Global Research

During World War I (1914-1918) and the immediately following years (1919-1921), racial tensions escalated inside the United States resulting in numerous efforts by white racists to contain and in many cases remove the presence of African Americans.

One of the most violent disturbances occurred in late May and early June of 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma where it is estimated that approximately 300 people were massacred when white mobs, which included law-enforcement agents and National Guard, assaulted the socially burgeoning and self-reliant Black community.

In recent months, forensic specialists and archaeologists have been engaged in attempts to locate unmarked mass graves where some of the victims were buried. Since July, scientists believe that some of the remains have been located and are seeking the legal requirements necessary to conduct further exhumations and testing.

Phoebe Stubblefield, a forensic anthropologist, has been involved in revealing the truth surrounding the massacre for over two decades. She was present at the Oaklawn cemetery, where the victims are said to have been buried, when the first indications of the remains were found in coffins.

The business district along Greenwood Avenue in Tulsa had become known as “Black Wall Street” due to its thriving independent small businesses which largely served an African American community forced by segregation laws to remain insulated. Despite its adherence to the strict edicts of Jim Crow, the white ruling class interests apparently felt threatened by the initiatives of African Americans who had built their own small enterprises, independent religious institutions, and other organizations.

The centenary of this horrendous series of events slated to be commemorated in another six months, has prompted a reexamination of the Tulsa massacre, falsely described in years past as a “riot.” The only “riot” which took place was the invasion of the African American community by armed racist mobs which looted and burned homes, churches and businesses, while murdering hundreds of people. Thousands of Black people were placed in an open-air detention facility in the aftermath of the events where many remained for several days.

Official accounts of the incident narrated by the white establishment in Oklahoma, denied the scale of the violence including the sheer destruction of property and the number of killings. Nonetheless, oral and documented histories by African Americans have always acknowledged the depth of the concerted attacks and the large number of deaths at the hands of the racists.

A series of documentaries and research studies have revealed the level of carnage carried out during the Tulsa unrest. During the late 1990s, the State of Oklahoma appointed a commission to reconstruct the events of May-June 1921. (See this)

A commission report issued in 2001 provided riveting accounts of the developments which sparked the murderous mobs and the efforts to suppress the actual horrors committed against the African American community. The racist vigilantes and police agents were acting in response to allegations that a young African American had assaulted a white woman on an elevator in the downtown area.

Flames across the Greenwood section of Tulsa (Source: Public Domain)

Corporate newspaper accounts at the time evoked the racist myths surrounding the propensity for Black males to assault innocent white women and called upon the authorities to take immediate action. After the youth who was accused of the assault was arrested, armed African Americans descended on the local jail to prevent a lynching of the man held in detention. Soon there were clashes resulting in shots being fired by African Americans and whites. During the subsequent hours and days, the racist militias invaded the African American community where they engaged in a reign of terror. Later there were reports of airplanes flying overhead in the Greenwood neighborhood where incendiary devices were dropped on homes and businesses.

Tulsa Was Not an Isolated Case

The years between WWI and 1921 were marked by racist attacks on African American communities throughout the U.S. where many were displaced, injured and killed. During the same year that the U.S. entered the first imperialist war, 1917, white racist mobs attacked African American communities in East St. Louis (Illinois), Chester (Pennsylvania), Lexington (Kentucky), Philadelphia, among other cities and rural areas.

After the conclusion of WWI, a renewed round of racial violence occurred across the country. In Elaine, Arkansas, where dozens and perhaps hundreds of African American tenant farmers were massacred after attempting to form a union of sharecroppers and domestic workers, it would take the intervention of anti-lynching fighter Ida B. Wells-Barnett along with the NAACP to prevent the execution of several Black men accused of insurrection. Chicago and Washington, D.C. were some of the worst cities affected when African Americans fought pitched battles with white vigilantes, police officers and National Guard soldiers in the summer of 1919.

These racially motivated conflicts coincided with both an upsurge in industrial labor actions and the continuation of state repression which intensified during the War. Thousands of opponents of U.S. involvement in WWI were imprisoned and deported by the government in 1917-1918. The-then Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer gained a horrendous reputation for anti-Black and anti-Labor political investigations and prosecutions. The Palmer Raids of 1919 were specifically designed to thwart the organization of the working class along with the struggle for equality and self-determination among African Americans.

Consequently, the situation in Tulsa in 1921 was reflective of the generally repressive atmosphere prevailing in the U.S. Therefore, it is not surprising that the authorities in Oklahoma went to great lengths to conceal the crimes committed against the African American people in Tulsa.

Live Science magazine published an article on the research being done in the Sexton section of Oaklawn Cemetery in Tulsa. The report notes that: “The Tulsa race massacre wasn’t officially recognized by the state until 2001, and historians have claimed accounts of the violence were suppressed. But in recent decades, Oklahoma and the city of Tulsa have tried to better come to terms with this brutal part of their history. It’s thought that most people who were alive at the time have now passed away; one of the last known survivors, the psychologist and professor Olivia Juliette Hooker, died in 2018 at the age of 103.” (See this)

Reparations Recommended and Denied

After the first commission report in 2001, it was recommended that reparations be paid to the survivors of the 1921 Tulsa massacre. Yet there is no record of any reparations given to African Americans living in Tulsa at the time or their descendants.

Leading up to the 100^th anniversary of the disturbances, a civil lawsuit has been filed with the lead plaintiff being a 105-year-old survivor of the unrest. Ms. Lessie Benningfield Randle, was a young child in 1921 when thousands of members of the white mob destroyed a 35-block area where more than 10,000 African Americans lived. She is thought to be one of only two survivors of the attacks.

The Guardian newspaper reported on the civil litigation saying: “Randle still experiences flashbacks of bodies stacked up on the street as the neighborhood burned, her attorneys said. Other plaintiffs include the great-granddaughter of J.B. Stradford, who owned the Stradford hotel in Greenwood, the largest black-owned hotel in the United States at the time of the massacre, and grandchildren of people killed. The lawsuit accuses the city of Tulsa, Tulsa county, the then serving sheriff of Tulsa county, the Oklahoma national guard and Tulsa regional chamber of being directly involved in the massacre. The defendants, lawyers allege, have ‘unjustly enriched themselves at the expense of the black citizens of Tulsa and the survivors and descendants of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre’.” (See this)

Advocates for African American Liberation and the fight for reparations will be following this most recent case very closely since its outcome will portend much for future claims. The movement for reparations to African people has grown in the last few years with demonstrations, conferences and lawsuits that span from the U.S. to the Caribbean and the African continent.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Smoldering ruins of African-American homes following massacre. (Source: Public Domain)

On Nov. 11, 2020, Billboard magazine reported that Ticketmaster, the world’s largest ticket agency, revealed it wants to require proof that ticket purchasers have tested negative for the SARS-CoV-2 virus within 24-72 hours before attending an event or have received a COVID-19 vaccine with a year of the event.¹ This would mean that gone are the days when the biggest concern for teens attending concerts was scraping together the money for overpriced tickets and pleading with their parents for permission to stay out late. Adults planning to attend a play in a theater or families going to football games together would have a lot more to worry about than what to wear or where to park.

However, the swift reaction from outraged consumers put pressure on Ticketmaster to walk back the earlier comments made by president Mark Yonich to Billboard that ticket purchasers to events would have their medical history accessed and screened by the U.S.-based ticket agency.

Yonich had told Billboard,

“We’re already seeing many third-party health care providers prepare to handle the vetting—whether that is getting a vaccine, taking a test, or other methods of review and approval—which could then be linked via a digital ticket so everyone entering the event is verified.” He added, “Ticketmaster’s goal is to provide enough flexibility and options that venues and fans have multiple paths to return to events, and is working to create integrations to our API and leading digital ticketing technology as we will look to tap into the top solutions based on what’s green-lit by officials and desired by clients.”

By Nov. 16, TicketNews reported that a statement was issued by Ticketmaster clarifying that the company was “just exploring the ability to enhance our existing digital ticket capabilities” and that event organizers, not Ticketmaster, would have the power to require testing or vaccination as a condition of attending an event:²

We are not forcing anyone to do anything. Just exploring the ability to enhance our existing digital ticket capabilities to offer solutions for event organizers that could include testing and vaccine information with 3rd party health providers. Just a tool in the box for those that may want to use. There is absolutely no requirement from Ticketmaster mandating vaccines/testing for future events… Ticketmaster does not have the power to set policies around safety/entry requirements, which would include vaccines and/or testing protocols. That would always be up to the discretion of the event organizer, based on their preferences and local health guidelines.

Ticketmaster Evaluating Partnerships with Health Companies

Regardless of the weak non-denial denial, it is a fact that Ticketmaster is evaluating options for partnering with health companies to offer concert halls, theaters, stadiums and other large public event organizers the option of requiring people purchasing tickets to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test or proof of vaccination. Ticket purchasers using Ticketmaster could be required to submit personal medical information and have a lab provide the COVID-19 test results or vaccination history to a third-party health company via a digital app.

The third-party health company would then relay the health information to Ticketmaster, which would issue digital tickets to purchasers who were vaccinated or tested negative for COVID-19. Tickets and entry to an event would be denied for those who tested positive or did not submit to testing or vaccination.³

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not yet approved the third-party health care companies that Ticketmaster would employ to collect data about ticket purchaser’s vaccine status or test results. The specific regulations, such as how far in advance testing must be done, would vary according to state laws. State health officials and event organizers would determine the new rules that would be in place at events, such as regulations regarding social distancing, staggered entrance times, contact tracing, mask requirements and sanitization.⁴

Event tickets would need to be purchased prior to submitting vaccination status or testing results to the third-party health care provider. Ticketmaster has not indicated how they would process payments or if they would refund ticket purchasers who tested positive or were unable to get tested or vaccinated prior to the event.⁵

Ticketmaster Denies Requiring COVID-19 Testing or Vaccination

After media outlets broke the story about Ticketmaster’s COVID-19 testing and vaccination plan, the news quickly generated pushback from consumers that it was an assault on medical privacy with substantial potential for abuse. The company then took steps to publicly deny it will require mandatory testing or vaccination of those purchasing tickets to attend events, claiming that providing health information to establish COVID-19 test results or vaccination status will be left up to the event organizer.

“Ticketmaster does not have the power to set policies around safety/entry requirements, which would include vaccines and/or testing protocols,” it said. “That is up to the discretion of the event organizer. Ticketmaster continues to work with event organizers on all COVID safety measures and it will be up to each event organizer to set future requirements, based on their preferences and local health guidelines.”⁶

Ticketmaster management further explained that they are looking into a digital medical status entrance requirement as one of several, “potential ideas” that would allow resumption of public events.⁷

Ticketmaster’s Use of SmartEvent Indicates Desire to Monitor Health Status of Ticket Holders

Despite denying that it plans to implement a digital health tracking system, it seems inevitable that Ticketmaster will use advanced digital technology to run events and monitor attendees. According to a recent press release by Ticketmaster:

Ticketmaster’s robust API capabilities combined with its foundation of digital ticketing allow for the roll out of new features at record speed. Operating in over 30 countries, Ticketmaster has a front-row seat to new tech, health and logistical developments around the world that may be ripe to integrate into its platform.⁸

In fact, Ticketmaster has already implemented SmartEvent, a digital platform that monitors events by determining seating capacity limits, staggering entry times and conducting contact tracing.⁹ Smart Event is essentially a remote box office that has a number of tools that can be used to optimize safety at events. Utilizing algorithms to determine the distance between seats, the Social Distance Seating Tool will set out safe seating arrangements at events.

The Timed Entry Tool will stagger attendees arrival times; the Entry Rate Monitoring Tools will prevent lines from being too crowded; and the Contactless Scanners will check guests in via their cell phone. SafeTix’s Secure Ticket Transfer, “gives organizers the capability to know every fan in the building” and easily conduct contact tracing.¹⁰ As many as 250 organizations including the NFL, MLS and universities have already started using SmartEvent.¹¹

As the world’s largest ticketing agency implements digital technology to monitor the health status of event attendees, NVIC co-founder and president Barbara Loe Fisher’s prophetic warning comes to mind…

Tomorrow, the “new normal” in America may well include the order to “Show me your vaccine papers before you can enter a store or restaurant, go to school, attend a football game, get on a plane, train or subway, obtain a driver’s license, be admitted to a hospital or nursing home, get a room at a hotel or walk on a public beach, if health policy and lawmakers do not use common sense to adopt a more balanced approach to dealing with a virus that, so far, has changed everything.¹²

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Notes

¹ Brooks D. How Ticketmaster Plans to Check Your Vaccine Status for Concerts: Exclusive. Billboard Nov. 11, 2020.

² Clark D. Ticketmaster Walks Back COVID Requirements After Fierce Backlash. TicketNewsNov. 15, 2020.

³ See Footnote 1.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Lam S. Live show behemoth Ticketmaster will require PROOF of vaccine or negative Covid-19 test to attend events – report. Reuters Nov. 12, 2020.

⁶ Neale M. Ticketmaster clarifies future safety policy for concert-goers. NME Nov. 12, 2020.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster Introduces ‘SmartEvent’ Solutions to Help Live Events Welcome Back Fans. Press Release Oct. 29, 2020.

⁹ Savage M. No, Ticketmaster won’t force you to have a Covid vaccine. BBC Nov. 12, 2020.

¹⁰ See Footnote 8.

¹¹ Iahn B. Ticketmaster Creates ‘Smartevent’ Solutions To Welcome Back Fans. The Music Universe Oct. 29, 20230.

¹² Fisher BL. How Fear of a Virus Changed Our World. NVIC Newsletter June 1, 2020.

Credits to the owner of the featured image

Dear President Hamilton,

Herewith I am submitting my petition in defense of academic freedom and free speech, prompted by my unfortunate experience at NYU since Sept. 20, when, as you are well aware, a student in my undergraduate propaganda course, “Mass Persuasion and Propaganda” (MCC-UE 1014), took to Twitter to demand that NYU fire me, for suggesting that the class look into the scientific studies of the effectiveness of masks against transmission of respiratory viruses. It was not the student’s tweets that decided me to publish the petition, but NYU’s response to them: a tweet of thanks from my department chair, with assurances that my department had made her grievance “a priority”; an email from Dean Jack Knott, and Dr. Carlo Ciotoli, to my other students (without myself on copy), hinting that I had dangerously misinformed them, and including links to studies that they should accept without question (studies that I also had encouraged them to read, albeit with an open mind); and pressure from my chair to cancel next semester’s propaganda course (which I’ve been teaching for over twenty years, usually twice a year at least) in favor of two sections of “Film: History and Form” (MCC-UE 1007).

Before giving you some sense of the diversity and eminence of many of the petition’s signatories, I feel it is appropriate to note what’s happened since I published it (although FIRE made you aware of it, in their comprehensive letter of Nov. 13). Evidently angered by its affirmation of my academic freedom, and my request that NYU respect that freedom, a majority of my department colleagues sent Dean Knott a letter on Oct. 21, urging him to order a “review” of my “conduct,” which they deem reprehensible not just because I had suggested that my students read those scientific studies, but, as they assert at length, because I am a menace in the classroom and beyond, engaging in “explicit hate speech,” “intimidation of students, staff and colleagues,” advocating for “an unsafe learning environment,” and otherwise behaving in a manner that bears no relation whatsoever to the way I teach, treat others generally, and always have done. They made that case in hopes that it will obviate my academic freedom, enabling whatever “disciplinary measures” NYU may deem “appropriate.” Although I explained to Dean Knott that my colleagues’ accusations are sheer fantasy, at the urging of NYU’s lawyers he complied with their demand, and ordered that review, which is ongoing.

To say that I am disappointed by my colleagues’ letter, and by Dean Knott’s response to it, is an understatement, as it appears to demonstrate that academic freedom is on thin ice at this university, where I’ve served on the faculty since 1997, and never have encountered anything like this, with my courses always heavily enrolled, with very positive responses from the students. My disappointment is compounded by my colleagues’ readiness to make up, or imagine, that I ever have committed any such transgressions as those which they impute to me, as well as by their eagerness to nullify my academic freedom, even as they claim to hold such freedom dear. (They are now up in arms over Zoom’s recent censorship of Palestinian activist Leila Khaled—censorship that I too have protested.) Their charges have been thoroughly refuted by many of my students, former and current, as well as many visitors to my classes through the years, in statements of support sent to Dean Knott. While that impressive chorus of defense is surely gratifying, I’d rather not have found myself in need of it.

Those many individual pleas that NYU respect my academic freedom are in accord with the view of the petition’s over (as of today) 17,700 signatories, who include professors, scientists, doctors, journalists and whistleblowers from all over the US and the world. The academics include economist James K. Galbraith, at the University of Texas and Bard College; Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia; Mark Edmundson, University Professor at the University of Virginia; Roberto Strongman, Associate Professor of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara; Ross Posnock, Anna S. Garbedian Professor of the Humanities at Columbia; Lynn Comerford, Professor of Human Development, and director of Women’s Studies, at California State University, East Bay; Benjamin Ginsberg, David Ginsberg Professor of Political Science, and Chair of the Hopkins Center for Advanced Governmental Studies in Washington, D.C., at Johns Hopkins; and faculty at schools as various as Trinity, Brown, Pace, University of Zurich, Ohio State, University of Bath, Wheaton College, Morgan State, University of Massachusetts (Amherst), East Carolina University, Virginia Commonwealth University and Okinawa Christian University.

The journalists who have signed the petition include Seymour Hersh, Sharyl Attkisson, Lewis Lapham (editor of Lapham’s Quarterly), Andrew Sullivan, Naomi Wolf, Stephen Jimenez, Kristina Borjesson, Celia Farber, Margaret Kimberly and Anne Garrison (editors at Black Agenda Report), Mnar Muhawesh (editor of Mint Press News), Max Parry, Max Blumenthal and Patrick Henningsen, among others. The scientists and physicians include Dr. David L. Katz, founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center at Griffin Hospital in Derby, CT (and formerly on the faculty at Yale); Dr. James C. Meehan, specialist in public health and ophthalmology, and former Associate Editor of the Journal of Ocular Immunology and Inflammation; Dr. Meryl Nass, biowarfare epidemiologist; and researchers and clinicians from Lynchburg, Santa Barbara, Green Bay and Lexington, Mass. to La Paz (Mexico), Madrid, Heilbronn, Trier, Changuinoa (Panama) and Rosebery in Australia.

Other noted signatories include Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Oliver Stone, Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama, Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, and prominent whistleblowers from the US government, including Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst; Coleen Rowley, former FBI Special Agent; Clement J. Laniewski, former Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army; Marshall Carter-Tripp, former senior State Department official; Elizabeth Murray, former CIA Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East; US Marine and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter; and Robert Wing, former State Department Foreign Service Officer (and NYU alumnus, who calls what has happened here a “travesty”).

Finally, Ralph Nader, although unable to sign the petition, has issued this statement of support, with his permission for me to use it publicly:

Academic freedom means the freedom to contest received opinion and official truths, on subjects of all kinds. Universities that seek to curb that freedom impede the education of their students and deprive society of invaluable research.

New York University and all universities must stand up to unfounded attacks on academic integrity and encourage professors to teach without interference or threats of punishment.

It is my hope that this petition will persuade you to act quickly to address its urgent plea that NYU respect my academic freedom, which you may do by halting the review demanded by my colleagues, with a public statement reaffirming NYU’s commitment to academic freedom, not only in my case but overall, whether certain students and/or faculty believe in it or not.

The petition is here. There are 17,700 signatories and counting.

Thank you for your time and attention. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Mark Crispin Miller

Department of Media, Culture and Communication

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Featured image is from drhurd.com

Un video, pubblicato il 23 novembre dai Sandia National Laboratories, mostra un caccia Usa F-35A che, volando a velocità supersonica a 3000 metri di quota, lancia una bomba nucleare B61-12 (dotata per il test di testata non-nucleare).

La bomba non cade verticalmente ma plana, finché nella sezione di coda si accendono dei razzi che le imprimono un moto rotatorio e la B61-12 (guidata da un sistema satellitare) si dirige sull’obiettivo che colpisce 42 secondi dopo il lancio.

Il test è stato effettuato il 25 agosto nel poligono di Tonopah nel deserto del Nevada.

Un comunicato ufficiale conferma il suo pieno successo: si tratta della prova di un vero e proprio attacco nucleare che il caccia effettua a velocità supersonica e in assetto stealth (con le bombe nucleari collocate nella stiva interna) per penetrare attraverso le difese nemiche.

La B61-12 ha una testata nucleare con quattro opzioni di potenza selezionabili al momento del lancio a seconda dell’obiettivo da colpire. Ha la capacità di penetrare nel sottosuolo, esplodendo in profondità per distruggere i bunker dei centri di comando e altre strutture sotterranee.

Il programma del Pentagono prevede la costruzione di circa 500 B61-12, con un costo stimato di circa 10 miliardi di dollari (per cui ogni bomba viene a costare il doppio di quanto costerebbe se fosse costruita interamente in oro). È stato ufficialmente annunciato che la produzione in serie della nuova bomba nucleare comincerà nell’anno fiscale 2022, che inizia il 1° ottobre 2021 (ossia tra undici mesi).

Non si sa quante B61-12 verranno schierate dagli Usa in Italia, Germania, Belgio e Olanda per sostituire le B61 il cui numero effettivo è segreto.

Foto satellitari mostrano che sono stati effettuati lavori di ristrutturazione nelle basi di Aviano e Ghedi in preparazione dell’arrivo delle nuove bombe nucleari, di cui saranno armati gli F-35A della US Air Force e, sotto comando Usa, quelli dell’Aeronautica italiana.

In quale situazione si troverà l’Italia, una volta che saranno schierati sul proprio territorio gli F-35A pronti all’attacco nucleare con le B61-12, è facilmente prevedibile. Quale base avanzata dello schieramento nucleare Usa in Europa diretto principalmente contro la Russia, l’Italia si troverà in una situazione ancora più pericolosa.

Dipenderà ancor più di prima dalle decisioni strategiche prese a Washington, che comportano scelte politiche ed economiche lesive della nostra sovranità e dei nostri reali interessi nazionali.

Dovrà accrescere la spesa militare dagli attuali 26 a 36 miliardi di euro annui, cui si aggiungeranno secondo i piani oltre 60 miliardi stanziati a fini militari dal Ministero dello sviluppo economico e tratti (più gli interessi) dal Recovery Fund.

L’Italia violerà ancor più di prima il Trattato di non-proliferazione, al quale ha aderito nel 1975 impegnandosi a «non ricevere da chicchessia armi nucleari né il controllo su tali armi, direttamente o indirettamente».

Rifiuterà ancora di più il recente Trattato Onu sulla abolizione delle armi nucleari, che stabilisce: «Ciascuno Stato parte che abbia sul proprio territorio armi nucleari, possedute o controllate da un altro Stato, deve assicurare la rapida rimozione di tali armi».

Per gettare un sasso nell’acqua stagnante di un parlamento che tace su tutto questo, l’on. Sara Cunial (Gruppo Misto) ha presentato una interrogazione a risposta scritta alla Presidenza del Consiglio e ai Ministeri della Difesa e degli Esteri.

Dopo aver esposto i fatti sopracitati, l’interrogazione chiede «se il Governo intende rispettare il Trattato di non-proliferazione delle armi nucleari, ratificato dall’Italia nel 1975; se intende firmare e ratificare il Trattato ONU sulla abolizione delle armi nucleari, che entra in vigore nel 2021; se intende far sì, in base a quanto stabiliscono tali trattati, che gli Stati uniti rimuovano immediatamente qualsiasi arma nucleare dal territorio italiano e rinuncino a installarvi le nuove bombe B61-12 e altre armi nucleari».

Mentre aspettiamo di leggere la risposta del Governo, negli Usa fanno gli ultimi test della Bomba, che ci verranno a mettere sotto i piedi.

The German Defense Minister’s undiplomatic threat that her country must negotiate “from a position of strength” with Russia, especially regarding military issues, triggered some harsh rebukes from Moscow which aimed to remind her of how unacceptable it is for Berlin to speak in such a way to the Eurasian Great Power.

US President Donald Trump is apparently set to slam the door and go to great lengths to show love to his friends in Tel Aviv before withdrawing from the White House.

On November 27, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a prominent Iranian professor of physics and quantum field theorist, was assassinated near the Iranian capital of Tehran. Formally, Fakhrizadeh was the head of its Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, while Israel and the U.S. insist that he headed the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Israeli media even called Fakhrizadeh “the Nuclear Soleimani” referring to the commander of the Iranian Qods Force, who was assassinated by a US drone strike in Iraq on January 3, 2020. That assassination almost led to a US-Iranian war and the White House even swallowed a ballistic missile strike on its bases in Iraq, while Iranian air defense forces accidentally shot down an airliner near Tehran. Fortunately, a larger war was avoided, but the region entered into a new spiral of tensions between the Israeli-US bloc and Iranian-led forces. The November assassination did not trigger an immediate military response from Tehran, but there are little doubts that it will also have negative consequences for regional stability.

According to US and Israeli media, the development of the Iranian nuclear program requires the following factors: time, money and specialists. Iran has already had a lot of time. Trump’s “maximum pressure campaign” was intended to target the ‘money’ factor, but Iran’s so-called resistance economy survived despite the pressure. Now, the US and Israel once again turned to the ‘specialists’ factor of this formula and they have capabilities to conduct politically-motivated assassinations as a part of what they call the ‘deterrence campaign’ against Iran.

Initial reports say that the car of Fakhrizadeh was targeted by a car bomb explosion and then was subjected to gunmen fire at Absard city. According to the Iranian Defense Ministry, Fakhrizadeh “was severely wounded in the course of the clashes between his security team and terrorists and was transferred to a hospital,” where he later succumbed to his wounds. Later it appeared in the unofficial version of events, claims that the attackers used a remotely-controlled machine gun that was installed in the trunk of a Nisan pickup. Then, the pickup and the gun were detonated. The Iranian Fars News report insists that the entire attack lasted for only 3 minutes and that no gunmen were involved.

The assassination demonstrates the particular gaps in the security of such prominent and high-ranking persons. It is no secret that the life of Fakhrizadeh was under threat for years, but he still moved around the country with a small security team with only two cars, and his car was not even armored. This posture may be partly explained by the cult of martyrdom on the all levels of Iranian society and the fact that Iranian officials are pretty close to ordinary people, especially in comparison with other Middle Eastern states. These factors allow the current political regime in Iran to resist unprecedented sanctions, political and even military pressure from its opponents, but at the same time creates additional security difficulties.

Immediately after the assassination, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Army were put on high alert and top Iranian officials vowed to take revenge for the attack. Also, on November 29, the Iranian Parliament decided to speed up the consideration of the bill that supposes to increase the level of uranium enrichment. As a “double urgency”, it was ratified with 232 votes from a total of 246 MPs attending the session. The final vote on the adoption of the law may take place on December 2. The bill states that Iran would now produce at least 120kg of uranium enriched to 20% per year.

In comparison, the Iranian nuclear deal, from which the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew, allowed Iran to enrich uranium to a maximum of 3.67%. In addition, under the bill in consideration, the government will have to put in operation one thousand additional centrifuges at the Natanz and Fordo nuclear facilities within a year. The bill also supposes an immediate return to the project for the reconstruction of the Arak nuclear reactor, which existed before the signing of the nuclear deal. Therefore, instead of slowing down the Iranian nuclear program, the assassination of Fakhrizadeh led to a public increase of the Iranian activity in the field. The United States and Israel will likely call these actions a great threat to global security and state that they are obliged to respond to the growing Iranian threat.

The only question is what do the Israeli and US leadership expect? Did they really believe that after the years of resistance and regional standoffs, that the Iranians would surrender after an assassination of one of their scientists?

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The ringleaders of the global conspiracy against us citizens have already pushed the realisation of their diabolical plans for a New World Order NWO and a One World Government based on the Chinese model as well as a “Great New Start” and a “Fourth Industrial Revolution”, the fusion of physical and digital identity (transhumanism), further than we suspect. WEF founder Klaus Schwab confirms this. (1)

Many of our fellow citizens wonder how evil came into the world and why a small clique of sinister figures can plunge the whole world into chaos when man is good by nature.

Since the exhortations of the human sense of community can be suppressed but never completely eradicated, social human nature will regain the upper hand in the long term. The gift of evolution is the moral awareness of the individual, the recognition of the responsibility of all to all. If we continue to nurture and strengthen community feelings and to place the human being more firmly in the social fabric, then the will to power and dominate over others will be limited by social bonds – and evil will not triumph.

How can the father of two children shoot babies?

In the blurb of Bernd Greiner’s book “Krieg ohne Fronten. The USA in Vietnam. I have died in Vietnam. But I have walked the face of the moon” is written:

“The images of destroyed villages, children burned by napalm, of a country that received more bombs than all the scenes of the Second World War put together, shape the memory of the Vietnam War and the years between 1965 and 1975. In an interview broadcast by CBS in 1969, the US soldier Paul Meadlo described the massacre of ‘My Lai’ as follows:”

“I had set my gun to automatic. So you can’t tell how many you shot. I shot maybe 10 or 15 of them.” – 

“Men, women and children?” –  “Men, women and children.” –

“And babies?” – “And babies.” –

“Are you married?” – “Yes.” –

“Children?” – “Two.” –

“How old?” – “The boy is two and a half, the girl one and a half.” –

“Then the question arises how the father of two small children can shoot babies.” – “I don’t know. It just happens.” –

“How many people were shot that day?” – “I estimate around 370.” (2)

The renowned American social psychologist Philip Zimbardo comment in his book “The Lucifer Effect. The power of circumstances and the psychology of evil” (2008) how we are all vulnerable to the temptations of “the dark side”. He explains that situational forces and group dynamic processes can work together to turn decent men and women into monsters. (3) Karl Marx – based on Ludwig Feuerbach – had long before him the view that the consciousness of man is shaped by social conditions (Being determines consciousness).

Alfred Adler: “Man is good by nature”

“Man is not evil by nature. Whatever mistakes a man may have made, he may be seduced by his erroneous view of life, it need not depress him; he can change. He is free to be happy and to please others.” (4)

This statement by the founder of individual psychology is an incontrovertible insight of scientific psychology: Man is a naturally social being, oriented towards the community of his fellow human beings and endowed with a rational faculty, with a natural inclination towards the good, the knowledge of truth and community life. This characteristic helps him to better recognise the laws of nature or what is right in nature. We need not be afraid of this person either. He wants to live in freedom and peace, without violence and war – just like we all do.

“Natural law”, a “right given by nature” says that there is something that is right by nature. It differs from the so-called “positive right” established by man in that it is due to man simply because he is human. Since it is not created by any ruler or majority decision of any kind, it is pre-state law. This means that the laws of a state must be measured critically against natural law. Knowing what is right by nature makes it possible to confront totalitarian ideologies and dictatorships from a firm human standpoint and to feel a sense of outrage against injustice and inhumanity. (5)

How did evil come into the world?

The religious myth of the West has traced the origin of violence and evil back to the fall of the first human beings. Expelled from paradise through their own fault, they knew what was good and what was evil. In another version of religious thinking, it is described how God created the world in all its perfection. But then one of his angels rebelled against him; it was Satan who was condemned to be the prince of the underworld. Since then, the power of light and the power of darkness have worked against each other, and their struggle has dominated the course of world history. But this religious myth does not help explain the evil.

In the 19th century, Charles Darwin recognised the breeding and selecting power of the “struggle for existence” in the animal world, which ensures the “survival of the fittest”. Some of his students also transferred this insight to the human world. They proclaimed the law of the struggle for existence and believed they had found the driving force of progress. The struggle of all against all would purify and elevate the human race. This ideology was adopted by the economic life of Manchester liberalism. But it is as false as it is inhuman. Research has now shown that in the animal kingdom not only the “struggle for life” but also the principle of mutual aid is effective.

The Russian anarchist, geographer and writer Prince Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) observed both nature and natural creatures and applied his findings to human beings. In his book “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution”, Kropotkin wrote that in nature and society there was by no means just a battle of all against all, but that the principle of “Mutual Aid” was also prevalent. Those living beings who implement this principle would survive more successfully. (6) The more highly organised living beings would live in associations, groups and herds. An instinct for herding has developed in them, which occasionally places species survival above self-preservation.

In the human world, social feelings and community ties certainly play as important a role as the will to power and self-interest. Since man is free to shape his own life, he has the possibility of choice; it is the possibility of good and evil. Man is not a priori destined to be a wolf or a lamb. If man does evil, he has chosen it beforehand; he has wanted it beforehand. Brutality on a human level is not fate, but the choice for evil. But why in the history of mankind has man repeatedly chosen evil?

The origin of evil is not in human nature, but in the conditions of existence that man found on earth at the beginning of time. Since he was helpless and abandoned to the overpowering forces of nature, he must have felt great fear of the world. This fear created the illusion of the gods, who were supposed to be helpful to mankind. It also unleashed a strong aggression, with the hostile environment constantly keeping the willingness to fight in check.

It was obvious to perceive other people as potential enemies. Added to this were the difficulties in obtaining food, which in some circumstances made the fight for the feeding ground necessary. So violence seemed to be a way out, a means to protect and preserve one’s own life. The temptation to violence was all the greater because the social bonds did not yet produce a firm cohesion. (7)

The human sense of community and the spirit of responsibility must put an end to violence

“The striving for domination”, writes Alfred Adler, the founder of individual psychology, “is a fatal illusion and poisons the coexistence of people. Whoever wants community must renounce the striving for power!” The “deepest idea of all culture” is the final elevation of the sense of community to a guiding idea. The development of culture consists essentially in making the voice of human conscience more and more audible and in replacing violence with the spirit of responsibility. From this awareness of the unity of all those who have the human face of the human race came the teachings of the moral leaders of humanity, the wisdom of Lao Tse, the commandment to love one’s neighbour and the innumerable forms of social life and behaviour in which the sense of community is expressed.

Among us human beings, social feelings and community solidarity certainly play just as important a role as the will to power and self-interest, for man is capable of devotion and self-sacrifice. All our endeavours in the world and in science should be guided by the principle that in future we should create a type of human being for whom – as Alfred Adler put it – a sense of community and human solidarity are as natural as breathing. (8)

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is an educational scientist and graduate psychologist.

Notes

(1) https://deutsch.rt.com/gesellschaft/109670-transhumanismus-wef-gruender-schwab-prophezeit/

(2) Greiner, B. (2017). War without fronts. The USA in Vietnam. Hamburg. Blurb text

(3) Zimbardo, Ph. (2008). The Lucifer Effect. The power of circumstances and the psychology of evil

(4) Alfred Adler quotes from Rattner, J. (1980). The individual psychology of Alfred Adler. Munich, p. 17; source: https://beruhmte-zitate.de/zitate/123126-alfred-adler-der-mensch-ist-von-natur-aus-nicht-bose-was-auch/

(5) http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=27120;

https://www.globalresearch.ca/dispel-the-magical-belief-in-author…-power-and-violence-strengthen-community-feelings/5729560?

(6) Kropotkin, P. (2011). Mutual help in the animal and human world. Grafenau; English original title: Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

(7) Leakey, R. E. / Lewin, R. (1978). How man became man. New insights into the origin and future of man. Hamburg

(8) Ansbacher, H. L. / Antoch, R. F. (eds.). (1982). Alfred Adler. Psychotherapy and education. Selected essays; Volume I: 1919-1929. Frankfurt

Iranian parliamentarians responded swiftly to last Friday’s assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh — more from the country’s ruling authorities highly likely.

According to Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, Fakhrizadeh was martyred by at least one explosion and gunfire from a number of assailants.

Condemnation followed by senior Iranian political and military officials, vowing retaliation.

Over the weekend, Iranian parliamentarians responded by overwhelmingly adopting legislation that includes the following provisions:

1. Voluntary implementation of the IAEA’s Additional Protocol (pertaining to verification of nuclear safeguards) to cease.

2. Producing and storing at least 120 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20% purity. More on this below.

3. Enriching amounts above 20% for legitimate industrial uses.

4. Requiring the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) to increase legitimate uranium enrichment of varying purity levels to at least 500 kilograms monthly.

5. At least 1,000 IR-2M centrifuge machines to be operating at the Natanz nuclear facility within three months.

6. Requiring at least 164 IR-6 centrifuges for R & D to be operating at the Fordow nuclear facility — increasing the number to 1,000 by March 2021.

7. Monitoring of Iranian nuclear sites will be allowed only according to Additional Protocol provisions.

8. Restoring the 40-megawatt Arak heavy water reactor to its pre-JCPOA condition.

9. If Iran’s earlier banking relations with Europe and EU oil purchases aren’t restored within three months of the new law’s adoption, voluntary adherence to the Additional Protocol will cease.

If P5+1 countries don’t don’t fully implement JCPOA provisions, further Iranian steps may be adopted.

Iranian parliamentarians called the new law a “strategic measure for the removal of (illegally imposed US and Western) sanctions.”

On Sunday, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said the following:

“The enemies of the Iranian people, once again by resorting to terror, proved that they are scared of the increase of Iran’s power and chose to remove our scientists to confront the nation.”

US-led Western countries won’t likely take positive steps toward Iran without its firm response to Fakhrizadeh’s assassination, he stressed.

Iranians have been harmed by the West “for more than four decades, and experience has proven that they have continued the path of their martyrs stronger than before,” Qalibaf added.

A “strong response that both deters them from possible future mistakes and takes revenge from them for these crimes” is necessary.

“(I)n addition to revenge from the perpetrators and commanders of the assassination of Martyr Fakhrizadeh, all relevant forces and organizations are duty-bound to turn the threat of this tragic loss into an opportunity to strengthen various economic, security, defense and nuclear fields.”

In response to unlawful Trump regime “maximum pressure” and breach of JCPOA provisions by Brussels, Iran exercised it legal rights under agreement.

JCPOA Article 36 states that if actions by its signatories “constitute significant non- performance, then (Iran) could treat the unresolved issue as grounds to cease performing its commitments under this JCPOA in whole or in part and/or notify the UN Security Council that it believes the issue constitutes significant non-performance.”

Article 26 states that if the US imposes new nuclear-related sanctions on Iran, it will constitute “grounds (for its authorities) to cease performing its commitments under this JCPOA in whole or in part.”

Because the JCPOA is binding international law, all world community nations are required to observe it.

In May 2018, the Trump regime illegally abandoned the landmark agreement.

EU JCPOA signatories Britain, France and Germany failed to fulfill their legally required obligations.

Increased uranium enrichment beyond the amount and level stipulated by the JCPOA is Iran’s legal right under Articles 26 and 36, as well as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

According to World Nuclear.org, “uranium used for nuclear weapons would have to be enriched in plants specially designed to produce at least 90% (purity) U-235.”

“Although 13 countries have enrichment production capability or near-capability, about 90% of world enrichment capacity is in” the US, Britain, France, Russia, and China.

Uranium enriched to 20% purity and other amounts above this level for industrial applications cannot be used for nuclear weapons development and production.

According to the Tehran Times on Sunday, “(s)everal Iranian officials called for an end to Iran’s cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),” adding:

Parliament Energy Committee head/former AEOI chief Fereydoun Abbasidavani tweeted that Fakhrizadeh’s martyrdom will change Tehran’s policies on the nuclear issue.

Separately, he said parliamentarians will focus on four issues:

“1. (S)tarting 20% (uranium) enrichment.

2. (E)xpelling all (IAEA) inspectors.

3. (E)nding cooperation with the Agency.

4. (W)ithdrawing from the JCPOA” — if the US, Britain and France continue breaching their obligations under its provisions.

The ball is in their court. Survival of the landmark agreement may depend on what actions they take — or don’t take — going forward.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from NIAC

Another Iranian nuclear scientist has been assassinated. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed by an elaborately planned and executed ambush. The complexity of the attack and the resources required to carry it out strongly indicate a state actor. Fingers of blame quickly pointed at a likely assassin: Israel. The United States was probably in some form of collaboration since it is widely considered that before Israel carries out such killings it informs the US.

Assassinations are nothing new to Israel or the US. The US admitted to the assassination of Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani earlier in 2020.

At the time of this writing, no one has admitted to the extra-judicial killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Usually targeted killings are carried out in the dark.

Currently, there is an attempt using the machinery of the state to try and beat down a man in the darkness of Belmarsh prison and a British kangaroo court in London. Big media, however, has marginalized coverage of the Assange case even though the outcome is bound to have an enormous impact on journalism.

Despite whatever charges Julian Assange may be accused of, it is well known that the WikiLeaks publisher was targeted for exposing the war crimes of the US government. In an upside-down Bizarro World, the screws are being ever so gradually tightened on Assange by the war criminals and their criminal accomplices. It is, in fact, a slow-motion assassination being played out before the open and closed eyes of the world.

Following the geopolitically coordinated undertaking to abrogate Assange’s asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Assange was arrested and imprisoned in Belmarsh maximum security prison for the relatively minor charge of skipping bail. [1] He continues to be held pending an extradition request from the US for violating its 1917 Espionage Act for “unlawfully obtaining and disclosing classified documents related to the national defense.”

Incarceration has been woeful for Assange in Belmarsh. The UN special rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Nils Melzer, has been highly critical of the treatment of Assange, describing it as “psychological torture.”

Since 2010, when Wikileaks started publishing evidence of war crimes and torture committed by US forces, we have seen a sustained and concerted effort by several States towards getting Mr. Assange extradited to the United States for prosecution, raising serious concern over the criminalisation of investigative journalism in violation of both the US Constitution and international human rights law.

Since then, there has been a relentless and unrestrained campaign of public mobbing, intimidation and defamation against Mr. Assange, not only in the United States, but also in the United Kingdom, Sweden and, more recently, Ecuador.

Melzer has called for the “collective persecution” to end.

The medical profession has also spoken out against the mistreatment of Assange. A top medical journal, The Lancet, carried the message of 117 physicians in its headline: “End torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange.”

The US extradition case against Assange was pursued during the Trump administration, but one should not expect clemency for Assange from president-elect Joe Biden. Biden has argued that Assange is “closer to being a high-tech terrorist than the Pentagon Papers.”

One brave Democrat, though, has bucked her party’s mainstream. The Hawaiian congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard introduced H.R. 8452, the Protect Brave Whistleblowers Act. Gabbard also called for the immediate dismissal of charges against Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.

Recently, circumstances have become bleaker for Assange because of a reported COVID-19 outbreak where “at least 56 people in his house block in Belmarsh prison, including staff and inmates, were found to have been infected.”

Wikileaks earlier reported that Assange, along with almost 200 other inmates of his house block, have been under lockdown since November 18.

Australia has done nothing for its citizen Assange. Australia is said to function at the behest of the US. This is so much so that Australia has put itself in a precarious economic situation with its largest trade partner, China. Furthermore, Australia has a long history of its own war criminalitythat it ignores.

What should people of conscience do? People opposed to war crimes; warring in general; persecution of publishers, journalists, and whistleblowers; and people who support freedom of the media and the right of the public to be informed should be doing what they can to bring about pardons for Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and other politically targeted prisoners of conscience.

Assange’s greatest “crime” was to reveal the US military establishment’s insouciance for innocent human life by releasing the video Collateral Murder.

COLLATERAL MURDER from Kristian Skylstad on Vimeo.

What about those of us who claim to stand for social justice and peace? Do we not have a responsibility to do what we can to stymie the stealthy assassination of a man by the military-industrial-governmental complex for exposing its murderous nature? Bystanding is immoral and cowardly. Do something; there are simple things that anyone can do. Write letters. Sign petitions. Speak out. Saving Assange, Manning, Snowden, and others persecuted by governments is saving our humanity; it is saving ourselves.

