers of what Henry Kissinger once called “useless eaters” — in the US and worldwide?
A so-called US Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI) was established.
Its sponsors include Microsoft, Oracle, the Mayo Clinic, the Commons Project, Change Healthcare, the Rockefeller Foundation, other corporate interests, likely mass-vaxxing advocate Bill Gates and US dark forces.
VCI calls itself “a coalition of public and private partners committed to empowering individuals with digital access to their vaccination records (sic).”
It’s part of a diabolical, deep state, Great Reset plot for draconian control over our lives — for ill, not good, to further erode and eliminate fundamental freedoms.
It’s unrelated to “protect(ing) and improv(ing) (our) health…safety, and privacy.”
Its aims are polar opposite the above mass deception.
It calls for digital access to health, vaxxing, and related information — for greater government intrusion into and control over our lives.
“Participating technology and other collaborating partners agree to support Vaccination Data Sources in issuing SMART Health Cards” — to aid diabolical aims sought by US dark forces at home and worldwide.
In response to what’s planned, UK-based Big Brother Watch (BBW) director Silkie Carlo said the following:
“Vaccine passports would create the backbone of an oppressive digital ID system and could easily lead to a health apartheid that’s incompatible with a free and democratic country,” adding:
“Digital IDs would lead to sensitive records spanning medical, work, travel, and biometric data about each and every one of us being held at the fingertips of authorities and state bureaucrats.”
“This dangerous plan would normalize identity checks, increase state control over law-abiding citizens, and create a honeypot for cybercriminals.”
BBW’s website warned about “(a) wave of emergency powers and extreme measures in response to (seasonal flu renamed covid that) brought about the greatest loss of liberty in (UK) history,” the US and other Western societies.
Vaccine passports are part of a diabolical plot to transform free societies into dystopian ones on the phony pretext of protecting our health and well-being that’s greatly harmed by what’s going on and planned.
Declarations by health officials and vaccine makers that deaths and injuries following COVID vaccinations are unrelated coincidences are becoming a pattern.
They’re also depriving people of the information they need to make informed decisions.
The official handling last week of the deaths of two Danes and a Miami doctor following their COVID jabs highlights the gaping holes in the government’s surveillance system for detecting post-marketing vaccine reactions.
These incidents suggest that health officials will be unlikely to give the public authentic risk profiles for the emergency use COVID vaccines.
Accurate risk profiles allow regulators to determine if a medical intervention is causing more harm than good and consumers to make rational choices about their own use of a product.
Regulators usually develop risk assessments during preclinical trials by comparing health outcomes in individuals receiving the intervention against a placebo group. Such studies must be large enough to detect rare injuries and of sufficient duration to reveal ailments with long diagnosis horizons.
The existence of the placebo group makes it difficult to conceal or misattribute injuries. Conversely, the absence of a placebo group in post-vaccination surveillance systems makes it easy for self-interested pharmaceutical and regulatory officials to undercount injuries by attributing them to coincidence.
Coincidence is turning out to be quite lethal to COVID vaccine recipients.
Death by coincidence
Shortly after reporting the Danish deaths and prior to any autopsies, Tanja Eriksen, acting head of Denmark’s Pharmacovigilance Unit, told the Danish newspaper, EkstaBladet, that the Danish Medicines Agency had determined that coincidence probably killed the two Danish citizens whose deaths followed their vaccinations.
One of the deaths was a citizen who had “severe lung disease.” The existence of the comorbidity suggested that the death was therefore coincidental. The second citizen received the vaccine at a “very old age,” and therefore also expired from coincidence.
“When vaccinated in fragile groups, one would expect there to be deaths,” explained Eriksen, using logic seldom applied by health officials to deaths from the COVID-19 virus. “This will happen regardless of whether they are vaccinated or not.”
These simple declarations — that deaths and injuries following vaccination are unrelated coincidences — are becoming a pattern.
On Dec. 20, 2020, World Today News reported the death of an 85-year-old man in Kalmar, Sweden, one day after he received the vaccine. Dr. Mattias Alvunger of the Kalmar Hospital dismissed concerns about the death being related to the vaccine, calling the fact that it was reported to the Swedish Medical Products Agency as “routine.”
On January 1, Sonia Acevedo, a 41-year-old Portugese nurse and mother of two, died two days after receiving the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine. Her father told the Daily Mail that she never drank alcohol and was in perfect health. Nevertheless, Portugal’s Health Authority dismissed her death as a sad coincidence.
Israel also reported two deaths from the coincidence pandemic: one in a 75-year-old man in Beit She’an, and the other an 88-year-old man. Both died two hours after vaccination. Israeli health officials warned the public not to attribute the deaths to the vaccine.
In Lucerne, Switzerland, a 91-year-old man died five days after getting Pfizer/BioNtech’s vaccine. Swiss authorities called any connection “highly unlikely.”
On January 3, Dr. Gregory Michael, a beloved Miami obstetrician and enthusiastic COVID-19 vaccine booster, died of a hemorrhagic stroke after receiving Pfizer/BioNtech’s vaccine. Dr. Michael developed acute idiopathic thrombocytopeniapurpura (ITP) — a known vaccine side effect — immediately after receiving the jab. His platelet count dropped from 150,000 to zero and never rebounded.
An army of experts from around the world, involved in the vaccine program, consulted in doomed efforts to restore Dr. Michael’s platelet count. The inevitable brain hemorrhage killed him two weeks later. Michael’s wife said that her husband’s death was “100% linked to the vaccine. She added that he was physically healthy, exercised often, rarely drank alcohol, never smoked cigarettes and had no known comorbidities.
Nevertheless, Pfizer dismissed Michael’s injuries as another sad coincidence: “We do not believe at this time that there is any direct connection to the vaccine.” Pfizer pointed out that ITP is also caused by excess drinking and reasoned that “there have been no recorded safety signals identified in trials from vaccinations so far.”
On Tuesday, the New York Times quoted Dr. Jerry Spivak, a blood disorder expert at Johns Hopkins University, saying “I think it’s a medical certainty that the vaccine was related.”
An injury that occurs at that frequency would not likely be seen in Pfizer/BioNtech’s Phase II clinical trial because only 22,000 people received the vaccine. However, an injury of this severity occurring once in every 25,000 shots could debilitate or kill 12,000 of the 300 million Americans to whom the company hopes to give the jab.
The public can expect to see more of this strategic chicanery: When a healthy 32-year-old Mexican doctor was hospitalized with encephalitis — inflammation of his brain and spinal cord — after receiving the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine, Mexican doctors dismissed the injury as unrelated to the vaccination, reasoning that the condition had not been detected in Pfizer/ BioNtech’s clinical trials.
This week an Auburn, New York nursing home reported, without any apparent irony, that 32 of 193 residents have died since the facility began administering the Pfizer vaccine on Dec. 21. The company claims that its clients are dying of COVID-19 infections, not the vaccine.
Equally disturbing, additional deaths may have gone altogether unreported.
Among Dr. Michael’s many grateful patients was Tessa Levy, who had a scheduled appointment with him for the Tuesday after his death on Jan. 3. Michaels delivered all four of Tessa’s children, saving one of them with an ingenious split-second diagnosis of a rare heart condition that would have otherwise killed the boy.
Tessa is the daughter of my close friend, the famous Beverly Hills surgeon, Dr. George Boris. “He was a healthy, strong, vigorous guy,” Tessa told me about Michaels. “He never showed any health problems.”
On New Year’s Eve, Dr. Boris’s brother-in-law, Murray Brazner, also died suddenly, one week after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. Neither the vaccine company nor any health agency took notice of his sudden unexpected death. “No autopsy was performed, and his death isn’t recorded as a vaccine injury. It makes you wonder,” Dr. Boris told me.
Mr. Brazner’s death illustrates an even graver problem: Many injuries may be escaping notice by the surveillance system and the media. Unreported stories similar to Dr. Brazner’s tragedy are already common complaints on social media.
On Jan. 2, Janice Hisle lamented on Facebook that her friend’s mom, an Ohio woman, died after receiving the vaccine. According to Hisle, the woman developed a high fever hours after the jab and died a “couple days” later. “I am so angry for my friend,” she commented, “who is crying because relatives were not allowed to see her before she was vaccinated. They thought the vaccine would ‘open the door.’”
We could find no mention of the Ohio woman’s death in media records or official COVID-vaccine death tallies.
One might assume that if deaths following COVID-19 vaccine can be so easily dismissed or ignored, lesser injuries will also escape notice.
The all-too-familiar vaccine propaganda playbook
The routine of reflexively dismissing suspicious deaths and injuries as unrelated to vaccination not only calls into doubt the official data tallies on vaccine injuries, it also contrasts markedly with the habit among public health officials of authoritatively attributing every death to COVID-19 so long as the deceased tested positive for COVID within 60 days of death using a PCR test notorious for producing false positives.
In fact, the $48 billion COVID vaccine enterprise shares three defining features with every new vaccine introduced since 1986:
1. Systematic exaggeration of risk from the target disease. (Pharma calls this project “Disease Branding.”)
2. Systematic exaggeration of vaccine efficacy.
3. Systematically downplaying vaccine risks.
1. Exaggerating disease risk:
Regulatory agencies count every death as a COVID death, so long as the deceased tested positive for COVID within 60 days of death — no matter that he may have died in a motorcycle crash.
In September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) admitted that 94% of individuals whose deaths the CDC officially attributed to COVID had other illnesses that may have actually killed them. The average deceased had 2.8 comorbidities. Yet in CDC’s official tabulations, CDC always presumes that COVID-19 did the killing.
But as we see from the examples above, when it comes to COVID vaccine injuries, the opposite presumption governs: the comorbidity is always the cause of death — even when, as with Dr. Michaels, there are no known comorbidities.
2. Systematic exaggeration of vaccine efficacy:
Pfizer touts a 95% efficacy rate in its clinical trials, but this is a meaningless measure of “relative efficacy” based on a tiny cohort of 94 people in the placebo group who got mild cases of COVID during the clinical trials.
The true risk of vaccine injury will continue to be obscured by the habit among public health officials of routinely dismissing reported injuries as unrelated to vaccination.
The practices of systematically overestimating vaccine safety, underestimating vaccine deaths, and exaggerating risks of COVID-19 effectively deprive the public of their right to informed consent.
And so what do we really know about the true risk of COVID-19 vaccines?
Public health officials and industry spokespeople like to say that the risks of serious injury from vaccination are “one in one million.. However, in the first week of distribution, Americans took 200,000 COVID vaccines and reported 5,000 “serious” (meaning missed workdays or medical intervention required) injuries.
This is an injury rate of 1 in every 40 jabs. This means that the 150 shots necessary to avert one mild case of COVID will cause serious injury to at least three people.
If the clinical trials are good predictors, that rate is likely to increase dramatically after the second shot (the clinical trials suggested that almost all the benefits of COVID vaccination and vast majority of injuries were associated with the second dose).
We don’t know the true risk of death from the vaccine since regulators have rendered virtually every death invisible by attributing them all to coincidence.
The 1-in-40 risk of “serious injury” from Pfizer’s COVID vaccine is consistent with what we know about other vaccines.
Nevertheless, it is only by clinging to this “designed to fail” system that regulators and industry have maintained their pretense that current vaccine risk profiles are acceptable.
A 2010 study funded by HHS concluded that VAERS captured “fewer than 1% of injuries.” In other words, the actual injury rates from mandated vaccines are more than 100x what HHS has been telling the public!
The 2010 HHS study found that the true risk for serious adverse events was 26/1,000, or one in 37.
Similarly, Merck’s clinical trials for Gardasil found that an astonishing half of all vaccine recipientssuffered from adverse events, which Merck euphemistically called “new medical conditions,” and that 2.3% of vaccine recipients (1 in 43) suffered from autoimmune disease within six months of vaccination.
Similarly, a recent Italian study found that 46% of vaccine recipients (462 adverse events per 1,000 doses) suffered adverse events, with 11% of these rated “serious,” meaning 38 serious adverse events per 1,000 vaccinated individuals. These include grave gastrointestinal and “serious neurological disorders.” This amounts to a “serious” injury rate of 1/26.
Holocaust survivor Vera Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection has observed that, “Everyone who gets any of these vaccines is participating in a vast medical experiment.”
Health officials generally concur that the granting of “emergency use authorization” to the rollout of experimental vaccine technologies with only a few weeks of safety testing, two years before the scheduled completion of Phase 2 testing, is a great human experiment, involving millions of subjects.
But researchers are unlikely to see all of the safety signals if a badly designed surveillance system allows local health officials and company employees the discretion to dismiss any serious injury as unrelated.
What could be more natural than to enjoy and draw strength from the wisdom of great European poets and thinkers such as Goethe, Schiller, Rolland or Camus? Are we not all – every single one! – urgently called upon to stop degrading ourselves into blind servants of corrupt governments in the pay of a criminal billionaire clique, but to follow our personal conscience, to exercise our right to individual and collective resistance and to stand up against them? This act of outrage – often set apart from the inert herd – includes civil disobedience and other non-violent individual and collective actions. In the process, man comes to himself. Romain Rolland warned of the danger of the individual soul sinking into the abyss of the mass soul in his anti-war novel “Clerambeault” in a similarly dark time as today. (1) Free souls and strong characters would have to offer blinded governments and their string-pullers in the background a check – for the love of humanity.
Enough words have been exchanged, …
In the quote fragment borrowed from Goethe’s “Faust”, “Enough words have been exchanged, …”, there is a call for action to follow words. Many intrepid enlighteners in the alternative social media have indeed tirelessly informed us,
– that we should have the courage to use our own minds,
– that power should not be handed over to any politician,
– that the planned and in parts already implemented “New World Order” of the so-called elite is a “crime against humanity” which they will one day have to answer for before a new “Nuremberg Trial”,
– that the call for social distancing and muzzling also has hidden aims,
– that stoking irrational fears (such as death by virus) is a tried and tested means of discipline and domination by those in power,
– that the corporate-owned and controlled media of lies (“journaille”) play a pathetic and sinister role in this,
– that one can give up the involuntary reflex of absolute mental obedience and
– that by rebelling against the illegally imposed restrictions on personal freedoms, one feels human again.
… let me also finally see action!
Why should the citizens of our generation not also succeed in doing what young and older men and women of the German resistance succeeded in doing three generations earlier: Standing up against screaming injustice and lawlessness. No, a border has tyrannical power! (Schiller) And the power to do so does not come from physical ability; it springs from an indomitable will. (Gandhi). Do not despair of humanity! Man is good. Evil will not triumph!
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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is an educationalist and qualified psychologist.
Note
(1) Reinbeck bei Hamburg (1988). Translated from the French by Stefan Zweig. First published in 1920 by the Ollendorff publishing house in Paris. Original title “One against all” (1917).
Today and during the last few days new “measures” – restrictions of freedom imposed by governments for reasons of “public health security”, i. e. preventing the spread of covid infections – have been tightened throughout Europe. Literally, these treacherous governments say, “we have to tighten the screws”. Seriously. WTF – who do they think they are? Servants of the people who elected them and who pay them. This is high treason. But people take it without asking too many questions, some complaints but not strong enough… we are living in the midst of the Sheep Syndrome.
They – these supposedly people friendly governments – call them “measures”, a euphemism for lockdown – sounds better in the ears of a public tired of continuous and more and more repressions. This second, in some countries even third lockdown, includes further business closing, more sever control on home-office work, police-enhanced social distancing, mask wearing, no indoor group activities, only 5 people may meet in an apartment… and, and, and.
For example, there are about 75 studies – give or take a couple – about the uselessness and even dangers of mask wearing. They address especially the danger for children and young adults…i.e students, but nobody, nobody in the bought-compromised and coerced, bribed – western governments pays any attention to them, nor does, of course, the presstitute mainstream media.
They also impose homeoffice, knowing damn well that any serious psychologist and sociologist tells you how devastating this is for the individual – loneliness, lack of physical contact, encounter and interaction with colleagues – as well as for society as a whole. Without physical contact it breaks apart. This is of course all wanton – thus, all restaurant closings, all events where people gather and interchange, is forbidden.
People are unhappy. Yes, but not enough to stop this tyranny! – Well, I better behave otherwise I’m going to be punished. – FEAR! – Fear leads to the sheep syndrome – that deep-deep social disease which besets us today – and has done so for a while. It does a lot of harm not only to you, but also to the societal cohesion. People, we got to get out of it.
But, it seems, people are not yet tired enough to stand up in unison, screaming “enough is enough”, we do not continue this is government tyranny, we stop obeying.
And yes, to give the tyranny more weight, more credibility, it is enhanced by a so-called Task Force (TF), a group of coopted “scientists”, especially established by the Powers that Be, to inform them what to do. It is an old method of a decision-making duality, when governments have to, or want to, take decisions that are not popular, they ask a specially designated Task Force for advice. However, the TF has been told and knows exactly what they have to advise. That’s a premeditated lie, at best manipulation of public opinion.
In the UK and France new lockdown measures were imposed already for days, Austria and Switzerland announced them a couple of days ago – the EU as an entity – says nothing, does not coordinate, does not want to see that these lockdowns are not only destroying the individual nations’ economy, but they bring the entire EU to economic suicide. The EU is hamstrung by Washington and by NATO.
The new lockdowns – and possibly more are planned as more waves of covid are in the making – until everybody is vaxxed – and has his / her electromagnetic gel injected in their bodies with a DNA-altering substance. So now, they are totally controllable over time. And the time horizon set for total digitization of everything is 2030. AI and robot control of humans – making them into transhumans that’s the goal for the UN Agenda 21-30. And the instrument to achieve it is the Bill Gates created Agenda ID2020 (see this)
Traditional and very effective medication against corona – proven for over 60 years for other infections and which were used successfully in China to beat the outbreak, and now in Argentina, Bolivia, southern Peru – and elsewhere in the world, are now forbidden under fines for medical doctors who prescribe them and treat their patients with these medicines. – Can you imagine! – So, no healing, only when you are vaxxed. There are clearly not only billions of dollars of profits for the pharmas behind this stint, this constantly propagated, to the point of being forced upon the people, vaccines, especially the western brands that are untested but are scientifically known to interfere with the human DNA.
More lockdowns are killing more small businesses, shops, and restaurants. Creating more hardship of small business owner, more bankruptcies, more misery for the people and their families, losing their jobs.
Just imagine – home-teaching, a family of 4, both parents work, the kids have to have each one a reasonably powerful computer / laptop to be able to connect to the school teacher – the kids have to have reasonable computer skills to manage home-learning, and the parents, even if they have time, do they all have the reasonable computer skills to help their kids? – Does every family in the already much covid-hardship affected society have the resources to spare the money for buying the needed electronic gear for the kids?
It is a disaster. Again, a wanton disaster. Because it will result in less or non-educated children in the west – non-educated kids will become easier manipulatable adults – well, they are expected to fall – in lockstep – into their parents Sheep Syndrome. – Or will they? – That’s where dynamics may not meet linear elite thinking and expectations.
Now, this is happening in the Global North. Imagine how it is in the Global South, where increasing poverty, misery and famine is ravaging entire societies. Often times, more than two thirds of a country’s population is poor and many of them at or below the poverty line. How will these kids be distance-taught? – They simply won’t. So, we have a situation where the Global South produces uneducated kids, because they simply don’t go to school. Most of them will remain poor, they will be the perfect laborers for the elite – or cannon fodder for the wars the rich nations have to (or want to) fight to satisfy their greed. Never forget, wars are profitable. But foremost because of the Globalists sociopathic thirst for more and more power and money.
Listening and talking to people in the street and to small business owners – they are all upset, and many of them say they may not survive, may never reopen, despite the subsidy they receive form governments. In Switzerland, the head of “Gastronomie Suisse” said with another lockdown, up to 50% of restaurants may not survive. Similar figures have been mentioned in Germany, Austria and France – and surely the situation is likewise devastating elsewhere too.
We are talking predominantly for the west. The situation in the East, Russia and China and their allies in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is different, in as much as they have a much more people-friendly approach to covid-eradication.
In the west, in some cases, people’s entire lifesaving, their life achievements, their family businesses, are killed for the sake of a useless and purely oppressive rule. The purpose of this rule is not to stamp out a disease, but covid is a means to instill fear and make us compliant, for worse times to come. Because, let me tell you, whatever you may think that in the summer of 2021, or next year, 2022, we will get back to normal – we will not. Never. If we let them do what they are doing now.
This small Globalist Cabal, via its ultra-rich handlers – billionaires with two and three digits, from the Silicon Valley – does not only have the power to censoring whoever is against the Matrix, but they are all censuring in unison the President of the United States. What does that say about a country, or about a society we live in, a society that calls itself “democratic”?
No matter how much you like or dislike your President, doesn’t it occur to you that this is the embodiment of freedom of speech that is taken away from you? – But again, we do nothing. We watch and complain, but we do nothing. We let it happen. Wouldn’t this be a golden opportunity to block and boycott all social media platforms? Period. – Live without them, for Christ’s sake, some 20, 30 years ago we didn’t even know that they existed, and even less so to what extent we will be hooked on them.
If we can still think independently, it’s now the time to cut yourself loose from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and what all their names are — don’t use them. Get back to regular human-to-human communications, dialogues, meeting each other, calling on the phone, landline if possible. Yes, I’m serious.
Think about the consequences of following this trend of no free speech, but a steady increase in AI-ization by algorithms that are precisely using the data you give them on the social platform to further enslave you; by ever more robotization and digitization – to the point when we don’t even realize that our brains have been wired and “hacked” by DARPA-developed super-computers. We will believe and follow orders we are directly implanted by such super-computers, managed, guess by whom – by the Globalist Cabal – at which point we have irreversibly become the personification of the Sheep Syndrome. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is an advanced research and technology branch of the Pentagon.
Does anyone want that?
I doubt it.
We have to find a way to act now. I don’t have the solution. But maybe collectively connecting with each other spiritually, perhaps meditation – we will find a solution – or we will make a solution emerge.
That would be the noble way – changing an utterly abusive environment with our conscientiousness and with spiritual thinking; emitting high-vibrating vibes that influence our collective destiny. But we have to believe in it and in ourselves as a solid and solidary collectivity.
If we fail as humans to claim back our human and civil rights and preserve them, eventually Mother Earth will clean herself. She will clean out the inhuman swamp. Maybe it needs one or two huge and lasting cataclysms; a massive earthquake with a disastrous tsunami, a gigantic eruption of one or several volcanos, darkening the sky for weeks, or a monster hurricane or ice storm that destroys and paralyzes parts of civilization, or a huge solar explosion, knocking out the world’s electric and electronic grid – ending digitization of everything on the spot. – All this might be much worse than what covid, or its inventors, ever did.
After such a cataclysm, much of humanity might have to start from scratch – from near-to-zero, and certainly without digitization – but with the now lost freedom, to start afresh and develop freely and sovereignly according to our needs.
For decades the Global Cabal has showered us with self-aggrandizing lies, with promises of comfort, of well-being, but with the notion that competition rather than cooperation will be the salvation. These well-thought-out lies led to a society of egocentric psychopaths – not only, but enough to influence the trend of society, of our dystopian lives. We have gradually acquiesced in LOCKSTEP to a move of societal, even civilizational destruction, from where there is no return.
Let’s work ourselves out of the Sheep Syndrome – NOW.
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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).
Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Featured image: File photo from the Times of India
Although hardly suggested by our mainstream media, the officially-reported results demonstrated that our 2020 presidential election was extraordinarily close.
All the regular pre-election polls had shown the Democratic candidate with a comfortable lead, but just as had been the case four years earlier, the actual votes tabulated revealed an entirely contrary outcome. According to the official vote-count, the Biden/Harris ticket ended up millions of votes ahead, having racked up huge leads in overwhelmingly Democratic states such as my own California, and also won by a very comfortable 306 to 232 margin in Electoral Votes. But control of the White House depends upon the state-by-state tallies, and these told a very different story.
