Mark Lowcock of the United Nations gave an impassioned and apocalyptic speech on Thursday warning that 4 million Yemenis who had been receiving aid no longer are, because of a shortfall in donor contributions, and the country could be on the cusp of mass starvation.
There already is widespread malnutrition in Yemen, fueled by the war and more recently by the economic downturn of the coronavirus pandemic.
The humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen largely stems from the war on that country launched in 2015 by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which is backed to the hilt by the Trump administration. This is an American war, and Americans have Yemeni blood on their hands. A third of Yemen’s infrastructure has been destroyed, mostly by Saudi and UAE air strikes, and over 100,000 have been killed.
The United Arab Emirates, led by Mohammed Bin Zayed, is giving nothing to aid Yemen this year, despite its invasion having caused many of the problems the country is facing. The Saudis and Kuwaitis were also called out by Lowcock, and they did proffer new donations, with Kuwait offering $20 million. But the aid effort has fallen from being funded at over 60% of requested contributions to only 42%.
Lowcock, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said:
“Aid agencies are now reaching only about 9 million people a month in Yemen – that’s down from more than 13 million at the start of the year. What is to be the fate of the 4 million we no longer have the money to help? I said earlier that the window to prevent famine in Yemen is closing.”
The country’s problems are worsening along several fronts, Lowcock reported. The nationalist government of Abd-Rabbo Mansour Hadi, backed by Saudi Arabia, has long contested the insurgent Houthis or Helpers of God for the port of Hodeidah, which is key to the provisioning of the northern part of the country. Its fighters have been preventing gasoline from being offloaded, presumably in a bid to deprive the Houthis of the ability to use armored vehicles. The Houthis are local guerrillas from the northern Zaydi Shiite branch of Islam. Although they are often called “Iran-backed,” the Iranian involvement in Yemen is not extensive, and the Houthis have local Arab grievances. The billions of dollars of high-tech weaponry sold to the Saudis and the UAE for use against Yemen dwarfs the small Iranian contributions to the Houthis by orders of magnitude. Zaydis often feel that Saudi Arabia was trying to dominate them and convert them to its hardline Wahhabi sect.
Lowcock noted,
“Only 20,000 metric tons of commercial fuel entered Hudaydah in September – that’s the third lowest figure ever recorded, and 76 per cent less than in August. Currently, 20 commercial fuel ships are waiting to enter the port and discharge the equivalent of three months of imports.”
The problem is that it isn’t only the Houthis who are being starved of fuel, but ordinary people, who need it to drive to market or to hospital when ill, and farmers who need it to deliver their crops to towns.
Likewise, the basket-case condition of the country has driven the Yemeni rial down to 850 to the dollar, a historic low. This exchange rate makes it impossible for many Yemenis to afford imports, and much of the country’s food and other staples are imported
Famines are not typically caused by a complete lack of food, but by food prices being too high for people to afford to buy it. If the nationalist government cannot find a way to put back up the value of the rial, large numbers of people could starve.
The war is also getting worse, despite this week’s prisoner exchange between the Houthis and the nationalists.
Lowcock warned,
“There are now 47 active front lines across Yemen – the most ever recorded. Over several recent weeks, the heaviest clashes have occurred in Hudaydah, Marib and Al Jawf.”
This year, another 150,000 people were displaced from their homes by the fighting, 80% to homeless shelters, bringing the total in the country to a million. The country’s population is about 30 million.
Last month, the UN announced that it was forced to slash aid to 300 medical facilities in Yemen, after a third of humanitarian programs in the country were closed in spring-summer this year.
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If we step back from the details of daily headlines around the world and try to make sense of larger patterns, the dominant dynamic defining world geopolitics in the past three years or more is the appearance of a genuine irregular conflict between the two most formidable powers on the planet—The Peoples’ Republic of China and the United States of America. Increasingly it’s beginning to look as if some very dark global networks are orchestrating what looks to be an updated rerun of their 1939-1945 World War. The powers that be periodically use war to gain major policy shifts.
On behalf of the Powers That Be (PTB), World War II was orchestrated by the circles of the City of London and of Wall Street to maneuver two great obstacles—Russia and Germany—to wage a war to the death against each other, in order that those Anglo-Saxon PTB could reorganize the world geopolitical chess board to their advantage. It largely succeeded, but for the small detail that after 1945, Wall Street and the Rockefeller brothers were determined that England play the junior partner to Washington. London and Washington then entered the period of their global domination known as the Cold War.
That Anglo-American global condominium ended, by design, in 1989 with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union by 1991.
Around this time, with the onset of the Bill Clinton presidency in 1992, the next phase– financial and industrial globalization– was inaugurated. With that, began the hollowing out of the industrial base of not only the United States, but also of Germany and the EU. The cheap labor outsourcing enabled by the new WTO drove wages down and destroyed one industry after the next in the industrial West after the 1990s. It was a necessary step on the path to what G.H.W. Bush in 1990 called the New World Order. The next step would be destruction of national sovereignty everywhere. Here the USA was the major obstacle.
“A little help from our friends…”
For the PTB, who owe no allegiance to nations, only to their power which is across borders, the birth of the World Trade Organization and their bringing China in as a full member in 2001 was intended as the key next step. At that point the PTB facilitated in China the greatest industrial growth by any nation in history, possibly excepting Germany from 1871-1914 and USA after 1866. WTO membership allowed Western multinationals from Apple to Nike to KFC to Ford and VW to pour billions into China to make their products at dirt-cheap wage levels for re-export to the West.
One of the great mysteries of that China growth is the fact that China was allowed to become the “workshop of the world” after 2001, first in lower-skill industries such as textiles or toys, later in pharmaceuticals and most recently in electronics assembly and production. The mystery clears up when we look at the idea that the PTB and their financial houses, using China, want to weaken strong industrial powers, especially the United States, to push their global agenda. Brzezinski often wrote that the nation state was to be eliminated, as did his patron, David Rockefeller. By allowing China to become a rival to Washington in economy and increasingly in technology, they created the means to destroy the superpower hegemony of the US.
By the onset of the Presidency of Xi Jinping in 2012, China was an economic colossus second in weight only to the United States. Clearly this could never have happened–not under the eye of the same Anglo-American old families who launched the Opium Wars after 1840 to bring China to heel and open their economy to Western financial looting–unless the Anglo-Americans had wanted it.
The same British-owned bank involved in the China opium trade, Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC), founded by a Scotsman, Thomas Sutherland in 1865 in the then-British colony of Hong Kong, today is the largest non-Chinese bank in Hong Kong. HSBC has become so well-connected to China in recent years that it has since 2011 had as Board member and Deputy HSBC Chairman, Laura Cha. Cha was formerly Vice Chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, being the first person outside mainland China to join the Beijing Central Government of the People’s Republic of China at vice-ministerial rank. In other words the largest bank in the UK has a board member who was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and a China government official. China needed access to Western money and HSBC and other select banks such as JP MorganChase, Barclays, Goldman Sachs were clearly more than happy to assist.
“Socialism with Xi Jinping Characteristics…”
All told until 2012 when Xi took charge of the CCP in Beijing, China seemed to be willing to be a globalist “team player,” though with “Chinese characteristics.” However, in 2015 after little more than two years in office, Xi Jinping endorsed a comprehensive national industrial strategy, Made in China: 2025. China 2025 replaced an earlier Western globalist document that had been formulated with the World Bank and the USA, the China 2030 report under Robert Zoellick. That shift to a China strategy for global tech domination might well have triggered a decision by the globalist PTB that China could no longer be relied on to play by the rules of the globalists, but rather that the CCP under Xi were determined to make China the global leader in advanced industrial, AI and bio-technologies. A resurgent China nationalist global hegemony was not the idea of the New World Order gang.
China:2025 combined with Xi’s strong advocacy of the Belt Road Initiative for global infrastructure linking China by land and sea to all Eurasia and beyond, likely suggested to the globalists that the only solution to the prospect of their losing their power to a China global hegemon would ultimately be war, a war that would destroy both nationalist powers, USA AND China. This is my conclusion and there is much to suggest this is now taking place.
Tit for Tat
If so, it will most likely be far different from the military contest of World War II. The USA and most of the Western industrial economies have “conveniently” imposed the worst economic depression since the 1930’s as a bizarre response to an alleged virus originating in Wuhan and spreading to the world. Despite the fact that the death toll, even with vastly inflated statistics, is at the level of a severe annual influenza, the insistence of politicians and the corrupt WHO to impose draconian lockdown and economic disruption has crippled the remaining industrial base in the US and most of the EU.
The eruption of well-organized riots and vandalism under the banner of racial protests across the USA has brought America’s cities to a state in many cases of war zones resembling the cities of the 2013 Matt Damon and Jodie Foster film, Elysium. In this context, anti-Washington rhetoric from Beijing has taken on a sharp tone in their use of so-called “Wolf Diplomacy.”
Now after Washington closed the China Consulate in Houston and China the US Consulate in Chengdu, both sides have stepped up rhetoric. High tech companies are being banned in the US, military displays of force from the US in the South China Sea and waters near Taiwan are increasing tensions and rhetoric on both sides. The White House accuses the WHO of being an agent of Beijing, while China accuses the US of deliberately creating a deadly virus and bringing it to Wuhan. Chinese state media supports the explosion of violent protests across America under the banner of Black Lives Matter. Step-wise events are escalating dramatically. Many of the US self-styled Marxists leading the protests across US cities have ties to Beijing such as the Maoist-origin Revolutionary Communist Party, USA of Bob Avakian.
“Unrestricted Warfare”
Under these conditions, what kind of escalation is likely? In 1999 two colonels in the China PLA, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, published a book with the PLA Press titled Unrestricted Warfare. Qiao Liang was promoted to Major General in the PLA Air Force and became deputy secretary-general of the Council for National Security Policy Studies. The two updated their work in 2016. It gives a window on high-level China military strategy.
Reviewing published US military doctrine in the aftermath of the 1991 US Operation Desert Storm war against Iraq, the Chinese authors point out what they see as US over-dependence on brute military force and conventional military doctrine. They claim, “Observing, considering, and resolving problems from the point of view of technology is typical American thinking. Its advantages and disadvantages are both very apparent, just like the characters of Americans.” They add, “military threats are already often no longer the major factors affecting national security…these traditional factors are increasingly becoming more intertwined with grabbing resources, contending for markets, controlling capital, trade sanctions, and other economic factors, to the extent that they are even becoming secondary to these factors. They comprise a new pattern which threatens the political, economic and military security of a nation or nations… The two authors define the new form of warfare as, “encompassing the political, economic, diplomatic, cultural, and psychological spheres, in addition to the land, sea, air, space, and electronics spheres.”
They suggest China could use hacking into websites, targeting financial institutions, terrorism, using the media, and conducting urban warfare among the methods proposed. Recent revelations that Chinese entities pay millions in ad revenues to the New York Times and other mainstream USA media to voice China-positive views is one example. Similarly, maneuvering a Chinese national to head the US’ largest public pension fund, CalPERS, which poured billions into risky China stocks, or persuading the New York Stock Exchange to list dozens of China companies without requiring adherence to US accounting transparency increase US financial vulnerability are others.
This all suggests the form that a war between China and the US could take. It can be termed asymmetrical warfare or unrestricted war, where nothing that disrupts the enemy is off limits. Qiao has that, “the first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden.” There are no Geneva Conventions.
The two Beijing authors add this irregular warfare could include assaults on the political security, economic security, cultural security, and information security of the nation. The dependence of the US economy on China supply chains for everything from basic antibiotics to militarily-vital rare earth minerals is but one domain of vulnerability.
On its side, China is vulnerable to trade sanctions, financial disruption, bioterror attacks and oil embargoes to name a few. Some have suggested the recent locust plague and African Swine Fever devastation to China’s core food supplies, was not merely an act of nature. If not, then we are likely deep into an undeclared form of US-China unrestricted warfare. Could it be that the recent extreme floods along the China Yangtze River that threaten the giant Three Gorges Dam and have flooded Wuhan and other major China cities and devastated millions of acres of key cropland was not entirely seasonal?
A full unrestricted war of China and the USA would be more than a tragedy. It could be the end of civilization as we know it. Is this what characters such as Bill Gates and his superiors are trying to bring about? Do they plan to introduce their draconian dystopian “Reset” on the ashes of such a conflict?
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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Featured image is from NEO
Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
Author Name: F. William Engdahl
ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
Year: 2007
Pages: 341 pages with complete index
List Price: $25.95
Special Price: $18.00
This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”
This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.
The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.
Covid-19: The Great Reset – is the title of a book by Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman of the WEF, and the Senior Director of the Global Risk Network at the institution, Thierry Malleret. The present analysis is based on review of the book by Steven Guiness, of 4 September 2020 (See this).
“This important book review by Steven Guinness (UK) reveals the same old language of ‘interdependence’, collaboration and cooperation that was heard from the Trilateral Commission in 1973. The then-and-now goal is Sustainable Development, aka Technocracy, and will result in the biggest resource grab in the history of the world.” ⁃ Technocracy News Editor
The book presents a “carrot and stick” scenario; one of scary threats and rewards for obedience. Schwab and Malleret offer The Brave New World as the “New Paradise” after the Great Reset.
The Powers that Be behind the Great Reset, cleverly work with two invisible weapons,
i) a probably man-made virus, now called covid-19 that nobody sees but corporate propaganda makes us believe is deadly and scary – fear is the associate weapon, and
ii) 5G (and later 6G, already being prepared), a strong, never experienced before, magnetic field, not talked about, not in the WEF book, not in the official media, but being rolled out over the entire world, covering every square centimeter of the earth’s surface, irradiated from hundreds of thousands of low-flying satellites.
This electro-magnet weapon is likely inflicting long-term damage, including possibly deadly damage, has been studied by hundreds of scientists, whose work has never been officially published, but stays underground. We, the People, are kept ignorant, in the shallows. Watch 5G Weapon – 8 min. Youtube below.
The Great Reset book is full with predictions of things that will or may happen, and threats, like the world will never be the same again, and we are just at the beginning of the Reset, worse is to come – or the Great Transformation, as the IMF calls what is coming.
The authors are spreading fear for the doubters of the New World Order (NWO). If you tell someone that the world is never going to be the same again, the way we are used to live our lives – the intention behind the information is not in the first place ‘predicting the future’, but instilling fear. Fearful people are vulnerable. Fear pulls the energy out of our bodies and minds, lowers the capacity of our immune system and increases the chances that we get sick, both physically from any disease, not just covid, but also mentally.
They – Schwab and Malleret – say not only that a lot of things will change forever, but ‘the worst of the pandemic is yet to come’. Wow! Scary!
Indeed, we have barely seen the tip of the iceberg. They admit, almost with a certain satisfaction, it seems, that millions of jobs will be lost and continue to be eviscerated at breathtaking speed, and that millions of small and medium size enterprises will be gone forever, that only a few will survive, namely the globalized conglomerates – Schwab’s and Malleret’s admission of the disaster unfolding upon us, is putting the icing on the cake of fear.
The reader will start thinking, ‘what will happen to me, my family, my business, or work – my children, their education – there will be an endless row of “what will happen”, leading to despair, to angst and anxieties – all kinds of pathologies. Pathology begets pathology. Big time.
More energy is sucked out of our bodies and minds, more gullibility instilled in our brains – you want to belong, you don’t want to be discarded like all those men and women who have lost their jobs, their livelihoods – who will get sick of loneliness in social distancing isolation – and may even get the covid disease, if they don’t wear a mask. You want to wear a mask. The media’s fear campaign has scared you. And when you wear a mask, you also belong. Never mind what it does for or against your health, you want to look the same – like everybody wearing masks. Wearing a mask is like a ritual that eventually allows you to belong to the masquerade. Because, have you seen how non-mask wearers are looked and sneered at, as if they were lepers or criminals?
You want to adhere to the rules – but silently and with inherent hope you look into an uncertain future – a hope of a better world, of a return to The Normal you know. There, at the horizon, hope is still glimmering like a fading sunset. And you want to race towards that horizon, a horizon that is ever moving away from you – as horizons are known to do.
Being segregated and separated from the believers for non-obedience, is the stick. Now comes the carrot. If you behave and obey the rules, you will be eligible for a vaccine – one of about 20 or 30 (maybe more) currently being developed by a myriad of different laboratories and countries. It’s the Russians, the Americans, the Chinese, the Cubans, the French, the Africans – it’s impossible to keep track of them, let alone trusting them.
Some of the vaccines are designed to genetically modifying your DNA forever – meaning, if the vaccine leaves a lasting damage, the damage will indeed be lasting, can never be cured. It may also be transmitted as a modified genome to your children and following generations. But you don’t mind. You want to get out from under this oppression, this health tyranny. You go: PLEASE-PLEASE gimme the vaccine!
And then, they tell you, once you are vaccinated, there is a chance that some of what you are used to may go back to “normal” – meaning some things will become “normal” again. But by and large, the WEF authors, the servants of the masters of the universe, tell you also that you better get used to a new normal. They never tell you actually what the new normal will exactly entail. But they tell you what’s wrong with the current world order of consisting of a collection of sovereign nation states and what the New World Order – all under One Government – would address. But they don’t say how and by whom – and what the new role of We, the People, will be, of those who survive the imploding cataclysm. It may be close to slavehood.
But, its never too late. We have the power of will and solidarity, if we reenact it, to stop this cataclysm in its tracks. It is Now the Time to Resist. We can rebuild the devastated economy and livelihoods as a project of humankind, according to our collective needs, with the principle of do no harm to our generous and beautiful Mother Earth.
We must not follow the dictate of the Great Reset, not be tempted by the carrot of a new paradise, but resist it, and take the reins of reconstruction in our own hands and minds – pursuing the common interest of humankind.
Here is what’s wrong, even in the eyes of Schwab and Malleret. There is widespread and ever-growing poverty; rampant inequality; racism; injustice – the North-South divide – and, finally, a world population that is growing too fast and is already too large. There is of course more, much more wrong with our civilization.
The two authors avoid mentioning that greed, artificially seeded conflicts and wars – biological, as well as by guns and bombs – limitless exploitation of unrenewable natural resources, of steeling public assets to privatize them, of the monumental injustice of neo-colonization of the Global South – is driven by the very deep dark diabolical elite that wants us to adopt and succumb to the new Global Reset.
The Great Reset book does not mention that there is way enough food to aliment the current and future world population. Already several years ago, FAO – the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN – has said that there is enough food to aliment at least 12 billion people with current technologies. The food is of course not distributed properly, is held back for speculation and price gains – depriving poor countries of their fair share to feed their populations.
Hundreds of thousands of people are starving and dying due to food crops speculation – and that in plain sight of the speculators, of the well-established bourses and agricultural commodities exchanges, like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, originally the “Chicago Butter and Egg Board” (founded in 1898). There are dozens of such speculating exchange bureau around the Global North.
FAO’s assertions that there is enough food for current and future world populations, does not even account for the huge potential of technology and agrarian efficiency improvement of healthy food production. Russia’s food production today is almost entirely bio – GMOs are constitutionally banned – and food is plentiful. Russia has become the world’s largest wheat exporter – bio-wheat.
Given the environmental destruction by the neoliberal constant profit-greed, eternal fetish of more and more consumption and growth, a Great Reset, or a Great Transformation (IMF), may indeed be justified, but not by the imposed globalist terms of the WEF and IMF, by the very powers behind the destruction; not under the terms of the global corporate banking, of the global military complex and of the Silicon Valley, i.e. the 5G-driven (and soon 6G) Artificial Intelligence (AI), or more broadly, the Internet of Things (IoT).
A reset has to be a people’s reset, where only We, the People, call the shots, and set the terms for the reset. A reset that leaves nobody behind and does not aim at eliminating “superfluous” populations – so that the rich and powerful can live longer with the remaining resources of Planet Earth. Because that is really their – the globalists elite’s goal.
Their powerful tools are biowarfare, invisible enemies, like viruses, i.e. corona – and vaccines against the very viruses they impose on the world in the first place.
Clever: First you attack and kill, then you offer salvation to the survivors – and kill at the same time, by the tools of salvation. It’s called dancing on many weddings, and along the way, you divide to conquer.
Divide the plandemic believers from the non-believers;
Divide between the mask wearers and the mask protesters, divide between those who believe that “social distancing” is the answer, and those who know that social distancing accelerates the disease and eventually the process of dying.
They create an ambiance of animosity and conflicts among those who were friends.
The two master minds of the Great Reset, Klaus Schwab (image on the right) and Thierry Malleret, don’t touch this delicate subject in their book. Instead they talk about opportunities and risks. They argue that this covid-19 pandemic – let’s call in Plandemic, as it clearly has been planned – offers a rare opportunity to get the Great Reset right. They call it a Window of Opportunity.
They talk about the Post Pandemic Era – as the panacea of the future for mankind, because, if we grab this unique window of opportunity to cooperate and collaborate between countries towards a global state, greater interdependence, we will be able to come to grips with all the ills, poverty, inequality and injustice. But the authors fall short of explaining how. They do not talk about lost national sovereignty – lost cultural sovereignty by embracing the a globalized and a globally governed world – abandoning the Nation State, and instead submitting to a One World Power.
That’s not all. The panacea of the future will be crowned by the Pearl of the Fourth Industrialization – Artificial intelligence (AI). It will be made possible by a 5G electromagnetic field, allowing the Internet of Things (IoT). Schwab and Malleret won’t say, beware, there is opposition. 5G could still be blocked. The 5G existence and further development is necessary for surveillance and control of humanity, by digitizing everything, including human identity and money.
It will be so simple, no more cash, just electronic, digital money – that is way beyond the control of the owner, the truthful earner of the money, as it can be accessed by the Global Government and withheld and / or used for pressuring misbehaving citizens into obeying the norms imposed from above. You don’t behave according to our norms, no money to buy food, shelter and health services, we let you starve. No more travel. No more attending public events. You’ll be put gradually in your own solitary confinement. The dictatorial and tyrannical global commandeering by digital control of everything is the essence of the 4th Age of Industrialization – highly promoted by the WEF’s Great Reset.