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

Note

1. For events preceding Assange’s stay in the Ecuadorian embassy see the timeline.

Featured image is from Lawyers for Assange

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.” – Aristotle

“Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.” — Francis Bacon

” If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?” – William Shakespeare

“There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

“It is essential that justice be done, it is equally vital that justice not be confused with revenge for the two are wholly different.” – Oscar Arias

“Justice is revenge.” — Saad Hariri

“Revenge is simply justice with teeth.” — Simon Green

The Ethics and Logic of Justice Versus the Persistence of Hatred and Revenge: An Idealistic Platform

The issue of justice is one of ethics and is basically founded on the human sense of fairness. It is something desired in every act or circumstance that respects the value of meaningful life both human and non-human. Justice is the very principle that sustains the condition of existence in its spontaneous flow towards higher and greater levels of refinement. It is a fundamental standard that bestows dignity to humanity. As such, human dignity is inalienable, inviolable, and thus, non-negotiable on the basis of the moral principle of justice.

Justice promotes human flourishing which, in a more comprehensive sense ties up and connects with ecological flourishing without which human flourishing doesn’t make sense at all. If ever there is a summum bonum or the highest good of morality, justice should stand as the uncontested beacon that gives direction to a more reasonable and proper understanding of the virtues of compassion, courage, freedom, honesty, humility, and responsibility, among others. In the light of justice, these virtues transcend their theoretical configurations and hence take their respective concrete forms of pragmatic expression in actual Sitz-im-Lebens. Justice, therefore, gives credence to and protects the essence of these virtues. From such a condition, justice itself draws its legitimacy as a supreme virtue that in turn should likewise be protected by the human agents who uphold and value it over and above the others.

Justice – as it is represented by the blindfolded woman holding up a weighing scale at the façades of halls of justice and supreme courts – is impartial and does not subjectively look at the superficial aspects of persons, things, and events. The weighing scale definitely represents the analytical character of justice with the “syllogistic” potency of a cold logic that takes its ethical signification as the major premise: 

“If x then y. And x. Therefore, y.” Or, “If x then y. And not y. Therefore, not x.” 

In other words, the “logic of justice” takes the same rational path trodden by a logical argument where something meaningful has to be proven (technically, the conclusion of a formal logical argument) through an orderly presentation of reliable pieces of evidence (technically, premises in a formal logical argument). As in the application of the formal logical procedure in true-to-life circumstances, the full satisfaction of the “logic of justice” is not simply hitched on an argument’s validity but more on its soundness.

All these matters henceforth considered, justice is by and large a virtue that transcends subjective perception. In this connection, there is supposed to be nothing emotional in the process of rendering justice to whom justice is due. Justice, as we have seen its objective configuration, follows a logical trajectory whose premises exactly lead to their inevitable conclusion. The true essence of absolute justice is devoid of subjective feelings and emotions. With this in mind, not a single matter of feeling or emotion may ever be construed to trigger an act of justice. Having the character of cold logic, the procedural path that leads to justice cannot emanate from a sensation of anger or elation, hatred or affection, sadness, or pleasure.

Can Revenge be Justice or Vice Versa?

Turning now our attention to the question, “Can revenge be justice or vice versa?”, one important issue to focus on is the basic idea that highlights an understanding of revenge. We may start off with the question: Does it emanate from rationality or is it basically a feeling fired up with hatred? In practically all instances, revenge is loaded with a highly aggressive feeling of resentment and loathing. It is characterized by a strong drive to retaliate –  and to retaliate viciously – towards a specifically defined adversary. But can revenge draw a supportive push from reason? In certain instances, people would justify the reasonableness of revenge (or vengeance). In the process, a flurry of opinions could be developed as considerable factors that make revenge seemingly reasonable and hence could be construed as an act of justice. But this manner of looking at the issue at hand distorts the logic of justice. The confusion created by putting revenge within the range of justice and vice versa desecrates justice and elevates revenge at the level of the virtuous. This is a case of making a mess out of the ethical landscape where justice is held supreme. Having true rationality at the core of justice, revenge cannot truly emanate from it for the conceptual components of revenge rest on one’s feeling of hatred and abomination.

A god acting on the basis of revenge is not a just god. The logic of justice cannot operate in such a statement as “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.” However, knowing the theological background that triggers contradictory statements which put the god of believers on the spot does not cast any negative notion about such a god if he really exists for such statements of conviction are only mental formulations of people who have never really known the mind of the god they say they believe in but merely imagined ideas such a god they have conceived would say according to their wishes and desires.

Justice takes a logical trajectory sans any feeling of hatred or loathing. At the end of the day after justice has been rendered to whom it is due, victims of previous injustice would certainly have a feeling of exhilaration and triumph for in the most superficial sense, their cause has been avenged. But one thing is very clear: they finally achieved the justice they long sought for not on the basis of hatred and revenge but through the “logic of justice” whose major premise is drawn from the “ethics of justice”.

Social Justice and Human Rights Amidst the Challenge of Social Injustice: Revenge Deconstructed

Nowadays, justice is a seriously sought-after ideal in a lot of places where dominant forces of oppression and tyranny operate and trample on people’s rights as human beings. In this sense, the issue of justice connects with that of human rights.

Being just is basically being fair. If justice reigns in a society, it is commonplace to see people doing things fairly with and for others. There’s no deception, manipulation, and exploitation. A society of this nature we call a just society.

A just society is a humanizing society. This is a situation where people experience the dignity of their humanity. Everybody has the opportunity to exercise her/his rights in such a way that doesn’t infringe on the rights of others.

A just society is a moral society where what is good and what is right are measured in terms of how people respect each other. A respected human being feels that her/his life is worth living. And having such a mental frame under normal circumstances, a respected person develops in her/himself a sense of responsibility to likewise give the same respect to others. This is fundamental justice.

In light of the above descriptions, we can examine the kind of human societies we have in practically all parts of the world. Lamentably, we don’t have a single perfect model of a society where honest-to-goodness justice is prevalent. What we actually have are societies where people experience injustice in all forms and patterns, shades, and textures at different levels of intensity and harshness. On planet Earth, we have manifold unjust societies. Through ages, injustice has always been a horrible root cause of serious problems, both personal and social.

In many instances, injustice is caused by countries of immense power. They look at others who are, of course, not as powerful as they are, like insignificant entities that may be exploited and manipulated, controlled, and dominated. We have witnessed how US imperialism has undermined the governments of countries like Cuba, Venezuela and Syria. Until the present time, the US-imposed economic embargo over Cuba has been going on for more than half a century. Another extremely debilitating embargo has likewise been more recently imposed by the US on Venezuela as a punitive reaction against the unrelenting defiance of the latter to the aggressive posturing of the US to impose control over Venezuela’s petroleum industry. In the case of Syria, US-sponsored terrorism has tremendously devastated this once flourishing nation which has never capitulated to the continued aggression of US imperialism supported not only by Zionist Israel but also by Wahabbist Saudi Arabia and their western European alllies. 

There are however cases where the justice system is simply a semblance of the real. In other words, we cannot really expect true justice from such a system because the people behind it are the very agents themselves of injustice at its most distorted form who have caused irreparable damages to society. In fact, many people who have experienced injustice in such a society have resigned themselves in the corner of hopelessness believing that they will never avail of the justice they seek, for such justice is nowhere found. We can cite at this point Zionist Israel which has long been oppressing and dehumanizing the original Palestinian inhabitants of the land they have colonized and occupied for many decades. The injustice committed against the Palestinians is commonplace and has been condemned in the strongest possible ways by the international community with the exception of the United States of America and its western European allies which are all solid supporters of Israeli Zionism both in terms of logistics and finances.

In certain societies, their very own governments could be the purveyors themselves of the worst kind of injustice. People experience tremendous difficulties in life because of unjust policies and practices that their government imposes on them. In this particular situation, the government becomes the people’s enemy. And on many occasions, corrupt and unscrupulous government officials who are closely associated with their equally corrupt and exploitative counterparts in the business realm intensify the degree of injustice experienced by the people in general and the poor sector of the population in particular. The Philippines is a clear case where the present government under the leadership of a gangland warlord is a pain in the necks of the people particularly those in the impoverished locales. In partnership with big-time business tycoons and their billionaire Chinese counterparts, the present Philippine government has not really improved the economic situation of the people on the social fringes but further pushed them into the quagmire of seemingly insurmountable sufferings. A situation of disempowerment is one of injustice. In an unjust condition, justice is muffled. In other words, we don’t expect justice served in a situation where justice is desecrated and at worst, where there is no rationally functional justice system at all.

In such circumstances, we see ordinary people being robbed of their dignity, and at worst, even murdered when they have crossed paths with the powers-that-be. How and where do their families seek justice afterward while their voices are muted by further threats of aggressive violence and outrageous brutality? When the dominant system itself precludes the call for justice, where do we go to redress the wrong that has been done to us? Can we not resort to putting justice in our hands when there’s no legal agency to turn to? Having this in mind, isn’t it logical to construe justice with revenge?

Synthesizing Justice and Revenge

We do not want to mangle justice; its superior worth remains to be our incontrovertible ideal. We will always promote the virtue of justice as one of the most important – if not the most important – of the human values in us. However, there could be a distortion of its very essence if we necessarily bind it with the concept of legality. Of course, it is one more ideal point to realize such an association but the risk is when legality itself gets distorted and unabashedly identified with the powers that be. What then becomes legal is anything that favors the interests of the powerful and if justice is defined in such a context, it is absolutely stripped off of its moral essence.

Justice devoid of its morality is the corruption of justice. Justice corrupted is justice falsified. When such a tragic transformation happens, an individual who puts justice in his hands is simply fulfilling an act of reclaiming its moral essence. In this connection, revenge becomes a just act – an act of justice. In the final analysis, we arrive at the synthesis of justice as revenge and revenge as justice and who will have the guts to question it? Only those who have redefined justice according to their own demented conception that accommodates, gratifies, and satisfies their criminal interests.

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Prof. Ruel F. Pepa is a Filipino philosopher based in Madrid, Spain. A retired academic (Associate Professor IV), he taught Philosophy and Social Sciences for more than fifteen years at Trinity University of Asia, an Anglican university in the Philippines.

“The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that Civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captives to the judgement of law, is one of the most significant tributes that Power ever paid to reason.” -Justice Robert Jackson, Nov. 21, 1945

It is often forgotten what sort of a battle occurred after WWII to establish the Nuremberg Trials which gave the world a revolutionary code of law which even today offers many of the remedies to the Gordian Knots blocking our way to a peaceful future. By the end of the war, many European leaders of the allied nations wished to simply put leading Nazis against a wall to face a firing squad and return to “business as usual”.

As I’ve outlined in many recent writings, it was only through the intensive efforts of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, and his leading allies in both the USA and Russia that a different course of action was decided upon and an official international tribunal was sanctioned that generated a total legal paradigm shift in international law that has been too easily taken for granted (due largely to the lack of effect these laws have had on post-WWII practice).

Among those revolutionary reforms included the unprecedented mandate that wars of aggression would henceforth be illegal in the eyes of the law. The tendency for those higher officials carrying out inhuman orders to escape responsibility for their actions or omissions of correct action were deemed insufficient defenses under the higher moral principle of “known or should have known”.

The underlying assumption of these Nuremberg laws are: 1) “might does not make right” despite what generations of Hobbesians and Niescheans have chosen to believe and 2) that every individual is responsible for their decisions based not on the arbitrary standards of whatever degenerate society they live in but rather upon the belief in the intrinsic powers of reason and conscience which all humans have access to and are obliged to guide our actions in life.

Nazi philosophers and crown jurists like Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmidt whose thoughts have penetrated the western zeitgeist over the past 70 years would obviously find such concepts repugnant and deplorable.

The fact that the “free world” has ignored these foundations of international law has not changed the fact that they are still true.

Today, many of those powerful unipolar ideologues who managed the disastrous Cold War and post-Cold War geopolitical environment have attempted to erase the precedents of Nuremburg with such atrocities as Soros’ International Criminal Court, and the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine (R2P) in defense of “humanitarian wars” as seen in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria in recent years. The disturbing rise of unipolar R2P advocacy rampant among the British ruling class like Lord Mark Malloch Brown, Tony Blair and all of the Obama-era globalists surrounding Biden make Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov’s recent remarks at the 75 Anniversary Moscow conference celebrating the commencement of the Nuremberg Trials that much more important.

Putin and Lavrov Celebrate the 75^th Anniversary of Nuremberg Trials

At this event, Putin reminded the attendees of the importance of the historic tribunals which ran from November 21, 1945 to October – 1946, saying:

“We constantly refer to the lessons of the Nuremberg Trials; we understand their importance for defending the truths of historical memory, for making a well-founded and solid case against deliberate distortions and falsifications of World War II events, especially the shameless and deceitful attempts to rehabilitate and even glorify Nazi criminals and their accessories… It is the duty of the entire international community to safeguard the Nuremberg Trials’ decisions, because they concern the principles that underlie the values of the post-war world order and the norms of international law.”

Putin’s remarks were amplified by Sergey Lavrov who elaborated on the new legal paradigm created at Nuremberg which provides an obvious cure for the rise of WWII revisionism, sanitation of Nazism in Ukraine and beyond as well as the revival of many of the practices that made Nazism a viral threat to mankind.

“The Nuremberg Trials—an example of international criminal justice—proved that justice can be achieved with a professional approach based on broad interstate cooperation, consent and mutual respect. Clearly, the Nuremberg Tribunal’s legacy is not limited to law, but has enormous political, moral and educational value. A strong vaccination against the revival of Nazism in all its forms and manifestations was made 75 years ago. Unfortunately, the immunity to the brown plague that was developed in Nuremberg has seriously worn off in some European countries. Russia will continue to vigorously and consistently oppose any attempts to falsify history, to glorify Nazi criminals and their henchmen, and to oppose the revision of the internationally recognized outcomes of World War II, including the Nuremberg rulings.”

So What Happened at Nuremberg?

Amidst the ashes of WWII, a major battle was waged between those deep state forces that had funded fascism as a “solution to the woes of the great depression” vs those genuine patriots who understood that the very fabric of empire and its associated financial, cultural and legal paradigm had to be destroyed and replaced with a paradigm more befitting human civilization.

Among the leading representative of the patriotic forces loyal to FDR’s anti-colonial vision was a man who has been nearly lost to history named Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954). Jackson would serve as Franklin Roosevelt’s most trusted legal advisor who first made a name for himself working closely with Ferdinand Pecora in prosecuting dozens of high level Wall Street financiers and pro-fascist industrialists who orchestrated the depression of 1929 and the later coup and assassination attempts against FDR in 1933-1934. After proving himself in combat, Jackson arose to become U.S. Solicitor General (1938-1940), Attorney General (1940-41) and leading member of the Supreme Court from 1941 until his death in 1954.

Knowing that the deep state coup that ousted Vice-President Henry Wallace and imposed Anglophile tool Harry Truman onto the USA might destroy the hopes for a post-WWII order of peaceful cooperation as outlined by the United Nations Charter, Judge Jackson took the lead and organized the Nuremberg Tribunals delivering the opening speech on November 21, 1945:

One of the prime motives behind the hearings was the intention to give legal meaning and action to the universal ideals conveyed in the United Nations’ Charter. This charter encapsulated the principles that FDR and Henry Wallace outlined repeatedly in the Four Freedoms. These freedoms asserted that all humankind regardless of race, sex, creed, or nationality would: 1) have the freedom from want, 2) freedom to worship as one’s conscience dictated, 3) freedom from fear, and 4) freedom of speech. If international law could tolerate wars of aggression, or if abdication of responsibility for ones’ criminal deeds could be tolerated on the basis of “I was just following orders”, then the UN Charter could carry little weight indeed.

As Jackson wrote in his Summer 1945 report to the President justifying the creation of the Nuremberg Tribunal:

“We therefore propose to charge that a war of aggression is a crime, and that modern international law has abolished the defense that those who incite or wage it are engaged in legitimate business. Thus, may the forces of law be mobilized on the side of peace.”

During the course of the 11 month proceedings, not only were leading cabinet members, generals, lawyers and other high officials put on trial, but the deepest facets of natural law vs Nietschean “law of the strongest” was investigated with Platonic rigor as laid out in the brilliant award-winning film Judgement at Nuremberg (1960).

Due to the leadership of Justice Jackson, the treatment of INTENTION and conspiracy was made the primary focus in the pursuit of justice and cause of criminal guilt. This was not a popular approach then or today for the simple fact that our world is shaped by many top down forces that want their victims’ minds to be forever trapped in the material bottom up world of deductive/inductive logic where immaterial causal intentions and ideas can never be found. For anyone wishing to pursue this fruitful line of thinking further, I suggest reading Edgar Allan Poe’s Eureka.

When one adopts the view that intentions and conspiracies (i.e.: the effect of intentions + ideas when put into action) ARE NOT a driving force of politics and life, then we forever loose our ability to judge truthfulness in any serious manner. This was the philosophical premise of leading Nazi financier Hjalmar Schacht, whose moral relativism and cold calculating principles of economics directly justified the cheap labor camps that worked millions to death in the German war production effort. This same philosophy again found fertile soil in the post-1971 consumer society that revived the logic of cheap labor production under the age of “cheapest price is the law” globalization.

Quoting Schacht who said “Truth is any story that succeeds”, Justice Jackson quipped “I think you can score many more successes, when you want to lead someone, if you don’t tell them the truth- than if you do tell them the truth”.

Laying out the principled intention of the trial to the American people, Jackson said:

“The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched….

“The case as presented by the United States will be concerned with the brains and authority in back of all the crimes. These defendants were men of a station and rank which does not soil its own hands with blood. They were men who knew how to use lesser folk as tools. We want to reach the planners and designers, the inciters and leaders….

“It is not the purpose in my part of this case to deal with the individual crimes. I am dealing with the common plan or design for crime and will not dwell upon individual offenses. My task is only to show the scale on which these crimes occurred, and to show that these are the men who were in the responsible positions and who conceived the plan and design which renders them answerable, regardless of the fact that the plan was actually executed by others….

“The Charter recognizes that one who has committed criminal acts may not take refuge in superior orders nor in the doctrine that his crimes were acts of state….

“The real complaining party at your bar is Civilization…. The refuge of the defendants can only be their hope that International Law will lag so far behind the moral sense of mankind that conduct which is crime in the moral sense must be regarded as innocent in law. Civilization asks whether law is so laggard as to be utterly helpless to deal with crimes of this magnitude by criminals of this order of importance.”

Today, the world sits once more on the brink of a new world order, and the emergence of a governing system that is shaped entirely on the same social Darwinistic/Nietschean operating system that gave rise to fascism in WWII. The same denial of universal truth that animated the minds of a Schacht, Goebbels, Heidegger or Schmidt has become hegemonic among western academia as well.

Very few statesmen have had the courage and insight to resist this unipolar anti-nation state system, but among those who have we are fortunate to have found the current leader of Russia and his allies who in many ways are playing the same historic role as the one played 75 years earlier by Justice Robert Jackson, Henry Wallace and President Roosevelt. Whether the rest of the world wakes up in time to recognize the superiority of the multipolar alliance over the regressive order of the unipolarists carrying us ominously towards World War 3 remains to be seen.

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Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

The World that Klaus Schwab, executive director of the World Economic Forum, wants us to rubber stamp is a 100% dystopian nightmare. In fact, if one was to write a film script about the worst of all outcomes for the human race and planet, Schwab’s ‘Great Reset’ dream would perfectly fill the bill.

Everything that moves and breathes is to be sanitised, anaesthetized and digitalised proclaims the WEF White Paper of October 2020. This is the way to turn the world ‘Green’ according to Schwab and his team of technocratic trolls. Well, most of us will turn green just by reading this WEF master-plan for humanity “Resetting the Future of Work Agenda in a post Covid World” so there’s really no need to bother with its implementation, is there?

The inventory of fake green huey to be found within the pages of this paper goes back to the Club of Rome (founded 1968) coming up with the idea that for the elite to maintain their grip on world affairs, some scary story threatening the end of life on Earth was needed. 

So the idea of Global Warming was hatched to fit this need. It also had the advantage of being a money spinner via the invention of ‘carbon taxes’ and deployment of a whole new fake green infrastructure under the title ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’. Yes, a truly inspiring control package was put together –  just waiting for a suitable moment to be rolled-out across the world.

Well, it just happened that something called Covid came along (sheer coincidence) to kick the whole show off at the beginning of 2020.  Aside from Global Warming, launched some twenty years earlier, the new show is proving to be quite a spectacle! There’s something for everybody in the tragi-comedy drama called ‘Covid-19’.

Fake news, fake views and fake truths – all conjoining to make a quite breathtaking virtual reality saga starring some previously little known bit part actors, who leapt at the chance to take leading roles in bringing to life the technocratic Great Reset dynasty promised by the World Economic Forum. A dynasty requiring the implementation of highly tuned Al-Gore-rythms so as to edit out the communications of all who don’t do Al’s Global Warming thing. Not just that, but EMF’ing all and sundry as a covert way of vastly reducing the global population, is also a vital part of the mix.

The only thing is, those doctors, scientists and engineers still able to think, saw immediately that they were being asked to believe that the world had gone flat again – like it was pre Copernicus and Galileo. And that 2+1=4. And that cell phone microwave radiation, now running at tens of thousands of times that of natural background radiation – doesn’t change anything and won’t do anyone any harm. No, of course not, why should it – we must have had a delusional moment ever entertaining such an idea.

As we peer at the newspaper headlines each morning, we become aware of a very well coordinated story-line being monotonously repeated day after day, with almost no variation wherever you happen to be in the world – but especially so in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. No surprise when just six corporations own 90% of the world media.

These headlines are continuously telling us to to believe in a surreal agenda that – of course – stars ‘Covid’ and comprises a whole series of absolute contradictions, invented, no doubt, for the purpose of causing mass distraction and confusion of the readership – while relentlessly pressing the fear button to ensure obeisance from a semi paralysed public.

But what is this we see emerging out of the gloom at this eleventh hour? Could it be a new hero is rising up out of the chaos to put our minds at rest? Could it possibly be one Klaus Schwab – ‘visionary extraordinaire’ and inspired saviour of humanity?

Her Schwab has now been joined by no lesser being than Prince Charles, to convince us Reset laggards to “use all the levers at our disposal” to ensure eco-corporate fascism dispossesses small to medium sized businesses of their hard won trading grounds while simultaneously walloping us with  a wall of 5G microwaves.

Apparently The Green New Deal sees 5G as the solution to getting a global centralised ‘smart grid’ up and running so as to enable us to be ‘watched’ 24/7. This, one assumes, is to help us get that warm feeling of “you are never alone.” That warm feeling will be accentuated by the fact that 5G, like its 3/4G predecessors, is a microwave weapon that cooks us from the inside out and serves us up rare, medium or well done, according to its output.

“Well done!” is the response that Schwab and his royal team are no doubt expecting us to proclaim while loudly applauding the roll-out of the Agenda 2030 – Zero Carbon – Smart City – Fourth Industrial Revolution – Transhumanist Singularity – Green New Deal – New World Order – ‘Great Reset’ blue print for a full-on fascist future.

Well sorry, Mein Herr, but I’ve got a strange feeling that you might have got this all a bit wrong. Your megalomania has been recognised for what it is. Most of us have accordingly decided to show you two fingers and the way to the door.

Your departure should not be delayed a day longer than necessary. Don’t worry, we have made it easier for you to take your leave by ensuring the exit door has these words writ large upon it: ‘THE GREAT REJECT’.

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Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and holistic teacher. His latest book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ is particularly recommended reading for this time: see www.julianrose.info

Featured image is from World Economic Forum

“… Somebody must say to America, America if you have contempt for life, if you exploit human beings by seeing them as less than human, if you will treat human beings as a means to an end, you thingafy those human beings. And if you will thingafy persons, you will exploit them economically. And if you will exploit persons economically, you will abuse your military power to protect your economic investments and your economic exploitations.” —Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Where Do We Go From Here?” (1967)

In the United States, a liberal or a self-identified radical can rationalize supporting a candidate who throws Palestinians under the bus in order to get elected to the U.S. Senate. These same people can remain silent on murderous U.S. economic sanctions. They also can avoid any comment on U.S. imperialist aggression. They can do all of these things and their “progressive” or “radical” credentials would not be questioned.

That is why Joe Biden can 1) fill his cabinet with neoliberal war hawks, 2) signal obscene spending on the U.S. military will continue, and 3) tell the rulers they can rest assured knowing he is committed to the imperialist agenda of “Full Spectrum Dominance” that has been the U.S. state’s bipartisan-supported national security policy for the last two decades—and what amounts to “the left” shrugs its shoulders.

But the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) will not be silent and we will not collaborate. When Biden and the right-wing neoliberal Democrats say they will re-assert U.S. leadership of the white, Western imperialist alliance to wage war against the global South in the name of protecting human rights, we say no to imperialist subterfuge. We will continue to expose both parties’ real agenda of advancing the interests of U.S. and European capital by slinging back into their collective faces the reality of their capitalist crimes and the systematic violations of the human rights of people in the United States.

We will not let go unchallenged any U.S. official, including the newly appointed mouthpiece of U.S. anti-people policies (the “U.S. ambassador to the United Nations”), standing in any international forum to twist up their mouths to talk about human rights and democracy.

The cruel joke of the United States being concerned for human rights is reflected in its policies on the African continent, which we will be exposing in webinars taking place over the next few days. Today, the International Committee of the National Lawyers Guild and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers have joined BAP’s work on AFRICOM by hosting a webinar on the subject. And on December 4, BAP is co-sponsoring an international webinar on AFRICOM with the Women’s International League on Peace and Freedom (WILPF). We hope you support both events and join and/or support BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network and our campaign to shut down AFRICOM.

Samora Machel (1933-1986), leader of the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) and the first president of Mozambique, said, “International solidarity is not an act of charity: It is an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains toward the same objective. The foremost of these objectives is to aid the development of humanity to the highest level possible.”

That is the task BAP has taken on. We hope, in your own way, you assume this awesome historical obligation.

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The Museum of Modern Art is currently presenting Félix Fénéon: The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde – From Signac to Matisse and Beyond, examining the immense influence of this art critic, editor, publisher, collector and anarchist. Fénéon (1861-1944) saw the critic as a channel between the artist and the public – a role which had particular significance because art could further the cause of social justice and harmony. As Paul Signac would proclaim: “Justice in sociology, harmony in art: same thing.”

The exhibition includes several of Georges Seurat’s paintings, and begins with a study for “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” (1884), his famed masterpiece, which was featured in its ultimate, monumental (10-foot wide) iteration at the 1886 exhibition of the Impressionists. That same year Fénéon would coin the term Neo-Impressionism to identify the revolutionary innovations that Seurat and Paul Signac were pioneering – which included the pointillist technique that Fénéon would contrast with the ‘blink-of-an-eye’ effects of the Impressionists. For Seurat and Signac, pointillism was a science-based approach to color, based on the application of tiny, juxtaposed dots of multi-colored paint, which were blended in the viewers eye, rather than physically blended on the canvas.

The show includes paintings by Maximilien Luce, such as “Man Washing” (1887) which depicts a man standing over a wash basin, as he cleans the back of his neck. The scene underscores the simple, daily routines of the working-class and their humble, domestic interiors: a small mirror hangs on the wall behind him; his jacket lies draped over a chair, which casts its shadow over his black boots and the hexagonal terracotta tiles of the floor. There is a tough, primitive ruddiness to Luce’ representations of the working-class, a quiet dignity in the subject’s thin but taut, muscular frame.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Luce was a fellow anarchist with whom Fénéon would form a close friendship. A spate of political bombings in 1894 would lead to the so-called Trial of the Thirty; and while Fénéon was ultimately (and narrowly) acquitted, both men would find themselves at Mazas prison – a notorious, twelve-hundred cell panopticon. A lithograph by Luce depicts Fénéon at Mazas, standing within a long, narrow outdoor corridor, flanked by a looming guard tower which could see into every cell.

One of the exhibition’s standout paintings is Signac’s “Demolition Worker” (1897-99) – a monumental allegory about delivering the “forceful blow of a pickaxe to the antiquated social structure.” One is reminded of Mikhail Bakunin’s famous dictum “the passion for destruction is a creative passion too.” But the painting is more than a plea for bringing down the present social order: it is an anarchist’s call to take up the struggle for a modern, egalitarian society in which manual laborers are treated with fairness and respect – a testimony to the inherent nobility of man and of the human form.

“In the Time of Harmony: The Golden Age Has Not Passed, It Is Still to Come” (1896), is meant to offer a glimpse of Signac’s utopian vision, his dream of what the future society might look like. Anarchism was not about the fury of political violence for its own sake, nor was it about dismantling social structures so that lawlessness and chaos might prevail. In Kropotkin’s words anarchism was about “well-being for all” – and “well-being for all is not a dream. It is possible, realizable, owing to all that our ancestors have done to increase our powers of production.” The Neo-Impressionists recognized that well-being also meant the liberation of our aesthetic sensibilities, and the realization of our true self through the freedom to create and recreate. As Signac would observe: “When the society we dream of exists, the workers freed from the exploiters who brutalize them, we will have time to think and to learn.” Signac’s figures dance, paint, exercise and read; they bathe and recline, they sing and play. Men, women, and children are all a part of Signac’s paean to a world in which social disparities are overcome, and positive freedom – the freedom to, as opposed to mere freedom from – is finally our guide.

The social theory of the Neo-Impressionists was a combination of anarchism and communism; and was chiefly inspired by the writings of Russian exile Pierre Kropotkin, as well as the work of Jean Grave and the Belgian geographer Elisée Reclus. They agreed with socialists in their vision of economic communism and equality of social conditions – including collective ownership of the means of production, the abolition of private property, and the dissolution of class hierarchies. A crucial feature of anarchism is the emphasis on the individual as the fundamental building block, the essential point of departure for any human association whatever. The individual was characterized by Grave in 1899 as a social creature who should be “left free to attach himself according to his tendencies, his affinities, free to seek out those with him whom his liberty and aptitudes can agree.” What the anarchists yearned for was a harmonious relationship between the individual and society as a whole – and this social ideal found its aesthetic representation in Neo-Impressionism. As D.D. Egbert observed in Social Radicalism and the Arts (1970): “… The very technique that the Neo-Impressionists employed, with its strongly accentuated individual brush strokes, which nonetheless are brought together in harmony to form the picture as a whole, paralleled the individualistic yet communal spirit of communist-anarchism.”

It is notable that in general, the Neo-Impressionists rejected overtly political subject matter – “stylistically innovative art, by its very freedom from convention, was necessarily revolutionizing.” They saw no need to embrace proletarian subject matter or anything like the ‘social realism’ which would characterize visual art during the Soviet era. As Pissarro observed in 1895: “Every production which is truly a work of art is socialist (whether or not the creator wishes it) … This work of pure beauty will enlarge the people’s aesthetic conceptions.” The fundamental idea here is that aesthetic form itself is the bearer of art’s radical potentialities, and beauty is inherently a kind of protest against an unfree world.

The show includes a number of works by the still underappreciated Félix Vallotton, including “Félix Fénéon at La Revue blanche” (1896) – a painting of Fénéon hunched over his desk, working assiduously late into the night, illumined by the glow of an electric lamp. It is a portrait of dedication – the image is reduced to its essentials, and intentionally slight on details to avoid distracting us from the portrait’s central theme. In other words, the concentrated focus of Vallotton’s subject is reproduced in the formal qualities of the painting, by eliminating everything extraneous to the image of a man wholly committed to his work.

In 1906, Fénéon joined the prominent art gallery Bernheim-Jeune, owned by Gaston and Josse Bernheim, two brothers who inherited their father’s business in the early years of the twentieth century. They are depicted in a 1920 painting by Pierre Bonnard, one of the Post-Impressionist, avant-garde artists to whom Fénéon gave his unflagging support. Fénéon also signed contracts with Kees van Dongen and Henri Matisse. Struck to see a well-known anarchist installed at an established and fairly conservative gallery, one contemporary observed that “A good anarchist, [Fénéon] planted Matisses among the bourgeoisie from the back room of Bernheim-Jeune as he might have planted bombs.” The comparison is a telling one because it underscores that, for Fénéon, all genuine art was necessarily subversive, an “indictment of the established reality” (as the philosopher and critical theorist Herbert Marcuse would later put it) – and by championing modern art he was, in his way, serving the cause of social revolution.

One of the most notable exhibitions that Fénéon organized was that of the Italian Futurists in February 1912 – which included paintings by Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, Luigi Russolo, and Carla Carrà, among others. Emphasizing speed, technology, political radicalism and violence, Fénéon’s exhibition served to propel the Futurists to the front ranks of the European avant-garde. Boccioni was the first artist to be associated with the movement – and the show includes his painting “La risata” (1911, The Laugh), regarded as his first indisputably Futurist work, and an expression of the artist in his full maturity. From the gaudy, theatrical woman smiling in the upper left-hand corner, to the conspicuous men on the far left and right sides of the painting, to the many other faces and objects that have been worked in, Boccioni presents us with what is at once a simple dinner party, and at the same time a multi-dimensional conjunction of people and things, a fragmented reality, quasi-cubist, semi-abstract and inexhaustible in the relationships it conjures.

The sampling of Futurists includes Carrà’s painting memorializing the “Funeral of the Anarchist Galli” (1910-11), who was killed by police during a strike in Milan in 1904. The funeral itself became violent when the police refused to let mourners enter the cemetery, and Carrà’s painting captures the chaotic scene with sharp, slashing lines, aggressive brushwork and intense shades of red.

Félix Fénéon was not an artist, but an art critic; a bridge as it were between the artist and the public – and yet he was also so much more, because he recognized his significant social responsibility to find and champion those artists that were worthy of the public’s attention. That is perhaps the most important duty of the critic, and also the most difficult of the critic’s tasks; as it is in the very nature of genius to elude us, to transgress our settled categories of comprehension; and this is most true of the avant-garde artist who defies convention, who creates in effect a new vocabulary of seeing, and in the process reshapes and redefines our aesthetic sensibilities, our understanding of what is beautiful, and what the very aim of art is or should be. Fénéon’s influence was immense and due, in no small part, to his eye for genius; and because he recognized that while a painting may not, in itself, start a revolution, it can transform the way we see the world – and that is the beginning of all meaningful change.

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Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City.

Full transcript of the interview below.

Mark: [00:00:00We’re in] Hamilton, Ontario, across from the City Hall, this is Cailin, and we’re at anti lock down rally and everyone that I’ve interviewed has their own different story and they’ve all been impacted by this legislation. And Cailin you have a couple of kids? [00:00:16][16.1]

[00:00:17] I have two kids in the Hamilton district, Wentworth School Board. [00:00:20][3.1]

[00:00:20] And how is the lockdown impacted you and your family? [00:00:23][2.9]

[00:00:23] Hmm, I’m quite majorly. I’m a single mom, so I completely rely on myself for money. I completely rely on myself for everything. [00:00:32][8.2]

Mark: [00:00:32] Yeah. [00:00:32][0.0]

[30.2]

Mark: [00:00:32] Yeah. [00:00:32][0.0]

Cailin: [00:00:33] So in the beginning of the lockdown, I had my own home care agency that was shut down because the government wanted only to sell P.P.E to government funded home care agencies. And so that impacted us greatly, as well as my children being out of school. [00:00:52][18.9]

Mark: [00:00:53] And I asked once, so you had to provide all this P.P.E. equipment yourself free for all the kids and yourself, and it just was too expensive is that it?[00:01:01][8.6]

Cailin: [00:01:02] Yeah, I OK, so Home Care Agency I work with older adults who have dementia and things like that do home care so they don’t have to go to long term care. But it seems as the government, when the lockdown happened, did not give the P.P.E. to private home care agencies, it was only government funded. [00:01:21][19.6]

Mark: [00:01:22] And isn’t that ironic? Ironic because I’ve heard all these horror stories with a lot of these long term care that has impacted me as well as everyone. OK, continue, please. [00:01:32][10.3]

[57.4]

Cailin: [00:01:35] So with them being out of school, their goals are socialism. They’re five and seven and greatly great need that. Being stuck inside we couldn’t go out and do fun things during the summer. The both of their birthdays are during the summer. School was a big thing. It really was, still is. [00:01:51][16.6]

Mark: [00:01:51] How is it still a big thing? [00:01:51][0.0]

Cailin: [00:01:56] So they do go to school full time here in Hamiltion because of the mask mandate, though, it’s made things extremely difficult. My five year old got hurt at school very bad. His tooth was knocked out here.It was bleeding everywhere. And from all the stories that I’ve gathered, they put his mask right back on while it was bleeding. So it bled through three layers until I picked [00:02:24][27.2]

[43.8]

Cailin: [00:02:23] him up two hours later. I also did not receive a phone call. [00:02:26][2.7]

Mark: [00:02:27] So we’re talking a lot of issues there, including bacteria buildup. That doesn’t sound very sanitary to me. [00:02:33][5.6]

Cailin: [00:02:33] None at all. For them to breathe in whatever he is trying to come out of their bodies. Breathing that in is not good for them. [00:02:39][6.1]

Mark: [00:02:39] And were you able to have an impact? You were talking to me about Rebel news story. [00:02:44][4.5]

Cailin: [00:02:44] And a shout out Rebel news they’re amazing. They brought light to this story. The interview is up on YouTube. And because of that, I have heard from the school board. Finally, I have heard from the principal and I haven’t told the group here yet but I will today that they are promising tCailin: [00:03:06] o take a day to educate all staff and all teachers on the proper use of masks, the dangers during exercise, the dangers of them just wearing it all the time and when to change a mask and when not to wear one because they weren’t educated. And I blame that solely on the school board, not the teachers. [00:03:26][20.8]

Mark: [00:03:28] OK, and is there anything else? For example, I mean, kids express themselves visually through facial expressions and what are masks doing to that? [00:03:36][8.6]

Cailin: [00:03:37] So my older son, he’s seven years old. I mean, he he’s a very sensitive child and he does a lot more talking through his facial expressions than speaking. He doesn’t like talking about his feelings. So at school, obviously, it’s extremely hard for him to express himself. So they’re saying this year that he’s a lot more quiet and all these things, but he is a quiet talker. Its just nobody can hear him talk now because of the mask as well. So all around, it’s just I don’t see any benefits. [00:04:11][33.9]

Mark: [00:04:12] No, neither do I. I haven’t seen any at all. And I’ve looked up the science of it. [00:04:16][3.8]

[67.1]

 [00:03:07][23.1]

[42.0]

Cailin: [00:04:16] Oh, there’s no science to back up to,. [00:04:18][1.8]

Mark: [00:04:18] No science to back it up. And it’s impacting them emotionally. I mean, I see them as muzzles myself. And the world has a long history of making people hide their faces. [00:04:28][10.5]

Cailin: [00:04:29] And that’s really sad. [00:04:30][1.3]

Mark: [00:04:31] Attack on our freedoms. Well, thank you very much. [00:04:33][2.5]

Cailin: [00:04:34] Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. [00:04:34][0.0]

*

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.

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The drum is always there. In life and death. In between is dance. Always the drum is everywhere. -Peniel Guerrier

I don’t think this world was made for a small minority to dance on the faces of everyone else. -H.G. Wells

Nothing happens until something moves. -Albert Einstein

Introduction

The dance group Diversity’s ‘I Can’t Breathe’ routine evoked around 24,500 complaints from members of the public when it aired on ITV on 5 September, 2020. The performance was inspired by the killing of George Floyd in the USA. Its choreography references progress from stock market bubbles, the growth of digital shopping, the effect of mobile phones on family life, the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, to the killing of George Floyd, and then ending with street protests and the riot police. The show was a spectacular mix of spoken word, song, visual and stage effects, as well as Diversity’s trademark mix of complex routines, breakdancing, backflips and theatricality.

Diversity’s ‘I Can’t Breathe’ routine:

While the troup garnered much international praise for the 4 1/2 minute anti-racist performance, the many complaints focused on its political content. According to Ashley Banjo, troupe member and choreographer, “We got bombarded with messages and articles … horrible stuff about all of us, our families … it’s sad.”

This level of negative public reaction to a dance routine on TV in the UK was unprecedented.

Dance has been an important part of of TV entertainment, especially in the UK and the USA, since the 1960s with shows such as American Bandstand and Soul Train, dance groups on Top of the Pops and in more recent decades, shows such as Dancing on Ice‎, Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance and Strictly Come Dancing‎.

However, maybe the innocuousness of such TV history has lulled people into seeing dance as pure entertainment, safe from the radical social commentary that other artforms put on display now and then in theatres, galleries and cinemas.

The history of dance shows that it has always been with us, and, like with other art forms, dance has a mixed history of social and radical roles. It has also, like other art forms, been highly influenced by Enlightenment and Romanticist ideas in more recent centuries, changing how we see and understand the role of dance in society today.

In this article I will examine how dance has changed since the Enlightenment and why it has had an increasing popularity in the last century. I will also look at the potential for a radical dance culture to become a vehicle for increasing social and political awareness on a global scale.

Early and medieval dance history

Dance has been a part of human culture from prehistoric times to Egyptian tomb paintings depicting dancing figures from c. 3300 BC. Folk dance, in particular, has been an important part of festivals, seasonal celebrations and community celebrations such as weddings and births.

In Europe during the Middle Ages there are references to circular dances called ‘carole’ from the 12th and 13th centuries. People also danced around trees holding hands in a leader and refrain style. These dances and songs became the carols we know today.

Le Roman de la Rose (The Romance of the Rose) is a medieval poem in Old French, styled as an allegorical dream vision.

However, the literary history of dance in terms of detailed descriptions goes back to Italy in the middle of the fifteenth century after the start of the Renaissance. During this time there also developed a divergence between court dances and country dances, between performance and participation. Court dancers trained for dances for entertainment, while anyone could learn country dances. At court formal display dancing would be followed by informal country dances for all to participate in.

Dance at Herod’s Court, ca. 1490, Israhel van Meckenem, engraving. Couples circling in a basse danse.

Ballet also began at this time developing out of court pageantry in Italy at aristocratic weddings. Its choreography was based on court dance steps and performers dressed in the formal gowns of the time rather than the later tutus and ballet slippers.

It was then brought to France by Catherine de’ Medici in the 16th century where it developed into a performance-focused art form during the reign of Louis XIV where: “His interest in ballet dancing was politically motivated. He established strict social etiquettes through dancing and turned it into one of the most crucial elements in court social life, effectively holding authority over the nobles and reigning over the state.”

By the 17th century ballet became professionalised and its challenging acrobatic movements could “only be performed by highly skilled street entertainers.”

The Enlightenment and ballet in the 18th century

It was ballet that also became a focal point for criticism by the Enlightenment philosophes during the 18th century. Philosophes (French for ‘philosophers’) “were public intellectuals who applied reason to the study of many areas of learning, including philosophy, history, science, politics, economics, and social issues.”

The philosophes “argued that ancient superstitions and outmoded customs should be eliminated, and that reason should play a major role in reforming society.” They desired to see “the development of art forms that gave meaningful expression to human thoughts, ideas, and feelings, and they disregarded merely decorative or ornamental forms of art.”

Image on the right: Jean-Georges Noverre (1727–1810) was a French dancer and balletmaster, and is generally considered the creator of ballet d’action, a precursor of the narrative ballets of the 19th century. His birthday is now observed as International Dance Day.

Denis Diderot, for example, (one of the editors of the quintessential enlightenment project: the Encylopédie) wrote in his essay ‘Entretiens sur ‘Le Fils Naturel”:

“I would like someone to tell me what all these dances performed today represent — the minuet, the passe-pied, the rigaudon, the allemande, the sarabande — where one follows a traced path. This dancer performs with an infinite grace; I see in each movement his facility, his grace, and his nobility, but what does he imitate? This is not the art of song, but the art of jumping. A dance is a poem. This poem must have its own way of representing itself. It is an imitation presented in movements, that depends upon the cooperation of the poet, the painter, the composer, and the art of pantomime. The dance has its own subject which can be divided into acts and scenes. Each scene has a recitative improvised or obligatory, and its ariette.”

To achieve this the philosophes argued for more naturalism in style and less of the “contrived sophistication and majesty” of earlier Baroque aesthetics. This criticism eventually led to new forms of ballet “that attempted to convey meaning, drama, and the human emotions” in particular the ballet d’action: “a dance containing an entire integrated story line”.