Incumbent Donald Trump lost Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin by such extremely narrow margins that a swing of less than 22,000 votes in those crucial states would have gotten him reelected. With a record 158 million votes cast, this amounted to a victory margin of around 0.01%. So if just one American voter in 7,000 had changed his mind, Trump might have received another four years in office. One American voter in 7,000.
Such an exceptionally narrow victory is extremely unusual in modern American history. For decades, the very tight Kennedy-Nixon race of 1960 had been a byword for close races, but Biden’s margin of victory was much smaller. More recently, George W. Bush won a narrow reelection over Sen. John F. Kerry in 2004, but Kerry would have required a voter swing nearly five times greater than Trump’s in order to claim victory. Indeed, with the sole exception of the notorious “dangling chads” Florida decision of the 2000 Bush-Gore election, no American presidential candidate in over 100 years had lost by so narrow a voter margin as Donald J. Trump.
If our incompetent or dishonest media had correctly reported these simple facts, perhaps Democratic partisans would have been somewhat more understanding of the outrage expressed by so many of their Republican counterparts, who believed they had been cheated of their election victory. Admittedly, Trump backers seem equally unaware of the historically slender margin of their candidate’s defeat.
The emotions on both sides of the Trump reelection campaign were among the strongest in modern American history, and the outcome was determined by the tiniest sliver of voters in a few states. So under these circumstances, last week’s controversial events in DC were perhaps not so entirely unexpected. Indeed, during the weeks before the election, I’d half-predicted such a scenario, speculating about possible claims of a stolen election and the resulting civil unrest. For example, the following was my response to a question from a longtime commenter:
Many Trump supporters are alleging that there could be massive voting fraud in the 2020 election. Some believe that if Trump is ahead on election night, Democratic machines will manufacture ballots to give a victory to Biden. Do you think this is possible or do you see this as improbable?
Well, I suppose it’s possible…
Frankly, both sides are so totally agitated and extreme, the Trumpists would be saying and believing it, even if it were entirely false and impossible. It’s hard to figure out what’s happening when everyone involved is so dishonest and corrupt. Trump has always seemed like an ignorant buffoon to me, but I think the Democrats and liberals have almost gone insane in their opposition to him.
As I’ve been telling people for weeks, the whole political situation certainly seems very bizarre and I’ve seen some pretty plausible arguments that we might end up with a “disputed” election if the numbers are fairly close in key states. Apparently, the Republicans are overwhelmingly going to be voting in person, while the Democrats will be voting by mail, meaning their ballots will be much slower to come in and be counted.
So Trump could be ahead by wide margins on Election Night and declare victory to the cheers of his partisans. And then as the mail ballots come in, the numbers turn against him, but he and his die-hard supporters cry “Fraud!” and refuse to recognize the result. Hard to say what would happen, but I’m glad I live in California which is generally quiet and peaceful these days.
Obviously, Bush/Gore was “disputed” in 2000, but only party loyalists much cared at the time, while today the country is filled with Trumpists and Trump-haters, both very suspicious and angry.
Although I think my speculative scenario turned out to be reasonably correct, the actual post-election developments were far greater in magnitude than I had expected, and may have dire consequences for maintaining American civil liberties.
I haven’t investigated the matter, but there does seem to be considerable circumstantial evidence of widespread ballot fraud by Democratic Party forces, hardly surprising given the apocalyptic manner in which so many of their leaders had characterized the threat of a Trump reelection. After all, if they sincerely believed that a Trump victory would be catastrophic for America why would they not use every possible means, fair and foul alike, to save our country from that dire fate?
In particular, several of the major swing-states contain large cities—Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Atlanta—that are both totally controlled by the Democratic Party and also notoriously corrupt, and various eye-witnesses have suggested that the huge anti-Trump margins they provided may have been heavily “padded” to ensure the candidate’s defeat.
Even leaving aside some of these plausible claims, the case for a stolen election seems almost airtight. I don’t know or care anything about Dominion voting machines, whether they are controlled by Venezuelan Marxists, Chinese Communists, or Martians. But the most blatant election-theft was accomplished in absolutely plain sight.
Not long before the election, the hard drive of an abandoned laptop owned by Joe Biden’s son Hunter revealed a gigantic international corruption scheme, quite possibility involving the candidate himself. But the facts of this enormous political scandal were entirely ignored and boycotted by virtually every mainstream media outlet. And once they story was finally published in the pages of the New York Post, America’s oldest newspaper, all links to the Post article and its website were suddenly banned by Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets to ensure that the voters remained ignorant until after they had cast their ballots.
Renowned international journalist Glenn Greenwald was hardly a Trump partisan, but he became outraged that the editors of the Intercept, the $100 million publication he himself had co-founded, refused to allow him to cover that massive media scandal, and he angrily resigned in protest. In effect, America’s media and tech giants formed a united front to steal the election and somehow drag the crippled Biden/Harris ticket across the finish line.
The Hunter Biden corruption scandal seemed about as serious as any in modern presidential election history and Biden’s official victory margin was just 0.01%. So if the American voters had been allowed to learn the truth, Trump almost certainly would have won the election, quite possibly in an Electoral College landslide. Given these facts, anyone who continues to deny that the election was stolen from Trump is simply being ridiculous.
Heated election campaigns have consequences, and this is especially true when all of America’s most powerful corporations and ruling elites unite to essentially steal a reelection from a populist incumbent, hero-worshiped by many tens of millions of Americans. And when despite all that blatant unfairness and theft, the final margin of defeat is just one vote in 7,000, an explosion of popular outrage should only be expected.
Solid estimates appear unavailable, but it seems that hundreds of thousands of grass-roots Trump supporters traveled to our nation’s capital to protest against what they regarded as a stolen election, and then peacefully assembled to listen to their hero’s speech.
Afterwards, a tiny sliver of this vast multitude of angry individuals—perhaps less than one in a thousand—barged their way into the strangely-undefended Capitol building of Congress, took souvenir selfies, livesteamed their antics, and generally played the role of tourist-protesters while the lawmakers they so despised as corrupt mostly fled or hid. These Trumpists and some of their colorful costumes brought to mind the radical Yippies of the late 1960s.
The previous year had seen an unprecedented wave of violent riots, arson, and looting across some 200 American cities, which our entirely corrupt and dishonest media had generally characterized as “mostly peaceful protests.” In previous years, angry mobs of organized Democratic activists had repeatedly invaded and occupied the Wisconsin Legislature, sometimes winning praise from the media. But when unarmed Trump supporters now did something similar for a few hours in Washington, they were quickly branded “domestic terrorists” seeking to overthrow our democracy.
A video shows Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed female protester, being shot dead by a security guard as she tried to climb through a window, an incident not dissimilar to the famous Kent State shootings of a 1960s campus protest, but hardly treated by the media in a similar manner.
GRAPHIC FOOTAGE: Police fatally shoot a Trump supporter inside the Capitol building. This is a sickening crime that should be prosecuted as such. pic.twitter.com/X8JK7HplJ7
A couple of other Trump protesters, probably elderly, overweight, or in poor health, died of strokes or heart-attacks during all the excitement, and one Capitol police officer later died as well, allegedly struck in the head with a fire-extinguisher although there has been no solid account of the incident. Yet this confused tableau of chaos and popular anger, which recalls scenes from the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention protests, has been portrayed as a “coup attempt” incited by President Trump, and therefore justifying his second impeachment.
Even more importantly, the incoming Biden/Harris Administration may be considering the most sweeping domestic crackdown upon traditional American civil liberties since the Patriot Act was passed in the hurried aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks twenty years ago. This has been justified by the need to suppress “domestic extremism.”
Even without any new governmental legislation, a remarkable Internet crackdown has already begun. In an absolutely unprecedented development, the sitting president of the United States—who had just lost his reelection by 0.01% of the vote—has been summarily banned by Twitter, Facebook, and all other major social media outlets, preventing him from communicating with his followers, and with many of his leading supporters suffering the same fate. Famed libertarian Ron Paul criticized Twitter for banning Trump, and he was immediately locked out of his own Facebook page. Parler, a young but rapidly growing Twitter competitor, refused to ban Trump, and was immediately driven off the Internet by a combined attack from Apple, Google, and Amazon, possibly never to return. Our Information Age has entered a truly Orwellian period.
These Tech giants have often justified their extreme censorship by expressing the need to combat the spread of the dangerous “conspiracy theories” so widespread among Trump partisans. Particularly demonized by the media is the wildly popular “QAnon” theory, which numbered the unfortunate Ms. Babbitt among its committed followers. Although I’m only very slightly familiar with QAnon, it appears to be a bizarre mishmash of many strange ideas, notably including the belief that our ruling elites heavily consist of exceptionally corrupt and criminal individuals, sometimes even being Satanic pedophiles.
Although much of that doctrine seems like total nonsense to me, we should note the massive suppression this movement has experienced and bear in mind that “the wicked flee when no man pursueth.” And indeed, my own articles over the years have solidly established that many of the seemingly ridiculous elements of QAnon probably contain a very large nugget of truth:
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
As a violent mob of Trump’s citizen militia scaled walls, broke windows and seized control of the Capitol building yesterday around 2 p.m., the Dow Jones Industrial Average set a new intraday high of 31,022.65. It gave up very little by the 4 p.m. close, gaining 437.8 points on the day.
The Trump operatives were attempting to stop Congress from confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral win. Dressed in paramilitary clothing or jeans and red MAGA hats, the mob overpowered the Capitol Police inside and outside the building, gaining access to both Senate and House chambers and lawmaker offices, including the office of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
Jamie Stiehm, a US political columnist, was inside the Capitol building and reported the following for the BBC:
“I went inside to the House of Representatives and up into the press gallery, where we were assigned seats, looking down at the rather somber gathering. Speaker Nancy Pelosi was holding the gavel, and keeping people to their five-minute statements.
“As we went into the second hour, all of a sudden we heard breaking glass. The air began getting fogged. An announcement from the Capitol Police said, ‘An individual has breached the building.’ So everyone looked around and then it was business as usual. But after that, the announcements kept coming. And they were getting more and more urgent…The police didn’t seem to know what was happening. They weren’t coordinated. They locked the chamber doors but at the same time, they told us we would have to evacuate. So there was a sense of panic…There was a sense of ‘nobody’s in charge here, the Capitol Police have lost control of the building, anything can happen.’ ”
An excellent report by Emilie Munson for Hearst Newspapers on how House Reps, Senators and press were eventually evacuated by Capitol Police through tunnels is provided here. The Capitol building was not declared secured by the Capitol Police until approximately 5:50 p.m. At around 8:00 p.m. Congress resumed its deliberations and confirmed the Biden win after hours of debate.
Grisly images of the mayhem at the Capitol are available at Bloomberg News here. According to CNBC, four people were left dead as a result of the riots. A young, unidentified woman was shot inside the Capitol building according to Capitol Police and died of her injuries. Another woman and two men died from “medical emergencies,” according to the CNBC report, which was based on information provided at a press conference by Washington, D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee.
CNBC also reported that “At least fourteen police officers sustained injuries with multiple [officers] still in the hospital.” One officer, whose photo of being assaulted by the mob is included in the link to Bloomberg photos above, sustained serious injuries.
While all of this mayhem and insurrection played out on television screens around the world, and world leaders were forced to confront the possibility that there would not be a peaceful transition to a new President in the United States, the Dow Jones Industrial Average yawned at the chaos. This is certainly not a normal reaction for the U.S. stock market, especially since it’s already in bubble territory.
There was the distinct impression among market watchers that an invisible hand was once again intervening to prevent a crash in the market as the violent events unfolded. Thoughts turned immediately to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s Exchange Stabilization Fund which, under the law (31 U.S.C. §5302) “may deal in gold, foreign exchange, and other instruments of credit and securities the Secretary considers necessary.” Conveniently, the Exchange Stabilization Fund has grown from $94.3 billion in assets prior to Trump taking office to $682 billion as of September 30, 2020.
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Update (1630ET): In what can only be described as a somewhat concerning turn of events, health experts from Wuhan, China, called on Norway and other countries to suspend the use of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines produced by companies such as Pfizer, especially among elderly people (following the surge in deaths in Norway described below)
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China’s Global Times reports Chinese experts said the death incident should be assessed cautiously to understand whether the death was caused by vaccines or other preexisting conditions of these individuals.
Yang Zhanqiu, a virologist from Wuhan University, told the Global Times on Friday that the death incident, if proven to be caused by the vaccines, showed that the effect of the Pfizer vaccine and other mRNA vaccines is not as good as expected, as the main purpose of mRNA vaccines is to heal patients.
…
A Beijing-based immunologist, who requested anonymity, told the Global Times on Friday that the world should suspend the use of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine represented by Pfizer, as this new technology has not proven safety in large-scale use or in preventing any infectious diseases.
Older people, especially those over 80, should not be recommended to receive any COVID-19 vaccine, he said.
All of which is a problem since it is the elderly who are at most risk (quite frankly at any real risk at all) and thus who need the protection the most. The Chinese health experts instead say that the most elderly and frail should be recommended to take medicines to improve their immune system.
Of course, one cannot help but note the irony of scientists from the source of the plague that has killed millions around the world and destroyed lives/economies almost everywhere, is now calling for the cessation of the process to protect against the plague.
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As we detailed earlier, Norway health authorities are reporting COVID-19 vaccine news of monumental importance at a moment the US is rushing to get an initial some 30 million doses into the arms of the elderly and those with chronic health conditions: sick patients over 80 are particularly at risk for devastating side effects.
Thus for this vulnerable demographic which is currently first in line in North America, the “cure” could be worse than the disease. Bloomberg notes that it’s “the most cautious statement yet from a European health authority” regarding potential adverse vaccine health risks.
“For those with the most severe frailty, even relatively mild vaccine side effects can have serious consequences,” the Norwegian Institute of Public Health said.
The health authority said further in its most blunt statement cautioning against a policy of a blanket promotion of the vaccine for all:
“For those who have a very short remaining life span anyway, the benefit of the vaccine may be marginal or irrelevant.”
This comes after a handful of global cases, including an elderly patient in France, where a recipient died within hours of receiving their first-round of the vaccine.
Thus far Norway says it has administered doses to up to 33,000 people, including the elderly, but are already finding it “too risky” for the terminally ill and people over 80 that are in frail condition. Given only 33,000 injected so far, the reported death count is already staggering and is causing officials to sound the alarm:
Norwegian officials said 23 people had died in the country a short time after receiving their first dose of the vaccine. Of those deaths, 13 have so far been autopsied, with the results suggesting that common side effects may have contributed to severe reactions in frail, elderly people, according to the Norwegian Medicines Agency.
But despite the warnings being featured prominently at the end of this week in Bloomberg and multiple other mainstream publications, again we doubt this will do anything in terms of putting the brakes on the rushed vaccine rollout in the US where it’s precisely the elderly, frail, and those prone to persistent health conditions that are being urged on by state and federal policies to be first in line.
How many of these deaths came after the Pfizer vaccine? It would be good to know after the news from Norway. https://t.co/TtazlDpG0s
Meanwhile, Bloomberg had this to say of the most common vaccine brands in Norway and the West:
Representatives for Pfizer and BioNTech didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine approved late last year has been used most broadly, with a similar shot from Moderna Inc. approved earlier this month also now being administered.
Norway initiated its COVID-19 vaccinations last month on the heels of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine receiving approval by the European Medicines Agency. Norway’s infections are approaching 60,000 out of total population of 5.3 million, including over 500 deaths.
Many skeptics in Europe and the US still have severe reservations about the vaccines, even as big pharma and governments continually insist they are completely safe.
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Saint Simeon, on the outskirts of Aleppo, was the largest church in the world in the fifth century. After Islam arrived in Syria, the country has remained a dense mixture of cultures and faiths, living in tolerance and cooperation until 2011, when a US-NATO war for ‘regime change’ began which destroyed the country, and scattered its citizens to the far corners of the world.
According to UNESCO, Aleppo is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, and it has survived the war but faces many challenges to recover, rebuild, and bring its citizens back home.
“What’s special about this city is its living cultural heritage,” says Dima Dayoub, an Aleppan architect now working in Berlin for the Syrian Heritage Initiative. “The priority is not the churches or the mosques, it’s for people to return. We need to help people reconstruct their homes and their livelihoods.”
An American in Syria
Drew Binsky is an American traveler who visited Aleppo in 2019 and produced a video showing life in Aleppo. Seeing the city and its people in a video brings the story of the city to life, and makes it real.
Airline connections
Syrian Air is expanding with a new Aleppo-Beirut service. The route will operate once a week on Fridays in both directions.
The airline flies to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Doha, Moscow, and Cairo. Syrian Air only flies to one European destination, Yerevan due to ongoing EU and US sanctions.
Transportation routes
In February 2020, the Syrian Arab Army (SAR) established full control over the Aleppo-Damascus highway, which is a strategically important transportation route. Aleppo is the industrial capital of Syria.
The SAR, advancing from the Western outskirts of Aleppo, liberated Sheikh-Ali, Arada, Arnaz, Khan el-Asal, and the Rashideen-4 district from terrorists.
Major General Yuri Borenkov, the chief of the Russian Center for Reconciliation of Opposing Parties in Syria, said that the security zone called for in the September 2018 Russian-Turkish memorandum had been partially achieved by liberating the highway from the terrorists, and he believed this would provide security for the Syrian residents.
How the war came to Aleppo
According to Wedad Mohammed, they went to sleep in East Aleppo in 2012 and woke up the next morning under the occupation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which was supported by the Obama administration. At first, they thought they might be able to stay in their home and continue working under occupation, but the strict enforcement of Sharia (Islamic Law) made life unbearable for Wedad and her family, who moved to Latakia as displaced persons.
Aleppo war years and liberation
In the last days of December 2016, CNN and BBC were featuring the battle for east Aleppo daily. Usually, they referred to the city as Aleppo, but the battles were in the eastern district. The international viewer came away with the impression that the largest city in Syria was engulfed in raging battles. Aleppo was not all besieged, and not all bombed into rubble. The eastern section of Aleppo had been occupied by armed terrorists. Some were the FSA, which was a local militia following the Muslim Brotherhood directives out of Istanbul. But, others were Al Qaeda affiliates and foreign fighters who had been imported from as far away as Afghanistan, Pakistan, the UK, and France. All these groups, whether being paid by Qatar at the behest of theUS, or by Saudi Arabia, were following Radical Islam, which is a political ideology and is not a religion, nor a sect.
The ‘last doctors’ in Aleppo
In August 2016, CNN featured an appeal by the last 15 doctors in Aleppo, asking President Obama to take military action.
“We do not need tears or sympathy or even prayers. We need action,” their letter to Obama read. The doctors added: “We choose to be here. We took a pledge to help those in need. ”
What CNN failed to explain was there were free public hospitals in the western side of Aleppo that could have served the needs of those patients, and they had never closed even in the darkest days of the war 2012-2016. However, some of those doctors remained because they were followers of Radical Islam and identified with the terrorists. Those doctors could have served their patients well by arranging for the Syrian Red Crescent to rescue their patients through the humanitarian corridors for civilians to leave the eastern district. The FSA snipers killed dozens of people, some whole families, as they attempted to flee to safety.
In stark contrast are the Catholic hospitals of Aleppo. Suffering has held together the bricks of Syria’s reconstruction, according to the “Open Hospitals” project launched in 2017, and sponsored by the apostolic nuncio, Cardinal Mario Zenari.
The Catholic hospital of Saint Louis of Aleppo, built-in 1905, is a 60-bed facility run by the nuns of Saint Joseph of the Apparition, to offer free treatment to the most vulnerable and destitute patients, despite the severe US and EU sanctions that affect medical facilities.
“Only 44 out of 141 health infrastructures are still functioning in Aleppo as a result of the war,” said George Theodory, head doctor at Saint Louis of Aleppo, who added that there are long waiting times for diagnosis and treatment as a result of the US and EU sanctions.
”The situation is very different today. There is no more fighting except in the area of Idlib, but we are facing another war that bears the name of poverty,” said Sister Fekria, while pointing an accusing finger at the US and EU sanctions that have been direly affecting the population. Electricity, gas, and fuel are rationed. The sanctions on banking prevent many foreign pharmaceutical companies from trading with Syria, causing a lack of medicines and difficulties in finding medical supplies and equipment.
The Syrian government has rehabilitated 52 health centers and hospitals, in addition to 1,620 schools, with over one thousand projects being announced by the local administration.
What was destroyed?
The first full satellite survey of devastated ancient Aleppo is called “Five Years of Conflict: The State of Cultural Heritage in the Ancient City of Aleppo,” and was made by the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), and cultural heritage experts from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), working closely with historians, architects, and archaeologists.
The study shows that, between 2014 and 2015, most of the historic buildings south of the ancient Citadel were destroyed or severely damaged,
Audrey Azouley, Director-General of UNESCO, said that the technology provides a “remarkable tool with unmatched precision for documenting and understanding heritage” adding that it could also pave the way “for the eventual recovery of the city.”
What has been restored?
Construction and restoration activities in Aleppo were the main source of income for a large proportion of the city’s population; however, the increase in the price of cement has stopped some housing projects.
Thousands of structures in Aleppo’s neighborhoods, including houses, schools, and hospitals, particularly in the eastern parts of the city, were destroyed in the bombing when the city was under the control of the terrorists.
The Aleppo governorate witnessed the highest destruction level in Syria, with more than 35.7 thousand buildings destroyed.
Residents who have returned to some eastern Aleppo neighborhoods have repaired their houses, such as in the Masaken Hanano area, al-Shaar, the al-Bab road, and the al-Maysar.
The Syrian government has limited its restoration and rehabilitation activity to government facilities, and some schools in the neighborhoods of al-Jazmaty, al-Ferdous, and al-Saliheen.
Restoration of architectural heritage
Aleppo was the symbol of the material and cultural wealth that once made Syria one of the most civilized places in the world. Blessed by climate, fertile land, physical beauty, and its position between the Mediterranean and the east.
The citadel sits atop a mound, with a moat, and the castle is the icing on the cake. The souks are a web of covered alleys and streets, which make up the first ‘shopping malls’ on earth, and are gems of architecture.
The Aga Khan Trust for Culture is supporting the rebuilding of some of the Aleppo souks, and some churches have been restored with the help of congregations abroad.
What’s next for Aleppo?
The Syrian people have suffered. Syrians who remained in the country have high hopes for 2021 being the year of peace and renewal. Syrians abroad may be homesick and waiting for the chance to return, but need security, an improved economy, and more electricity and gasoline supplies to make the long journey back home.
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In his first media interview, the incoming US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has given a preview of Joe Biden administration’s foreign policy directions in regard of Russia, Iran and China. Major shifts can be expected in the policies toward both China and Iran while selective engagement of Russia is on cards.
First, Russia. Sullivan noted that it was “most likely” that Russia is responsible for the massive cyber attacks on the US government system, critical infrastructure and private sector entities that have come to light recently. He didn’t want to “telegraph our punches” but forewarned that Biden will impose “substantial costs” on Russia.
Biden will “choose his time and place” pending a thorough assessment regarding the intent of the attack, how far and wide it had spread and precisely what might result from it. Prima facie, this appears to go beyond“random opportunities for espionage” and downstream destructive action cannot be ruled out. Biden has told aides that from day 1, cyber security will be “a top national security priority of his administration.”
However, Sullivan drew the analogy of the Cold War to point out that even when the US and the former Soviet Union arrayed thousands of nuclear warheads against each other on “a hair trigger”, and spoke in existential terms about their competition with each other, there were areas of cooperation — “more specifically, on arms control and nuclear non-proliferation.”