Image below: Thierry Malleret (Source: London Speaker Bureau)
The global universal lockdown – all 193 UN members at once (what a coincidence!) – has already devastated and will continue to do so for years to come, our economy, jobs, businesses, livelihoods, society, social cohesions – you name it – what we called “normal” is gone, gone forever. That’s what Schwab and Malleret repeat time and again. As they are spreading fear, they are telling us, you better adapt to the new normal. Looking back on the ruins caused by the onset of the destructive Great Reset is no good. There is no hope, they tell us. Instead, trust in the future, the new Great Reset. It will rise from the ashes of the past and will give humanity – those who survive – in the long run a better life on a less encumbered globe. So, the WEF narrative.
The two “wise men” mercilessly hammer it in on every occasion at every corner, never can the world return to normal. They pretend to make us believe that Covid-19 has given us this unique opportunity to begin anew, with a Great Reset. It is twisting the truth, because the reality is exactly the contrary – they – the diabolical elite, the dark deep state – created Covid-19, to lock us down, in social separation, in quarantines, so they can undisturbed destroy mankind’s achievements in plain sight under the pretext of protecting us from the invisible covid virus. In reality they prepare for the Global Great Reset.
There is a real risk however which the authors recognize, namely that a strong nationalistic feeling may persevere. They call it “a broken sense of normalcy”. Nationalistic thinking may turn factions of the world ‘inwards’, more patriotic. They, the “nationalists”, will seek division or abolition of this new global government. The WEF authors see this nationalistic trend – they never call it preserving or returning to sovereignty – as dangerous. They predict, it will result in continuous conflicts and revolutions. Rebellions instead of building towards the Global Common Good. But, We, the People, know better. We can resist.
Schwab and Malleret cannot avoid mentioning the UN Agenda 2030 – the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) which are the pretext as well as the backbone of the UN Agenda 2030 – which cannot be achieved without a Global and Great Reset, because they require collaboration and cooperation among nations that have the same vision – a globalized One World Order.
Agenda 2030 is intimately linked to Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, adopted by more than 178 Governments at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 3 to 14 June 1992. The Global Warming / Global Climate Change agenda emanates from it.
This is the trick: Nations, mostly developing countries, who subscribe to pursue the achievement of the wonderfully human-justice 17 SDGs, will get money, aid money, loans and grants from the IMF, World Bank and other similar globalized institutions, to work towards achieving these goals. But – under the condition that they follow and submit to the Great Reset.
Nevertheless, we know that these 17 noble goals of equality, justice and a balanced world are a phantasy, the same as were the 8 Millennium Development Goals (observe the 8th Goal: “Develop a Global Partnership for Development”) that ended in 2015. Hardly any of the 8 goals (plus 21 targets and 60 indicators for measuring progress between 1990 and 2015) have been met by a country. Now they are replaced by the new 17 SDGs – UN Agenda 2030 – which will not be met either. The SDGs are a tool for further enslavement of the Global South by the Global North.
The saving grace is that the world is not a uniform place with a homogenous population. That is where Schwab and Malleret are unwittingly right by predicting resistance. Mother Earth is diverse, colorful, and her populations come in all shapes, languages and cultures. The world consists of a vast, universal, heterogenous humanity that will, by nature, not submit to the dictate of a few. Impossible.
Undeniably, this may lead to a division towards two or more powers – the globalists and the nationalists or the patriots, as the globalists demeaningly call those who want to preserve their national identity, their national sovereignty – a sovereignty that does not stop at the political level, but encompasses monetary sovereignty and people’s individual and collective sovereignty. For the “nationalists” and “patriots”, the nationalistic trend may lead to real democracy – maybe a democracy we have never known may emerge from an autonomous and sovereign reset made by the people; a far more attractive option than the Great Reset forced upon humanity by a small globalist elite.
The division into two (or more) camps, may lead to conflicts and wars, to bloodshed. So, are warning Schwab and Malleret. But a group of sovereign nations with alliances among them, must not end in conflicts and wars. To the contrary. They will be thriving and prospering – an endless creation and development, with respect for each other.
Indeed, the People’s way of resetting the globe, may create unheard-of and unbelievable alliances. As friends were divided by the covid-drive for a Great Reset, so may enemies become friends and allies in the future – with the goal of remaining independent, autonomous and sovereign nations and people.
This type of unity was at the heart of the creation of the Confoederatio Helvetica, what is today’s Switzerland. We stand together in defense and mutual respect, but preserve our sovereignty in daily life. Thus, spoke the three representatives of three provinces under Habsburg’s tyranny in 1291, and the Swiss Confederacy was born 729 years ago.
Hope and light will prevail. We, the People, have the Power.
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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. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
The Lebanese population faces between six to twelve hours of electricity cuts per day, and in some rural areas, there is simply no electricity provided by the government grid. Amid the backdrop of decrepit infrastructure, government corruption, devalued currency, and widespread poverty, Lebanon began talks with Israel concerning their maritime borders in the gas-rich Mediterranean Sea on Wednesday at the UNIFIL headquarters at Naquora.
The UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL has been monitoring the disputed land boundary since Israel’s’ military withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000, ending a 22-year occupation. The two sides met together in the same room but directed their communications through a US mediator.
The US is the mediator between the two countries which remain technically ‘at war’ while hoping to end a long-running dispute which could eventually see Lebanon producing gas to convert to domestic electricity, as well as a potential revenue producer which could pay off Lebanon’s huge debts. Lebanon’s currency has lost 80 percent of its value against the dollar over the last year, and its debt-to-G.D.P. ratio is one of the world’s highest.
Lebanon and Israel are struggling to deal with high COVID-19 infection rates, while Netanyahu is slipping in the polls due to abuse of power charges, and the Lebanese government is in limbo after being labeled as corrupt and inept, while desperate for cash from foreign donors as it faces the worst economic crisis since its 1975-1990 civil war. The financial collapse was compounded by an explosion at the Port of Beirut in August, killing nearly 200 people.
Israel is already pumping gas from huge offshore fields, and this meeting will allow both sides to proceed further within the safety of an understanding of the maritime borders.
US pressure
The talks follow years of diplomacy by Washington, and the Trump Administration had hoped to use the Naquora meeting as a dramatic media show less than a month after landmark US-sponsored normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain; however, this showy plan was aborted.
The US envoy David Schenker explained that these talks “have nothing to do with the establishment of diplomatic relations or normalization.” However, it was last month that the US turned up the pressure on Lebanon to start the talks with a deadline for the agreement before the US election on November 3, while the second round of talks is scheduled for October 28.
The Naquora meeting
President Michel Aoun is the key person managing the off-shore energy resources portfolio, and he placed a representative from the Lebanese Petroleum Administration (LPA) on the negotiating team as a nod to pressure from Washington who had insisted on civilian presentation, whereas Hezbollah requested only military and technical delegates.
There are four points on the agenda of the Naqoura talks: setting the land reference point from which to depart toward the sea; defining the southern maritime border where the disputed area is located; agreeing on the land border demarcation after the completion of the maritime demarcation, and exchanging documents and handing over copies to the United Nations.
The Lebanese Negotiating team
Brigadier General Bassam Yacine is the lead negotiator, Marine Colonel Mazen Basbous is the head of operations in the Lebanese military, Najib Masihi is a Lebanese American expert in maritime and territorial boundaries, and Wissam Shbat is a board member of LPA and head of its geology and geophysics unit.
Lebanon’s offshore possibilities
In 2017, Lebanon’s information minister announced the Cabinet had approved licenses for Italy’s Eni, Frances’s Total, and Russia’s Novatek to carry out exploratory drilling off the Lebanese coast in two of Lebanon’s 10 offshore blocks to determine whether oil and gas exist in the area.
Analyst Diana Kaissy, who heads the Lebanese Oil and Gas Initiative think-tank, said it was “impossible to know” the extent of the accessible reserves before exploration operations begin, but she said, “preliminary evaluations” showed the five blocks offered by the government were the “most promising,” with block nine bordering a sector disputed by Israel.
At issue is more than 330 square miles in the Mediterranean that Israel and Lebanon both claim is in their exclusive economic zone. The pressure to resolve the dispute has mounted as Israel and Cyprus have begun exploiting offshore gas.
Lebanon estimates it has 96 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves and 865 million barrels of oil offshore. Israel is aiming to get a percentage of a contested area of 860 square kilometers that Lebanon is claiming.
The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) stipulates that coastal states have sovereign rights in a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) concerning natural resources; however, the maritime dispute does not fall within the UNIFIL’s current mandate, and Israel is not a party to UNCLOS.
Lebanon reached a maritime border agreement with Cyprus in January 2007. This prompted Beirut, in July and October 2010, to deposit with the United Nations the geographical coordinates of the southern and southwestern maritime borders of that EEZ. Cyprus went ahead and signed an EEZ delimitation accord with Israel in December 2010.
Lebanon and Israel could share in the disputed 860 square kilometers, which covers Lebanon’s offshore gas Blocks 8, 9, and 10. The “Hoff line” proposal gave Lebanon 550 square kilometers, which was rejected as Beirut insists on full rights in this disputed area. Lebanon has refused to join the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum or any other regional mechanism that includes Israel; therefore, it has been more or less isolated in the eastern Mediterranean gas process given the emerging alliance between Israel, Egypt, Cyprus, and Greece.
France’s Total energy company to begin gas exploration in Block 9 by the end of the year, while Israel approved in June oil, gas exploration in Block 72, close to Lebanon’s Block 9 where exploration will soon start.
Hezbollah and Amal
Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in a joint statement with Amal, the country’s other main party of resistance, released hours before the talks were due to start, called for the negotiating team to be revised to include only members of the military.
The Lebanese preconditions included having military and technical delegates, instead of diplomatic delegates, and setting no timeline to reach a deal, to avoid US pressure on the negotiations.
Last month the US placed sanctions on the top aide to Nabih Berri, the leader of Amal, for corruption and financially enabling Hezbollah.
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Alla conferenza, tenutasi lo scorso 14 ottobre, hanno partecipato i rappresentanti del Comitato No Guerra No Nato, che sta adesso portando avanti la campagna “Assange Libero per la Nostra Libertà” per il sostegno alla liberazione dell’editore e giornalista perseguitato per aver rivelato crimini di guerra. Tra questi: Manlio Dinucci, geografo, scrittore e giornalista; Germana Leoni von Dohnanyi, scrittrice e giornalista e Berenice Galli, attivista e giornalista e l’attivista Mauro Abiti. Durante l’incontro è stato proiettato anche un messaggio video da parte di John Shipton, padre di Julian Assange.
Il processo contro Assange è un processo contro tutti quelli che lottano per la libertà e la democrazia. Assange, infatti, si è contraddistinto nel panorama dell’informazione per la continua ricerca della verità a tutti i livelli politici e istituzionali, sfidando la secretazione delle informazioni da parte dei governi, superando le barriere informatiche, portando alla luce le reali motivazioni che hanno determinato la distruzione di interi Paesi, economie e comunità. Questa è la sua colpa. Intanto, mentre si svolgono le udienze e Assange in carcere continua a versare nelle peggiori condizioni – così come denunciato anche dal responsabile Onu contro la tortura Nils Melzer, Assange che nei mesi scorsi ha denunciato le “condizioni di sorveglianza e isolamento estreme e non giustificate” alle quali era sottoposto mostrando ormai “tutti i sintomi tipici di un’esposizione prolungata alla tortura psicologica” – i responsabili dei crimini denunciati continuano a beneficiare dell’impunità.
Byoblu ha seguito per voi l’intera conferenza stampa.
Everybody likes beauty, such as the beautiful things and beautiful people. It seems that humans are born to possess the ability to appreciate beauty, even though not so many people had ever thought about what it is. Obviously the sense of beauty, and the ideas about beauty had rooted into people’s daily life long before Aesthetics appeared as a well-established sub-discipline of philosophy. Art is the notable representative of this discipline.
It is certain that humans developed their sense of beauty, one of the prominent features of human feelings before they developed their logic of thinking. People also had mastered the essential skills in creating beautiful things before the theory of Aesthetics came out. I feel that the human civilization spent thousands of years in practicing art, while developing theories to interpret their art work, in a way agreeable to sensible people, not excluding the possible failure in their endeavor. Those critics might have tried to guide artists in their process of art creation, however, mostly worked out as a guide for appreciation or evaluation of art, because artists are always quicker than the critics, bestowed by their inborn sensitivity and ability to catch that artistic intuition from life. A new art style appeared usually after the economic,social or religious reforms, or science and mathematics discoveries, or birth ofnew philosophies.
The flourishing of art and literature during European renaissance period was not only due to the humanist rival of the ancient Greek culture, but also because of the influence of the new ideas appeared in the religion notably represented by Saint Augustine, as well as in discoveries in natural science and mathematics that provided the premises for the appearance of classic realism painting style, represented by da Vinci, and Michelangelo etc. who applied the one point perspective according to optical principle of human eyes, and used the shade and light effect to create the realist image. This period lasted almost four centuries. The capitalism in Europe matured around the same period after the industry revolution, coming along with it the global colonization, which brought great wealth to the capitalist, as well as the material improvement to people’s life, while it also irritated some upright intellectuals and artists, who got disgusted with some of the side effects of the economic growth and capital colonization. Those artists started searching for new artistic elements and inspiration for their art creation. Then appeared all genres of western modern art one after another, such as Fauvism, Impressionism, Post-impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Abstractionism, Dadaism, Surrealism, etc al, under the influence of a new trend of philosophies.
The work of those modern artists had encountered various resistance and attacks from the traditionalists, since it seemed either weird, ugly, or mysterious and confusing to traditional artists, However, the most significant ones eventually survived and even shined at their own time, and until now. Now days, culinary art became very popular, in which style, the way to display the art pieces, matters equally important as the art work itself, which combined with latter to create a modern art concept that is what truly matters. When Duchamp was displaying a urine tub in the museum, which idea could be disgusting to a lot of people, it was inevitably accepted as an art piece by people with avant-garde mindset and thus created an unforgettable anecdote in modern art history. Is that also beautiful thing? But according to many philosophers, art is creation of beauty. Duchamp even added the mustache to the picture of Mona Lisa, seemed an irony to the ordinary artists. However, this was just one of the modern art styles, Dadaism, the art to protest, and marked this period of human art history by boldly showing their frustration about this more and more complex society and their struggle to reach for something new and different, and also by leaving such questions to people as what is art and where the art is leading us.
Beautiful things should not be difficult to find. We could give many examples which people with sensible faculty all agree to be beautiful, however, it may not be able to be defined by one certain concept. The pity is that modern people have fallen into the habit to define any philosophical terms in a fixed formationinfluenced by the numerous discoveries in science and mathematics in late centuries of last millennium, which could be accepted in any other domains, but not in defining what is beauty. Those discoveries and creations brought new inspiration to the artists on one side, while constrained the thoughts of some art critics on the other side.
Kant argues that the kinds of ‘cognition’ (i.e. thinking) characteristic of the contemplation of the beautiful are not much different from ordinary cognition about other things in the world. The faculties of the ‘understanding’ of people’s mind is responsible for concepts, and that of ‘sensibility’ (including our imagination) is responsible for intuitions. The difference between the two is that in the case of aesthetic cognition, there is no one ‘determinate’ concept that pins down an intuition. Instead, intuition is allowed for some ‘free play’, and rather than being subject to one concept. Simply put it this way, the human’s sensible faculty made the intuition possible, and the sense of beauty is aroused by intuition, as intuition is allowed for some freedom to do some playful “games” in the mind, purporting to reach a status of harmony with other related concepts in the mind, if necessary, and leads to the best pleasure possible.
Thus,we have obtained the basic idea about the sense of beauty, which is a feeling of a biological being who possesses the faculty of sensibilities. Whenone says something is beautiful, it doesn’t simply mean this thing possesses “beauty” as its attribute, but also means this very person has the normal sensibility according the general understanding of our society, and/or to the common sense of this particular culture. It explains that evaluation of art involves two parts: the person who executes evaluation as the subject, and the piece of art to be evaluated as the object. And the sense of beauty can only be produced during the process of positive interaction between these two parts.
Humans have known the essential skills of creation of art for a long time. There is a proverb says: Art lies in concealing art and that beauty and honesty can never agree. In order to be honest, people are generally required to stick to the truth of the things, where the well-defined concepts and logic are applied, which are the jobs of another faculty of human mind, but the classical realism is built on the illusionary vision of people tricked by the realism painting techniques. The volume of the image and depth of the space that people see from the two-dimensional painting art arenothing but an illusion, and obviously not real. Plus, it is better to look at it at some distance than facing up onto it by inches, in order to get that ideal image desired. Nevertheless, most people like that painting style, since it suits the way of human’s eyes. It would be easy for people to tell the beauty of a classic realism painting than of a post-impressionism one, an abstractionism one, or a Chinese literati’s painting. It takes some aesthetical training before people came to appreciate the newstyle of beauty created by the modern painting techniques, and meanwhile, training in traditional Chinese culture is required to understand and see the beauty of the Chinese scholar’s art. However, it was not that those non-professionals simply couldn’t see anything good from those art works. Some abstractionism art and Chinese literati’s art may not be comparable to the former classic style in the sense of realistic presentation of images, but they have another type of beauty, that is the beauty of imagination associated with the freedom to unknown, available only from the art that had come through the ingenious maneuver of the master’s hand and mind.
Chinese people like to say that people need nice apparel just as the statue of Buda needs a gold finish. People need to dress nicely in order to attract the other sex, and gain the respect of their friends and colleagues, that is to say, to make the latter feel pleasant to be with them. A statue of Buda in shiny outfit in the temple would attract a lot more prayers than the one in shabby clothes. That explains the psychology of ordinary people in daily aesthetics. It works on many occasions, and came with it of some painting styles that emphasize on the visual effect of the art. Nevertheless, I am afraid that it is not the final beauty.
There is another proverb that says beauty’s sister is vanity, and her daughter is lust. Obviously, the shiny, colorful, extravagant things with fancy formalitywould feed to some people’s taste on beauty, as those things could excite and please them. Sexy pose of women and nudes are another popular source of beauty in humans, which are associated with the people’s biological need and the sub-consciousness of their mind. I guess this proverb had enlightened many artists in their art creation.
However, there is also one proverb that says the fair face needs no paint. I guess many Chinese painting artists, especially the literati’s painter would agree with this. As their painting work emphasizes on the simplicity, purity, and a natural elegance without much need of ornaments or decoration. It also suits with many western modern art that focus more on ideas and concepts than colorful presentation.
I would like particularly mention one saying by our ancestor here that is: beauty’s tear is lovelier than her smile, which had bothered me greatly before, because it is against the basic definition about beauty that is to bring the pleasant feeling to people. However, when we take our time to look into some greatest art works, whether in painting, or literature, or music. We may find some of the tragedies from the theatre, the blue music, the saddest painting work would produce the most striking feeling in the audience, by making them sad, weeping, but finally the extraordinary happiness arose from deep of their heart, after that amazing chemistry connected between them and the art, andthe sudden release of that unbearable emotional burden that had probably been hanging on there for long time, without being noticed before. That is the beauty of tragedies. All grow-ups have gone through unfortunate life experiences themselves or seeing their dear ones doing so, and would be more likely to understand that beauty.
In addition, one very popular proverb says: beauty is in the eyes of beholder. When one is in love with another person, he would undoubtedly see the other one as a beauty regardless what her real look is. In this case, the appreciator already has a pleasant image in his mind, which only waited to be triggered by that particular person associated with that image. It explains that beauty is not just about skin deep. Appearance only matters to some degree in producing the sense of beauty. Have we heard that a beauty without virtue is like a flower without fragrance and virtue is fairer far than beauty. These ideas existed in almost all cultures.
Andone proverb directly defined virtue as the beauty of mind, which means that virtue itself is just one kind of beauty. Among virtues, goodness or kindness is the most mentioned one. People believe that goodness charms more than mere beauty, as if goodness is a higher level of beauty. Since the beauty’s taste is pleasure, then we may say that goodness could cause stronger pleasant feeling among people than superficial beauty which is more focus onappearance. Furthermore, similar to goodness, grace is equally important to arouse that sense of beauty among people. Graceful people are nonetheless elegant, but pretty and stylish people are not necessarily graceful. Grace is shown in each move and manner of people with unspeakable charms shining out from a magic source hidden inside them, to silently influence and please people. As a matter of fact, grace is more lasting than beauty in its general meaning, mere beauty may fade and blast, however, grace will last with handsome appearance gone. We may say that it is another higher level of beauty.
Beautiful things can charm people by bringing them happiness with its enormous power that could be beyond the expression of art itself, which might draw much more than people can imagine. Just as if a person with full liberty would become most powerful ever, to some people, that is God. The final goal of beauty is the true freedom, so, to obtain the true sense of beauty is to achieve the true freedom of a person, that is to completely unify themselves with the universe, more concretely, is to follow the law of the universe, and to know what to do and what not to do. The real freedom is not to do whatever one likes to do, but can stop their doing when they are not supposed to do it. Especially in a complicated environment, to stay quietly by carefully listening to the revelation of the universe, or of God to some people, can gain yourself more freedom than act mindlessly.