Ballet in the 19th century: Romanticism

Enlightenment ideas which led to the ‘Age of Reason’ and classical ideas of order, harmony and balance gave way to Romanticist emphasis on emotion, individualism and anti-rationalist medievalism. The “vogue for exotic, escapist fantasy which dominated Romanticism in all the other arts” soon affected ballet in two major aspects: a new preoccupation with the supernatural, and the exotic. The plots in Romantic ballet:

“were dominated by spirit women—sylphs [imaginary spirits of the air], wilis [a type of supernatural being in Slavic folklore], and ghosts—who enslaved the hearts and senses of mortal men and made it impossible for them to live happily in the real world. Women dancers were dressed in diaphanous white frocks with little wings at their waist, and were bathed in the mysterious poetic light created by newly developed gas lighting in theatres. They danced in a style more fluid and ethereal than 18th-century dancers and were especially prized for their ballon [the ability to appear effortlessly suspended while performing movements during a jump] as they tried to create the illusion of flight.”

The second important Romantic influence in ballet was:

“a fascination with the exotic, which was figured through gypsy or oriental heroines and the use of folk or national dances from ‘foreign’ cultures (such as Spain, the Middle East, and Scotland). Such dances were considered highly expressive both of character and of exotic local colour, though in some countries, such as Italy, indigenous dances were featured in ballets whose plots reflected that region’s surge of nationalist feeling.”

An early example of the Romantic ballet is La Sylphide which was first performed at the Paris Opera in 1823 starring Marie Taglioni:

“La Sylphide is a story ballet about a supernatural female creature, half-woman, half-bird, who is doomed to an eternity of dancing. The Sylphide falls in love with a peasant man, James, who is soon to be married. However, James falls in love with the sylphide and leaves his wedding to spend his life with her. The ballet takes a turn when James consults a witch on how to keep the Sylphide from flying off. The witch tells him to tie a scarf around the Sylphide’s waist, and James obeys. The scarf ends up killing the Sylphide, and James is ultimately killed by the witch in an attempt to avenge her death. The Sylphide is symbolic of an unattainable dream, and James is the naive hero who pursues her. This ballet was the first romantic ballet and typifies the romantic themes of fantasy, supernaturalism and man vs. nature.”

However , it was also the 19th century which saw the creation of what is considered by many to be the finest achievement of the Classical period, Sleeping Beauty. As Victoria Rose Niblett writes:

“Sleeping Beauty is opulent, returning to the intermingling of traditional French court dances in the choreography and the refinement of the Apollonian [relating to the rational, ordered, and self-disciplined aspects of human nature as opposed to Dionysian characteristics of excess, irrationality, lack of discipline, and unbridled passion] expression. This was a shift away from the emotional exploration of the Romantic period and back to reason and rational philosophy. […] In the Romantic period, dance was designed by the external power of the music, but in the Classical period choreographers had a more influential role with the construction of the symphony. This involvement allowed choreography to follow an academic, pattern-oriented structure that insured the association between dance and music. […] While Romantic ballet focused on fragile and emotional femininity, Classical ballet focused more on the type of femininity that could be expressed in the refinement, strength, and charm of the female character.”

A publicity photo for the premiere of Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Sleeping Beauty (1890).

While this era saw the rise of ballet as a truly international art form, Romanticism in ballet declined rapidly “as ballets were so weighted towards the feminine and the febrile”, while “male dancers were frequently relegated to the role of porteur [supporting the ballerina]”.

Folk dance and Herder

The rise of nationalist feeling in the 19th century was also associated with the new emphasis on local culture and traditions. Folk dances attained a new significance as the spread of nationalist and socialist ideas gave a new emphasis and importance to the culture of the peasants and the working classes. In Ireland, for example, Ceili dances were popularised by Conradh na Gaeilge (Gaelic League) in its goal to promote Irish cultural independence and de-anglicisation.

It was the 18th century Enlightenment philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803) who recognised the importance of traditional culture. Herder established fundamental ideas concerning the intimate dependence of thought on language which “appears in its greatest purity and power in the uncivilized periods of every nation.” Hence Herder’s interest in collecting ancient German folk songs. His focus upon language and cultural traditions as the ties that create a ‘nation’ “were extended to include folklore, dance, music and art.”

Image below: Portrait of Johann Gottfried Herder

Herder developed his folk theory to the point of believing that “there is only one class in the state, the Volk, (not the rabble), and the king belongs to this class as well as the peasant”. His idea that the Volk was not the rabble was a new idea at this time, and thus Herder laid the basis for the idea of “the people” as the basis for later democratic ideologies.

Therefore, as Vicki Spencer writes:

“Herder’s intention, then, was not to urge moderm intellectuals and artists to reject the philosophical and intellectual features of their own culture in favor of the simple naivety of earlier folk literature. Instead, he argued that their relationship to their own culture needed to change, in order to capture the complexities and spontaneity in the way of life, language, and character of their own unique culture.” [1]

Moreover, Herder believed it was important to look back through history for the nation to ‘grow organically’ into the future. According to David Denby:

“Herder believes in a human drive towards perfection and self-improvement, but this is a process which operates always in given contexts and within given constraints, which must be understood and respected historically. It is when societies are denied the  opportunity  to  grow  organically  that  they  fail  to  progress. Tradition and progress are not opposites: progress must emerge out of a social and historical tradition if it is to take root, and, conversely, ‘a living tradition was  inconceivable  without  the  progressive  emergence  of  new  goals’.” [2]

Later, Herder’s ideas on folk culture became strongly associated with Romanticism and national chauvinism. However, Herder “understood and feared the extremes to which his folk-theory could tend” and he “refused to adhere to a rigid racial theory, writing that ‘notwithstanding the varieties of the human form, there is but one and the same species of man throughout the whole earth’.”

Thus Herder saw the importance of understanding one’s own culture as a foundation stone for future national projects to be built upon, and not about seeing the past as a Golden Age to be nostalgic about as in Romanticist theory.

The twentieth century and Modernism

By the beginning of the twentieth century folk dance was firmly established and formed an important part of national culture. Many countries around the world had state folk dance ensembles by the middle of the century. In particular this could be seen in the Soviet Union after the Russian revolution of 1917 where the state supported and promoted folk dance as part of the culture of the people. The Red Army Choir, an official army choir of the Russian armed forces, was set up in the 1920s, and by the 1930s was touring with an ensemble of dancers.

The Alexandrov Choir with Dance Ensemble, Warsaw 2009 (Also known as the Red Army Choir and the Song and Dance Ensemble of the Russian Army)

Ballet continued life after the revolution too but with new revolutionary content. As Georg Predota writes:

“Ballet companies had to cope with a mass exodus of leading figures of the stage, but also defend against grassroots Communist voices that decried ballet as an artificial, frivolous art form, a decadent playground for grand dukes hopelessly out of touch with reality. Yet gradually, government policy opened the former bastions of imperial high culture to the masses, making ballet performances available to a wider audience by distributing free or subsidized tickets.”

For example, the Russian ballet, The Red Poppy, with a score written by Reinhold Glière, was created in 1927 and was a huge success. It had a modern revolutionary theme, as Predota notes:

“Set in a port in Kuomintang China in the 1920’s, The Red Poppy eventually became the first truly Soviet ballet. The story tells of the love between a Soviet sailor and a Chinese girl, who is eventually killed by the sailor’s capitalist rival. The tyrannical British imperialist commander of the port sanctions her murder, as Tao-Hoa tries to escape her homeland on board a Soviet ship. As she falls dying, she gives her compatriots a red poppy as an emblem in their fight for freedom.”

A scene from the 1927 production of The Red Poppy

In Europe the ballet company Ballet Russes, was formed in 1909 and toured Europe as well as North and South America. Although set up by the Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev (and even used Russian dancers), the company never performed in Russia. It became part of the Modernist movement with music commissioned from Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky and the designs of Picasso, Rouault, Matisse, and Derain.

Modernism – an extension of Romanticist thinking – emphasised individualism, art for art’s sake, suspicion of reason, subjectivism and rejected Enlightenment ideas. In the arts, Modernism tended to emphasise constantly changing form over sociopolitical content and this became particularly notable in the twentieth century.

Dance in general also developed in many different directions in the twentieth century but the Modernist movement set the stage for dance trends and styles in the United States and Europe which tended to emphasise individualism and diversion, and then later developed into freestyle. This could be seen in western concert or theatrical dance where modern dance continued as an art form:

“Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance, primarily arising out of Germany and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Modern dance is often considered to have emerged as a rejection of or rebellion against, classical ballet. Socioeconomic and cultural factors also contributed to its development. In the late 19th century, dance artists such as Isadora Duncan, Maud Allan and Loie Fuller were pioneering new forms and practices in what is now called aesthetic or free dance for performance. These dancers disregarded ballet’s strict movement vocabulary, the particular, limited set of movements that were considered proper to ballet and stopped wearing corsets and pointe shoes in the search for greater freedom of movement.”

Image on the right: Josephine Baker dancing the Charleston at the Folies Bergère, Paris, in 1926

Later in the twentieth century, as in the other arts, dance was affected by Postmodernism from the 1960s to the 1980s. While Postmodernism rejected the grand narratives [e.g. Christian ideology, Freudian psychology, political democracy etc.] and ideologies of Modernism, it was similar to Modernism in that it also rejected Enlightenment ideas and was thus another form of Romanticism. With Postmodernism, the politicisation of dance or the use of dance as a form of collective resistance to capitalism and imperialism, became a more remote prospect as “the postmodern dance movement rapidly developed to embrace the ideas of postmodernism, which rely on chance, self-referentiality, irony, and fragmentation.” For example, Postmodern dance incorporated “improvisation, spontaneous determination, and chance”, cast non-trained dancers, and changed the relationship of dance to the tempo of accompanying music. Later it became more conceptual and abstract while distancing “itself from expressive elements such as music, lighting, costumes, and props.”

As Postmodern dance distanced itself from the masses, popular dances in the form of novelty and fad dances went to the other extreme, regularly spreading among the people like wildfires that soon burnt themselves out. They took different forms: solo dances, partner dances, group dances and freestyle dances. From 1909 to the mid 1940s there was: The Grizzly Bear, Charleston, Duckwalk, Carioca, Suzie Q, The Lambeth Walk, Thunder Clap, Conga, and the Hokey cokey. During the 1950s there was Bomba, The Chicken, Bunny Hop, The Hop, The Meatstick, Madison, The Stroll, and Hully Gully. The 1960s had Shimmy, Twist, The Chicken Walk, The Gravy (“On My Mashed Potato”), The Loco-Motion, Martian Hop, Mashed Potato, The Monster Mash, The Swim, Watusi, Chicken Dance, Hitch hike, Monkey, The Frug, Jerk, The Freddie, Limbo, Batusi, and The Shake.

In the 1970s it was Sprinkler, Penguin, Hustle, Time Warp, Bump, Tragedy, Grinding, Car Wash, Electric Slide, Robot, The Running Man, Y.M.C.A., and Little Apple. The 1980s saw Moonwalk, Cotton-Eyed Joe, Harlem Shake, Agadoo (aka Agadou), Superman (aka Gioca Jouer), The Safety, Lambada, Thriller, The Hunch, Wig Wam Bam, Cabbage Patch, Da Butt. In the 1990s there was The Carlton, Locomía, Boot Scootin’ Boogie, Do the Bartman, Hammer, The Humpty, Vogue, The Urkel, Achy Breaky Heart (Line dance), Macarena, Saturday Night, Tic, Tic Tac, Thizzle, La Bomba (not to be confused with Bomba), The Roger Rabbit, and Tootsee Roll.

As can be seen from the quantity cited and the regularity of change there is no end to Modernism’s ability to move with the markets or keep up with the constantly changing mass consumer pop music scene. A few styles of dance had periods of mass popularity and are still going today as social dances encouraged by regular classes in, for example, jive, salsa, and ballroom dancing.

Cinema also aided the popularity of dance in the twentieth century as can be seen in films featuring ballet in the 1940s (The Red Shoes), tap dancing in the 1950s (Singin’ in the Rain), modern dance in the 1960s (West Side Story), disco in the 1970s (Saturday Night Fever), club/performance partner dancing in the 1980s (Dirty Dancing), tango in the 2000s (Chicago) and modern dance theatre in the 2010s (Pina). The global popularity of Hollywood musicals and Bollywood song-and-dance sequences have made dance an important element to be considered in any new film musical.

Rehearsals for West Side Story, 1960 | American dancer, choreographer, and director Jerome Robbins (1918 – 1998) (in white) demonstrates a dance move to
American actor George Chakiris (left, foreground) during the filming of ‘West Side Story,’ directed by Robbins and
Robert Wise, New York, New York, 1961.

In terms of live performance the Irish stage show, Riverdance, featuring Irish step-dancing, opened in Dublin in 1995. It went on to perform in over 450 venues worldwide and has “been seen by over 25 million people, making it one of the most successful dance productions in the world.” The show also incorporated international dance elements of flamenco and tap dancing.

Thus the twentieth century has seen an explosion in interest in dance in general, and in the quantity of styles and techniques. It also has seen the overt politicisation of dance in nationalist and socialist struggles, and as an art form as affected by Romanticist and Enlightenment ideas as every other major art form.

The 21st century and new debates

Dance has become even more prevalent in the 21st century with the internet and global satellite media, for example, through  apps like TikTok and dance shows on TV. Riverdance is still touring and ballet is as popular as ever. Novelty and fad dances still come and go. Social dancing and traditional dance are still in demand due to classes, competitions and people’s natural love of dance as a form of socialising.

Riverdance cast at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, 2019.

However, it could be asked if popular dance has simply become a form of social catharsis, and performance dance as escapism and diversion? Is there a role for dance in progressive culture? The negative reaction to Diversity’s ‘I Can’t Breathe’ radical narrative may have been simply an overreaction in a society unused to seeing dance used in a critical setting. The connection between dance and story has become relevant again as Modernist and Postmodernist aesthetic strategies have waned in popularity. 21st century ballet has seen discussion revolving around narrative or story ballet (has plot and characters), as Alastair Macaulay writes: “Nowhere more than in narrative has ballet become the land of low expectations. Audiences regularly sit through a poverty of dance-narrative expression that they would never tolerate in a movie, a novel, an opera, a play or even a musical.”

Hanna Rubin discusses issues relating to choreography:

“Choreographing story ballets that will appeal to contemporary audiences presents unique challenges even for experienced dancemakers. A too-literal approach or too-traditional staging can seem quaint or flat. And what makes a suitable narrative for those coming of age in a digital era, where there are no strictures on what can be searched, seen and shared? How can a story ballet hold audiences’ attention? If mere distraction becomes the goal, how can a ballet achieve the resonance that will give it continued life?”

However, choreographer Helen Pickett notes that “[n]ew stories are being created from other people’s histories”. She points out that traditional ballerina roles haven’t always been empowering ones. “Putting the female on the pedestal was a way to say she is untouchable, but not in an elevated way — in a way that she is perhaps suffering […] There was a lot of that in the Romantic era: Giselle goes nuts for her love.”

In her own work, Pickett has featured strong female characters, and has worked on an adaptation of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible for the Scottish Ballet. This is certainly an interesting direction as The Crucible was a “dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692–93. Miller wrote the play as an allegory for McCarthyism, when the United States government persecuted people accused of being communists.”

Scottish Ballet’s The Crucible – Theatre Royal, Glasgow . Image: Jane Hobson.
Based on the play by Arthur Miller. Choreographer: Helen Pickett.
“The real trick of telling the story of The Crucible through dance is not to overexplain everything.” Helen Pickett in The Scotsman

Yet, although laudable, progressive narratives of resistance can also be cheapened. According to Macaulay: ““Spartacus,” the Bolshoi Ballet’s biggest hit of the last half-century, reduces its freedom-fighting story to the dimensions of trash (irresistible and sensational trash in the right performance), as enjoyable as “Flash Gordon” and scarcely more serious.”

Finding the right balance between form and progressive content in ballet may be one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century for many reasons: conservative owners/backers/critics, the negative effects of Modernism and Postmodernism on form and ideology, and the lingering effects of Romanticist over-emphasis on emotion and the individual rather than on context and sociopolitical struggles.

Similarly with other forms of dance. The synthesis of the new with the old can make for exciting and engaging art (like ‘I Can’t Breathe’) when it is based on the stories of people’s actual lived lives.

Dance has truly taken its place as a significant global cultural movement. While there are still social divisions in dance today, as in the past, the difference is that the performance dances of the elites have the potential to be radical and progressive, just as the group dances of the masses today can be self-absorbed and escapist.

The future of participative dance will also depend on the level of engagement of people in sociopolitical struggle. In the past, in Ireland, for example, people flocked to traditional dance as it tied in with their nationalist and socialist beliefs. It was a way of connecting their past to a perceived or hoped for future. Similarly, in sport the Irish people flocked to Gaelic games while the previous mass support for cricket dropped dramatically as cricket was perceived to be a ‘British’ sport. People seek what gives their life meaning as they become more politicised, and this leads to pride in their own radical culture and radical history as a form of resistance. Participative dance will no doubt change again on this more conscious basis because it is an important part of people’s social and cultural lives.

Conclusion

Dance has had a long journey through human history. It has always been associated with people’s celebrations and festivities as a collective expression of human emotions. However, over time particular dances became more and more associated with different classes and groups as societies grew ever more complex. During the time of the Enlightenment, dance became a focus of research and criticism. Performance dance became imbued with Classical ideals and participative dance was seen in a new way as an important part of the heritage of all the people, and not backward or even inferior as in the past. Later, such dances took on even more powerful roles with revolutionary content and state folk ensembles. However, Romanticist ideas turned dance in on itself, shearing it of sociopolitical ideals and progressive content. That is, until Diversity hit the stage with a performance which may yet prove to be the beginning of a new chapter in the history of dance.

*

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

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. 

Notes

[1] Vicki Spencer, In Defense of Herder on Cultural Diversity and Interaction, The Review of Politics , Winter, 2007, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Winter, 2007), pp. 79-105 Published by: Cambridge University Press for the University of Notre Dame du lac on behalf of Review of Politics

[2] David Denby, Herder: culture, anthropology and the Enlightenment, HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 18 No. 1
© 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) pp. 55–76

US President Donald Trump and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided that Iran was their worst enemy and that its nuclear and missile programs should be disrupted or destroyed by all means. Perhaps Trump considers Iran to be one of the reasons for his failure to be re-elected- or is it a “non-mission accomplished” to see Iran increasing its nuclear enrichment and developing its ballistic missile programs? There is little doubt that Trump wanted to add these two “achievements” to the list of gifts he offered to Israel: the Syrian-occupied Golan Heights, the Palestinian Capital of Jerusalem, the illegal reconstruction of settlements and the normalisation of relations of Arab and Muslim countries with Israel. Hence Trump’s motive for dragging Iran into a war or at least making sure he burns the ground under the JCPOA were the President-elect to attempt to reinstall it after the 20^th of January 2021. The assassination of the Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhri Zadeh was not explicitly, but only implicitly, announced by Netanyahu. What are Iran’s options? Who supported Israel in this assassination? How did Netanyahu drag Saudi Arabia onto Iran’s target list? On which platform is the next battlefield expected to be?

Prime Minister Netanyahu faces the Court of Justice at home, accused of bribery and corruption. He is trying everything to remain in power and to gather more allies around him. He has not hesitated to drag his new ally, Saudi Arabia, with him in the play against Iran. One result of this is that Iran now has a wider choice of objectives to target in response to the assassination of Fakhri Zadeh.

In fact, the Israeli Prime Minister has few valid options for engaging in a wider war, alone, and for many reasons. In Lebanon, the deterrence imposed by Hezbollah forces on the Israeli army to stay away from the borders. Hezbollah leader Sayed Hassan Nasrallah vowed to hit and kill any Israeli soldier at the first opportunity. The Israeli government ordered all Israeli troops to stand down and take their distance, leaving the borders unattended for several months now. Moreover, Hezbollah is transporting weapons from Syria to Lebanon under the impotent eyes of the Israelis, who fear hitting a Hezbollah operative and suffering the consequences. Hezbollah has imposed its rules of engagement on Israel on a front where Netanyahu feels weak and vulnerable.

In Israel, the army is not ready for war and its internal front is also far from ready. Israel’s harbours and airports are within easy reach of Iran and its allies’ precision missiles if fired from Syria or Lebanon or even Iraq. The Israeli economy has suffered acutely from the Corona Virus. Therefore, Netanyahu needs other states to fight on his side or on his behalf. His revelation of the secretive visit he took to Saudi Arabia to meet crown prince Mohamad Bin Salman makes more sense following the assassination of Fakhri Zadeh. Netanyahu wanted to show Iran that he was not alone in the assassination and that Saudi Arabia is also involved. This means that the Iranian choice of “revenge objectives” will not be limited to Israel. Netanyahu’s hit is clearly below the belt, but is not unusual in terms of his character and strategies.

There was no real need to reveal the date of his visit, nor to keep civilians monitoring his flight from Israel to the city of Neom on the Red Sea. Nothing new really is happening in the Saudi-Israel relationship. Saudi Arabia has already been financing wars carried out by Israel, mainly against Lebanon (in 2006). Former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo visited Riyadh in 2014. Retired Saudi General Anwar Eshki met with Israeli official at King David Hotel in 2016 and a year later Saudi spy chief Khalid Bin Ali al-Humaidan made a secret visit to Israel.

For the first time since the assassination of four Iranian nuclear scientists, in recent years, the international community has openly condemned the target-killing of a civilian in Iran, defining it as “state -sponsored terrorism”. Israel is once more accused of violating  international law by carrying out an assassination : and one that is barely useful to its objective to halt the Iranian nuclear program.

In fact, Israel routinely carries out dozens of assassinations against non-combatant militants and civilians without any global accountability, under the rule that “what is not permitted to any other state is permitted to Israel” .

The Israeli Foreign intelligence service, the Mossad, is not so competent as its reputation in the media might suggest. Its mediocrity has already been publicly exposed. Its “long arm” is actually dependent on outside international support. Mossad agents were rarely executed, unlike in Syria, when Damascus refused any negotiation.  Not only does it have a huge budget and a liberal supply of fake passports, but it enjoys the support of the international community and US military facilities everywhere in the world, depending on the particular clandestine operation and its objectives. The Israeli intelligence service can also rely on US and European support in most countries to release or smuggle out Mossad agents. These resources are the source of strength of Israel, in addition to the unlimited US support it receives when a president like Donald Trump is in office. Following the Israeli normalisation with the Gulf countries, Israel can now count on Arab support, more than before, to coordinate its clandestine activities in countries where the mutual enemies of these Arab states and Israel reside: Iran and the “Axis of the Resistance” (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen).

“The assassination of the Iranian scientist was carried out by a highly trained team of executors who did not prepare for the attack in just a few days. The team had explosives, weapons, financial means and safe houses to meet in and train as a team for the operation. That scale of activity requires a state-sponsored operation,” according to Iranian security sources in Tehran.

Israel, unlike President Trump when he assassinated Brigadier general Qassem Soleimani, did not officially announce its responsibility for the assassination of Fakhri Zadeh, even if Netanyahu hinted to this effect in his own style. However, US B-52s were ordered back to the Middle East a few days before the attack and the Pentagon ordered USS Nimitz back to the Persian Gulf and the US administration vowed to hit hard if any US soldier was attacked in Iraq. All these indications are taken by Iran as clear signals of the US-Israel complicity and responsibility for this unlawful assassination.

What are Iran’s choices?

The commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Major General Hossein Salameh, said “Iran will respond.” He has committed himself, and is not expected to risk his credibility by not responding. The leader of the revolution Sayed Ali Khamenei instructed his military commanders to “take the necessary revenge for the martyr Mohsen Fakhri Zadeh.” The IRGC–Quds Brigade commander, General Ismail Qaani, who represents the arm of Iranian strikes abroad, indicated: “there are targets that have been identified regionally and Iran’s allies will participate in the response.”

According to the sources, Iran has begun to work on several levels: 1) Uncovering the assassination team responsible for the assassination. 2) Asking all embassies abroad to solicit the international community’s condemnation of this unlawful target-killing of a civilian. 3) Identifying the absolute supporters of any Israeli action: deterrence is done in response by striking targets set by Iran in the Middle East. 3) Searching for any team (s) ready to carry out any other potential attack that Israel could execute during the remaining fifty days of Trump’s term. 4) Identifying the most urgent targets to hit in the Middle East. 5) Increasing the level of uranium enrichments, with little regard to the JCPOA, and increasing the level of stockpile beyond 2,442.9 kg.

The sources understand that there is nothing to stop Israel from carrying out further attacks against Iranian targets if deterrence is not imposed, as Hezbollah has effectively done in Lebanon. Moreover, any possible hit to Israel and US allies in the Middle East (in Afghanistan or Yemen, for example) would send signals to Israel to stop, when the US interests in the region are put in jeopardy.

As long as Trump (whom our source describes as “a bull in a China shop”) is in power,  Iran has decided not to go to war and in the meantime won’t be dragged into situations and arguments imposed by its enemies. Therefore, all-out-war is not yet on the table even if further cyber, sabotage or assassination attacks are likely in the weeks to come. “The account is open with Netanyahu, no need to rush, there will be other opportunities,” concluded the source.

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Ukraine’s economic situation is getting more and more complicated. The country is going through a moment of great crisis, from which it hoped to mitigate the effects by receiving emergency financial aid from the International Monetary Fund. However, the IMF now refuses to provide a large part of such emergency aid and launches Kiev into a danger of financial collapse. Now, the country must look for other ways to end this fiscal year after facing a large debt in its budget.

The new support program for Ukraine, approved by the IMF Board of Governors in early June, provides for the sending of 5 billion dollars over a period of one and a half years. Kiev has already received the first payment, valued at 2.1 billion. The remaining amount was expected to be sent in four installments of around 700 million dollars each one, in late June and late September, with two revisions next year. However, there will be no further installment until the end of 2020. Therefore, Ukraine must work within the current amount and meet its targets, which is truly complicated, if not impossible.

According to Yaroslav Zhelezniak, the first vice-chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s Financial and Fiscal Policy Committee, more than a billion dollars are missing – adding to the amount already collected – for the state to be able to pay the so-called “protected expenses”, which are those that according to Ukrainian national law cannot be cut, such as salaries, pensions, defense industry, among others. In any event, spending considered “secondary” would be canceled, but now, with the IMF’s delay, Kiev will not even be able to afford its protected expenses.

The accumulation of debts with protected expenses is precisely the greatest current threat to the Ukrainian state, as it represents a structural danger not only for finances but also for all strategic sectors affected by the lack of resources. For reasons of confidentiality, current Treasury information does not show which specific items of protected expanses have stopped receiving funding, but currently protected sectors account for 80% of all budgetary expenses.

As for unprotected items, everything is clear: simply, nothing is paid. In November, nothing outside the strategic sectors was financed from the Ukrainian state budget. That is, the authorities simply decided not to pay service providers and public-private partnerships in November. Obviously, this was a forced choice: without money available, there is no way to pay. However, it is undeniable that the social consequences of such default will be severe and will only further weaken Ukraine.

Given this scenario, the draft budget for 2021 has already been rewritten by the Council of Ministers. The new version was approved at an extraordinary meeting on 26 November and sent to Parliament for evaluation. In particular, the first budget plan for 2021 was one of the reasons for the refusal by the IMF of the aid to Ukraine, considering that the project had a deficit forecast of 6%, instead of the 5.3% agreed with the IMF. In the revised version, the deficit was reduced to 5.5%. This required increasing revenues and cutting expenses. Still, Ukraine remains hopeful of receiving aid with such a reduction.

In the draft of the second version of the 2021 budget, GDP growth remains estimated at 4.6%. However, it is important to note that this forecast appeared in the middle of the year, when nothing was known about the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic in Ukraine and the current crisis, which means that the calculations must be updated. Currently, the World Bank expects Ukrainian GDP growth of less than 1.5%, contrary to the optimism of Kiev’s experts.

It is interesting to note how Ukraine has struggled over the past six years to establish a political and economic orientation totally focused on the interests of Western powers, having been completely abandoned by such powers during its most fragile moment. In recent years, Kiev has entered a crisis that is already considered by many experts to be the worst since World War II. And the positioning of its western allies in the face of this scenario of imminent national collapse has been an absolute omission. Washington, for example, constantly announces military cooperation projects with Ukraine valued at millions of dollars, providing equipment and human resources, but at least in the past five years no effective financial aid project to the Ukrainian state has been established, having been limited to one small participation in European aid announced in 2014.

Amid the pandemic and the rise of economic isolationism, Ukraine will only be more and more alone. Perhaps the best path to follow is a general review of state priorities. For example, why include the defense industry in protected expenses when the country is experiencing a deep social crisis? It would be more strategic – and in line with the humanitarian values that Kiev claims to defend – to retreat in military spending and invest capital in partnerships with the private sector that can improve the lives of the Ukrainian people. This is currently the only possible way to Kiev.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

First published September 1, 2020

The data and concepts have been manipulated with a view to sustaining the fear campaign.

The estimates are meaningless. The figures have been hyped to justify the lockdown and the closure of the national economy, with devastating economic and social consequences. The Virus is held responsible for poverty and mass unemployment. 

Confirmed by prominent scientists as well as by official public health bodies including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Covid-19 is a public health concern but it is NOT a dangerous virus.

The COVID-19 crisis is marked by a public health “emergency” under WHO auspices which is being used as a pretext and a  justification to trigger a Worldwide process of economic, social and political restructuring. Social engineering is being applied. Governments are pressured into extending the lockdown, despite its devastating economic and social consequences.

There is no scientific basis for implementing the closing down of the global economy as a means to resolving a public health crisis. 

Both the media and the governments are involved in spreading disinformation.

The fear campaign has no scientific basis. 

Our objective is to reassure people Worldwide. Your governments are LYING.  In fact they are lying to themselves. 

We start by defining the virus and the tests which are being used to “identify the virus”. 

1  What is Covid-19, SARS-COV-2.

Below is the official WHO definition of Covid-19:

Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses which may cause illness in animals or humans.  In humans, several coronaviruses are known to cause respiratory infections ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The most recently discovered coronavirus causes coronavirus disease COVID-19.

The most common symptoms of COVID-19 are fever, dry cough, and tiredness. … These symptoms are usually mild and begin gradually. Some people become infected but only have very mild symptoms. Most people (about 80%) recover from the disease without needing hospital treatment. Around 1 out of every 5 people who gets COVID-19 becomes seriously ill and develops difficulty breathing.

“COVID-19 is similar to SARS-1″: According to  Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, pneumonia is “regularly caused or accompanied by corona viruses”. Immunologists broadly confirm the CDC definition. COVID-19 has similar features to a seasonal influenza coupled with pneumonia.

According to Anthony Fauci (Head of NIAID), H. Clifford Lane and Robert R. Redfield (Head of CDC) in the New England Journal of Medicine 

…the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.

Dr. Anthony Fauci  is lying to himself. In his public statements he says that Covid is “Ten Times Worse than Seasonal Flu”.

He refutes his peer reviewed report quoted above. From the outset, Fauci has been instrumental in waging the fear and panic campaign across America:

 

 

Screenshot The Hill, March 19, 2020

Covid-19 versus Influenza (Flu) Virus A and Virus B (and subtypes) (Bear in mind seasonal influenza is not a coronavirus)

Rarely mentioned by the media or the governments, The CDC confirms that Covid-19 is similar to Influenza

If the public had been informed and reassured that Covid is “similar to Influenza”, the fear campaign would have fallen flat.

The lockdown and closure of the national economy would have been rejected outright.

2. The Test for Covid-19 “Confirmed Cases”

The standard Covid test  is the Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR):

“The COVID-19 RT-PCR test is a real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) test for the qualitative detection of nucleic acid from SARS-CoV-2 in upper and lower respiratory specimens … collected from individuals suspected of COVID 19 … [as well as] from individuals without symptoms or other reasons to suspect COVID-19 infection. …

This test is also for use with individual nasal swab specimens that are self-collected using the Pixel by LabCorp COVID-19 test home collection kit … The COVID-19 RT-PCR test is also for the qualitative detection of nucleic acid from the SARS-CoV-2 in pooled samples, using a matrix pooling strategy (FDA, LabCorp Laboratory Test Number: 139900)

This test is based on upper and lower respiratory specimens.

 The criteria and guidelines confirmed by the CDC  pertaining to “The CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Diagnostic Panel” are as follows (Read carefully):

While SARS-CoV-2 –namely the the virus which is said to cause COVID-19 (erroneously categorized as a disease rather than a virus), was isolated in a laboratory test in January 2020, the RT-PCR test does not identify/detect the Covid-19 virus. What it detects are fragments of several viruses. According to renowned Swiss immunologist Dr B. Stadler

So if we do a PCR corona test on an immune person, it is not a virus that is detected, but a small shattered part of the viral genome. The test comes back positive for as long as there are tiny shattered parts of the virus left. Even if the infectious viri are long dead, a corona test can come back positive, because the PCR method multiplies even a tiny fraction of the viral genetic material enough [to be detected].

The Question is Positive for What?? The PCR does not detect the identity of the virus, According to Dr. Pascal Sacré,

In the UK, according to a Daily Telegraph May 21 report: “samples taken from the same patient are being recorded as two separate tests in the Government’s official figures”.

This is only one example of data manipulation. In the US, clinics are paid ($$$) to hike up the number of Covid-19 admissions. A probable case does not require a lab exam: “Meets vital records criteria with no confirmatory lab testing” (see form above)

COVID-19 Recovery Rates

The CDC Data tabulates  both “confirmed” and “presumptive” positive cases since January 21, 2020. Yet what it fails to make public is that among the confirmed and presumptive cases, a large number of Americans have recovered. But nobody talks about recovery. It does not make the headlines.

Falsification of Death Certificates

At the outset of the pandemic, the CDC had been instructed to change the methodology regarding Death Certificates with a view to artificially inflating the numbers of “Covid deaths”.  According to H. Ealy, M. McEvoy et al 

“The 2003 guidelines for establishing death certificates had been cancelled. “Had the CDC used its industry standard, Medical Examiners’ and Coroners’ Handbook on Death Registration and Fetal Death Reporting Revision 2003, as it has for all other causes of death for the last 17 years, the COVID-19 fatality count would be approximately 90.2% lower  than it currently is.” (Covid-19: Questionable Policies, Manipulated Rules of Data Collection and Reporting. Is It Safe for Students to Return to School? By H. Ealy, M. McEvoy, and et al., August 09, 2020

CDC Deaths Attributed to COVI-19. Comorbidities 

The latest CDC report confirms that 94% of the deaths attributed to Covid have “comorbidities”,(i.e. deaths dues other causes).

For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death. The number of deaths with each condition or cause is shown for all deaths and by age groups.

On March 21, 2020 the following specific guidelines were introduced by the CDC regarding Death Certificates (and their tabulation in the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS)

These specific guidelines have indelibly contributed to increasing Covid-19 as the recorded “cause of death”

And this despite the fact that the relevant lab texts (i.e. RT PCR) provide misleading results. Bear in mind that a Covid-19 cause of death does not require a lab exam.

• Covid-19 is Similar to Influenza 
• The whole exercise of PCR testing and establishing data of Covid-19 infection is subject error.  
• The figures are unreliable and so are the death certificates.
• “Confirmed Cases” are not always confirmed.
• The RT-PCR Test Does not isolate the Covid-19 virus. 

These inflated Covid positive “estimates” (from the PCR test) are then used to sustain the fear campaign. The hype in Covid-19 deaths is based on flawed and biased criteria.

Israel’s Mossad operates like a global Mafia hit squad.

On the phony pretext of protecting national security, it has a long history of assassinating Palestinians and others it wants eliminated.

Former IDF chief of staff General Dan Haluts once said “(t)argeted killing is the most important method in the fight against ‘terrorism (sic).’ ”

Like the US, Israel’s alleged threats are invented, not real.

Murder is a capital offense most everywhere. It’s a flagrant breach of international law.

Article 23b of the 1907 Hague Regulations prohibits “assassination, proscription, or outlawry of an enemy, or putting a price upon an enemy’s head, as well as offering a reward for any enemy ‘dead or alive.’ ”

UN Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions (1989) states the following:

“Governments shall prohibit by law all extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions and shall ensure that any such executions are recognized as offenses under their criminal laws, and are punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account the seriousness of such offenses.”

The US, NATO, and Israel operate by their own rules exclusively — the rule of law long ago abandoned.

According to Iranian media, Islamic Republic nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh — head of its Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND) — was assassinated on Friday in his car by multiple assailants 40 km northeast of Tehran.

Explosives and gunfire took his life in what was a carefully orchestrated incident.

Security guards with him were also killed, along with three or four hitmen.

Destabilizing Iran is longstanding US/Israeli policy. Tactics include sanctions, sabotage, cyberwar,  assassinations, and other dirty tricks.

In January 2012, prominent Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was assassinated by a powerful sticky bomb attached to his car.

From 2010 to that time, he was the fourth Iranian nuclear scientist assassinated.

Former Atomic Energy Organization of Iran head — current member of parliament — Fereydoun Abbasi narrowly escaped an attempt on his life.

In November 2011, Iranian missile expert/General Hassan Moghaddam was killed in a blast at the Bid Baneh base outside Tehran.

In July 2011, gunmen on motorcyles killed Dariush Rezaeinejad, a member of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.

In November 2010, a bomb attached to his car killed Iranian nuclear engineer Majid Shahriyari.

In January 2010, a bomb outside his home killed Iranian nuclear scientist Massoud Ali-Mohammadi. 

Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif commented sharply on Fakhrizadeh’s assassination, tweeting the following:

“Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today.”

“This cowardice—with serious indications of Israeli role—shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators.”

“Iran calls on int’l community—and especially EU—to end their shameful double standards & condemn this act of state terror.”

Iran’s Defense Ministry issued the following statement:

“This Friday afternoon, armed terrorist elements attacked a vehicle carrying Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.”

“During the clashes between his security team and the terrorists, Mr. Fakhrizadeh was severely injured and then transferred to hospital.”

Efforts to save his life failed. Iran’s Armed Forces Chief of Staff General General Mohammad Bagheri said the following:

“The terrorist groups and the perpetrators of this blind act should also know that severe revenge awaits them.”

By letter on Friday to UN secretary-general Guterres and the Security Council, Iran’s world body envoy Majid Takht Ravanchi said the following:

“The cowardly assassination of Martyr Fakhrizadeh — with serious indications of Israeli responsibility in it – is another desperate attempt to wreak havoc on our region, as well as to disrupt Iran’s scientific and technological development.”

“Warning against any adventuristic measures by the United States and Israel against my country, particularly during the..current (US regime’s time) in office, the Islamic Republic of Iran reserves its rights to take all necessary measures to defend its people and secure its interests.”

With less than two months of Trump’s tenure remaining, was Fakhrizadeh’s assassination a Netanyahu regime attempt to provoke Iranian retaliation in hopes of getting the US involved in war on the country?

Consider the following:

Mossad has a long history of targeted assassinations.

Its dirty hands were likely all over earlier killings of Iranian scientists.

Most likely, it was responsible for Fakhrizadeh’s assassination.

The Netanyahu regime wants no return of the US to the JCPOA, hoping to kill it altogether.

Trump did more to fulfill Israel’s wish list than any of his predecessors.

His actions included unlawful recognition of Syrian Golan as Israeli territory, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, drafting a one-sided no-peace/Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, and arranging normalization of Israeli relations with the UAE, Bahrain and the Saudis.

While the Biden/Harris regime will  one-sidedly support Israel like all its predecessors, it may not be as accommodative of its wishes as Trump.

Most likely, it would want war with Iran avoided, while continuing hostile US actions against the country, short of attacking it militarily.

Despite continuing wars he inherited and waging them by other means on numerous countries — including “maximum pressure” on Iran — Netanyahu’s aim to get Trump involved in hot war on the Islamic Republic is highly likely to fail.

Based on the above responses by Iranian officials to Fakhrizadeh’s assassination, retaliation in some form(s) seems likely — short of what could explode the region in hot war.

The Netanyahu regime may have more anti-Iran provocations in mind while Trump remains in office.

Iran will respond in its own way at times of its choosing.

Since establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979 — ending a generation of US-installed fascist tyranny — Washington never attacked Iranian territory militarily except for covert actions.

Whatever Netanyahu regime hardliners may try to involve the US in war on Iran ahead is highly likely to fail.

The Jewish state won’t take military action against Iran on its own without US permission and involvement.

What never happened before most likely isn’t in the cards ahead.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Credits to the owner of the featured image

On November 23, Russian Senators, Academicians, Researchers and Experts gathered to discuss the export of non-commodities to Africa at the interactive webinar, organized by Federation Council of Russia, Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Russia, and Business Russia Association.

According to the organizers, the meeting was to identify funding for exports, to concretize proposals for increasing exports to Africa and to facilitate amendments to the Russian legislation if required to promote exports to African market.

Senator Igor Morozov, a member of the Federation Council Committee on Economic Policy, also the Chairman of the Coordinating Committee on Economic Cooperation with Africa, held the videoconference meeting on “Improving State Support for Export in African Countries.”

During the videoconference, many questions including the issues of developing a system of state support for Russian enterprises exporting products to the African market, as well as the participation of Russian regions in the development of exports to African countries were thoroughly discussed.

The meeting was attended by Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Economic Policy, Konstantin Dolgov; member of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Construction, Alexey Pushkov; representatives of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation; the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation; the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation; the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs; scientific organizations and expert community.

Senator Igor Morozov noted that in conditions of sanctions pressure, new markets, new partners and allies are important for Russia.

“This predetermines the return of Russia to Africa, makes this direction a priority both from the point of view of geopolitical influence, and in the trade and economic context.”

“It is important for us to expand and improve competitive government support instruments for business. It is obvious that over the thirty years when Russia left Africa, China, India, the USA, and the European Union have significantly increased their investment opportunities,” Morozov stressed.

He, however, suggested creating a new structure within the Russian Export Center – an investment fund, explained further that

“Such a fund could evaluate and accumulate concessions as a tangible asset for the Russian raw materials and innovation business.”

Konstantin Dolgov touched upon the topic of using political ties with African countries to build up economic and investment cooperation. He also pointed out the need to connect Russian regions, to maximize their export potential.

Alexey Pushkov noted that with the right strategy, such a large state as Russia has a chance to take strong positions in interaction, in particular, economic, with other continents, including Africa. “The competition will certainly grow,” the Senator said, noting that the situation is constantly changing.

Representative from the Russian Export Center (REC), Veronika Nikishina, informed the gathering about Russian projects that are being implemented or planned in the African market, including the supply of passenger cars to Egypt, wheat supplies, as well as REC business missions, participation in exporters’ exhibitions.

REC offers a wide range of financial and non-financial support tools to benefit the Russian exporters explore the foreign markets and build capacity in the global trade. Generally, the African market is of particular interest to potential Russian exporters, and negotiations with government, trade agencies and business community to allow establishing effective ways of entry to the huge continental market. With an estimated population of 1.3 billion, Africa constitutes a huge market for all kinds of products and a wide range of services.

According to her, since July 2020, the REC began to practice online business missions, which in the absence of physical contacts, allows continuing communications, maintaining current exports and looking for new niches.

According to Professor Irina Abramova, Director of the Institute for African Studies under the Russian Academy of Sciences, financial instruments are the main issue of Russian interaction with the continent. She touched upon such topics as Russian investments in African countries, the prospects for establishing direct contacts on the supply of agricultural products with African countries.

Quite recently, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs created the Secretariat for Russia-Africa Partnership Forum. The Secretariat further established an Association for Economic Cooperation with African States. The Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has also restructured its Coordinating Committee for Economic Cooperation with African States that was established as far back in 2009.

According to historical documents, the Coordinating Committee for Economic Cooperation with African States was created on the initiative of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation and Vnesheconombank with the support of the Federation Council and the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. It has had support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Economy and Trade, the Ministry of Natural Resources, as well as the Ministry of Higher Education and Science.