Therefore, the US and Russia “can act in their national interests” to advance an arms control and strategic stability agenda amidst today’s tense relations. Sullivan disclosed that Biden has “tasked us to pursue from right outside the gate” (after the inaugural ceremony on Jan. 20) the renewal of the new START agreement. He admitted that US will have to look at “extending that treaty in the interests of the United States.”
Sullivan didn’t expand on this selective engagement with Russia to include other issues (eg., Syria, Ukraine, etc.) or on the need of cooperation to meet common challenges. But Sullivan did not use any harsh language against “Russian aggression,” leave alone call Russia a “revisionist power”, etc. Nor did he make any critical references to Russian policies.
Sullivan’s remarks in a measured tone followed come only days after an unusual gesture by Russian President Vladimir Putin last week to convey his Christmas and New Year greetings to Biden where he touched on the “the importance of broad international cooperation” in the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic and “other challenges which the world faced”.
Putin went on to express the hope that “by building a relationship in the spirit of equality and consideration for each other’s interests, Russia and the United States could contribute much to enhancing stability and security at the regional and global levels.”
China
As regards China, Sullivan’s extended remarks signalled that Biden’s approach will be radically different from that of the Trump administration. He criticised that Trump took on China on its own, while also “picking fights” with its allies and partners. Whereas, Biden intends to “consult with our allies and partners” on how together the US can bring leverage to come to bear on China’s most problematic trade abuses, including dumping, illegal subsidies for state-owned enterprises, forced labour and environmental practices that hurt American workers and farmers and businesses.
Sullivan exuded confidence that said Biden’s extensive contacts with lawmakers in the Congress will help push through his China policies. “He (Biden) knows his mind on China and he is going to carry forward a strategy that is not based on politics, not based on being pushed around by domestic constituencies, but based on the American national interests.”
Sullivan described it as a “clear-eyed strategy, a strategy that recognises that China is a serious strategic competitor to the US that acts in ways that are at odds with our interests in many ways including trade.” At the same time, “it is also a strategy that recognises that we will work with China when it is in our interests to do so”, such as on climate change.
To quote Sullivan, Biden’s strategy will be to work on “our sources of strength here at home so that we can more effectively compete with China on technology, economy and innovation, more effectively invest in our alliances, so as to build up to develop leverages.”
Alongside, the US will be active in international institutions so that it is the US and its partners and not China “who is calling the shots at the key tables on issues ranging from nuclear non-proliferation to international economics.” Sullivan said that Biden’s strategy will be rooted in a clear assessment of the challenges the US faces, of America’s national interests and what are “the points of strength we can bring to bear in this competition.”
What Sullivan didn’t say merits careful attention too. Never once did he mention Trump’s Indo-Pacific strategy or the Quad. He completely avoided any critical remarks about China or references to contentious issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang or Tibet.
Sullivan’s characterisation of China as a “serious strategic competitor” differs sharply from the Trump administration’s projection of China as a rival and irreconcilable enemy and aggressor. Indeed, he spoke about the imperatives of engagement with China despite differences.
Iran
When it comes to Iran, Sullivan did not mince words to underscore that Trump’s maximum pressure policy has been a spectacular failure insofar as Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon today than before and its policies are posing “continuing, ongoing concerns”. Clearly, the promises made by the Trump administration — that US would extract a better nuclear deal, stop Iran’s malign behaviour and so on — did not bear out. The assassination of Qassem Soleimani showed that a strategy that is “so focused on one element of American power and completely sets aside diplomacy” cannot ultimately help attain the US’ strategic objectives.
Sullivan reaffirmed Biden’s stance that if Iran comes back into compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal — that is, reduces its stockpiles, takes down some of its centrifuges — so that it is “back in the box”, then the US will also return to the JCPOA. Significantly, he added, “And that will become the basis of follow-on negotiation.” Sullivan flagged the following:
Iran’s ballistic missile “has to be on the table” as part of follow-on negotiation.
There could be conversations that go beyond the P5 + 1 and “involve the regional players” as well.
In that “broader negotiation”, we can “ultimately secure limits on Iran’s ballistic missile technology” and that is what Biden administration will try to pursue through diplomacy to address both the nuclear file and a broader range of regional issues.”
Sullivan who was instrumental in preparing the ground for the negotiations leading to the JCPOA, noted that the very logic of the 2015 deal was that it’d be narrowly focused on Iran’s nuclear programme, while the US would retain all its capacities — sanctions, intelligence capability, deterrent capacity — to push back at Iran on all other issues.
He said the US had made no assumptions that by going into the nuclear deal, it would change Iran’s behaviour on other issues. But what the US estimated was that if it had the Iranian nuclear programme “in a box, it could then begin to chip away” at some of the other issues. Sullivan regretted that the US did not pursue “clear-eyed diplomacy backed by deterrence”, which was the hallmark of what produced the JCPOA.
Having said that, “it was never fundamentally a part of the nuclear deal that we had expectations.” Therefore, “As we move forward, we will look at each of these issues in its own distinctive way, without presuming that progress on one aspect will necessarily mean progress on other aspects too.”
To be sure, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE will feel disappointed that the “maximum pressure” strategy is going to be unceremoniously dumped, and renewed US-Iranian engagement is on cards. Biden apparently sees no problem in associating Saudi Arabia and the UAE with the forthcoming process of engagement with Iran, but it also has flip side insofar as Iran’s missile capability is its deterrence against the massive arms build-up by these two countries as well as Israeli belligerence.
Therefore, Iran will not agree to unilaterally abandon its deterrent capability. And it is unlikely that Israel would disarm or that the Saudis and Emiratis would agree to curtail their excessive arms purchases. Arguably, the western powers themselves may not be enthusiastic about the highly lucrative West Asian arms bazaar drying up.
Iran has reacted sharply to Sullivan’s remarks saying, “As for Iran’s defence capability, there has never been, there is no and there won’t be any negotiation.” Suffice to say, the US will have to incentivise Iran. A rollback of US sanctions, as provided under the JCPOA, will be a step in that direction.
The bottom line is that Sullivan refrained from demanding any re-negotiation of the JCPOA. Sullivan has phrased it as “follow-on negotiation.” Now, there is going to be a great sense of urgency in kickstarting negotiations. Today, Iran’s enriched uranium stockpiles vastly exceed the limit set by the JCPOA.
Iran also announced today that it has begun the pre-processing stage of gas injection earlier in the underground Fordow nuclear site and the first UF6 enriched uranium will be produced “in a few hours”.
The transcript of Jake Sullivan’s interview with CNN is here.
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“The purpose of impeachment is to get somebody out of office. If they’re already out of office what’s the purpose? It’s all a political act, and the Establishment getting rid of a non-establishment figure who was seen as a treat to their agendas and who had massive popular support.”
The remarkable events unfolding on Capitol Hill in the afternoon of January 6, 2021 have been compared to Pearl Harbor. [2]
Thousands of aggrieved Americans descending on the home of leading democratic structures and then breaking through into the U.S. Capitol! [3]
Capitol police were described by the media as being overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of people. The protesters stormed in and raised havoc.
They collected in the Senate Chamber while the democratic representatives huddled in a secure location. A few of the culprits made it into House Representative Nancy Pelosi. And there were five individuals who died in the clash, including the death of a protester – U.S. Air Force Veteran and Qanon supporter Ashli Babbit. [4][5][6]
Senators, media personalities, and talking heads everywhere noted the tragedy, the terror, and the insult to the principles the elected individuals swore an oath to uphold when they set up an office in this nearly two and a half century old institution. The shattered politicians in the wake of the calamity named a singular villain as the author of this misfortune…Donald Trump. [7]
Now, the outgoing president, with less than a week to go before his regularly appointed succession has been impeached a second time. He has lost access to twitter and other platforms. And he may have lost any chance of returning again in four years for a rematch. [8][9]
Now, in just a few days, shortly after securing the presidency, Joe Biden will surely announce measures leading the charge against fascists, “White Supremacists” and “conspiracy theorists” to insure they will never again challenge the nation as a bastion of democracy.
Looking at this situation as the dust settles behind us, certain questions have started to challenge the 1/6 official story.
A further concern pertain to the measures to be introduced to defeat the angry mobs of the future. Will they stop at Trump supporters? What about BLM? Or anti-war demonstrators? Peddlers of ‘conspiracy theories?’
These are the questions we will focus on in this brand new episode of the Global Research News Hour.
In our first hour, we get an opinion from the renowned commentator and analyst Paul Craig Roberts. He describes the January 6 riots as essentially a false flag. He also explains why Trump is targeted, why the election actually was fraudulent, and what the future holds for a split America.
Next up is former journalist and media critic Barrie Zwicker. He too agrees it was a false flag and puts the Washington incident in the context of countless others throughout history.
Finally, we hear from Jason Bermas. He presented himself as a reporter in the crowd. He relies a little more about what happened there and why the mainstream media is distorting the Trump supporters and thus the overall picture of the action.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in the Reagan administration, a member of the US Congressional staff, associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. He is chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and author or co-author of ten books and numerous articles in scholarly journals. His site is PaulCraigRoberts.org. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Jason Bermas is an accomplished broadcaster and Documentary film producer. He worked on the 9/11 film Loose Change and has been involved with WeAreChange. His current work is InfoWarrior, available through the webpage www.rofkin.com/jasonbermas.
William L Shirer (1960), The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, published by Simon and Shuster
Pail Kengor (January 12, 2021), ‘January 6, 2021: The New Kristallnacht, Pearl Harbor, 9/11?’, The American Spectator; http://spectator.org/january-6-2021-kristallnacht-pearl-harbor-9-11/
Kenya Evelyn (January 8), ‘Capitol attack: the five people who died’, The Guardian; Http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/08/capitol-attack-police-officer-five-deaths
January 15 is the day on which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born, in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1929. He would go on to become one of the most powerful voices of all time against racism, oppression, violence, imperialism, and impoverishment.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Riverside Church speech was titled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” It was delivered exactly one year before his April 4, 1968 assassination in Memphis. In the speech, King declared, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
After four weeks of testimony and over 70 witnesses in a civil trial in Memphis, Tennessee, twelve jurors reached a unanimous verdict on December 8, 1999 that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.
King was on the motel’s second floor balcony at 6:01 pm on April 4, 1968, when a bullet struck his chin, knocking him to the ground. He died in hospital an hour later. The authorities never matched the bullet that killed King to the rifle they claim Ray used.
Martin Luther King Jr. 4 April 1967 Speech at Riverside Church, Upper Manhattan, New York. The speech was delivered on the same day (April 4, 1967) one year before MLK was killed on April 4, 1968.
Thanks to the nearly four-decade investigation by human rights lawyer William Pepper, it is now clear once and for all that Martin Luther King was murdered in a conspiracy that was instigated by then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and that also involved the U.S. military, the Memphis Police Department, and “Dixie Mafia” crime figures in Memphis, Tennessee.
King denounced the U.S. as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” and saw the war was “a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.” Later that spring, he asserted that “the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together“: we could not “get rid of one without getting rid of the others [and] the whole structure of American life must be changed.”
While many people take the opportunity to treat Martin’s life as a pre-packaged hallmark card of cliché speeches, far too few take the time to fully appreciate not only the depth of his understanding of the multifaceted evils plaguing society but also his brilliant plans, methods and vision for creative problem solving.
What is routinely overlooked by the corporate and government-sponsored media in the U.S. is the political shift of Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) following the signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965.
The great variety of evidence presented by attorney William Pepper pointed to the impossibility of the lone assassin hypothesis (James Earl Ray) and to the conspiring of several bodies, including the local police (Memphis Police Department), the mafia (local representative Frank Liberto), and federal police, intelligence and military units.
Very few Americans are aware of the truth behind the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Few books have been written about it, unlike other significant assassinations, especially JFK’s. For almost fifty years there has been a media blackout supported by government deception to hide the truth.
Mountaintops offer dynamic vistas and symbolize not only physical heights but inspiring points of prominence. On the night before he was murdered, Martin Luther King told a packed church in Memphis where he was crusading on behalf of the city’s garbage workers, that he had been to the mountain top.
In its waning days in power, Trump regime hardliners are going all-out to more greatly deteriorate US relations with China than already — Pompeo leading the assault.
Rather than seeing it as a blueprint for imminent conflict with China, a more benign reading is given: how to handle “strategic rivalry with China.” Looming in the text of the National Security Council’s US Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific (SFIP) is a generous doffing of the cap to Australia’s reckless, self-harming approach towards China.
The public health goal of lockdowns was to save the population from COVID-19 cases and deaths, and to prevent overwhelming health care systems with COVID-19 patients. In this narrative review I explain why I changed my mind about supporting lockdowns.
Most Americans have no idea that President-elect Biden’s pick for Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs is stuck in the quicksand of 1950s U.S.-Russia Cold War politics and dreams of continued NATO expansion, an arms race on steroids and further encirclement of Russia.
There is something on the horizon that does not bode well for most Americans. It is a simple principle to understand; yet so subtle it will likely go unnoticed until everyone is individually and collectively affected. It is the utter lack of balance within the nation’s body politick, and across the media that spoon feeds us virtual images of a faux theatrical play.
The first two weeks of 2021 have, so far, been marked by an incredible increase in Israeli activity in the skies over Syria. The most intense strike took place on January 13 morning hitting multiple Syrian and Iranian-affiliated targets in the province of Deir Ezzor.
Under the Keynesian takeover of Bretton Woods Trans-Atlantic nations became increasingly dominated by bloated bureaucratic systems while plans for genuine development were undermined, Matthew Ehret writes.
The ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, realised that persuasive speakers can lead their audience into making unwise choices, and therefore believed that the ‘art of influencing opinion’ should be widely taught. Unfortunately in Britain and the US, there is no formal teaching of how powerful people manipulate our opinions.
The painters of Mexico’s renaissance saw the potential of art to serve as a political force against social injustice, nor was this lost on their counterparts to the north. A subject to which these artists frequently turned was police brutality against unionized workers.
Alle 2:20 del 17 gennaio 1991 (ora del Golfo), elicotteri Usa penetrano in territorio iracheno, distruggendo con missili Hellfire due stazioni radar. Subito dopo missili da crociera Tomahawk e caccia Stealth F-117A colpiscono altri centri nevralgici, accecando le difese aeree della capitale.
La Cnn trasmette in tutto il mondo le immagini del cielo di Baghdad illuminato dai traccianti della contraerea che spara alla cieca, uno «spettacolo» che il reporter paragona ai festosi fuochi d’artificio del 4 Luglio. C’è sotto le bombe anche il nostro inviato Stefano Chiarini. Inizia così quella che il Pentagono descrive come l’azione militare più distruttiva mai effettuata in così breve tempo con armi non-nucleari, modello delle guerre future.
Paradossalmente la guerra scoppia nel momento in cui «scoppia la pace» (secondo lo slogan dell’epoca). Dopo il crollo del Muro di Berlino nel 1989, stanno per dissolversi il Patto di Varsavia e la stessa Unione Sovietica. «La guerra fredda è terminata, siamo entrati in una nuova era che offre grande speranza», annuncia il presidente Bush, ma «la crisi del Golfo ci ricorda che vi sono ancora nel mondo fonti autonome di turbolenza».
In realtà la «turbolenza» viene innescata da Washington per trarre il massimo vantaggio dal fatto che, con la disgregazione del blocco sovietico, gli Stati uniti, come ufficialmente dichiarano, rimangono «il solo Stato con una forza, una portata e un’influenza in ogni dimensione – politica, economica e militare – realmente globali: non esiste alcun sostituto alla leadership americana».
Dopo aver sostenuto negli anni Ottanta l’Iraq di Saddam Hussein nella guerra contro l’Iran di Khomeini, gli Usa spingono il Kuwait, che ha aiutato l’Iraq a combattere l’Iran, a esigere da Baghdad l’immediato rimborso di un prestito di decine di miliardi di dollari e a sfruttare oltremisura, danneggiando l’Iraq, il giacimento petrolifero che si estende sotto ambedue i territori.
Mentre cresce la tensione tra i due paesi, il 25 luglio 1990 l’ambasciatrice Usa a Baghdad April Glaspie assicura Saddam Hussein di «avere dirette istruzioni dal Presidente di ricercare migliori relazioni con l’Iraq» e che «noi non abbiamo alcuna opinione sulla vostra disputa di confine con il Kuwait». Una settimana dopo, con un colossale errore di calcolo politico, l’Iraq invade il Kuwait, proponendo successivamente di ritirarsi in cambio di determinate concessioni, tra cui l’accesso al Golfo negatogli quando la Gran Bretagna aveva ridisegnato negli anni Venti la carta del Medio Oriente.
La trappola è scattata. Gli Stati uniti – che hanno da tempo preparato la guerra, osservando con i satelliti militari il dispiegamento delle forze irachene e individuando gli obiettivi da colpire – formano una coalizione internazionale che invia nel Golfo una grande armata di 750 mila uomini agli ordini del generale Usa Schwarzkopf. Nel novembre 1990 il Consiglio di sicurezza dell’Onu approva – con 12 voti favorevoli (compreso quello dell’Urss), 2 contrari (Cuba e Yemen) e l’astensione della Cina – la Risoluzione 678 che autorizza l’uso di «tutti i mezzi necessari» contro l’Iraq.
La guerra del Golfo è la prima guerra a cui partecipa sotto comando Usa la Repubblica italiana, violando l’articolo 11 della Costituzione. La Nato, pur non partecipandovi ufficialmente in quanto tale, mette a disposizione sue forze e basi.
Subito dopo la guerra la Nato vara, sulla falsariga della nuova strategia Usa, il «nuovo concetto strategico dell’Alleanza», che l’Italia ricopia col «nuovo modello di difesa». Si passa così di guerra in guerra, presentandole quali «operazioni umanitarie per l’esportazione della democrazia»: Jugoslavia 1999, Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 2003, Libia 2011, Siria 2011, e altre.
Questa è la guerra che, secondo quanto dichiarato dal presidente Bush nel 1991, avrebbe aperto «un futuro migliore – una nuova comunità mondiale riunita dal crescente consenso che la forza non può essere usata» e che per questo «la crisi del Golfo passerà alla storia come il crogiolo del nuovo ordine mondiale».
Lo testimoniano i milioni di morti, invalidi, orfani, rifugiati provocati dalla guerra del Golfo, cui si aggiungono un milione e mezzo di morti, tra cui mezzo milione di bambini, provocati dai successivi 12 anni di embargo all’Iraq e dagli effetti a lungo termine dei proiettili a uranio impoverito, più i molti altri provocati dalla nuova guerra del 2003. La scia di morte, scaturita trent’anni fa dalla prima guerra del dopo guerra fredda, continua a dilagare.
On January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King, Jr. is born in Atlanta, Georgia
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Riverside Church speech was titled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” It was delivered exactly one year before his April 4, 1968 assassination in Memphis. In the speech, King declared, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
The people who heard that speech recognized it as one of the most powerful speeches ever given articulating the immorality of the Vietnam War and its destructive impact on social progress in the United States. In explaining his decision to follow his conscience and speak out against U.S. militarism, King said:
“I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.”
But King went farther, diagnosing the broader disease of militarism and violence that was endangering the soul of the United States. King said,
A mug shot photo of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.”
Poisoning America’s Soul
King knew very well that the disease of violence was killing off more than social progress in America. Violence was sickening the nation’s soul as well. He added,
“If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read ‘Vietnam’.”
King urged his fellow citizens to take up the causes of the world’s oppressed, rather than taking the side of the oppressors. He said:
“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
“We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace and justice throughout the developing world a world that borders on our doors.
“If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality and strength without sight.”
King pointed to an alternate path into the future:
“Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter but beautiful struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard?”
Signing His Own Death Warrant
By denouncing so forcefully the war crimes that the U.S. military was committing daily in the killing fields of Vietnam, some of King’s followers understood that he had just signed his own death warrant. But King, being a person of conscience, was compelled to express his deep sense of moral outrage over the horrific maiming, suffering and dying of millions of innocent Vietnamese civilians in that unjust war that afflicted mostly unarmed women and children and that was going to leave behind lethal poisons in the soil, water and unborn babies that would last for generations.
He knew that non-combatants are always the major victims of modern warfare, especially wars that indiscriminately used highly lethal weapons that rained down from the air, especially the U.S. Air Force’s favorite weapon, napalm — the flaming, jellied gasoline that burned the flesh off of whatever part of the burning adult or child it splashed onto.
King also connected the racist acts (of American soldiers joyfully killing dispensable non-white “gooks” and “slants” — often shooting at “anything that moves”) on the battlefields of Southeast Asia to the oppression, impoverishment, imprisoning and lynching of dispensable, deprived non-white “niggers” in America.
King saw the connections between the violence of racism and the violence of poverty. He saw that the withholding of economic and educational opportunities came from the fear of “the other” and the perceived need to protect the white culture’s wealth and privilege with violence if necessary.
King knew, too, that fortunes are made in every war, and the war in Vietnam was no exception. In his speeches, he talked about that unwelcome reality that the ruling class preferred not be discussed. That meant his well-attended Riverside Church speech threatened not only the powerful interests already arrayed against his civil rights struggle but also the interests of the war profiteers and the national security establishment.
War is Good Business
The longer the Vietnam War lasted, the more the weapons manufacturers thrived. With their huge profits, there was a strong incentive for these financial elites to continue the carnage. And therefore the Wall Street war profiteers financed, out of their ill-gotten gains, battalions of industry lobbyists and pro-military propagandists who descended upon Washington, DC, and the Pentagon to claim even more tax dollars for weapons research, development and manufacture.
Nick Ut’s famous photo of terrified South Vietnamese children fleeing from a napalm attack on the village of Trang Bang in 1972. The girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, has ripped off her burning clothes.
With that funding secured, armies of desperate jobs-seekers were hired to work in thousands of weapons factories that were strategically placed in congressional districts almost everywhere, with weapons research grants likewise being awarded to virtually every university in the nation. Thus, weapons-manufacturing and R&D soon became vitally important for almost every legislator’s home district economy as well as for the household budgets of millions of American voters who indirectly benefited from the U.S. military’s killing, maiming, displacement, starvation and suffering of non-white people in war zones.
King’s anti-war stance was based on his Christianity and on the ethics and life of Jesus, but it was also based on his standing as a revered international peace and justice icon. Those factors made him a dangerous threat to the military/industrial/congressional/security complex.
The powerful forces that were working hard to discredit King had already infiltrated the civil rights movement. Their efforts, cunningly led by the proto-fascist and racist J. Edgar Hoover and his obedient FBI, accelerated after the Riverside speech. The FBI ramped up the smear campaigns against King. Eventually he was “neutralized” with a bullet to the head. [The case for believing that King’s murder was not simply the act of lone gunman James Earl Ray is laid out in many studies, including attorney William F. Pepper’s An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King.]
King’s Prophetic Vision
Now, five decades after his anti-war speech (which was widely kept from the public), it is clear how prophetic King’s observations were. America is indeed losing its soul. Violence, racism, militarism and economic oppression are still American epidemics.
Both upper- and middle-class investors of get-rich-quick schemes in America have succumbed to predatory lenders, cannibalistic corporate mergers and acquisitions, psychopathic multinational corporate schemers, corrupt crony capitalists, and the rapist/exploiters of the land and water by extractive industries all schemes that will eventually burst as part of predictable economic bubbles.
Those busted bubbles regularly wipe out investors (except for the large, deep-pocketed “insiders” who, usually being forewarned, will have sold their holdings just in time, before the publicly revealed “bust”), leaving the taxpayers to bail out the financial messes that were created by the so-called “invisible hand of the market” but are really caused by the cunning work of corporate gamblers.
Photos of victims of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam galvanized public awareness about the barbarity of the war. (Photo taken by U. S. Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle)
King was trying to warn us not just about the oncoming epidemic of violence toward victims at home but also about the tens of millions of people around the world who were and are still being victimized by U.S. military misadventures. King was also warning us about the multinational corporate war profiteers whose interests are facilitated and protected by the U.S. military whether they are operating in Asia, Latin America, Africa or the Middle East.