Humans are originated from the universe, and the universe has created all kinds of models of beauties for them at the time of their birth, only waiting for them to find those beauties through their sensibility. Just like a new-born baby whose sole idol of beauty is its mother, when it is hungry, the mother’s breast is the most beautiful; when it needs to be hugged, the mother’s arms are the most beautiful ones, and when he needs to be kissed, the mother’s lip is the most beautiful. All of those are to satisfy its basic needs for nutrition and love as a baby. When the baby grows up, he would find different beauty idols functioning as his mother’s breast, arms, or lips, as his world is growing also. And they have to find out those beauties in order to achieve their freedom as a human. But in order to find those beauties, they need to learn about the universe, that’s why human’s civilization has developed so many sensible(can not only be felt by our sensors, but also make sense to our mind) disciplines to guide them, just as themother has guided the new-born baby. The first time when the baby cries because it is hungry, it probably doesn’t know where to get food, but the mother knows why and then put the tip of her breast into its mouth, and the cry stops. Next time, the baby would know where to search for its mother’s breast when it is hungry. If this baby happens to be a naughty one, and tries to bite its mother’s nose or ears to ease its hunger, then the mother probably wouldn’t understand that, and would just throw it in its cradle, letting it crying for ever, and think this baby is ugly, because a beautiful baby in parent’s eyewould behave nicely since the looks of baby are not much different at this stage of their life.
An individual who can achieve his full liberty would be the most beautiful one, and the very beautiful person should be the one that has achieved great liberty. Any one can do it, under the condition that there is no interruption of other people and other things, just like one of the laws of physics discovered by Newton, that a moved object could keep its motion permanently provided that there is no resistance against it at all. We all know that is not possible, since human is a social being with its own existence based on the coexistence of others., and the world is made of things of duo featured by its adversity. This is the dilemma of beauty, also of freedom. However, if we take all human as a unity, or as one person, then without the intervention of aliens, it would be much more simple, and it is possible for the human species to achieve its freedom to a great degree, and the human society would be so much better and much more pleasant to our senses. Thus the human’s beauty as one unity matters most to all, while all humanly beings as parts of the unity also matter in this extraordinary and inevitable task of looking for freedom or beauty. The job of an artist is to create beauty, and to be an idealist, we could all be an artist if we may.
In painting or related arts, there are warm colors and cold colors. The ones close to the warm color spectrum include red, orange, yellow. The ones close to cold color spectrum include green, blue and purple. Nonetheless, there are much more colors in nature or to be concocted by people than the ones mentioned above. People have preferences to different colors, while each color has different impact on their mood and emotions, and gives different psychological suggestion to people. Red color usually makes people feel exciting and happy, which is a color of celebration and associated with passion, power, ambition, courage; orange and yellow colors are cheerful and warm-hearted, and could be extravagant as well delightful, which conveys a sense of achievement or sublimity, also associates with wealth, ripeness and maturity, or hope and desire; blue color represents tranquility, stability, calmness, and loyalty; green brings a peace of mind, also suggest growth,health, freshness and liveliness; purple is a color of dignity, represents wisdom, integrity, solemnity and pride; pink is a very feminine and sexy color, which signifies beauty and love; white signifies grandness, perfection, confidence, and cleanness; dark is a mysterious color which conveys fear, unknown world, also graveness.
One famous painting by Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, just used a light yellow color to paint Venus’s naked body, which successfully created a beautiful and lovely goddess of love, which, with her birth, brought love and hope to the world. In the painting of The Garden of Eden by Michelangelo, the delightfulyellow color of Eve and Adam occupies the center of the work and might indicate the desire of our first ancestors and hope of humans.
Those psychological suggestion of colors are not permanent to any person, nor the same to different people. Colors don’t carry element of emotions themselves, but only reflect color-associated light waves of different length on human’s eyes and cause different neuron reaction in their brain and accordingly produce the so-called color emotions. What people feel about different colors not only relates to the type of color, but also the culture background of the person, circumstance of event, health situation of the color viewer etc. For example, the yellow could also signifies sickness or frailness at certain circumstance, while red could express rage or hints violence, and green associates with weakness and undecisiveness quite often. White is perfection and purity ,but sometimes may suggest arrogance. Pink color is attractive, but can’t dissociate with being frivolous sometimes.
Some colors carry strong message of cultures just as people’s psychology are greatly effected by their culture background. Ancient Europeans tended to apply white color for their architecture, while Asian people favoured red color to paint the walls or pillars of their buildings or mansions. In some countries of Europe, people can find many antique architectures built by big white marble stones, with huge white pillars holding up in the front. And in some Asian countries, red or yellow-color painted temples, palaces could be found everywhere in their historical scenery sites or capital cities. European culture has got great influence from Greeks and Italians who reside by the sea and could have been brain- washed by the light blue color of the vast ocean and sky, while Asian culture, most influenced by Chinese people who originated from plains of inland with rich soil for agriculture, and had been seeing the yellow crops and colors of ripe fruits generation by generation, thus take it as a color of wealth and happiness. However, In some western paintings, we may found red color was actually used to depict the outfit of generals or garments of religious figures such as Jesus, Mother Mary etc al, which indicate the power and authority conveyed through this color, but usually it is not the case in Chinese culture.
Different ethnic groups may also incline to the different tones or saturation of the same color. Western culture tend to use bright tone of the colors with high saturation in their visual art, demonstrating the openness of their personality, the brightness in their thinking, the straightforwardness and boldness of their doing. Asian people like to use less light tone of the colors with low saturation in their painting, and very often would add water or ink to the color to make it darker and less bright, which probably reflects the introspected personality of Asian people who don’t like to be seen as too sharp or too outspoken inanything they are doing, in a way trying to demonstrate their virtue of modesty. Of course, those Chinese painters are mostly gentry class people or court officials or disciples of ancient saints, and varied from the ordinary artisan people who did all the mural paintings and ceramic decorations.
Beside color, shape is another very important element of painting art, which has square, rectangle, triangle, circle and polygons such as Pentagons, hexagons, octagons. For painters who are trained in western painting schools, they are probably told that drawing or painting images are actually the process of drawing geometric shapes and putting all of them together. At least the beginning stage of sketching is almost the same thing of drawing geometric shapes and then to round the straight lines a little bit to make them have a natural look and a better resemblance to the real image of the object. In traditional Chinese painting, the painters probably don’t go through this stage of training, due to the perception that they didn’t think the accurate forms are important. What matters to them were the quality and expressiveness of the lines, the composition of the painting and meanings conveyed through the work. Sometimes, colors are not even necessary. Still those shapes were moreor less noticeably displayed in their work without their knowing.
Different shapes also have their own psychological suggestion to viewers. Rectangles give people a sense of stability, integrity, and spaciousness. Many objects in our daily life show the rectangle shapes, such as desk, blackboard, bed, walls, doors, etc. Squares are neat and cute, and conveyed a sense of perfectness and centerness. Triangles with one side based on the bottom displays the stableness and strength, such as the Egyptian pyramid; the triangle with one point on the bottom either indicates the threat of danger such as a dagger, or the unsteady situation of impending fall-down. However, sometimes, the over-turned triangle shape could also indicate the fertile pelvisbasin of the woman, which is a good sign for the family. Also, triangles with one point directing to right or left side gives a sense of movement such as the road signs. Circles convey fullness and wholeness, or indicate movement of rolling. Such as the moon, the sun and moon cake for the former, and car wheels, balls for the latter. The polygons are used in many things in our life. The patterns of window frames used interlocked hexagons quite a lot while the patterns of design for fibers for bed sheet or the table cover also favour the shape of polygons. Actually the shape of human face could be done through drawing a vertically lengthened octagon.
Lines of the short or the long; the straight or the curved make different shapes, also directly show in the paintings or designs as an art element itself. Longstraight lines show the strength, neatness and steadiness. Short ones or even the ones shortened to be the dotty brush strokes, are lively and give a sense of vitality, motion or texture if applied properly. The curved line is also an indicator of movement, and is used quite often in painting water and clouds in Chinese paintings. The curved line used in painting the flowing bands around the ancient Chinese ladies’ shoulders or arms is elegant.
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The Azerbaijani Armed Forces have been developing their advance on Armenian positions in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region. As in the previous several days, the main clashes are taking place in the southern part of Karabakh.
As of October 16, Azerbaijani forces finally took full control of the town of Hadrat and started an operation to push the remaining Armenian units out of the town’s surroundings. Despite this, Armenian forces still conduct regular counter-attacks attempting to force the Azerbaijani military to retreat from their recently captured positions.
Azerbaijani troops also seized the villages of Arish in the Fuzuli district, Doshulu in the Jabrayil district and the villages of Edishe, Dudukchi, Edilli and Chiraguz in the Khojavend district. Earlier this week, Azerbaijan captured Garadaghli, Melikjanli, Garakollu, Bulutan, Tagaser, Khatunbulag, Kemertuk and Teke. Thus, Armenian forces lost at least 15 towns and settlements during this week of clashes.
The Azerbaijani side employs its advantage in artillery and air power. Azerbaijani special forces also conducted several raids in the rear of Armenian positions in the south of Karabakh trying to create chaos there.
The town of Fuzuli, which for the previous days remained in the contested area, is now about to fall in the full control of Azerbaijan. If Armenian forces are not able to gain back the initiative, this will become the inevitable.
Meanwhile, the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan announced that the Armenians tried to recapture several positions taken by Azerbaijani forces, but these attacks were repelled. According to Baku, a large number of Armenian forces, including two T-72 battle tanks, a Tor-M2KM surface-to-air missile system, four BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launchers, a D-20 howitzer, a D-30 howitzer, and two D-1 howitzers, as well as several vehicles and UAVs were eliminated.
On the morning of October 15, videos filmed in the area of Hadrut appeared online showing how Azerbaijani troops had captured two Armenian fighters, one of them was an old man (he does not even seem to be able to hold arms), then tied them with Armenian flags and had them killed. A few hours after, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry released a statement claiming that Armenians share in social media some ‘fake videos’ that are ‘not related’ to the Karabakh conflict.
Earlier, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and top Turkish officials repeatedly claimed that the Azerbaijani advance on Nagorno-Karabakh poses no threat to the Armenian population there. Nonetheless, actions like on the aforementioned videos as well as almost no reports about captured Armenian soldiers demonstrate that in fact the conflict creates a real threat of ethnic cleansing of the Armenian population in Karabakh the areas captured by Azerbaijan. In its own turn, the Armenian Defense Ministry claims that despite some ‘tactical retreats’, its forces have been successfully repelling Azerbaijani attacks.
This just week only, the Armenian side claimed that its forces had shot down 3 SU-25 warplanes and multiple UAVs of Azerbaijan. Dozens of Azerbaijani armoured vehicles and hundreds of troops were also allegedly eliminated. Nonetheless, photo and video evidence from the ground demonstrates that in fact Armenian forces are on retreat and are now trying to regroup and prevent further advances of Azerbaijan into the contested region.
Taking into account the current complex diplomatic situation in the region, the Azerbaijani military has all chances to continue its active offensive operations until the start of winter. After this, Baku will likely temporarily halt the military phase of its push to capture Karabakh and return to the negotiating table to force Armenia to surrender the region. If this does not happen, the Azerbaijani advance will likely be resumed in the spring of 2021.
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During her Supreme Court confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Amy Coney Barrett refused to say that voter intimidation is illegal, that armed poll watchers are intimidating, that voter discrimination exists, whether the president could deny someone the right to vote based on race or that Congress has a constitutional duty to protect the right to vote.
She refused to affirm that Medicare is constitutional; that married couples should not lose their right to contraceptives; that a Black worker repeatedly called the N-word was subjected to a hostile work environment; that it’s wrong to separate children from their parents at the border; or that marriage equality, the right to consensual gay sex and LGBTQ workers’ rights should be protected. Barrett would not say that human beings are responsible for climate change or that the Constitution requires a peaceful transfer of power.
Barrett’s answers — and refusals to answer — confirm that she will be the most radical right-wing member of the Court.
Even Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), noted, “Voting discrimination still exists. No one doubts that.” Apparently, Barrett does. Roberts also said at his confirmation hearing, “I agree with the Griswold court’s conclusion that marital privacy extends to contraception and availability of that.”
When Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) asked Barrett whether a president could refuse to comply with a court order, she refused to answer. Even Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch “made it clear [during their confirmation hearings] that a president cannot refuse to comply with a court order and the Supreme Court’s word is the final word on that matter,” Leahy told Barrett.
Even Kavanaugh wrote in a court of appeals opinion that, “being called the N-word by a supervisor suffices by itself to establish a racially hostile work environment,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) told Barrett.
Barrett’s Confirmation Threatens Voting Rights
Barrett was asked whether she agreed with her mentor Antonin Scalia’s characterization of the Voting Rights Act as “a perpetuation of racial entitlement.” Barrett refused to answer. “This should sound an alarm for anyone in our country who cares about protecting voting rights for all Americans,” Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, testified at Barrett’s hearing.
An Arizona case on the Court’s docket will test another anti-discrimination provision of the VRA, Section 2, which prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race. “Given Judge Barrett’s unwillingness to recognize the threats that Black people and communities of color face in voting, I’m deeply concerned about how she would handle this case and many other such cases that will come before the Court,” Clarke told the committee.
Barrett’s Confirmation Threatens the Affordable Care Act
Barrett admitted to Leahy that she didn’t know how many people are covered by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), how many people under age 26 have health insurance under their parents’ plans thanks to the ACA, or how many Americans have tested positive for coronavirus.
If she was being straight with Leahy, Barrett is a judge wildly out of touch with the people of this country.
Barrett also refused to tell Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) that she was aware Donald Trump had opposed the ACA before he nominated her. When Sen. Kamala Harris (D-California) asked Barrett whether she had heard Trump’s statement committing to nominate judges who would strike down the ACA, the judge replied, “I don’t recall hearing about or seeing such statements.”
Has Barrett been hiding under a rock? Or is she lying?
On November 10, the Court will hear arguments in California v. Texas, which will determine the fate of the ACA. The Trump administration’s brief in the case says, “The entire Affordable Care Act must fall.” Barrett wrote in a 2017 law review article that Roberts’s 2012 majority opinion upholding the law “pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute.”
The Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee spent most of their time providing personal stories demonstrating the tragedy that would befall tens of millions of Americans who would lose their health care if the Court repeals the ACA, especially in the midst of a pandemic.
But they could have better explained why Trump is so eager to repeal “Obamacare” and why congressional Republicans have tried to abolish it 70 times. It’s the powerful insurance lobby that has Trump and GOP congress members in their pocket. Although Republicans have been promising for years that they would replace Obamacare with a better plan, no plan has ever been forthcoming.
Dr. Farhan Bhatti, CEO of a Michigan nonprofit clinic, testified that without the ACA, insurance companies could discriminate against anyone who has tested positive for COVID-19, which would constitute a pre-existing condition, as well as any other pre-existing conditions. They could refuse to provide coverage or raise costs. “Any judge who opposes the ACA endangers a lifeline that my patients count on to stay healthy, and in many cases, to stay alive,” Bhatti told the senators.
Barrett’s Confirmation Threatens Racial Justice and Reproductive Rights
In light of the national discourse and public protests against systemic racism and police brutality, Booker asked Barrett what books or law review articles she’s read about racial disparities in the criminal legal system. Barrett cited the sentencing guidelines, sentencing commission reports and “conversations” she’d had. Booker said there are books on the bestseller list, including The Color of Law, Just Mercy and The New Jim Crow, because “people are seeking to know what the facts are.”
Booker told Barrett that the “war on drugs” is a war on Black and Brown people “because of the outrageous disparities.” He confronted Barrett with a lengthy blog post she wrote questioning whether people sentenced under the racially discriminatory cocaine law should have their sentences adjusted retroactively after the law was overturned. Booker noted that of the 20,000 people affected, 98 percent were Black or Brown. He pointed out that Barrett never mentioned that the prior law, with its racially biased sentencing disparities for crack and powder cocaine disproportionately affecting Black people, was unjust.
When asked about the standard for overruling Supreme Court precedent, Barrett called Brown v. Board of Education — which held that “separate but equal” schools discriminated against Black children — a “super-precedent,” that is, “precedent that is so well-established that it would be unthinkable that it would ever be overruled.” But Barrett refused to say that Roe v. Wade is also a super-precedent because many people are trying to overturn it. That’s not surprising as she signed a statementreferring to Roe as “barbaric” and a “raw exercise of judicial power.” She also opposed access to contraception under the Affordable Care Act, calling it “an assault on religious liberty.”
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) cited 14 abortion cases winding their way through the courts. They include abortion bans between six and 24 gestational weeks, bans on dilution and extraction (which account for almost all second trimester abortions), requirements that fetal remains be buried or cremated, unnecessary requirements imposed on abortion providers like transfer agreements with hospitals, reason bans, and parental notification and consent requirements.
Many of these cases could reach the Supreme Court. Although no case has yet squarely presented the issue of whether Roe should be overturned, right-wingers have erected procedural barriers aimed to cause death of abortion by a thousand cuts.
Make no mistake: Reproductive rights are on the line if Barrett joins the Court.
Dark Money Propelled Barrett to the Supreme Court
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) did a masterful job of explaining how dark (secret) money has been spent to overturn the ACA and put Barrett and other right-wingers on the high court. He described “orchestrated” campaigns with amicus briefs written by right-wing organizations and signed by GOP senators. Whitehouse cited “the Judicial Crisis Network campaigning for Supreme Court nominees, writing briefs for senators against the Affordable Care Act, supporting the Republicans who are bringing this case, and leading the selection process for this nominee.”
Whitehouse displayed a list of 80 cases decided by a 5 to 4 vote with no Democrats joining the majority. These cases were backed by identifiable GOP donor interests and they won all of them. They’re not about Roe or the ACA, Whitehouse told Barrett. “They’re about power,” he said, listing three categories of cases: (1) unlimited dark money in politics (Citizens United); (2) diminishing the civil jury (“annoying to big corporate powers”); and (3) weakening regulatory agencies (favoring polluters like the fossil fuel industry and Koch industries).
Barrett explained the process by which a case gets to the Supreme Court: Someone suffers an injury, gets a lawyer, sues, and the case winds its way up to the high court. But Whitehouse clarified how big funders inject cases into the system to serve their political and economic interests. He described “a whole array of legal groups also funded by dark money, which … bring cases to the court. They don’t wind their way to the court, your honor, they get shoved to the court by these legal groups. Many of which asked to lose below so they can get quickly to the court to get their business done there.” Whitehouse cited the example of a $45 million campaign to get rid of union dues which succeeded when the Court decided Janus v. AFSCME in 2018 and overruled its 40-year-old decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education.
Trump has made clear he wants Barrett confirmed to the Court in time to decide election challenges. Nevertheless, Barrett refused to commit to recusing herself in any cases that come before the Court contesting the election results.
The Democratic senators repeatedly said that the GOP’s hypocritical rush to install Barrett on the Court while people are already voting in the middle of a pandemic is “not normal.” They should instead be working to pass COVID-19 relief for the millions of people who are suffering.
Barrett will be confirmed to the Court and at age 48, she could serve for decades. She will create a 6 to 3 right-wing majority on the Court. But if the Democrats win both the presidency and the Senate, two of the three branches of government could check and balance the judicial one.
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Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.
Enquanto a “crise do Coronavirus” continua a provocar consequências socio-económicas devastadoras, também em Itália, uma grande parte do “Fundo para a Recuperação” é destinada não aos sectores económicos e sociais mais atingidos, mas aos sectores mais avançados da indústria bélica.
De acordo com o Fundo de Recuperação, a Itália deveria receber € 209 biliões nos próximos seis anos, dos quais cerca de 81 como subsídios e 128 como empréstimos a serem reembolsados com juros.
Entretanto, os Ministérios da Defesa e do Desenvolvimento Económico apresentaram uma lista de projectos de carácter militar no valor de cerca de 30 biliões de euros (Análise da Defesa, Fundos também para a Defesa do Fundo de Recuperação, 25-09-2020). Os projectos do Ministério da Defesa prevêem atribuir 5 biliões de euros do Fundo de Recuperação para aplicações militares nos sectores da cibernética, das comunicações, do Espaço e da inteligência artificial. Os projectos relativos ao uso militar da 5G são significativos, principalmente no Espaço, com a concretização de uma constelação de 36 satélites e outros.
Os projectos do Ministério do Desenvolvimento Económico, relacionados, sobretudo, com o sector aeroespacial militar, prevêem uma despesa de 25 biliões de euros do Fundo de Recuperação. O Ministério pretende investir num caça da sexta geração (a suceder ao F-35 de quinta geração), o Tempest, denominado “o avião do futuro”. Outros investimentos dizem respeito à produção de helicópteros/tilt rotors militares da nova geração, capazes de decolar e aterrar na vertical e voar a alta velocidade.
Ao mesmo tempo, irá investir em drones e unidades navais da nova geração e em tecnologias submarinas avançadas.Também são esperados grandes investimentos no sector das tecnologias espaciais e de satélite. Várias dessas tecnologias, entre as quais se destacam os sistemas de comunicação 5G, serão usadas com um duplo objectivo – militar e civil. Visto que alguns dos projectos militares apresentados pelos dois departamentos se sobrepõem, o Ministério do Desenvolvimento Económico elaborou uma nova lista que permitirá reduzir as suas despesas em 12,5 biliões de euros.
No entanto, permanece o facto de que se está a programar gastar uma quantia que varia de 17,5 a 30 biliões de euros retirados do Fundo de Recuperação para fins militares, que devem ser reembolsados com juros. Além desta quantia, há mais 35 biliões destinados a fins militares e a serem gastos pelos governos italianos durante o período 2017-2034, sobretudo, no orçamento do Ministério do Desenvolvimento Económico.
Esta verba soma-se ao orçamento do Ministério da Defesa, elevando a despesa militar italiana para mais de 26 biliões de euros por ano, equivalente a uma média de mais de 70 milhões de euros por dia, em dinheiro público subtraído às despesas sociais. Cifra que a Itália se comprometeu com a NATO a aumentar para uma média de cerca de 100 milhões de euros por dia, de acordo com o que foi solicitado pelos Estados Unidos.