After the first Russia-Africa Summit in the Black Sea city Sochi on October 23-24 in 2019, Russia and Africa have resolved to move from mere intentions to concrete actions in raising the current bilateral trade and investment to appreciably higher levels in the coming years. Indeed, all the structures are fixed for the necessary take-off.

“There is a lot of interesting and demanding work ahead, and perhaps, there is a need to pay attention to the experience of China, which provides its enterprises with state guarantees and subsidies, thus ensuring the ability of companies to work on a systematic and long-term basis,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explicitly said.

According to Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Ministry would continue to provide all-round support for initiatives aimed at strengthening relations between Russia and Africa.

“Our African friends have spoken up for closer interaction with Russia and would welcome our companies on their markets. But much depends on the reciprocity of Russian businesses and their readiness to show initiative and ingenuity, as well as to offer quality goods and services,” he stressed.

Amid a stagnating economy and after years of Western sanctions, Moscow is looking for both allies and an opportunity to boost growth in trade and investment. Currently, Russia’s trade with Africa is less than half that of France with the continent, and 10 times less than that of China. Asian countries are doing brisk business with Africa.

In terms of arms sales, Russia leads the pack in Africa, and Moscow still has a long way to catch-up with many other foreign players there. In 2018, Russia’s trade with African countries grew more than 17 percent and exceeded US$20 billion. At the Sochi summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would like to bring the figure US$20 billion, over the next few years at least, to US$40 billion. 

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Kester Kenn Klomegah is a frequent and passionate contributor to Global Research.

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On Friday, the Philadelphia-based Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump campaign’s accusation of Election 2020 fraud in Pennsylvania — despite hard evidence proving otherwise.

The court ruling rejected issuance of an injunction to bloc Pennsylvania’s certification of Election 2020 results.

Dismissed as well was the claim by Trump’s legal team that mail-in ballots were handled differently in Dem-controlled counties compared to majority GOP ones.

Nor did the court agree that blocking GOP poll watchers from observing the count close-up was a legitimate complaint — or that election fraud occurred.

A case with credible merit — supported by eyewitness testimonies — was dismissed as meritless.

Writing for the three-judge panel, Judge Stephanos Bibas — a Trump appointee — said the following:

“Voters, not lawyers, choose the president. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections.”

“Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy (sic).”

“Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so.”

“Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here (sic).”

“No federal law requires poll watchers or specifies where they must live or how close they may stand when votes are counted.”

“Nor does federal law govern whether to count ballots with minor state-law defects or let voters cure those defects.”

“Those are all issues of state law, not ones that we can hear. And earlier lawsuits have rejected those claims.”

Rejection by Third Circuit Appeals Court was expected.

The Trump campaign’s plan all along was and remains for nine Supreme Court justices to have final say on Election 2020’s legitimacy.

On Friday, campaign attorney Jenna Ellis tweeted the following:

“The activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania continues to cover up the allegations of massive fraud.”

“We are very thankful to have had the opportunity to present proof and the facts to the PA state legislature.”

“On to SCOTUS!”

After Trump said he’ll leave the White House if on December 14 the Electoral College affirms a majority of electors for Biden, on Friday he tweeted:

“Biden can only enter the White House as president if he can prove that his ridiculous ’80,000,000 votes’ were not fraudulently or illegally obtained.”

The challenger has a “big unsolvable problem (of) massive voter fraud” in key swing states.

Dems, major media across the board and courts so far ignored brazen election fraud for Biden/Harris over Trump.

A SCOTUS showdown may be next, Trump’s last chance for a second term that’s fast slipping away.

The Supreme Court may or may not have final say on Election 2020’s outcome.

While it most often declines to hear election-related cases, it ruled on Bush v. Gore (2000) and may hear Trump’s election-rigging arguments with plenty of supportive evidence.

Yet based on what happened so far, it’s a long shot at best for Election 2020 results to be reversed.

Majority High Court justices most often swim with the tide. It’s going out for Trump and in for Biden/Harris.

In 2000, majority justices ruled for losers Bush/Cheney over winner Gore.

A similar Election 2020 ruling is likely if it hears arguments by Trump’s legal team — for losers Biden/Harris over the incumbent.

Democracy in America is pure fantasy.

So is judicial fairness — likely to be denied a US president if dark forces running things want him replaced.

That’s how things appear to be unfolding — majority Supreme Court justices perhaps to affirm it.

If things turn out this way, a free, fair, and open process will go down with Trump. No longer will it exist.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

A wonderfully written recent article on the ethics of Facebook Inc provoked me to think about my own position. It’s oft said in defence of the software that Facebook is a forum for progressive public debate, an ideal and desirable stimulus for democracy. So I was pleased the article stimulated a lively exchange of ideas on a contentious issue, the ethics of Facebook itself.

During the unprecedented, wild explosion of Facebook’s popularity, it had a revolutionary vibe. By 2018, political scandal had engulfed the company and Facebook vs The People hit the high court in the USA, stoking public concern over how much power the business has. Nonetheless, Zuckerburg is teflon-skinned, at least in the elite privilege networks he moves in, because they are acting as if, and telling us that, Facebook is socially responsible, acts lawfully, and is not a threat to democracy. In all truth, the fact Facebook successfully established the “publisher” defence in court (Wikileaks?) suggests that its primary function as corporate spyware is left unmentioned, intact, and beyond the purview of public scrutiny. In all truth, the only revolutionary thing about Facebook is it has upgraded the ability of the powers that be to repress dissent, especially powerful dissent spawned on Facebook itself.

Like every revolution, Facebook had its cadre, its battle, its legacy. Like every revolution, the cadre was purged, the battle turned downwards, the legacy? Propaganda. By stealth, the undemocratic vanguard of Facebook enacted policies to accrue more power, more wealth, and became an ossified nomenclatura that cultivate, fiercely protect class privileges. Like Stalin being bestowed praise in Pravda, Zuckerburg is given laurels in Time, his eerie face a reminder of who is officially the great man of our times. Like Stalin in the USSR, he is the primary political Titan and heavyweight behind the facile facade of popular democracy. In 1917 the revolution was red, its slogan “Bread and Peace.” In 2018 the revolution is hollowed of soul and substance by a blue collar, data age enterprise, indoctrinating people to think they care about meaningful “connection” before capital, or people, before profit.

Commentators call the data age the fourth industrial revolution. Borne aloft by the rapid global expansion of processes of digitisation and artificial intelligence, the fourth industrial revolution has had vast effects on the economy, the means of production and society at large, blurring the distinction between the digital and physical. Evidently this has had a profound effect on social relations and power dynamics. At once liberating the best and worst instincts in humanity, the means of informational production contains the possibility of liberation today, but in the hands of anti-democratic incumbent elites in politics, business and law enforcement, it deepens and broadens the vassalage relations of feudalism and capitalism by affording elites the power of surveillance, which is an easy way to regulate modes of thought and behaviour to conform to their agenda.

Such unethical psychological and behavioural manipulation was a key strategy of the well documented, but scarcely understood, partnership between Cambridge Analytica, a sordid global lobbying consultancy, and social media. The presidential and Leave-the EU campaigns represent many millions spent on completely manufactured demands: Trump’s policies and Brexit.

The sad truth of where power lies in politics today is that Cambridge Analytica didn’t work for political campaigns. The political campaigns really worked for Cambridge Analytica, because Trump’s and Leave’s roles were — perhaps unknowingly — not to be borne aloft to victory by underlings at the firm but to act as stooges to rally, recruit more and more citizens to be crunched in the firm’s matrix and spat out as a model voter, pliable citizen and captive consumer, a purpose for which corporate information management has been using political campaigns for well over a decade.

Data, advertising and social media companies already have long established and vastly more significant income revenues from the constant use of their software by other means than having to depend on single political commissions to get by. A commission like Trump’s or Leave’s merely sanctions the act of harvest, a mass reaping. Corporate data management portfolios have, over time, edged closer and closer to the architecture of political power, to the extent the two are fast becoming indistinct, a single power complex.

Silicon Valley is increasingly deployed as a strategist, and in turn campaigns enrol them to lobby us in such a way as to recreate our “psycho geographic profile” to fit their model. The idea of elections in days gone past was that, accepting of course it fast became the norm not all candidates abided to the norm, that candidates nonetheless made an earnest pledge for a mandate on which they would be judged by the public and ultimately be rewarded or punished at the ballot box, not that the electoral process would become a spectacle in which dishonest promotions to audiences would be used to nudge and steer them towards well advertised ideas.

Why has this change occurred? The advent of transnational informational capitalism meant centralised hierarchical networks of IT experts like Silicon Valley could pursue their own selfish agenda, namely self enrichment, the most direct and obvious means to that end being to sell the data we so willingly impart within their software within a culture of what I call “consensual coercion” that has taken over our lives. That is, a lifestyle of unnecessary transparency that is promoted to us through social media and, longing for acceptance, we do it, cultivated, nurtured, fed by big business. Lots of companies have high stakes in our penchant for carelessness with data and have long sought for us to give it up by latent or patent means.

To understand the raison d’être of Cambridge Analytica and, by proxy, contemporary political campaigns we have to move backwards to the inception of consumer psychology, the art and science of manipulating the minds, emotions and desires of citizens to generate intended economic outcomes.

As partisan wings of the liberal media stage manage and rehearse their response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal to get their verdict on which breach was worse in first, to best frame events to the advantage of their partisan agenda, the world becomes ever more deceived and confused about precisely how far, how deep, how rancid the rotten corruption runs. Scapegoating Trump alone for the scandal not only ludicrously attributes the misuse of the politics and economy of information management — based on complex mathematical modelling and research — to him, but moreover overlooks the social and historical context of these revelations, which implicates the politico-corporate infrastructure of silicon valley in a vast conspiracy against the people.

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According to the Center for Systems Science at Johns Hopkins University, as of November 29th, there have been 62,150,421 COVID-19 cases, including 1,450,338 deaths. According to the latest ILO reports, as job losses escalate due to lockdowns, nearly half of the global workforce is at risk of losing livelihoods, access to food and the ability to survive. The World Economic Forum states that

‘With some 2.6 billion people around the world in some kind of lockdown, we are conducting arguably the largest psychological experiment ever.’

As governments and corporations tighten political authoritarianism and technological surveillance, curtailing privacy and democratic protest, much of humanity is succumbing to anxiety, depression and a sense of powerlessness. Countries with some of the harshest lockdowns, such as India, have seen significant increases in suicides.

Pandemic Narrative and Dissent

Dominant global political and economic institutions and the media present their pandemic narrative as based on scientific authority. However, there is increasing dissension on the origin and prevention of the virus within the biomedical profession. Many physicians and scientists are questioning if COVID-19 is a natural occurrence or the product of a leak from a lab experimenting with coronaviruses and bioweapons.

There is concern over the accuracy of PCR tests and false positives, as well as the classification of deaths simply as COVID-19 deaths when an overwhelming number of deaths are related to pre-existing illnesses or comorbidities, such as diabetes and heart disease.

Even according to November 25, 2020 CDC statistics, COVID-19 was the sole cause of death mentioned in only 6% of the deaths. The disproportionately higher rates of Covid deaths among American Indians and Alaska Natives, for example, are due to higher rates of obesity, diabetes, asthma, and heart disease than among more privileged U.S. communities.

The Covid pandemic has not been the ‘Great Equalizer’ as suggested by the likes of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and members of the World Economic Forum. Rather, it has exacerbated existing inequalities along gender, race and economic class divides across the world. Just as unemployed and uninsured Americans are pleading for support, the combined wealth of U.S. billionaires ‘surpassed $1 trillion in gains since March 2020 and the beginning of the pandemic,’ according to a study by the Institute for Policy Studies. The top five U.S. billionaires – Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett and Larry Ellison – saw their wealth grow by a total of $101.7 billion, or 26%, during this period.

Among the pandemic profiteers are CEOs of companies like Zoom and Skype providing video conferencing, and Amazon providing online shopping to citizens under lockdown. Yet the success of these companies has not translated into better wages and safety conditions for their employees. However, the political and ideological power of the billionaire class and their influence over domestic and global policymaking are increasing. Relevant in this regard is billionaire Bill Gates’ central role in the development and marketing of vaccines and interest in use of vaccines as a method of population control.

The pharmaceutical industry, i.e. Big Pharma, (including vaccine manufacturers) are known for inflating prices, avoiding taxes and manipulating the political process to maximize profit. Unfortunately, this corrupt industry is a key player in the race to end the COVID-19 pandemic. The incoming Biden administration in the US has received extensive funding from the pharmaceutical industry, yet they have not agreed to cut the cost of a possible coronavirus vaccine developed with federal research dollars. Rather, the Biden administration, also heavily funded by the big tech, finance and defense sectors, is poised to facilitate ‘The Great Reset;’ the initiative to remake the post-pandemic world order by the World Economic Forum.

The ‘Great Reset’

The World Economic Forum (WEF), which identifies itself as ‘the international organization for public-private partnership,’ (i.e., like the Council on Foreign Relations, a geopolitical corporate power agency) sees the social and economic devastation [allegedly] caused by the COVID-19 pandemic as a ‘unique window of opportunity to shape the recovery.’ Speaking at a conference organized by the WEF in June 2020, former US Secretary of State, John Kerry expressed concern:

“Forces and pressures that were pushing us into crisis over the social contract are now exacerbated……The world is coming apart, dangerously, in terms of global institutions and leadership.”

The ‘Great Reset’ envisioned by the WEF seeks to address these challenges by radical global restructuring. It seeks to reinvent ‘the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons…to build a new social contract…,’ with sustainable development and resilience as its ultimate objectives.

At its next annual gathering of the rich and powerful in Davos, Switzerland in January 2021, the WEF is expected to adopt the Great Reset and also incorporate youth leaders from around the world into the initiative through a virtual summit.

The stated goals of sustainability and resilience are laudable, but many are questioning the true objectives of both the WEF and the Great Reset. The pandemic simulation called Event 201, for example, was conducted in October 2019, about three months before the COVID-19 outbreak by the World Economic Forum in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The simulation predicted up to 65 million deaths due to a coronavirus. Many are wondering why these powerful organizations, having apparently already run the exact scenario as a test, failed to prevent or at least prepare the world for the imminent viral outbreak.

The global political economy has been moving in the direction of increasing technological and market integration through social media, artificial intelligence and biotechnology. In the wake of COVID-19, the trends towards digitalization and commoditization of economic and social relations have increased. The ‘Great Reset’ seeks to accelerate and solidify these trends as well as expand corporate control of natural resources and state surveillance of individuals. In the post-pandemic ‘Great Reset,’ there would not be much life left outside the technological-corporate nexus dominated by monolithic agribusiness, pharmaceutical, communication, defense and other inter-connected corporations, and the governments and media serving them.

The proponents of the ‘Great Reset’ envisage a Brave New World where, ‘You will own nothing. And you will be happy. Whatever you want, you will rent, and it will be delivered by drones…´ But it is more likely that this elite-led revolution will make the vast majority of humanity a powerless, appendage of technology with little consciousness and meaning in their lives.

Resistance

The mainstream media establishment tends to cast all critiques of the dominant Covid narrative and solutions as ‘conspiracy theories.’ Yet, more and more people are questioning the narrative on the origin and management of the pandemic and, instead, see the need to shift to a truly democratic, just and ecological civilization.

Many of the anti-lockdown protests around the world have had a limited focus on social restrictions and personal freedom, desires usually in tune with the individualism of globalized consumer culture. While these have gained some attention in the mainstream media by their acceptability, the more focused and progressive demands for social and economic rights by civil society groups have received scant attention.

These include demands by numerous groups, such as Oxfam International, to make COVID-19 medicines and vaccines free and fair for all. There is also a demand for a global public inquiry, to be led by independent scientists, to gather evidence on the origin and evolution of COVID-19. In addition, there is a call for an International Biowarfare Crimes Tribunal, to bring perpetrators of the pandemic to justice, whether they be from the US or China.

The overall objective of these demands is in greater transparency, ethics and accountability in the use of technology, especially biotechnology and vaccines against COVID-19 and other viruses. The demand for enforcement of the Biological Weapons Convention calls on the ‘nations of the world, China, Russia, the US, to come together to enforce better verification systems for preventing the production of biological weapons in the future, before the world is put through multiple pandemics to come’. These are concerns to be included in an alternative ethical, wise and compassionate ‘Great Reset.’

The Covid pandemic is a turning point, an opportunity to change. The reset we need now is not the creation of a ‘post-human, post-nature’ world defined by unregulated corporate-led growth of artificial intelligence and biotechnology. We need to balance digitalization and commoditization with an ecological reset, a way of living that respects the environment, promotes agroecology, bioregionalism and local communities.

We need to raise our consciousness and understanding of humanity as a species in nature, our connectedness to each other and the rest of planetary life.

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Featured image: Public domain image from Wiki’s COVID-Protest page.

An important guest to get to Dr. Reiner, is with us now and he is in Germany and my understanding is, is actually filing a lawsuit, correct me if I’m wrong, filing a lawsuit over many of the lockdowns that have occurred around the world. And you say it’s because of these. I want to read it here. Current geopolitical changes in the world are regarded as crimes against humanity. Can you speak to that?

Yeah, well, we filed that lawsuit today here in Germany, it’s part of a larger strategy of lawsuits.  We are in very close cooperation with Bobby Kennedy’s CHD and his team of attorneys. But this is the first step, we believe, which I think will attack the cornerstone of the current crisis, which are the PCR tests, because we believe after having listened to dozens of experts since July 10th here in Berlin in our CORONA investigative committee, we believe that this is a staged pandemic. This is nothing this is nothing to do with health, but everything to do with what Bobby Kennedy just talked about.

The they’re very concrete dangers for democracy, in particular for free speech. So we believe that in order to make this house of cards collapse, we have to attack the PCR test, because in the meantime, we have learned from the WHO  that the actual danger of this so-called pandemic is no worse than that of a common flu at .14% infection fatality rate, and we also know that there are no asymptomatic infections. So what is left is the PCR test.

TRANSCRIPT

00:01:56.120

We know that from listening to our witnesses, we know that this particular now so-called Drosden PCR test, which supposedly tells you something about infections, does not tell you anything about infections, but rather it is being used as a tool to keep people in panic mode and not ask any questions about what they are supposed to do, like mask-wearing requirements, social distancing the lockdowns.

OK, so let me be a little bit of clarification here on some things, so you said that the lawsuit was filed this morning. Who have you filed against?

This is a defamation lawsuit. We are our plaintiff is Dr.Wolfgang Wodarg, I don’t know if you’ve heard about him. He’s the person who more or less single handedly stepped in 12 years ago when something very similar to what’s happening now was about to happen, namely the swine flu. He’s the one who was then in a position of political power. He was a member of the German parliament and he was also a member of the Council of Europe.

And he managed back then to stop things from getting any worse, even though it had gotten pretty bad at the time that he stepped in, because they were already vaccinating people with a hastily invented vaccine, which eventually did a lot of damage to, I think, seven hundred children here in Europe.

They’re now permanently disabled, suffering from narcolepsy. But he is the one who stopped this. And he he did great work showing to the to the general population in throughout the world that even then this so-called swine flu wasn’t any worse, was just a mild flu eventually. And that’s what we believe this is.

So so he’s the person you’re suing, though? No, no, he’s the plaintiff and we’re suing a group of people, so-called fact-checkers, which they’re not.

Of course, they’re manipulating the truth. They’re being hired by the corporations that Bobby Kennedy spoke about by YouTube, Facebook and Facebook and Twitter. Exactly. And we’re suing them and this is clad in a defamation lawsuit. I’m doing this for reasons of burden of proof. There’s this group of people is accusing Dr. Wodag of lying when he says that the PCR tests are unreliable and cannot tell you anything about infections. So we’re doing two things. We’re killing two birds with one stone.

On the one hand, we’re protecting Dr Wodarg, who is back in the picture now back and who is visible now for the general public, because, as I said, he’s the one who who did a great job 12 years ago, unmasking, so to speak, the swine flu. And at the same time, we’re attacking the people who are behind this behind the staged pandemic by attacking the PCR tests.

So when you say that you’re attacking the PCR test, what you’re saying is you’re doing that through a defamation lawsuit, if I understand this correctly, saying doctor Wodag is being attacked on social media or censored or or defamed on social media because of statements he’s making about the PCR test. Therefore, we are suing for defamation in order to force those fact-checkers to present their evidence as to why the statements that he has made about PCR tests are untrue. Do I have that correct?

Precisely. And you even got the burden of proof, correct, because it’s up to them to prove that he’s lying. But a complaint that we’ve written is very well stocked with lots of evidence already, testimony and expert testimony and publications by experts in scientific journals, including Professor Camera, who is a biologist, an immunologist at the University of Pittsburgh here in Germany, including Dr. Mike Yeadon. And you may have heard of him. He’s a former vice president of Pfizer.

And I think he was for 16 years. He was their chief science officer, but there’s others as well. So this is not something to be taken lightly. And I think the other side will know this once they read this.

I think what’s interesting, because obviously, you know, just to be clear here, as a disclaimer, you know, I have no evidence that PCR tests don’t work. I have no evidence that they’re flawed. Having said that, this strategy is very interesting to me because of the fact that the fact checkers let’s be clear about this, whether it’s in Germany, whether it’s in the UK or here in the United States. Right. Or Australia, the fact checkers themselves never seem to present evidence as to any of the reasons why information is removed or censored, taken down, you know, thrown down the memory hole. That burden has never been placed on them legally to say we have proof that the person here is lying.

They simply label you as someone who was untruthful or spreading misinformation. So the fact that they would be required to then come forward and present evidence, that proves one thing or another. Do you believe that you are setting a precedent by doing this that can be followed almost a blueprint that could be followed in other countries as well?

Excellent. You’ve got it, you hit it right on the spot. That’s precisely what we’re doing. That’s why we this is going to be a precedent.

This is this is one of many, many, many complaints we’re going to file here in in Germany and throughout Europe, through the other law firms, in all the German speaking countries, Australia, Switzerland, I’m sorry, Austria, Switzerland, but also the other countries lawyers who we cooperate with. But this same complaint is going to be used for a large part of it is also going to be used by our American and Canadian colleagues, because in the meantime, everybody agrees. All the lawyers who have kind of dug into this all all of them agree that the PCR test is the cornerstone of this entire hoax.

And again, is there any evidence that you can provide today that shows the PCR tests don’t work?

Yeah, there is no scientist in this entire world who will claim that a PCR test can detect infections, PCR tests are not designed for diagnostic purposes. They’re not admitted for diagnostic purposes. I’ve seen all the videos by the inventor of the PCR test is a great tool.

It makes things visible to the human eyes, which are otherwise not visible by amplifying it, by making those molecules that you take with these swabs larger so that eventually you can see what this is all about. But they are not in any way capable of telling you anything about infections in particular, not when these PCR tests are set at more than twenty five cycles.

Everybody agrees because cycles of amplification, that is, everybody agrees, including the New York Times, which is part of the mainstream media, which again, as Bobby Kennedy just alluded to, is apart from investing their money in the pharmaceutical and tech industry, they’ve also the other side I’m calling them, they’ve also invested invested much of their money in the mainstream media but even the New York Times in an article that was published in August of this year agrees that anything beyond 35 cycles is completely and utterly unscientific and completely useless now the tests we’re talking about the infamous Drosten test which us what the so-called professor Drosten here from charity University in Berlin invented in order to show the world that by using these tests you can see the infections you can detect infections.

This test was used worldwide because it was pushed by the WHO as a sort of gold standard to find out how many infections there are with COVID-19.

Fascinating stuff Dr. Reiner Fuellmich thank you so much for taking the time today and personally I wish you good luck in your lawsuit against those tech companies and their censorship. I think it’s needed badly not just in Germany but worldwide. Thank you, thank you very much.

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Scary Scenarios: State Surveillance Expanding Exponentially Using Advanced Wireless Technologies

By Dr. Jack Rasmus, November 30 2020

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The Global Research Team

At the time of this writing, the United States currently maintains the highest number of Covid-19 deaths and ranks 11th for the highest deaths per capita. There have been approximately 262,000 recorded Covid-19 deaths in the United States, which is certainly a concerning number. 

However, a new study (link removed or site crashed but now available at Archive.org) published by Dr. Genevieve Briand at Johns Hopkins University notes some critical accounting errors done at the national level. The study – which is still being vetted – simply examines the raw data that should have been questioned months ago. The overall conclusion is that Covid-19, at least according to collected data, is not the killer disease that it is currently hyped up to be. AIER is not endorsing the study as is without further study, but we are interested in the argument being examined and discussed.

Viewing Covid-19 Deaths in Context

It is already well established that Covid-19 is a disease that is most dangerous to those over the age of 65 and who have preexisting conditions. In the United States, there has been an observed2.1% mortality rate, with elderly individuals making up over half that number.

Young and healthy people are not by any significant capacity threatened by Covid-19.

One of the most important factors when it comes to Covid-19 is preventing excess death. According to the CDC,

“Estimates of excess deaths can provide information about the burden of mortality potentially related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including deaths that are directly or indirectly attributed to COVID-19. Excess deaths are typically defined as the difference between the observed numbers of deaths in specific time periods and expected numbers of deaths in the same time periods.”

Essentially, there is an average number of deaths every year due to a variety of causes that for the most part have remained constant through the years. This includes morbidities such as heart disease, which has long been the leading cause of death, and cancer, which has long plagued our existence. For Covid-19 to be a serious cause of alarm, it would need to significantly increase the number of average deaths.

However, according to the study,

“These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.”

Total deaths in the United States show no significant change and even mirror past trends of seasonal illness.

Source: CDC Data, Methodology Included in this Video

According to this graph constructed using data provided by the CDC from the last 6 years, total deaths have remained relatively constant and increases can be explained by various factors such as a larger population. The spikes in deaths in 2020 are consistent with historical trends, only topping 2018 by 11,292 deaths. There have been over 262,000 deaths attributed to Covid-19 in the United States, yet total deaths have not increased in any alarming capacity; they have only mirrored existing trends. In short, according to 6 years of data collected by the CDC, Covid-19 has not led to any significant increase in deaths.

Diving Deeper 

What is even more interesting if not more alarming is that the spike in recorded Covid-19 deaths seen in 2020 has coincided with a proportional decrease in death from other diseases.

Yanni Gu writes

“This suggests, according to Briand, that the COVID-19 death toll is misleading. Briand believes that deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia may instead be recategorized as being due to COVID-19.”

Deaths have remained relatively constant, yet reported deaths due to deadly conditions such as heart disease have fallen while reported Covid deaths have risen. This suggests that the current Covid death count is in some capacity relabeled deaths due to other ailments. According to the graph, reported Covid deaths even overtook heart disease as the main cause of death at one point, which should raise suspicion.

This aligns with many other well-established facts about the virus, such as those with comorbidities are the most at risk. According to the CDC, about 94% of Covid deaths occur with comorbidities. This suggests that it could be possible that a large number of deaths could have been mainly due to more serious ailments such as heart disease but categorized as a Covid-19 death, a far less lethal disease.

Source: John Hopkins News-Letter, provided by Genevieve Briand

According to this graph provided by the study, deaths labeled under Covid-19 increased while deaths labeled under others decreased. It is important to note that this sample only applies to the month of April as the author notes these were the weeks with the highest reported deaths. Gu writes

“The CDC classified all deaths that are related to COVID-19 simply as COVID-19 deaths. Even patients dying from other underlying diseases but are infected with COVID-19 count as COVID-19 deaths. This is likely the main explanation as to why COVID-19 deaths drastically increased while deaths by all other diseases experienced a significant decrease…

“If [the COVID-19 death toll] was not misleading at all, what we should have observed is an increased number of heart attacks and increased COVID-19 numbers. But a decreased number of heart attacks and all the other death causes doesn’t give us a choice but to point to some misclassification,” Briand replied.”

Furthermore, Briand’s research notes that the percentage of death has remained relatively constant through all age groups. Covid death statistics seem to mirror the normal distribution of death amongst age groups, further lending credence to the argument that many Covid deaths are recategorized deaths.

Briand provides this graph constructed from CDC data that shows that deaths amongst various age groups have remained relatively constant.

By simply looking at the raw data presented by the CDC Gu writes that

“All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers. We found no evidence to the contrary,” Briand concluded.

What Do We Do With This Information?

Briand and likely many others suppose that the extreme emphasis on Covid-19 has led to the unintended classification of the disease as the cause of death. She further stresses that although this data challenges the idea that Covid is an unprecedented and lethal disease, we should still be concerned with mitigating death in general.

However, it is clear that this significant accounting error regarding Covid deaths, if true, is not productive. It has caused mass hysteria and misinformed public policy. Closing down communities to fight a virus that according to the data, has had no significant contribution to total deaths, reduces our overall capacity to build a healthy society.

Lockdowns have resulted in severe damage to our capacity to improve the general health of society. From the catastrophic economic damage that lowers the standard of living for everyone to surgeries being deemed “unessential,” our current policies are not helping in preventing deaths in general; they are likely leading to more. Suicides and substance abuse are up, mental and physical health are down, all due to lockdowns.

The late Dr. Donald Henderson, who led the eradication of smallpox, noted in 2006 that

“Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted.”

The hysteria over Covid-19 has likely led to the alleged accounting error noted in Briand’s study, the reclassification of expected deaths from all causes into Covid deaths. That accounting error has likely led to a number of policy decisions that have drastically crippled our ability to support the general welfare of society, economically, socially, and spiritually. Going forward these findings should give us pause and reconsideration over the threat Covid-19 actually poses and realize how much avoidable damage we have done to ourselves as a result.

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Ethan joined AIER in 2020 as an Editorial Assistant and is a graduate of Trinity College. He received a BA in Political Science alongside a minor in Legal Studies and Formal Organizations. He currently serves as Local Coordinator at Students for Liberty and the Director of the Mark Twain Center for the Study of Human Freedom at Trinity College. Ethan is currently based in Washington D.C.

Featured image is from The Freedom Articles

If you’re worried about the capability of government to conduct surveillance of citizens engaged in political assembly and protest, or even just personal activity, then you should be aware the technological capability of government surveillance is about to expand exponentially.

The US Air Force’s Research Lab (yes, it has its own lab) has recently signed a contract to test new software of a company called SignalFrame, a Washington DC wireless tech company. The company’s new software is able to access smartphones, and from your phone jump off to access any other wireless or bluetooth device in the near vicinity. To quote from the article today in the Wall St. Journal, the smartphone is used “as a window onto usage of hundreds of millions of computers,s routers, fitness trackers, modern automobiles and other networked devices, known collectively as the ‘Internet of Things’.”

Your smartphone in effect becomes a government listening device that detects and accesses all nearby wireless or bluetooth devices, or anything that has a MAC address for that matter. How ‘near’ is nearby is not revealed by the company, or the Air Force, both of which refused to comment on the Wall St. Journal story. But with the expansion of 5G wireless, it should be assumed it’s more than just a couple steps from your smartphone.

One can imagine some scary scenarios with this capability in the hands of government snoops:

Not only would the government know your geographical location via the GPS signal to your cellphone. They’d know what you are doing. And with whom.

A political gathering would allow them to see all the owners of other cellphones in the vicinity of a protest or demonstration. How many are gathering at a particular street or location. The direction they might be heading. Or whether there’s an organization meeting in a hall or room and who (with a cellphone as well) might be attending.

If you’re driving on a winding coastal or mountain road, it would know, and could possibly access, your car’s various electronic systems to turn them off. It might access your car’s circuit board that governs your power steering when you’re driving in an area of winding roads. Or it might be able to just shut down your car’s electrical system and remotely lock all your doors. The police no longer have to engage in highway chases until capture.

The new tech would allow the government to access the data on your fitbit device while you’re jogging. Or worse, maybe even interfere with the signal on your heart pacemaker device.

The technology might be used to access your smartphone, and from there to turn on your home Alexa device to listen in and record conversations without you ever knowing. Or to listen in on your zoom conferencing on your laptop. Or maybe even worse, to shut down or bypass the safety features on your home furnace equipment. Or turn off your home security system.

And with 5G wireless broadband, the tracking might be extended well beyond the range of a bluetooth device. Add 5G broadband wireless to SignalFrame’s technology, and then wed that to the capability of machine learning and artificial intelligence, and you get instant processing of a massive amount of data on any targeted person or gathering!

This problem of government surveillance on free citizen activity is not new. It took a giant leap after 9-11 with the Patriot Act and acquisition of phone data by Homeland Security and other government agencies. It was supposed to have stopped. But it hasn’t. The snoops have continued to ignore Congressional resolutions and court decisions on privacy invasion of citizens. The latest Air Force lab testing is likely just a recent ‘tip of the iceberg’ revelation. And if the Air Force is doing it, be assured so are the Army, Navy, the NSA, CIA, FBI and all the other government snoops.

Certainly this kind of technology would be used not only by the US government. If the USA has it, you can bet other governments do too–especially China, Russia, Israel, and probably some of the Europeans as well.

Unlike in 2001, in 2020 SignalFrame’s technology takes government surveillance to a new level–given the ubiquity of smartphones, Internet of Things (IOT) devices, digital circuit board dependent autos, and all the many household devices now with MAC wireless access addresses. And now, unlike circa 2001 and the passage of the Patriot Act (and its continuation in annual NDAA legislation), we have AI, machine learning, neural nets everywhere, and massive government data processing power.

In short, Technology is becoming a growing tool and power in the hands of governments, to use to thwart democratic and constitutional rights–as well as to detect, apprehend, and ‘deal with’ those who protest and oppose those governments.

The coming decade in the USA will be increasingly difficult economically, increasingly unstable politically, but will be a decade in which technology is increasingly threatening basic civil and constitutional rights.

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Featured image is from Global Look Press / Jaap Arriens

This week, the Armenian leadership has reached an unprecedented height in its state management achievements. Prime Minsiter Nikol Pashinayan and his government did not stop at the successful campaign to undermine the Armenian regional position and the epic loss in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. Now, they are losing their largest gold mine, which was controlled by the Armenians for the last few decades.

On November 26, Azerbaijani troops entered the Sotk gold mine, which is located in the Gegharkunik province of Armenia, right on the border with the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The mine reserves are estimated at more than 130 tons. GEOPROMINING GOLD, which operates this mine, is one of the largest taxpayers and employers in Armenia. According to Armenian sources, the company paid $34 million into the Armenian budget in the period just between January to September of 2020.

A total of over 80 Azerbaijani soldiers entered the gold mine and the nearby town, claiming that the area should be handed over to Baku and gave workers one hour to leave the mine. For years, the Armenian state border with Azerbaijan in this area did not exist and there was no established border line since the fall of the USSR, Baku is now claiming that at least a half of the gold mine belongs to it.

On November 25, Armenian forces returned control of the district of Kalbajar bordering Gegharkunik to Azerbaijan as a part of the ongoing implementation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani ceasefire deal reached to end the hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh. Thus, the Azerbaijanis also obtained access to the Sotk mine.

The Armenian government tried to hide these developments from the public and the Defense Ministry even called reports about Azerbaijani troops in the Sotk area fake news. However, later, it had to change the official version claiming that ‘parts’ of the mine appear to be on the Azerbaijani side of the border and Azerbaijani troops entered only their side of the mine. How this became possible without any monitoring by the Armenian military and why the Defense Ministry was not aware about Azerbaijani troop movements remain a big secret. Now, Yerevan says that Azerbaijani forces established 3 posts near the gold mine, while the boundary settlement process is ongoing under the supervision of the Russians.

Armenia did not reveal who would operate the gold mine after this process, but according to claims of the Armenian General Staff the status of the mine is being settled in the Russian-Azerbaijani talks. By these claims, the Pashinyan government likely tries to lay blame for the fact that they somehow forgot to secure its largest gold mine and guarantee Armenian interests on the process of the settlement of this question.

In the current conditions, Baku is likely considering to push even further in an attempt to establish control of the entire mine. And the only factor that is preventing it from doing this is the presence of the Russian forces and business interests in this area.

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“The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good.” (Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize speech 2005)(1)

Many people thought that US President Obama, who was in power from 2009 – 2017, would be a huge improvement over President Bush when it came to foreign policy. They believed that he would be far less militaristic. However, this view was somewhat naïve. US Presidents from the Democratic Party have historically been involved in many wars, and Obama virtually boasted of bombing 7 countries.(2) He ordered a new bombing campaign in Iraq, extended the Afghan war into Pakistan, destroyed Libya, and sent US forces to fight in Yemen, Somalia and Syria. He also openly assassinated people, including US citizens, using pilotless drones. Not only is this a serious crime, but for each person deliberately killed, it is estimated that, on average, somewhere between ten and fifty innocent bystanders were also killed.(3)

Some readers will be aware of a sequence of events beginning in 2011 that were called the ‘Arab Spring’, where populations in the Middle East protested against their governments. These events highlight a number of the points that we have already explored. There were large-scale protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, but these regimes have historically been supported by the US, so the US has not provided assistance to the protestors in these countries,(4) despite the fact that these countries have very poor human rights records. Various commentators have noted that British and US journalists misleadingly use the term ‘moderate arab states’ when they are describing some of the most extreme religious governments, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.(5)

However, Libya under Colonel Gadaffi, and Syria under Bashar al-Assad, were considered to be official US enemies, so the US, Britain, France and other countries have supported the protestors there. It is important to be aware that events in these two countries are rather different from events in other ‘Arab Spring’ countries. Elsewhere, the protests have mostly been ordinary people engaging in protest. In Syria and Libya, eyewitness accounts indicate that many of the ‘protestors’ have been extremists (in other words, terrorists) who have been much more violent.(6)

Libya 

The US and their allies flew 26,000 sorties to drop bombs on Libya in 2011. The actions of US and British bombers, and the terrorists supported by the West, have led to “mass death, ethnic cleansing, mass displacement for millions of Libyans, and the destruction of the entire country.”(7) The US and Britain claimed that the reason for their involvement was humanitarian intervention, to avert a massacre, but this was yet another lie. An investigation in Parliament in the UK in 2016 showed that there was no evidence that a massacre would have taken place.(8) The US and Britain created other propaganda to generate support for the invasion. They claimed that Gaddafi was giving Viagra to his troops to encourage mass rape, but there was again no evidence for this.(9)

Wikileaks obtained over 250,000 documents about Libya,(10) and 10% of them referred to oil. Gadaffi had been concerned for a number of years that foreign oil companies had too much control over Libya’s oil, and was intending to change that. Wikileaks’ release of US Secretary-of-State Hillary Clinton’s e-mails has also provided good evidence about the real motives for French involvement in the military attacks on Libya. They show that the French President, Sarkozy, was motivated to support the war for the following reasons(11):

1) Access to Libyan oil reserves

2) For French firms to be rewarded with contracts

3) To ensure French influence in the region and to prevent Gaddafi’s influence in French-speaking parts of Africa. In particular, to stop the creation of an African currency that would replace the dominant French franc, and would help to unify Africa.

4) To increase Sarkozy’s reputation domestically

5) To assert French military power

Further emails indicate that a US motive for the war was to boost President Obama’s approval rating. The emails make it clear that the US government understood that overthrowing Gaddafi was likely to strengthen terrorist organisations in the region. They also understood that the people in Libya who were trying to overthrow Gaddafi were not moderate opponents, but were themselves terrorists committing widespread atrocities. There is one final issue that the emails highlight. Gaddafi’s son was actually trying to negotiate a peaceful resolution, but Hillary Clinton was not interested. Quite clearly, overthrowing Gadaffi in order to control resources, particularly oil, was the goal from the beginning.(12) The US government actively pursued another criminal war.(13)

The mainstream media have completely failed to acknowledge the importance of Gadaffi’s role in Africa. He introduced communications technology to Africa that gave the whole continent the opportunity to do telephone, television, radio and long-distance teaching without having to pay enormous fees to Europe.(14) He was trying to set up an African Monetary Fund, and African Banks, so that African countries could fund their development independently, without being exploited by the French or the Americans. The creation of an African currency (point 3 above) to replace the French currency that had effectively strangled development in much of Africa for many years, would be an enormously positive step. He intended that African oil would be traded in the new currency, displacing the US dollar.(15) The US considered this to be a serious threat to their ability to exploit the continent.(16)

It is worth noting that the quality of life in countries that the US attacks is often higher than most people realise (before the US start bombing.) The UN Human Development Index, which measures health, education and income, ranked Libya first in the whole of Africa before 2011.(17) Similarly, the standard of living in Iraq before the US began destroying the country in the early 1990s was close to the standard of living in advanced nations.(18)

Syria 

In an article written in 2007, officials from the US admitted that they had worked with Saudi Arabia and Israel to create a ‘militant front of extremists’ (in other words, an army of terrorists) for the sole purpose of causing the destabilisation of Syria, with the aim of overthrowing the government.(19) This terrorist army has been supplied with huge quantities of weapons by the governments involved. The US spy agency, the CIA, has been training and arming thousands of terrorists, at a cost of $1 billion per year. Syria is an example of what is known as a ‘proxy’ war, where the US and British governments do not use their own soldiers in large numbers. Instead they provide support for other groups who do most of the fighting. However, they do use their air force to fire missiles and drop bombs. The exact details of who was doing what in Syria are complex, with different parts of the US government disagreeing with each other, and policy being changed repeatedly. The US attempt to overthrow Assad has failed, partly because the Russian government intervened to help the Syrian government from 2015 onwards. Over 400,000 people have died since 2011(20) and parts of Syria are now in chaos. US sanctions are making the situation worse.

The British government originally claimed that its military was not involved in Syria, but British pilots were ‘loaned’ to the Canadian air force so that they could participate in attacks. By 2017 there were over 1,000 British military personnel in Syria and “the government reported that RAF operations in Syria far outstripped the intensity of the UK’s operations in Iraq and Afghanistan”.(21) The British government also had an important propaganda role in Syria, where they funded citizen journalists to promote the UK’s strategic interests in Syria and the Middle East.(22) Many of these journalists in Syria had no idea that they were actually doing propaganda for the UK.

In order to justify their involvement in Syria, the US claimed that Assad was using chemical weapons. However, the evidence indicates that the chemical weapons were actually planted by the terrorists, to create a false justification for the US’s involvement. Chemical weapons are inspected by an organisation called the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) but whistleblowers have come forward to explain that the OPCW has been politically corrupted and that their reports are misleading.(23) This story should be as important as the lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction that were used to justify destroying Iraq, but it has been almost entirely covered-up by the mainstream media. In fact, the media have gone further than simply covering this up. Where critics of the US and British governments have talked about the OPCW whistleblowers, the media have deliberately tried to discredit those critics.(24)

Yemen

Since 2015, the US, Britain and France have provided huge quantities of weapons to Saudi Arabia, which has used them to destroy Yemen. The three countries also provide logistical support, surveillance, and political cover – that is, they block the United Nations from investigating.(25) By 2016, 3 million people had been displaced. Out of a population of 27 million, 21 million needed aid. 58 hospitals had been deliberately destroyed and civilians had been targeted. Saudi Arabia blocked medicines from reaching affected areas and there is widespread malnutrition stunting the growth of children.

Image below: Creative Commons/Felton Davis

Whilst the Saudi Arabian government is doing most of the fighting, it is important to note that if the US, Britain and France stopped supplying weapons and maintaining equipment, the war would almost certainly end. Weapons companies from all three countries make big profits from this war. The details of who is fighting whom, and why, is quite complex in Yemen. The main point for this post is that Britain and the US are actively participating in serious war crimes, because they wish to retain Saudi Arabia as an ally. The British government repeatedly misled parliament over their role in Yemen. British people only became aware that British soldiers were operating in Yemen after newspapers reported that members of the SBS (Special Boat Squadron) had been killed.(26)

As with Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya and Yemen are now in chaos. Parts of Syria are also in chaos, although the Syrian government has regained control of some of the country with the help of the Russian military.