The Pentagon budget averages well over $700 billion per year, including wars that are often illegal and unconstitutional. That amounts to $2 billion per day with no visible return on investment, except for the military contractors, the oil industries and Wall Street financiers.
Vast sums also are needed to address the physical and mental health costs needed for the palliative care for the permanently maimed and psychologically-traumatized veterans. Hundreds of millions of dollars more are spent paying down the interest payments on past military debts.
All those potentially bankrupting costs represent money that will never be available for programs of social uplift like combating racism, poverty and hunger, or paying for affordable housing/healthcare, universal education or meaningful job creation. Can anyone else hear a demonic laugh reverberating down Wall Street?
King was warning America about its oncoming spiritual death if it didn’t convert itself away from military violence. But most observers of the U.S. see America still worshipping at the altars of the Gods of War and Greed. Our children may be doomed.
The vast majority of American Christian churches (whether fundamentalist, conservative, moderate or liberal, with very few exceptions) have failed King’s vision, despite the lip service they sometimes give to King on MLK Day. Churches whose members were brought up on the Myth of American Exceptionalism (and the myth of being “God’s chosen people”) consistently refuse to take a stand against the satanic nature of war.
Past the Point of No Return?
If America is to avert future financial and military catastrophes, King’s central warnings about the “triple evils” of militarism, racism and economic oppression must be heeded. That means a retreat from worldwide network of budget-busting military bases. And, if America wants to shed the justified label of “Rogue Nation,” the covert killing operations of its secret black ops mercenary military units all around the world must be stopped, as should the infamous extrajudicial assassinations by America’s unmanned drones.
If King’s 50-year-old warning continues to be ignored, America’s future is bleak. The future holds the dark seeds of economic chaos, hyperinflation, unendurable poverty, increasing racial/minority hostility, worsening malnutrition, armed rebellion, street fighting, and perhaps, ultimately, institution of a reactionary totalitarian/surveillance police state in order to control citizen protests and quell rebellions.
At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad, known as “shock and awe.”
In 1967, many Americans considered King hopeful vision for a better future as irrational idealism. He was told that the task was too great, the obstacles were too imposing, and there was no will for even the churches to reverse their age-old, conservative pseudo-patriotism and society’s institutional racism. I suspect that many of the churches that called King a communist and therefore ignored him back then wish that they could turn back the clock and give King’s (and Jesus’s) path a try.
King finished his speech with these challenges:
“War is not the answer. We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace and justice throughout the developing world a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality and strength without sight.”
And he had these sobering words for the churches that are immersed in a polytheistic culture (the worship of multiple gods, including the gods of war and mammon) and thus are tempted to quietly ally themselves with those gods rather than the God of Love that King was devoted to:
“I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. I have looked at her beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlay of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over again I have found myself asking: ‘What kind of people worship here? Who is their God?’”
Today, the task is even tougher, the obstacles much more imposing, but the path that King outlined remains.
Dr. Gary G. Kohls is a retired physician who writes about peace, justice, militarism, mental health and religious issues.
January 15 is the day on which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born, in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1929.
He would go on to become one of the most powerful voices of all time against racism, oppression, violence, imperialism, and impoverishment.
Dr. King can rightly be described as a prophet in the fullest sense of the word, warning us in no uncertain terms of the consequences of deliberately continuing to violate the will of heaven, and advising us that until we face those violations head on and fix them, things will not get better but instead will get even worse.
Of course Dr. King is rightly remembered as a towering leader of Civil Rights, and that of course is an undeniable fact. But the fact that he very clearly and explicitly connected his struggle for Civil Rights and racial justice to the world-wide struggle against what he described as “old systems of exploitation and oppression” which enable “the privileges and the pleasures” and the “immense profits” which are enjoyed at the expense of constant wars of aggression and counter-revolution around the globe is all but forgotten today, especially by the controlled media which by its ongoing lies and dissimulation continues to support those systems of exploitation and those wars of aggression.
Even as the organs of the media and the government continue to give lip service to the memory of Dr. King each year on this day of his birth, they deliberately ignore his powerful and prophetic message on this crucial subject, a message which was at the very heart of the speech he gave on April 4th, 1967: one year to the day before he was brutally gunned down by criminal participants in an organized plot that included members of the very national security state which was perpetrating those wars of aggression and counter-revolution that Dr. King was opposing so powerfully in his oratory and with his life.
That speech was entitled “Beyond Vietnam,” and you can hear the entire recording in the video below.
Although Dr. King delivered that speech while the United States was embroiled in the hottest years of the Vietnam War, every word he says in his message rings as true today as on the day he spoke them, almost 54 years ago. In fact, every time he says the word “Vietnam” in that speech, the listener of today can imagine the names of other nations in which the United States now has military forces, either openly or clandestinely or towards the destruction of which the United States is sending weapons and fuel and other forms of military support: Afghanistan, and Syria, and Yemen, and Iraq, and the Ukraine, and countless others.
I would recommend that on this day of remembering the powerful life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it would be very fitting to listen to that entire message in “Beyond Vietnam,” along with any of the other speeches and sermons of Dr. King which one can today find very easily on the web.
Here are some paragraphs excerpted from that moving address, which will be even more moving if listened to in the recording above, and to which we are called to listen today, because we have yet to address and truly face those violations against the divine order which Dr. King prophetically called to our attention so many decades ago, and until we do, we cannot hope to correct them: [extended block quotation follows]
For those who ask the question, “Aren’t you a Civil Rights leader?” and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957, when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: “To save the soul of America.” We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, the black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:
O yes, I say it plain:
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath —
America will be!
Now it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read, “Vietnam.” It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that “America will be” are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.
[. . .]
Now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.
The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality — if we ignore this sobering reality — we will find ourselves organizing “clergy and laymen concerned” committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. So such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.
In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of US military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.
It is with such activity that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Increasingly, by choice or by ancient, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin — we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West — investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries — and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
*
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David W. Mathisen is the author of eight books about the connections of the world’s ancient myths to the stars. He is a graduate of West Point and has a masters degree in literature from Texas A&M University. His website can be found at www.starmythworld.com.
In its waning days in power, Trump regime hardliners are going all-out to more greatly deteriorate US relations with China than already — Pompeo leading the assault.
Mindful of what’s going on with more coming, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the following last Tuesday:
“Pompeo certainly went to great lengths to spread political viruses.”
“He’s truly in a league of his own when it comes to weaving lies and distorting facts.”
The US “is the biggest destabilizing factor threatening global peace and security and undermining multilateral cooperation.”
“In rampant pursuit of unilateralism, it blatantly withdraws from treaties and organizations and arbitrarily resorts to the threat of sanctions.”
“To date, it has exited a dozen international conventions and organizations.”
It “unilaterally announced the restoration of UN Security Council sanctions against Iran, and abused the venue of the UN to flagrantly smear other countries, drawing wide opposition from the international community.”
These actions…“gravely undermine international cooperation…world peace, stability and security.”
“Pompeo’s lying diplomacy has once again exposed the infamous ‘American double standard.’ ”
It undermines cooperation among world community nations, leaving America’s “international image and reputation” in tatters.
On Thursday, the Trump regime added nine more Chinese firms to its so-called “entity list.”
They include the China National Offshore Oil Corporation and mobile phone producer Xiaomi — on the phony pretext of ties to the country’s military.
The move blocks US exports to and imports from targeted firms without Commerce Department approval.
A statement by Secretary Wilbur Ross said the following:
“China’s reckless and belligerent actions in the South China Sea and its aggressive push to acquire sensitive intellectual property and technology for its militarization efforts are a threat to US national security and the security of the international community (sic).”
The above claim applies to the US and its imperial partners, not China.
Its leadership prioritizes cooperative relations with other nations, confrontation with none.
Separately, an anti-China propaganda report by a so-called Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) falsely accused its government of “crimes against humanity – and possibly genocide” against its Uyghur population.
Similar US charges were made before that falsely claim mass-internment of up to a million Uyghurs and other Muslims.
When accusations like these surface against sovereign independent countries free from US control, no credible evidence supports them because none exists.
In response to the above US charge, China’s Washington embassy slammed the CECC for being “obsessed with making up all sorts of lies to vilify China,” adding:
“The so-called ‘genocide’ is a rumor deliberately started by some anti-China forces and a farce to discredit China.”
House passed Uygur legislation called for sanctions against Beijing for human rights abuses.
The world’s leading human rights abuser domestically and worldwide USA time and again blames other nations for its own high crimes.
Reportedly, the Trump regime is set to release so-called “bombshell” information about made-in-the-USA covid it claims was released from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology before reported outbreaks last year.
As point man for Trump’s war on China by other means, Pompeo will release so-called evidence.
According to London’s Daily Mail, “America is set to present dramatic new evidence that the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab – in the final act of the Trump” regime, adding:
“Senior officials in Washington say that…Pompeo is set to make a ‘bombshell intervention.’ ”
“They say he will reveal evidence that SARS-CoV-2 did not leap naturally from bats, pangolins or other species to humans.”
“Instead he will claim it was cultured by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology…”
“British Foreign Office and security sources confirmed they were expecting the claims from Washington but dismissed them in advance, saying ‘all the credible scientific evidence does not point to a leak from the laboratory.’ ”
“The established view of the US intelligence community suggests the pandemic was natural in origin.”
Pompeo is also expected to accuse the WHO of aiding an alleged Beijing cover-up with no credible evidence supporting the charge.
He’ll claim ties between the lab and China’s military to conduct experiments.
On Monday, a White House statement said the following:
“The world cannot continue to pay heavy prices for its naivete and complicity in Beijing’s irresponsible and harmful practices (sic) – whether it is ending the rule of law in Hong Kong (sic) or not cooperating with health officials on the pandemic (sic).”
The Trump regime “is examining further options to respond.”
As earlier explained, covid is renamed seasonal flu/influenza that occurs annually — with none of what’s going on now, no mass-hysteria fear-mongering propaganda.
What began since early last year is a diabolical brave new world US-led social control plot.
Its aim is transforming world community nations into ruler/serf societies.
It created the Greatest Main Street Depression in US history.
It’s facilitating the greatest ever wealth transfer from most people to the privileged few.
Lockdowns and quarantines (aka house arrest), social distancing, mask-wearing, and all the rest caused infinitely more harm to countless millions of households than any number of serious diseases combined.
What’s happening perhaps established a permanent new abnormal, the worst likely to come.
A diabolical social engineering plot with no end of it in prospect may eliminate freedoms as once existed — dystopian harshness replacing them.
Ongoing actions have nothing to do with protecting and preserving health and well-being, everything to do with harming them by police state social control.
Covid is the vehicle, a hoax perpetuated by Big Government/ Big Media mass deception — a state-sponsored coup d’etat against virtually everything just societies hold dear.
If successful, it’ll create what Orwell called “a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”
Everyone vaxxed with hazardous covid vaccines is playing fast and loose with their health, safety and well-being.
We can either resist to preserve and protect what’s too precious to lose or risk near-or-longer-term contraction of serious illnesses under draconian conditions.
The choice is self-evident.
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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.”
What Biden proposed Thursday may or may not be what Congress passes and gets enacted into law.
Whatever becomes law, special interests may largely benefit when funds are dispensed.
Much of what was in last year’s $2.2 trillion CARES Act went to business and other special interests over Main Street needs.
According to Wall Street on Parade (WSOP), around 75% of $454 billion allegedly earmarked for emergency lending to save businesses and jobs was unaccounted for by Treasury Secretary Mnuchin.
At a time when nearly 100,000 largely small businesses permanently closed for lack of enough customers and revenue, $340 billion of CARES Act relief “went missing.”
WSOP later learned that the missing funds were in a Mnuchin “slush fund” to be used at his discretion for what he favored, not for their intended purpose, adding:
He “ha(d) no problem (using) emergency lending programs (to aid) Wall Street” while largely indifferent toward Main Street.
Will something similar play out after Biden/Harris replace Trump next week?
His proposed plan heavily pushes mass-vaxxing with hazardous to health/experiment Pfizer and Modern covid vaccines — essential to avoid or risk serious illness or death.
Direct relief is as follows if the so-called American Rescue Plan (ARP) becomes law.
It includes $1,400 to eligible households — not $2,000 Biden pledged earlier.
The amount at most might cover essentials to life for around a month.
The plan also includes $400 in weekly unemployment insurance (UI) benefits through September, along with rental assistance; emergency paid leave, and funding for schools.
It calls for a $15 per hour federal minimum wage.
Evictions and foreclosure moratoriums are extended until end of September.
Around $350 billion in aid to states and communities pushes harmful mass-vaxxing, meaningless PCR tests that don’t work, and funding for public health workers that’s all-about wanting all Americans vaxxed.
Another $170 billion is earmarked for K-12 schools and higher education institutions that includes mass-vaxxing students.
Nearly always when PCR tests for covid are positive, the diagnosis is false.
Former Pfizer chief science advisor Dr. Mike Yeadon called their use “junk science.”
According to 22 eminent scientists, around 97% of PCR tests for covid produce false positive results.
Yet the ARP includes $50 billion for testing, another $20 billion for promoting mass-vaxxing nationwide in cahoots with state and local governments.
The plan makes the Child Tax Credit fully refundable for 2021, increasing the credit to $3,000 per child, $3,600 for children under age-6.
What’s needed are weekly stimulus checks of at least $600 as approved last year that ended on July 31.
The proposed plan also extends a 15% increase in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and $3 billion for the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program through September.
Proposed $225 billion in aid for small businesses includes $15 billion in grants, $175 billion in loans, and another $35 may likely go at least largely to corporate favorites.
Dem leadership supports the plan. Most Republicans likely to want less than proposed.
If conservative Dems support them, one alone in the equally divided Senate perhaps enough, the plan could be pared back.
Nothing is included for debt bondage from America’s student loan racket as Biden earlier pledged.
He could do it by executive order post-inauguration.
Reportedly, a follow-up stimulus package will be introduced in February that allegedly will call for jobs creation, infrastructure related programs and others.
Whatever helps Main Street is positive.
Yet time and again, Republicans and Dems are generous to corporate America and other special interests.
Notably since the neoliberal 90s they’ve been stingy to Main Street.
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Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
“The United States government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”- Martin Luther King
On December 8, 1999, a jury in Memphis, Tennessee, reached the verdict that Martin Luther King Jr. was killed as a result of a conspiracy involving the FBI, CIA, U.S. Army, Memphis police and the Mafia.
After a five week trial which presented 70 witnesses, the jury (made up of six blacks and six whites) rejected the official position that the civil rights titan was shot by a lone assassin, James Earl Ray, who was jailed for 99 years for the crime and died in 1998. The verdict concluded a wrongful death civil lawsuit brought by the King family against Loyd Jowers, owner of Jim‚s Grill, a Memphis cafe located next to the scene of the shooting when it took place on April 4, 1968.
The jury found Jowers guilty as one part of a large conspiracy created by government agencies. Jowers admitted his role but insisted that he did not know the identity of the target.
Coretta Scott King, Martin’s widow, hailed the verdict as “a great victory for justice and truth.” She added: “there is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband and the civil court’s unanimous verdict has validated our belief.” Dexter King, one of Martin’s four children, said that his father was killed “because he challenged the establishment.” He called the official investigation into Martin’s murder, “the most incredible cover-up of the century.”
The case for conspiracy and the inadequacy of the lone assassin theory seem obvious. The state had no significant evidence implicating Ray. According to the official version, Ray shot King from the bathroom window of a rooming house located next to the Lorraine Motel where the civil rights leader was staying. King was on the motel’s second floor balcony at 6:01 pm on April 4, 1968, when a bullet struck his chin, knocking him to the ground. He died in hospital an hour later.
The authorities never matched the bullet that killed King to the rifle they claim Ray used. Charles Stephens, the state’s only eye witness who claimed to have seen Ray leave the rooming house soon after the shot, was too drunk to even stand up at the time. There was a tree branch between the bathroom window and the balcony that made a clear shot impossible. Ray was not a trained marksman and the scope on the rifle was not sighted which means that it could not have hit any target. Six witnesses claimed that the shot came from bushes behind the rooming house. Jim’s Grill was located under the rooming house and its back door opened on to the bushes. Ray was jailed not due to evidence but because he pleaded guilty. He recanted 3 days later and spent the rest of his life trying to get a trial. Under Tennessee law Ray had the right to a trial but this was consistently denied. Ray claimed that his guilty plea was coerced by Percy Foreman, his lawyer at the time, who threatened him with the death penalty.
Ray was a petty criminal who had bungled almost every robbery he committed. In the King murder, he claimed to have been set up by a man named Raul (of Portuguese origin) who, he said, directed his movements after Ray escaped from prison in April 1967. Ray first met Raul in Montreal in August and agreed to work for him after he was promised travel papers. Raul was a gunrunner with links to Carlos Marcello, the Mafia boss of New Orleans. Raul had Ray smuggling contraband across the U.S.-Canadian border and going to different U.S. cities to make deliveries. On April 3, 1968, Raul met Ray in Memphis. Raul had already asked Ray to buy a Remington 30.06 rifle with a telescopic sight. Ray was then told to get accomodation at the rooming house next to the Lorraine Motel and leave the rifle there. On the afternoon of April 4, Raul asked Ray to “go to the movies” for three hours. After 6:01 pm, Ray heard on his car radio that King had been shot and the police were looking for a white man in a white Mustang (the make of his car). Ray escaped to Toronto and then flew to London (England) where he was caught. Sidney Carthew, a seaman, testified that he met Ray and Raul together in Montreal’s Neptune Bar in the summer of 1967.
Jowers also identified Raul. According to him, King’s assassination was planned by three Memphis Police Department (MPD) officers in Jim’s Grill over 2 days. The officers were Earl Clark, Johnny Barger and Marrell McCollough. Jowers was asked to help in the plot by Frank Liberto, a produce dealer with Mafia connections to whom he owed money. Liberto told Jowers to hold $100,000 for him. Minutes after the bullet hit King on April 4, Jowers was handed a smoking rifle at the back door of Jim’s Grill by Earl Clark, the MPD’s best marksman. Jowers believes Clark killed King. Raul picked up the rifle and the money the next day, according to Jowers.
William Pepper, the King family’s lawyer, actually found Raul living in Yonkers, New York. He was asked to appear in court but refused. Barbara Reis, journalist for “Publico”, the main newspaper in Portugal, testified that a source connected to Raul’s family told her that agents of the U.S. government had visited them three times. The source added that the government was “protecting” the family and monitoring their phone.
One of the main indicators of conspiracy was the removal of all security for King in Memphis during April 3- 4. A detail made up of black police officers assigned to King on previous visits to Memphis was not deployed this time. Similarly, two black firemen were removed from the fire station overlooking the Lorraine Motel on April 3, as was black detective Ed Redditt who was surveilling King from there. Police emergency tactical units were also pulled back from around the motel giving the assassin lots of room to escape. All police personnel disappeared from the motel an hour before the murder. After the shooting, no All Points Bulletin describing the suspect was issued nor was a “Signal Y” which would block off exits from the city. Both of these are standard police procedures. A door-to-door investigation in the Lorraine Motel area was never carried out by authorities and many witnesses were not questioned. By order of the police the bush area from where, according to six witnesses, the shot came, was cut down the next day. This destroyed the crime scene.
The state also claimed that Ray was driven by racism to kill King but there is no record of Ray displaying racist or violent behaviour. He had no motive to kill King. There is lots of evidence, however, to indicate that U.S. federal government agencies were out to get King. He was extensively surveilled by the FBI, CIA and Army Intelligence, as a dangerous radical who threatened national security. All three agencies believed that King had communist ties. J. Edgar Hoover, FBI director, hated King intensely and wanted him “neutralized” by almost any means. When King won the Nobel Peace Prize, Hoover publicly called him, “the most notorious liar in the country.” A Senate report stated in 1976 that the FBI tried “to destroy Dr. Martin Luther King.”
William Sullivan, FBI assistant director, considered King “the most dangerous and effective negro leader in the country.” King’s phones were tapped, his movements watched, his rooms bugged and his entourage infiltrated. The FBI threatened him, blackmailed him, launched a media disinformation campaign to discredit him, and sent him a letter suggesting that he commit suicide. A main goal of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) which was aimed at eliminating black nationalist groups, was to prevent the rise of a black “messiah.” FBI memoes also discussed finding a black leader to replace King. The final obscenity of U.S. “justice” was that the FBI which clearly wanted King dead was given the task of investigating his murder. Hence the official devotion to the baseless lone assassin theory for the last thirty two years. Judge Joe Brown who presided over one of Ray’s appeals, called the FBI’s investigation into King’s killing, “inept and incapable if not downright incompetent.”
In its surveillance of King, the FBI collaborated with Army Intelligence which had been spying on the King family for three generations, since 1917. There were seven U.S. Army Military Intelligence Groups (MIGs) spread out over the U.S., and six of them surveilled King as he toured the country. The Army maintained a massive domestic spy system which included 304 intelligence offices in the U.S. and national security dossiers on 7 million Americans. In a series of articles in the “Memphis Commercial Appeal” in March 1993, reporter Steve Tompkins detailed the “increasing hysteria”of Army intelligence chiefs over the national security threat they thought King posed. Tompkins stated that army intelligence was “…desperately searching for a way to stop him…” Particularly alarming was King’s opposition to the Vietnam War which he denounced as On April 4, 1967, as an “imperialist assault on Third World peasants.”
He equated the use of new weapons against the Vietnamese to the testing of “new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe” by the Nazis. King’s condemnation of the Vietnam War made him the leader who could merge the anti-war and civil rights movements. He announced his intention to lead a Poor Peoples’ March (of all races) to Washington D.C. in the spring of 1968 and shut down the government if it did not stop the war in Vietnam and take steps to end poverty in the U.S. The Army received reports stating that “King will create massive civil disobedience in [Washington] and in ten to fifteen major cities in the U.S. in the spring of 1968.” The Army was not prepared for such upheaval. According to Major General William Yarborough, assistant chief of staff for army intelligence, there were “too few reliable troops to fight in Vietnam and hold the line at home.”
Army surveillance of King continued until his assassination. Carthel Weeden, a former captain with the Memphis Fire Department, testified at the Jowers trial that on the afternoon of April 4, 1968, two men approached him at the fire station across from the Lorraine Motel, and showed the identification of U.S. Army officers. The men carried photographic equipment and positioned themselves on the rooftop of the fire station which gave them a clear view of King and the assassin. Any photographs could be in Pentagon archives. According to former National Security Council operative, Jack Terrell, the army went beyond surveillance. Terrell testified that his close friend J.D. Hill who was part of the 20th Special Forces Group confessed to him that he had been a member of an Army sniper team in Memphis ordered to shoot an “unknown” target on April 4. The snipers were being transported to Memphis when their mission was suddenly cancelled. Hill stated that upon learning of King’s murder the next day, he realized that the team must have been part of a backup operation to kill King if another sniper failed.
The U.S. government’s murder of arguably “the greatest American who ever lived” signified that in violently propping up vicious right-wing dictatorships all over the Third World (as in Vietnam), the U.S. itself had become one of the biggest banana republics with no possibility for peaceful social change. Martin Luther King was a leader of international stature who spoke for the poor of the world and militantly confronted a system based on their slaughter. This pitted him against the most genocidal establishment on Earth. The state murder of such a great man only increased the power of his example.