A atribuição para este efeito de uma grande parte do ‘Recovery Fund’ permitirá à Itália atingir este nível. Na primeira fila, entre as indústrias militares que pressionam o governo a aumentar a fatia militar do Fundo de Recuperação, está a empresa Leonardo,da qual o Ministério do Desenvolvimento Económico possui 30% das acções. A Leonardo está integrada no gigantesco complexo militar-industrial USA, comandado pela Lockheed Martin, construtora do F-35 em cuja produção participa essa mesma empresa Leonardo, através da sua fábrica em Cameri.
A Leonardo que se autoproclama “protagonista mundial no Aeroespaço, na Defesa e na Segurança”, com a missão de “proteger os cidadãos”, demonstra como pretende fazê-lo, ao usar a sua influência e poder para roubar aos cidadãos, recursos vitais do “Fundo de Recuperação”, a fim de conseguir uma maior aceleração da “recuperação” da indústria bélica.
Recursos que seremos sempre nós a pagá-los, acrescidos de juros. Pagaremos assim, “o avião do futuro”, que nos protegerá, assegurando um futuro de guerra.
O planeta inteiro está estupefato, espantado, chocado e aterrorizado com o espetáculo da democracia desvelado nas sombras do imperialismo messiânico – acrescente um monte de surpresas asquerosas tipo “bala de prata” de outubro.
Estamos dentro do território de Frank Underwood. Para ficar de acordo com o suprassumo da “Sociedade do Fingimento” retratado por Baudrillard nos idos dos anos 80, todas as semelhanças com um espetáculo de Vale Tudo não são, por óbvio, mera coincidência.
Comecemos com as pesquisas
Todos os tipos de pesquisas circulam por aí como dervixes sufistas rodopiantes. A maioria delas espelha os democratas trilhando o caminho da vitória e apontam uma inevitável Rota do Inferno para Trump. Uma pesquisa feita pelo The Economist dá a Joe “Walking Dead” Biden estonteantes 91% de chance – lembram de Hillary, em 2016? – de vitória no Colégio Eleitoral.
Exsurge um consenso impulsionado pelos Democratas de que Trump – inapelavelmente descrito como um proto-fascista perigoso e alucinado, prejudicial aos negócios mundo afora – não aceitará os resultados em quaisquer estados norte-americanos com tradição Republicana no qual ele venha a ser derrotado por margem pequena, como Arizona, Flórida, Michigam, Carolina do Norte, Pensilvânia e Wiscosin.
Ocorre que no desenrolar da campanha a história é diferente. As evidências mostram que nos comícios dos “Walking Deads” há mais pessoas que surgem dos ônibus de Biden que eleitores do Partido Democrata em carne e osso. A campanha Biden/Harris, mostrando sua perícia em Relações Públicas, tratam esses comícios como segredos de campanha.
Aparentemente, o próprio presidente revelou a estratégia de longo prazo de sua equipe: “daqui a dois anos ainda estaremos contando votos … se voltarmos ao Congresso, a vantagem é nossa. Penso em algo por volta de 22 a 26, uma vez que se conta um voto por Estado.”
É uma referência à 12ª Emenda à Constituição: se eleitores de determinado estado não conseguem chegar a um resultado quanto ao vencedor, a decisão vai para a Câmara. Ali, todos os estados têm direito a apenas um voto. Pensem que estados controlados pelos republicanos com Alasca, Dakota do Norte, Dakota do Sul e Wyoming (todos com apenas um representante [republicano] na Câmara) tem o mesmo peso que California (que tem 52 representantes na Câmara, dos quais 45 são democratas).
Trump leva vantagem: no cenário atual, seriam mesmo 26 a 22, com dois – Pensilvânia e Michigam – em tese empatados.
Pergunte aos quant(1)
Enquanto as próprias pesquisas internas do Partido Republicano indicam que os Democratas ainda não estão batendo de porta em porta, os entusiastas de Trump enxameiam nas casas, já tendo atuado em cerca de 20 milhões de residências nos estados indecisos.
Junte a isso uma nova pesquisa Gallup indicando que 56% dos (norte)americanos consideram estar melhor sob Trump do que estiveram anos atrás sob Obama/Biden. Você pode apelidar isso de “a volta do ‘é a economia, estúpido’”
O Grupo Trafalgar – que previu corretamente a eleição de 2016 – aposta que Trump vencerá por pouco o Colégio Eleitoral, com 275 votos.
O principal analista quantitativo do JPMorgan mapeou exaustivamente as mudanças entre eleitores registrados para negar quase quaisquer pesquisas que apontem para uma vitória folgada dos Democratas. Isso quer dizer que Trump pode perfeitamente acabar vencendo na Santíssima Trindade: Pensilvânia (20 votos), Flórida (29 votos) e Carolina do Norte (15 votos).
Como cereja do bolo, nada mais inesperado que um buraco negro massivo engolindo uma estrela aconteceu nesse outubro de surpresas, na última semana: a CNN de repente resolveu fazer jornalismo e estraçalhou Nancy Pelosi diante das câmeras.
Isso pode ser de mau agouro para a presidente-na-espera Kamala Harris, a qual, como poucos recordam, foi ungida como herdeira do eixo Obama/Pelosi em reunião secreta no verão de 2017.
Sigamos o dinheiro
Vamos seguir o dinheiro.
É brincadeira de criança. Para os republicanos, o homem da grana é o esquematizador de cassinos Sheldon Adelson – que literalmente comprou o Congresso por uma mixaria de $150 milhões de dólares. Já para os democratas, o dono da burra é Haim Saban – que tem seu próprio think tank e é a pessoa que socorre Hillary quando esta necessita de numerário. Essencialmente, o demente democrata é o operador do “homem da mala”.
Só para melhorar as coisas, tanto Adelson quanto Saban são defensores ferrenhos de Israel-acima-de-tudo. Um agente de Inteligência dissidente bateu no fígado: “O mafioso Sheldon Adelson financiou Trump porque o achou melhor para Israel, embora Israel favorecesse Hillary”.
Há quatro anos, fontes fidedignas de Nova Iorque com as quais eu tinha contato acertaram o resultado das eleições com dez dias de antecedência.
Uma delas, magnata de Nova Iorque intimamente ligado aos Mestres do Universo que controlam Wall Street, também foi na jugular:
“O Estado Profundo governa tanto Republicanos quanto Democratas. Trump teve que trabalhar dentro do sistema. Ele sabe disso. Sou amigo de Donald e sei que ele quer fazer a coisa certa. Mas ele não manda. Claro que ele quer relações amistosas com Rússia e China. Ele é um homem de negócios. Quer negociar com eles, não lutar. Nós traçamos as linhas mestras da campanha dele em 2016: parar a manipulação e moedas que destrói as indústrias domésticas; cessar a imigração ilimitada que acaba com os salários das classes baixas e encorajar a distensão com a Rússia e a China. A grande maioria dessas coisas não aconteceu nos últimos quatro anos.”
Há gente de Nova Iorque que acrescentaria: “de um jeito ou outro, Trump fez 90% do que eles queriam. É melhor ter no poder um rufião conhecido e manter os proletários andando em círculos.”
Na frente financeira, há coisas que jamais verão a luz: Wall Street, mesmo mantendo uma fachada favorável aos Democratas, não está minimamente interessada numa vitória Democrata “retumbante”, desde que isso significaria queda imediata em ações da bolsa em Wall Street. Da mesma forma com uma eleição que pudesse ser contestada ou postergada – e nesse caso Goldman Sachs prevê um cenário de pesadelo no qual o índice S&P cairia para apenas 3100 pontos.
Então, devagar com o andor, este é o cenário preferido por Wall Street: Trump vence e produz mais cortes generosos de impostos – paralelamente, o sentimento em Wall Street é que Trump continuará a despejar dinheiro às mancheias aconteça o que acontecer. Afinal, na realidade a única “política” real é que Wall Street transformou o Fed em um fundo de investimento livre.
Por sua vez, algo que a equipe de Trump com certeza não quer é o Grande Reinício (Great Reset, no texto em inglês – nt) – a ser oficialmente lançado no encontro virtual de Davos em janeiro de 2021.
Tudo isso acontece simultaneamente, enquanto Goldman Sachs, mais uma vez, alerta estridentemente que a única maneira de “salvar” a nação de sua dívida portentosa e eternamente prestes a explodir é a desvalorização do dólar.
Hillary quer outro emprego
No teatro de sombras – ou plano de luta livre sem regras – do conflito de Trump contra o Estado Profundo (Deep State, no texto em inglês – nt) outro dos atores novaiorquinos confirma que “Trump nunca teve permissão para cumprir parte substancial de sua própria agenda o que demonstra onde está o poder real. Na medida em que ele dá tudo o que pedem, que seja o aumento de um orçamento militar já gigantesco, o complexo Militar/Industrial quer a vitória de Trump. Já Biden se recusa a assumir tal compromisso.”
Como “apenas obedeciam ordens” Clapper, Brennan Comey e Mueller estão sendo protegidos. Quanto à hiena belicista e narcisista chamada Hillary Clinton, esta precisa que Biden/Harris vençam, para, entre outras coisas, escapar da cadeia, desde que se cumpra um acordo “secreto” entre ela e Obama, que a forçou a se manter distante enquanto o ex-presidente assumia como líder de fato da vasta máquina política do DNC (Democratic National Committee – Comitê Nacional Democrata – nt).
Qualquer um que tenha um cérebro em atividade e more em Beltway tem consciência de que o Walking Dead foi escolhido justamente porque mal se qualifica como capacho dos poderosos. Admitindo-se que ele vença as eleições, o poder real por trás do trono será o eixo Obama/Pelosi – e seus mestres suspeitos de sempre. Seja muito bem vindo ao reinado da Presidente Kamala.
Hillary, claro, não dá ponto sem nó, dobra as apostas e não faz prisioneiros. Acabou de divulgar um manifesto de 5000 palavras que pode ser entendido como uma candidatura a chefia do Pentágono.
Todos esses planos e contra planos não afetam os padrões principais do Estado Profundo, que continuam inabaláveis. Compreende-se então que o pântano proverbial do Distrito de Columbia continua a proteger suas crias. Além da possibilidade real de que Trump sequer é qualificado para escolher seus subordinados, acrescente-se que na verdade não lhe foram dadas opções decentes: teve que lidar com espécimes do naipe de Gina “rainha da tortura” Haspel, O Bigode Belicoso de John Bolton e Mike “nós mentimos, nós enganamos, nós roubamos” Pompeo.
O que nos leva ao Procurador Geral William Barr – e a uma questão resiliente em muitos corredores da Beltway: qual a causa da falta de indiciamentos mesmo quando se amontoavam as evidências de malfeitos relacionados ao Estado Profundo.
Muito simples: Barr é ao mesmo tempo parte da CIA e da gang do Velho pai Bush, recrutado quando ele ainda cursava o ensino médio em 1971. Quando seu mentor se tornou diretor da CIA em 1976, Barr adentrou no Departamento Jurídico da CIA e a partir daí sua carreira decolou, culminando em 1991 com a nomeação para a Presidência da Consultoria Jurídica sob o Presidente Bush.
Nem é preciso dizer que Barr a seguir impediu quaisquer eventuais investigações contra Bush, Clinton e demais operadores da CIA, desde o BCCI até o roubo do software da PROMIS.
Não haveria voluntários dispostos a desvendar porque Trump escolheu Barr – ou como o Estado Profundo fez isso acontecer. O fato é que Barr foi alçado logo depois da morte de Papai Bush. Com ou sem os 33.000 e-mails deletados de Hillary, é muito pouco provável que Trump “tirasse” do pântano o agente da CIA William Barr
São esses fatos que levam aqueles jogadores em Nova Iorque a apostar que Barr não acionará suas baterias contra qualquer estrela na galáxia do Estado Profundo.
Mas permanece o fato de que a NSA (Agência de Segurança Nacional – nt) armazenou todas as chamadas, conversas ou e-mails em suas massivas Torres de Servidores (Servers Farms no texto em inglês – nt) e que Trump tem o poder de ordenar a divulgação de tudo – o que na realidade já fez. Mesmo assim, aos proletários foram oferecidas apenas pobres narrativas sobre espécies animais ameaçados, tipo WWF (World Wide Fund [for Nature]).
“Voltei” – em esteroides
A balcanização total da cultura dos Estados Unidos encerrada em containers blindados de irracionalidade impede quaisquer possibilidades de debate civilizado. O que resta é uma proliferação interminável de maus atores, exércitos de trolls pagos, robôs, ultraje da massa embrulhado como se fosse barras de chocolate e a histeria geral.
Aconteça o que acontecer, esteja pronto para um massacre tipo Kill Bill logo à frente.
Neste fogo cruzado – não apenas metafórico – aparece John Lydon, também conhecido como Johnny Rotten, lenda do Sex Pistol e milionário residente na melhor parte de Venice Beach, Los Angeles. Ele votará em Trump.
Para o Presidente Trump, é a consagração – mesmo que Trump esteja mais para Village People (“Young man/ there’s no need to feel down” – não é preciso se sentir arrasado, meu jovem – nt) que o Sex Pistols em “Holidays in the Sun” ou os Dead Kennedys em “Holiday in Cambodia”.
Dica para o POTUS (Presidente Of The United States – Presidente dos Estados Unidos – nt) doidão na Flórida: “Estou de volta” em esteroides, trabalhando a multidão excitada como um profissional, atingindo o clímax em passos da dança YMCA na finalização: “I’ll kiss the guys, and the beautiful women…” (Beijarei os manos e as mulheres bonitas… – nt).
Faça a comparação com o “Zé Dorminhoco” (Sleepy Joe, no texto em inglês – nt) em Ohio, encarando, bem, ninguém, na realidade: “I’m running as a proud Democrat … for the Senate”. (Estou concorrendo como um orgulhoso candidato Democrata… ao Senado (!) – nt)”
Semana passada, uma incontável multidão de oito pessoas compareceu em um comício Biden/Harris no Arizona.
A palhaçada continua inabalável enquanto uma pandemia com taxa de mortalidade de mais ou menos 0,14% – de acordo com estimativas da própria Organização Mundial de Saúde – está custando à economia global nada menos que espantosos $28 trilhões de dólares, de acordo com o FMI.
Antes que eu me esqueça: só termina quando Britney, a magrela, cantar “I did it again” …
The whole planet is enthralled, appalled, shocked and awed by the spectacle of democracy as enacted under the shadow of messianic imperialism – complete with a slew of slimy, smoking gun October Surprises.
We’re in total Frank Underwood territory. And as befits the ultimate “society of the simulacrum” pictured by Baudrillard back in the swingin’ 1980s, all those similarities with a Wrestlemania spectacular are obviously not mere coincidence.
Let’s start with the polls.
All manner of polls are circulating like whirling dervishes. Most highlight myriad Dem paths to victory and an inexorable Highway to Hell for Trump. A poll by The Economist gives Joe “Walking Dead” Biden a whopping 91% chance – remember Hillary in 2016? – of winning the Electoral College.
A Dem-fueled consensus is emerging that Trump – relentlessly depicted as a deranged, lunatic proto-fascist who’s bad for business worldwide – will dispute results in any Republican-led state which he may narrowly lose, as in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Yet on the campaign trail, it’s a completely different story. Evidence shows that on The Walking Dead’s rallies, there are more people from the Biden bus and reporters than flesh-and-blood Dem voters. The Biden-Harris campaign, demonstrating its matchless P.R. skills, spins these rallies as campaign secrets.
Team Trump’s long-shot strategy seems to have been unveiled by the President himself:
“We are going to be counting ballots for the next two years (…) We have the advantage if we go back to Congress. I think it’s 26 to 22 or something because it’s counted one vote per state.”
That was a reference to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution: if state electors can’t agree on a president, the decision goes to the House. And then each of the 50 states gets one vote. So picture small GOP-controlled states such as Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming (each with one Republican in the House) having the same weight as California (52 members in the House, 45 of them Democrats.)
Advantage Trump: as it stands, it’s indeed 26 to 22, with two – Pennsylvania and Michigan – basically tied.
Ask the quant
Internal GOP polls show that while the Biden-Harris campaign is not knocking on any doors, Trump volunteers have actually swarmed no less than 20 million homes in swing states.
Combine it with a new Gallup Poll showing that 56% of Americans state they are better off now under Trump than four years ago under Obama/Biden. Call it the return of “It’s the economy, stupid.”
The Trafalgar Group – which correctly called the 2106 election – bets that Trump narrowly wins the Electoral College with 275 votes.
JPMorgan’s top quant Marko Kolanovic has exhaustively mapped changes in voter registration to dismiss virtually every poll showing a Dem sweep. This implies that Trump may well end up winning the Holy Trinity: Pennsylvania (20 votes), Florida (29 votes) and North Carolina (15 votes).
And to top it off, something more exotic than a black hole eating a star has happened in this October Surprise-laden week: CNN decided to practice real journalism and eviscerated Nancy Pelosi on camera.
That may be quite a bad omen for President-in-Waiting Kamala Harris, who very few remember was forged as the heir to the Obama-Pelosi axis in a secret meeting in the Hamptons way back in the summer of 2017.
Follow the money
Now let’s Follow The Money.
That’s a slam dunk. For Republicans, the top bagman is casino schemer Sheldon Adelson – who literally bought Congress for a paltry $150 million. For Democrats, it’s Haim Saban – who owns his own think tank and is Hillary’s go-to moneyman. The Dem dementia is essentially a bagman op.
To make it even more digestible, both Adelson and Saban are rabid Israeli-firsters. A dissident Beltway intel op cuts all corners: “The Mafia front man Sheldon Adelson financed Trump for Israeli insurance even though Israel was for Hillary.”
Four years ago, selected New York sources I was in touch with correctly called the election result at least 10 days before the fact.
One of these, a New York business tycoon intimate with assorted Masters of the Universe in control of Wall Street, once again goes to the jugular:
“The Deep State governs both Republicans and Democrats. Trump has to work within the system. He knows it. I am a friend of Donald and I know he wants to do the right thing. But he is not in charge. He certainly wants to be friends with Russia and China. He is a businessman. He wants to make deals with countries not fight them. We were among those who set the main campaign features for him in 2016: stop rigged currencies destroying domestic industries, stop unlimited immigration destroying the lower classes wages and encourage detente with Russia and China. Largely nothing has happened in four years.”
Still, adds another New York player, “Trump does 90% of what they want anyway. Better to keep a villain at the top to blame and keep the proles running in circles.”
On the financial front, that will never be admitted publicly: but Wall Street, while projecting a mere pro-Dem façade, is not interested in a Democrat “sweep”, because that would tank Wall Street stocks. A contested/protracted election would go the same way – with Goldman Sachs projecting a nightmare scenario of the S&P down to only 3,100 points.
Thus the preferred, hush hush, Wall Street scenario: a Trump win and more juicy tax cuts – in parallel with the sentiment that Wall Street’s priority is for the Fed to keep showering trillions of dollars in helicopter money whatever happens. After all the only “policy” in town is that Wall Street turned the Fed into a hedge fund.
For its part, what Team Trump certainly does not want is the Great Reset – to be officially “launched” at a virtual Davos in January 2021.
And all this while Goldman Sachs, once again, is adamant that the only way to “save” the nation from it humongous, ever-exploding debt is to devalue the U.S. dollar.
Hillary wants a new job
In the shadow play – or Wrestlemania plot – of Trump’s face-off against the Deep State, another of those New York players confirms that, “Trump was not allowed to do much of his agenda. That shows you where the real power is. The military-industrial complex wants Trump in as he is giving them everything they want for a giant military buildup. But Biden will not make that commitment.”
Clapper, Brennan, Comey and Mueller “were just following orders and are being protected.” As for warmongering narcissistic hyena
Hillary Clinton, she needs a Biden/Harris win essentially to stay out of jail, a follow-up to a “secret” deal struck with Obama which had her bow out to the former President as the de facto leader of the vast DNC machinery.
Anyone with a brain across the Beltway knows The Walking Dead was chosen because he does not even qualify as a place mat. Assuming he would be elected president, the real power behind the throne will be the Obama-Pelosi axis – and their usual suspect masters. Welcome to the reign of President Kamala.
Hillary though is leaving nothing to chance, doubling down and taking no prisoners. She has just released a 5,000-word manifesto which reads as an application to become head of the Pentagon.
The fact that with all the plot twists key vectors of the Deep State continue to be untouchable should be read as the proverbial D.C. swamp protecting their flock. More than the possibility that Trump is unqualified when it comes to picking minions, more realistically he was never given any decent options: so he was stuck with nefarious specimens such as Gina “Queen of Torture” Haspel, The Warring Mustache John Bolton, and Mike “We Lie, We Cheat, We Steal” Pompeo.
Which bring us to Attorney General William Barr – and a persistent question across many Beltway corridors: how come there have been no indictments as evidence piles up of interlocking Deep State-related shenanigans.
Simple: Barr is CIA, part of the old Daddy Bush gang, recruited when he was still in high school, in 1971. When Daddy Bush became CIA director in 1976, Barr stepped into the CIA’s legal office and started his steady climb, culminating in 1991 as Chief Legal Counsel to Daddy Bush’s presidency.
Needless to add, Barr subsequently squashed every possible investigation on Bush, Clinton and assorted CIA ops, from BCCI to the theft of PROMIS software.
No one will volunteer to be on the record showing how Trump selected Barr – or how the Deep State made it happen. The fact is Barr was appointed shortly after the death of Daddy Bush. It’s unlikely that Team Trump have “turned” CIA asset Barr away from the swamp – with or without Hillary’s 33,000 deleted emails.
And that’s what leads those New York players to bet that Barr won’t go after any star in the Deep State galaxy.
Still the fact remains that the NSA has stored every possible call, chat or email on its massive server farms. Trump has the power to order everything to be released – as he did. Yet, as it stands, the proles have only been offered a WWF-themed sitcom.