Fitting the Historical Pattern 

The wars described in the last two posts are all separate events, but four of them (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria) are easier to understand if we think of them as examples of an overall attempt by the US to control resources and trade, by overthrowing governments that were not sufficiently compliant. These countries had problems that were caused or made worse by a long history of outside interference.  Our politicians and the media presented the one-size-fits-all warplan of Taliban/Saddam/Gaddafi/Assad bad; US and British white knights must ride to the rescue to make Afghanistan/Iraq/Libya/Syria safe for democracy. The false justifications for each war were repeated without adequate scrutiny by the mainstream media. The true motives for war were rarely mentioned. The result is multiple failed states, whole cities destroyed by US bombing, chaos and lawlessness in much of the region, with violence and terrorism spilling over into neighbouring countries.

These actions enable us to see through the lies of the US and British governments. Both governments frequently claim that they have a ‘responsibility to protect’ others (this is known as R2P) but their support for Saudi Arabia’s destruction of Yemen, and their supplies of weapons to terrorists in Libya and Syria, show that they have no genuine interest in protecting others. International polls show that outside the US and Britain, most people recognise the US as the biggest global threat to peace.(27)

There are many other US crimes this century that could have been discussed in these posts. They supported the attempted coup in Venezuela in 2002, and again in 2019. They invaded Haiti in 2004 and overthrew the government. They were involved in overthrowing the democratically elected leader of Honduras in 2009. They were secretly involved in fighting alongside the Ethiopian military when it invaded Somalia in 2006, and they have been killing people there ever since, leaving yet another country in chaos.

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This article was first posted at medium.com/elephantsintheroom

Rod Driver is a part-time academic who is particularly interested in de-bunking modern-day US and British propaganda. This is the fourth 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) Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize in Literature speech, Dec 2005, at

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2005/pinter/25621-harold-pinter-nobel-lecture-2005/

2) Glenn Greenwald, ‘To Defend Iran Deal, Obama Boasts That He’s Bombed Seven Countries’, 6 Aug 2015, at

https://theintercept.com/2015/08/06/obama-summarizes-record

3) Daniel L. Byman, ‘Do Targetted Killings Work’, 14 July 2009, Brookings Institute op-ed, at

http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2009/07/14-targeted-killings-byman

David Kilcullen and Andrew Mcdonald, ‘Death from above, Outrage down below’, New York Times, 16 May 2009, at

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17exum.html

US commanders’ official figures: only 14 al-Qaeda leaders killed but 700 civilians killed.

4) Ian Black, ‘Bahrain protests will go nowhere while the US supports its government’, Guardian, 16 Apr 2011, at

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/16/bahrain-protests-us-supports-government

5) William Blum, ‘The Anti-Empire report 140: Are You Confused by the Middle East? Here are some things you should know. (But you’ll probably still be confused)’ 2 May 2011, at https://williamblum.org/aer/read/140

6) Policraticus, ‘British Parliament Confirms: Libya War was based on lies’, 7 April 2020, at

http://global-politics.eu/british-parliament-confirms-libya-war-based-lies-turned-nation-shit-show-spread-terrorism/

7) David Edwards, ‘Guardian-Friendly omissions – ‘This Land by Owen Jones’’, 23 Oct 2020, at

https://www.medialens.org/2020/guardian-friendly-omissions-this-land-by-owen-jones/

8) House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, ‘Libya: Examination of intervention and collapse and the UK’s future policy options’, 6 Sep 2016, at

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmfaff/119/119.pdf

9) Maximilian Forte, ‘The Top Ten Myths in the War Against Libya’, 31 Aug 2011, at

https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/08/31/the-top-ten-myths-in-the-war-against-libya/

10) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_cables_leak

11) Brad Hoff, ‘Hillary Emails Reveal True Motive For Libya Intervention’, 6 Jan 2016, at

https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/01/06/new-hillary-emails-reveal-true-motive-for-libya-intervention/

US State Department, ‘France’s client and Qaddafi’s Gold’, 31 Dec 2015, archived at

 https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/110402-France-client-gold-State-Dept.pdf

12) Medialens, ‘Three Little Words: Wikileaks, Libya, Oil’, 22 June, 2011, at

https://www.medialens.org/2011/three-little-words-wikileaks-libya-oil-sp-1286592871/

13) Dan Kovalik, ‘Clinton Emails on Libya Expose The Lie of ‘Humanitarian Intervention’’, 22 Jan 2017, at

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/clinton-emails-on-libya-e_b_9054182

14) Jean-Paul Pougala ‘The lies behind the West’s war on Libya’, Pambazuka News, 14 Apr 2011, at

https://www.pambazuka.org/human-security/lies-behind-wests-war-libya

15) Ellen Brown, ‘Why Qaddafi had to go: African gold, oil and the challenge to monetary imperialism’, 14 March 2016, at

https://theecologist.org/2016/mar/14/why-qaddafi-had-go-african-gold-oil-and-challenge-monetary-imperialism

Chris Welzenbach, ‘The Dreadful Chronology of Gaddafi’s Murder’, Counterpunch, 5 Oct 2016, at

https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/05/the-dreadful-chronology-of-gaddafis-murder/

16) Dan Glazebrook, ‘Books:Review:Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s war on Libya and Africa by Maximilian Forte’, Ceasefire, 22 April 2013, at

https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/review-slouching-sirte-natos-war-libya-africa-maximilian-forte/

17) Mary-Lynn Cramer, ‘Before US-NATO invasion, Libya had the Highest Human Development Index, The Lowest Infant Mortality, The Highest Life Expectancy in all of Africa’, 4 May 2011, at

https://www.countercurrents.org/cramer040511.htm

Garikai Chengu, ‘Gaddafi’s Libya was Africa’s most prosperous democracy’, Foreign Policy Journal, 12 Jan 2013, at

https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2013/01/12/gaddafis-libya-was-africas-most-prosperous-democracy/

18) Vanessa Jones, ‘When The Going Was Good’, 22 Oct 2002, in Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Imperial Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, 2004

Online Version – Vanessa Jones, ‘An Egyptian in Baghdad: 1987, When the Going Was Good’, October 1-15, 2002, at

https://cpdev1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/vol-9-no-17.pdf

19) Tony Cartalucci, ‘US Officially Arming Extremists in Syria: Denied no longer, US officials admit US-Saudi cash & logistical support arming terrorists in Syria’, 18 May 2012, at

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30891

Seymour M. Hersh, ‘The Redirection: Is the Administration’s New Policy Benefiting our Enemies in the War on Terrorism?’, New Yorker, 26 Feb 2007, at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/05/the-redirection

20) Piers Robinson, ‘The propaganda of terror and fear: A Lesson from Recent History’, off-Guardian, 28 March 2020, at

https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/28/the-propaganda-of-terror-and-fear-a-lesson-from-recent-history/

21) Jean Shaoul, ‘Britain’s covert operations to overthrow Syrian government exposed’, WSWS, 18 May 2020, at

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/18/syri-m18.html

22) Fraser Myers, ‘Chemical weapons and cover-ups: The western media’s Syrian shame’, Spiked Online, 10 July, 2020, at

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/07/10/chemical-weapons-cover-ups-western-medias-syrian-shame/

Ian Cobain and Alice Ross, ‘REVEALED: The British government’s covert propaganda campaign in Syria’, Middle East Eye, 19 Feb 2020, at

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/revealed-british-government-covert-propaganda-campaign-syria

23) Arron Mate, ‘Exclusive: New OPCW whistleblower slams ‘abhorrent treatment’ of Douma investigators’, 12 Mar 2020, at

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/12/opcw-whistleblower-mistreatment-douma-investigators/

24) Jonathan Cook, ‘George Monbiot’s excuses for not speaking out loudly in defense of Assange simply won’t wash’, 9 Oct 2020, The Palestine Chronicle, at

https://www.palestinechronicle.com/george-monbiotsexcuses-for-not-speaking-out-loudly-in-defense-of-assange-simply-wont-wash/

25) David Edwards and David Cromwell, Propaganda Blitz, p.126

26) Marc Nicol, ‘Our secret dirty war: Five British Special Forces troops are wounded in Yemen while ‘advising’ Saudi Arabia on their deadly campaign that has brought death and famine to millions’, Daily Mail, 24 Mar 2019, at

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6843469/Five-British-Special-Forces-troops-wounded-Yemen-advising-Saudi-Arabia-campaign.html

27) David Edwards and David Cromwell, Propaganda Blitz, P.148

There is an old saying that you should not put the fox in charge of the hen house. It makes perfect sense, and yet that’s exactly what Western governments are increasingly starting to do when it comes to their freedom of speech policies. All bluster about “cancel culture” aside, the leading threat in the world today to freedom of speech is the ever-increasing crackdown on the right to speak out in support of the Palestinians.

Israel’s military dictatorship against the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; its apartheid regime against its own Palestinian citizens; and its adamant denial of the Palestinian refugees’ legitimate right to return to their land are all such transparent injustices that the Palestinian cause has always been popular across the world. That means that Israel cannot win the argument on the popular level. Instead, it wants to suppress free speech of the kind that I have just employed here, and outlaw public exposure and discussion of its breaches of international law and human rights violations. This, of course, starts in the occupied West Bank.

Under Israel’s regime there, Palestinians have no right to speak out against the military dictatorship that controls every facet of their lives. They can be thrown into prison on the say-so of an army officer, with no charges or any semblance of due process. Protests are routinely banned; journalism, poetry and literature speaking out against the occupation are slapped with the label “incitement” and stamped out; and unarmed Palestinian activists and campaigners are routinely thrown into prison.

Khalida Jarrar is just one example; she’s a leading women’s rights activist and socialist Palestinian lawmaker. On 1 November last year, she was abducted by Israeli army thugs and thrown in jail. More than a year later, she continues to be detained without charge or trial.

By way of contrast, Jewish citizens of Israel – including the settlers who dominate the West Bank in their illegal colonies — are granted the right to freedom of speech under Israeli law. This is clear evidence that not only is Israel a military dictatorship, but it is also an apartheid military dictatorship and a Jewish-supremacist state. In fact, that is the reality of Zionism.

Nevertheless, full control of the lives and speech of Palestinians is not enough to satisfy Israel’s thirst for domination. The Zionist state relies on support from European governments and — especially — from the US. The latter subsidises Israel’s armed forces to the tune of $3.8 billion every year, with this figure looking set to rise in a new deal that the pro-Israel lobby is aiming for during Joe Biden’s presidency.

Israel’s position as a small, European settler-colony surrounded by millions of indigenous people who it denigrates as hostile natives (a “villa in the jungle,” as Israel’s racist Prime Minister Ehud Barak once put it) makes such military and political subsidies essential if it wants its unjust regime to survive. This means that any threat to this political and military support for Israel in Western countries must be counteracted swiftly.

It is for this precise reason that Israel has for years been waging what it calls a “war” against the BDS movement, the popular campaign to put pressure on Israel through boycotts, divestment and sanctions until it complies with the requirements of international law on Palestinian human rights. A major part of this “war” against Palestinians and their rights has been for Israel to pressure, convince and lobby Western governments into suppressing and outlawing Palestine solidarity campaigns such as BDS. That’s why Israel represents such a major threat to freedom of speech in Britain and the United States.

Last year, Israel’s then “Strategic Affairs” Minister Gilad Erdan took credit on behalf of the Israeli government for a wave of anti-BDS laws and measures in the US. “Our efforts are producing results,” he said. “Twenty-seven US states now have counter-BDS legislation. Let’s give a hand to all the governors and state legislators who supported this law. They deserve it.”

Since then, that number has risen to 30 US states, with 202 anti-BDS bills having been introduced to date.

Moreover, just this week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau anointed leading pro-Israel lobbyist Irwin Cotler as Canada’s “special envoy” against anti-Semitism. Cotler’s true role, though, will not be to protect Jews against bigotry or hatred. Instead, it will be to implement and enforce the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s bogus definition of anti-Semitism, which conflates criticism of Israel and Zionism with hatred of Jews.

As Canadian organisation Independent Jewish Voices explained on Wednesday, Cotler “has long been one of the world’s leading proponents of the ‘new anti-Semitism’ discourse, which paints supporters of Palestinian human rights as anti-Semitic. His appointment today to this position is troubling.”

Trudeau’s appointment of Cotler is quite similar to Trump’s appointment in 2018 of Kenneth Marcus as the US Department of Education’s top civil rights enforcer. In both of these cases, Western governments were putting the fox in charge of the hen house. For years, Marcus pioneered the “lawfare” strategy of abusing US civil rights law by attempting to mobilise it in defence of Israeli crimes and arguing that criticism of Israel was “anti-Semitic”. Trump appointed Marcus at the behest of the pro-Israel lobby to run the very same government department that he had been lobbying for years as a “lawfare” operative on behalf of the state of Israel.

We face a similar threat in Britain, with the government’s appointment of John Mann — a former Labour MP who was so anti-socialist that he quit the party under Jeremy Corbyn and was given a life peerage in return — as it’s so-called “Anti-Semitism Tsar”. The irony is obvious, given that the real Tsars were brutally and violently anti-Semitic in Russia before they were overthrown by the communist revolution in 1917.

Mann has essentially based his whole career on smearing Palestine solidarity activism as “anti-Semitism”. Yet again in a major Western country, the fox has been put in charge of the hen house. Israel’s strategic threat to our freedom of speech is indeed growing.

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Featured image: Graffiti on the Israeli separation wall dividing the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Dis (Photo: Ryan Rodrick Beiler via shutterstock.com)

On Saturday 21 November 2020 Russia celebrated the 75^th Anniversary of the beginning of the Nuremberg Trials which started on 20 November 1945 and lasted almost a year, until 1 October 1946. The Tribunal was given the task of trying and judging 24 of the most atrocious political and military leaders of the Third Reich.

For this unique celebration – so we shall never forget – Russian leaders and people of the Arts and History organized a Special Performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Requiem” at Moscow’s Helikon Opera Theatre.

Daniel Hawkins, from RT, introduced this extraordinary event, as a journey through history, a journey through life and death, when some of – at that time – most genocidal people in history had to answer for their crimes.

This opera event was prepared for more than a year and was first performed in January 2020 for the Holocaust victims and the victims of the Nazi concentration camps in Leningrad.

Nuremberg Trial 

The Nuremberg Trials were conducted by an International Military Tribunal. They resulted in 12 death sentences.

The idea of the “Requiem” performance is “not just to appeal to emotions, but to reason. Because if we fail to learn from history, the tragedy could be repeated.”

This is precisely what Sergei Novikov, head of the (Russian) presidential directorate for social projects, intimidated. He says,

“Despite of what we have seen happening 75 years ago – we do not seem to have learned a lesson. Today we seem to go down the same road, which is frightening.”

The musical performance interplays with theatrical realism – so memories are awake and moving – better than a museum. The educational impact of this celebration of remembrance is extremely important – especially for the young people, who do not remember these events, but with this first-class performance, they may learn a crucial lesson – a lesson, hardly talked about in history books – and even less so in the west.

If we compare what has happened then – 75 years ago – actually the anti-Jewish demonstration in Berlin, known as Kristallnacht, on 9 and 10 November 1938, effectively the beginning of WWII, and look at today’s extremism in Europe, Germany, France, Austria, Belgium – we should know that we are not far from a tyranny we knew as “Nationalsozialismus” – a political Nazi-concept of the late 1930s and up to mid-1940s, that today can best be compared with extreme neoliberalism – and merciless oppression of peoples’ rights by police and military.

Let us reflect on Todays World.

Are we not steps away from “a totalitarian government”. But again, today, like then, we are blind to it.  

There may be a time when we can no longer move – when we are in constant lockdown, masked – with dismembered faces, so to speak, kept away from each other under the pretext of social distancing – so that we cannot communicate with one another – all for reasons of public health, for the “good intentions” of our governments to protect us from an evil virus – the corona virus.

Today, this oppression is the result of a long-term plan by a small elite to implement The Great Reset (Klaus Schwab, WEF, July 2020) – see this and this. 

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There is, of course, a good reason, why Moscow wants the world to remember what WWII meant and how eventually Nazi-Germany was defeated – yes, largely if not solely by enormous sacrifices of the Soviet Union. Some 25 to 30 million USSR soldiers and Soviet citizens had left their lives for salvaging Europe – and possibly the world – from an all invading fascism.

The United States, nominally an ally of the Soviet Union, had clandestinely funded the Third Reich’s war against the Soviet Union. (See the analysis of Dr. Jacques Pauwels)

One of the key purposes for the US of getting “involved” in WWII, other than defeating the British Empire, was to defeat their arch-enemy, communist Soviet Union. The Rockefellers funded Hitler’s war machine by providing them with hydrocarbons, with petrol, the energy that drove the war.

On the other hand, the Federal Reserve (FED), via the Bank for International Settlement (BIS) – the pyramid tower still omni-present in Basle, Switzerland, near the German border – transferred gigantic monetary resources to the Reichsbank (at that time Hitler’s equivalent of a German Central Bank)

Verdi’s Requiem Performance in Moscow on 21 November is important to go back in history and open the “memory books” in front if our eyes.

It is even more important, as we see the trend towards fascism taking over the entire European continent – and possibly also in the United States.

Europe basically ignores the importance of the 75^th Anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials which still, as of this date, provides precedents for international war crimes – except, these precedents are miserably ignored, if not, we would have multiple repeats of Nuremberg in our days and age – with European and US leaders (sic) in “retirement’ but still with power.

Our dystopian western world is beset by war criminals even to the point where they blackmail judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, not to touch their – the European and US – war crimes, or else…

That’s where we have arrived.

Since we are going back to the times when WWII and Nuremberg happened, we should take the opportunity to also look at the Big Picture – one that may be at the root of this new wave of fascism invading Europe. It is in essence a “health dictatorship”; it has become a Health Martial Law. Many countries have ratified, quietly, or rammed it through Parliament without the public at large noticing – a law allowing them switching from everyday life to an emergency situation, i.e. (health) Martial Law.

The Big Picture though is a diabolical plan of eugenics. Yes, it’s a term nobody wants to use, but it must be said, because it’s one of the fundamental principles that lies in all that is planned,  the 2010 Rockefeller Report entitled “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development Area” and the extremely important WHO Report “A World at Risk” – Annual Report on Global Preparedness for Health Emergencies, by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board – GPMB (September 2019).

Key members of this Monitoring Board include the World Bank, IMF, CDC and many more influential players, who have been concocting the “Preparedness” for a new epidemic since at least 2016, when the World Bank set up a special “Health Emergency Fund” to face the “next pandemic”. See this also.

Also, part of the SARS-Cov-2 preparedness – and planned outbreak, was Event 201 (18 October 2019), NYC, sponsored by Gates, the WEF, and the Johns Hopkins School for Medicine (Rockefeller created and funded), which simulated the outbreak of a SARS-Cov-2 virus – which curiously happened a couple of months later.  The “outbreak” was actually officially announced on the dot of the beginning of the 2020 Decade.

The Big Picture scheme also includes as an aftermath to covid, The Great Reset by Klaus Schwab, WEF, July 2020), a plan to implement the 4^th Industrial Revolution and the enslavement of the remaining population. The Rockefellers and Bill Gates, Kissinger and many more – have nurtured the idea of massively reducing the world population for at least the last 70 years.

Ever since the Rockefellers espoused the concept of the “Bilderberger Society” (a parallel organization to the WEF (World Economic Forum), with overlapping and an ever-moving memberships) – their one and only continuous “project” was a selective population reduction. And they actually never made it a secret. See Bill Gates TedTalk in February 2010 – just about the time when the infamous 2010 Rockefeller Report was issued – the one that has us now in “lockstep” following all the rules and regulations, issued by the WHO and supported by the entire UN system (see this).

Why then was the eugenics agenda never seriously picked up by the mainstream, by the public at large? – Possibly, because nobody can even imagine people so evil to actually wanting to make this reality. How they infiltrated themselves into human society is a mystery.

To implement such a massive plan on a worldwide scale, one needs a uniform approach to world health. In 1948, just a couple of years after the Nuremberg trials started, where war criminals like the Rockefellers should also have been indicted for supplying the enemy (German Nazis) with energy to drive their (anti-Soviet) war machine – back then, in 1948, Rockefeller created the WHO, the World Health Organization.

The philanthropic Rockefeller Foundation (RF) has marked the field of health like no other organization. The oil magnate, John D. Rockefeller “to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world.” Hence, the RF created and provided the original funding to set up WHO in 1948. On 7 April 1948, WHO inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health Organization, which had been an agency of the League of Nations. Twenty-six (out of then 58) UN members ratified WHO as a UN agency under the UN Constitution.

Once you have “Global Health” under one roof, the WHO, funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the pharmaceutical industries (predominantly GAVI – Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization – also created by Bill Gates in 2000) and you also have the predominant donor, Bill Gates, an obsessed vaxxer (and eugenist) without any medical training, choose WHO’s Director General – Dr.Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a buddy of Gates and former Board Member of GAVI – it is relatively easy to make the foundation of WHO’s health policies based on vaccination.

That’s what we see today. As we have heard from Gates’ TedTalk (2010 see above), vaccination seems to lend itself perfectly to reduce the world population. It has the further advantage, that if anything goes “wrong” – no vaccine company can be held responsible, let alone being sued. For example, if people get seriously ill or die from the vaccinations – which would not be a surprise, after the Covid-19 are planned to be administered in warp speed – the vaccine pharmaceuticals cannot be sued.

In fact, vaccine companies do not bear any liability risk. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986 (42 U.S.C. §§ 300aa-1 to 300aa-34), was signed into law by US President Ronald Reagan on November 14, 1986. NCVIA’s purpose was to eliminate the potential financial liability of vaccine manufacturers due to vaccine injury, since lawsuits led many manufacturers to stop producing the vaccines, a lame argument, but that shows once more the lobbying power the pharma industry commands.

That’s where we stand today. Any sinister vaccination agenda, no matter how hurtful to the public, is home free. Today we are at this crucial point of massive forced vaccination. Many governments, i.e. UK’s Boris Johnson and Australia’s Scott Morrison, have already advanced the idea of a vaccination-pass. Without it you are banned from flying and from just about every public event. That’s promising.

And one might ask – what does that have to do with public health?

What is the real agenda behind it?

Again, returning to the Nuremberg Trials – aren’t we in the midst of a world tyranny – to which 190 (out of 193) UN member countries subscribed (including Russia and China, excluding Nicaragua, Sweden and Belarus), or were coerced into – a tyranny that has already been genocidal, in as much as it has destroyed the world economy, creating countless bankruptcies, unemployment – untold poverty and misery and death – and now a massive vaccination campaign.

A world tyranny inflicted by all 193 UN member countries – whatever their motivation – all these governments and the heads of WHO and the entire UN system belongs before a new Nuremburg-type Tribunal – where the same legal principal would be applied as 75 years ago – in 1945.

Who says this will not happen? We can make it happen. We, the People, are the 99.99% – they are only 0.01 %. We have the power to resist – and we will prevail.

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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals such as Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO) and more. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. 

Peter is also 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). He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Israel used all four years of Trump’s presidency to entrench its systems of occupation and apartheid. Now that Joe Biden has won the U.S. election, the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, likely by Israel with the go-ahead from the US administration, is a desperate attempt to use Trump’s last days in office to sabotage Biden’s chances of successful diplomacy with Iran. Biden, Congress and the world community can’t let that happen.

On Friday November 27, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated in the Iranian city of Absard outside of Tehran. First, a truck with explosives blew up near the car carrying Fakhrizadeh. Then, gunmen started firing on Fakhrizadeh’s car. The immediate speculation was that Israel had carried out the attack, perhaps with the support of the Iranian terrorist group the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (MEK). Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted that there were “serious indications of [an] Israeli role” in the assassination.

All indications indeed point to Israel. In 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu identified this scientist, Fakhrizadeh, as a target of his administration during a presentation in which he claimed that Israel had obtained secret Iranian files that alleged the country was not actually abiding by the Iran Nuclear Deal. “Remember that name, Fakhrizadeh. So here’s his directive, right here,” Netanyahu said.

Fakhrizadeh was far from the first assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist. Between 2010 and 2012, four Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated—Masoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan. Though Israel never took official credit for the extrajudicial executions, reports were fairly conclusive that Israel, working with the MEK, were behind the killings. The Israeli government never denied the allegations.

The assassination of Fakhrizadeh also follows reports that the Israeli government recently instructed its senior military officials to prepare for a possible U.S. strike on Iran, likely referring to a narrowly averted plan by President Trump to bomb Iran’s Natanz nuclear site. Furthermore, there was a clandestine meeting between Netanyahu and Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman. Among the topics of conversation were normalization between the two countries and their shared antagonism towards Iran.

Israel’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear activities are particularly galling given that Israel, not Iran, is the only country in the Middle East in possession of nuclear weapons, and Israel refuses to sign the International Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Iran, on the other hand, doesn’t have nuclear weapons and it has opened itself up to the most intrusive international inspections ever implemented. Adding to this absurd double standard is the intense pressure on Iran from the United States—a nation that has more nuclear weapons than any country on earth.

Given the close relationship between Netanyahu and Trump, and the seriousness of this attack, it is very likely that this assassination was carried out with the green light from Trump himself. Trump has spent his time in the White House destroying the progress the Obama administration made in easing the conflict with Iran. He withdrew from the nuclear deal and imposed an unending stream of crippling sanctions that have affected everything from the price of food and housing, to Iran’s ability to obtain life-saving medicines during the pandemic. He has blocked Iran from getting an IMF $5 billion emergency loan to deal with the pandemic. In January, Trump brought the US to the brink of war by assassinating Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, and in an early November meeting with his top security advisors, and right before the assassination of Fakhrizadeh, Trump himself reportedly raised the possibility of a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

After the news broke of the assassination, Trump expressed implicit approval of the attack by retweeting Israeli journalist and expert on the Israeli Mossad intelligence service, Yossi Melman, who described the killing of Fahkrizadeh as a “major psychological and professional blow for Iran.”

Iran has responded to these intense provocations with extreme patience and reserve. The government was hoping for a change in the White House and Biden’s victory signaled the possibility of both the U.S. and Iran going back into compliance with the nuclear deal. This recent assassination, however, further strengthens the hands of Iranian hardliners who say it was a mistake to negotiate with the United States, and that Iran should just leave the nuclear deal and build a nuclear weapon for its own defense.

Iranian-American analyst Negar Mortazavi bemoaned the chilling effect the assassination will have on Iran’s political space. “The atmosphere will be even more securitized, civil society and political opposition will be pressured even more, and the anti-West discourse will be strengthened in Iran’s upcoming presidential election,” she tweeted.

This assassination will have a chilling effect on Iran’s political space; the atmosphere will be even more securitized, civil society and political opposition will be pressured even more, and the anti-West discourse will be strengthened in Iran’s upcoming presidential election.

— Negar Mortazavi (@NegarMortazavi) November 27, 2020

The hardliners already won the majority of seats in the February parliamentary elections and are predicted to win the presidential elections scheduled for June. So the window for negotiations is a narrow one of four months immediately after Biden’s inauguration. W. What happens between now and January 20 could derail negotiations before they even start.

Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, said that US and Israeli efforts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program “have now morphed into Trump & Netanyahu sabotaging the next US President. They are trying to goad Iran into provocations & accelerating nuclear work—exactly what they claim to oppose. Their real fear is US & Iran talking.”

US & Israel efforts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program have now morphed into Trump & Netanyahu sabotaging the next US President. They are trying to goad Iran into provocations & accelerating nuclear work-exactly what they claim to oppose. Their real fear is US & Iran talking

— Jamal Abdi (@jabdi) November 27, 2020

That’s why U.S. members of Congress, and President-elect Joe Biden himself, must vigorously condemn this act and affirm their commitment to the US rejoining the nuclear deal. When Israel assassinated other nuclear scientists during the Obama administration, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced the murders, understanding that such illegal actions made negotiations infinitely more difficult.

The European Union, as well as some important US figures have already condemned the attack. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy pointed out the risks involved in normalizing assassinations, how the killing will make it harder to restart the Iran Nuclear agreement, and how the assassination of General Soleimani backfired from a security standpoint. Former Obama advisor Ben Rhodes tweeted that it was an “outrageous action aimed at undermining diplomacy,” and former CIA head John Brennan called the assassination “criminal” and “highly reckless,” risking “lethal retaliation and a new round of regional conflict,” but rather than putting the responsibility on the U.S. and Israel to stop the provocations, he called on Iran to “be wise” and “resist the urge to respond.”

I have not yet been briefed on this incident, but: Every time America or an ally assassinates a foreign leader outside a declaration of war, we normalize the tactic as a tool of statecraft. The risk is that the security benefit can be very short lived. https://t.co/vn3mbEWmhB

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) November 27, 2020

This is an outrageous action aimed at undermining diplomacy between an incoming US administration and Iran. It’s time for this ceaseless escalation to stop. https://t.co/ix6LpeVpcQ

— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) November 27, 2020

This was a criminal act & highly reckless. It risks lethal retaliation & a new round of regional conflict.
Iranian leaders would be wise to wait for the return of responsible American leadership on the global stage & to resist the urge to respond against perceived culprits. https://t.co/0uZhyBTM3S

— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) November 27, 2020

Many on Twitter have raised the question of what the world response would be if the roles were reversed and Iran assassinated an Israeli nuclear scientist. Without a doubt, the U.S. administration, whether Democrat or Republican, would be outraged and supportive of a swift military response. But if we want to avoid escalation, then we must hope that Iran will not retaliate, at least not during Trump’s last days in office.

The only way to stop this crisis from spiraling out of control is for the world community to condemn the act, and demand a UN investigation and accountability for the perpetrators. The countries that joined Iran and the United States in signing  the 2015 nuclear agreement —Russia, China, Germany, the UK and France—must not only oppose the assassination but publicly recommit to upholding the nuclear deal. President-elect Joe Biden must send a clear message to Israel that under his administration, these illegal acts will have consequences. He must also send a clear message to Iran that he intends to quickly re-enter the nuclear deal, stop blocking Iran’s $5 billion IMF loan request, and begin a new era of diplomacy to dial back the intense conflict he inherited from Trump’s recklessness.

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Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. She is a member of the writers’ group Collective20.

Ariel Gold is the national co-director of CODEPINK and runs their Peace with Iran campaign.

“They call my people the White Lower Middle Class these days. It is an ugly, ice-cold phrase, the result, I suppose, of the missionary zeal of those sociologists who still think you can place human beings on charts.  It most certainly does not sound like a description of people on the edge of open, sustained and possibly violent revolt,” wrote the marvelous New York journalist, Pete Hamill in “The Revolt of the White Lower Middle Class” in New York magazine.  He added:

The White Lower Middle Class? Say that magic phrase at a cocktail party on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and monstrous images arise from the American demonology. Here comes the murderous rabble: fat, well-fed, bigoted, ignorant, an army of beer-soaked Irishmen, violence-loving Italians, hate-filled Poles. Lithuanians and Hungarians….Sometimes these brutes are referred to as ‘the ethnics’ or ‘the blue-collar types.’ But the bureaucratic, sociological phrase is White Lower Middle Class. Nobody calls it the Working Class anymore.

He wrote that on April 14, 1969. Yesterday. Little changes.

Transferred from NYC to the middle of the country half a century later, these people are referred to as Trump’s “deplorables.” They comes in baskets, as Hillary Clinton said.  And even though they represent nearly half the voting public in the last two presidential elections – 70+ million Americans – their complaints are dismissed as the rantings of ignorant, conservative racists.

Name calling substitutes for understanding. This is not an accident.

Like Hamill, I am a NYC born and bred Irish-American – my working-class Bronx to Pete’s Brooklyn. We both attended the same Jesuit high school in different years. Unlike Hamill, known for his gritty street reporting, because I have been a college sociology professor, I could falsely be categorized as a northeastern liberal intellectual oozing with disdain for those who voted for Trump.  This is false, because, like Hamill, I see it as my intellectual duty to understand what motivates these voters, just as I do with those who voted for Biden.

I didn’t vote for Donald Trump, nor did I vote for Joseph Biden, or Hillary Clinton in 2016.  I am not one of those sociologists Hamill refers to; I use the term Working Class and am acutely aware of the social class nature of life in the U.S.A., where the economic system of neo-liberal capitalism is constructed to try to convince working Americans that the system cares for them, and if they grow disgusted with its lies and inequities and rage against the machine by voting for anyone who seems to be with them (even a super-rich reality TV real estate magnate named Trump who is not with them), they are dumb-ass bigots whose concerns should be brushed off.

The truth is that both the Trump voters and the Biden voters have been taken for a ride.  It is a game, a show, a movie, a spectacle.  It hasn’t changed much since 1969; the rich have gotten richer and the poor, working, and middle classes have gotten poorer and more desperate.  Those who have profited have embraced the fraud.

The Institute for Policy Studies has just released a new analysis showing that since the start of the Covid-19 “pandemic” in mid-March and the subsequent transfer upwards of $5 trillion to the wealthy and largest corporations through the Cares Act, approved 96-0 in the U.S. Senate, 650 U.S. billionaires have gained over a trillion dollars in eight months as the America people have suffered an economic catastrophe.  This shift upward of massive wealth under Trump is similar to Obama’s massive 2009 bailout of the banks on the backs of American workers. Both were justified through feats of legerdemain by both political parties, accomplices in the fleecing of regular people, many of whom continue to support the politicians that screw them while telling them they care.

If the Democrats and the Republicans are at war as is often claimed, it is only over who gets the larger part of the spoils. Trump and Biden work for the same bosses, those I call the Umbrella People (those who own and run the country through their intelligence/military/media operatives), who produce and direct the movie that keeps so many Americans on the edge of their seats in the hope that their chosen good guy wins in the end.

I am well aware that most people disagree with my analysis.  It does seem as if I am wrong and that because the Democrats and their accomplices have spent years attempting to oust Trump through Russia-gate, impeachment, etc. that what seems true is true and Trump is simply a crazy aberration who somehow slipped through the net of establishment control to rule for four years.  To those 146 + million people who voted for Biden and Trump this seems self-evident.  But if that is so, why, despite their superficial differences – and Obama’s, Hillary Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s for that matter – have the super-rich gotten richer and richer over the decades and the war on terror continued as the military budget has increased each year and the armament industries and the Wall Street crooks continued to rake in the money at the expense of everyone else?  These are a few facts that can’t be disputed. There are many more. So what’s changed under Trump?  We are talking about nuances, small changes.  A clown with a big mouth versus traditional, “dignified” con men.

If you were writing this script as part of long-term planning and average people were getting disgusted from decades of being screwed and were sick of politicians and their lying ways, wouldn’t you stop the reruns and create a new show?  Come on, this is Hollywood where creative showmen can dazzle our minds with plots so twisted that when you leave the theater you keep wondering what it was all about and arguing with your friends about the ending. So create a throwback film where the good guy versus the bad guy was seemingly very clear, and while the system ground on, people would be at each other’s throats over the obvious differences, even while they were fabricated.

Variety is necessary.  You wouldn’t want to repeat the film from 2008 when a well-spoken black man came into town out of nowhere to clean up the mess created by the poorly spoken white sheriff who loved war and then the black hero went on to wage war in seven countries while his fans sat contented in the audience loving the show and making believe they didn’t see what was happening on the screen even though their hero jailed whistle blowers and greatly expanded the surveillance state right in front of their eyes.

No, as the years passed, those two guys turned out to be buddies, and their wives hit it off, and a famous photograph appeared of the good guy’s wife hugging the bad guy, which was not a good thing for the script that has the Republicans warring against the Democrats.

A new story line was needed. How about an opéra bouffe, someone suggested, and the rest is history. Or pseudo-history. This is the real matrix. The most sophisticated mind control operation up to this point, with the coronavirus lockdown added to propel it to what the producers hope is a conclusion.

What more can I say?

Billy Joel said it:  “JFK blown away.”

The Towers pulverized. David Ray Griffin told us the truth repetitively.

Minds of this generation destroyed, as Allen Ginsberg said in Howl: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.”

It’s been many generations now.  There has been a form of social madness growing over the decades and it is everywhere now.  Look at people’s faces, if you can see them behind the masks; everywhere the strained and stressed looks, the scared rabbit eyes that you see on the wards of mental hospitals. The look that says: what the fuck has happened as they stare into a blank screen in a tumbling void, to paraphrase Don DeLillo from his new book Silence, where people speak gibberish once their digital world is mysteriously taken down and they wander in the dark.  We are in the dark now, even though the lights and screens are still shining for the time being.

Let those who think I am wrong about Trump and Biden being players in the same show, consider this. If Trump is truly the opponent of the Deep State, the Swamp, the corrupt establishment, he will pardon Julian Assange, Chelsey Manning, and Edward Snowden who have been persecuted by these forces.  He has nothing left to lose as he exits stage right.

The journalist Julian Assange has done more than anyone to expose the sick underbelly of the gangster state, its intelligence and military secrets, its illegal and immoral killings. That is why he has been hounded and locked away for so long. It’s a bipartisan persecution of an innocent man whose only “crime” has been to tell the truth that is allegedly the essence of a democratic society.

Chelsey Manning has also suffered tremendously for exposing the savagery of U.S. military operations.

And Edward Snowden has been forced into Russian exile for telling us about the vast global surveillance systems run by the NSA and CIA to spy on the American people.

Three innocent truth-tellers at war with the Deep-State forces that Donald Trump says he opposes.

If he is what his supporters claim, he will pardon these courageous three.  It’s all in his power. A simple, clear message as he goes out the door. If by the smallest chance he does pardon them, I will be very happy and publicly apologize.  If he doesn’t, as I expect, please don’t say a word in his defense.  My ears will be stuffed with wax.  For he won’t, because, like Biden, he is controlled by the very forces that these truth-tellers have exposed.

But back to the working class “deplorables” that voted for Trump. They aren’t going anywhere.  Their grievances remain. For decades, under Democratic and Republican administrations, their lives have been hollowed out, their livelihoods taken as corporate thieves have ravaged their towns and cities by closing down the factories where they worked and sending them overseas for greater profits. Small farmers have been “liquidated” for agribusiness.

As always, the coastal urbanites have considered rural people stupid, uncouth, and clownish, as the words clown, boor, and villain have all originally meant farmer or countryman or lower-class peasant.  Such hidden etymological social class prejudices have a way of persisting over the years.

Towns and small businesses disappear, traditional values are ridiculed, drug addiction and suicide increase, the fabric of traditions crumble, etc.  This list is long.  The people who voted for Trump feel betrayed; feel like victims. Of course, as Pete Hamill wrote of the NYC white working class in 1969, there are racists among them, and with all racists, they have their reasons, but these reasons are poison and despicable. But overall, these Trump voters are, in Hamill’s words, “actually in revolt against taxes, joyless work, the double standards and short memories of professional politicians, hypocrisy and what he considers the debasement of the American dream.”  Any politician, he added, who leaves these people out of the political equation, does so at a very large risk.  That risk has been growing over the decades.

Yet desperate people do desperate things, and for many Americans these are desperate times.  Everywhere you look, there are long lines at food pantries and soup kitchens.  The unemployment numbers are staggering. Homelessness. Suicides.  Drug and alcohol addictions rising.  Clear signs of social disintegration.  This is true not just in the United States but is happening around the world as neo-liberal economic policies are exacerbated by the widespread lockdowns that have given rise to massive protests worldwide, protests that the corporate press has failed to publicize since doing so would give the lie to their promotions of the lockdowns.

In England, the Mirror newspaper just printed the legendary Australian journalist John Pilger’s article about his 1975 interviews with impoverished English families with this lead:

John Pilger interviewed Irene Brunsden in Hackney, east London about only being able to feed her two-year-old a plate of cornflakes in 1975. Now he sees nervous women queueing at foodbanks with their children as it’s revealed 600,000 more kids are in poverty now than in 2012.

Vast numbers of people are suffering.

Many Trump voters no doubt know that Trump was never going to save them. But he said the right things, and desperation and disgust will grasp onto the slightest will-o’-the-wisp when disbelief in the whole rotten system is widespread.

Let’s not bullshit: everyone knows the game is rigged.

Trump is a liar.

Biden is a liar.

Great Britain’s Boris Johnson is a liar.

Fill in the names of the political charlatans.

The system is built on lies to keep the illusions brightening the screen of the great picture show, what Neil Gabler has rightly called “life the movie.”

Biden voters no doubt desperately hope that we can go back to some semblance of “normal,” even while knowing this is a losing game. Many of them try hard to conceal their true feelings, that their hatred for Trump and their love of living in times when imperialism is concealed as democracy is what they want. They don’t want to know. Concealment of the atrocious underbelly of normal is their hope and desire, even while they too are being fleeced and secretly know that the “new normal” will be far from their restorative dreams.  There are exceptions, of course, true believers who think Biden will significantly change things, but I would say they are a very small minority.  Many Biden voters say they have voted for the “lesser of two evils,” an old, worn-out excuse that in a rigged system will perdure.

Little changes. The past lives on.

Next year’s Academy Awards will be interesting.  A wit I know suggested that perhaps Trump and Biden will be nominees for the Best Actor in a Leading Role and they will tie for the Oscar.  That will be the second time that has ever happened.  The first was in 1932 when Fredric March and Wallace Beery shared the award.  March starred in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Beery in the boxing film, The Champ.

Both winners will be announced as starring in the same film, confusing the audience until it’s named: The American Nightmare.  Then raucous cheering will erupt from the jaded audience.  Dr. Jekyll will embrace Mr. Hyde and the melded Champ will take a bow as he winks for the cameras.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Behind the Curtain.

Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He is the author of the new book: https://www.claritypress.com/product/seeking-truth-in-a-country-of-lies/

Featured image is from Sky News

Reports on the death of senior Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh signals another dangerous turn in Washington’s systematic attempts to undermine and overthrow the current government of Iran.  

The Western media is framing the assassination as a unilateral operation carried out by Israel with the New York Times in an article titled, “Assassination in Iran Could Limit Biden’s Options. Was That the Goal?,” claiming:

Intelligence officials say there is little doubt that Israel was behind the killing — it had all the hallmarks of a precisely timed operation by Mossad, the country’s spy agency. And the Israelis have done nothing to dispel that view. 

The article also claimed:

But Mr. Netanyahu also has a second agenda.

“There must be no return to the previous nuclear agreement,” he declared shortly after it became clear that Mr. Biden — who has proposed exactly that — would be the next president.

The New York Times assumes that Biden genuinely wanted to return to the 2015 nuclear agreement – officially known as the The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – and insists that it is up to Iran whether or not that possibility still remains.

The article claims:

If Iran holds off on significant retaliation, then the bold move to take out the chief of the nuclear program will have paid off, even if the assassination drives the program further underground.

And if the Iranians retaliate, giving Mr. Trump a pretext to launch a return strike before he leaves office in January, Mr. Biden will be inheriting bigger problems than just the wreckage of a five-year-old diplomatic document.

But there is a third option – if the US or Israel – or both – stage an event meant to look like an Iranian retaliation to help ensure the nuclear deal is permanently buried and only a path toward escalation lies ahead for Washington.

And this third option is the most likely. More than mere speculation – this conclusion is drawn from US policy papers produced by corporate-funded policy think tank – the Brookings Institution.

Their 2009 paper (PDF) titled, “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran,” had not only called for the US to disingenuously offer Iran an opportunity to escape from under US sanctions, but admitted that the offer would be deliberately sabotaged by the US and used as a pretext toward further escalation.

Thus the JCPOA was doomed before it was even signed in 2015 – with US policymakers fully determined to scrap it at the most opportune time and then incrementally ratchet up pressure on Iran.

And while the US posed as “peacemaker” with Iran in 2015 – at the same time it waged proxy war on Iran’s closest ally in the region – Syria – aiming to overthrow the Syrian government and thus further isolating and encircling Iran itself.

Two quotes in particular from the 2009 Brookings document are revealing in regards to the ill-fated JCPOA and what is most likely to follow this most recent assassination as well as the prospects for Biden’s “desire” to restart the deal after taking office next year.

First the document claims (emphasis added):

…it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.) 

Next, the document claims:

In a similar vein, any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it. The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer—one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians “brought it on themselves” by refusing a very good deal.

Creating the deal, sabotaging it, and using it as a pretext to pursue military aggression against Iran was always the plan – long before the JCPOA was ever signed.