Asad Ismi is a writer on international politics who specializes in detailing the destructive impact of U.S. and Canadian imperialism on the Global South and the resistance of the Southern people to this. He is a regular contributor to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor, Canada’s biggest left-wing magazine by circulation. Asad is winner of a Project Censored Award for his article The Ravaging of Africa which was released in 2007 as a radio documentary. He holds a Ph.D. in War Studies from the University of London (England) and taught for two years in Vietnam. He is a regular guest on community radio stations across Canada and the U.S. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The first two weeks of 2021 have, so far, been marked by an incredible increase in Israeli activity in the skies over Syria.
The most intense strike took place on January 13 morning hitting multiple Syrian and Iranian-affiliated targets in the province of Deir Ezzor, including the underground base of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Corps near al-Bukamal.
The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that Israeli strikes have killed 57 and wounded another 37. Pro-government sources confirmed only 5 casualties.
The airstrikes were so numerous that even Abu Yatem al-Katrani – the commander of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) 4th Brigade was killed in an airstrike.
The Israeli operations were carried out with the assistance of the United States – it provided intelligence and Israeli struck on them. Former CIA Director, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was reportedly discussing the airstrikes with Yossi Cohen, chief of Israel’s spy agency Mossad.
The US support of Tel Aviv’s aerial raids is a clear message to Iran, and is a very open support to Israel’s undeclared war against Iran, which it has been waging in Syria since hostilities began.
All of the airstrikes in the first two weeks of 2021 are the most significant by Israel, and over all, since the beginning of the war in Syria. They were so significant, that Damascus even accused Tel Aviv of carrying out the strikes in very open support of ISIS militants which the Syrian Arab Army is hunting.
Meanwhile, there appears to be a sense of urgency, or a sense of danger in the air, as the United States reinforced its troop positions in the Omar oil fields with artillery pieces and other equipment.
The US troops, together with their local proxies also hold frequent drills in the area, to keep ready, for some future unknown escalation.
Prior to New Year’s Eve, Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated, in what Tehran claimed to be an elaborate Israeli operation.
Additionally, since around the same time, a farewell strike on Iran has been expected from US President Donald Trump, and the general chaos in the US ahead of Joe Biden stepping into office has been used by Israel as a chance to inflict as much damage as possible on Tehran and its allies.
Russia, at the same time, appears to also be preparing for an escalation of some sort, by building up its forces and is lying in wait.
Israel appears dead set on continuing its crusade against Iran and its allies in Syria. An urgency is felt, since Biden is unlikely to support Tel Aviv as much as Trump did, and every possible chance should be used. This is all in spite of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu removed the photo of Donald Trump from his Twitter, but all is fair in love and war.
Finally, both the American and Russian forces appear to be biding their time, waiting for an escalation that, with tensions at the breaking point appears closer than ever.
The year began with terrorist attacks in Syria, increased Israeli strikes, Iran threatening against any aggression against it, and the two most significant players in the face of Moscow and Washington are expecting an escalation, and no amount of preparation would be enough for the incoming storm.
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The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.
For the vast majority of Americans, the past year has been the most challenging in their lives – certainly for young adults. However, not everyone has been suffering equally. The nation’s health or illness is not uniform. Much of our suffering is dependent upon the institutionalization and negligence of previous injustices, the loss of social equanimity, economic heedlessness, and our leaders’ unmitigated greed and pursuit of power. Nor is everyone adversely affected by the shifts underway in the imaginations of the political and ideological universes. The transnational class of corporate and banking elites, for example, has little motivation to respect or contribute to national boundaries and interests. They perceive themselves as global actors. For the generals and captains of neoliberal globalization, the puppet masters of financial markets, the Covid-19 pandemic only caused annoying disruptions in the quality of their lives. For the remainder, it has been cataclysmic.
There is something on the horizon that does not bode well for most Americans. It is a simple principle to understand; yet so subtle it will likely go unnoticed until everyone is individually and collectively affected. It is the utter lack of balance within the nation’s body politick, and across the media that spoon feeds us virtual images of a faux theatrical play, the illusory icons on our minds’ monitor screens, that shape our perspectives of reality. This is how control is exerted over our thoughts, speech and actions. In fact, it is only after people exercise their thoughts independently, with the certain belief that they have actual self-control over their lives, that they arrive at the realization that their perceptions may be largely distorted.
Throughout America’s history there has been a system of three federal branches to assure there is a platform for checks and balances as well as a structure to contain the tensions between them. That system now is being rapidly challenged and even eroded away. Next week the middle of the road Democrats will officially control the White House and both legislative bodies. We will see what awaits us.
There is also what is commonly referred to as the “fourth estate,” the powers of the press and news media that control the framing of the political narrative and partisan issues. In the past, the media was expected to hold the government accountable by exposing its conflicts of interest that endanger the public, its misdemeanors, and systemic corruption. This too is in decay as the media has been fully captured by corporate interests and now aligns itself politically and ideologically with the new political elite determined to reshape democracy and launch a new reset that will dramatically infringe on individual rights and liberties.
Finally, there is the growing influence of a fourth branch of government, the corporate state and its private interests. We might also include the US intelligence community that now increasingly operates independently from executive and legislative oversight.
Together we can witness this cabal of seemingly independent entities, working simultaneously in consortium and in opposition to each other, propelling us towards a future tsunami of greater polarization and immense social disruption.
Earlier generations were not threatened by the telecommunication and technological giants of industry, such as Google, Facebook and Amazon. Clinton’s Communications Decency Act of 1996, despite its realistic intentions to protect free speech, was otherwise destructively naïve. At that time it was sensible; however, that was before that advent of the social media that now dominates our lives and shapes our political narratives. Now we are witnessing Silicon Valley as a force far more powerful than the lobbyists on K Street to ensure that corporate Democrats are raised to a position of absolute power. Yet the problem would be equally threatening if it were the corporate and radicalized GOP in power.
The centrist Democratic left, lulled in a passivity that “it can’t happen here,” is every bit as dangerous and delusional as the Republican far-right’s paranoia over conspiracies squatting behind every nook and cranny. A moderate centrist right no longer exists as it has now exited reality like a herd of lemmings to follow Trump over a phantasmagoric cliff.
The more important question to contemplate is how this will impact yourself and average citizens. What happens elsewhere around the world must no longer be viewed in isolation. Globalization is perhaps the most holistic phenomena within the matrix of financial capital movements and post-modern social restructuring. China now has the means to socially control most of its population, especially in urban areas.
On the other hand, China would be unable to succeed in this endeavor without the direct assistance, trade and technological development of Silicon Valley and the private innovators of intelligence and surveillance applied science. China has already launched social scoring, a nefarious means to reward and penalize public activity. If a person protests the lack of personal freedom, democratic values or free speech, his or her social score decreases. And through digital networks, authorities can monitor and identify every Chinese citizen’s movements. All of this technology is ready for launch in the US and other developed nations. However rather than social scoring, it is called bit chain, which has already been employed for almost a decade.
After the recent attack on the capitol by hundreds of Trump’s most radical supporters, a Patriot Act 2.0 was ready to be launched. This follows a similar playbook to the weeks following 911, and Biden was one of its principal legislators. Does this mean that the capitol was a false flag as many conspiratorial sites, right and left, are now suggesting? Not necessarily. We believe this apparent convergence of events may have more in common with what the quantum physicist and Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli and his colleague Carl Jung, and later Arthur Koestler, theorized as synchronicity, or “meaningful coincidences” that unfold despite there being no apparent causal relationship. Perhaps this is a wrong interpretation, but it is nevertheless something worth considering as we try to better understand how a dystopian future is evolving before our eyes through what might appear as a convergence of disparate events, laws and policies.
At this moment the federal government and individual states are over-reacting to Covid’s health threats, the climate and environment, and the collapse of social cohesion. These threats are eliciting government mandates, such as vaccination. Anthony Fauci has suggested that Covid-19 vaccine mandates are on the table at the federal level, which would overrule state laws. The fact that this is being publicly stated should quell any conspiratorial theories. It is already part of the long-term agenda for expanding the government’s social control under the pretense and propaganda of keeping Americans safe under the banner of national security.
New laws are under construction that would redefine hate speech, such as conflating criticism towards Israeli policies against Palestinians with anti-Semiticism. Censorship of free speech for criticizing official narratives and policies to tackle the pandemic are being enforced. Any criticism towards the complete failure of the PCR tests as a reliable diagnostic tool is being redefined as threats to public health. People raising such critiques may eventually find their names on domestic terrorist lists. And this scenario is not beyond the imagination. Wikileaks revealed that environmental, animal protection, and human rights groups have been labeled as terrorist organizations. Guilt by association laws, for example buried in Obama’s National Defense Authorization Act, are in place. Expanding a law’s scope is far easier than erasing it from the books. Consequently, it is not unlikely that these laws may eventually widen to include charges of subversion based solely on the emails you read, the videos you watch or the broadcasts you listen to. This would inevitably lead to the death toll for any residue of integrity in journalism. This is underway as we witness Silicon Valley’s collusion with the government to cancel the voices of some of our best investigative journalists such as Chris Hedges, Sharyl Attkinsson, Glenn Greenwald, Max Blumenthal and Julian Assange in particular. These are only a few of many examples. The new unstated law is that original investigation must support the official narrative, otherwise it will be prohibited from accessible public view.
We may recall that under the second Bush administration, the Justice Department created “free speech zones,” fenced off or confined areas where demonstrators were only permitted to exercise their Constitutional rights of free speech. Today we are only several small amendments away before the right to assemble beingbanned altogether.
Now faced with growing condemnation by many nations, the US’ hegemony on the world geopolitical arena has waned considerably. Biden’s administration and its return to neocon foreign and neoliberal market policies will likely make every effort to regain the dominance it lost during the past four years. How successful a Biden White House will be to recover lost ground and international respect remains to be seen. On the other hand, what has vanished in the US’ former full spectrum dominance over the geopolitical landscape is now being inverted to strengthen federal hegemonic reign over the American population.
Finally, we need to awaken to modern technologies’ remarkable sophistication and its certain threats to the health of our societies, and even to our definition of being human. Sadly, this is an industry each one of us has been complicit in advancing. Coining a term by one of the planet’s most important and forgotten 20th century prophetic voices, the Trappist monk Fr. Thomas Merton, we are facing a great Unspeakable, a spiritual crisis contributing to the existential vacuity of modern American culture. Few are aware that in his 1964 collection of meditations, Seeds of Destruction, Merton predicted that the civil rights movement would confront a catastrophic impasse and may find itself without leadership. Four years later, Martin Luther King, who Merton had a deep correspondence with, was assassinated. Merton would die suddenly later that year under very mysterious circumstances on his return to the US from Thailand.
Another way to describe the Unspeakable is criminal Sovereignty, with a capital S, to convey its numinous qualities. If alive today, Merton would look upon the Proud Boys on the right, and Antifa on the left, as mere expressions of the meaninglessness of American life manifesting as a turbulent ocean of afflictive emotions and thoughts. Instead of technology serving the needs of humanity, Americans are being increasingly conditioned to willingly bow as slaves to technology. The Unspeakable’s unspoken mantra is: technology must progress regardless of how many people fall destitute, jobless, debt ridden and physically ill with only suicide as a recourse to escape. “American democracy today,” Merton observed over 55 years ago, “is just cheap pressed wood fiber, cardboard and spray paint.” Consequently, the elite sitting in the global control tower view the emerging technological regime as preferable to democracy’s kabuki theater. Advanced surveillance, artificial intelligence, intelligent robotics, transhumanism, a 5G internet of everything, genetic engineering, and weather modification should be our guiding avatars. The solutions, he would argue, can no longer be found in civil discourse or the rights of human beings gathering in assembly. For the ruling elite, the masses are dumb sheep in need of a shepherd. This is what author Ronald Wright called the “progress trap” – progress’ unending efforts to feed technology’s hunger to devour natural and human capital, interest free. And the mainstream press and news media, in its’ malady of cognitive dissonance, serve as its unreflective cheerleader for our march towards civilizational collapse.
Merton was keenly aware of technology’s dangers to social stability. In a 1967 letter he took aim at the “universal myth that technology infallibly makes everything in every way better for everybody. It does not.” However, he was by no means a Luddite. “Technology could indeed make a better world for millions of human beings,” he wrote. Yet there remained the nightmare of technology transforming the world into a “more collectivist, cybernated mass culture.” Decades before the first desktop, Merton foresaw a complete fragmentation of the nation’s moral and spiritual fabric when people will begin basing all of their political and ethical decisions on computers. Prophetically he wrote to a friend, “just wait until they start philosophizing with computers!” That was 1967. He even foresaw technology becoming a means to elevate the slaves of technology’s false self, to satisfy narcissistic appetites for admiration and status. In other words, the social media of wokeness.
“The greatest need of our time,” Merton wrote in his Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, “is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds and makes all political and social life a mass illness. Without this housecleaning we cannot begin to see. Unless we see we cannot think. The purification must begin with the mass media.”
For this reason we urgently need to penetrate the illusions of propaganda and popular falsehoods, across the entire political spectrum as well the self-appointed pontificating Pharisees, that we have entered a new social era. Despite its newness, it has also been clearly predictable. No doubt, if Orwell were penning his great book today, the emergence of this new era we are witnessing would not be fiction.
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“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”(1)
Propaganda is the distortion of information to manipulate people’s thoughts and actions. Many philosophers over the years have noted “The easiness with which the many are governed by the few.”(2) The ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, realised that persuasive speakers can lead their audience into making unwise choices, and therefore believed that the ‘art of influencing opinion’ should be widely taught. Unfortunately in Britain and the US, there is no formal teaching of how powerful people manipulate our opinions.
Propaganda-managed democracy
A democracy works best if decision-making is out in the open and policies can be thoroughly scrutinised, but present-day politicians and corporate leaders operate in secret, and spend a lot of money manipulating our opinions. Most people associate propaganda with dictators, or with historical events such as World War 1 and World War 2. However, propaganda is actually one of the most powerful forces within 21st Century Britain and the US, despite being rarely mentioned by the mainstream press. The overall aim is to control people whilst they think they have freedom of action – this is sometimes called ‘engineering’ or ‘manufacturing’ consent.(3) The more specific goals are to limit the terms of any debate, and to direct our attention away from thinking critically about our military, corporate, economic and political systems.
Propaganda specialists now play an almost continuous behind-the-scenes role. Much of the time, people are not even aware that their views are being manipulated. There is repeated, subliminal reinforcement. What we have ended up with has been labelled a propaganda-managed democracy.(4) People who do this work have stopped using the word propaganda, because of its negative association with war. It is now known as Public Relations (PR). When governments distort information this is colloquially known as spin.
The most powerful source of propaganda is mainstream media – newspapers and TV news and current affairs programs. This was discussed in detail in the two previous posts. However, there are other sources of propaganda. Some of these are discussed below. Others, such as advertising, will be discussed in later posts.
Layer Upon Layer of Propaganda
Where discussions of propaganda do take place, commentators usually talk about individual pictures, newspaper articles, or political speeches, but propaganda is much broader and more complex than that.(5) Many parts of our society contain elements of propaganda, and they can influence our thoughts and our ideas for many years. What starts out as a deliberate attempt to mislead people, gradually becomes the received wisdom if it remains unchallenged. It surrounds us and works in a subconscious way to influence our thoughts about almost every aspect of our societies – how they are structured, which aspects of society get talked about critically, and who benefits. The framework for every important discussion contains unstated assumptions that go unquestioned. This sets the limits for which opinions are considered reasonable, and which are not.
When magazine editors decide who to interview, or a TV producer decides who to have as a guest, they are making decisions, sometimes subconsciously, about which opinions to take seriously, and whom they perceive as knowledgeable. When editors decide whose obituaries will appear in their newspaper, they tend to celebrate establishment figures, reinforcing a message that we should treat them and their views as important. When this happens repeatedly, day after day, year after year, readers and viewers will tend to be influenced by these ideas, and come to share similar views.
For example, if we talk about wealth, there is an unstated assumption that it is ok for some people or organisations to have unlimited wealth. In fact we are bombarded with propaganda, in magazines like Forbes, which is intended to encourage us to celebrate extreme wealth,(6) and even to define success by how wealthy we are. The evidence showing that concentrations of wealth, and extreme inequality, create huge problems for societies is mostly ignored.(7) We are indoctrinated to believe that the rich have ‘earned’ their wealth, or that success is based on merit. Some people who have accumulated great wealth by committing serious crimes, such as Andrew Carnegie or John Rockefeller, set up foundations and give money to good causes as a way of whitewashing their reputations.(8) They make donations to universities or have buildings named after them. As one commentator noted:
“Corporate fraudsters almost all use philanthropy as a cover. Because of all their goodness, people never look any further”(9)
This is all intended to make us less critical of those with great wealth, and therefore less critical of how our society works.
History, as taught in the US and Britain, is Propaganda
Censorship-by-omission, where important issues are not discussed (explained in the previous post) is important with historical propaganda. Our history books have a western perspective, distorting events, exaggerating positives and minimising or ignoring negatives.(10) A great deal of our history is propaganda to whitewash reputations and to celebrate the role of the wealthy and the powerful, and to erase their crimes and exploitation. People such as Winston Churchill are portrayed positively, with no discussion of his extreme, racist approach to killing people in Britain’s colonies. Commentators talk unquestioningly about British and US ‘values’, like ‘freedom’ or ‘democracy’, without mentioning that the values that influence policymaking the most include power, money, war and exploitation.
I cannot stress this point enough. The positive portrayal of rich and powerful people, both historical and in the present day, and the censorship-by-omission of all their crimes and unethical activities, and the huge amount of damage that their actions have caused to people at home and abroad, is incredibly powerful propaganda.
During recent protests about racism, statues were pulled down in Britain and the US.(11) These statues have played a propaganda role. They are intended to show how important the individuals were, and make us less questioning of our history and of earlier decision-makers. Similarly, many British country houses were built with money that came either directly from the slave trade, or from industries that used slaves, or from compensation given to slave owners when slavery was abolished.(12) The houses were status symbols when they were built, and they now stand as historical monuments to the people who built them. Some churches contain monuments to wealthy donors who helped to pay for the building of the church, with no indication that their wealth came from slavery, or the drug trade, or colonial exploitation. Streets are named after famous people, some of whom committed serious crimes, but their true history is rarely mentioned. This propaganda is remarkably effective and creates what is known as ‘collective amnesia’. Whole societies deny their history, and British and American citizens have become remarkably uncritical of their military, corporate, economic and political systems.
Museums do Propaganda
Museums and other exhibitions are an important part of this historical propaganda. The displays at the Imperial War Museum are notoriously distorted, celebrating Britain’s history of violence, and misrepresenting what actually happened and why.(13) Medals are celebrated, even if they were awarded for participation in colonial plunder and associated massacres, and the soldiers are presented as heroes. Powerful people involved in aggression and violence clean up their stories. There is an unstated assumption that US and British politicians had good intentions in their foreign policies. But this needs to be stated clearly, questioned and challenged, because the evidence shows that US and British leaders have not had good intentions in their foreign policies. Even a display about propaganda by the British Library in 2013 did not have any discussion about censorship-by-omission.(14)
Think Tanks and Universities do Propaganda
Think tanks claim to be independent research establishments, but they are usually funded by wealthy donors such as billionaires or big corporations, so their output reflects the interests of those donors.(15) Mainstream publishers rarely publish genuinely critical books. Before the financial crisis in 2008, they declined many books that explained the problems with the financial system.(16) Most critical writing is in books published by small publishers, and those books are rarely reviewed in the mainstream press. Universities teach Economics, Finance, Politics, International Relations and War Studies in heavily distorted ways. The majority of academics in these subjects present only a narrow range of mainstream opinions and ignore the most critical views. Critical academics have complained that most academic journals reinforce mainstream thinking by not accepting work that is too critical. This has been particularly notable in economics, where students at many universities have been protesting, since the 2008 financial crisis, that what they are taught is irrelevant to the real world.(17)
People are rewarded for not challenging the system
The honours system in Britain, where awards such as peerages and knighthoods are given out, is notorious for rewarding party fundraisers and political allies,(18) and more generally for rewarding people who have been successful within the establishment system.
The Nobel Peace Prize is given to sociopathic war criminals such as Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama. The prize for economics is awarded to people who have promoted some of the most extreme economic ideas such as Milton Friedman. The economics prize was set up by the Swedish central bank to promote neoliberal (an extreme form of capitalism) ideas,(19) and to make economics seem more scientific than it really is. These awards are mostly given to people who are not strongly critical of how our societies work.
Not everyone is conscious that they spread propaganda
The successful spread of propaganda involves people repeating and passing on distorted information that they were exposed to in the past. Most people are unaware they are doing it. When economics lecturers teach economic theories that end up benefitting the rich, some of them are unaware they are doing so. Some journalists believe the propaganda that they have been exposed to by governments and corporations, so they repeat it. Any time someone repeats something that they have read in a mainstream newspaper, or seen on television news or current affairs programs, there is a high probability that they are repeating propaganda.
The Overton Window – Alternative Views Are Not Discussed
The repetition of some points-of-view is so widespread that these perspectives become the accepted norm, so individuals engage in self-censorship, where they become reluctant to express dissenting views, afraid that they will be considered ridiculous by their friends and colleagues. This becomes reinforcing, so that the acceptable range of views becomes very narrow. This is known as the ‘Overton window’.(20) Alternative views are essentially shut down. This desire to conform with others around us is a very powerful psychological trait that will be discussed in a later post.
Resisting propaganda is possible – Seek out alternative views
People with strongly critical opinions rarely appear on discussion programs or in magazines. In 2014, the singer P.J.Harvey was a guest editor on BBC Radio 4’s Today program. All of her guests were critical thinkers. This was unique in 21st century BBC broadcasting. Voices and opinions that are rarely heard finally had an opportunity to explain what is really going on.(21)
Most people do not like to admit that they are susceptible to propaganda, therefore they claim it is not there. We are all regularly manipulated. There is no shame in admitting it. We can never change things if we do not admit that people are trying to manipulate us. Understanding the extent of propaganda in Britain and the US is the key to understanding how political and corporate criminals have been able to get away with their activities for so long.
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Rod Driver is a part-time academic who is particularly interested in de-bunking modern-day US and British propaganda. This is the thirteenth in a series entitled Elephants In The Room, which attempts to provide a beginners guide to understanding what’s really going on in relation to war, terrorism, economics and poverty, without the nonsense in the mainstream media.
Notes
1) Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928
2) David Hume, 1711-1776, cited in Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, 2006
3) A similar expression, ‘Manufacturing Consent’, is the title of a book by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky about the media. This book is discussed more in the posts about the failings of the media.
4) Alex Carey, Taking The Risk Out Of Democracy, 1996, p.19
5) Robert Jackall (ed.) Propaganda (Main trends of the Modern World), 1994
The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) worldwide pandemic in 2020. In response, most countries in the world implemented lockdowns, restricting their population’s movements, work, education, gatherings, and general activities in attempt to ‘flatten the curve’ of COVID-19 cases. The public health goal of lockdowns was to save the population from COVID-19 cases and deaths, and to prevent overwhelming health care systems with COVID-19 patients. In this narrative review I explain why I changed my mind about supporting lockdowns. First, I explain how the initial modeling predictions induced fear and crowd-effects [i.e., groupthink]. Second, I summarize important information that has emerged relevant to the modeling, including about infection fatality rate, high-risk groups, herd immunity thresholds, and exit strategies. Third, I describe how reality started sinking in, with information on significant collateral damage due to the response to the pandemic, and information placing the number of deaths in context and perspective. Fourth, I present a cost-benefit analysis of the response to COVID-19 that finds lockdowns are far more harmful to public health than COVID-19 can be. Controversies and objections about the main points made are considered and addressed. I close with some suggestions for moving forward.
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Despite Trump agreeing to leave the White House next Wednesday after losing the election under contentious circumstances, the Democrats and their “Republican In Name Only” (RINO) allies pushed Trump’s historic second impeachment through the House on allegations that he “incited insurrection” in order to delegitimize his legacy, intimidate his supporters, and establish the “legal” precedent for de facto criminalizing the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement that he inspired as a “domestic terrorist” organization in order to pave the way for one-party rule.