“I’m back” on steroids
The total balkanization of culture in the U.S. into bulletproof containers of irrationality is precluding any possibility of civilized debate. What’s left is an endless proliferation of fake actors, paid troll armies, bots, mob outrage packaged as chocolate bars, all out hysteria.
Whatever happens, get ready for some major Kill Bill mayhem ahead.
And into this shooting war – not only metaphorical – steps John Lydon, a.k.a. Johnny Rotten, Sex Pistol legend and a millionaire resident of the tony parts of Venice beach in L.A. He’s voting Trump.
That’s the ultimate crowning of POTUS Punk – except that Trump is more Village People (“Young man/ there’s no nee to feel down”) than the Sex Pistols in Holidays in the Sun or the Dead Kennedys in Holiday in Cambodia.
Cue to POTUS Punk in Florida, “I’m back” on steroids, working an excited crowd of thousands like a pro, complete with YMCA dance moves at the end: “I’ll kiss the guys, and the beautiful women…”
Now compare it to “Sleepy Joe” in Ohio, in front of, well, nobody really: “I’m running as a proud Democrat…for the Senate”.
Last week an astonishing eight people showed up for a Biden-Harris rally in Arizona.
And the racket goes on while a pandemic with an Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of roughly 0.14% – according to the WHO’s own estimate – has cost the global economy no less than a whopping $28 trillion, according to the IMF.
Oh yes: it ain’t over till slim Britney “I Did It Again” sings.
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Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
What Happened: Bill Gatesrecently appeared on NBC news stating that after the first generation of COVID vaccines becomes available, a second wave of vaccines will then hit the market, letting the public know that the COVID vaccine will be a multi-dose vaccine.
Approximately 6 months ago he gave multiple interviews, in one of them stating that “It is fair to say that things won’t go back to truly normal until we have a vaccine that we’ve gotten out to basically the entire world.”
In this most recent interview, he discussed how vaccine hesitancy is at an all time high, but did not address the concerns that vaccine safety advocates commonly bring up, some of which you can see in the articles listed towards the end of this article. Instead, like many other mainstream media interviews and pieces about vaccines, the idea that they’re not completely safe and effective for everyone seemed to be brushed off as a mere “conspiracy theory.”
From here he was asked about misinformation that’s spread on social media outlets, and the responsibility the government has to limit, stop and slow down its spread. But this begs the question, how much of this information is actually misinformation? If scientists and various publications raise legitimate concerns about vaccines, it also seems to be pilled into the ‘misinformation’ category in the minds of people like Bill Gates.
This is a very serious issue, as legitimate safety concerns regarding vaccines continue to be completely ignored and never really addressed. That being said, there is a lot of misinformation out there. Whenever writing about this topic it’s imperative one uses credible sources and information.
Right now we have a digital authoritarian “fact-checker” patrolling the internet telling people what is and what isn’t. Should people not have the right to examine information and sources for themselves and decide on their own what they choose to believe? Are we really so unintelligent that we can’t determine what a credible source is anymore, and require a ‘ministry of truth’ to tell us what is?
Why This Is Important: Why doesn’t mainstream media or Bill Gates actually addresses the concerns that are being raised by scientists and doctors? Why is ridicule and terms like “conspiracy theory” always used instead?
What are the concerns? Vaccine injury is one of them. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act has paid more than $4 billion to families of vaccine injured children. A 2010 HHS pilot study by the Federal Agency for Health Care Research (AHCR) found that 1 in every 39 vaccines causes injury, a shocking comparison to the claims from the CDC of 1 in every million.
Again, it’s no secret that vaccine hesitancy is at an all time high, even among physicians. Professor Heidi Larson, a Professor of Anthropology and the Risk and Decision Scientist Director at the Vaccine Confidence Project stated at a World Health Organization (WHO) conference that:
The other thing that’s a trend, and an issue, is not just confidence in providers but confidence of health care providers, we have a very wobbly health professional frontline that is starting to question vaccines and the safety of vaccines. That’s a huge problem, because to this day any study I’ve seen… still, the most trusted person on any study I’ve seen globally is the health care provider…
Are these health care professionals being had by “conspiracy theories?”
Again, there are many concerns with vaccine safety, and if you browse through our site they are not hard to find. You can refer to the articles listed below if you want to dive deeper into a few examples that are backed by proper sources. This is the information that never seems to be acknowledged by the mainstream.
The question on many people’s minds seems to be if the vaccine will be made mandatory for things like travel or to enter into certain buildings. No doubt health authorities will face many backlashes and protests if this is the case. We will see what happens.
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America, we need to have a conversation. It is a very serious and dire conversation that has been intentionally ignored and swept under the rug for far too long. It concerns a dialogue that our entire mainstream media, in its conventional blindness, refuses to acknowledge. Yet its consequences are potentially severe and perhaps deadly. It may not eventually have an impact upon you personally nor your health, but it will surely have a profound adverse effect upon someone you know or perhaps even a loved one.
It is time to finally agree on a very simple fact. It is a truth that needs to be driven into our nation’s collective consciousness: Vaccination hesitancy and opposition did not mysteriously appear out of a vacuous void. Nobody rubbed an Arabian lamp to release an anti-vaccine genie upon the public. However, this is the image that our federal agencies, the medical establishment, your average pediatrician, the vaccine tsars such as Bill Gates and his ilk, and the media project upon the visual mental screen of our culture.
In effect they reify a false narrative on our behalf. In our opinion any hope that life will return to normal is now a pipedream. The pandemic has spurred too many other financially driven initiatives that are going to propel the redefinition of “normalcy” and none of these measures will benefit the average person.
Rather than engage in open dialogue to reevaluate the causes for vaccination hesitancy, which has been increasing substantially and especially after the first announcements to develop a Covid-19 vaccine, the pro-vaccination regime has been focusing its attention on how to launch counter-measures to reinvigorate popular faith in vaccines.
Common sense should tell us this is the wrong discussion. The only real genies that have appeared in the vaccine vials themselves that have been responsible for vaccine injuries, an epidemic of neurological disorders in our children, weakened immune systems, life-long autoimmune conditions and deaths. Every parent with a vaccine-injured child at one time placed their complete faith in the safety of the vaccines that their children received. Wholeheartedly they believed the medical establishment. They believed their pediatricians and school health officials. And they listened intently to the television talking heads who convinced them with scare tactics to get vaccinated for whatever infectious outbreak was being reported that particular week. Therefore there are very rational reasons, also based on a large body of scientific evidence, for why vaccine hesitancy is on the rise. Our federal health agencies, in particular the CDC and FDA, and certainly the drug makers, have done nothing forthrightly to earn our trust. Nor should we be sucker punched into handing it over to them during this pandemic.
Many people are now eager to see a Covid-19 vaccine available under the hopeful assumption that their lives will return to 2019 before the pandemic was declared. Many are also willing to sacrifice themselves as guinea pigs in these vaccine clinical trials. As admirable as their courage may be, we must ask whether it is founded on a sound understanding of vaccine risks or is it simply an emotional reaction to the panic that has been orchestrated by our government’s health officials, the tsars of the vaccination imperium such as Bill Gates, the World Health Organization and those voices doing the bidding of the industrial pharmaceutical complex.
Not every expert in the fields of immunology, virology and genetics is buying into the Covid-19 vaccine frenzy. But sadly their voices are either muffled in the louder noise of panic control and medical propaganda or worse are being ignored or censored altogether. Yet they too now more than ever need to have a seat at the table. Not every problem requires a technological medical solution, and more often than not the irrational rush for such technological remedies makes matters far worse and costs more lives.
Lets consider one important voice now being ignored.
Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi is no nickel-dime physician. He has practiced medicine for five decades, was a post-doctoral researcher at one of the world’s most prestigious research institutes – the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, and later held the Microbiology Chair at the University of Mainz in Germany for a dozen years. He has impeccable credentials that in our opinion outweigh many of our so-called medical experts preaching from their official soapboxes. Dr. Bhakdi is not anti-vaccine, however he is deeply worried about the new technologies for a Covid-19 vaccine being rushed to market. One of the greatest fears being heard over the internet is that these new gene-based vaccines will recombine with our body’s DNA and cause untold health problems. But this worries Bhakdi less than other far greater risks with life-long debilitating consequences:
First, there is the possibility of mutagenesis, or mutations occurring due to the insertion of the vaccine’s viral-based gene. This is especially worrisome given the possibility that these insertions could occur in reproductive cells and will thereby be inherited by future children. These were among the safety concerns raised by the Paul Ehrlich Institut in Germany and published in the journal Methods in Molecular Biology.
Second, there is a very real danger that our body’s immune system will identify this inserted genetic material as a foreign invader and create anti-DNA antibodies that will in turn trigger an autoimmune disease. There is no certainty that an adverse autoimmune response will occur immediately or even shortly after vaccination. It may take one, two, three or more years before the vaccinated person lapses into a serious, or even life-threatening, autoimmune condition. There are over 80 different autoimmune illnesses; it is a toss of the dice as to which might appear. Nevertheless in the case of such an event, the gene-based Covid-19 vaccine cannot be ruled out as a fundamental cause.
And don’t place any bets that you will be properly diagnosed if symptoms of a chronic autoimmune disease begin to appear. During the annual European League Against Rheumatism conference in 2018, two papers were delivered that should frighten us far more than Covid. Separate studies found that approximately 95 percent of patients were misdiagnosed on at least one occasion after displaying autoimmune symptoms. About thirty-five percent were told it was psychosomatic, “all in their head.” How many parents have been told by their pediatricians after the collapse of their child into mental despondency shortly after receiving one or more vaccinations that it has nothing to do with a vaccine and is their genes or another cause?
Then there is a third and even more “terrible” danger with these new vaccines. It is wise to give heed to Dr. Bhakdi’s warnings in his bookCorona False Alarm? Facts and Figures(Chelsea Green):
“… during or after production of the viral spike, waste products of the [virus’] protein must be expected to become exposed on the surface of the targeted cells [i.e., cells which the virus has latched onto]. The majority of healthy individuals have killer lymphocytes that recognize these viral [waste] products. It is inevitable that autoimmune attacks will be mounted against the cells. Where, when and with which effects this might occur is entirely unknown. But the prospects are simply terrifying.”
Although early research shows DNA and mRNA vaccines have benefits over the current cultured viral vaccines because of their high potency, they are still experimental. Much remains unknown. And because this new generation of vaccines are very recent, there is no reliable data to reach a medical consensus about their safety profile nor their potential long-term adverse risks. It is Dr. Bhakdi’s belief that a Covid-19 vaccine is completely unwarranted. An important fact people fail to realize is that the vaccine will not necessarily prevent you from contracting the virus. Instead you are more likely to not fall ill. However, you can still contract the virus and remain a spreader and infect others. The only incentive for a Covid-19 vaccine is that it is an enormous cash cow for the drug industry.
Each of us should be deeply concerned about the above potential adverse effects from a Covid-19 vaccine. Vaccination policy is supposed to be based upon concise benefit-risk analyses. Sadly, this has never been a firm policy implemented in the US and it has been a factor largely denied by the majority of the medical community. Every vaccination is a game of Russian roulette. For safer vaccines there may be 10,000 or even 100,000 chambers in the syringe-shaped revolver but there is always that one live bullet. For other less safe vaccines such as Gardasil, MMR and DpT the odds for that single bullet drop dramatically. As in the case of Merck’s Gardasil the results can be catastrophic; for this reason Robert Kennedy Jr has filed a major lawsuit against the vaccine’s maker. And so far, the future prospects of a truly safe Covid-19 vaccine appear to be far off into the distant horizon if ever.
So why such concern over a Covid-19 vaccine?
Following AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine clinical trial it was reported that at least one participant had a very serious vaccine injury. “The highest levels of NIH are very concerned,” reported the pro-Pharma news site Fierce Biotech. Yet British health authorities permitted the trial to resume. And this is where the event becomes insidious. No information about the nature of the injury nor its severity has been made public. The company has argued it cannot release further information because of patient privacy. In other words, despite the government being the appendage that will distribute the vaccine, for the maker’s financial benefit, it has no leverage to review the injuries from the clinical trials. US health officials have come to the conclusion that the participant was diagnosed with vaccine-induced transverse myelitis, a debilitating inflammation of both sides of the spinal cord. AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine is “a weakened version of a common cold virus (adenovirus) from chimpanzees that has been genetically changed so it is impossible for it to grow in humans.” Or so the Participant Information Sheet for the vaccine trial alleges.
It is also worth noting that anyone with a history of immunosuppression, immunodeficiency, angioedema, anaphylaxis, cardiovascular condition, gastrointestinal disease, liver or renal disease, a neurological illness or a psychiatric condition, allergies, a cancer diagnosis, alcohol or drug dependency, is pregnant, or received another vaccine within 30 days was excluded from participating in the trial. Of course, this is not unusual. This is not an uncommon list of exclusionary conditions used during all vaccine trial recruitments to assure that only the healthiest people are enrolled that in turn reduces substantially the likelihood of adverse reactions. Nevertheless, once launched, the vaccine will be distributed indiscriminately to everyone, except in cases of very severe prior medical conditions.
This week it was reported that an adverse reaction occurred during Johnson’s and Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine trial. Information about the actual diagnosis of the participant’s adverse reaction remains unknown. But the case must be extremely serious because it signaled a high red alert and J&J halted its trial with 60,000 enrolled participants. Vaccine–related injuries, and even casualties, are not uncommon in such trials. J&J’s press release stated it is conducting an investigation internally – meaning that outside authorities without conflicts-of-interest are again excluded — in order “to respect this participant’s privacy.” Similar to AstraZeneca’s vaccine, J&J’s relies upon a genetic engineered vector of a human adenovirus which infects our cells and then delivers the engineered blueprint it is carrying. The company plans to manufacture more than 1 billion doses for global distribution to almost a seventh of the world’s population.
Finally, there is Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine that is based on mRNA technology, a trick of genetic engineering with lipid nanoparticles (LNP) that when injected turns our bodies into their own vaccine manufacturing factories. There seems to be more secrecy behind this company over the others. Moderna managed to get past the hurdle of animal testing and leap right into human clinical trials. However, according to a preliminary article in the New England Journal of Medicine, 80 percent of the participants in the moderate and high dose trial groups reported moderate to severe adverse reactions. If we take a look at Moderna’s Form S-1 Registration submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission we discover:
“[T]here can be no assurance that our LNPs [lipid nanoparticles] will not have undesired effects. Our LNPs could contribute, in whole or in part, to one or more of the following: immune reactions, infusion reactions, complement reactions, opsonation reactions, antibody reactions . . . or reactions to the PEG [a synthetic vaccine ingredient]… Certain aspects of our investigational medicines may induce immune reactions from either the mRNA or the lipid as well as adverse reactions within liver pathways or degradation of the mRNA or the LNP, any of which could lead to significant adverse events in one or more of our clinical trials.”
This Form S-1 was filed back in November 2019 and therefore serious risks of mRNA vaccines have been well known for a sufficient length of time to elicit grave caution.
All three of these companies’ Covid-19 vaccines are now included in Trump’s Operation Warp Speed. Bill Gates, who is heavily invested in all of these vaccines, is eager to profit over their future prospects. “We need to make billions of doses,” Gates wrote on his blog page, “we need to get them out to every part of the world, and we need all of this to happen as quickly as possible.” We might add: and, damn the regulations and high safety standards that could hinder us.
And one final warning. Don’t count upon the mainstream media to educate you about any of this. In the event you or a loved one is injured or contracts a life-long autoimmune illness from one of these new Covid-19 vaccines, lower your hopes and expectations that you will be rewarded, if at all, with adequate compensation for damages. As a consequence of Reagan’s 1986 National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, the drug companies – and make no mistake, vaccines are also drugs – were left off the hook from any legal liability due to vaccine-related injuries and deaths. Don’t rely upon our word. This is recently from the media darling of the pharmaceutical dynasty, the Wall Street Journal, in its article “People Harmed by Coronavirus Vaccines Will Have Little Recourse,”
“The U.S. government paid out $4.4 billion over more than 30 years covering injuries relating to a host of vaccines—from flu to polio—but payouts for potential injuries from Covid-19 vaccines will be covered by a far less-generous program. Covid-19 vaccine injuries will be covered under a program known as the “countermeasures injury” compensation fund… The new fund has a tougher threshold for proving a relationship between an injury and the vaccine, experts say. The newer fund has a shorter statute of limitations, no avenue for appeals and doesn’t pay damages for pain or suffering like the older vaccine program does.”
The Journal article continues with reporting on the aggressive efforts underway by the vaccine companies to secure additional protection from personal liability due to vaccine injuries. In other words, they are preparing for a worse case scenario.
Do you have a fuller picture now of the larger stakes behind national governments’ hasty release of a Covid-19 vaccine? Now ask yourself why a more open and public discussion is not being conducted to address the evidence for these very legitimate concerns and fears. The warnings stated herein warrant a rise in vaccine hesitancy and opposition across the public landscape. The conspiracy theorists are not the parents caring for neurologically damaged children for the remainder of their lives. The real denialists are those in the mainstream media who are too lazy, biased or lack a moral conscience to perform proper due diligence and mine the scientific literature for answers. Do yourself a favor. Simply don’t listen to them.
And when Gates, Fauci, Trump, Biden or any state governor begin talking about the “awesome” promises of a Covid-19 vaccine or its mandate, turn off your television or computer screen. These people are only the profiteers protecting the vaccine makers and in the event of vaccine injuries we are just collateral damage in the “War Against Corona”.
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Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null co-direct Progressive Radio Network. They are frequent contributor to Global Research.
In July 2017, two journalists working for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Dan Oakes and Sam Clark,wrote of a stash of incriminating documents, running into hundreds of pages. They were “secret defence force documents leaked to the ABC”. These documents gave “an unprecedented insight into the clandestine operations in Australia’s elite special forces in Afghanistan, including incidents of troops killing unarmed men and children.”
In exposing these depravities of invasion, adventurism and war, the devotees of secrecy got busy. Bureaucrats chatted; investigations commenced. On June 5, 2019, officers of the Australian Federal Police raided the Sydney offices of the ABC. It was a busy time for the police; Annika Smethurst of News Corp was also the subject of a warrant, having written about discussions about a proposed enlargement of surveillance powers already possessed by the Australian Signals Directorate. Both warrants had been executed pursuant to alleged breaches of official secrecy under the old version of the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth). Legal affairs editor of The Australian, Chris Merritt was alarmed enough to write of a less than brave new world. “Welcome to modern Australia – a nation where police raid journalists in order to track down and punish the exposure of leaks inside the federal government”.
Both warrants were subsequently challenged. The returns for journalism were mixed. In the case of the ABC, they were abominable. In February, the Federal Court Justice Wendy Abraham dismissed the effort by the broadcaster to impeach the warrant. She found the warrant validly drafted and sufficiency clear. Justice Abraham also affirmed that the implied constitutional right to communicate on political subjects was not a personal, enforceable one, merely a restraint on state power. “[T]he notion of speech as an affirmative value has no role to play.”
This formulation of Australian law, miraculously extracted from the worn teeth of the Australian constitution, is designed to render any such rights inoffensive and benign, lest the citizenry get uppity with such ideas as free speech. This state of affairs ought to encourage a move towards a bill or charter of rights, but Australia’s politicians will have none of it. Constitutionally enshrined rights would only inhibit the powers of parliament and frustrate the ever abstract sovereign will.
Smethurst had better luck in invalidating the search warrant on April 15. But the judges of the High Court found against the police the way a teacher might against an essay from a student prone to poor grammar. The warrant in question failed “to identify any offence under section 79(3)[of the Crimes Act]” and significantly misstated “the nature of an offence arising under it.” In short, go back to class and mind your punctuation before searching the homes and workplaces of journalists. The ill-gotten gains of the police – material taken from the Smethurst’s home – could still be kept, guaranteeing her a run of sleepless nights.
The AFP subsequently confirmed that a brief of evidence had been submitted to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDDP), the result of the July 11, 2017 referral received from the Chief of the Defence Force and then acting-secretary of defence. It recommended that charges be made, though only against Oakes.
With Oakes facing a gloomy prospect of being charged, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security released its report on “the impact of the exercise of law enforcement and intelligence powers on the freedom of the press.” The report, with its 16 recommendations, was predictably weak and timorous. At times, it reads like a cosy overview of how government institutions in the country truly appreciate the role of a free press. There are merry references to Australia’s vibrant democracy. It notes such fairly meaningless improvements as the Attorney General’s direction of September 19, 2019 that his consent would be required were the CDPP to initiate prosecutions against journalists.
The power to issue warrants against journalists was barely challenged. At most was a qualifying recommendation that the role of the Public Interest Advocate be expanded. This creature was already an oddity, given the secretive nature of the office. We know little about the credentials of those who occupy the office, nor its actual workings. The committee suggests a more active role for the advocate in dealing with warrant applications against journalists and media investigations concerning breaches of government secrecy. “The PIA must represent the interests of the principles of public interest journalism, and be authorised to request information to clarify elements of the warrant application provided by ASIO or an enforcement agency to enable the case to be built in their submission.” The monstrous chink in this already perforated armour is that that the PIA is wholly dependent on the evidence and claims of the government agency. The balancing act ceases to be credible.
With this less than comforting backdrop, it was confirmed on October 15 that the CDDP would not be taking the matter up against Oakes. According to a statement from the AFP, “In determining whether the matter should be prosecuted, the CDPP considered a range of public interest factors, including the role of public interest journalism in Australia’s democracy.” Having applied its own version of a “public interest” test (all government agencies seem to be doing so these days), the prosecutor found no reason to pursue the case despite believing that there was a “reasonable chance” of securing a conviction on three criminal charges.
As with such prosecutions, the public interest is a weapon twisted not in the name of the public’s interest, whose ignorance must be assured, but in the name of the state’s interest, ever reliant upon secrecy. To that end, “The CDPP determined the public interest does not require a prosecution in the particular circumstances of the case.”