With prospects of the plan being revived already unlikely – and more so with this recent escalation – the only path left and just as Brookings in their 2009 paper planned years ago, is toward wider conflict between the US and Iran.

Whether this conflict unfolds as American policymakers envisioned over a decade ago or US power in the Middle East evaporates before this plan is fully realized – only time will tell – and depends widely on not only Iran’s patience and skill – but also on that of its allies in Moscow and even Beijing.

For the US who still clings to the illusion of leading a “rules based international order” – assassinating scientists half-way across the planet either directly or through its Israeli proxies – is only further evidence of just how desperately the world needs to move on with such an order left far behind.

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This article was originally published on Land Destroyer Report.

Brian Berletic is an independent geopolitical analyst based in Bangkok, Thailand and a regular contributor to New Eastern Outlook. You can support him and his work at Land Destroyer via Patreon here. 

On Tuesday, December 1, 2020, Canadians will take action right across the country to FREE MENG WANZHOU, who will have been under house arrest in Vancouver for two full years on that date.

In brief, the sponsors seek the release of Ms. Meng – through a simple order by Justice Minister Lametti – because they see her arrest and extradition at the request of the Trump Administration as a means by which it tried to drag Canada into a new cold war with China.

Disturbing elements of this new cold war with China are a rising tide of hostility towards Asian-Canadians and the illegal attempt, orchestrated through the Fives Eyes Intelligence Network, to prohibit Ms. Meng’s company, Huawei Technologies, from participating in the Canadian deployment of a 5g internet network. 1300 lucrative, high-tech, Canadian jobs are at stake. The sponsoring organizations are also united in the belief that Canada must develop an independent foreign policy, which is sadly lacking in the Trudeau government of today.

There will be three different avenues of protest on Dec. 1st. The first course of protest will be a cross-country day of informational pickets at courthouses, MP’s constituency offices, and other governmental sites. These socially-distant and masked events have been deliberately kept small to comply with public health restrictions in view of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The second course of action will be a selfie day in support of Ms. Meng. A selfie poster has been distributed, which Canadians are asked to pose with, and to send the selfies to their MP’s, post on social media, and forward to our campaign for compilation. The selfie poster is attached.

The third course of action will be an Action Alert message, distributed through the offices of the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, to all members of Parliament.

The Cross-Canada Day of Action follows closely upon the heels of the Zoom to Free Meng Wanzhou,  a successful panel discussion involving two MP’s, namely, the NDP’s Niki Ashton and Green’s Paul Manly. 261 people attended that online event on Zoom and more than 1000 watched it livestreamed on Facebook. In addition, it was widely reported in the Canadian media.

The sponsors of the Cross-Canada Day of Action are World Beyond War, the Canadian Peace Congress, the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, the Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War, and Just Peace Advocates.

People seeking additional information are urged to contact the author.

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Ken Stone is a longtime antiwar, environmental, anti-racism, and social justice activist. He is treasurer of the Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War, a member of the Steering Committee of the Syria Solidarity Movement, and a writer for Global Research. He may be reached at 905-383-7693 or [email protected].

Featured image is from the author

Ryan Costello, Policy Director of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), issued the following statement on reports of the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who led Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program until it was shelved in the early 2000s. Israel and the U.S. have long been linked to assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted Fakhrizadeh as pivotal to any Iranian weaponization possibilities in 2018.

“If confirmed, the assassination of Iran’s nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is yet another reckless step that appears intended to poison the well for negotiations under a Biden administration and set the stage for war. Coming shortly after the assassination of Qassem Soleimani earlier this year, the killing of a scientist who formerly directed Iran’s shelved military nuclear program risks war between Iran, the U.S. and Israel.

“President Elect Biden has made clear his desire to return to the negotiating table and the international agreement that restrained Iran’s nuclear program, signaling an end to the failed pressure-only approach directed by Trump and cheered on by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Saudi kingdom. This dramatic escalation in the waning days of the Trump presidency appears to be part of a scorched earth approach to sabotaging diplomacy and locking the U.S. and Iran onto the war path. While Iran reacted with relative restraint after one of its nuclear facilities was destroyed in an act of sabotage over the summer, each new step weakens those advocating restraint and empowers those advocating confrontation.

“Assassinations, sabotage, sanctions and military confrontation have all accelerated the U.S. and Iran on the path to war as well as resulted in an expanding Iranian nuclear program. The killing of military men and scientists will only result in their replacement and Iran accelerating their pursuit of credible deterrents. By contrast, sincere diplomacy managed to overcome decades of mistrust and take the dual threats of war and an Iranian nuclear weapon off the table. It has taken President Trump the better part of four years to return those threats to the fore.

“There is still space for urgent diplomacy to stop a rush to war. Conflict is not inevitable. But it will require restraining those in Washington and around the region who are determined to plunge forward into war.”

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Featured image is from NIAC

“Petitioners appear to have a viable claim that the mail-in ballot procedures set forth in Act 77 contravene Pa. Const. Article VII Section 14 as the plain language of that constitutional provision is at odds with the mail-in provisions of Act 77.”- PA Judge Patricia McCullough

In one ruling, a bombshell.

Issued in the late evening this past Friday by Pennsylvania Commonwealth judge, Patricia McCollough, her bold– and absolutely correct– ruling is about to make Nov 27, 2020 the day that the highly questionable 2020 election blew to pieces.

To make matters worse for the Dems, the same day, just down the street from Judge McCollough’s chambers, civil war broken out on the floor of the PA State House.  Outraged Republicans announced they would proceed, post haste, to pass a resolution that,

“Declares that the selection of presidential electors and other statewide electoral contest results in this commonwealth is in dispute” and “urges the secretary of the commonwealth and the governor to withdraw or vacate the certification of presidential electors and to delay certification of results in other statewide electoral contests voted on at the 2020 general election.”

Thinking ahead to the Electoral College:

“urges the United States Congress to declare the selection of presidential electors in this Commonwealth to be in dispute.”

That’s as polite as civil war gets.

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When both McCullough’s decision and the PA’s awakening are considered in detail The Keystone State has, after more than two centuries, once again become the epicenter of the war for American democracy.

Over the past three weeks, this ongoing report has documented the intricacies of: the US Electoral College, Media’s complicity as partisan censorship, the initial allegations of mail-in ballot fraud, and the inner workings of American voting machines. All are players in this high stakes drama unfolding before the eyes of all Americans.

If they look.

Outrage is increasing; slowly becoming bi-partisan contempt. Except in the media that has buried this news.

As the author, next in the series, began to examine the illegal, if not unconstitutional, self-serving mandates imposed on the voters by many States’ Legislatures, their Governors and their Secretaries of State, this past Wednesday a story leaked out that lite the fuse of Friday’s bombshell.

In power politics there are few checkmates, but political irony is coming in the form of two previous court decisions, and judge McCollough’s, and are about to force feed these decisions to the DNC’s masters of the universe… for a second time in thirteen days.

This, is the stuff of history!

Three Weeks in November.    

As has been suggested previously that all the salacious allegations across the battleground states are legally, for the moment, nothing more than circumstantial evidence. Yes, thee allegations are important and together may have much weight eventually in court. This was evidenced by Trump’s handlers losing their case repeatedly in a multitude of jurisdictions.

What has been missing has been a constitutional challenge born of its own merits. Strangely, as the reader will see, those merits became obvious- in writing- first on Nov 3 and again on Nov 6.

When a new law suit was filed on Monday, Nov 23 in PA using purely constitutional reasoning bolstered by the allegation directly germane to the argument, this author snapped to attention. It’s been a very busy week.

On Wed Nov. 25, 2020, PA Commonwealth Judge Patricia McCullough ordered the state, “to not take any further steps to complete the certification of the presidential race”, which the state already announced on Tuesday. In calling for a Friday hearing, McCullough added, “Respondents are preliminarily enjoined from certifying the remaining results of the election, pending the evidentiary hearing.” [Emph. added]

McCullough was presiding over a lawsuit brought by Republican affiliates against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf (D), Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, and the Pennsylvania General Assembly. All four were instrumental, it is alleged, in the unconstitutional passage of Pennsylvania’s absentee ballot and vote-by-mail statute: Act 77. A copy of that action is provided here.

In short, the PA legislature too hastily crafted Act 77 which allowed, in part, for virtually all unregulated mail-in ballots to be tabulated. However, Act 77 was created in violation of PA state statutes and constitutional law. Boockvar knew it, as did the PA Supreme Court. So did SCOTUS, before it put a temporary stop to some of these rather limited but highly effective vote counting irregularities on Nov 5.

At the very moment that this ruling permeated the last remnants of quality American journalism, a storm of a different kind was blowing an ill wind for state democrats in a conference room in Harrisburg, PA.

Upon the request of Pennsylvania Senator Doug Mastriano (R), the state’s Senate Majority Policy Committee was holding a public hearing, on Thursday, to discuss these election issues and irregularities. Outside thousands rallied with their demands that their currently elected officials do their duty.

This, for most, of course, translated into “toss the election to Trump,” but, interestingly, the additional presence of many banners and signs suggested a growing non-partisan call to, “Investigate!”

Echoing the days old of SCOTUS Associate Justice, Samuel Alito, Mastriano said,

“Elections are a fundamental principle of our democracy – unfortunately, Pennsylvanians have lost faith in the electoral system…Over the past few weeks, I have heard from thousands of Pennsylvanians regarding issues experienced at the polls …We need to correct these issues to restore faith in our republic.”

At the public hearing, Trump consiglieri Rudy Giuliani appeared as point man with his usual layout of many allegations and presentation of witnesses. Certainly, this hearing was a very partisan showing of self-serving facts by a legion of GOP sponsored camera moths, but their testimony was indeed pause for further investigation; not a cover-up.

The more important charges were:

• 47 memory cards containing over 50,000 votes are missing.
• PA’s registry shows 1.8 million absentee ballots were mailed out, yet 2.5 million mail-in ballots were counted.

Of course, not one MSM source covered the hearing and, as punishment for his efforts, Twitter disabled the Mastriano’s account as it did to the author last week. It should be noted now by all that being banned by Twitter, Facebook- and even Parler- is quickly becoming, in the minds of Americans, not censorship, but certification of the allegations themselves.

As goes PA, the voters in both GA and MI will soon watch special sessions of their state congresspersons begin to factually examine very similar claims as those in PA. Other states are sure to follow, if not, their own politicians with stand guilty by the same association to a silent and corrupt media.

Little of this, however, had a purely constitutional foundation.

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To understand the constitutional strength of the civil suit before McCollough in PA a good example is already on the books of Election 2020 and it comes by way of, strangely, California..

On election eve Monday, Nov 3 a California judge ruled that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) overstepped his authority when he issued an executive order amending state election law and thus required mail-in ballots to be sent to every registered voter amid the COVID-19 pan-panic.

In her ruling, Sutter County Superior Court Judge, Sarah Heckman, said that Newsom’s order was “an unconstitutional exercise of legislative power.”

In March, Newsom, like many officials in other states, declared a state of emergency in CA due to the alleged spreading of COVID-19. Three months later, in June, Newsom issued a blanket executive order to send mail-in ballots to all registered California voters. Overall, Newsom issued more than fifty orders that changed a number of state laws under the auspices of the California Emergency Services Act (CESA). That law gives the governor the authority to issue orders and rules while suspending certain laws during a declared state of emergency.

But California GOP Assemblymen James Gallagher and Kevin Kiley filed suit against Newsom, claiming his mail-in vote order was a gross abuse of power and an overreach. In May, former GOP Rep. Darrell Issa also filed suit against Newsom, along with Judicial Watch, in which they, too, claimed the order was “unconstitutional.”

Heckman did not overturn Newsom’s state of emergency but ruled the CESA,

“does not authorize or empower the governor of the state of California to amend statutory law or make new statutory law, which is exclusively a legislative function not delegated to the governor under the CESA.”

In an interstate summation of Newsom’s violations, and those in PA and other states,  Heckman wrote in finality:

 “…the Constitution gives the legislative branch the exclusive authority to make law and the executive branch the power to see that the law is faithfully executed.”

Heckman’s words may very soon be re-written even more powerfully by SCOTUS, a court, that on Nov 6 already agreed with Heckman. Both have embodied in their words a singular constitutional prerogative:

Article II Sect 1, Clause Two of the Constitution of the United States of America.

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Returning to PA and Judge McCullough, unilateral violations of PA constitutional provisions and procedures by the legislature are at the foundation of the matter.

As referenced in part two of this series, previously three weeks ago U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, on Friday, Nov 6, ordered very publically overruled the PA Supreme Court and Pennsylvania state election officials to segregate and separately count mail-in ballots that arrived after 8 PM on Election Day. Many PA counties did not honor Alito’s injunction.

Alito’s injunction was a direct result of the PA Supreme court playing fast and loose with US Article II Sect 1, Clause two and the PA constitution as well.

To  understand the PA Supreme Courts outrageous decision is to understand a court that cared not for either.

In 2019, the PA legislature passed a law called Act 77 that, among other provisions, permitted all voters to cast their ballots by mail but, in Justice Alito’s words,

“unambiguously required that all mailed ballots be received by 8 p.m. on election day.”

This was, by using plain English and the PA constitution, absolutely true.

Indeed, the exact text from the 2019 Pa. Leg. Serv. Act 2019-77, reads,

“No absentee ballot under this subsection shall be counted which is received in the office of the county board of elections later than eight o’clock P.M. on the day of the primary or election.”

Even more prohibitively, Act 77 also provided that if any portion of Act 77 was ever invalidated, the entirety of Act 77, including its liberalization of absentee balloting voting, would also be immediately void.

Pretty clear so far, except if you’re on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Like the edicts imposed by Calif’s Gov. Brylcrèem, just as outrageously the PA Supreme Court attempted to use Emergency Powers created for the mythic Coronavirus to justify a strange emergency ruling. The court ruled that mailed ballots did not need to be received by election day at 8 PM. Further, that ballots can be accepted if they are postmarked on election day or received within three days thereafter. Next, the court allowed that a mailed ballot with no postmark, or an illegible postmark, must be regarded as timely if it is received by that same date.

The SCOTUS injunction of Nov 6 put a temporary stop to all that. However, when Trump attorneys tried to effect certiorari with the court on their allegation of fraud, SCOTUS was reticent. A 4-4 vote sent Trump’s forces back to the lower courts to seek further relief.

Of course, MSM called this a defeat for Trump. It was really just a moot attempt applied to the incorrect jurisdiction and court venue and no more than a “nice try” that SCOTUS had seen before.

Make no mistake. SCOTUS can afford to be patient and has a long historical track record of watching dramatic cases unfold before their eyes while within the pleadings of their lower courts.

So, here were the voters of PA as of this past Monday morning, in a lower court. A court and a judge that already had in mind the previous words of wisdom of Calif. Judge Heckman, and the days-old admonishment of Alito, who similarly assessed regarding the “nice try,” of the PA Supreme Court:

 “The provisions of the Federal Constitution conferring on state legislatures, not state courts, the authority to make rules governing federal elections would be meaningless if a state court could override the rules adopted by the legislature simply by claiming that a state constitutional provision gave the courts the authority to make whatever rules it thought appropriate for the conduct of a fair election.” [Emph. Added]

With these words, Alito is directly referring to the established law of the land in America: Article II Sect 1, Clause two of the US Constitution

So, at the evidentiary hearing, this Friday Judge Mc McCullough likely had a firm grasp of all these words of wisdom. Perhaps, also, the shouts of an ever maddening public just outside her courtroom walls.

What Judge McCullough had most in mind, however, is the PA Constitution and its own legally required provisions under Article VII, Sect 14.

In a hangman’s twist of political and judicial irony that will soon extract a dark irony all of its own, the Dems have filed an emergency petition in court to immediately block Judge McCullough’s ruling. That court:

The Supreme Court of the State of Pennsylvania.

For any political aficionado, it doesn’t get any better than that.

MATERIAL FACTS.

Article VII of the PA Constitution allows for only two kinds of votes to be cast in the Keystone State. One: In Person. Two: Absentee.

However, and here was the consideration for Judge McCullough: Only under the expressed provisions and restrictions of Art VII Sect. 14 can Article VII be changed. No exceptions. Further, these provisions can only be amended by using a mandated process under Article VI Sect.1.

Article VII provides,

“provision[s] underlining the limited circumstances under which an elector is permitted to vote without being present at a polling location- Absentee Voting.”

In the rush to put in place Act 77, PA failed to follow this prescribed methodology that could, at least, only have been finalized as completed legislation during the following state election scheduled for May 18, 2021.

It would appear that the Biden forces realized this mistake

Unconstitutionally, Gov. Tom Wolf (D) signed Article 77 into law on Oct 31, 2019. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, these same PA legislators were scrambling to have the PA Supreme Court come to their rescue by using COVID-19 and emergency powers as the reason to approve the arbitrary mail-in ballot provisions added to Act 77, which Alito rebuked.

The current suit cites that, as to all current changes to absentee ballot regulations, PA has had no legal changes since being amended in1967. Further, the suit states that at that time the PA legislature did correctly follow both law and precedent in creating and subsequently passing these amended statutes so long ago.

The suit also alleged that the current PA legislature and its spawn ART 77, did not.

Art VI Sect 1 provides the only permissible methodology for changing absentee voting rules- or any other part of the PA constitution- in any way at any time. To do so, this statute first requires a majority vote of a joint session of the State House and Senate, not once, but twice and in succession.

Those two vote results and intended legislation, if successful, must then be advertised as pending in two newspapers in each and every PA county for a full three months before the next scheduled State General Election. At the time of that election, the Bill must be presented to the voter as a ballot question about amending the statute, or not. A simple majority must agree.

The PA legislature is deficient on all but one count. They did vote collectively for Act 77 and to change absentee voting rules, but only once on April 29, 2020.

In violating these provisions, the legal actions now before judge McCullough claim Act 77 and all its related mail-in ballots to be constitutionally invalid.

That’s a bunch of votes. Potentially, 2.5 million.

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Act 77 started its life first as Bill 411 and was then rolled into Bill 413 on March 9, 2019. The Bill passed the Senate on Oct 22, 2019, and made its way out of the House committee on April 6, 2020. Interestingly, by then the words, “Mail-in Balloting” had been removed from the title of the Bill after it was sent to the House.

Then S.B. 413 was passed, one time only, by both House and Senate on April 29.

Act 77 functionally crossed out almost all of Art. VII sect. 14 which required any eligible voter to, when first requesting an absentee ballot, “provide a permissible reason to do so” before being sent a ballot.

It did not provide for the mass mailing of unsolicited ballots to the entire PA voting constituency.

The PA mandate that an absentee voter first personally and individually request a ballot is a significant requirement and protection. This allows for the initial substantiation and likely legitimacy of that mail-in vote when received by the state. It also significantly eliminates the temptation towards massive endemic election fraud by mail-in ballots.

Article VII sect. 5 does allow for the advent of the possibility of other methods of absentee voting, but only “as may be prescribed by law.”

As to this possibility of an amendment, Art VII sect 14 allows for changes only if “The legislature, by general law, provide [such] a manner.” General law means, Article VII, Sect 5 and Article VI, Sect 1.

Translated into plain English: Hillary, …you have a problem!

A Multi-State Pandemic.

As of Friday night’s, ruling and keeping in mind Alito’s words and the previous decision of CA judge Heckman, the magnitude of McCollough’s ruling has equally dramatic national implications.

Across America, many other state governors and Secretaries of State also ignored their state’s constitutional procedural mandates thinking that a medical virus would allow the cover to affect a political one.

The voters of at least the states of AZ, GA, MI, MT, NV, IA, ND, VT and WI had their Sec.of State also required unsolicited absentee ballots to be sent out statewide while citing a virus as the reason. Considering the PA example, it is very likely that their unilateral decisions are also in violation of state constitutional law. In NV a state court also helped matters along when refusing to accept a similar challenge from private citizens.

Certainly, these violations with respect to the outcome of the US election matter little in many of these states. However, the voters in every state should be just as outraged as in PA. since the ruse that was a virus-induced rationale for canvassing any state with absentee ballots, and/ or eliminating almost all restriction on other types of mail-in ballots, should now be obvious to anyone following the litany of allegations mounting daily in their own state.

It does indeed seem evident that all of this was by design.

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In GA, WI, MI, however, the states that do matter in their effect on the Electoral College totals for president, all three are at this moment in court and under legal action to petition these state courts to stop and then rectify similar unilateral political moves.

MSM would have their voters believe that, since these states have managed to certify their election results under very dubious circumstances, the matter is settled. AS is the case now in PA, nothing is settled until the Electoral College on each state certifies its slate of electors on Dec 14.

That’s two more weeks.

As a previous article highlighted, Trump and his minions had no choice but to be patient and allow for certification before beginning serious legal challenges that may move through state and district courts and then all the way to SCOTUS.

As of Thanksgiving Day, if Trump’s lawyers as smart as those in PA, three new judges will soon be facing a similar constitutional determination as McCullough, Heckman, and Alito. Like the PA lower courts, in the other three battleground states, politicians have already attempted to ignore their own state’s constitutions, not examined evidence, nor considered the merits of the plaintiff’s- the voter’s- claim.

Today, Former Assist. US attorney, Sidney Powell finally delivered her, much advertised “Kraken” to the courts in both MI and GA.  Previously in GA, noted attorney Lin Wood served his own legal action regarding mail-in voting not being constitutionally approved. Wood had his suit quashed by U.S. District Judge Steven Grimberg, who refused to grant standing to Wood’s claims and thus avoided any court examination of evidence or constitutional claims.

Powell has waited until the GA vote was certified. If her salacious accusations of the past week are accurate she will be providing evidence of voter fraud along with allegations of constitutional violations of absentee voting statutes in a manner very similar to PA.

Previously, U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross, an Obama appointee wrote that voters must be protected during the coronavirus pandemic, when record numbers of Georgians were expected to cast absentee ballots and then extended the deadline for absentee ballots to be returned in Georgia, ruling that they must be counted if postmarked by Election Day and delivered up to three days afterwards.

This, like the PA Supreme Court’s abuse of power, is certainly unconstitutional per US Art II, Sect 1, Clause two as referenced above.

That GA judge’s decision likely resulted in tens of thousands of ballots being counted after Nov. 3 that would have otherwise been rejected, and enough to swing this close election, since Ross, all by herself, invalidated Georgia’s requirement that ballots had to be received at county election offices by 7 p.m. on Election Day.

In MI, similar violations have allowed Powell to virtually cut and paste the GA legal filing when introducing it to the MI courts.

Michigan, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) unilaterally voided the legal requirement that voters provide a signature when requesting an absentee ballot, establishing instead an online request form. She then took things a step further by announcing that she would “allow civic groups and other organizations running voter registration drives to register voters on their behalf through the state’s online registration website,” granting activist and partisan groups such as Rock The Vote direct access to Michigan’s voter rolls.

Since the MI legislature had not created this new law, Ross did so with a stroke of her pen. In doing so she became a co-conspirator in this growing indictment of MI election fraud.

Up in WI, the election is not yet certified. For Trump, the case in point may be the reports that the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) told poll workers to ‘add a missing witness address’ to any deficient ballot and that some poll workers allegedly took it one step further by signing for non-existent witnesses.

If proven true in court, these workers, who have testified to these illegal instructions, may have invalidated thousands of more ballots, committed a felony offence and necessitated further SCOTUS intervention.

Wisconsin Statute 6.86 provides that: 

“an absentee ballot must be signed by a witness, who is also required to list his or her address. If a witness address is not listed, then the ballot is considered invalid and must be returned to the voter to have the witness correct.”

“The statute is very, very clear,” said retired Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, a Milwaukee poll watcher on Election Day. “If an absentee ballot does not have a witness address on it, it’s not valid.”

It is a safe bet that the Trump minions will proceed similarly to court within hours of certification.

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The Only Effective Vaccine.

At this point in the story, and with voter interest growing, refusal by any court to provide some degree of investigation will encourage a popular voter revolt on their streets and likely on their doorsteps. Should these judges perform their duty to the voter-not the DNC- when they commence these proceedings they will be faced with a difficult and simple constitutional polar choice of decision.

Beyond technicality, wholesale denial of the allegations, or a court refusing standing to the many voter plaintiffs and their allegations, these politicians, judges, and legislators now under popular attack will have only one remaining affirmative defense to offer,

“The virus made me do it.”

This argument did not work previously in CA with judge Heckman nor with SCOTUS judge Alito. So, the choice becomes a simple one for these judges:

One: Allow a virus- a political one- to prevail within their courts and next infect all others.

Or…

Two: Vaccinate publicly, in court, the voters of their states against a national pandemic of viral democratic corruption.

With each day and new civil suit, it appears more probable that it will ultimately be up to SCOTUS to make this all-important polar choice. A landmark choice that will likely decide America’s true future beginning the very next day.

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The still-developing story of the election conspiracy of 2020 has, yesterday, taken on the greatest of importance. Election 2020 has revealed many important facts, yet all are almost exclusively covered over by American media which must be considered also a co-conspirator. Why have you not heard this week’s historic news? Well, that’s a rhetorical question now, isn’t it?

As this series has progressed, evidence of demonstrative state-by-state election fraud, the complicity of the Dominion voting machines, and the dire need for these states to invoke the Electoral College to stop this political virus from destroying the body politic of a nation, have been offered in these pages as a furthering of this collective indictment.

In PA, this Friday’s call to take back the power of the Electoral College from one Secretary of State of questionable motives, and place it in the hands of a full body of elected officials, is an advent that will almost assuredly be repeated in other states. The public will demand it. Probably before Dec 14.

The most powerful and necessary vaccine, factual investigation, must now be jabbed, not into the arms, but directly into the foreheads of all Americans of any party affiliation before their country and their democracy dies the violent death of American color revolutions past.

As has been suggested, a purely political virus has utilized the virus known as Covid-19 to great effect: That of anointing, not electing, Joe Biden president.

If the state and federal courts fail in their proper duty, there is but one court remaining.

This court has failed the American public in the past, most famously with the Citizens United decision. Will it fail once again at this Rubicon of American history?

Of which of the two polar choices that “the highest court in the land” ultimately allows to prevail, Americans are increasingly bearing witness and closer scrutiny each day.

It seems an increasing probability that this political football of Election 2020 will require a landmark decision and will soon be punted as high and as long as it possibly can.

However, when that ball finally lands in the dramatic days to come, it will do so upon the grounds of the most important location in Washington, DC:

#1 First Street.

Perhaps, too long ago, there was a damn good reason for providing SCOTUS with that address.

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Brett Redmayne-Titley has authored and published over 180 in-depth articles over the past twelve years. Many have been translated and republished worldwide. He can be reached at: live-on-scene ((at)) gmx.com. Prior articles can be viewed at his archive: www.watchingromeburn.uk

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

On November 4, the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) came under attack by the provincial government in the northern Tigray region.

Reports indicate that numerous ENDF personnel were killed while the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) local leadership declared that the administration of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali in Addis Ababa as being illegitimate.

Between 1991 and 2018, the TPLF was the dominant political party within the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) which had fought the former government of Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam, the ruler of the country from 1974 to the early 1990s. Mengistu was aligned with the former Soviet Union, the Eastern European socialist countries and Cuba. He was a part of the armed forces grouping known as the Derg, the Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC), which seized power from the Monarchy under the control of H.I.M. Haile Selassie in 1974 amid a national uprising inside the country.

With the advent of unrest in Ethiopia during early 2018, the former EPRDP leadership of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn resigned from office. Hailemariam said he wanted to pave the way for much-needed reforms creating the conditions for the rise of the incumbent administration of Abiy.

Abiy has described the conflict as an internal matter which does not require the diplomatic and military intervention of the African Union (AU), whose Secretariat is based in Addis Ababa, along with the United Nations and other international bodies. The deliberate and rapid military actions taken by the ENDF was characterized by the Ethiopian government as a law-enforcement operation.

A delegation from the AU visited Ethiopia for discussions with Abiy on November 27. The talks appeared to have been cordial resulting in the issuing of communiques by both the delegation empowered by the current AU Chairperson South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and the federal government in Addis Ababa.

A report published by AllAfrica.com says of the meeting between the AU delegation and Abiy that:

“African Union envoys meeting Friday with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali ended with no apparent progress towards averting an attack on Mekelle, capital of the northern Tigray region. Abiy has demanded that regional forces surrender and urged international actors not to intervene, saying Ethiopia is capable of resolving the situation internally. The envoys, three former presidents – Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Mozambique’s Joaquim Chissano and Kgalema Motlanthe from South Africa – have been seeking a negotiated solution for the conflict, which has already displaced 43,000 Ethiopians, according to UNHCR. In a statement after the meeting, Abiy expressed ‘utmost gratitude to President Cyril Ramaphosa & his Special Envoys for their concerted effort to understand our rule of law operations,’ he said in a Tweet. ‘Receiving the wisdom & counsel of respected African elders is a precious continental culture that we value greatly in Ethiopia.’ The African Union in a communique described the positions outlined by the prime minister but gave no indication of any further actions by the envoys.” (See this)

Military Clashes Resulting in Humanitarian Crisis

Even though the Ethiopian government has declared victory in the current conflict, TPLF leaders at present are refusing to concede and vowing to continue the fight against the ENDF. The clashes between the ENDF and TPLF loyalists has prompted the departure from the country of tens of thousands of Ethiopians from various nationalities and regions.

Many of the refugees are temporarily settling in eastern Sudan where humanitarian agencies are reporting on their status in a country which is itself undergoing a political transition. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) noted in a November 26 article that those displaced number around 40,000.

The report emphasizes:

“UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and its partners are delivering and distributing life-saving aid, including hot meals, water and latrines for the arrivals. Staff at the Hamdayet border crossing in Kassala State and the Lugdi crossing in Gedaref State, are registering thousands of new arrivals each day. The most vulnerable refugees including older people, pregnant and lactating women and children are receiving special care, including supplementary feeding. But the humanitarian response continues to face logistical challenges. The relocation of refugees away from the border is hampered by logistics and distances, limiting the number of people being transferred to Um Rakuba camp in Gedaref, some 80 kilometres inside Sudan.” (See this)

International Dimensions of the Internal Conflict

Although it has been nearly three decades, the role of the United States government in the current political crisis in Ethiopia cannot be overlooked. Under the administration of former President George H.W. Bush, Sr. in May 1991, the U.S. State Department encouraged and facilitated the seizure of power by the EPRDF.

This was the period of decline and dissolution of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies which had played an enormous role in the efforts by the Mengistu government to create a socialist society under the leadership of the Workers Party of Ethiopia (WPE).  Herman Cohen, the-then U.S. Undersecretary for African Affairs, had been involved in negotiations to bring about peaceful settlement to the wars in Ethiopia between the Mengistu administration and the EPRDF. Cohen emerged from the talks held in London issuing a statement recognizing the TPLF-EPRDF as the legitimate government in Ethiopia.

In the early phase of the EPRDF government in Addis Ababa, there was extensive military cooperation with the U.S. Ethiopia at the aegis of Washington under successive Republican and Democratic administrations engaged in military operations in neighboring Somalia, which is still not stable even decades after direct and indirect interventions by Washington. Relations with the U.S. and Britain had been very close from the time of the Italian occupation during 1935-1941 to the post World War II period of the Cold War.

When Ethiopia experienced a Revolution stemming from demonstrations and strikes in the early months of 1974, the mass sentiment among many inside the country was in opposition to U.S. foreign policy. Ethiopia turned towards the socialist camp, declaring itself marxist-leninist and eventually attempting to form a vanguard party. Yet the internal problems of the sectional conflicts with the Tigray and Oromo groups prevented the WPE from consolidating its national development policies. In addition, a war of independence waged by Eritrea against the central government lasted from 1961-1991, when the former Italian colony declared itself a sovereign state and two years later, after a referendum on independence was recognized by the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor of the AU, and the United Nations.

Former Assistant Secretary of State Cohen is still denying rumors related to his political bias towards the EPRDF. A twitter post by Cohen said of the resurfaced allegations that: “I was surprised to see frivolous rumors alleging I have taken money from the TPLF. There is no truth to this.” (See this)

An Ethiopian news agency, Borkena.com, reported during mid-November that many people consider Cohen as some sort of “political godfather” of the TPLF. The existing federal system of governance in Ethiopia which Prime Minister Abiy is trying to transcend, has been favored by Cohen. Borkena quoted a Cohen twitter post which asserts that the:

“’Best solution for #Ethiopia is a truly decentralized federal system, in which Ethiopia remains unified but each ethnic nation has the self-determination they desire. If Abiy wins militarily, [the] international community should still press for this outcome through political dialogue,’ he said.” (See this)

The formation of the Prosperity Party (PP) in December 2019 by Abiy is designed to usher in a new era of governance for the country of 110 million, the second-most populous state in Africa. It appears to many that the TPLF is attempting to rekindle its political dominance exercised during its 27-years of undisputed rule. The refusal of the TPLF to join the PP and to hold its own provincial elections after the central government postponed voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic, fueled tensions with the Abiy government in Addis Ababa.

In the last several months, the administration of President Donald J. Trump has interfered in the ongoing talks to resolve the dispute between Addis Ababa and Egypt over the operations of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) project which is viewed as essential for the further modernization and industrialization of the Horn of Africa state and its neighbors. After the Ethiopian government refused to accept a U.S. proposal advanced by the Trump White House, Abiy was condemned by administration.

A recent conference call over the question of “normalization” of relations between the Republic of Sudan and the State of Israel, gave an indication of the hostility directed towards Ethiopia by Washington. Trump said during the conversation that the Egyptian government would have no other choice than to “blow up” the Dam. Such reckless comments could very well have been interpreted by the TPLF as a signal from the U.S. welcoming its hostile action against the central administration of Abiy.

Attempts by the TPLF to bring Eritrea into the conflict has so far failed. Reports on November 29 from Asmara say that there have been six explosions in the capital city of Eritrea without mentioning the exact cause. (See this)

Abiy had negotiated a peace agreement with Eritrea after taking power in 2018, putting an end to the border conflict around Badme which erupted in 1998 and 2000. Abiy was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his negotiations with the Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki resulting in the signing of accords and a deepening of bilateral relations.

Since Ethiopia is an important nation within the AU and the international community, with thousands of years of history and cultural contributions, the outcomes of the present crisis will be followed closely by many people throughout the world.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The assassination of Tehran’s top nuclear scientist is a ploy by Israel to compel the likely US president-elect to reject diplomacy and choose military action to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambition. Which option will he choose?

Making political sense of the world can be tricky unless one understands the role of the state in capitalist societies. The state is not primarily there to represent voters or uphold democratic rights and values; it is a vehicle for facilitating and legitimating the concentration of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands. 

In a recent post, I wrote about “externalities” – the ability of companies to offset the true costs inherent in the production process. The burden of these costs are covertly shifted on to wider society: that is, on to you and me. Or on to those far from view, in foreign lands. Or on to future generations. Externalising costs means that profits can be maximised for the wealth elite in the here and now.

My latest: The increasingly desperate task of capitalism's perception managers is to dissociate our economic system from the emerging environmental crisis – to break our understanding of the causal link between the two https://t.co/S4Aby314FX

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) October 25, 2020

Our own societies must deal with the externalised costs of industries ranging from tobacco and alcohol to chemicals and vehicles. Societies abroad must deal with the costs of the bombs dropped by our “defence” industries. And future generations will have to deal with the lethal costs incurred by corporations that for decades have been allowed to pump out their waste products into every corner of the globe.

Divine right to rule 

In the past, the job of the corporate media was to shield those externalities from public view. More recently, as the costs have become impossible to ignore, especially with the climate crisis looming, the media’s role has changed. Its central task now is to obscure corporate responsibility for these externalities. That is hardly surprising. After all, the corporate media’s profits depend on externalising costs too, as well as hiding the externalised costs of their parent companies, their billionaire owners and their advertisers.

Once, monarchs rewarded the clerical class for persuading, through the doctrine of divine right, their subjects to passively submit to exploitation. Today, “mainstream” media are there to persuade us that capitalism, the profit motive, the accumulation of ever greater wealth by elites, and externalities destroying the planet are the natural order of things, that this is the best economic model imaginable.

Most of us are now so propagandised by the media that we can barely imagine a functioning world without capitalism. Our minds are primed to imagine, in the absence of capitalism, an immediate lurch back to Soviet-style bread queues or an evolutionary reversal to cave-dwelling. Those thoughts paralyse us, making us unable to contemplate what might be wrong or inherently unsustainable about how we live right now, or to imagine the suicidal future we are hurtling towards.

Lifeblood of empire 

There is a reason that, as we rush lemming-like towards the cliff-edge, urged on by a capitalism that cannot operate at the level of sustainability or even of sanity, the push towards intensified war grows. Wars are the lifeblood of the corporate empire headquartered in the United States.

My latest: The new documentary on Greta Thunberg – I Am Greta – isn’t about climate change. It’s about something even more important: the elusiveness of sanity in an insane world https://t.co/uU2G6i821I

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 17, 2020

US imperialism is no different from earlier imperialisms in its aims or methods. But in late-stage capitalism, wealth and power are hugely concentrated. Technologies have reached a pinnacle of advancement. Disinformation and propaganda are sophisticated to an unprecedented degree. Surveillance is intrusive and aggressive, if well concealed. Capitalism’s destructive potential is unlimited. But even so, war’s appeal is not diminished.

As ever, wars allow for the capture and control of resources. Fossil fuels promise future growth, even if of the short-term, unsustainable kind.

Wars require the state to invest its money in the horrendously expensive and destructive products of the “defence” industries, from fighter planes to bombs, justifying the transfer of yet more public resources into private hands.

The lobbies associated with these “defence” industries have every incentive to push for aggressive foreign (and domestic) policies to justify more investment, greater expansion of “defensive” capabilities, and the use of weapons on the battlefield so that they need replenishing.

Whether public or covert, wars provide an opportunity to remake poorly defended, resistant societies – such as Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria – in ways that allow for resources to be seized, markets to be expanded and the reach of the corporate elite to be extended.

War is the ultimate growth industry, limited only by our ability to be persuaded of new enemies and new threats.

Fog of war 

For the political class, the benefits of war are not simply economic. In a time of environmental collapse, war offers a temporary “Get out of jail” card. During wars, the public is encouraged to assent to new, ever greater sacrifices that allow public wealth to be transferred to the elite. War is the corporate world’s ultimate Ponzi scheme.

The “fog of war” does not just describe the difficulty of knowing what is happening in the immediate heat of battle. It is also the fear, generated by claims of an existential threat, that sets aside normal thinking, normal caution, normal scepticism. It is the invoking of a phantasmagorical enemy towards which public resentments can be directed, shielding from view the real culprits – the corporations and their political cronies at home.

The “fog of war” engineers the disruption of established systems of control and protocol to cope with the national emergency, shrouding and rationalising the accumulation by corporations of more wealth and power and the further capture of organs of the state. It is the licence provided for “exceptional” changes to the rules that quickly become normalised. It is the disinformation that passes for national responsibility and patriotism.

Permanent austerity 

All of which explains why Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister, has just pledged an extra £16.5 billion in “defence” spending at a time when the UK is struggling to control a pandemic and when, faced by disease, Brexit and a new round of winter floods, the British economy is facing “systemic crisis”, according to a new Cabinet Office report. Figures released last week show the biggest economic contraction in the UK in three centuries.

If the British public is to stomach yet more cuts, to surrender to permanent austerity as the economy tanks, Johnson, ever the populist, knows he needs a good cover story. And that will involve further embellishment of existing, fearmongering narratives about Russia, Iran and China.

To make those narratives plausible, Johnson has to act as if the threats are real, which means massive spending on “defence”. Such expenditure, wholly counter-productive when the current challenge is sustainability, will line the pockets of the very corporations that help Johnson and his pals stay in power, not least by cheerleading him via their media arms.

New salesman needed 

The cynical way this works was underscored in a classified 2010 CIA memorandum, known as “Red Cell”, leaked to Wikileaks, as the journalist Glenn Greenwald reminded us last week. The CIA memo addressed the fear in Washington that European publics were demonstrating little appetite for the US-led “war on terror” that followed 9/11. That, in turn, risked limiting the ability of European allies to support the US as it exercised its divine right to wage war.

The memo notes that European support for US wars after 9/11 had chiefly relied on “public apathy” – the fact that Europeans were kept largely ignorant by their own media of what those wars entailed. But with a rising tide of anti-war sentiment, the concern was that this might change. There was an urgent need to futher manipulate public opinion more decisively in favour of war.

The US intelligence agency decided its wars needed a facelift. George W Bush, with his Texan, cowboy swagger, had proved a poor salesman. So the CIA turned to identity politics and faux “humanitarianism”, which they believed would play better with European publics.

Part of the solution was to accentuate the suffering of Afghan women to justify war. But the other part was to use President Barack Obama as the face of a new, “caring” approach to war. He had recently been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize – even though he had done nothing for peace, and would go on to expand US wars – very possibly as part of this same effort to reinvent the “war on terror”. Polls showed support for existing wars increased markedly among Europeans when they were reminded that Obama backed these wars.

As Greenwald observes:

“Obama’s most important value was in prettifying, marketing and prolonging wars, not ending them. They saw him for what U.S. Presidents really are: instruments to create a brand and image about the U.S. role in the world that can be effectively peddled to both the domestic population in the U.S. and then on the global stage, and specifically to pretend that endless barbaric U.S. wars are really humanitarian projects benevolently designed to help people — the pretext used to justify every war by every country in history.”

Obama-style facelift 

Once the state is understood as a vehicle for entrenching elite power – and war its most trusted tool for concentrating power – the world becomes far more intelligible. Western economies never stopped being colonial economies, but they were given an Obama-style facelift. War and plunder – even when they masquerade as “defence”, or peace – are still the core western mission.

That is why Britons, believing days of empire are long behind them, might have been shocked to learn last week that the UK still operates 145 military bases in 42 countries around the globe, meaning it runs the second largest network of such bases after the US.

Such information is not made available in the UK “mainstream” media, of course. It has to be provided by an “alternative” investigative site, Declassified UK. In that way the vast majority of the British public are left clueless about how their taxes are being used at a time when they are told further belt-tightening is essential.

REVEALED — The UK military’s overseas base network involves 145 sites in 42 countries.

The results of a months-long investigation by @pmillerinfo https://t.co/oaffNnJlZc

— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) November 24, 2020

The UK’s network of bases, many of them in the Middle East, close to the world’s largest oil reserves, are what the much-vaunted “special relationship” with the US amounts to. Those bases are the reason the UK – whoever is prime minister – is never going to say “no” to a demand that Britain join Washington in waging war, as it did in attacking Iraq in 2003, or in aiding attacks on Libya, Syria and Yemen. The UK is not only a satellite of the US empire, it is a lynchpin of the western imperial war economy.

Ideological alchemy 

Once that point is appreciated, the need for external enemies – for our own Eurasias and Eastasias– becomes clearer.

Some of those enemies, the minor ones, come and go, as demand dictates. Iraq dominated western attention for two decades. Now it has served its purpose, its killing fields and “terrorist” recruiting grounds have reverted to a mere footnote in the daily news. Likewise, the Libyan bogeyman Muammar Gaddafi was constantly paraded across news pages until he was bayonetted to death. Now the horror story that is today’s chaotic Libya, a corridor for arms-running and people-trafficking, can be safely ignored. For a decade, the entirely unexceptional Arab dictator Bashar Assad, of Syria, has been elevated to the status of a new Hitler, and he will continue to serve in that role for as long as it suits the needs of the western war economy.

Notably, Israel, another lynchpin of the US empire and one that serves as a kind of offshored weapons testing laboratory for the military-industrial complex, has played a vital role in rationalising these wars. Just as saving Afghan women from Middle Eastern patriarchy makes killing Afghans – men, women and children – more palatable to Europeans, so destroying Arab states can be presented as a humanitarian gesture if at the same time it crushes Israel’s enemies, and by extension, through a strange, implied ideological alchemy, the enemies of all Jews.