Impeachment 2.0
A lot of folks are confused about why there was such a rush to impeach Trump for the historic second time despite him agreeing to leave the White House next Wednesday after losing the election under contentious circumstances. The motivation clearly isn’t to remove him from office but to advance a more devious agenda being pushed by the Democrats and their “Republican In Name Only” (RINO) allies. These anti-Trump forces will stop at nothing in order to delegitimize his legacy and intimidate his supporters, as well as de facto criminalize the Trump-inspired “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement as a “domestic terrorist” organization in order to pave the way for one-party rule. These are the only explanations that make any sense for explaining their obsession with impeaching him before he leaves.
“The Great (Political) Reset”
Regarding the first motivation, the American Establishment wants to return to as much of the pre-Trump domestic political status quo as is realistically possible, to which end they plan to reverse practically all of his legacy after the Democrats seized control of both chambers of Congress and the Presidency. The RINOs will go along with this since their vested interests were always threatened by the self-professed “outsider” who they voted to impeach as revenge for his failed crusade to “drain the swamp”. The swiftness with which these policy reversals take place might surprise some Americans, but will be “justified” on the basis that everything that the supposed “Insurrectionist-in-Chief” has done is a “danger to the country” in hindsight. Trump’s supporters will understandably be enraged, but they won’t be able to do much of anything to stop this process.
State-Sponsored Intimidation
That’s because many of them are intimidated after they saw how quickly their leader was accused of “insurrection” despite arguably never having done anything of the sort if one actually takes the time to read the speech that he gave at his Save America Rally and subsequent now-deleted tweets which are misleadingly being used as “evidence” to support this ridiculous claim. They, too, fear that they’ll be caught up in the “anti-insurrectionist” witch hunt if they dare to exercise their constitutionally enshrined freedoms of speech and peaceful assembly to protest the dark path that their country is nowadays treading. After all, if the House can impeach the President for purely political reasons on such a false pretext after he was already completely censored from social media, then there’s nothing stopping them from being victimized too.
De Facto “Domestic Terrorists”
Therein lies the crux of the issue since the worst-case scenario is that this development is exploited by the Democrats and their RINO allies as the “legal” precedent for de facto criminalizing MAGA as a “domestic terrorist” organization. President-Elect Biden himself declared that those who stormed the US Capitol were “domestic terrorists”, and Senator Richard Durbin and Representative Brad Schneider plan to reintroduce their 2019 “Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act” in the wake of what recently happened. Although that proposed piece of legislation doesn’t explicitly ban MAGA, the US’ official definition of “domestic terrorism” is broad enough that it could be abused to encompass all of the movement’s supporters after the events of 6 January and Trump’s subsequent impeachment for “inciting insurrection” if the Democrats and RINOS choose to do so.
“American Solidarity” Is The Answer
There’s no credible reason to dismiss that scenario either since America is hurtling towards de facto one-party rule in the aftermath of that attack, which arguably wasn’t anywhere near as violent or destructive as the last half-year of nationwide riots provoked by Antifa and “Black Lives Matter”(BLM) even though this recent incident was far more symbolic by virtue of the fact that it took place in the US Capitol. The author predicted the impending Democrat-RINO dictatorship and other disturbing outcomes in his piece from last year about how “Biden’s America Would Be A Dystopian Hellhole”, which should be read as a glimpse of what’s likely to come. Under these difficult conditions, he recently proposed the establishment of an “American Solidarity” movement modeled off of its Polish predecessor as the most peaceful, legal, and effective form of resistance.
Concluding Thoughts
The real reasons behind Trump’s second impeachment can be summed up by the meme that he retweeted over a year ago in December 2019 ahead of his first impeachment and which was selected as the cover photo of this article. The image conveyed the powerful message that “In reality they’re not after me. They’re after you. I’m just in the way”, which is exactly what’s happening nowadays even much more than before. Unlike back then, this time Trump’s supporters are directly threatened by this witch hunt since it’ll likely turn against them soon after their political hero leaves off in less than a week’s time. The Democrats and their RINO allies — who function as the public proxies of the anti-Trump faction of America’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) — will now punish MAGA to ensure that a “second Trump” never rises.
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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.
Who is Victoria Nuland? Most Americans have never heard of her because the U.S. corporate media’s foreign policy coverage is a wasteland. Most Americans have no idea that President-elect Biden’s pick for Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs is stuck in the quicksand of 1950s U.S.-Russia Cold War politics and dreams of continued NATO expansion, an arms race on steroids and further encirclement of Russia.
Nor do they know that from 2003-2005, during the hostile U.S. military occupation of Iraq, Nuland was a foreign policy advisor to Dick Cheney, the Darth Vader of the Bush administration.
You can bet, however, that the people of Ukraine have heard of neocon Nuland. Many have even heard the leaked four-minute audio of her saying “Fuck the EU” during a 2014 phone call with the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt.
During the infamous call on which Nuland and Pyatt plotted to replace the elected Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, Nuland expressed her not-so-diplomatic disgust with the European Union for grooming former heavyweight boxer and austerity champ Vitali Klitschko instead of U.S. puppet and NATO booklicker Artseniy Yatseniuk to replace Russia-friendly Yanukovych.
The “Fuck the EU” call went viral, as an embarrassed State Department, never denying the call’s authenticity, blamed the Russians for tapping the phone, much as the NSA has tapped the phones of European allies.
Despite outrage from German Chancellor Angela Markel, no one fired Nuland, but her potty mouth upstaged the more serious story: the U.S. plot to overthrow Ukraine’s elected government and America’s responsibility for a civil war that has killed at least 13,000 people and left Ukraine the poorest country in Europe.
Image on the right: Robert Kagan
In the process, Nuland, her husband Robert Kagan, the co-founder of The Project for a New American Century, and their neocon cronies succeeded in sending U.S.-Russian relations into a dangerous downward spiral from which they have yet to recover.
Nuland accomplished this from a relatively junior position as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. How much more trouble could she stir up as the # 3 official at Biden’s State Department? We’ll find out soon enough, if the Senate confirms her nomination.
Joe Biden should have learned from Obama’s mistakes that appointments like this matter. In his first term, Obama allowed his hawkish Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Republican Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and military and CIA leaders held over from the Bush administration to ensure that endless war trumped his message of hope and change.
Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, ended up presiding over indefinite detentions without charges or trials at Guantanamo Bay; an escalation of drone strikes that killed innocent civilians; a deepening of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan; a self-reinforcing cycle of terrorism and counterterrorism; and disastrous new wars in Libya and Syria.
With Clinton out and new personnel in top spots in his second term, Obama began to take charge of his own foreign policy. He started working directly with Russia’s President Putin to resolve crises in Syria and other hotspots. Putin helped avert an escalation of the war in Syria in September 2013 by negotiating the removal and destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles, and helped Obama negotiate an interim agreement with Iran that led to the JCPOA nuclear deal.
But the neocons were apoplectic that they failed to convince Obama to order a massive bombing campaign and escalate his covert, proxy war in Syria and at the receding prospect of a war with Iran. Fearing their control of U.S. foreign policy was slipping, the neocons launched a campaign to brand Obama as “weak” on foreign policy and remind him of their power.
With editorial help from Nuland, her husband Robert Kagan penned a 2014 New Republic article entitled “Superpowers Don’t Get To Retire,” proclaiming that “there is no democratic superpower waiting in the wings to save the world if this democratic superpower falters.” Kagan called for an even more aggressive foreign policy to exorcise American fears of a multipolar world it can no longer dominate.
Obama invited Kagan to a private lunch at the White House, and the neocons’ muscle-flexing pressured him to scale back his diplomacy with Russia, even as he quietly pushed ahead on Iran.
The neocons’ coup de grace against Obama’s better angels was Nuland’s 2014 coup in debt-ridden Ukraine, a strategic candidate for NATO membership right on Russia’s border.
When Ukraine’s Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych spurned a U.S.-backed trade agreement with the European Union in favor of a $15 billion bailout from Russia, the State Department threw a tantrum.
Hell hath no fury like a superpower scorned.
Image below: Victoria Nuland
The EU trade agreement was to open Ukraine’s economy to imports from the EU, but without a reciprocal opening of EU markets to Ukraine, it was a lopsided deal Yanukovich could not accept. The deal was approved by the post-coup government, and has only added to Ukraine’s economic woes.
The muscle for Nuland’s $5 billion coup was Oleh Tyahnybok’s neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and the shadowy new Right Sector militia. During her leaked phone call, Nuland referred to Tyahnybok as one of the “big three” opposition leaders on the outside who could help the U.S.-backed Prime Minister Yatsenyuk on the inside. This is the same Tyanhnybok who once delivered a speech applauding Ukrainians for fighting Jews and “other scum” during World War II.
After protests in Kiev’s Euromaidan square turned into battles with police in February 2014, Yanukovych and the Western-backed opposition signed an agreement brokered by France, Germany and Poland to form a national unity government and hold new elections by the end of the year.
But that was not good enough for the neo-Nazis and extreme right-wing forces the U.S. had helped to unleash. A violent mob led by the Right Sector militia marched on and invaded the parliament building, a scene no longer difficult for Americans to imagine. Yanukovych and his members of parliament fled for their lives.
Facing the loss of its most vital strategic naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea, Russia accepted the overwhelming result (a 97% majority, with an 83% turnout) of a referendum in which Crimea voted to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia, which it had been a part of from 1783 to 1954.
The majority Russian-speaking provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine unilaterally declared independence from Ukraine, triggering a bloody civil war between U.S.- and Russian-backed forces that still rages in 2021.
U.S.-Russian relations have never recovered, even as U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals still pose the greatest single threat to our existence. Whatever Americans believe about the civil war in Ukraine and allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, we must not allow the neocons and the military-industrial complex they serve to deter Biden from conducting vital diplomacy with Russia to steer us off our suicidal path toward nuclear war.
Nuland and the neocons, however, remain committed to an ever-more debilitating and dangerous Cold War with Russia and China to justify a militarist foreign policy and record Pentagon budgets. In a July 2020 Foreign Affairs article entitled “Pinning Down Putin,” Nuland absurdly claimed that Russia presents a greater threat to “the liberal world” than the U.S.S.R. posed during the old Cold War.
Nuland’s narrative rests on an utterly mythical, ahistorical narrative of Russian aggression and U.S. good intentions. She pretends that Russia’s military budget, which is one-tenth of America’s, is evidence of “Russian confrontation and militarization” and calls on the U.S. and its allies to counter Russia by “maintaining robust defense budgets, continuing to modernize U.S. and allied nuclear weapons systems, and deploying new conventional missiles and missile defenses to protect against Russia’s new weapons systems…”
Nuland also wants to confront Russia with an aggressive NATO. Since her days as U.S. Ambassador to NATO during President George W. Bush’s second term, she has been a supporter of NATO’s expansion all the way up to Russia’s border. She calls for “permanent bases along NATO’s eastern border.” We have pored over a map of Europe, but we can’t find a country called NATO with any borders at all. Nuland sees Russia’s commitment to defending itself after successive 20th century Western invasions as an intolerable obstacle to NATO’s expansionist ambitions.
Nuland’s militaristic worldview represents exactly the folly the U.S. has been pursuing since the 1990s under the influence of the neocons and “liberal interventionists,” which has resulted in a systematic underinvestment in the American people while escalating tensions with Russia, China, Iran and other countries.
As Obama learned too late, the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time can, with a shove in the wrong direction, unleash years of intractable violence, chaos and international discord. Victoria Nuland would be a ticking time-bomb in Biden’s State Department, waiting to sabotage his better angels much as she undermined Obama’s second-term diplomacy.
So let’s do Biden and the world a favor. Join World Beyond War, CODEPINK and dozens of other organizations opposing neocon Nuland’s confirmation as a threat to peace and diplomacy. Call 202-224-3121 and tell your Senator to oppose Nuland’s installation at the State Department.
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Marcy Winograd of Progressive Democrats of America served as a 2020 Democratic delegate for Bernie Sanders,and is Coordinator of CODEPINK CONGRESS. @MarcyWinograd
Featured image: Nuland and Pyatt planning regime change in Kiev (Source: thetruthseeker.co.uk)
Dr. Ari Joffe is a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases at the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton and a Clinical Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at University of Alberta. He has written a paper titled COVID-19: Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink that finds the harms of lockdowns are 10 times greater than their benefits.
The below Q&A is an exchange between Joffe and Anthony Furey.
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Anthony Furey: You were a strong proponent of lockdowns initially but have since changed your mind. Why is that?
Dr. Ari Joffe:
Emerging data has shown a staggering amount of so-called ‘collateral damage’ due to the lockdowns. This can be predicted to adversely affect many millions of people globally with food insecurity [82-132 million more people], severe poverty [70 million more people], maternal and under age-5 mortality from interrupted healthcare [1.7 million more people], infectious diseases deaths from interrupted services [millions of people with Tuberculosis, Malaria, and HIV], school closures for children [affecting children’s future earning potential and lifespan], interrupted vaccination campaigns for millions of children, and intimate partner violence for millions of women. In high-income countries adverse effects also occur from delayed and interrupted healthcare, unemployment, loneliness, deteriorating mental health, increased opioid crisis deaths, and more.
….
I believe that we need to take an “effortful pause” and reconsider the information available to us. We need to calibrate our response to the true risk, make rational cost-benefit analyses of the trade-offs, and end the lockdown groupthink.
We need to better educate ourselves on the risks and trade-offs involved, and alleviate unreasonable fear with accurate information. We need to focus on cost-benefit analysis – repeated or prolonged lockdowns cannot be based on COVID-19 numbers alone.
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Vida Americana is an exhilarating, expansive and immensely satisfying exhibition at New York’s Whitney Museum. Like a great and varied feast, this is a show that one must take one’s time to fully appreciate and digest; an exhibition that includes photography, film, sculpture, charcoal sketches, colored pencil and graphite, watercolors, lithographs and oil paintings, from the easel to the epic in scale. Not only are the greatest Mexican artists of the twentieth century represented here – including Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros (‘Los Tres Grandes’) – but also many of the notable American artists who they had a profound influence on, such as Jackson Pollock, Jacob Lawrence, Marion Greenwood and Charles White, among others.
The show occupies the entire fifth floor of the Whitney, and upon entering we are immediately greeted by a large, and colorfully exuberant canvas by Rivera featuring men and women commencing to “Dance in Tehuantepec” (1928). It is a fitting beginning to an exhibit which is at once a celebration of indigenous Mexico – its colors, and textures, its sorrows and its joys – as well as a close look at the new visual language that emerged during the cultural renaissance that began following the decade-long Mexican Revolution.
The horror and brutality of war looms large in this exhibition, especially in the work of Orozco. In his depiction of “Pancho Villa” (1931), we find the revolutionary leader, pistol in hand, standing barrel-chested over emaciated men and women who crouch at his feet in abject terror. In the top left corner a building is engulfed in flames, while in the bottom right a pregnant women kneels, completely naked and exposed, her arm covering her face, in a gesture that heightens our sense of her grief and shame. Orozco’s images are among the most provocative, violent and daring in the entirety of the exhibition, which notably includes a reproduction of his mural Prometheus (1930), “the greatest painting done in modern times,” Pollock would declare. The central figure stands with his anguished face and hands upturned to the heavens, as if he is both in the act of stealing fire from the gods to give to the throngs of suffering, desperate humanity flanking him; and at the very same time being condemned to eternal suffering for doing so. The penalty is implicit within the deed itself.
David Alfaro Siqueiros, Our Present Image, 1947 (Source: whitney.org)
One of the most arresting paintings to confront the devastation and despair wrought by modern warfare is Siqueiros’ “Echo of a Scream” (1937). The scene is one of utter desolation, drained of almost all color, save for the striking red garment that barely covers the solitary infant whose cries echo across the ruined landscape. The destruction we see is the result of fascist forces in Europe – forces that Siqueiros was so determined to see defeated that, not longer after this painting was completed, he joined the Republicans fighting against General Franco’s army in the Spanish Civil War.
When Siqueiros’ Experimental Workshop opened near New York’s Union Square in 1936, Jackson Pollock was among the initial group of artists to join. Siqueiros would emphasize the importance of discovering novel techniques and materials, and Pollock would wholly embrace the use of unorthodox paint applications, including spraying paint through stencils, as well as pouring, dripping, bespattering, and flinging paint at the canvas; in a word, “the exploitation of accidental effects.” Vida Americana includes a generous selection of Pollock’s work from the 1930’s, including “Landscape with Steer” (1936-37), a haunting work which he created by airbrushing lacquer onto the surface of the paper. The Guggenheim is presently exhibiting Pollock’s Mural (1943), his first great masterpiece, and a reminder of just how important the great Mexican muralists were for his development.
Another welcome highlight of the show are ten panels from Jacob Lawrence’s 60-panel Migration Series (1940-41) about the largest exodus in American history, where beginning in the 1920s some 6 million African-Americans would eventually leave the south in search of a better life in the great metropolises of the northern states. Lawrence clearly drew inspiration from the Mexican muralist’s commitment to produce art that confronted the history of the marginalized and oppressed, the subjugated races and classes, including the experience of women and people of color. Panel 3 depicts a sizeable group of black men, women and children walking north, carrying large bags and boxes, presumably all that they own. As they move, they form a triangle, a “V” shape, which is of course how birds – like those hovering above the dense crowd – fly in formation. Lawrence would in fact observe that, “we are very much like other kinds of animals in that we move for different reasons.” The Mexican muralists sought to create socio-politically transformative public art; and Lawrence was effective in realizing that objective in works with the thematic breadth and scope, the poetry and potency of the muralists, but on a much smaller scale.
Gray Terrain by Edward Millman, 1954 (Source: whitney.org)
The painters of Mexico’s renaissance saw the potential of art to serve as a political force against social injustice, nor was this lost on their counterparts to the north. A subject to which these artists frequently turned was police brutality against unionized workers. Philip Evergood’s “American Tragedy” (1937) depicted the Memorial Day Massacre which occurred when hundreds of steelworkers, demanding the right to unionize, marched toward the Republic Steel plant on the South Side of Chicago. When police officers failed to disperse the crowd with tear gas, they charged in firing their guns. This is the awful the scene that Evergood depicts, where police officers use their batons to beat protesters bloody, and their guns to shoot men and women in the back as they flee. Evergood manages to capture the mayhem, the blood-soaked ground, the cracked heads and broken bodies with frightful clarity – but also the bold defiance of the workers. In the central foreground, a worker stands tall and resilient, his right arm supporting a young woman who firmly holds a long stick, while his left hand grasps the lapel of the officer who, standing before them, seems ready to fire his gun on the courageous couple.
The exhibition includes a large-scale reproduction of Rivera’s most famous and controversial commission, Man, Controller of the Universe (1934), a fresco in the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City. It is a truly extraordinary achievement, not only for its immense thematic scale and scope, but because it grasps the world in all its irreducible complexity and at the same time insists on organizing it, making some kind of sense of the world, and taking a stand on what it all means. The world it depicts is filled with conflict and strife – from the soldiers in gas masks marching across the top left, while just below them mounted policeman brutalize workers. Opposite an image of capitalism’s jaded and decadent elite, drinking and playing cards, is an image of Lenin, in whose hands are the hands of men and women of all different races. At the heart of the fresco is man, in all his mastery of nature, at the very center of a chiasm formed by two elongated ellipses – one containing the cosmic world of stars galaxies, and the other the world as seen through the microscope. Modernity may be defined by struggle, conflict and contradiction, but at the same time we have the power to create an egalitarian society where workers are treated fairly and decently, or a society where the people are literally trampled over for the sake of a callous and cynical few.
Vida Americana is an astounding exhibition which almost manages to do justice to the breathtakingly immense contribution of the artists that it revisits. It is the kind of exhibition that places great demands on the viewer and rewards the viewer with great riches in return. For the Mexican muralists, and many of their notable students to the north, art is ultimately about human liberation, it is about ushering in the new, delivering humanity from the forces that subjugate us, and creating the conditions in which personal and collective renewal are possible. Genuine art is inherently transgressive, subverting the structures that perpetuate an unfree world. By creating an art which is at once “for and about the people,” the Mexican muralists also created an art with the inherent potential for social and spiritual transformation.
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Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Janine Jackson interviewed the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund’s Mara Verheyden-Hilliard on police responsibility for the January 6 insurrection for the January 8, 2021.
It is not only federal prisons that contract out prison labor to top corporations. State prisons that used forced prison labor in plantations, laundries and highway chain gangs increasingly seek to sell prison labor to corporations trolling the globe in search of the cheapest possible labor.
Mussolini’s coup was described by the onlooking US ambassador to Italy, Richard Washburn Child, as “a fine young revolution here. No danger, plenty of enthusiasm and colour. We all enjoy it”.
There’s no ambiguity about Trump’s legion of supporters. On average, polls show that nearly half of voting-age Americans oppose impeaching Trump and removing him from office.
Predictions that China would once again, as it did in 2008, lead the rest of the world, especially the EU and North America, out of deep recession are common. Yet behind the official Beijing statements there are indications that China’s decades of economic boom are coming into deep problems.
9/11 opened the gates to the Patriot Act, whose core had already been written way back in 1994 by one Joe Biden. 1/6 opens the gate to the War on Domestic Terror and the Patriot Act from Hell, 2.0, on steroids (here is the 2019 draft ), the full 20,000 pages casually springing up from the sea like Venus, the day after, immediately ready to roll.
In 1973, Dr. D. L. Rosenhan, a professor of psychology and law at Stanford University, published a ground-breaking psychiatric study in the January 19 issue of Science magazine. The article exposed a serious short-coming in the psychiatric hospital system at the time.
On 5 January, British MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi wrote a letter to Boris Johnson urging him to convey to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi the “heartfelt anxieties” of MPs’ constituents (many emanating from Punjab) regarding the treatment of protesting farmers in India.
Animal protection campaigners have called for the urgent closure of gaping loopholes in EU wildlife trade regulations that fail to prevent the trafficking of protected wild species.
Under the Keynesian takeover of Bretton Woods Trans-Atlantic nations became increasingly dominated by bloated bureaucratic systems while plans for genuine development were undermined, Matthew Ehret writes.
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It is as if the battle lines of civil war have been drawn up between masses of Americans who have been led to believe in either a false “bottom up” approach to economics, as defined by the Austrian School represented by Friedrich von Hayek, or in the “top-down” approach of John Maynard Keynes. The former sacrifices the general welfare of the whole nation for the sake of the parts (i.e. individual liberties), while the latter sacrifices the individual liberties of each citizen for the sake of the general welfare (or at least some oligarch’s definition of what that should be).
In my last article, I introduced, in broad strokes, a history of the American System of political economy as advanced by Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Henry Clay, Henry Carey, Lincoln, and McKinley. We reviewed how it was derailed by McKinley’s 1901 murder and was only revived 30 years later with Franklin Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential victory which put a stop to the 1933 Bankers Dictatorship.
Finally, we briefly explored how and why both John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich von Hayek whose ideas so deeply influence the polarization of the USA today, not only despised FDR but hated everything the republic stood for.
In this second installment of a three-part series, we will shed light on the anti-human ideas and the political operations that shaped the mind, the life and the politics of Lord John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946).
Keynes the Fabian Eugenicist
Although Keynes is heralded as the guiding light of the New Deal (and, as such defended by modern “Green New Dealers” and Great Reset technocrats wishing to impose a top-down system of governance onto the world), the fact is that Keynes not only detested Franklin Roosevelt, but also humanity more in general.
This will be seen clearly in 1) his devotion to the theories of Thomas Malthus, 2) his promotion of eugenics as a science of racial purification and population control, and 3) his general devotion to World Government as a leading member of the Fabian Society.