The conclusion of the case against Oakes can only be troubling. The CDPP preferred waving the wand of deterrence just in case other journalists might wish to engage in the same practice. After all, there was a “reasonable” chance of securing a successful conviction. Clark, while welcoming the decision, claimed that “the matter should never have gone this far.”
As with the dangerous US Department of Justice indictment against WikiLeaks publisher and Australian national Julian Assange, the very fact of its existence is, in itself, threatening. It is a roaring threat, a promise that publishing national security information that reveals the dark side of state power will be pursued, and, importantly, can be pursued.
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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]
There is considerable speculation in Washington about a so-called October Surprise being engineered by either party to change the outcome of the upcoming election. The original October Surprise took place in 1980, when Ronald Reagan’s campaign manager William Casey conspired with several senior CIA officers in Europe to convince the Iranian government to delay the release of the American Embassy hostages until after the November election against Jimmy Carter. Casey believed that any earlier release of the hostages would give a boost to the Carter campaign. The Iranian government was approached and complied with the request, believing that it would result in a less hostile relationship with the new administration. In the event, Reagan defeated Carter and some believed that the continuation of the hostage crisis had made the administration look feckless and hurt the incumbent.
The latest version of the October Surprise relates inevitably to the recent bout of President Donald Trump with COVID-19, which some “conspiracy theorists” are attributing to his having been deliberately infected by the Democrats to take him out of the race. There is no evidence to support such a claim and it is not even clear exactly how one would go about getting access to the president and introducing the virus.
Another recent version of the Surprise involves starting a little war to demonstrate national resolve and willingness to directly confront America’s enemies. It has been suggested that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo might be considering staging some kind of provocation or even a false flag operation that would result in open conflict with Iran or even Syria with the U.S. arguing that the fighting is both lawful and defensive in nature. Such as suggestion might be considered insanity, but there are signs that the U.S. in heightening its delegitimization campaign against Iran in particular. Unconfirmable allegations from anonymous U.S. government sources are surfacing about an alleged Iranian plot to kill the U.S. Ambassador in South Africa while Washington is now implementing new unilateral sanctions against Tehran as well as Damascus. The downside that suggests that starting something with Iran might be a bridge too far is the considerable ability of the Mullahs to strike back against U.S. forces in the region. Venezuela might be considered a much softer target, where the U.S. also has sanctions and a naval blockade in place.
But also given the fact that Trump’s taxes and Hunter Biden’s illegal meanderings in Eastern Europe have failed to arouse much public anger, perhaps the most interesting option for staging an October Surprise is already out on the table as it were and has been alluded to by a number of Republican politicians as well as by some of the punditry in the conservative media. It consists of a declassified letter sent to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) by Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe. DNI Ratcliffe was responding to Graham’s request for an intelligence community overview of the FBI’s handling of Crossfire Hurricane. Crossfire Hurricane was the cover name given to what has turned out to be a possible Hillary Clinton initiated FBI-run largely clandestine defamation campaign directed against Trump and all his associates that may have been launched formally in July 2016.
In the letter, DNI Ratcliffe provided the following declassified information to the Senate committee for its consideration. The letter was received by Graham on September 29, the same day as the first presidential debate. The key points are:
“In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee. The IC does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.
“According to his handwritten notes, former Central Intelligence Agency Director Brennan subsequently briefed President Obama and other senior national security officials on the intelligence, including the ‘alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.’”
“On 07 September 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding ‘U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server.’”
Noting the fact that the Bureau did not aggressively follow-up on the claims regarding Clinton, who was expected to win the election, Graham subsequently commented on the letter, saying “This latest information provided by DNI Ratcliffe shows there may have been a double standard by the FBI regarding allegations against the Clinton campaign and Russia. Whether these allegations are accurate is not the question. The question is, did the FBI investigate the allegations against Clinton like they did Trump? If not, why not? If so, what was the scope of the investigation? If none, why was that?”
The Ratcliffe letter was followed by a committee review of the confidential information that supported the claims made in the letter. On the following day, the committee questioned former head of the FBI James Comey who implausibly claimed that Crossfire Hurricane “didn’t ring a bell,” before asserting that his bureau “did not intentionally commit wrongdoing” though there may have been some “real sloppiness” on the part of some FBI employees.
An angry Donald Trump subsequently ordered that all the documents relating to the Russiagate investigation be declassified, but neither the CIA nor the FBI appears to be in any hurry to comply, so there are unlikely to be any new revelations before the election.
So the real smoking pistol that might have turned into an October Surprise may have been the expectation on the part of some Senate Republicans that the story about Hillary Clinton personally initiating an illegal conspiracy involving the FBI and intelligence community to destroy a political rival would take off politically. As President Barack Obama reportedly was briefed on what was taking place and signed off on it, it is plausible that Biden as Vice President was also in the loop. That might have been enough to turn voters against Joe Biden and the party that he represents.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on one’s point of view, the U.S. media has not taken the bait. The tale revealed by the Ratcliffe-Graham letter was hardly replayed in the mainstream and there were few in the public space who stridently demanded that Hillary Clinton publicly face the consequences for her illegal and one might even suggest treasonous actions. Hatred of Trump in the media seemingly cancels out all other considerations, particularly when it is the Democrats who are behaving badly.
And now time is running out. If either party has an October Surprise up its sleeve it had better produce it soon. Only about three weeks to go until the election.
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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org,address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Thousands of US soldiers continue to pace and patrol exactly the same routes as their predecessors did in 2001, fighting a seemingly endless conflict that both the American and Afghan public have long since soured on.
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Nineteen years ago last week the United States invaded Afghanistan, a country halfway around the world that few in America had heard of and even fewer knew anything about. Today, thousands of U.S. soldiers and many more private military contractors continue to pace and patrol exactly the same routes as their predecessors did in 2001, fighting a seemingly endless and pointless conflict that both the American and Afghan public have long since soured on.
One example of this is Master Sgt. Trevor deBoer, deployed to the country three times with the 20th Special Forces Group.
“When we started this, people asked why I was going, and my response was, ‘So my sons don’t have to fight this war,’” deBoer told military news site Stars and Stripes.
But, ironically for deBoer, Afghanistan is exactly where his son, Spc. Payton Sluss ended up, metaphorically and literally walking in his footsteps. “My feet were walking the same land you were,” Sluss said to his father. This father-son dynamic is not as unique as one might expect; Stars and Stripes also profiled a number of other parents and children in the same situation.
The story was another case of life imitating art, as it bore an eerie resemblance to a three-year-old article in the satire outlet The Onion, called “Soldier Excited To Take Over Father’s Old Afghanistan Patrol Route.” In it, a fictional interviewee claims that “It’s just so incredible that I’ll soon be walking the very same footpath as my old man, securing the perimeter of Camp Chapman in Khost Province just like he did so many years ago,” expressing his pride in taking flak from the same angry rebel groups and dodging IEDs on the same deserted roads. But reality is increasingly driving satirists out of a job these days.
A new poll found that Americans are extremely weary of the conflict and want it to come to an end as soon as possible. Nearly 62 percent of the country backed a peace agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban signed in February, with the number of respondents who want to keep troops in Afghanistan until “all enemies have been defeated” dropping from 30 percent in 2019 to just 15 percent today. The poll also found that Americans want a decrease in foreign interventions and military presence around the world. About twice as many favor cutting the military budget than increasing it.
President Trump appeared to be on the verge of pulling out of Afghanistan for good in the summer and was in negotiations for a peace deal. However, anonymous intelligence officials leaked stories to The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal alleging that Russia, and later Iran, were paying off the Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers, causing a media storm that was used as the basis to postpone the withdrawal. Trump is now claiming only that U.S. troops “should” be out by Christmas.
A costly humanitarian war
The United States and its allies quickly invaded Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, citing the Taliban’s refusal to hand over chief suspect Osama Bin Laden. Yet the Taliban were, in fact, willing to negotiate through neutral third parties, but were not given the chance. Bin Laden was captured and killed in 2011 — over nine years ago — yet the United States has still not left the country. The Trump administration has even ramped up the war, dropping the “Mother of All Bombs” — the largest non-nuclear explosion in world history — in 2017. Between January and October of 2018, it dropped 5,982 more bombs, the highest number in over a decade.
The humanitarian cost of the war is debated, with little agreement about the scale of the violence perpetrated against Afghanistan’s people. What is not in doubt is the attitude of Afghans. A poll published last year found that zero percent of respondents described themselves as “thriving,” and 85 percent described their situation as “suffering.” Less than half the country said they experienced any enjoyment in the previous day, while 52 percent admitted to constantly worrying. The $2 trillion conflict has much to do with it.
The war has a serious effect on American lives too, and not just those of the military. The state of Oregon, for instance, was not able to effectively tackle this summer’s record-breaking wildfires because their firefighting helicopters had been requisitioned by the Department of Defense and sent to Afghanistan to continue bombing the country. Over 1 million acres of Oregonian land was destroyed, and eleven people were killed as a result. Continuing to send fathers and sons off to fight in foreign lands will mean fewer resources at home.
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Public Citizen today filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to compel disclosure of coronavirus vaccine development and manufacturing contracts with major pharmaceutical corporations worth billions of dollars.
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, challenges HHS’s withholding of records requested by Public Citizen under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) related to Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s initiative to accelerate the development of COVID-19 treatments and vaccines.
Operation Warp Speed, which is co-led by HHS, has given more than $10 billion to pharmaceutical corporations. The terms of these contracts remain secret. Public Citizen first requested Operation Warp Speed’s contracts with AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Pfizer and Regeneron, among others, in May 2020. The contracts could shed light on critical questions like:
Will pharmaceutical corporations be required to set a reasonable price for their products, or will they be free to profiteer despite the public’s massive investment?
Will taxpayer-funded technology be held as corporate secrets, or can the U.S. government share technology with the World Health Organization to advance scientific research, accelerate manufacturing and more quickly end the global pandemic?
What rights does the U.S. government maintain in the factories it is helping build?
“The success, failure and terms of Warp Speed projects may determine when and under what conditions people living in the U.S. receive a safe and effective vaccine,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program. “Taxpayers deserve to know what they are getting in return for their billions of dollars in investments. Health experts should be able to assess whether our government is doing everything possible to end the pandemic.”
Earlier this year, Public Citizen worked with the group Knowledge Ecology International to demand that HHS enforce its disclosure requirements for a pharmaceutical corporation developing a COVID-19 vaccine. At that time, a leader of Operation Warp Speed responded:
“The trust of the American people is vital in the all-of-America response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In recognizing this important relationship, the leadership of… Operation Warp Speed [is] committed to remaining transparent with the American people.”
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The top 50 think tanks in America, as ranked by the University of Pennsylvania’s Go To Think Tank Index, received over $1 billion from U.S. government and defense contractors. The top recipients of this funding were the RAND Corporation, the Center for a New American Security, and the New America Foundation, according to analysis by the Center for International Policy.
Donations to these think tanks came from 68 different U.S. government and defense contractor sources, under at least 600 separate donations. The top five defense contractor donors to U.S. think tanks were Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martina and Air Bus.
The Top 10 Think Tanks by Amount Received from U.S. Government and Defense Contractors
Top think tank funders from within the U.S. government include the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Air Force, the Army, the Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department. The defense contractors that forked over the most to think tanks were Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Airbus.
The RAND Corporation alone received over $1 billion between 2014-2019, accounting for approximately 95 percent of its funding that the report tracked. Nearly all the money came from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ($110 million,) the U.S. Army (over $245 million,) and the U.S. Air Force (over ($281 million.)
CNAS, the second highest recipient, received $9 million from U.S. government and defense contractors, including Northrop Grumman, Boeing and the Department of Defense.
The third highest receiver of U.S. government and defense contractor funding, the Atlantic Council, received nearly $8.7 million from defense contractors like Saab, Airbus, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and United Technologies.
The amounts estimated are conservative, due to the fact that most think tanks do not disclose funders or the amount of funding received, or that the amounts are listed in wide ranged (such as $25,000 to $100,000.) Therefore the amounts listed in the report are a floor, not a ceiling, for the amount of money that the top 50 think tanks received from U.S. government and defense contractors. The report also relies on investigative reporting, as well as publicly available information from the think tanks, and their funders.
“Think tanks should be required, by law, to publicly disclose their funders,” said Ben Freeman. “There were widely varying levels of transparency about funding sources at America’s top think tanks, ranging from full disclosure of all funders and exact amounts donated, to think tanks that disclose absolutely no information about funders.”
The Top 5 U.S. Government Donors to U.S. Think Tanks
“Think tank experts testify before Congress and, in some cases, literally write laws. The very least they can do is be fully transparent about who is funding them,” said Ben Freeman in an interview with The American Conservative. “Taxpayers have a right to know if that expert they hear advocating for more Pentagon spending is being paid by the Pentagon. If the funding isn’t influencing their work, then they should have no problem disclosing their funders.”
Disclosure matters because journalists rely on think tanks to provide supposedly non-biased experts to weigh in on complicated policy matters. These think tank experts are frequently hosted on TV panels on CNN or Fox News, or are seen penning op-eds in newspapers or heard on the airwaves of National Public Radio (NPR.)
Think tank experts also frequently appear and give testimony in Congressional hearings, a setting where transparency is of primary importance.
Think tanks contribute to the Washington ecosystem in a variety of ways: while their writers and influence-peddlers appear as experts on news shows and pen op-eds, they also conduct in-depth research on policy, help draft legislation, and write talking points, memos and Congressional scorecards. Think tanks provide a home for legislative experts when their party or views are out of favor, allowing them to cool their heels and collect a paycheck until an administration of another color regains power. Think tanks are also homes for former and future government officials: they employ former senators, representatives, executive branch officials, and their staff. The Brookings Institution is headed by retired four-star General John Allen and they employ two former Chairs of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke, among over 300 experts.
After serving as Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton, John Podesta founded possibly the most prominent liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., the Center for American Progress (CAP.) CAP works closely with Democratic members of Congress and presidential candidates, and previously with the Obama administration, and plays many of the same roles as the Heritage Foundation does for the right. Podesta even served as Chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Opaque think tank funding damages the neutrality of U.S. news reporting and the expert analysis lawmakers lean on for policy and legislative advice. Think tank experts are often held up as paragons of non-biased, expert analysis. Imagine how your perspective as a reader would change if you knew that the writer or panelist advocating for increased military security aid to Turkey was receiving their salary from a think tank that receives several million dollars from multiple defense contractors that sell weapons to Turkey.
As I pointed out in my previous article for TAC, think-tanker Brenda Shaffer now writes on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict for the think tank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, without disclosing that she had been an adviser to Azerbaijan’s state-run oil company. Shaffer is FDD’s senior advisor for energy, so the public should know who’s paying her bills.
While think tanks protest that their work is independent of the funding they receive, that view is “naive, to say the least,” writes Freeman. “Most funding comes with explicit strings attached, like writing research reports or hosting public events about specific topics. While the public may or may not agree with funders’ objectives, these funders nevertheless place explicit or implicit constraints on what a think tank can and cannot do.”
One way this works is that an organization that promotes beliefs at odds with a prominent funder will quickly lose that donor’s funding.
“Funders directing what think tanks do is an obvious form of influence, but funders can also wield considerable power by paying for what think tanks don’t do,” writes Freeman. “In fact, one of the most valuable commodities funders buy is a think tank’s silence.”
There’s an easy fix Congress could implement that would end this problem, exposing think tanks and their experts’ conflicts of interest. The government should require that think tanks publicly disclose their funding, say the study’s authors. It’s not a difficult fix to implement, since many think tanks already disclose some of their funding, and all report donor data to the IRS.
“If think tanks are truly maintaining their intellectual independence from funding sources as many told us they were, they’ll be able to prove it when there is full transparency of their funding sources,” writes Freeman.
“When people talk about ‘the Blob’ it’s important to remember that it’s a self-sustaining ecosystem–the Pentagon and contractors dole out millions of dollars to think tanks every year, and those think tanks in turn make the case for more Pentagon funding. Rinse and repeat year after year after year,” said Freeman to TAC.
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Barbara Boland is TAC’s foreign policy and national security reporter. Previously, she worked as an editor for the Washington Examiner and for CNS News. She is the author of Patton Uncovered, a book about General George Patton in World War II, and her work has appeared on Fox News, The Hill, UK Spectator, and elsewhere. Boland is a graduate from Immaculata University in Pennsylvania. Follow her on Twitter @BBatDC.
However beautiful an art piece might be, or however delicious the food could serve the gourmet, people never stopped to change their taste on things. It is because the human’s nerves tend to gain fatigue easily when focusing on the same thing too long. Just as if you stared at certain color without blinking your eyes for half hour or so, you would feel the color having lost its attraction, or even having changed to its original hue to something different. Perhaps that explains part of the reason that all art forms have been constantly developing their new styles. Other reasons could be that the economic, social and political change of the society led to different life style and the demand for new art.
When most people were still enjoying the classical Chinese figure painting style which had prevailed in Tang dynasty, there appeared a Madman Liang Kai in Song dynasty who left his official post as an painter-in-attendance from the court and went to become a Buddhism monk. He was the first well-known artist to paint people with broad brush strokes while applying the techniques of splattering ink on paper which was usually applied on modern Chinese painting, and created distinctly different style of figure painting, such as his Celestial Man andLi Bai Reciting a Poem(see volume 1 of Chinese Painting – a Showcase to Chinese Culture). Even though Liang was not regarded as the father of modern art in China, he did make a corner stone in Chinese painting art. It was not until the late Ming dynasty that a revolutionary figure in Chinese art history, Xu Wei (1521-1593 AD) founded the genre of modern art and was worshipped as the father of modern art by numerous followers and modern art practisers, such as masters Zhu Da (1626 – 1705 AD) and Shi Tao (1642 – 1707 AD) from the early Qing Dynasty. The important figure from Beijing painting style such as Qi Baishi (1864 – 1957AD) was a great admirer of Xu and Zhu, and undoubtedly a devoted disciple to those precedent masters. Their work all featured with very expressive brush strokes and vivid figure, and usually with beautiful poems.
Just like the western modern art, Chinese modern art came to paint a lot of ordinary people and scenes of daily life, and used distinct brush strokes. During the Tang or Jin Dynasty, the celebrated artists are court painters or government officials, such as Gu Kaizhi (344 – 406 AD), Yan Liben(600 – 673 AD) and Zhou Fang(730 – 800 AD) who painted mostly figures from mythologies, emperors and court ladies, with dedicated coloring and detailed depiction of forms, a style for the taste of the royal family, or high-rank officials, or rich people. Liang was brave enough tobreak that rule of traditional figure painting. And the masters in Ming dynasty made the Free-hand painting style in figures, landscape and birds or flowers a very popular practice, which is opposite to the style of Tang’s court painting that is called Gongbi painting style. Xu Wei made a giant stride in the course of development of Chinese painting, and made painting such a approachable media to freely express the inner spirit and emotions of the painters, which used a lot of calligraphic strokes in the painting and directly added poems to the image of the work. When we see the image, one can feel the poem; while we read the poem, one can vision the image, such as his work The Grape and Chrysanthemum, which have been introduced in the volume one of this book.
We may see that there are some similarities among those painters mentioned above. Liang Kai went to become a Buddhism monk after his political career from government, while Zhu Da and Shi Tao (whose original family name was also Zhu) were both offspring of the royal family from Ming dynasty and retreated from the mundane world to become the Buddhism monk after the Man People conquered the Ming emperor and built the Qing Empire. Xu Wei was never successful in his pursuit of career in government, and was even thrown into the jail for some reason. He tried writing drama also, but painting made him one of the greatest artists in Chinese history. So all those artists were not happywith their life. The loss of their home country or the huge failure in their career associated with the great disappointment at the old dynasty and resistance to the new authority made them feel estranged from the current society. With angers and frustration growing inside and pushing them to find out a way to let out, of course, emotional display on their work would be a reasonable solution for a painting artist. Thus, maneuvering the ink and varying the brush strokes just came so naturally to them. So for Chinese modern artist, they didn’t start to search for the new techniques before they had that desire to express their inner emotions.
It seemed a different story for the pioneer of Post-impressionism painting master Paul Cezanne (1839-1906 AD), equally as the father of modern art in western painting. As western painting artists took techniques as a very important part of their artisanship, just as they could be bored with the old painting subject, they never gave up trying new techniques to fine tone their work. Cezanne applied distinct lines in his painting, which was usually avoided in the classical realism painting due to the requirement for a illusionary realistic look of the image, which is usually accomplished by using the shade and light to create a volume-like body of the object and depth of the space. The application of strong lines for images make it look less realistic, however, it greatly influenced the work of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973 AD), the founder of Cubism. Cezanne also innovated the short-brush stroke for an effect of shimmering light in the painting, by juxtaposing the dots of different colors of light or dark artistically to reflect the light which led to the creation of new style of Pointillism. I am afraid we have to credit all these to this talented painting master to make him worthy of the title as the father of western modern art.
Zhu Da and Shi Tao lived a estranged life in their late time, trying to void the harassment and persecution of the new government, during which ordeal they found their inspiration of painting. The Post-impressionist Gauguin(1848 – 1903 AD) went to search for new painting subject in Tihiti, a distant island from main-stream civilization of Europe. Cezanne hid himself for art creation while experimenting with new painting techniques in southern France, while Van Gogh (1853 – 1890 AD) lived a isolated life in Arles and produced some later to become the master pieces of post-impressionism. Van Gogh applied many strong colored lines in his work, to create a style of painting with vibrant colors, a contrast to his destitute life situation, maybe a comfort to his constant depression.