Quite how opportunistic – and divorced from reality – the western discourse about Israel and the Middle East has become is obvious the moment the relentless concerns about Syria’s Assad are weighed against the casual indifference towards the head-chopping rulers of Saudi Arabia, who for decades have been financing terror groups across the Middle East, including the jihadists in Syria. 

During that time, Israel has covertly allied with oil-rich Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, because all of them are safely ensconced within the US war machine. Now, with the Palestinians completely sidelined diplomatically, and with all international solidarity with Palestinians browbeaten into silence by antisemitism smears, Israel and the Saudis are gradually going public with their alliance, like a pair of shy lovers. That included the convenient leak this week of a secret meeting between Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia.

Israel’s likely reward is contained in a new bill in Congress for even more military aid than the record $3.8 billion Israel currently receives annually from the US – at a time when the US economy, like the UK one, is in dire straits.

My latest: Pompeo’s declaration that criticism of Israel and the peaceful movement urging a boycott of its settlements are ‘antisemitic’ marks the logical endpoint of a foreign policy consensus rapidly taking shape in the US and Europe https://t.co/0fLC8TKnzm

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 24, 2020

The west also needs bigger, more menacing and more permanent enemies than Iraq or Syria. Helpfully one kind – nebulous “terrorism” – is the inevitable reaction to western war-making. The more brown people we kill, the more brown people we can justify killing because they carry out, or support, “terrorism” against us. Their hatred for our bombs is an irrationality, a primitivism we must keep stamping out with more bombs.

But concrete, identifiable enemies are needed too. Russia, Iran and China give superficial credence to the war machine’s presentation of itself as a “defence” industry. The UK’s bases around the globe and Boris Johnson’s £16.5 billion rise in spending on the UK’s war industries only make sense if Britain is under a constant, existential threat. Not just someone with a suspicious backpack on the London Tube, but a sophisticated, fiendish enemy that threatens to invade our lands, to steal resources to which we claim exclusive rights, to destroy our way of life through its masterful manipulation of the internet.

Crushed or tamed 

Anyone of significance who questions these narratives that rationalise and perpetuate war is the enemy too. Current political and legal dramas in the US and UK reflect the perceived threat such actors pose to the war machine. They must either be crushed or tamed into subservience.

Trump was initially just such a figure that needed breaking in. The CIA and other intelligence agencies assisted in the organised opposition to Trump – helping to fuel the evidence-free Russiagate “scandal” – not because he was an awful human being or had authoritarian tendencies, but for two more specific reasons.

First, Trump’s political impulses, expressed in the early stages of his presidential campaign, were to withdraw from the very wars the US empire depends on. Despite open disdain for him from most of the media, he was criticised more often for failing to prosecute wars enthusiastically enough rather than for being too hawkish. And second, even as his isolationist impulses were largely subdued after the 2016 election by the permanent bureaucracy and his own officials, Trump proved to be an even more disastrous salesman for war than George W Bush. Trump made war look and sound exactly as it is, rather than packaging it as “intervention” intended to help women and people of colour.

But Trump’s amateurish isolationism paled in comparison to two far bigger threats to the war machine that emerged over the past decade. One was the danger – in our newly interconnected, digital world – of information leaks that risked stripping away the mask of US democracy, of the “shining city on the hill”, to reveal the tawdry reality underneath. 

Julian Assange and his Wikileaks project proved just such a danger. The most memorable leak – at least as far as the general public was concerned – occurred in 2010, with publication of a classified video, titled Collateral Murder, showing a US air crew joking and celebrating as they murdered civilians far below in the streets of Baghdad. It gave a small taste of why western “humanitarianism” might prove so unpopular with those to whom we were busy supposedly bringing “democracy”.

The threat posed by Assange’s new transparency project was recognised instantly by US officials. 

Exhibiting a carefully honed naivety, the political and media establishments have sought to uncouple the fact that Assange has spent most of the last decade in various forms of detention, and is currently locked up in a London high-security prison awaiting extradition to the US, from his success in exposing the war machine. Nonetheless, to ensure his incarceration till death in one of its super-max jails, the US empire has had to conflate the accepted definitions of “journalism” and “espionage”, and radically overhaul traditional understandings of the rights enshrined in the First Amendment.

My latest: Julian Assange was on the front line of a war to remake journalism as a true check on the runaway power of government. Journalists had a chance to ally with him. Instead they served him up as a sacrificial offering to their corporate masters https://t.co/oF2nPOix49

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) September 2, 2020

Dress rehearsal for a coup

An equally grave threat to the war machine was posed by the emergence of Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of Britain’s Labour party. Corbyn presented as exceptional a problem as Assange.

Before Corbyn, Labour had never seriously challenged the UK’s dominant military-industrial complex, even if its support for war back in the 1960s and 1970s was often tempered by its then-social democratic politics. It was in this period, at the height of the Cold War, that Labour prime minister Harold Wilson was suspected by British elites of failing to share their anti-Communist and anti-Soviet paranoia, and was therefore viewed as a potential threat to their entrenched privileges.

As a BBC dramatised documentary from 2006 notes, Wilson faced the very real prospect of enforced “regime change”, coordinated by the military, the intelligence services and members of the royal family. It culminated in a show of force by the military as they briefly took over Heathrow airport without warning or coordination with Wilson’s government. Marcia Williams, his secretary, called it a “dress rehearsal” for a coup. Wilson resigned unexpectedly soon afterwards, apparently as the pressure started to take its toll.

‘Mutiny’ by the army 

Subsequent Labour leaders, most notably Tony Blair, learnt the Wilson lesson: never, ever take on the “defence” establishment. The chief role of the UK is to serve as the US war machine’s attack dog. Defying that allotted role would be political suicide.

By contrast to Wilson, who posed a threat to the British establishment only in its overheated imagination, Corbyn was indeed a real danger to the militaristic status quo.

He was one of the founders of the Stop the War coalition that emerged specifically to challenge the premises of the “war on terror”. He explicitly demanded an end to Israel’s role as a forward base of the imperial war industries. In the face of massive opposition from his own party – and claims he was undermining “national security” – Corbyn urged a public debate about the deterrence claimed by the “defence” establishment for the UK’s Trident nuclear submarine programme, effectively under US control. It was also clear that Corbyn’s socialist agenda, were he ever to reach power, would require redirecting the many billions spent in maintaining the UK’s 145 military bases around the globe back into domestic social programmes.

In an age when the primacy of capitalism goes entirely unquestioned, Corbyn attracted even more immediate hostility from the power establishment than Wilson had. As soon as he was elected Labour leader, Corbyn’s own MPs – still loyal to Blairism – sought to oust him with a failed leadership challenge. If there was any doubt about how the power elite responded to Corbyn becoming head of the opposition, the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sunday Times newspaper soon offered a platform to an unnamed army general to make clear its concerns.

Weeks after Corbyn’s election as Labour leader, the general warned that the army would take “direct action” using “whatever means possible, fair or foul” to prevent Corbyn exercising power. There would be “mutiny”, he said. “The Army just wouldn’t stand for it.”

My latest: Corbyn's election to lead the Labour party didn't overturn the rigged political system or end the corporate chokehold on power. His victory was an accident, and the system has been fighting back with all its might to correct the error ever since https://t.co/2u0Vyo0qLU

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) July 3, 2019

Such views about Corbyn were, of course, shared on the other side of the Atlantic. In a leaked recording of a conversation with American-Jewish organisations last year, Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state and a former CIA director, spoke of how Corbyn had been made to “run the gauntlet” as a way to ensure he would not be elected prime minister. The military metaphor was telling. 

In relation to the danger of Corbyn winning the 2019 election, Pompeo added: “You should know, we won’t wait for him to do those things to begin to push back. We will do our level best. It’s too risky and too important and too hard once it’s already happened.”

This was from the man who said of his time heading the CIA: “We lied, we cheated, we stole. It’s – it was like – we had entire training courses.”

Smears and Brexit

After a 2017 election that Labour only narrowly lost, the Corbyn threat was decisively neutralised in the follow-up election two years later, after the Labour leader was floored by a mix of antisemitism slurs and a largely jingoistic Brexit campaign to leave Europe. 

Claims that this prominent anti-racism campaigner had overseen a surge of antisemitism in Labour were unsupported by evidence, but the smears – amplified in the media – quickly gained a life of their own. The allegations often bled into broader – and more transparently weaponised – suggestions that Corbyn’s socialist platform and criticisms of capitalism were also antisemitic. (See here, here and here.) But the smears were nevertheless dramatically effective in removing the sheen of idealism that had propelled Corbyn on to the national stage.

By happy coincidence for the power establishment, Brexit also posed a deep political challenge to Corbyn. He was naturally antagonistic to keeping the UK trapped inside a neoliberal European project that, as a semi-detached ally of the US empire, would always eschew socialism. But Corbyn never had control over how the Brexit debate was framed. Helped by the corporate media, Dominic Cummings and Johnson centred that debate on simplistic claims that severing ties with Europe would liberate the UK socially, economically and culturally. But their concealed agenda was very different. An exit from Europe was not intended to liberate Britain but to incorporate it more fully into the US imperial war machine.

Which is one reason that Johnson’s cash-strapped Britain is now promising an extra £16.5bn on “defence”. The Tory government’s priorities are to prove both its special usefulness to the imperial project and its ability to continue using war – as well as the unique circumstances of the pandemic – to channel billions from public coffers into the pockets of the establishment.

A Biden makeover 

After four years of Trump, the war machine once again desperately needs a makeover. Wikileaks, its youthful confidence eroded by relentless attacks, is less able to peek behind the curtain and listen in to the power establishment’s plans for a new administration under Joe Biden.

We can be sure nonetheless that its priorities are no different from those set out in the CIA memo of 2010. Biden’s cabinet, the media has been excitedly trumpeting, is the most “diverse” ever, with women especially prominent in the incoming foreign policy establishment. 

There has been a huge investment by Pentagon officials and Congressional war hawks in pushingfor Michèle Flournoy to be appointed as the first female defence secretary. Flournoy, like Biden’s pick for secretary of state, Tony Blinken, has played a central role in prosecuting every US war dating back to the Bill Clinton administration.

The other main contender for the spot is Jeh Johnson, who would become the first black defence secretary. As Biden dithers, his advisers’ assessment will focus on who will be best positioned to sell yet more war to a war-weary public.

The role of the imperial project is to use violence as a tool to capture and funnel ever greater wealth – whether it be resources seized in foreign lands or the communal wealth of domestic western populations – into the pockets of the power establishment, and to exercise that power covertly enough, or at a great enough distance, that no meaningful resistance is provoked.

A strong dose of identity politics may buy a little more time. But the war economy is as unsustainable as everything else our societies are currently founded on. Sooner or later the war machine is going to run out of fuel.

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

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

To be a nuclear scientist in Iran is to be in danger. During the past decade, up to this week, at least four had been killed in vehicle bombings and shootouts, and several others have been targeted but survived. 

On Friday, the alleged architect of Iran’s military nuclear programme joined the ranks of the slain. Armed assassins gunned down Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in his car in an ambush in Absard city, outside the capital Tehran.

Fakhrizadeh, an officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), has been known as one of Iran’s most celebrated physicists because of his work on the country’s nuclear programme, Project 111.

When his colleague, Majid Shahriari, was assassinated in 2010, the UN described Fakhrizadeh as a leader in Tehran’s effort to acquire a nuclear warhead.

Details of Friday’s attack remain unclear, but Hossein Salami, head of the country’s Republican Guards, has accused those who targeted Fakhrizadeh of working to block Iran “from gaining access to modern science”.

There is a long history of world powers killing scientists as a form of warfare; from World War II to the Cold War, physicists and engineers have been known to turn the tide of military capabilities, making them prime targets.

Iran has blamed Israel and the United States for past assassinations of its scientists, though both countries have denied involvement.

Masoud Alimohammadi

Masoud Alimohammadi, a professor of particle physics at the University of Tehran, was killed in January 2010 by an apparent remote-controlled bomb that had been attached to his motorcycle.

At the time, Iranian government authorities, as well as his university colleagues, swore that Alimohammadi, described as “apolitical,”  had nothing to do with the country’s nuclear programme.

“He was a well-known professor but was not politically active,” Ali Moghari, director of the science department of Tehran University was quoted as saying at the time.

The year before his assassination, however, Alimohammadi had signed a letter – along with hundreds of others – expressing support for the main opposition candidate, former prime minister Mir Hussein Mousavi, in that year’s presidential elections.

Still, following his death, Iranian authorities branded Alimohammadi a government loyalist and arrested several suspects in his killing, accusing them of working for the Israeli intelligence service.

Majid Shahriari

Eleven months later, Majid Shahriari, a scientist who managed a “major project” for the country’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEO), was also killed.

A motorcycle driver reportedly pulled up to Shahriari’s car and attached a bomb, killing him in the explosion. His wife and driver were wounded but survived.

Then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the attack was “undoubtedly the hand of the Zionist regime” and western governments. Both the US and Israel denied involvement.

His colleague, Fereydoon Abbasi, was wounded in a similar attack on the same day but survived after being rushed to hospital. Abbasi was the head of the AEO at the time and was sanctioned by the UN Security Council.

The UN had described Abbasi as a senior scientist in the Ministry of Defence who had been “working closely” with Fakhrizadeh.

Meanwhile, Iran’s nuclear programme also came under cyber-attack. At the time, Ahmadinejad admitted those intrusions had been successful in “creating problems for a limited number of… centrifuges with the software”.

Darioush Rezaeinejad 

Darioush Rezaeinejad became the next Iranian scientist to meet a bloody fate in July 2011. Two gunmen riding motorcycles fatally shot Rezaeinejad one Saturday afternoon, wounding his wife in the attack.

A doctoral student at Khajeh Nasroldeen Toosi University, Rezaeinejad was thought to have been working on a nuclear detonator, and had, according to Israeli reports, been seen frequently entering a nuclear lab in northern Tehran.

Iranian authorities rejected such intelligence, painting Rezaeinejad as nothing more than an academic.

“The assassinated student was not involved in nuclear projects and had no connection to the nuclear issue,” Iranian intelligence minister Heidar Moslehi was quoted as saying at the time.

Iran has long denied any desire to build a nuclear bomb, but western powers have insisted on its intentions to do so. Tensions in 2011 had been building, as the US, Israel and the European Union feared the country was getting close to succeeding in its alleged attempts to access fissionable material.

Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan

Less than a year later, in January 2012, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan became the next assassination target.

Another motorcyclist was used in the killing of Roshan, riding up to his car and attaching a magnetic bomb that killed the scientist and his driver.

Roshan was a professor at a technical university in Tehran and a department supervisor at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant.

His death came a week after Iran’s top nuclear official announced that production was about to start at the country’s second major uranium enrichment site.

Two months earlier, the UN’s nuclear watchdog had published a report alleging that Iranian scientists were engaging in secret and continuous efforts to construct a nuclear weapon.

The AEO released a statement warning that “America and Israel’s heinous act will not change the course of the Iranian nation”.

The United States condemned the killing and denied any responsibility, while Israel’s military spokesman released a sort of non-denial denial in a statement on Facebook.

“I don’t know who took revenge on the Iranian scientist,” Brigadier-General Yoav Mordechai wrote. “But I am definitely not shedding a tear.”

Quiet until Trump

That year, serious nuclear talks began between Iran and six world powers known as the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States).

The assassinations stopped, and negotiations – which had been sporadic in years past – picked up steam. In June 2013, Hasan Rouhani, a former nuclear negotiator, became president of Iran.

By September, the newly inaugurated leader took part in a phone call with then-US president Barack Obama, marking the highest level talks between Iran and the US since 1979.

Within four months, parts of the nuclear deal had been implemented, and, by July 2015, Iran and the P5+1 announced a comprehensive deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

On 8 May 2018, US President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the multilateral nuclear accord, reinstating a series of crippling sanctions against the country.

When Iran failed to garner enough European support to pressure the United States against its escalating “maximum pressure” sanctioning campaign, it began breaking terms of the deal, restarting some parts of its shuttered nuclear enrichment programme.

Tensions between the US and Iran have been heated ever since, several times coming to what many called “the brink of war,” particularly when the Trump administration ordered the assassination of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in January this year.

President-elect Joe Biden, who worked on the Obama-era negotiations, has expressed willingness to restart talks with Iran, but concern has been growing over the outgoing president’s plans for Iran and its uranium enrichment facilities during his final weeks.

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Featured image: Killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh (CC BY 4.0)

Britain’s leading supermarkets and fast food outlets are selling chicken fed on soya that has been linked to vast deforestation and thousands of fires across a vital region of tropical woodland in Brazil, an investigation has revealed.

Tesco, Asda, Lidl, Nando’s and McDonald’s source chicken produced in the UK by the agribusiness giant Cargill – America’s second biggest private company. It is estimated that Cargill ships more than 100,000 tonnes of soya beans to the UK every year from Brazil’s threatened Cerrado savannah.

Though less well known than the Amazon rainforest to its north, the Cerrado is an enormous natural biome, covering 2 million sq km of land. It is a major habitat for wildlife – home to 5% of the world’s plant and animal species – and a critical region for tackling climate change. It is also under increasing threat from industrial food production.

An investigation by the Bureau and a coalition of reporting partners has revealed the complex supply chains that bring this soya to the UK – much of it from the deforestation hotspot of the Cerrado, where allegations of land-grabbing, violence and deforestation have been rife.

Exclusive figures obtained from Aidenvironment, a research consultancy, reveal 800 sq km of deforestation and more than 12,000 recorded fires since 2015 on land used or owned by a handful of Cargill’s soya suppliers in the Cerrado. Fires are often set to clear woodland and aid agricultural expansion. Footage obtained in the investigation shows huge fires burning on a farm belonging to one of Cargill’s suppliers in October.

Cargill said it broke no rules, nor its own policies, by sourcing from the farm in question and made clear it does not source from illegally deforested land.

The broadcaster and campaigner Chris Packham said the revelations showed that consumers needed to be given more information about their food. “Most people would be incredulous when they think they’re buying a piece of chicken in Tesco which has been fed on a crop responsible for one of the largest wholesale tropical forest destructions in recent times,” he said.

“We’ve got to wake up to the fact that what we buy in UK supermarkets, the implications of that purchase can be far and wide and enormously damaging, and this is a prime example of that.”

The findings come as the British government is proposing new legislation, aimed at stamping out deforestation in British supply chains, that would make it illegal for companies to import foodstuffs linked with any illegal environmental destruction in the source country.

Campaigners and politicians say the legislation needs strengthening because it would potentially omit areas – including the Cerrado – where local laws permit significant deforestation.

“Voluntary commitments … from the private sector just don’t work, which is why we need robust UK legislation,” Kate Norgrove, director of campaigns at WWF-UK, said. “Although an important first step, the proposed approach to due diligence, relying on local laws, will not be enough. We need a legally binding UK target to end all deforestation and habitat destruction in precious landscapes like the Cerrado through our imports.”

Neil Parish, the Conservative chair of the environment select committee, said he welcomed the government’s proposals, “but this investigation shows legal deforestation is widespread, ingrained and endemic in our supply chains”.

A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the proposed legislation was one piece of a “much larger package of measures” to tackle deforestation. “Businesses must take greater responsibility for ensuring the resilience, traceability and sustainability of their supply chains.”

An intensive poultry farm in the UK. (By Rob Stothard)

McDonald’s, Asda, Lidl and Nando’s do not publicly say where the soya in their supply chains originates from, though Nando’s told the investigation team that its soya is from Brazil and Paraguay. Tesco states that some of the Cargill soya in its supply chains comes from the Cerrado but in 2019 it told Greenpeace it does not know the origin of much of the product it uses.

The supermarkets and fast food outlets all said they are committed to tackling deforestation in their supply chains but acknowledged there was more work to do. All these corporations recently wrote to the government in support of the proposed legislation and urged that it be expanded to cover locally legal deforestation too.

Some argue the only way to get companies to act is by applying public pressure. “It’s vital that pressure is applied to Cargill, but also to the household names like Tesco, Asda, McDonald’s and Nando’s if they are using soya from deforestation hotspots for their chicken,” said Parish. “Naming and shaming these companies is an important tool in our armoury, and our consumers deserve to know.”

Ten years ago Cargill set itself a deadline of 2020 to eliminate deforestation in its supply chains of key commodities such as soya, but admitted last year it would not be met. It has pushed back its deadline to 2030 instead. McDonald’s has given itself until 2030. Experts have repeatedly warned this is far too late.

A final refuge for wildlife

While the Amazon rainforest has become the focus of global environmental concern in recent decades, its neighbouring Cerrado region remains largely unknown to the outside world. Yet despite being much smaller than the Amazon, it has lost more of its vegetation over the 10 years to 2018, and today only half of its original cover remains.

Image on the right: A jaguar in the Cerrado. (Source: Victor Moriyama/Greenpeace)

The Cerrado’s trees, shrubs and plains are estimated to store the equivalent of 13.7bn tonnes of carbon dioxide – significantly more than China’s annual emissions. The savannah is considered a crucial part of South America’s water system and is home to many indigenous communities as well as endangered animals, including jaguars, giant armadillos and giant anteaters. It provides a habitat for more than 4,800 species of plants and animals found nowhere else on the planet.

But although traders and international NGOs agreed a ban on felling trees in the Amazon for soya production in 2006, no such agreement has ever been reached for the Cerrado. While beef production continues to drive Amazon deforestation, soya is doing the same in the Cerrado, with the region estimated to account for 90% of soya-driven deforestation in Brazil.

Global exports of Brazilian soya were linked to 500 sq km of deforestation in 2018, according to the supply chain expert Trase. Cargill is one of the world’s biggest exporters of Brazilian soya, alongside another American trader, Bunge.

Last year, Cargill publicly opposed proposals for a Cerrado soya moratorium similar to that in the Amazon. Instead it announced $30m of funding for efforts to address deforestation, but did not specify what this would be spent on. According to Reuters, in 2018 the Brazilian government’s environmental agency, Ibama, fined Cargill for trading soya originating from illegally deforested areas in the Cerrado.

Cargill said it is “committed to nourishing the world in a safe, responsible and sustainable way” and that it is aiming to build a deforestation-free soya supply chain. It added: “Cargill estimates that 96% of our soya volumes in Brazil for the 2018-19 crop year were deforestation-free … Cargill does not and will not supply soya from farmers who clear land in protected areas.”

Brazil’s farming frontier

This August, the investigation team tracked the journey of a bulk tanker, the BBG Dream, as it left Cotegipe port near the Cerrado carrying 66,000 tonnes of soya beans on a journey that included a stop into Liverpool docks. The team was able to confirm that Cargill had leased the ship and that the beans on board were from the Cerrado’s hard-hit Matopiba region – including from the heavily deforested municipality of Formosa do Rio Preto.

Some of the ship’s beans were originally supplied by Bunge and another trader, ADM, but trade data shows all the beans were unloaded into Cargill’s soya plant in Liverpool.

Matopiba is Brazil’s newest soya frontier, an expanding agricultural powerhouse that has driven the country’s record soya harvests. An exclusive new analysis by the Dutch NGO Aidenvironment has found vast deforestation and fires on land used or owned by nine Cargill suppliers in the Cerrado, mainly in Matopiba.

Some of these farms are in Formosa do Rio Preto, a municipality notorious for alleged land-grabs and violence, and for its rapid transformation from a lush biodiverse savannah into the site of many sprawling monoculture soya fields.

A soya bean silo near Formosa do Rio Preto (Source: Marizilda Cruppe/Greenpeace)

On just one farm in the area, Fazenda Parceiro, more than 50 sq km of vegetation was razed in the first three months of 2020 alone, according to the sustainability risk analyst Chain Reaction Research. Cargill has confirmed that it sources soya from this farm, which is owned by SLC Agrícola, one of Brazil’s biggest soya bean producers. SLC runs 17 large farms in Brazil, 10 of which are in Matopiba. More than 210 sq km of deforestation has been recorded on SLC Agrícola farms since 2015 – a total area roughly twice the size of Bristol.

Huge fires were spotted burning on Fazenda Parceiro as recently as early October and were estimated to have affected at least 65 sq km of land. There is no evidence to suggest the farm started these.

A former Fazenda Parceiro employee interviewed for this investigation said the company was under intense pressure to address deforestation in its production. In September, SLC Agrícola said the company would stop engaging in deforestation from 2021 onwards but admitted it still planned to clear around 50 sq km before the end of this year. SLC Agrícola declined a request for comment.

On another soya-growing estate, which is one of the largest in the area and not part of the new data analysis, last year Greenpeace Brazil filmed guards seemingly threatening villagers with guns.

In the UK

Once Cargill’s soya beans from Matopiba arrive on UK shores, they are processed at its soya crushing plant in Liverpool for use in animal feed. The plant sends the processed soya to Cargill’s poultry feed mills in Hereford and Banbury. Cargill runs its UK chicken operations under the banner Avara, a joint enterprise with the British producer Faccenda.

The soya is mixed with wheat and other ingredients at the feed mills, then taken to Avara’s contracted chicken farms. Identifying a typical case, the investigation established that the Hereford mill supplies a nearby farm that sends birds on to McDonald’s. Avara also supplies chicken to Asda, Lidl and Nando’s, and is the largest fresh chicken supplier to Tesco.

Avara said it has committed to eliminate deforestation in its soya supply chain by 2025. It said it is exploring ways to reduce its dependency on imported soya and that the issues raised by the investigation would only be combated by “continuing to work across the full supply chain to improve transparency”.

The findings highlight how even homegrown livestock has a global environmental impact. The UK slaughters a billion birds – the equivalent of 15 per person – every year and according to one estimate, chickens account for around 60% of the UK’s imported soya consumption.

McDonald’s serves meals to 3.5m customers a day in the UK, including McNuggets, Chicken Legends and McChicken sandwiches. It has admitted that 14% – a seventh – of the soya used in its chicken feed was not covered by any sustainability certification; the rest is covered by buying credits – similar to carbon offsetting – or other schemes. The credits support farmers producing sustainably but the actual soya in the retailers’ supply chains can still come from deforesting farms.

A McDonald’s spokesperson said: “We’re proud of the progress we’ve made, yet recognise there is more to do. […] An effective approach will require strong collaboration between governments, civil society and the private sector.”

Nando’s, which also uses a credits system, said: “We recognise that there is more work to do, which is why we are also investing in research looking at more sustainable feed alternatives.”

Several British supermarkets including Asda and Lidl say they are working towards buying 100% “certified” soya by 2025. Asda said: “We understand the importance of sustainable soya to our customers and are committed to reducing food production linked to deforestation.”

Lidl GB said it is committed to sourcing sustainable and deforestation-free soya and that it was the first supermarket to cover its entire soya footprint with sustainability credits. Tesco said it has set an “industry-leading target” for its soya to come from verified “deforestation-free areas” by 2025.

“Setting fires to clear land for crops must stop,” a Tesco spokesperson said. “We are working with partners including WWF to build the industry-wide support needed to deliver this.”

Last year, Tesco committed £10m in funding to help find a solution to soya deforestation in the Cerrado. McDonald’s, Nando’s and the three supermarkets named have publicly expressed their support for a new moratorium, like that in the Amazon, to restrict deforestation for soya in the Cerrado, but opposition in Brazil has so far been successful. Cargill has publicly said it opposes a further moratorium.

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The current hearings on the extradition of Meng Wanzhou are a tangled web of legal arguments that obscure a simple truth: the Canadian government is enabling a witch hunt on the part of a right-wing Trump administration against a Chinese capitalist rival—the telecommunications giant, Huawei.

This is putting Canada in the crosshairs of the US and China, aligning us closer than ever to wayward American foreign policy, and jeopardizing the safety and security of all.

We are adding our voices to the growing campaign to demand an end to the extradition process and release Meng.

Why?

For those who have not followed the case, Meng Wanzhou is the Huawei executive who was arrested at the Vancouver airport on December 1, 2018 in response to an extradition request from the US charging her with fraud for violating sanctions against Iran.

From the outset the case seemed far-fetched and part of the Trump administration’s anti-China campaign, and we hesitated to speak out. Meng is a rich and powerful figure, vice-chair of one of the largest corporations in the world, engaged in a tit-for-tat battle with US corporations. Why get involved?

Meng also owns luxury properties in Vancouver, an emblematic target for those who indiscriminately blame “the Chinese” for the city’s housing crisis, setting the stage for the Sinophobic racism associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Then the Chinese government arrested Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig on charges of allegedly “endangering state security.” Suddenly, we entered into an ‘us vs. them’ scenario, and a destructive discourse on hostage taking.

As anti-war and social justice activists who have built long-term friendships with people in China, we refuse to be caught in the crosshairs of those who would recklessly demonize an emerging economic superpower.

The growing chorus of voices demanding the release of Meng has prompted us to take a closer look at what’s been going on, particularly in the extradition hearings currently taking place in the BC Supreme Court.

And we don’t like what we see.

The US charges seem hardly supportable given that Canada does not have sanctions against Iran and the alleged crimes took place in Hong Kong, not in Canada or the US.

So how did we get here?

Canada’s Justice Holmes and the Iran sanctions

In 2015, the Obama administration waived any sanctions aimed at Iran as part of an international agreement that saw Iran limit its nuclear development program in exchange for the withdrawal of sanctions. However, when Trump assumed power, he unilaterally withdrew from the deal and re-imposed sanctions against Iran to the astonishment of most countries and the United Nations.

The Canadian government did not follow Trump’s lead and has not imposed sanctions against Iran. The decision to arrest Meng and subject her to the extradition hearings now taking place should have been a non-starter since the allegation, breaking US sanctions, is not a crime in Canada.

Meng’s lawyers have argued exactly that. In response, the judge in the extradition hearings, Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes, has shifted the focus of the deliberations away from Iran. In a ruling on the importance of Canada not having sanctions (United States v. Meng, BCSC 2020, 785), Justice Holmes came to the curious conclusion that, though she recognized that US sanction laws are not part of Canadian law, “they are also not fundamentally contrary to Canadian values as in the way that slavery laws would be, for example.”

Justice Holmes’ historical reference to slavery laws as the bottom line in Canadian values is breathtaking. It sets a bar so low that it belittles the long history of struggle for justice in this country, not to mention the fight for an independent Canadian foreign policy.

In a letter beseeching the Canadian government to release Meng, 17 prominent Canadians including former justice minister Alan Rock, former foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy, and former NDP leader Ed Broadbent stated that releasing Meng would not be the first time that Canada has parted ways with the US, “including on much more momentous issues, such as refusing to join in their invasion of Iraq.”

Having participated in 2003 with hundreds of thousands of other people across Canada and in Quebec in demonstrations against the proposed invasion of Iraq, we agree that it was a momentous occasion, one that reflects how Canadians value their independence despite the country being allied with the US. The failure of Justice Holmes to recognize that Canadian non-participation in sanctions against Iran is—like our refusal to join in the invasion of Iraq—an integral part of Canadian values is distressing.

An illegal interrogation and arrest?

Upon accepting the US extradition request, Canada’s Department of Justice and the RCMP obtained a warrant for the “immediate arrest” of Meng for December 1, 2018 when she was scheduled to pass through Vancouver on her way to Mexico.

But instead of arresting Meng, Canadian Border Service Agency (CBSA) officers detained and interrogated her for over two hours, telling her the scrutiny was necessary to enter Canada–even though Meng was en route to Mexico.

Knowing that Meng would soon be arrested but failing to disclose this to her, CBSA agents seized her goods including her phones. When asked to surrender the pass codes for the devices she did so, but only after being assured it was part of immigration procedure.

A CBSA officer then wrote the pass codes in his notebook and on a separate piece of paper that was then inserted with the telephones in a designated bag. An RCMP officer’s notes from that day indicate that the seizure and placement in mylar bags was “as per FBI request.”

After detaining and grilling Meng for two hours, the CBSA suspended their interrogation, led Meng to another room, and RCMP officers arrested her. They read Meng her rights and took her to jail. The CBSA then handed the phones and passcodes over to the RCMP.

According to the notes of an RCMP officer introduced as evidence, another officer, Brett Chang subsequently emailed the serial numbers of the devices, SIM cards and international mobile identity numbers to the FBI. Chang initially denied that he had done this but now, after seeking legal advice, he is refusing to testify in court.

There is more. CBSA officers admitted that they, together with RCMP officers, schemed to delay the arrest and oblige her to go through immigration screening, supposedly because the CBSA had its own suspicions that Meng represented a “national security” risk.

Meng had entered the country 52 times without a problem yet somehow, on this particular trip with the RCMP waiting with an arrest warrant in their pocket, the CBSA suddenly discovered Meng was a national security risk?

The CBSA admitted in court that not “one iota” of evidence of her being a national security risk was found during their screening. And now Scott Kirkland, the CBSA agent has admitted that handing over Meng’s personal security codes to the RCMP was improper, that it was “heart-wrenching to realize I made that mistake.”

The hearings reveal a judiciary obliged to denigrate Canadian law, and law enforcement agencies bending the rules, if not breaking them, to find evidence for a Trump administration that, even now on its way out, is seriously considering bombing Iran according to the New York Times. This has shades of Iraq in 2003 when the US, without sanction from the UN, invaded that country because the Bush administration believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. As we now know, there were no such weapons, and US intelligence had made it up.

50 years ago, Justin Trudeau’s father was prime minister and he had the foresight to open diplomatic relations with China. He believed in keeping US foreign policy at arm’s length. As China’s power in the world grows, Pierre Trudeau’s approach is all the more relevant as the US government strives to do what George Bush did prior to the invasion of Iraq—bypass the UN and divide the world into “coalition of the willing” against an “axis of evil.”

Canadians rejected that approach then and we should do the same today. Justin Trudeau, however, does not seem to get that. That is why Canadian protests surrounding the Meng affair are growing.

Protests growing

Nearly a year ago, former prime minister Jean Chrétien called for an end to the Meng extradition to facilitate the release of Kovrig and Spavor. Now, many others are doing the same.

Vina Nadjibulla, the spouse of Michael Kovrig, took matters into her own hands this summer and called for the release of Meng. She, with former minister of justice Rock and former supreme court justice Louise Arbour, commissioned a legal opinion by Edward Greenspan that details how Canada’s minister of justice would be fully within his legal rights to intervene at any time to release Meng.

“The Minister of Justice, acting in that capacity, should immediately accept the responsibility under the Extradition Act and exercise the authority he has under that statute to end the Meng extradition proceeding,” states the letter signed by Rock, Arbour as well as a 17 others including Broadbent and Axworthy.

In July, the Green Party of Canada echoed the sentiments of that letter. Their parliamentary leader, Elizabeth May, argued that the US has abused Canada’s friendship, trust and the extradition treaty. “It’s time for the Canadian government to stand up to the US administration and demand that it drop the criminal charges and extradition request against Meng so that we can release her,” she stated in a press release.

A month later, the Globe and Mail reported that over 100 former Canadian diplomats had also called on Trudeau to stop extradition proceedings against Meng, allow her to return to China, and arrange a swap for Kovrig and Spavor.

Professor Charles Burton, considered a hawk on China, complained that he was not contacted to sign the letter even though he did a stint at Canada’s embassy in Beijing. He argues that to end the extradition would embolden China.

This view is contested by others such as professor emerita Wendy Dobson, one of the 19 signatories to the letter to Justin Trudeau and author of Living with China: A Middle Power Finds Its Way.

Now, MP Niki Ashton has sponsored a parliamentary petition calling for Meng’s release. A national day of action to back up the demand is planned for December 1.

With Trump on his way out, there is no time like the present to break the impasse by ending the extradition hearings and releasing Meng. This does not in any way imply aligning ourselves with the Chinese government. It is a message that we will not be bullied—full stop.

To do otherwise is to allow the world to be cleaved into hostile camps and to court disaster in the face of the two global crises of our time: the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate emergency.

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John Price is professor emeritus of Transpacific history (University of Victoria) and author of Orienting Canada: Race, Empire and the Transpacific and A Woman in Between: Searching for Dr. Victoria Chung.

Margaret McGregor is a family physician in Vancouver. She lived in Beijing for two years as part of the first Canada-China student exchange (1973-1975).

Featured image is by Canadian Dimension

There’s at least one good reason to support Donald Trump’s ongoing lawsuits challenging the election results in several states: the US foreign policy establishment doesn’t want you to.

As Newsweek reported last week, “A group of more than 100 national security experts” from Republican administrations have condemned the president’s challenges to some states’ vote-counting process. These “experts” are claiming these legal efforts “undermine democracy” and “risk long-term damage” to the nation’s institutions. The signatories include people like Michael Hayden, John Negroponte, and Tom Ridge. These are the usual sort of “deep state” technocrats—for example, James Comey and John Brennan—who chime in to defend the status quo in the United States and insist it is an outrage that anyone (i.e., Donald Trump) departs from the usual way of doing things.

This alleged devotion to “democracy” and “the nation’s institutions” rings a bit odd coming from people like Negroponte and Hayden. Hayden, after all, has supported a litany of spying programs, torture, and the wholesale destruction of the human rights of both Americans and countless foreigners. Negroponte was the first director of national intelligence and has long supported spying on American citizens without a warrant. He oversaw the US-funded terror campaigns against Hondurans during the Reagan administration. Negroponte also enthusiastically supported the US’s 2003 war in Iraq which failed to achieve any of the objectives sold to the Americans as the reasons the war was a necessity.

Through scandals like the Abu-Graib debacle, unconstitutional wiretapping, torture, and ceaseless paranoid calls for an ever larger national-security state, the American foreign policy establishment has done more to undermine American democracy and institutions than Trump could ever hope for.

Yet,  these people are now speaking as if they are moral authorities on preserving the rights of Americans.

Given their clear disregard for basic human rights in recent decades, however, one suspects it is more likely that what really motivates the signatories’ denunciation of Trump’s election lawsuits is a desire to return to “business as usual.” This, after all, would make it easier for the regime to get back to dismantling the Bill of Rights, initiating new wars, and generally doing what it wants.

This becomes harder to do if millions of Americans begin to suspect that the regime isn’t as legitimate as has been long claimed, and that maybe the game is rigged against those who fail to be sufficiently friendly toward the permanent government in Washington and the so-called deep state.

But lest anyone think that investigating the integrity of American elections is a worthwhile endeavor, these national security bureaucrats resort to the usual, tired claim:

“By encouraging President Trump’s delaying tactics or remaining silent, Republican leaders put … national security at risk.”

The message is this: Dear Trump supporters, if you demand thorough legal proceedings and a careful look at this election’s outcome, then you support “America’s enemies.” We’ve heard a similar sentiment from these people before, when the Bush Administration declared “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.” The message now is: “either you’re with us, or you’re with the Chinese totalitarians.”

It’s the usual sort of ruse that’s been used by the US foreign policy establishment for decades, and this is only the latest illustration. This same impulse is why the Conservative movement’s longtime leader William F. Buckley called for “a totalitarian bureaucracy” in the United States so long as it served the interests of the American national security state.

What’s the Harm in Contesting the Election?

More reasonable people however, should see the value and necessity of a slow, thorough, and public legal examination of the election.

Regardless of how one feels about Donald Trump, anyone who values fair play, honesty, and the votes of legal voters should want thorough audits and investigations. The question: “how much was this election affected by fraud?” warrants serious consideration and serious investigation into how the election was conducted. After all, whenever political power is at stake, there is no reason whatsoever to assume honesty and integrity are guiding the actions of all involved.

Fraud occurs with every election, of course. Anyone who claims any election contains no fraud lives in a fantasy land, or is lying. Voter fraud exists anywhere that votes are cast. Anecdotes of fraud in this election are plentiful, from backdated ballots in Pennsylvania, to  “coaching” voters in Detroit. The question is whether or not this sort of thing is widespread enough to change the outcome. In a number of lawsuits, the Trump campaign has suggested that it has been widespread.

And there’s no harm in allowing the legal process to proceed. After all, in legal and constitutional terms, the US election process is still very much on schedule.

Contrary to what various reporters seem to think, it is not the case that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris “were declared the election’s winners more than two weeks ago, after Fox News, the Associated Press and other television networks called” it. The outcomes of presidential elections aren’t declared by infotainment performers working at Fox News.

Rather, federal statutes and constitutional provisions stipulate that the Electoral College will meet in December, and the Congress will declare a winner shortly thereafter. This process is in no danger of being derailed.

It’s too bad that people like Michael Hayden don’t respect this constitutional process, but that’s just par for the course coming from someone who has been director of the CIA.

For those who actually care about some measure of accountability and transparency from government institutions in charge of running elections, there should be no problem with any presidential candidate demanding a wide variety of legal challenges. This in itself won’t solve the problem of election fraud, and it won’t make the regime respect anyone’s human rights. This wouldn’t make government by majority-rule any less problematic. But it would be helpful to gather more information on how much of a gulf lies between the perception of “free and fair elections” and the reality. And it is the very least that should be done in the wake of an election where the outcome is close, messy, and conducted by politicians who are very unlikely to have the average Americans’ interests at heart.

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Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and The Austrian, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado and was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

Featured image is by Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Speaking just over a week after the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, US President George W. Bush made his now infamous declaration “either you are with us or you are with the terrorists”. “In this conflict, there is no neutral ground”, he repeated seventeen days later, as military strikes on Afghanistan began.

It certainly felt like this at the time—that there was very little anti-war ground, and insofar as there was any, very few people were standing on it. The Australian government immediately pledged support for the invasion, as did the Labor Party and most union leaders (with a couple of honourable exceptions). The mainstream media dutifully rallied behind it, along with an array of liberals, influenced by the appeal to liberate women from the repressive Taliban. A number of prominent women’s rights groups even held a pro-war press conference at the White House.

The Murdoch press was predictably belligerent, Piers Ackerman writing in the Sunday Telegraph soon after the invasion began, “Some people are running around the country saying they don’t know why Australians are going to war, so let me make a few things clear. Australian military forces are joining a long-overdue fight against evil. Is that too difficult to understand?” Unsurprisingly in the face of all this, almost two-thirds of Australians supported the invasion when it was launched.

In the nearly twenty years that Afghanistan has been occupied by Western soldiers, the reality of this “liberation” has become clear. Since 2009, more than 100,000 civilians have been killed, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, and nearly 500,000 were displaced last year alone. According to the US Central Command Combined Air Operations Centre figures, a record 7,423 bombs were dropped on Afghanistan in 2019, up from 7,362 in 2018. More than half the population currently lives in poverty. “Entire cities have been left in ruins, with the United States offering no coherent strategy for a return to stability, or even normalcy, in the places it has been at war”, writes Murtaza Hussein in the Intercept.

For the many Australian champions of this war, this matters not a bit. The purpose of the mission—a show of continuing loyalty to the US empire—has been fulfilled. As Clive Williams, adjunct professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy, wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald last year: “The real reason [for the war] is of course to show we are a willing ANZUS and Western alliance partner in order to be well regarded by the US and receive the defence and intelligence benefits that go with active membership of the Five-Eyes relationship. Afghanistan per se is of little strategic importance to Australia”.

The Brereton report reveals the tragic human consequences of this cold calculation.

The Australian military has long been highly secretive about its overseas operations, especially those of the SAS. A working paper published by the army’s Land Warfare Studies Centre, that looked at the experience of embedding reporters with the Australian forces in Afghanistan, found the Australian Defence Force had an “institutional aversion to media” and a “lingering bias” against media organisations. Partly because of this, “the war in Afghanistan has not only been the nation’s longest military commitment, it has also been the worst-reported and least-understood conflict in Australian history”, argues Kevin Foster, author of Don’t Mention the War: The Australian Defence Force, the Media and the Afghan Conflict.

Journalists who dared to challenge the official narrative have faced extreme repression, from the persecution of Julian Assange for his WikiLeaks revelations to the raids of ABC offices and the referral of ABC journalist Dan Oakes to the Director of Public Prosecutions for his 2017 “Afghan Files” stories.

The Brereton report exposes this for what it is: a monumental cover-up. The reality of Australian troops on the ground is not just that of a pointless war that has further devastated a long-suffering country, but one of barbaric cruelty borne of hardened, racist contempt for those being occupied. Official bleating about how sorry military heads and politicians are for the “misconduct” and “wrongdoing” identified—when they have created a pathologically secretive and sadistic military culture for decades—reveal only that they have been backed into a corner. Certainly, they can never make it up to the countless Afghans whose lives have been devastated by Australian atrocities.