From his earliest days at Cambridge where he rose quickly to become one of the select Cambridge Apostles and shared, among other things, a lifelong friendship with Lord Bertrand Russell, Keynes devoted himself to the service of empire, becoming Knight of the Order of Bath and Order of Leopold by 1919.
His early 1911 book on Indian Currency and Finance (conducted during his five-year foray in the Empire’s Indian Office) ignored all actual political reasons for the famines plaguing India and argued coldly for a greater integration of the Indian banking system into the City of London controls which would somehow solve India’s problems. The provable reality was that Indian famines were coordinated tools of population control by the Malthusian elite of the British establishment who considered “war, famine and disease” as the gifts nature gave the strong to manage the weak.
While his later 1919 Consequences of the Peace appeared to be a reasonably sympathetic warning that the draconian Versailles reparations would do incredible damage and lead to a new world war, in reality, Keynes was displaying a cold sleight of hand. Serving as British Treasury representative to the Versailles Conference, Keynes never opposed fascism: he merely argued that a more liberal pathway to global fascism could be established under the direction of the Bank of England. His opposition, though, to the more violent approach preferred by conservative imperialists among the British Intelligentsia, was one of form more than substance.
Keynes and his fellow Fabians H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell and G.B Shaw preferred the “slow and steady” “long game”, reminiscent of the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus who famously fought his enemies by slow attrition rather than in full-scale confrontation. Due to the public’s general ignorance of this strategy, we celebrate these Fabian Society luminaries for their pacifism, though in reality they were just as racist, fascist and eugenics-loving as their more short-sighted, hard-stomached counterparts sir Oswald Mosley, Lord Alfred Milner and even Winston Churchill.
Where the real solution to the hyperinflationary money printing and economic industrial shutdown of Germany during the post WWI years was to be found in the German-Russian Rapallo Agreement (destroyed with the assassination of American System Foreign Minister Walter Rathenau), Keynes and his ilk merely called for economic integration of the German banking and military system under Bank of England/League of Nations control.
Malthus, Eugenics and Keynes
Two theories advanced by the British Empire in response to the growth of the American System, first in the USA, and later internationally, were those of Thomas Malthus, and of Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin who coined the term “eugenics” in 1883. These sister concepts served as nothing less than religious precepts for the ruling elite as it desperately reorganized itself in the late 19th century.
It must be kept firmly in mind that at this period the British Empire was weak, and incapable of stopping the electric spread of win-win cooperation as the American System was sped around the world bringing progress and full-spectrum economics in its wake. One of the leading voices of the American System in 1890 was Colorado’s first Governor William Gilpin whose The Cosmopolitan Railway laid out a practical vision for a world united by rail, development, and national banking [see map].
Nevertheless, the Empire was determined to put an end to the spread of the American System.
A new breed of think tanks was created to shape the Empire’s grand strategy in the face of this growth of independent sovereign nations: these were T.H. Huxley’s X Club (c.1865), the Fabian Society (c.1884), and the Roundtable Group (c.1902). Where Huxley’s X Club coordinated with Cambridge, and the Roundtable Group/Rhodes Trust interfaced with Oxford, the Fabian Society created a new school called the London School of Economics. All three worked together as one unit.
Defining his misanthropic belief in overpopulation, Thomas Malthus (a British East India Company economist) stated in his famous 1799 Essay on Population:
“The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.”
How could this crisis be avoided? Malthus answers it like only a devout imperialist could:
“We should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague.”
Darwin himself admitted in his autobiography that his theory of evolution arose only after his 1838 reading of Malthus’ Essay on Population in which he “at last got a theory by which to work”.
So, Darwinism is really an extension of Malthus’s Hobbesian social theories onto all of living nature: a mere struggle for survival in a universe of entropy and diminishing returns. After a Malthusian version of biology was created, Darwin’s theories were in turn re-applied to human society as imperial tools for population control under the form of Galton’s Eugenics thus giving the same old evil practices of empire, war and slavery a “scientific validation”.
Although some apologists considered Keynes an anti-Malthusian- due to his theory that overpopulation might be overcome by encouraging spending rather than savings, which would, in turn, somehow create markets and thence new factories and more growth, the reality was the opposite. Keynes not only spoke gushingly of Malthus throughout his life as one of the greatest minds of all time, but even plagiarized many of Malthus’ own theories, for instance that of “demand deficiency causing unemployment and recession” outlined in his 1930 Treatise on Money. In his 1933 Essay on Malthus, Keynes wrote:
“Let us think of Malthus today as the first of the Cambridge economists—as, above all, a great pioneer of the application of a frame of formal thinking to the complex confusion of the world of daily events. Malthus approached the central problems of economic theory by the best of all routes.”
In his May 2, 1914 lecture Population, Keynes argued that government should “mould law and custom deliberately to bring about that density of population which there ought to be” and that“there would be more happiness in the world if the population of it were to be diminished.”
Saying that “India, Egypt and China are gravely overpopulated”, Keynes advocated using violence to defend the “superior white races” in this struggle of survival with the pacifist saying: “Almost any measures seem to me to be justified in order to protect our standard of life from injury at the hands of more prolific races. Some definite parceling out of the world may well become necessary; and I suppose that this may not improbably provoke racial wars. At any rate such wars will be about a substantial issue.”
As Acting chair of the Neo-Malthusian League, Keynes stated in 1927: “We of this society are neo-Malthusians… I believe that for the future the problem of population will emerge in the much greater problem of Hereditary and Eugenics. Quality must become the preoccupation.”
By 1946, Keynes, still a member of the British Eugenics Society (after serving as Vice President from 1936-1944) wrote in The Eugenics Review: “Galton’s eccentric, sceptical, observing, flashing, cavalry-leader type of mind led him eventually to become the founder of the most important, significant and, I would add, genuine branch of sociology which exists, namely eugenics.”
This was not ivory tower theorizing, but concepts with very real-world significance.
By 1937, Keynes’ General Theory of Employment was published in Nazi Germany. If anyone wishes to defend the idea that the economist was somehow an anti-fascist defender of “liberal values”, let them read his own words in the preface and then either redefine “liberal values” or their naïve idea of Keynes:
“I may perhaps expect to find less resistance among German readers than among English ones, when I put before them a theory of employment and production as a whole… The theory of production as a whole which is the object of this book, can be much better adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than the theory of production and distribution of wealth under circumstances of free competition.”
Hitler himself was not only a devout eugenicist (whose racial purification policies emerged through the funding of the Rockefeller, Carnegie Foundations as well as British establishment), but was also a devout Malthusian saying:
“The day will certainly come when the whole of mankind will be forced to check the augmentation of the human species, because there will be no further possibility of adjusting the productivity of the soil to the perpetual increase in the population.”
Keynes was by this time extremely frustrated that the intention-driven system of political economy defining the New Deal under the helm of FDR’s leadership was not absorbing his trojan horse theories on employment, demand, and inflation. However, by the end of the war, many Council on Foreign Relation (CFR)-affiliated operatives pushing Keynesianism were making successful inroads into all branches of U.S. bureaucracy and penetrated the highest levels of the state department and treasury. At one point in 1943, Franklin Roosevelt commented on his understanding of this British Deep State operation when he told his son Elliot:
“You know, any number of times the men in the State Department have tried to conceal messages to me, delay them, hold them up somehow, just because some of those career diplomats over there aren’t in accord with what they know I think. They should be working for Winston. As a matter of fact, a lot of the time, they are [working for Churchill]. Stop to think of ’em: any number of ’em are convinced that the way for America to conduct its foreign policy is to find out what the British are doing and then copy that!” I was told… six years ago, to clean out that State Department. It’s like the British Foreign Office….”
The Battle for Bretton Woods
During the Bretton Woods conference (July 1-20, 1944), the two opposing paradigms, on the one hand the American System of anti-colonialism, and on the other hand the. British System of zero sum Malthusianism, went to war.
This war took the form of the battles waged by FDR’s trusted collaborator Henry Dexter White against John Maynard Keynes at Bretton Woods, where 730 delegates representing 44 nations gathered to settle the terms of the post-war order.
Although this conference is famously associated with the creation of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), it is falsely assumed to be a Keynesian creation. Keynes’ role as representative of the British Empire, much like his earlier role at Versailles in 1919, was defined by the intention at all costs to shape the conditions of a post-nation state world order on behalf of the City of London. Like Bertrand Russell and other Cambridge Apostles before and since, Keynes was trained in the sophistical deployment of statistics and mathematical logic to cover for the imperial rape of target nations.
Where Dexter White and Franklin Roosevelt demanded a U.S. dollar-backed post-war system of fixed exchange rates (to block speculation on commodities as a tool of economic war), theirs was not an idea premised on imperialism which FDR’s recorded battles with Churchill attest. Unlike the hard vs soft imperialism of Churchill and Keynes, FDR and his allies rather looked to a post-war system defined by U.S.-China-Russia friendship, and the internationalization of the New Deal applying a win-win approach to foreign policy.
At Bretton Woods, Dexter White and Henry Morganthau reached agreements to provide vast technology transfers to help South America industrialize. At the same time, large-scale programs modelled on the New Deal were presented by delegations from India, Eastern Europe, and China. It is noteworthy that the Chinese delegation introduced infrastructure plans first laid out by Sun Yat-sen in his 1920 International Developmentof China which both Mao, and Zhou Enlai endorsed alongside the Kuomintang’s Chiang Kai-Shek! Had these plans not been sabotaged, it is amazing to consider what sort of progress might have opened up for the Chinese 70 years before anyone heard of the “Belt and Road Initiative”.
At this early stage, Russia was still happy to be a founding member of the IMF and World Bank which were designed to act as cheap lending mechanisms for long-term, low-interest, high-tech global development.
Commenting on support for FDR’s post-war system of mutual interest, Stalin stated: “Can we count on the activities of this international organization being sufficiently effective? They will be effective if the Great Powers who have borne the brunt of the burden of the war against Hitler’s Germany continue to act in a spirit of unanimity and harmony. They will not be effective if this essential condition is violated”.
In opposition to this anti-imperial win-win system defended by Dexter White, and FDR, Keynes demanded a bankers’ dictatorship with a new supranational currency controlled by the Bank of England called the Bancor, as well as an international clearing house. The Bancor was later revived in a modified form when Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) were established, bringing the world closer to the sort of green synthetic hegemonic currency now promoted by the likes of Mark Carney, Klaus Schwab and George Soros under the veil of a Great Reset and Central Bankers Climate Compact.
Similarly to the League of Nations’ earlier design for World Government, Keynes’ arguments entailed the virtual castration of nation states, preventing their involvement in their own economic planning. These arguments also demanded that the USA fully recognize the legitimacy of the British Empire in the post war age (something which Dexter White and Morgenthau refused to do). In Keynes’ view, nation states should relinquish their sovereign financial controls to Malthusian technocrats managing the levers of production and consumption through a system of globally interconnected central banks.
Keynes’ model of governance would ensure that the sorts of INTENTION-driven large-scale projects that could finally end colonialism would not see the light of day.
The Keynesian World That Emerged in the Wake of FDR
Under the Keynesian takeover of Bretton Woods that emerged during the Anglo-American special relationship created by Truman and Churchill, Trans Atlantic nations became increasingly dominated by bloated bureaucratic systems while plans for genuine development were undermined. With Roosevelt dead by 1945, Harry Hopkins dead by 1946, Dexter White dead by 1948, and Henry Wallace’s presidential efforts sabotaged by 1948, the last serious resistance to Britain’s reconquest of the USA had been put down.
After the war, eugenics-promoting organizations and think tanks changed their names while continuing their work, morphing into new forms by the 1960s such as the environmental movement, transhumanist movement, while not even the pharmaceutical/healthcare sector was left untouched.
In the next chapter we will close up this short series by reviewing the figure of Friedrich von Hayek and the Austrian School of Economics which emerged with the collapse of the Keynesian Bretton Woods in 1971 and the rise of the “Conservative Revolution”.
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Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Der Mensch vermag es nur dann, sich zu seiner vollen Größe aufzurichten, wenn er sich den Anordnungen der Macht nicht beugt, sondern kraft seiner inneren Befreiung dagegen aufbegehrt. Zahlreiche Psychologen dieser Tage — aber auch schon vor der Corona-Krise — verhalfen den Menschen eben nicht zu einer solchen Befreiung, sondern lehrten sie in der „Kunst“, sich den Umständen so zu fügen, ohne dabei allzu großen — inneren — Schaden zu erleiden. Dies ist nicht der Weg der Befreiung. Die innere wie äußere Befreiung gelingt, indem der Mensch sich seiner selbst, seines Wertes bewusst wird und sich mit gesunder Empörung zur Wehr setzt.
„Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten! Das arglose Wort ist töricht. (…) Der Lachende hat die furchtbare Nachricht nur noch nicht empfangen.“
So beginnt Bertolt Brechts Gedicht „An die Nachgeborenen“, veröffentlicht im Juni 1939. Es ist einer der wichtigsten Texte der deutschen Exilliteratur. Drei Generationen später leben wir wieder in finsteren Zeiten. Die meisten Bürger fühlen instinktiv, dass „etwas faul ist im Staate Dänemark“ und die „Zeit aus den Fugen ist“ (Shakespeare). Autoritätshörigkeit und geistiger Gehorsamsreflex hindern sie jedoch daran, den dreisten Lügen von Politikern, Wissenschaftlern und Massenmedien zu misstrauen und Nein zu sagen. Mit diesem Verhalten stabilisieren sie das totalitäre System. Die Wissenschaft hat die Aufgabe, den Menschen zur Erkenntnis zu führen.
Die Tiefenpsychologie zum Beispiel hat herausgefunden, was den Menschen daran hindert, sich seines gesunden Menschenverstands zu bedienen, anstatt Politikern die Macht zu übergeben. Der hellsichtig gewordene freie Bürger wird nicht mehr gehorchen: Er wird sich gegen die verfassungswidrigen Corona-Maßnahmen der Regierungen als Ausfluss der Neuen Weltordnung auflehnen und sich dem Geist der Revolte verschreiben. Sein höchstes Ziel ist die Verwirklichung der Freiheit aller Menschen. In diesem Akt der Empörung findet er zu sich selbst: Ich empöre mich, also bin ich!
Die Wissenschaft hat den Menschen zur Erkenntnis zu führen
Die menschliche Gemeinschaft erwartet von der Wissenschaft zu Recht, dass sie die Not der Menschen lindert und dem Schutz des Lebens dient. Aber es gibt kaum noch unabhängige Wissenschaftler, sondern nur mehr Akademiker (mit Universitäts- oder Hochschulausbildung), die kuschen. Immer mehr Wissenschaftler verhökern ihr Wissen und Können und oft auch ihre Seele dem militärisch-industriellen-medialen Komplex und Big Money. Sie entfernen sich sogar so weit von ihrem Menschsein, dass sie die Mittel für die allgemeine Vernichtung der Menschheit vervollkommnen helfen.
Das trifft auch auf Psychologen, Psychotherapeuten und Psychiater zu, die das Leben der Menschen sehr bereichern könnten. Dass die Wissenschaft der Psychologie in unseren Breitengraden immer noch sehr unterschätzt wird, liegt zum großen Teil daran, dass viele deutsche Psychologen jüdischen Glaubens während der Zeit des Faschismus ins US-amerikanische Exil gehen mussten. Die Psychologie wird aber auch deshalb argwöhnisch beäugt, weil viele ihrer Vertreter zwar bemüht sind, einzelnen Menschen zu helfen, aber für die Erhaltung des Systems sind. Sie wollen, dass sich der ratsuchende Mensch in der Gesellschaft zurechtfindet, dass er ein guter und braver Staatsbürger ist.
Im Krieg spannt der Staat die Psychologen ein, damit der Soldat bei der Stange bleibt und nicht davonläuft. Und wenn dessen Gemüt auf dem Schlachtfeld erkrankt, dann wird er im Heimaturlaub vom Psychologen aufgefangen und wieder präpariert, damit er weiterhin unter Einsatz seines Lebens das Vaterland verteidigt.
Heutzutage erteilen Psychologen Jungen wie Alten zweifelhafte Ratschläge, wie sie ihre Ängste, Depressionen und Verzweiflungsanfälle aufgrund der politisch verordneten Corona-Maßnahmen einigermaßen heil überstehen können. Der Verrat der eigenen Berufsethik stößt die Menschheit ins Elend (1).
Welche Freude hingegen, wenn man erfährt, dass ein Richter in Deutschland wegen der von Bund und Ländern verhängten einschneidenden Corona-Maßnahmen bereits im Dezember 2020 eine 190 Seiten lange Verfassungsbeschwerde beim obersten Gericht eingereicht hat, weil es höchste Zeit sei, „unsere freiheitlich-demokratische Rechtsordnung wieder zu stabilisieren“ (2). Oder dass ein Tübinger Professor die deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz, eine Schwesterorganisation der Nationalen Akademie der Wissenschaften „Leopoldina“, die die deutsche Bundesregierung berät, verlässt. Seine Austrittsbegründung lautet:
„Ich möchte einer Wissenschaft dienen, die einer faktenbasierten Aufrichtigkeit, einer ausgewogenen Transparenz und einer umfassenden Menschlichkeit verpflichtet ist“ (3).
Zuerst kommt das Gefühl, dann die Tat!
Es ist sehr schwer, einen Menschen direkt für eine humane, friedliche und freiheitliche Gesellschaft in Bewegung zu setzen. Unbewusste Ängste und innerpsychische Blockaden hindern ihn daran, rational zu denken. Wenn er sich dessen mithilfe eines erfahrenen und mitfühlenden Psychologen oder Psychotherapeuten bewusst wird, kann er beginnen, „den Geist frei zu haben und alle Ängstlichkeit abzuwerfen“ (Rabelais).
Dieser Mensch kann dem anderen zuhören, wenn er neue Informationen bekommt und man ihn aufmerksam macht. Er kann sich dann auch seine eigenen Gedanken machen und anfangen, sich zu ändern, zur Tat zu schreiten. Dazu muss aber sein tiefes seelisches Empfinden, sein Gefühlsleben angesprochen werden. Die Erkenntnis der wissenschaftlichen Tiefenpsychologie lautet:
Zuerst kommt das Gefühl, dann die Tat! Aus diesem Grund ist es kontraproduktiv und verletzend, ängstliche und gehorsame Mitbürger als „Vollidioten“ oder „Duckmäuser“ zu diskriminieren. Eine solche Bewertung zeugt davon, dass man ihre tieferen Beweggründe nicht kennt.
Deshalb müssen alle denkbaren Beweggründe für den Gehorsam und das ängstliche Schweigen erforscht werden — insbesondere die autoritäre und religiöse Erziehung in Elternhaus und Schule sowie der Einfluss der Gesellschaft (4).
Oft sind es ganz persönliche Schilderungen Betroffener, die den Menschen im tiefsten Inneren ansprechen, aufwühlen und zum Nachdenken anregen. Ein positives Beispiel ist die herzzerreißende Geschichte des Kollegen Peter König, die am 27. Dezember 2020 in der kanadischen Online-Plattform „Global Research“ veröffentlicht wurde: „Death by Ventilator — A Personal Story — for the World to Know“ (5).
Ich empöre mich, also bin ich!
Der hellsichtig gewordene, zum Bewusstsein seiner selbst gelangte Mensch, der sich als Herr seines Schicksals weiß, kann eigentlich nichts anderes tun, als sich gegen die Bedingungen der gegenwärtigen Sozialordnung aufzulehnen, sich dem Geiste der Revolte zu verschreiben. Die ihm entsprechende Lebensform ist die der permanenten Empörung.
1952 veröffentlichte der französische Schriftsteller, Philosoph, Religionskritiker und Literatur-Nobelpreisträgers Albert Camus (1913 bis 1960) das Buch „L’homme révolté“ (Der Mensch in der Revolte). Camus’ Denken kulminiert in der Aufforderung zur Revolte im Sinne eines unablässigen Kampfes um ein höheres Maß von Freiheit.
Die Absurdität der Welt zur Kenntnis zu nehmen heiße, sich gegen sie auflehnen. In diesem Akt der Empörung fände der Mensch zu sich selbst — in Abwandlung der Formel von Descartes: Ich empöre mich, also bin ich!
Dieser Mensch wolle weder irdische Verheißungen noch Vertröstungen auf das Jenseits. Die Ankündigung eines zukünftigen Gottesreiches auf Erden oder im Himmel sei ihm gleichgültig. In beiden Fällen müsse man warten, und während dieser Zeit höre der Unschuldige nicht auf zu sterben. Die Arbeitermassen, müde geworden des Leidens und des Sterbens, seien Menschen ohne Gott. Der Platz des Menschen in der Revolte sei an ihrer Seite.
Für den freien Menschen und seine Auflehnung im Namen von Menschenrecht und Menschenwürde gebe es kein höheres Ziel als die Verwirklichung der Freiheit aller — und zwar sofort und nicht über den „Umweg“ einer Diktatur, wie es der Revolutionär fordere.
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Rudolf Hänsel, Jahrgang 1944, ist promovierter Erziehungswissenschaftler, ehemaliger Lehrer und Schulberater sowie Diplom-Psychologe mit den Schwerpunkten Klinische Psychologie, Pädagogische Psychologie und Medienpsychologie. Er ist Buchautor sowie Autor von Fachartikeln zu den Themen Jugendgewalt, Mediengewalt und Werteerziehung.
DARPA, the Department of Defense’s research arm, is paying scientists to invent ways to instantly read soldiers’ minds using tools like genetic engineering of the human brain, nanotechnology and infrared beams. The end goal? Thought-controlled weapons, like swarms of drones that someone sends to the skies with a single thought or the ability to beam images from one brain to another.
This week, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) announced that six teams will receive funding under the Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N3) program. Participants are tasked with developing technology that will provide a two-way channel for rapid and seamless communication between the human brain and machines without requiring surgery. “Imagine someone who’s operating a drone or someone who might be analyzing a lot of data,” said Jacob Robinson, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University, who is leading one of the teams. [DARPA’s 10 Coolest Projects: From Humanoid Robots to Flying Cars]
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With its large population and fragile health systems, Africa has recorded more than three million Covid-19 cases, still less deadly as compared to other regions in the world, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). According to Africa CDC, Africa’s coronavirus tally was 3,021,769 as of January 10. The death toll was 72,121 and the number of recoveries was 2,450,492. The biggest number of coronavirus cases were reported from South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, and Ethiopia.
South Africa, with more than 1.2 million reported cases, including 32,824 deaths, accounts for more than 30% of the total for the continent of 54 countries and 1.3 billion people. The high proportion of cases identified in South Africa, were attributed to more tests carried out than many other African countries.
African countries are expecting to get medical equipment, most especially vaccine, to help them out of the pandemic. These they expect from external sources. During January 4-9, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi paid official visits to Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Tanzania, Botswana and Seychelles. Wang Yi emphasized that China is willing to deepen mutually beneficial cooperation in diverse spheres with Africa. For example, China’s efforts to create a new image in Africa through China-European Union Cooperation in vaccine.
Both China and the EU vow to work as a global collaboration under the World Health Organization in terms of accelerating the development and manufacture of Covid-19 vaccines, and assuring fair and equitable access for every country in the world. It’s about making the vaccine a global public good.
It is also important to remind here in this article that the Extraordinary China-Africa Summit on Solidarity Against Covid-19 was held in June 2020, making China the only major country that convened a summit with countries across Africa in 2020. China has provided rounds of high-demand supplies to all African countries and the African Union to help them combat Covid-19, and African countries have also been firm in their support to China’s efforts on fighting against the pandemic.
Last December, during his annual media conference, President Vladimir Putin made it known that Russia’s readiness to help foreign countries including Africa. With regard to cooperation with other countries, it would boost the technological capabilities, enterprises to produce the vaccine, foreign countries would invest their own money into expanding their production capacities and purchasing the corresponding equipment, he explained.