Zhu Da painted most work of flowers, or birds with funny looks anddesolate landscape. He was a great master in maneuvering the ink by producing different shades of ink with one brush stroke. In those shades, the volume is indicated, even may not clearly shown strictly to the standard of classical realism; accordingly, without real colors in painting, but we can tell “colorful” hues in the painting. This is the feature of Chinese modern art at its beginning stage, minimal application of colors, less endeaveur to focus on the resemblance of the object, however, enough to satisfy the need of the painters, luckily with no interruption of extra labour to intervene his flow of artist input, in addition, with poems added to further express the spirit and thoughts of the master, aesthetic value is enhanced to the work. In Chinese poems, there are no well-defined concepts, but artistic conceptions. So the enormous room for imagination, the expressive brush strokes carried with strongemotions, the symbolic image together with the connotations beyond the words of poem, all bring up a sensational feeling of beauty to the viewers. The beauty might come after that saddest feeling delivered by the painter, combined with a refreshing feeling prompted by the painter’s intuition from practicing the new belief in Buddhism, and thus made it the most impressive one. To the painter himself, the completion of the creation of the work would bring great comfort to his wounded soul, and lead to a complete relaxation after pouring out all the restrained emotions and thoughts, and a feeling to transcend theexperience of his life, as well as that of producing the art under the spiritual guidance of the new belief. Consequently, a great pleasure and self-content that is more meaningful and lasting than one received material wealth or achieved career success. That is the pleasure only associated with beauty, and nothing else.
When it came to middle or late Qing Dynasty, with Shanghai becoming the international port for business and a major city exposed to foreign culture and art influence, colors took its important role in Chinese free-hand brush painting style, especially in Bird and Flower genre. Among those painters, Wu Changshuo was a successful example. The peony painted by him gave a very rich color look and were favoured by many trades of people. This is the Shanghai School of painting, an art for all class of people, a genre to paint different subjects of every day life. Until now, the Chinese painting has come down to the door of general people from the wall of temples, the palace of the royals, and the study of the Confucianism scholars. Paintings had become part of the business, started to show up in the commercial galleries and business shops. Those painting works fed the taste of ordinary people, whether theywere well-educated or not, whether they were seniors or young people.
To some degree, Chinese literati painting had the feature ofimpressionism style, such as distinct brush strokes for the outline of the image, not focusing on the resemblance of the object, inclined to paint real people from their life. Quite some Chinese landscape paintings, as well as bird and flower genre even present a great deal of abstractionism element in their work, such as the Six Gentlemen by the master Ni Zan(1301-1374AD) from Yuan dynasty, and the Bamboo and Rock by Zheng Xie(1693-1765AD) from Qing dynasty, or the Orchard by Zheng Sixiao of song dynasty. Coincidently, the abstractionism goes together with symbolism quite often, as displayed on those painting works mentioned above. Orchard is a symbol of purity and integrity, and bamboo is the upright one with unbending character. Both are the so-called Junzi (gentleman) by Chinese painters, and bear the noble characters in Chinese culture (details also refer to Part 1, Si Junzi – FourGentlemen of volume 1 of this book).
Chineseliterati’s painting is a very unique art genre among all two-dimensional art forms. It was first started by Wang Wei (701- 761 AD), a poet and painter from Tang dynasty, then officially became a genre in Song dynasty, and reached its peak in Ming dynasty. All the practisers had to be the scholars in order to have that particular taste. Literati’s painting should be simple and pure but not plain and vague, elegant but not too fancy, concise but not superficial, primitive but notdull. The person was not only required to be very well educated in Chinese philosophies such as Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism and so on, but also to be very sophisticated in painting brush work and composition. You have to know the Buddhism to understand that particular meaning of being simple and pure, or the Daoism to know how to be primitive and concise, and to learn the Confucianism to grasp the essence of being elegant.
Being elegant here may take more endeavour to dig into its original meaning here. In Chinese figure paintings, there are some commonly used brush strokes, such as the silk-line brush stroke created by Gu Kaizhi (344 – 406 AD), the iron-line brush stroke by Yanli Ben (600 – 673 AD), the willow-leaf brush stroke created by Wu Daozi(680 – 760 AD). Wu was regarded as a “saint of painting” in Chinese history, however, his brush stroke was sneered at by the classical literati’s painters, and thus he was expelled from that painting genre, because they felt that the willow-leaf brush stroke didn’t satisfy that requirement of being elegant, not as smooth as silk-line, neither as stern as iron – line. There was something deliberately maneuvered in that brush stroke, in order to enrich the painting language, which was not encouraged in traditional literati’s painting, even though it might enhance his individual style and charmthe crowd. Shi Tao was an great renovator in brush stroke also, he usedvery bold impressionist brush stroke and smart washes in his painting and earned him the fame of being one of greatest Chinese modern artist. However, he was accepted by some orthodox art critics as a successful innovator in literati’s painting and was highly regarded by them. One has to carefully study their painting works before they came to understand all that subtlety.
To achieving the effect of being pure and simple, one had to be an excellent brush work master, to immerge himself into the nature and follow its rules, and enable him to produce the image that would look as natural as it is. However, it didn’t mean to achieve the exact likeness here, but that the image in painting should immediately remind you of the real thing in nature, but anything else, and make you forget that it was nothing but a painting. Because the spirit of the object reflected from the image would immediately catch your attention, and make you neglect all the techniques.
That type of work can only be accomplished when the painter’s brush work has reached a highly sophisticated level and was led by the nature itself, instead of by the painter’s hand. Also the painter has to have very thorough knowledge of the object, from its appearance to its inner characters, and can call them out anytime during the process of hisartistic creation. For example, when one paints a pine tree, he should already have its image in his mind before he takes the brush, then he may take a deep breath to vision the spirit of the pine tree. This vision is greatly influenced by his mindset of that moment. As we all know the pine is an evergreen plant that can live for many years, as well stand the cold winter and get even greener in snowy season. So pine is a symbol for longevity, vitality and perseverance in Chinese culture, however, which character the painter was going to display in his work mainly depends on his current mood, the thoughts propelled by that defined circumstance and his own stories. Some painter might be inclined to express the longevity and vitality of the pine, especially when he put it together with the cranes in the same painting, while other painters might like to expression the perseverance of the pine, to show theirformidable strength and unbendable integrity. Different visions of those characters in the painter might affect the brush language and bring up different expressions to the image and make its display not the same.
However, the traditional literati painting finally retreated from art battle field after centuries of glorious history when the Qing dynasty was overthrown and replaced by the Republic of China in year 1911. Then the following New Culture Revolution launched by some intellectuals who had studied abroad gave it a deadly blow by completely negating theConfucianism who had dominated the ideology of China for about two thousand years. Lingnan School of painting appeared at this time of break-point between new culture and traditional Chinese culture. It was a school created by Gao Jianfu( 1879 – 1951 AD) and his friend Chen Shuren. Gao first took training in traditional Chinese paintings, then went to Japan for an exchange in art, and brought some fresh ideas and techniques of western painting back to China, since Japan had been one of pioneers to learn from advanced western European countries. Then, Xu Beihong (1895 – 1953 AD) who studied painting in France came back China to teach western painting as a professor in Art Academies in Beijing. Xu was also regarded as a member of the Lingnan painting school. This school was well-known for its effort to incorporate western painting techniques into traditional Chinese painting. Gao’s painting keptthe freehand brush work for its expressiveness and spontaneity, while applied the realism drawing and painting techniques to make the image look more real. There was also inscription and seal applied in the painting, so, maybe it could be taken as the new scholar painting with new ideas and new techniques, to be differentiated from the ones without inscription, which are solely focused on the fine depiction of the work and mainly for the taste of the image itself. Xu painted both oil painting and Chinese painting, and was so good at painting horses in Chinese freehand brush style that he was mostly known for his horse painting among Chinese people, perhaps some of them don’t even know that he was also good at oil painting.
The New Culture Revolution started in year 1915 of last century, soon after the end of Qing dynasty, the last one of Chinese feudal empires. Most leaders of the revolution had studied abroad, who were strongly against the Chinese traditional culture without reservation, and enthusiastically welcomed the western culture without hesitation. (Politics could be involved in the situation to certain degree). Luckily, the Chinese brush and ink were still kept, to make the Chinese calligraphy and painting practice still possible. It was not that Chinese traditional paintings are not beautiful, but because after over a thousand years of facing the images produced by the same set of tools had created the sensational fatigue to the appreciators’ eye. I had tried to show some Chinese master pieces of antique time to people of various nationality who all responded that they were elegant, still they could feel more attached to the type of art produced by their own people, due to theculture habit – a habitual way of thinking under the strong and long-time influence of certain culture.
The interesting thing is that the western modern art were in its feverous renovation around the same period. After the style of new realism, newclassism, there appeared fauvism, impressionism, post-impressionism, expressionism, cubism, futurism, abstractionism, Dadaism, Surrealism, and so on. It was also not that the paintings from the renaissance period were not attractive enough, the smile of Mona Lisa by da Vinci was possibly able to catch the soul of all people in the world, but the artists’ sensitivity made them always restless in searching and trying new things.
According to the official record, among those modern western masters, Picasso was probably the one who had visited China and highly regarded Chinese painting by saying that the true art was in China. Whether the comment was reasonable or not, it did say a fact, that the western modern art renovation had got influence from Chinese art, the painting or the calligraphy. Just from the distinct brush lines they applied whether in post-impressionism style, the cubism, or the abstractionism, they can’tdeny this truth. Some may argue that those masters didn’t borrow those elements directly from China, but from the Japanese art such as Ukiyoe, which could be true. Picasso himself just had a great collection of Japanese Ukiyoe art at home. The same case applied to some other modern artist. The thing is that Chinese neighbour Japanese might also like Chinese art and it was quite usual for neighbours to borrow from each other. We just need to see where the root is from. As a matter of fact, those impressionist, or cubists also learned from the primitive art in Africa and the Oceanian culture and then influenced the later artists.
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Unlike fellow former Soviet Republics Belarus and even neighboring Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan’s latest elections didn’t result in any turmoil even though one might have expected it to have due to some similarly discernible risk factors, but that wasn’t the case (at least not yet) for five primary reasons.
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Tajikistan’s latest elections came and went without any turmoil unlike the recent ones in fellow former Soviet Republics Belarus and even neighboring Kyrgyzstan, the first of which is now in the midst of an ever-intensifying Color Revolution while the latter just experienced a successful regime change operation which led to the president’s resignation. Some observers expected Tajikistan to follow in their footsteps, especially since it has some similarly discernible risk factors such as a long-serving ruler, an impoverished population (even before the onset of WorldWarC), and a history of internationally criticized election results (to put it mildly). The very fact that this wasn’t the case, however (at least not yet), can be attributed to five primary factors:
Lucid Memories Of The Former Civil War Deter Regime Change Scenarios
Tajikistan’s former civil war from 1992-1997 was a complex conflict with regional, clan, and religious dimensions. It’s estimated to have killed at least 65,000 people and internally displaced 20% of the population. President Rahmon, who first took office at the beginning of the conflict, still rules the country to this day. Although some members of the population might still be unhappy with him or eventually became fatigued after his nearly three-decade-long rule, they all remember what a tragedy the civil war was and few want to risk doing anything that could repeat it, such as unleashing a Color Revolution or returning to anti-state militancy.
Afghanistan’s ISIS-K Threat Reminds Everyone Why Stability Is So Important
Even among those “well-intended” members of society who might silently wish for profound political change, they’re keenly aware of the ISIS-K terrorist threat in neighboring Afghanistan. In the event that Tajikistan is destabilized because of post-electoral unrest, the world’s most notorious terrorist group might be able to more easily exploit events in order to establish a territorial foothold in Central Asia. Lucid memories of the former civil war already act as a powerful regime change deterrent for many, but for the most “passionate” among them who might still clamor for change, then the threat of ISIS-K might deter all but the most radical “activists”.
The “Islamic Renaissance Party” Is Banned & Foreign-Linked NGOs Are Regulated
The “Islamic Renaissance Party” (IRP) played a key role supporting the opposition during the civil war and resultantly earned the right to be legalized as the only such Islamist party in the region after the conflict ended. It was once again banned five years ago and subsequently linked to several terrorist attacks in the country. Some Westerners argue that banning it radicalizes its members, but one can also argue that the IRP was already becoming a front for radical goals. Tajikistan’s regulation of foreign-linked NGOs complemented its crackdown on the IRP by reducing external influence over its domestic political processes, thus stabilizing the state.
Tajikistan’s “Strongman” System Keeps Regional & Clan Conflicts Under Control
Objectively speaking, Tajikistan’s contemporary politics are a textbook example of a “strongman” system. President Rahmon has thus far succeeded in keeping regional and clan conflicts under control unlike neighboring Kyrgyzstan which jettisoned its “strongman” model after its Color Revolutions in 2005 and 2010. As can now be seen, so-called “democratic” Kyrgyzstan (as described by its many NGOs’ Western patrons) is much more unstable than “strongman” Tajikistan, which vindicates many of the controversial moves that President Rahmon made during his time in office. To his credit, he’s kept the peace for almost a quarter of a century.
Russian Intelligence Likely Has Greater Freedom To Thwart Hybrid War Threats
Tajikistan is Russia’s first line of defense from Afghan-emanating HybridWar threats, both those related to ISIS terrorism and also the “Weapons of Mass Migration” which might be driven from the Central Asian region to the Eurasian Great Power due to the first-mentioned trigger factor. It’s likely a lot easier for Russian intelligence to thwart these threats by cooperating real closely with its political allies within a “strongman” system compared to a “democratic” one like in Kyrgyzstan. It therefore can’t be ruled out that Russia played a leading role behind the scenes in ensuring that there wasn’t any post-election turmoil in Tajikistan.
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The five primary factors that were elaborated upon above help explain why Tajikistan didn’t become destabilized after its latest election unlike Belarus and Kyrgyzstan. That said, instability might eventually erupt in the country if the younger generation has little to no memory of the civil war and becomes politically and/or religiously radicalized through the internet. It’s difficult for a faraway observer such as the author to measure those variables, though they mustn’t be discounted in principle since they represent latent threats that could spiral out of control if left unchecked. One should assume that there are domestic and external forces interested in exploiting them, but the speculated role that Russian intelligence plays in securing the country’s political stability should hopefully suffice for ensuring that no such dark scenarios transpire anytime soon.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
After Turkey downed a Russian jet operating in Syria in late 2015, there was a major risk that the Syrian War could explode into a greater conflict between the two Eurasian countries. The Turkish attack resulted in the death of two Russian servicemen and relations between Moscow and Ankara were again tested in December 2016 when Russian Ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was assassinated by off-duty police officer Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş. Although Russian President Vladimir Putin accepted the explanation from his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that the assassination was not ordered by the state, Nordic Monitor has published compelling evidence that Altıntaş had strong connections to the so-called Turkish deep state. Despite these major setbacks in Russian-Turkish relations, by the end of 2017 the two countries signed a $2.5 billion agreement for Turkey to acquire the Russian-made S-400 air defence system, considered the most sophisticated of its kind in the world.
As is well-known, this deal resulted in tense relations between Turkey and its NATO allies, and many speculated that with Russian encouragement Ankara would eventually leave the Atlantic Alliance. It is highly unlikely that Turkey will ever leave NATO willingly or be ejected from the organization. Turkey, as a key country connecting East and West and controlling Straits linking the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, knows that it is one of the most important geostrategic countries in the world and can afford to leverage both NATO and Russia to advance its own ambitions.
The Russian-Turkish partnership has seen Ankara acquire the S-400 system, Russia has a critical part in the construction of the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, and cooperation on significantly reducing conflict in Syria. However, it now appears that Moscow is becoming increasingly frustrated and antagonized by Ankara’s constant escalation of hostilities across Russia’s southern flank and/or areas of interest. Despite Russia and Turkey cooperating in Syria, they support opposing sides in Libya, but this is not considered a major issue between them, or at least not enough to change the course of their bilateral relations. However, the war in Artsakh, or more commonly known as Nagorno-Karabakh, has exposed the fragility of relations between Moscow and Ankara.
Artsakh, despite being an integral part of the Armenian homeland for over 2,500 years and always maintaining an overwhelmingly Armenian majority population, was assigned to the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic in the early 1920’s. However, in 1989 Armenians in Artsakh demanded unification with the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. This demand was ultimately rejected by Moscow. However, the final collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992 sparked a war in Artsakh. The Armenians achieved a decisive victory in 1994 and the Republic of Artsakh emerged, although it is still internationally recognized as a part of Azerbaijan.
The OSCE Minsk Group, comprising of France, Russia and the U.S., is the foremost international body attempting to end the decades-long conflict between the de facto independent Republic of Artsakh and Azerbaijan. Although minor wars and skirmishes have been commonplace since 1994, the current war is the most serious escalation, especially when considering the internationalization of the conflict because of Turkey’s transfer of special forces, military advisers, and more importantly, Syrian jihadist mercenaries.
Many within the Syrian government and military have expressed frustration that Russia effectively prevented a Syrian Army offensive at the beginning of the year to liberate more areas of Idlib from Turkish-backed jihadist rule. It is likely that Moscow’s push for a ceasefire in Idlib was to appease Turkey in the hope that it would slowly de-escalate and eventually withdraw from Syria. However, Erdoğan used the lull in the fighting in Idlib to transfer Syrian jihadist mercenaries to fight in Libya. These militants fight on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood Government of National Accords based in Tripoli. They are in opposition to the Libyan National Army, which is based in Tobruk and has ties to Russia.
The transfer of Syrian militants to Libya certainly concerned Moscow, but Libya is not as geopolitically crucial for Russia. However, the transfer of Syrian militants to Azerbaijan brings various terrorists and mujahideen forces right to the very doorstep of Russia in the South Caucasus. Whereas Syrian militants in Idlib and Libya were no real threat to Russia directly, bringing such forces can now easily put them in direct contact with Islamist terrorists based in Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia in Russia’s Caucasus region.
This will likely be a gamechanger in Russian-Turkish relations.
Moscow’s reaction to Turkey transferring Syrian terrorists to Azerbaijan is beginning to reveal itself. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that Moscow “has never considered Turkey as a strategic ally” and emphasized that Russian military observers should be placed on the line of contact between Artsakh and Azerbaijan. Although Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev repeatedly calls for Turkey to be involved in the Minsk Group or in negotiations, Russia has continually blocked Ankara from being involved in any negotiations.
Russia’s frustration with Turkey can even be felt in the East Mediterranean now. As recently as September 5, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova angered many Greeks when she urged states to be “guided by common sense and take into consideration the geographical peculiarities of a region” when discussing Turkey’s illegal claims against Greece in the East Mediterranean. Zakharova effectively adopted Turkey’s arguments that if Athens enacts its international legal right to extend its territorial waters from six nautical miles to 12, then the Aegean will effectively become a “Greek lake,” and therefore the Turks believe “common sense” has to prevail over this “geographical peculiarity.”
However, only yesterday, it appeared that Moscow now indirectly supports Greece’s position in the East Mediterranean, with the Russian Embassy in Athens tweeting that “Russia’s position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council is the starting point. We consider the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea the ‘cornerstone’ of international maritime agreements. The Convention explicitly provides for the sovereign right of all States to have territorial waters up to 12 nautical miles and sets out the principles and methods for delimiting the [Exclusive Economic Zone]. This also applies to the Mediterranean.”
It was also announced yesterday that Lavrov will be making a working visit to Greece on October 28. Russia’s repositioning on the East Mediterranean issue by firmly supporting a states’ right to extend its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles as permitted by international law, something that Turkey has said would be a “reason for war” if Greece enacts its legal right, is likely part of its retaliation against Erdoğan’s transfer of Syrian terrorists to the doorstep of Dagestan. Although Moscow tolerated Erdoğan’s aggression in Syria, Iraq and Libya, by threatening war on Armenia, a Collective Security Treaty Organization member state, and transferring militants to the border of Dagestan, Turkey has overstepped Russia’s patience and this can be considered a gamechanger in their bilateral relations.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
In our first half hour, the Global Research News Hour reassembles three of the guests from past episodes of this series, Sucharit Bhakdi MD, Meryl Nass MD, and Docs for an Open Debate, share their reservations about the COVID vaccine. In our second half hour, Peter Koenig, an economist and geopolitical analyst with background at the WHO, brings forward his perspective that includes an ID2020 nanochip that could ultimately raise the threat to a new level.
“The paintings which I propose to do will depict the struggles of a people to create a nation and their attempt to build a democracy” – this is how Jacob Lawrence described his project in 1954. Over sixty-five years later his proposal has, if anything, become only more urgent.
While the “Coronavirus crisis” continues to cause devastating socio-economic consequences also in Italy, a large part of the “Recovery Fund” is destined not to the most affected economic and social sectors, but to the most advanced sectors of the war industry.
“At the outset, yes it may look like a victory, perhaps rather a “first step” towards peace, because victory is saying a lot —- of the Yemen’s Ansarullah movement, actually for better understanding it is the Houthi Shia’ movement. All depends on what the Saudis will do next.”
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said on Thursday that he tasked a Pentagon-funded university to focus half of its curriculum on China. The move is a testament to the shift in the US military’s focus from terrorism to so-called “great power competition,” as outlined in the 2018 National Defense Strategy.
Despite the aggressive campaign by the United States against the Cuban candidacy for the Council, the General Assembly elected Cuba as a member with 170 votes out of 193 possible.
“We’re number one!” The United States famously fails to actually lead the world in anything desirable, but it does lead the world in many things, and one of them turns out to be the poisoning of the Pacific and its islands. And by the United States, I mean the United States military.
American citizens should know their choice in the upcoming presidential election is limited to selecting the leader of the Democratic or Republican crime syndicates. The two-party system of American imperialism works on behalf of a rapacious owing class that uses murder, extortion, sanction, bribery, electoral fraud, war and mass violence to control the world.
Unemployment, growing poverty, food insecurity, and overall deprivation are growing, not easing — while politicians in Washington prioritize war-making and self-interest over essential aid to needy households, small businesses, as well as cash-strapped states and local communities.