This harrowing report is yet more vindication, if more were needed, of the anti-war position. It vindicates all those who stood against the march to war, who saw through the lies and platitudes and who recognised that, whatever the window dressing, major powers go to war for power and economic dominance, nothing more. Governments and their backers in the media said we were “with the terrorists”. But the Brereton report shows that the Australian government was sponsoring terrorism and the armed forces were carrying it out. Those who launched and continued the invasion and occupation should be in jail for war crimes.

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Featured image: U.S. Army Sgt. Christian Cisineros takes a moment to speak with his interpreter March 17, 2009, while on a dismount patrol mission near Forward Operating Base Baylough in the Zabul Province of Afghanistan. Cisineros is assigned to  Company B, 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, U.S. Army Europe. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Adam Mancini/Released)

Drawing alarm at the D.C. Circuit, a lawyer for the United States argued Monday that the government has the power to kill its citizens without judicial oversight when state secrets are involved.

“Do you appreciate how extraordinary that proposition is?” U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett asked Justice Department attorney Bradley Hinshelwood, paraphrasing his claim as giving the government the ability to “unilaterally decide to kill U.S. citizens.”

The hearing before the federal appeals court came as the government fights to hold off allegations by two journalists who say it wrongly targeted them as terrorists in Syria.

One of the journalists, U.S. citizen Bilal Abdul Kareem, says his interviews with al-Qaida-linked militants landed him on the U.S. kill list. Just in June and August 2016, Kareem says, the U.S. government targeted him five times, including one drone strike involving a U.S.-made Hellfire missile.

Though the United States has not confirmed whether Kareem or his co-plaintiff, Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, pose any such threat, it has withheld information related to their case on the basis of national security.

Arguing only on the claims brought by Kareem, the Justice Department’s Hinshelwood conceded Monday that a strike against a U.S. citizen is a serious undertaking. Where the judiciary can step in, he said, is in ensuring that the state-secrets privilege was appropriately applied.

Read full article here.

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Featured image via Reprieve

To say out-loud that you find the results of the 2020 presidential election odd is to invite derision. You must be a crank or a conspiracy theorist. Mark me down as a crank, then. I am a pollster and I find this election to be deeply puzzling. I also think that the Trump campaign is still well within its rights to contest the tabulations. Something very strange happened in America’s democracy in the early hours of Wednesday November 4 and the days that followed. It’s reasonable for a lot of Americans to want to find out exactly what.

First, consider some facts. President Trump received more votes than any previous incumbent seeking reelection. He got 11 million more votes than in 2016, the third largest rise in support ever for an incumbent. By way of comparison, President Obama was comfortably reelected in 2012 with 3.5 million fewer votes than he received in 2008.

Trump’s vote increased so much because, according to exit polls, he performed far better with many key demographic groups. Ninety-five percent of Republicans voted for him. He did extraordinarily well with rural male working-class whites.

He earned the highest share of all minority votes for a Republican since 1960. Trump grew his support among black voters by 50 percent over 2016. Nationally, Joe Biden’s black support fell well below 90 percent, the level below which Democratic presidential candidates usually lose.

Trump increased his share of the national Hispanic vote to 35 percent. With 60 percent or less of the national Hispanic vote, it is arithmetically impossible for a Democratic presidential candidate to win Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. Bellwether states swung further in Trump’s direction than in 2016. Florida, Ohio and Iowa each defied America’s media polls with huge wins for Trump. Since 1852, only Richard Nixon has lost the electoral college after winning this trio, and that 1960 defeat to John F. Kennedy is still the subject of great suspicion.

Midwestern states Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin always swing in the same direction as Ohio and Iowa, their regional peers. Ohio likewise swings with Florida. Current tallies show that, outside of a few cities, the Rust Belt swung in Trump’s direction. Yet, Biden leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin because of an apparent avalanche of black votes in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. Biden’s ‘winning’ margin was derived almost entirely from such voters in these cities, as coincidentally his black vote spiked only in exactly the locations necessary to secure victory. He did not receive comparable levels of support among comparable demographic groups in comparable states, which is highly unusual for the presidential victor.

Read full article here.

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Featured image is by viarami / Pixabay

In Argentina, beatification and canonisation can happen to living figures.  Unlike the officialdom of the Catholic Church, the processes take place in accordance with an insurgent popular will.  The death of various public figures – Carlos Gardel for tango; Evita Perón for politics; Diego Maradona for football – merely reassures them the status of popular saintliness.  Essential in the make-up of such a figure: a flawed, distressed character; usually of humble origins; a stroke of charisma, even genius; a rascal’s talent to seduce.

Diego Maradona, footballer with the No 10 shirt, had oodles of all of those traits.  It was on the field where he expressed himself best, so much so that he was lauded, if not as a god of sorts, then certainly the emissary of one.  As with so many figures who become premature monuments and plinth displays, the process off the field of performance is cruel, a disfiguring form of sinning saintliness. But on the field, the figure of Maradona beguiled.  As he described it, “When you’re on the pitch, life goes away.  Problems go away.  Everything goes away.”  His technique entailed hypnosis with feet and legs, a dynamo of deceiving genius.  When he played, he moved laws and assumptions.  During the 1986 World Cup tournament in Mexico, one he made his own, his performances were never just pitch-confined.  In them, Argentina saw catharsis.  Rivals such as England saw a bedevilling cheat. 

It came in that most written and talked about of encounters.  June 22, 1986.  The quarter-final.  England and Argentina, locked at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City.  Maradona breaks the drought with his first goal.  Some confusion over the scrappy method of execution: offside?  “Or was it a use of a hand that England were complaining about?” wondered Barry Davies in his BBC commentary. The Uruguayan, Victor Hugo Morales, was less equivocal and more spiritually honest in his famous narrative: “handball!  Goal!  Goal!  Goal!  Goal for Argentina!”  He conceded that the English had grounds to protest but knew where his allegiance lay.  “The goal was scored using a hand, I celebrate it with all my soul, but I must say what I think. I hope you tell me, from Buenos Aires, if you’re watching the game, if the goal was fair, though the referee has given it.”  He sought God’s forgiveness for his remarks.

Within a few minutes, the Sky God again prevailed upon, this time to be thanked.  From poacher, Maradona had turned artist, using the dribbling, bewildering seduction of the gambeta.  Morales was ecstatic.  “Genius!  Genius!  Genius!  Genius!  He’s still going… Goooal!  Sorry, I want to cry!  Good God!  Long live football! … The greatest solo goal of all time.  Cosmic Kite, which planet did you come from leaving so many English players behind, and in this process turning the country into a clenched fist shouting for Argentina!”  God was thanked profusely, “for football, for Maradona, for these tears and for this score line: Argentina 2 England 0.” 

A football chant was given birth to, one recalled by the Argentine anthropologist Eduardo Archetti.  It was richly crude and unforgiving, featuring Britain’s prime minister and victor over Argentina in the Falklands War of 1982.  “Thatcher, Thatcher donde estas?  Maradona, Maradona te anda buscando, para metértela por detras!” (Thatcher, Thatcher where are you?  Maradona is looking for you to screw you from behind!)

In his autobiography Yo Soy El Diego (I am The Diego), Maradona recalled being a surrogate, avenging warrior for his country.  “Somehow we blamed the English players for everything that had happened, for everything that the Argentinian people had suffered.  I know that sounds crazy but that’s the way we felt.  The feeling was stronger than us: we were defending our flag, the dead kids, the survivors.”  An analysis published in one of Spain’s leading newspapers, El País, went so far as to see Maradona as a hero no less significant than “the legendary liberator from colonial rule, General San Martín.”

The football authorities have never stopped weighing in on the significance of the moment.  The contrasting ways the goals were scored, suggested Mark Biram, were dichotomous of Argentina itself.   He quotes Maradona’s 1986 teammate, Jorge Valdano, who assessed the first goal as the result of characteristic deceit, creole cunning and sharpness.  “Argentina is a place where deceit has more prestige than honesty.”  But the second goal was a product of another, flair-filled side, “one of virtue and ability.”

In 1984, Maradona made the journey from silverware heavy Barcelona to silverware bereft Napoli.  The fee then would not seem so eye-popping now: £5 million.  He was also unduly optimistic, a point he made in Asif Kapadia’s 2019 documentary.  “I expected peace.  The peace I didn’t have in Barcelona.”  But things started oddly; expectations not met.  “I asked for a house, I got a flat.  I asked for a Ferrari, I got a Fiat.”  What he gave to Napoli was worth its weight in gold and, it should be said, sanity.  The club won its first ever Serie A title in 1987 because of the exploits of the Scugnizzo Napoletano, that naughtiest of naughty rascals. 

Maradona’s miracles began to compete with the city’s established patron saint, San Gennaro.  But yet to become a fully-fledged figure of sinning saintliness, there was more room to err.  At the club, things turned tempestuous.  By the late 1980s, Maradona wished to leave.  Napoli shut the door on such suggestions.  The player took to drugs under the stifling shadow of organised crime.  In 1991, he was suspended for 15 months following a test showing traces of cocaine.  The Cosmic Kite suffered a gradual, health plagued decline as he fell to earth.  In an interview with Argentina’s Tyc Sports in 2014, he rued his fall towards addiction: “I gave my opponents a big advantage due to my illness.  Do you know the player I could have been if I hadn’t taken drugs?”

At his passing, the mayor of Naples, a politician sensing a moment, was keen to draw upon and imbibe the Maradona legend.  “I ask,” requested Luigi de Magistris, “that our stadium, which has witnessed so many of his successes, bear his name.  It will be called the Diego Armando Maradona.  The people want it.  They spoke unanimously.”

Roberto Saviano, who made his name with Gomorrah, a work on the Camorra crime network, was less opportunistic though no less indulgent in the memory of the Argentinean.  Themes of sin pickle it: Maradona was the means of the city’s redemption.  “Redemption, because a southern team had never won a Scudetto, a team from the south had never won the UEFA Cup, or even been the centre of the world’s attention.”  The greater footballer might have gone for Juventus, the star club of the Serie A galaxy; he, instead, picked Napoli.

Broadcasters, commentators and players across the globe will recount memories of the Cosmic Kite like sips of holy water and pieces of blessed bread.  Sporting stars of codes beyond football will pay their respect to him as, indeed, they already have.  The words of Charles Baudelaire, noted in the opening of Emir Kusturica’s tribute from 2008, are appropriate.  “God is the only being who, in order to reign, doesn’t even need to exist.”  Cosmically, the kite never fell.

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

Featured image: Maradona. Source: Twitter.

We’re living through unprecedented times.

Covid is another form of seasonal flu/influenza that occurs annually like clockwork.

Millions of people are affected worldwide with no fear-mongering mass hysteria, no lockdowns, social distancing and mask-wearing — until 2020.

What’s likely to continue ad infinitum is a made-in-the-USA dystopian nightmare.

It diabolically aims to transform Western nations (and all others) into ruler/serf societies.

It’s to benefit privileged interests by exploiting ordinary people everywhere.

It’s about plundering planet earth, not preserving and improving it for the betterment of humanity.

All the while, we’re being systematically lied to by US-led Western ruling authorities and public health officials serving their interests.

Elections when held are farcical, not legitimate.

The rights and welfare of ordinary people are eroding in plain sight, heading toward eliminating them altogether — totalitarian harshness replacing them.

A year ago, who could have ever imagined that most Americans and others elsewhere would voluntarily accept house arrest for weeks or months — unaware of mass deception mandating it.

Events of 2020 causing Main Street economic collapse are highly likely to continue in the new year and beyond.

The hardest of hard times affect most people with no end of it in prospect.

Perhaps what’s going on won’t end in our lifetimes — the worst of times ahead, dystopia replacing societies safe and fit to live in.

Mass vaxxing and mask-wearing are among defining features of what’s going on.

All vaccines are hazardous to human health — rushed development, production, and distribution of covid ones potentially most harmful of all.

It’s why no one should accept the Big Lie about their safety and effectiveness, an issue discussed in previous articles.

What about mask-wearing? Do they protect against covid illness and its transmission?

According to a GlobalResearch.ca article titled: “The Plain Truth About Face Masks,” Michael Talmo explained the following:

Based on peer-reviewed studies, “all masks…have a network of microscopic pores/holes in them. If they didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to breath.”

You’d be hermetically sealed and suffocate.

“Numerous systematic reviews have been done on masks. All of them came to the same conclusion.”

None “established a conclusive relationship between mask/respirator use and protection against influenza infection.”

According to “peer-review journal Canadian Family Physician (CFP) in July 2020:

“(U)se of masks in the community did not reduce the risk of influenza, confirmed viral respiratory infection, influenza-like illness, or any clinical respiratory infection.”

Professor of Physics Denis Rancourt, an expert in his field, explained that no study exists to show mask-wearing effectiveness.

Based on what’s known about viral respiratory diseases, they’re mainly transmitted by “too fine to be blocked…aerosol particles” able to penetrate all face masks.

“No RCT study with verified outcome shows a benefit for HCW or community members in households to wearing a mask or respirator.”

“There is no such study. There are no exceptions…Masks and respirators do not work.”

Public health authorities in the US, West, and elsewhere know this.

Yet in cahoots with dark forces, they claim otherwise.

Based on scientific evidence, masks don’t work and may be hazardous to human health from longterm use — “from concentration and distribution of pathogens on and from used masks.”

Yet governments in the US, West and elsewhere ignored science, risking harm, instead of protecting human health.

Recommended mask-wearing — perhaps to be mandated ahead (see below) — shows governments, establishment media, and public health authorities are “operat(ing) in a science vacuum, or select only incomplete science that serves their interests,” Rancort explained.

Critical care physician/public health expert Pascal Sacre explained that “(c)ontinuous wearing of masks aggravates the risk of infection.”

“(S)cientific and medical analysis” proved it.

“(A)ir, once exhaled, is heated, humidified and charged with CO2.”

“It becomes a perfect culture medium for infectious agents (bacteria, fungi, viruses).”

Their longterm use “is a scientific and medical aberration!”

Scientific research shows that “about a third of the workers developed headaches with the use of the mask, most had pre-existing headaches that were aggravated by wearing the mask, and 60% needed pain medication to relieve it.”

“With respect to the cause of the headaches, while the straps and pressure of the mask may be causative, most of the evidence points to hypoxia and/or hypercapnia as the cause.”

“That is, a reduction in blood oxygenation (hypoxia) or an increase in blood C02 (hypercapnia).”

What’s recommended in the US may be required ahead.

On November 25, Dem Senators Edward Markey and Richard Blumenthal introduced legislation that mandates mask-wearing in public.

Joe Biden supports the ineffective/potentially harmful to human health practice.

Defying scientific evidence, he said “(t)his is about saving American lives (sic), so let’s institute a mask mandate nationwide, starting immediately.”

In legislation Markey and Blumenthal introduced, their intention is “masked” by the following remarks:

If enacted into law — what’s likely if a Biden/Harris regime replaces Trump — the law they introduced “would encourage states to require the use of face masks in all public spaces and outside when one cannot maintain social distance.”

Markey separately added: “(W)e need to use every technique available to us to encourage mask use…even… mandating (its) use nationwide.”

Mandatory mask-wearing — in defiance of scientific evidence against the practice — will be an element of social control if enacted into law that’s unrelated to and potentially harmful to human health.

It’s part of a planned dystopian future in the US and West, perhaps many other countries to follow.

Instead of governance of, by, and for everyone equitably according to the rule of law, Western societies are heading toward becoming more unsafe and unfit to live in than already for ordinary people.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from howstuffworks

In the debate over coronavirus policy, there has been far too little focus on the costs of lockdowns. It’s very common for the proponents of these interventions to write articles and large studies without even mentioning the downsides. 

Here is a brief look at the cost of stringencies in the United States, and around the world, including stay-at-home orders, closings of business and schools, restrictions on gatherings, shutting of arts and sports, restrictions on medical services, and interventions in the freedom of movement.

Click Here to Access the original AIER document (including links to sources)

Mental Health

The Economy

Unemployment 

Education

Healthcare

Crime

Food and Hospitality

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Credits to the owner of the featured image

The national economies of 193 countries, member states of the United Nations were ordered to close down on March 11, 2020. The order came from above, from Wall Street, the World Economic Forum, the billionaire foundations. And corrupt politicians throughout the world have enforced these so-called guidelines with a view to resolving a public health crisis. 

Millions of people have lost their jobs, and their lifelong savings. In developing countries, poverty and despair prevail. We are told the it is V the Virus which is responsible for the wave of bankruptcies and unemployment. 

The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext and justification to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to precipitate the entire World into a spiral of  mass unemployment, bankruptcy and extreme poverty. 

Shortly before midday on 9 November 1923, around 3,000 far-right insurgents began marching on Munich, Germany’s second largest city in the south of the country. Before these brownshirts had set out it was clear to the Nazi Party leader, the 34-year-old Corporal Adolf Hitler, that their coup d’état had already failed. A few hours prior to marching out Hitler learnt that the inter-war German Army, the Reichswehr, would firmly oppose his so-called Beer Hall Putsch. This was ordered by the Reichswehr chief, General Hans von Seeckt, who remained loyal to the Weimar Republic for now.

With impending defeat obvious Hitler had not wanted this march on Munich to go ahead, but proposed that the rebels retire to nearby Rosenheim. Hitler suggested this retreat of their forces to his famous ally, the 57-year-old Erich Ludendorff, dictator of Germany during World War One. In reaction General Ludendorff looked coldly at Corporal Hitler and exclaimed, “We march!” When Hitler said rather nervously that they “would be fired on” by Reichswehr troops or police, Ludendorff barked again, “We march!”

They marched. Ludendorff, Hitler and a few other Nazi Party officials marched at the head of the units, as they quickly reached the Marienplatz square in central Munich. A few hundred yards away at the top of Residenzstrasse, a cordon of armed police loyal to the government were awaiting the brownshirts. As they approached one Nazi Party member, Ulrich Graf, stepped forward and shouted to the police, “Don’t shoot, Ludendorff and Hitler are coming!” (1). The police commander Freiherr von Godin, a conscientious officer later persecuted by the Nazis, ordered his men to fire at the rebels.

On hearing von Godin’s command to shoot, the police hesitated for they could clearly see General Ludendorff at the forefront, goose-stepping in their direction. Just a few years previously, Ludendorff had issued orders to most of these police officers during the war, when they were then soldiers. Von Godin loudly repeated the order to fire, but as it was met once more with silence, the police commander grabbed a rifle from one of his men and fired it himself at the brownshirts. The other policemen followed suit. A prominent Nazi, Scheubner-Richter, marching with linked arms between Ludendorff and Hitler immediately fell dead.

If the rifle had only been fired some inches to the other side, Hitler might well have met his end – and Europe would have been spared the brutal dictatorship to come. A few Nazis shot at the police in response, but the latter showed more resolve, inflicting 16 fatalities on the brownshirts compared to four police deaths. Panic set in as the fascists dropped to the ground and fled in every direction, like earwigs disturbed from the nest.

Out of the few thousand insurgents who marched on Munich, only two of them had held their nerve. The American historian and war correspondent William L. Shirer noted that,

“Ludendorff did not fling himself to the ground. Standing erect and proud in the best soldierly tradition, with his adjutant Major Streck, at his side, he marched calmly on between the muzzles of the police rifles until he reached the Odeonsplatz. He must have seemed a lonely and bizarre figure. Not one Nazi followed him. Not even the supreme leader, Adolf Hitler”. (2)

Having suffered a dislocated shoulder Hitler was instead “bundled into a little yellow Fiat on the Odeonsplatz and driven away to hiding” (3), according to the biographer of Ludendorff, Lieutenant-Colonel Donald J. Goodspeed, professor emeritus of history at Brock University, Ontario.

Lt. Col. Goodspeed acknowledged that as the unarmed Ludendorff steadfastly approached the line of policemen and “brushed them contemptuously aside”, that also “he was, in fact, marching out of history. All the rest of his life was excruciating anti-climax. Perhaps after all, it would have been better if von Godin’s men had dared to shoot their wartime leader down”. (4)

How quickly fortunes change. Less than six years before, as Germany’s military autocrat, Ludendorff ruled over much of Europe and came tantalisingly close to winning the First World War. During the Germans’ major spring offensive, which was Ludendorff’s creation, by late March 1918 the German 18th Army had captured the town of Montdidier, less than 65 miles from Paris.

The 18th Army was meeting little opposition, and it looked likely that the French capital would soon fall. In addition, German railway guns produced by the Krupp steel company, such as the 43 ton “Big Bertha”, were ominously lining up near Montdidier. German soldiers quickly loaded these siege howitzers with their 16.5 inch shells, which were then pointed southwards at Paris and fired (5). Horrified Parisiens could see the shells of Big Bertha soaring through the air, and smashing into the buildings of the landmark city.

The experienced French commander Philippe Pétain, seldom the most high-spirited of men, gloomily informed his British counterpart, Douglas Haig, that he would have to relocate French Army reserves south-west, in a desperate attempt to save Paris. This was the equivalent of saying that France would have to abandon their British ally further north.

On 24 March 1918, the Germans had already driven a deep wedge between the French and British forces south of the Somme – but, in the end, the Allied commanders need not have worried too much, for the German advance gradually petered out. The German Army of 1918, though still formidable, was not quite as good as its 1914 or 1916 predecessors, failing to capitalise on the progress made while Allied resistance hardened. From April 1918, a quarter of a million American troops were landing on French soil each month, another factor in the turning of the tide.

Yet credit must be given where credit is due. The fact that Germany, against daunting odds, had fallen just shy of victory in a conflict where they had faced the world’s strongest nations (Russia, Britain, France and finally America), was largely down to Ludendorff’s “outstanding military talent”, as outlined by Lt. Col. Goodspeed. He continued that,

“The defensive and offensive doctrines developed under his direction displayed a tactical brilliance not shown elsewhere in the war, and seldom equalled in any war… Ludendorff’s administrative ability was even more pronounced, and he must be ranked as one of the very greatest military organisers of all time”. (6)

Hindenburg and Ludendorff (pointing), 1917 (CC BY-SA 3.0 de)

Today Ludendorff’s name is often classed in equal terms with Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, a tall, well-built man who possessed strong nerves and simple optimism. Yet Goodspeed discerned correctly that in comparison, “Ludendorff was a much stronger personality and much more intelligent”. For most of the war Hindenburg played a somewhat passive role, leaving the key and complex details for Ludendorff to iron out, including political matters, which Hindenburg had little time for. By the autumn of 1916, with Ludendorff having amassed virtually all real power in Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II was merely a ceremonial figurehead. The Kaiser never did relish his meetings with the overbearing “Sergeant-Major”, as he dubbed Ludendorff.

Hindenburg, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Ludendorff, January 1917 (Public Domain)

The Ludendorff dictatorship can most plausibly be described as a milder version to that of Hitler’s. The younger fanatics who emerge are usually worse than their elders, and Hitler was undoubtedly more extreme than Ludendorff by a considerable margin. While the general pursued imperialist policies as Germany’s warlord, he refrained from initiating wanton acts of annihilation against the Russian-led armies, nor against Slavic civilians. Though Ludendorff could be heard making anti-Semitic comments during the war, there is no evidence to suggest that he considered executing criminal acts against Europe’s Jewish populations, let alone genocide.

In fact at a conference at General Headquarters, on 14 August 1918, Ludendorff requested a “more vigorous conscription of the young Jews, hitherto left pretty much alone” (7). He held out hope, unrealistically, that Poland would dispense with armed divisions to bolster Germany’s forces. These attitudes would have been unthinkable in Hitler’s Germany.

Four weeks into the conflict, on 23 August 1914 Ludendorff and Hindenburg – having achieved a significant success at the fortress city of Liège in Belgium – were transferred to the Eastern front, in order to rescue a potentially dire situation against the Russian Empire’s huge armies. They were threatening not only the whole of East Prussia, but had a conceivable chance to march on to Berlin itself, thereby bringing the war to an early end. In the coming months with Ludendorff’s arrival, assisted by his able deputy Lt. Col. Max Hoffmann, German forces would instead force the Tsar to retreat. The Germans secured decisive early victories against the Russians, such as in the Battle of Tannenberg and around the Masurian Lakes of Central Europe.

Come the spring of 1915, the Germans had conquered a large swathe of territory in the East, and were inflicting horrendous casualties on the Russian divisions. After just over a year of war, by September 1915 the Russians had lost 1,750,000 men. (8)

Before the age of Blitzkrieg, the rapidity of German advances in the East were “made possible only because Ludendorff paid the closest attention to prosaic administrative details” (9). He set the road-mending companies feverishly to work, while he ordered that the broad Russian railway line gauge be changed to the narrower German gauge. This enabled the swift transfer of German soldiers and materiel to the Eastern front. World War One was in many ways a railway war. It had created a constant necessity for lumber, railway sleepers and cellulose. Ludendorff therefore established forestry inspectorates and saw-mills to help cope with the demand.

After less than 18 months of fighting, the German Army had captured land areas such as all of Lithuania, Courland (western Latvia), Suwalki and Bialystok (both in northern Poland), and Grodno (western Belarus). Ludendorff poured over his map at headquarters with satisfaction, and he divided these conquered areas into separate districts under German rule. He formed a police corps and law courts with provincial appeals, along with a high court of appeal founded in Kovno (central Lithuania), where Ludendorff and Hindenburg settled down in new headquarters from October 1915.

Ludendorff issued local coinages and levied taxes and customs duties (10). In the opposite manner to present day neoliberalism, he controlled big business at home and in the captured territories. Ludendorff nationalised industries en masse and brought them under his domain, roughly brushing aside the arguments of corporate managers who came to see him. Hindenburg, a massive and intimidating presence, nodded approvingly and grunted in his deep voice to support his colleague’s views.

Goodspeed wrote that, “Ludendorff was at least as brilliant an administrator as a soldier, and he thoroughly enjoyed using his powers. More ambitiously than Napoleon, he dreamed of the future colonisation of the East, especially of Courland… Ludendorff, determined that Germany would get everything possible out of the occupied territories, administered them with a ruthless hand”.

Further power was drawn to Ludendorff as he created monopolies on cigarettes, alcohol, especially spirits, salt, matches and confectionery. He founded a chain of newspapers and placed them under strict censorship, which forced upon the local populations the news that he wanted them to read (11). Ludendorff established factories for the manufacture of barbed wire, and erected workshops for the repair of military equipment.

Large caches of captured Russian machine-guns were altered to take German ammunition. Billets were constructed for the German troops, better quality hospital facilities were built, winter clothing was provided; and other measures were adopted to maintain the health of the German Army’s soldiers and its horses. Leave was arranged and the mail delivery system put in order to reach standards of German efficiency.

To sustain morale Ludendorff created soldiers’ clubs, libraries, bookshops and concerts. He intensified military training and tweaked it to incorporate lessons learnt during the war. Supply services were improved, and the roads were made fit for all-weather transport, including mechanised machinery and horses. Ludendorff saw to it that Germany was furnished with ample quantities of Polish scrap-iron, brass, copper, skins and hides. The German Army was heavily reliant on the horse, and there was an ongoing shortage of these once sought after animals. He implacably ordered that horses be conscripted from farmers and peasants, despite the hardship this brought on the people in occupied regions.

In particular, Ludendorff commandeered the Lithuanian horse which he wrote “possesses great powers of endurance” and is “a very useful animal for military purposes”; though the general admitted of Lithuania itself, “The country was bound to suffer severely as the result of the continuous heavy demands made upon it, especially the constant levies of horses and cattle. The local administrative authorities often drew my attention to this fact, but there was nothing for it but to insist on these deliveries”. (12)

Ludendorff ruthlessly enacted tight controls over agriculture in the conquered regions, and he dispatched motor-ploughs, agricultural machinery and seed from Germany to augment food crops. German companies were established to farm the colonised areas, while a census was taken of peasants’ cattle.

From the war’s outset, Ludendorff spoke bluntly about his desire “of a greater Fatherland and of territorial acquisitions that would compensate the German people for their sacrifices”. His view was that “if Germany makes peace without profit, Germany has lost the war” (13). For these reasons Ludendorff began to enjoy “a tremendous reputation with the masses of the German people”, along with Hindenburg. (14)

On 11 September 1917 at a Crown Council meeting in Pless Castle, Silesia, Ludendorff demanded that “the conquered territories in the East be divided into a Duchy of Courland and a Grand Duchy of Lithuania”. These annexed lands would ostensibly be placed under the personal sovereignty of the Kaiser.

Ludendorff’s hegemonic aspirations for the West were likewise exacting. Once victory was obtained, far from his considering the returning of Alsace-Lorraine to France or offering concessions on it, he intended that these provinces be fully incorporated into Prussia, rather than administered as a separate entity. Ludendorff had plans for the seizure of all French property in Alsace-Lorraine, which he wanted to hand over to German war veterans as compensation for their sacrifices to Germany. He wanted economic union with Belgium, and a prolonged military occupation of that country.

In late 1917, as Germany’s eastern forces were preparing to give the coup de grâce to the Tsar’s regime, Ludendorff increased his demands against the Kremlin. His final peace terms to Russia were harsh and audacious in scope, and he was becoming impatient with how long the negotiations were taking. To show how serious he was, Ludendorff ordered German soldiers to march deep into eastern Europe during the early spring of 1918 – which they did, almost unmolested. Ludendorff was firmly set on carving out a great slice of Russia’s Empire, to be absorbed into the German Reich: A land mass stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, hundreds of miles of fertile, resource rich land.

These expansionist goals were supported strongly by Field Marshal Hindenburg. He and Ludendorff rarely disagreed on anything, hence their seamless collaboration. On 19 December 1917 Hindenburg informed the German foreign secretary, Richard von Kühlmann, that Germany needed the Baltic territories “for the manoeuvring of my left wing in the next war”. (15)

As further humiliation for Russia, and to demonstrate his contempt for the Bolsheviks, Ludendorff granted Finland, Poland and the Ukraine their independence – all formerly part of the Russian Empire – while Estonia and Latvia were to be occupied by the German Army. Also stripped from the Kremlin were the Black Sea port of Batumi and Kars Oblast. Ludendorff turned his ire towards Romania too. He insisted that Romania be turned into a German satellite under a puppet regime, partly as retribution for the Romanians having unexpectedly chosen to join the Allied side in August 1916.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

1 David King, The Trial of Adolf Hitler: The Beer Hall Putsch and the Rise of Nazi Germany (Pan; Main Market edition, 14 June 2019) Chapter 20, Blood Land

2 William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (Fawcett Crest Book, 1 Jan. 1968) p. 74

3 Donald J. Goodspeed, Ludendorff: Soldier: Dictator: Revolutionary (Hart-Davis; 1st edition, 1 Jan. 1966) p. 242

4 Goodspeed, Ludendorff, p. 243

5 Washington Post, “A Blast from ‘Big Bertha’”, 24 March 1999

6 Goodspeed, Ludendorff, p. 248

7 Ibid., p. 209

8 Ibid., p. 136

9 Ibid., p. 103

10 Ibid., p. 138

11 Ibid.

12 Erich Ludendorff, Ludendorff’s Own Story, August 1914-November 1918, The Great War (Pickle Partners Publishing, 12 Apr. 2012) Chapter 6, The Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief on the Eastern front in Kovno

13 Will Brownell, Denise Drace-Brownell, Alex Rovt, The First Nazi: Erich Ludendorff (Counterpoint, 31 Mar. 2016) Chapter 7, Ludendorff fights Lenin

14 Goodspeed, Ludendorff, p. 236

15 James Joll, Gordon Martel, The Origins of the First World War (Routledge; 3rd edition, 5 Oct. 2006) p. 212

Featured image: Cropped photograph of German general, Erich Ludendorff (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The tragic, cynically calculated decline of Corbynism, and the subsequent ascendancy of the neo-Blairite Starmer project, have made the Labour party a lot less free. When Starmer’s great power games started – after being elected on a manifesto of party unity – censorship and propaganda was introduced to manage the threat of socialism and democracy. The alliance between Zionist diplomacy and Starmer’s administration created the necessity for Labour’s new bureaucrats to embark upon a McCarthyist pursuit of its political enemies, and in the process to control and narrow the spectrum of acceptable opinion within the party.

In this era of escalated warfare against the left, the leadership’s list of enemies has grown to embrace, beyond Jeremy Corbyn, a large amount of the party membership he’s allied with. Israel is the preeminent enemy of Corbynism, since its empire has a strong motivation to exterminate the influence of his pro-Palestinian, anti-imperial policies. Starmer is even making enemies of grassroots activists keen for a civic-minded debate on his controversial decision to suspend and remove the whip from Jeremy Corbyn, punishing their free discussion of policy within the confines of the law. Starmer is an adversary to Labour socialism because of his agenda to capitulate policy to the needs of big business donors. Most of his positions are the same as the Tory government’s, making it possible to see Starmer’s Labour and the Tories as one entity, the same power.

An example of the intersection between the hard right Tory government and Starmer is the PLP’s support for a surge in war spending, favouring bombs over investment in public services. During moments like this year’s coronavirus crisis, Starmer has been hesitant to present an alternative opposition to government policy, erring on the side of praise. His biggest commitment to the right comes from his rehearsal of pro-Zionist propaganda, with “anti-semitism” being cynically used as a political tool behind apologist arguments for Israeli war crimes.

This repellent, opportunistic abuse of antisemitism was repeated throughout the media’s attempts to discredit Jeremy Corbyn, so much so that they were able to destroy his reputation as a principled, veteran anti-racist. At one point, Pompeo, an ally of far right Zionism, claimed that he would use his power to prevent Corbyn’s election when in fact that decision lies squarely with the sovereign UK electorate.

Such blatant Zionist interference in the internal democracy of the Labour party was not acknowledged by the political mainstream, because these truthful, accurate narratives are portrayed as the antisemitic enemy to Israeli self-determination. The tale the establishment tells is one of widespread, aggressive chauvinism against Jews, against which their allies must be eternally vigilant. This story is disinformation, and the Labour left has collapsed under pressure from its agents.

The happenings of the last fortnight have proven that this information war is focused not just on Jeremy Corbyn, but on the entire alliance he galvanised. In response to internal party debate about the suspension and removal of the whip, party bureaucrats have suspended dozens of innocent members. The reporting on this development by the progressive, independent left media, which has rightly criticised Starmer’s nascent dictatorship, might be right, but it is not the view of the political mainstream, which is largely sympathetic to the persecution of Corbynism. So far the media has ignored that Starmer crosses a line far more dangerous than what’s represented by Corbyn.

The examples never end of the political policing of supporters of the Labour left, representing the agenda of a totalitarian regime that’s emerged during the new Mccarthyism. To enforce this regime, the establishment has needed to reconcile the public to their own suppression. To rationalise its persecution of Corbynism, elites have treated it as a form of ideological extremism, with the implicit assumption that Blairite centrism is the only agenda deserving of time, attention and respect.

Policies crafted in the public interest generate outrage, while the cronyism and corruption of the centre is viewed as a standard. The leader of the opposition isn’t allowed to advocate policies that will resonate with the electorate, while the government is able to spin its self-serving policies in the media. And the narrow agenda of corporatocracy is protected by the media-politico complex, whilst the accurate criticisms levelled against it by independent media analysts is censored on social media.

This commitment to capitalist totalitarianism among elites – and therefore to the type of fascist reaction the West has so long thought itself immune from – is rationalised through the logic that it is a radical, progressive resistance to left fundamentalism. The monolithic ideology of capitalist realism has conquered heterogeneous, pluralist social democracy, making the superiority of the neoliberal regime the default assumption of the dominant political centre.

Buoyant radical hope for a Corbynite restoration of the UK’s neoliberal political economy to its former glory as a world-leading social democracy has been betrayed by a violent crackdown. Reactionary in nature, the censorship and propaganda that’s occurring is imposed by authoritarianism, because it’s built upon hierarchical, elitist power. And authoritarian hierarchical, elitist power is a system that’s evolved to efficiently exploit the weaknesses of the people.

The thought police of the ascendant Labour right yield authority from the aggressive Zionist psyops the elite class is happy to rehearse, and from the logic that Corbyn represents a fundamentalist threat to political virtues. Until we can next reelect a socialist to the leadership of the Labour party, the best we can do to resist these cynical, opportunistic attacks on democracy is to insist on fearlessly having the debate that Starmer so fears.

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Featured image is from MEMO

There, it happened.

For my words, my words, my writings, I was dismissed like a waste, a thief, without the right to answer.

An experienced, competent emergency physician, appreciated by his colleagues for my actions in stressful situations, fired in the middle of COVID!

For words, for an image.

All you had to do was reassure people, defend your doctor, attenuate and wait for the storm to calm down…  and then talk.

I write, it’s true, things that disturb, dissident points of view, those who follow me on this site since 2009 know it.

When I resumed my writing starting in 2020, about the political management of the COVID crisis, but also generally, about the endemic corruption of medicine, science and official bodies in Belgium, I felt that it would be risky, really.

But I did not give up because I will never let my life be controlled by fear.

Some people say that I am unconscious. Do you think that after 17 years of treating people, in emergency, stress, often for 24 hours at a time, I could have done all this while being unconscious?

Some people say that I am irresponsible. I have always taken my responsibilities, preferred writing to speaking because it allows reflection, rereading, and I have always turned my tongue 7 times in my mouth, before finishing an article and sending it with all its sources and references. I have always respected the rules of the hospital, of society, even when, as they stand, they seemed crazy to me and likely to cause more harm than good. I have always put the safety of my patients above my convictions, preferring to explain, to convince through words and writings.

Some say I am a disgrace to the profession.

Those who say that are ignorant of my profession. Many people talk about critical care, especially today with Covid, when critical care has been around for 70 years, but do they even know, these accusing people, what they are talking about?

We can’t pretend, this is live, live, surrounded by death and suffering,

We don’t know how to lie and if we do, we get out. I’ve held on to it for 17 years and I only had to stop suddenly because of people who don’t like what I say, don’t like my opinions!

Some say, the most beautiful things, that I am anti-everything. Those who say that are certainly much more so than I am. I will tell you all the things I am for:

1. The truth, in any case its permanent search and accept for that, to deceive me.
2. Tolerance of other people’s ideas, opinions and writings.
3. The will, in turn, to be able to express my ideas, opinions and writings.
4. Respect for nature and animals
5. Relief of pain and suffering
6. Life in all its facets, music, sounds, songs, dances, colors, and therefore accept death, because one cannot live like this without accepting the idea of dying at any time.

I only wanted to ask questions, to give my points of view without ever imposing them, to question, to nuance, to contextualize, to reassure when others only want to terrorize.

I was condemned, thrown away for that.

I was forced to abandon my colleagues in difficulty, summoned to leave burning places by people who should not so easily spit on the help of one of their own, a resuscitator, for words, a picture!

That’s how it is.

They have that power.

And yet,

• Professor Didier Raoult (France)
• Professor Christian Perronne (France)
• Professor Toubiana (France)
• Professor Toussaint (France)
• Professor Gala (Belgium)
• And all those other doctors, caregivers, health care professionals,

Belgium :  https://docs4opendebate.be/fr/open-brief/ 

Netherlands: https://opendebat.info/  et https://brandbriefggz.nl/ 

US Frontline Doctors : https://www.xandernieuws.net/algemeen/groep-artsen-vs-komt-in-verzet-facebook-bant-hun-17-miljoen-keer-bekeken-video/ 

Spain: https://niburu.co/gezondheid/15385-artsen-komen-massaal-met-coronawaarheid-naar-buiten 

Germany: https://acu2020.org/international/ 

Belgium : https://omgekeerdelockdown.simplesite.com/?fbclid=IwAR2bJAAShAlIidjnRQPyVSoZbk1Uj-FTHAthL77hKX_Oo8aMLN3V6DdwAac 

https://www.lalibre.be/belgique/enseignement/septante-medecins-flamands-demandent-l-abolition-du-masque-dans-les-ecoles-une-menace-serieuse-pour-leur-developpement-5f58a5189978e2322fa9d32c 

https://belgiumbeyondcovid.be/ 

France : https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/provence-alpes-cote-d-azur/bouches-du-rhone/marseille/covid-tribune-pres-300-scientifiques-denoncent-mesures-gouvernementales-disproportionnees-1878840.html 

We are all of them.

There are thousands of us.

Thanks to all of you who want a world where the word is respected, truth is defended, freedom is a reality.

I will never let fear rule my life. Don’t negotiate with fear.

Dr. Pascal Sacré

Featured Photo: Citizen Initiative Video

“While Donald Trump continues to stoke the flames of division and uncertainty surrounding election 2020, the Establishment is also preparing for the possibility of martial law in response to this chaos. Meanwhile, the public is being prepped for a second wave of COVID-19 infections which could lead to the foreshadowed Darkest Winter. While we don’t care to instill fear we do encourage everyone to heed these warnings and be prepared for potential unrest in the days and weeks following the election.”

– Derrick Broze, excerpt of The Darkest Winter [1]

“Without better planning, 2020 could be the darkest winter in human history.”

– Richard Bright, Former Dir, DHS’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Auth (excerpted from Dark Winter)

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LISTEN TO THE SHOW

The ballots to the US Presidential election have been counted. That tally indicates that the Joe Biden won and that Donald Trump lost. [2]

The battle isn’t quite over yet. Trump insisted since the night of the election that he won. Biden’s victory after the fact was, according to Trump, a product of election-rigging and fraud.

None of the courts to which he has challenged the election results have so far seen any substantial evidence of election fraud. But not only is the 45th President sticking to his guns, but a huge swath of the population – fully 70 percent of the Republican Party – is backing the President’s position!

The interesting development though is how this circumstance was predicted as an outcome! In October, the site TheLastAmericanVagabond.com featured extensive conversations about election simulations guided by the Transition Integrity Project (TIP). The drill anticipated scenarios where Trump lost the election but refused to accept defeat under any circumstances, resulting in chaos confusion and possibly a potential civil war.

On October 29, a video, The Darkest Winter, debuted about 5 days in advance of the election. It was intended as a message and a warning to members of the general public. Not only was it about the election result, it highlighted the potential for a second wave of COVID-19, which was predicted by several officials, and even the prospect of martial law being invoked to contain the ebullient spirits waking up opposing any establishment narratives.

The author of The Darkest Winter is a young man by the name of Derrick Broze. He will be our feature guest this week.

a

a

For about 40 minutes, he not only expands on his video prediction, he focuses on The Great Reset being planned as a strategy for resolving COVID-19 and other issues related to the economy, technology, the environment and other issues. He will also share his views on Operation Warp Speed and the alliance of vaccines with bio-electronics placed inside the body. And he will discuss the issues associated with the immense 5G project.

Following the interview, we will pay a clip from Dr. Roger Hodkinson, a prominent physician and CEO speaking the Edmonton City Hall earlier in November in opposition to the ‘anti-COVID’ strategies being implemented.

Derrick Broze is a freelance investigative journalist, documentary film maker, author, public speaker and, in 2019, a candidate for Mayor of his town Houston. Derrick is the author of 5 books and writer of 5 documentaries. He is currently a staff writer for The Last American Vagabond, co-host of Free Thinker Radio on 90.1 Houston, and the founder of The Conscious Resistance Network & The Houston Free Thinkers.

Roger Hodkinson received his medical degree at Cambridge University and is the CEO of Western Medical Assessments providing Independent Medical Examinations (IMEs) to insurance companies, employers, and lawyers. He is the CEO of a biotech company that manufactures COVID tests. He is also a general practitioner in the UK and Canada, a Pathologist with the Medical Examiner’s Office in Edmonton, and the President of the Alberta Society of Laboratory Physicians.

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Notes:

1. https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/darkest-winter/
2. Sarah Elbeshbishi (Nov. 25, 2020) ‘Biden won, but technically the election’s not over: What to expect in the next 60 days’, USA Today; https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/elections/2020/11/13/electoral-process-and-what-expect/6234952002/