Foreign countries would be investing in these projects: the enlargement of production facilities and the purchase of equipment.
“As for cooperation with foreign countries: nothing is stopping us from manufacturing vaccine components at facilities in other countries precisely because we need time to enhance technological capacities of our vaccine manufacturing enterprises. This does not hinder vaccination in the Russian Federation in any way,” Putin said.
According to January report from the Tass News Agency, the Russian Direct Investment Fund has only registered the first Russian vaccine Sputnik V in Africa.
“Russian Direct Investment Fund announces the first registration of Sputnik V in Africa. Ministry of Pharmaceutical Industry of Algeria registered Sputnik V on January 10th,” as follows from a post on their official Twitter account.
According to the Russian Direct Investment Fund, the registration was done under the accelerated Emergency Use Authorization procedure. This procedure was also used to register this vaccine in Argentina, Bolivia, and Serbia. The Fund said that supplies to Algeria would be possible thanks to its international partners in India, China, South Korea and other countries.
Writing under the headline “Africa’s Road to Recovery in 2021 Is a Fresh Start” published by Chatham House, Dr Alex Vines, the Director for the Africa Programme at Chatham House, said many African countries would be much more seriously affected by the socioeconomic consequences of the global economic slowdown triggered by the pandemic. Even before Covid-19 hit, an increasing number of African countries were indebted and financially stressed.
He wrote that African debt would become a greater global concern in 2021 as many African states remain the world’s poorest and most fragile and have been hard hit by the economic and financial costs imposed by the pandemic.
In his analysis, Dr Vines further pointed out that 2021 will also see increased geopolitical rivalry for influence in Africa.
This will include competition over generosity, ranging from positioning over debt cancellation to providing Covid-19 vaccines. China has its Sinopharm vaccine and has already signed up to Covax, the international initiative aimed at ensuring equitable global access. The Russians have their Sputnik V vaccine, the UK has its AstraZeneca and University of Oxford vaccine, and the US the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech (with Germany) vaccines.
Reports from Quartz also said Africa appears not part of the supply priorities of the Pharmaceutical companies producing the foremost Covid-19 vaccines. While Pfizer-BioNTech has offered to supply just 50 million Covid-19 vaccines to Africa starting from March to the end of this year, Moderna and AstraZeneca have not yet allocated supplies for Africa. AstraZeneca directed the African Union (AU) to negotiate with the Serum Institute of India for its vaccine to see if they can get a deal. Serum Institute of India has earlier obtained the license to produce the AstraZeneca vaccine.
The Quartz report said most African countries mainly relied on the COVAX co-financing public-private facility backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to enable rapid and equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines for lower income countries. The facility promised access to vaccines for up to 20% of participating countries’ population with an initial supply beginning in the first quarter of the year to immunize 3% of their population. However, COVAX is underfunded, and these countries must look for other avenues to access more doses to vaccinate the 50% of their population in order to reach immunity.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, several countries around the world have been making efforts to facilitate local vaccine development, clinical trials, and some had made upfront payments for vaccines to encourage early production. Outside of South Africa, most African economies have played too little or no role at all in the development of Covid-19 vaccines and had likewise made little or effort to secure vaccines while other economies around the world were doing so.
For instance, a globally respected genomic and infectious disease laboratory in Nigeria announced the development of a Covid-19 vaccine in September that is 90% effective against the virus in the preclinical trial but it has not been able to carry out clinical trials due to lack of support and funding.
While Kenya recently announced that through the COVAX facility, it ordered 24 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, with supply expected to start arriving in the second week of next month, several African countries are opting for vaccines from India, Russia, and China. This is despite skepticism about the vaccines from Russia and China in particular. Both countries rolled out their vaccines without phase 3 clinical trial results that confirm the vaccine effectiveness.
South Africa said it made a deal with Serum Institute India and will be getting 1.5 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine for its health workers starting this month. The country, which is going is also in talks with Russia and China to procure vaccines. Currently, Guinea is testing the Russian vaccine, Sputnik V and has ordered 2 million doses.
Morocco has ordered 65 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine from China, and AstraZeneca vaccine from Serum Institute India. Egypt plans to buy 40 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine, has already received 50,000 doses of the vaccine in December, and expecting another 50,000 in the second or third week of this month when vaccination will commence. Nigeria says vaccine access was in its discussions this week with the Chinese foreign minister during his visit to the county, according to the report from Quartz.
Besides the fact that Africa has registered its three million cases, Africa still behind the United States and European countries, and Asian countries such as China and India when it comes to the Covid-19 outbreak. For many African countries, it is still the time to reflect on African countries’ responses to Covid-19. Although it has abundant resources, Africa remains the world’s poorest and least developed continent, and worse with poor development policies. It is time to prioritize and focus on sustainable development.
Significantly, the global pandemic has exposed the weaknesses in Africa’s health system, adversely affected its economic sectors, it is therefore necessary for African leaders, the African Union (AU), regional organizations and African partners be reminded of issues relating to sustainable development and integration. It sets as a reminder to highlight and prioritize the significant tasks set out by the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
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Kester Kenn Klomegah, a former regional bureau correspondent for Inter Press Service (IPS), is now a frequent and passionate contributor to Global Research.
U.S. President Donald Trump and his entourage have evidently lost the “war at home”. The internal struggle is all but entirely concluded, and the victors are Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party.
However, Trump and Co., in their last days in office are still dead set on proving they are in charge of the Middle East, and on guaranteeing that their “maximum pressure campaign” on Iran continues. And both sides are flexing muscles showing that they are ready for military confrontation at any moment.
Tehran revealed its new helicopter carrier – the Makran, as well as a brand-new missile launching warship – the Zereh. Iran continues amassing forces along its sea border in the Persian Gulf and is tightening its grip on the Strait of Hormuz.
US Satellite imagery has revealed an increase in activity by IRGC vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.
In just the first days of the year, Iran carried out a large-scale drone drill, showcasing loitering munitions and more, closely followed by a naval exercise.
The elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps revealed their own underground missile base near the Persian Gulf, promising to realize their threat of turning the US aircraft carriers into “sinking submarines.”
On its part, the United States sent their nuclear submarine, the USS Georgia, loaded to the brink with Tomahawk missiles, accompanied by two guided missile destroyers, to the Persian Gulf.
They joined the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier, which was initially set to depart, but which has instead remained.
To top it all off, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that the new “home base” of Al-Qaeda is Iran and went pretty close to claiming that Iran was even behind the organization of 9/11.
That took place just days after Pompeo vowed to designate Yemen’s Houthis, longstanding Iranian allies, as a terrorist organization. Hezbollah is also on high alert. Its Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah vowed to support Iran and thanked it again for its support.
Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei warned the US against “extraterritorial adventurism” and its actions do appear to be evidence of that.
At the same time, Donald Trump is desperate for a “win” or at least to show himself as a decision-maker, after being banned from all social media. It could also be his aim to damage the relations between Tehran and Washington beyond repair.
Incoming President Joe Biden is expected to attempt to rejoin the Iran Nuclear Deal in one way or another, which could lead to improving relations between the two sides and bring a semblance of calm to the Middle East.
There is no certainty that this would happen and, depending on which actions would be undertaken by both Iran and the USA, this could also contribute to a deepening rift between the two.
In regard to the conflict between Iran and Israel, the parliament in Tehran voted on a resolution to end the state of Israel by 2041. While Biden is expected to be less supportive of Tel Aviv than Trump, the United States will remain Israel’s key ally. Therefore, an end to the conflict between the sides is as unlikely as ever, but Israel may, for the first time in a while, be on retreat.
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A figure like Benito Mussolini could only have taken power in a nation plagued by severe illness. Italy, a resource poor state, had been virtually bankrupted by expenditure in World War One, with the Liberal-led Italian governments dispensing with more money on the conflict than during the previous half a century combined.
Italy suffered more than 1.5 million casualties in the war. Those Italian soldiers who returned home found a country where divisions ran deep, unemployment was high, opportunities were few, and inflation was soaring. It was a breeding ground for extremists to emerge, as would occur further north in Germany, one of the most harmful side effects of the war.
Despite being on the “winning side”, much of the Italian public felt their nation was then robbed at Versailles, in June 1919, by America, Britain and France – who shared almost all of the spoils of war among themselves with the Treaty of Versailles ratified.
As the war was concluding, Mussolini had looked coldly at the fractured society that lay before his eyes in Italy. He surmised that a determined, ruthless man like himself could forge a pathway to power. Mussolini was a cynical opportunist and shrewd operator who possessed notable journalistic skills. The future Duce (“leader”) also had a psychopathic streak, as revealed by his bulging, coal black eyes and sometimes timid disposition. A good psychiatric nurse would have recognised the warning signals by observing him.
Unlike with Hitler, Mussolini had no real loyalty to a particular ideology. It was inevitable that he would abandon his pre-1914 Marxist tendencies, and shift far off to the right. Mussolini was concerned more than anything with himself, and wanted power for its own sake. He intended to do so by the illegal route, a coup d’etat. By the late summer of 1922, his Blackshirts had eradicated all active resistance on the streets through militant means.
With the left in Italy beaten by force, Mussolini’s three other adversaries could not be dealt with in such a manner: the Roman Catholic Church, the Monarchy and the liberals. Mussolini won over the Church and the Monarchy by renouncing his anti-Catholicism and anti-Monarchism, while offering them concessions, allowing those power-hungry and vain institutions to retain some influence in Italy.
The historian and anthropologist David Kertzer, who has analysed relations between Italian fascism and Roman Catholicism, said that “The key ingredient to Mussolini really becoming a dictator was the Church” and without its collaboration his autocracy “wouldn’t have happened. Or it could have been stopped”. To hide the truth, various myths have since been pushed by Roman Catholic apologists, claiming that religious leaders were against fascism from the outset. In actual fact the opposite was the case as, “The Church was incorporated into the state under Mussolini”, Kertzer continued, while the Duce and Pope Pius XI “came to depend on one another, in a sense”. (1)
With the Church and Monarchy on board, Mussolini had the appearance of respectability with those who counted, leaving the liberals checkmated. He provided the final blow through his March on Rome during 28 October 1922. Once Mussolini entered office, he would enjoying increasing support from the leading Western powers.
Mussolini’s coup was described by the onlooking US ambassador to Italy, Richard Washburn Child, as “a fine young revolution here. No danger, plenty of enthusiasm and colour. We all enjoy it” (2). The New York Times, reflecting standard US media coverage, commented that the Blackshirts had achieved a “revolution of the peculiar and relatively harmless Italian type”, which, over the past three and a half years, had resulted in widespread violence and several thousand deaths.
The fascists’ arrival ended Washington’s fears of another Bolshevik-style takeover, such as had occurred in Russia five years before in October 1917. A top level inquiry, conducted by US president Woodrow Wilson‘s administration in December 1917, warned of Italy that it poses “the obvious danger of social revolution and disorganisation”, as labour power intensified. A US State Department official observed privately, “If we are not careful we will have a second Russia on our hands”, adding that “The Italians are like children” and should be “assisted more than almost any other nation”.
Mussolini’s street brawlers quickly solved the problem. The US Embassy in Rome reported that the fascists are “perhaps the most potent factor in the suppression of Bolshevism in Italy”, expressing mild concern regarding the “enthusiastic and violent young men” comprising the Blackshirts. The US Embassy elaborated further on the appeal of fascism to “all patriotic Italians”, simple people who “hunger for strong leadership”. (3)
US corporations flocked to invest in Mussolini’s Italy. The American historian and analyst Noam Chomsky wrote,
“As fascist darkness settled over Italy, financial support from the US government and business climbed rapidly. Italy was offered by far the best postwar debt settlement of any country, and US investment there grew far faster than in any other country, as the fascist regime established itself, eliminating labor unrest and other democratic disorders”. (4)
The irresistible attraction of big business towards fascist rule, like moths to a flame, tells its own story. With Mussolini one year in power, the US Embassy eulogised in late 1923, “The results have been excellent, and during the last 12 months there has not been a single strike in the whole of Italy” (5). The Embassy believed that Mussolini was becoming a success because of his destruction of labour power, and therefore the erosion of a key democratic process.
The new US Ambassador to Italy from 1924, Henry Fletcher, outlined a central factor of American foreign policy which resurfaced for decades to come. Ambassador Fletcher informed the US Secretary of State, Frank Kellogg, that the choice in Italy is “between Mussolini and fascism and Giolitti and socialism”; Giovanni Giolitti being Italy’s former left-leaning prime minister. Ambassador Fletcher, and Secretary of State Kellogg, preferred the dictatorial Mussolini over the liberal-minded Giolitti.
Fletcher thought that the Italian population desired “peace and prosperity” under Mussolini in comparison to “free speech, loose administration” and “the danger and disorganisation of Bolshevism”. Kellogg, who served as US Secretary of State from 1925 to 1929, agreed with Fletcher, designating all opposition groups to Mussolini as consisting of “communists, socialists and anarchists” who must be prevented from attaining power (6). The real fear of elites, such as Fletcher and Kellogg, was the threat “to the very survival of the capitalist order” that Bolshevism supposedly presented.
With the Great Depression biting deep across Europe from early 1930, Mussolini’s regime received even greater praise from establishment circles. American diplomat Alexander Kirk wrote in 1932, “On all sides it is agreed that the future welfare of Italy is safe as it could humanly possibly be in the hands of Mussolini, but if anything should happen to him, what then? (7)”. Perish the thought.
In 1933 the New York Times Magazine noted approvingly, “there is no limiting condition imposed on any fascist project” in Italy and “whatever Mussolini commands is executed without being hampered by problems, practical or financial”. The New York-based Fortune Magazine, a major US business journal, devoted a full special issue to fascist Italy in 1934. It declared that, “The Wops are unwopping themselves”. A “wop” is a derogatory term for an Italian, and the headline suggested that under Mussolini the Italian people are no longer backward and dismal.
Between 1925 and 1938, Mussolini’s economic strategy had actually lowered the real wages of Italian workers by 11%. Before the Great Depression had even struck, the numbers of Italian unemployed under Mussolini were rising fast – more than doubling in the space of two years, from 181,000 out of work in 1926, to 439,000 in 1928. By 1932, over 1.1 million Italians would be unemployed (8), so much then for the immunity of fascist Italy to the Depression.
Mussolini’s policies had also driven up the cost of production, while his stabilisation of the currency at 90 lire to the pound “placed tremendous strain on the Italian economy”, as recognised by academic and scholar David F. Schmitz, who has closely studied US foreign policy with Mussolini. The Duce was able to keep the currency stable only because he took drastic actions, like incurring severe inflations followed by deflations.
All of this had somehow escaped the attention of the Western business press; in spite of telling public comments from exiled Italian historians, like Gaetano Salvemini. In 1932 Salvemini informed the US think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, that “business in Italy has been hit by the depression as elsewhere” and “is just as bad as here in the United States”.
National debt in Mussolini’s Italy was growing year-on-year, while he placed the Italian economy increasingly on a war footing; “this military dilettante”, as Hitler’s close adviser Wilhelm Keitel contemptuously described Mussolini, was seeking to create a 20th century Roman Empire by force of arms. Schmitz discerned that, “American officials, impressed by the political stability of Italy, ignored such warnings of trouble”. (9)
As early as 1923 Mussolini “made a very favourable impression” on US delegates, according to Morgan Bank representative Nelson Dean Jay, after the Duce delivered the opening address at the International Chamber of Commerce in Rome. Why had Mussolini so impressed? During his speech, he said it was time for European governments to privatise enterprises that had been nationalised during World War One. The German military leader, Erich Ludendorff, whose reign expanded across most of Europe in the war, had nationalised an array of industries in central and eastern Europe (10), including newspaper and cigarette companies. This process, of placing industry under state control, was later reversed after Ludendorff was forced to resign at war’s end. For Western elites, privatisation ruled.
From left to right: Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano, as they prepare to sign the Munich Agreement (CC BY-SA 3.0 de)
The prominent US judge, Elbert Henry Gary, a co-founder of the US Steel Corporation, said of Mussolini while on a trip to Rome in 1923, “A master hand has, indeed, strongly grasped the helm of the Italian state”. Judge Gary felt “like turning to my American friends and asking them whether they don’t think we, too, need a man like Mussolini” (11). The judge was obviously impressed by Mussolini’s ability to crush labour strikes.
Henry Stimson, the US Secretary of State and future Secretary of War, outlined in 1933, “American relations with Italy were of the most cordial character”. After World War Two, Stimson recalled that he and US president Herbert Hoover believed Mussolini to be “a sound and useful leader”. When US General Smedley Butler made unflattering remarks about Mussolini in 1931, Stimson went so far as to bring court-martial proceedings against him.
Hoover’s successor Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democratic president, labelled Mussolini an “admirable Italian gentleman” in 1933, as Washington’s support for the dictator continued. Roosevelt’s Ambassador to Italy, Breckinridge Long, was enthusiastic about the “new experiment in government” that fascism presented which “works most successfully in Italy”.
The US State Department considered Mussolini’s murderous 1935 invasion of Ethiopia a “magnificent” achievement, and that the Blackshirts “brought order out of chaos, discipline out of licence, and solvency out of bankruptcy”. In 1937, the State Department regarded both Italian and German fascism as political movements which “must succeed or the masses, this time reinforced by the disillusioned middle classes, will again turn to the Left”. (12)
In 1939 as a second war loomed, president Roosevelt said that Italian fascism was “of great importance to the world” but was “still in the experimental stage” (13). Powerful multi-millionaire American bankers, like Thomas Lamont for example, was a fervent Mussolini admirer. Lamont, a partner of US banking institution J.P. Morgan, called Mussolini “a very upstanding chap” who had “done a great job for Italy” with his “sound ideas”. Otto Kahn, another influential US banker, praised Italy under “the clear sighted and masterful guidance of that remarkable man, Benito Mussolini”.
Backing for Mussolini likewise extended across the British establishment. Mussolini’s ties to London in fact date to 1917, when he was hired in the autumn of that year as a British agent by MI5, the intelligence service (14). The then 34-year-old Mussolini, as editor of the Il Popolo d’Italia newspaper in Milan, was paid £100 a week by MI5 for at least a year, equivalent to £7,000 weekly today. These payments were dispensed to ensure that Mussolini would continue publishing warmongering articles, urging Italy to remain on the Allied side against Germany.
British funds to Mussolini were authorised by the Conservative politician Samuel Hoare, MI5’s man in Rome. Mussolini told Hoare, an MP, that he would send Italian Army veterans to beat up peace protesters, news that apparently did not discourage his British paymasters.
Italy’s dictator received glowing plaudits from high-ranking British statesmen, such as Conservative Party MP Winston Churchill. In 1927 the 52-year-old Churchill, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, embarked on a visit to Rome where he met the Duce. Churchill subsequently informed the press,
“I could not help being charmed, like so many other people have been, by Signor Mussolini’s gentle and simple bearing and by his calm and detached pose, in spite of so many dangers and burdens… If I had been an Italian, I am sure that I should have been wholeheartedly with you from start to finish, in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism”. (15)
Churchill’s obsequious comments are perhaps not surprising, considering that he hated trade unionists, socialists and communists as much as Mussolini did. The English educator John Simkin wrote, “The historical record shows that Churchill was a great admirer of fascism”, as revealed in addition by “his speeches and articles he produced in the 1920s and 1930s”, including letters to his wife (16). Much of this has been disappeared from history, however.
“Signor Mussolini” would only become a problem for Churchill and colleagues in the latter stages of his fascist rule, when British interests were threatened by the despot’s colonial ambitions.
Chomsky reflected that,
“Mussolini was portrayed as a ‘moderate’ with enormous popular appeal, who had brought efficient administration and prosperity, slaying the beast and opening the doors to profitable investment and trade”. (17)
Conservative Party MP Austen Chamberlain, the British Foreign Secretary from 1924 to 1929, was a personal friend of Mussolini’s. Chamberlain, a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925, had twice served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was the half-brother of future prime minister Neville Chamberlain.
As Foreign Secretary, Austen Chamberlain said of Mussolini, “I am confident that he is a patriot and a sincere man; I trust his word when given, and I think that we might easily go far before finding an Italian with whom it would be as easy for the British government to work” (18). Ronald Graham, the British Ambassador to Italy from 1921 to 1933, also viewed the fascist dictatorship with approval. The Eton-educated Graham dispatched to London a number of supportive accounts of Mussolini’s rule, which were read eagerly by British Foreign Office and Cabinet officials.
With Mussolini having consolidated his power, the London-based newspaper the Times, one of England’s leading dailies, outlined its view in June 1928 that Mussolini was “indefatigable and successful” in securing Italy’s place as a major state. The London Times, bought in 1922 by wealthy US-born Conservative politician John Jacob Astor, was clearly pro-Mussolini. The Times applauded the dictator’s “wonderful judgment”, observing that he even had “a sense of humour”; while the newspaper was worried that Mussolini’s regime could fall some day, calling it “too horrible to contemplate”; the Times praised him again in February 1929 for his “great daring and great statesmanship”. (19)
In December 1928 the Daily Telegraph professed Mussolini to be an “uncompromising realist” who had an “honourable record” of peaceful intent. Conveniently forgotten was Mussolini’s invasion and bombardment of the Greek island of Corfu, in autumn 1923, which resulted in over a dozen civilian deaths.
The Telegraph, moreover, approved of Mussolini’s labour laws, which it considered a “daring innovation” rooted in “pure patriotism”. The anti-fascist historian Salvemini remarked in 1936 that the Telegraph “always backed Mussolini”. Italian fascism was firmly supported by other British newspapers, like the extreme anti-Bolshevik Daily Mail and Morning Post, the latter taken over in 1937 by the Telegraph. Australian author Richard Bosworth, who focuses on fascist Italy, revealed that the only mainstream British journal which condemned Mussolini outright was, “The Spectator, whose early enthusiasm for Mussolini had waned”. (20)
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Notes
1 Alex Floyd, “A Communion of Dictators Binds Fascism and the Catholic Church”, Vineyard Gazette, 30 July 2015
2 David F. Schmitz, “A Fine Young Revolution”: The United States and the Fascist Revolution in Italy, 1919-1925, Radical History Review, 1 May 1985
3 Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (Vintage, New edition, 3 Jan. 2006) p. 38
4 Ibid.
5 Edwin P. Hoyt, Mussolini’s Empire: The Rise and Fall of the Fascist Vision (Wiley; 1st edition, 2 Mar. 1994) p. 87
6 Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, p. 39
7 David F. Schmitz, The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940 (University of North Carolina Press, 30 Jan. 1988) Chapter 5, Italy and the Great Depression
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Donald J. Goodspeed, Ludendorff: Soldier: Dictator: Revolutionary (Hart-Davis; 1st edition, 1 Jan. 1966) p. 138
11 Schmitz, The United States and Fascist Italy, Chapter 3, the United States
12 Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (Penguin, 1 Jan. 2004) p. 68
13 Ibid.
14 Tom Kington, “Recruited by MI5: The name’s Mussolini. Benito Mussolini”, The Guardian, 13 October 2009
15 Tom Behan, The Camorra: Political Criminality in Italy (Routledge; 1st edition, 18 Aug. 2005) p. 34
16 John Simkin, “Was Winston Churchill a supporter or opponent of Fascism?” Spartacus Educational, September 1997 (updated January 2020)
17 Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, p. 39
18 Lawrence R. Pratt, East of Malta, West of Suez: Britain’s Mediterranean Crisis, 1936-1939 (Cambridge University Press; 1st edition, 13 Oct. 2008) p. 16
19 R. J. B. Bosworth, The British press, the Conservatives and Mussolini, 1920-1934, Jstor, pp. 172 & 174
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