Mayor of Manchester,Andy Burnham, is furious. In a dramatic spectacle, the mayor spoke with anger at how the Westminster government was ‘treating the north with contempt’ in its approach to Covid-19. The mayor has reservations over Boris Johnson’s three tier system which came into force this week; he argues that it is unfairly penalising the north of England.
While the “Coronavirus crisis” continues to cause devastating socio-economic consequences also in Italy, a large part of the “Recovery Fund” is destined not to the most affected economic and social sectors, but to the most advanced sectors of the war industry.
According to the EU Recovery Fund, Italy should receive € 209 billion over the next six years, of which about 81 is for grants and 128 for loans to be repaid with interest. In the meantime, the Defense and Economic Development Ministries have presented a list of military projects for an amount of approximately 30 billion euros (Defense Analysis, from the Recovery Fund financing also for Defense, 09-25-2020).
The projects of the Ministry of Defense could spend 5 billion euros of the Recovery Fund for military applications in the sectors of cybernetics, communications, space and artificial intelligence. The projects relating to the military use of 5G are significant, particularly in space with a 36 satellites constellation and others.
The projects of the Ministry of Economic Development, mainly relating to the military aerospace area, foresee an expenditure of 25 billion euros from the Recovery Fund. After the F-35 fifth generation, the Ministry intends to invest in a sixth-generation fighter, the Tempest, called “the plane of the future.”
Other investments concern the production of new generation military helicopters / tiltrotors, capable of vertical take off and landing, and flying at high speed. At the same time, the Ministry will invest in next-generation drones and naval units, and advanced underwater technologies. Large investments are also expected in the space and satellite technology field.
Several of these technologies, including 5G communication systems, will be for military and civilian dual use. Since some of the military projects presented by the two departments overlap, the Ministry of Economic Development has drawn up a new list that makes it possible to reduce its spending to 12.5 billion euros.
However, the fact remains that there are plans to spend between 17.5 and 30 billion euros drawn from the Recovery Fund for military purposes, which must be repaid with interest.
In addition to these expenses, more than 35 billion is allocated for military purposes by Italian governments for the period 2017-2034, largely in the budget of the Ministry of Economic Development.
These expenses are added to the budget of the Ministry of Defense, bringing Italian military spending to over 26 billion per year, equivalent to an average of over 70 million euros per day, in public money subtracted from social expenses. A figure Italy is engaged to with NATO, as requested by the United States, to increase to an average of about 100 million euros per day. The allocation for this purpose of a large part of the Recovery Fund will allow Italy to reach this level.
Among the military industries, in the front row, pressing the government to increase the military share of the Recovery Fund, is Leonardo Ltd, whose 30% shareholding is owned by the Ministry of Economic Development.
The Leonardo group is integrated in the gigantic US military-industrial complex headed by Lockheed Martin, builder of the F-35 whose production Leonardo himself participates in with the factory in Cameri. Leonardo defines itself as a “global player in Aerospace, Defense and Security,” with the mission of “protecting citizens.”
This demonstrates what the company intends to do by using its influence and power to steal vital resources from citizens, and from the “Recovery Fund,” for a further acceleration in the “recovery” of the war industry – resources that we will always pay for, increased by interest. In this way we will be paying for “the plane of the future,” which will protect us and ensure a future of wars.
Today Cuba obtained a new and resounding victory in the UN Human Rights Council, gaining election to the body for the 2021-2023 period.
Despite the aggressive campaign by the United States against the Cuban candidacy for the Council, the General Assembly elected Cuba as a member with 170 votes out of 193 possible.
With this victory the Caribbean nation reaffirms its commitment to an international order based on inclusion, social justice, human dignity, mutual understanding, and the promotion and respect of cultural diversity, a press release from the Cuban mission to the United Nations indicated.
At the same time, this statement adds, it demolishes the current maneuvers of the United States administration, who lost ground in their slandering of Cuba’s exemplary human rights record.
“The Caribbean island will continue to defend dialogue and cooperation with its own voice, in favor of all rights for all people.”
According to a note from the Cuban Foreign Affairs Ministry, the nation presented its candidacy to the Human Rights Council, proud to be among the countries whose governments have done much to achieve the widest possible enjoyment of all human rights for all their citizens.
Electa #Cuba al Consejo de Derechos Humanos por 170 votos, el 88 % de los miembros de @UN
Nuestro país es parte de 44 de los 61 instrumentos internacionales de DDHH, cuyo cumplimiento reporta a ONU
A pesar de la campaña de desprestigio, los logros de Cuba no pueden ser opacados pic.twitter.com/PNjp7NDNIw
Cuba is a founding member of the Human Rights Council, created in 2006; it held a seat for two consecutive periods until December 2012, and years later it held a seat for two more consecutive periods (2014-2016 and 2017-2019).
In this capacity Cuba presented resolutions on the right to food, cultural rights and cultural diversity, and on the effects of foreign debt on the enjoyment of human rights, in particular economic, social and cultural rights, among others.
The active participation of the largest of the Antillean isles in that body also resulted in the renewal of the mandate of the independent expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order.
The United Nations Human Rights Council was established on March 15, 2006 and is currently made up of 47 UN member states, which are elected directly and secretly in the General Assembly.
As established, this body that meets at the UN office in Geneva, Switzerland, is responsible for the promotion and protection of human rights throughout the world and has the capacity to debate various interconnected issues.
Cuba is recognized as a country firmly committed to building an increasingly just society concerned with the wellness of the human being and with social justice. The country obtained the secret, direct and individual vote of 170 members of the UN General Assembly, which the island sees as “the result of respect and admiration for the humanist work of the Cuban Revolution.”
According to the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations,
“the self-determination and resistance of the Cuban people in the face of serious obstacles and threats caused by the unilateral policy of hostility, aggression, and the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States, is honored in this way.
“It is also a recognition of the significant progress that Cubans have made in the enjoyment of all their rights, and of their extensive record of international cooperation in the field of human rights, demonstrating through concrete facts their unequivocal willingness to respect frank and open dialogue ”added the statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Greater Antilles will be accompanied in this body by Bolivia, China, Ivory Coast, Gabon, France, Malawi, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Senegal, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and the United Kingdom.
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“As part of our top-10 goal to focus the department on China, I directed the National Defense University to refocus its curriculum by dedicating 50 percent of the coursework to China by academic year 2021,” Esper said at an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation.
The National Defense University is a higher-learning facility run by the Pentagon that offers graduate programs mostly to members of the US military.
“I also tasked the military services to make the People’s Liberation Army [China’s military] the pacing threat in our professional schools, programs and training,” the Pentagon chief said.
Esper also warned of the threat China and Russia pose to US global hegemony.
“Our strategic competitors China and Russia are attempting to erode our hard-earned gains,” he said.
The former Raytheon lobbyist also touted a new plan to increase the fleet of the US Navy that Esper has dubbed “Battle Force 2045.” The plan calls for the Navy to have a 500 ship fleet by 2045. Currently, the US Navy has just under 300 battle-ready ships.
The Pentagon released its annual report on China’s military in September. The report says China has the world’s largest navy and has “an overall battle force of approximately 350 ships and submarines.”
Despite having more ships, China’s navy is vastly smaller than Washington’s in terms of tonnage. One example of this is the number of aircraft carriers each nation has, with the US having eleven aircraft carriers, while China only has two.
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Dave DeCamp is the assistant news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.
The fourth batch of Yemeni detainees has arrived the in Sana’a as part of the largest prisoner swap between the country’s warring sides. The residents in the capital received 112 prisoners after their plane landed in the Sana’a international airport. 1-thousand 81 men will be released in two days.
A two-day prisoner swap between Yemen’s warring sides is underway. The move is part of a deal reached last month in Switzerland. Here is a report:
Yemen’s warring sides are exchanging detainees in the largest prisoner swap between the Ansarullah movement and the Saudi-backed former regime. One-thousand eighty-one men will be freed in a two-day swap. –Hussein al-Bukhaiti – Political Commentator
The exchange was agreed last month after a week of negotiations in Switzerland. The prisoner swap is being overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Analysts believe the exchange is a victory for Yemen’s Ansarullah movement. – Naseh Shaker – Political Analyst
Ansarullah Spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam says the swap brings hope for peace-building. The United Nations special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths also hailed the success of the operation.
“Today’s release operation, led by the I-C-R-C, is another sign that peaceful dialogue can deliver. I hope the parties will soon reconvene under UN auspices to discuss the release of all conflict-related prisoners and detainees.” – Martin Griffiths, UN special envoy for Yemen.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in order to bring former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power.
But the campaign that was supposed to last only a few months is raging on more than five years later now. The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has killed more than 100-thousand people, mostly civilians.
Saudi Arabia’s US-backed deadly war and an all-out blockade against Yemen, in tandem with outbreaks of cholera and now the covid-19 pandemic, have left some 24 million Yemenis, or 80% of the population, in need of aid. 20 million Yemenis also lack sufficient food supplies and access to clean water.
Riyadh has so far turned a deaf ear to all humanitarian pleas to stop the war. Yemenis say today’s prisoner swap is an important step, but what is necessary as a prelude to stop the conflict is an end to Saudi Arabia’s aggression and blockade.
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PressTV: Tell me the significance of this prisoner swap.
Peter Koenig:A prisoner swap is always a positive sign. It could be a first step to a cease fire – and leading hopefully to Peace negotiations.
At the outset, yes it may look like a victory, perhaps rather a “first step” towards peace, because victory is saying a lot —- of the Yemen’s Ansarullah movement, actually for better understanding it is the Houthi Shia’ movement.
All depends on what the Saudis will do next.
If they get instructions from the US and the UK and other European allies, like France – to halt the bombing, then we may be able to talk about an interim success.
The Saudis will do what their western Masters tell them to do.
The Saudis have been mostly a proxy for the US and UK. If you look at the map, you see how strategically located Yemen is… and Yemen in control of a left-leaning government, a government that supports the people, supports a move towards democracy, is not what the west wants.
However, the US has already reached a little talked-about target, namely to set up via the UAE (United Arab Emirates) a military base on Socotra, a beautiful island with some 60,000 inhabitants off the Yemeni Coast, off Aden, in the Gulf of Aden.
On 8 September 2020, politicians in Aden reported that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has begun building two military camps on Yemen’s Socotra island. In this case it is the UAE building the military camps, what will eventually become a military base, to which the US and western allies will have access.
The UAE were supporting Saudi Arabia in the fight against the Yemeni Houthis, who were and are fighting for their freedom, autonomy and democracy. The UAE were instrumental in blocking the port of Hudaydah so that no food and vital medicine could enter Yemen. The UAE – close ally to the western powers – is co-responsible for famine, disease – foremost cholera – and death of tens of thousands of children.
So, perhaps UAE military bases on Socotra island, to which the west, i.e. NATO, will have free access, may have been a “chip” in the negotiations for the prisoner exchange. This is of course speculation, but it would make geopolitical sense.
Image on the right is from Al-Masdar News
PressTV: How significant do you think this exchange is where initially the Saudi regime thought that its war on Yemen would only take a month and now more than five and a half years later, Riyadh has had to agree to negotiate with AnsaraAllah?
PK: What we don’t know is what went on behind closed doors. I understand negotiations on Socotra started already in 2016…
That would be one explanation – another one, more straightforward, is the Irani support the Houthis received.
It wasn’t or isn’t direct weapons support, but military advice and technical support, so that the Yemeni Houthis are able to build their own military precision weapons, like rockets, missiles and drones, and are able to hit with drones’ guided missiles anywhere in Saudi Arabia, as we have seen when Yemeni missiles destroyed a Saudi pipeline last year.
Therefore the Saudi bombing had to go on – with of course weapons – bombs and missiles – supplied by the US, UK, and France. A Financial bonanza for the western weapons industry. War is a very profitable business.
PressTV: The talks leading up to this swap agreement were held in Switzerland. Do you think the so-called international community can play a more active role in trying to bring this war to an end?
PK: The talks were hosted by the International Red Cross (ICRC), that’s why it was taking place in Switzerland.
Yes, I believe the international community should play a much more active role when PEACE is at stake – anywhere in a conflict zone around the world.
Unfortunately, those who have a political weight in the international community are also those who have a vested interest in wars and conflicts – not only weapons sales, also moving a step or two closer to controlling the energy-and other resources-rich Middle East.
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PressTV: Why has Saudi Arabia not been condemned for its blockade on Yemen which is preventing foodstuffs and even medicine from entering the country?
PK: They have been condemned, but not with much noise and only with tiny voices; to no avail, because they got the support from the US, UK, France and Germany. Yes, Russia and China have voiced their opposition to the Saudi / US / UK war on Yemen. But their voices were silenced by the western-bought and oriented media.
We are living in a dystopian world, where rights and international laws do no longer count.
Breaking international laws is the new normal. And the public at large is so used to it, it doesn’t even react.
Laws and international rules are made up by the western powers, as they go along in the process of trying to conquer the world.
Fortunately, we have Russia and China as permanent members in the UN Security Council. Although, the UNSC has not been able to achieve Peace in Yemen – nor in Palestine, for that matter – it is at least a forum which the media cannot simply ignore. And little by little people will recognize who is behind all these conflicts and vested interests.
In the long-run, western powers for absolute dominance will not succeed.
Its not in the laws of nature.
PressTV: The Saudis are well equipped with sophisticated equipment and weapons which they buy from London and Washington despite their many human rights violations in this war. Shouldn’t these two countries be held partially responsible for the death and destruction which has been taking place inside of Yemen?
PK: Absolutely. Of course they should.
They are not only behind the war in Yemen, but they are involved in all the Middle Eastern conflicts, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, now Lebanon – wherever you look it’s the bloody fingerprints of the west, and often Israel acts as a proxy for Washington – almost all conflicts are started by the US, NATO and its European allies.
And not to forget, by western funding of terrorism.
PressTV: We have seen a big difference between the Yemeni fighters during the first year of war until now. It is no longer rare now that the Houthis are able to attack the Saudis. Does this help in being able to negotiate, even in being able to have a prisoner swap?
PK: Yes, probably. The fact is that the Houthis have become much stronger in the past five years of war – which the Saudis started in March 2015, when in the US the Obama Administration was still in power.
The Houthis have made technological advances in building their own drones, missiles, and rockets. They have shown the Saudis that they have the precision and capacity to attack Saudi Arabian targets practically anywhere in the Saudi territory. This is impressive and surely may have had a crucial influence in this first step of a prisoner exchange; first step to what I hope will be a much more important goal – Peace.
PressTV: Is the lesson learned here that in order to have effective political negotiations, that an entity needs to be strong militarily?
PK: In general, it helps.
We have seen other examples throughout the world, not least, North Vietnam won the war against the South which was basically the US Army, because the North Vietnamese were well equipped and were strategic thinkers. They gained the upper hand – to eventually prompt the US the leave.
So, yes, military strength helps definitely in defining the term to the war or peace process. In this case the AnsaraAllah movement, alias the Houthis military strength and strategic thinking has certainly played a role – reaching the point where they are now; possibly a step away from a Peace Process.
PressTV: Where do you see the situation in Yemen going?
PK: I am optimistic, hoping that the ICRC will involve the UN Security Council in calling for a Cease Fire and Peace Talks. The suffering of a poverty-stricken population without the war, has become atrocious with the war, especially affecting children. The Saudis, helped by the UAE and of course supported by western powers, have literally committed genocide – by depriving the population of vital food and medication imports, causing famine and famine related diseases – and countless death.
PressTV: Do you think the Saudi regime, basically Muhammad bin Salman, is getting to the point that he is ready to negotiate with AnsaraAllah?
PK: Yes, I do hope so. It may not be an easy negotiation, because a “loser” can never admit losing. But I do hope under the guidance of the UN Security Council and the strong presence of Russia and China in the UNSC, negotiations for PEACE may emerge – and that Peace may bring restoration to this devastated country.
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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. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
“The paintings which I propose to do will depict the struggles of a people to create a nation and their attempt to build a democracy” – this is how Jacob Lawrence described his project in 1954. Over sixty-five years later his proposal has, if anything, become only more urgent. Two days after this exhibition closes, Americans will vote in what is arguably the most significant election in a generation, an election that will measure our commitment to preserving that democracy, the struggle for which was Lawrence’s mighty theme.
Jacob Lawrence is among the most recognized and celebrated African American painters of the twentieth century. Yet the series to which this exhibition is devoted – Struggle: From the History of the American People (1954-56) – has received relatively scant attention. Lawrence intended an immensely ambitious project: a series of sixty paintings beginning with European colonization and ending with World War I and America’s ascendance to the world stage. Ultimately, however, the series would comprise thirty small-scale tempera paintings on hardboard, detailing significant historical moments in the period lasting from 1775 to 1817; moments which will often underscore the role, and the experience, of people of color in the creation of the republic and its formative years.
Harlem Bar
The panels commence with a painting that draws its title from Patrick Henry’s famous “liberty” speech defending the colonial cause: “…Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” We begin, then, with the stirring scene of a crowd that stands roused, their arms upraised, their fists clenched, and their eyes fixed on the commanding orator elevated above the rest. Henry’s right hand grasps a bayonet, while his left hand hovers above the chaotic scene, drawing the viewers eye to a dark wall that drips with blood, reinforcing our awareness of the bloody conflict that is to ensue.
Blind Beggars
This painting is immediately followed by the “Massacre in Boston” – particularly notable for its central foregrounding of a dying Crispus Attucks, the seaman of African and Wampanoag descent who escaped slavery to become the first martyr of the American Revolution. The fifth panel confronts the experience of slavery head-on, drawing its title from the petition of an enslaved man to the Province of Massachusetts Bay: “We have no property! We have no wives! No children! We have no city! No country!” It is a frightful scene of violence, with bayonets and knives flashing, naked brown bodies dripping blood, accentuated throughout by Lawrence’s sharp, angular lines.
The ninth installment is “Defeat”, a deeply moving reflection on the physical and emotional toll that military setbacks and the brutal winter took on Washington’s army. We see the backs of the men as they turn away from the dying warhorse that lies partially covered in the foreground, a poignant symbol of their desperate condition. It is an excellent example of Lawrence’s brilliant sense of economy, his ability to compress the greatest amount of meaning and emotional energy within the smallest surface. We are clearly in the presence of an artist who has thought long and deeply about his subject – and indeed we know that he spent “long hours” researching the period at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library (now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture). Each of his compositions require an active participation on the viewers part, a readiness to engage with Lawrence not only in the exercise of our historical imagination, but in reexamining the ways we reconstruct, and mythologize the past – what gets left out, what is elided, and what is buried.
The next painting – about the crossing of the Delaware River on the night of December 27, 1776 – is a case in point. Lawrence takes a theme which was immortalized in Emanuel Leutze’s, “Washington Crossing the Delaware” (1851), also in the Metropolitan Museum, and transforms the meaning of the event – where it is less about the heroism of one man, General George Washington, and more about the “excessively severe” night, “which the men bore without the least murmur” – to quote from Washington’s military aide Tench Tilghman, whose firsthand observations served as a key source. In other words, Lawrence underscores the shared, collective struggle, and the bravery, resilience and sheer nerve of all the men who took part.
“And a Woman Mans a Cannon” is an important addition to the series because it reminds us that women also took part in the fighting – in particular, Margaret Cochran Corbin, who took her husband’s place when he fell in the Battle of Fort Washington. She boldly fought on until wounded and captured. Lawrence emphasizes her spiritedness and bravery – with her dead husband at her feet, and a pistol at her side, her standing figure extends almost the full height of the panel, imposing, dauntless and resolute.
The fifteenth painting takes its title from the preamble of the Constitution – “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility…” – and once again Lawrence challenges the tendency to idealize, or in this case to mythologize the making of the constitution in Philadelphia 1787. In Lawrence’s depiction, the delegates are not bathed in heavenly light but in a dark room; they are not all standing erect as if modeling for a statue, but so utterly exhausted they can hardly sit upright; they are not cordially interacting and observing decorum, but gnashing, panting and gesticulating madly as the sweat rolls off their faces. Is it realism then Lawrence is after? Far from it. Seven sword hilts gleam in the foreground, symbolizing the seven states that were needed for ratification. Lawrence is also guided by an idea – the idea that this country was born out of struggle, and conflict, whether on the battlefield or in the halls of state. These delegates who are giving birth to the constitution look as though they are literally suffering the pangs of labor. Lawrence, to his credit, has not forsaken idealism – he has given us an idea that can inspire us today; one that is rooted in action, and sacrifice, courage and perseverance in defeat.
The eighteenth panel captures a memorable moment from the expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. In August of 1805, Clark recorded in his journal that their translator and guide, a Lemhi Shoshone woman named Sacagewea, was reunited with her brother, Chief Cameahwait, from whom she had been separated since childhood. Lawrence depicts this moment of recognition between brother and sister by focusing our attention on their faces, unmistakably tinged with sadness, even as their eyes interlock. Its tenderness is underscored by Lawrence’s title, which records President Jefferson’s order to the explorers to treat all the natives they encounter “in the most friendly and conciliatory manner…” The painting becomes a painful reminder of how little the country in fact heeded the example set by Lewis and Clark in their interactions with the indigenous peoples of the American West.
Every panel in the series bears close examination and engagement. Lawrence recognizes the significance of those that have been under-represented, marginalized or oppressed. As he observed: “I don’t see how a history of the United States can be written honestly without including the negro.” Unfortunately, some of the paintings have been lost and are only known by black and white reproductions, others have been completely lost and only their titles are known. Still, enough remains that this exhibition is a profoundly rewarding experience, coming at a time when we desperately need to reinvigorate our commitment to democracy and universal enfranchisement, to the struggle against authoritarianism, and the cult of personality.
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Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City.
Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, is furious. In a dramatic spectacle, the mayor spoke with anger at how the Westminster government was ‘treating the north with contempt’ in its approach to Covid-19. The mayor has reservations over Boris Johnson’s three tier system which came into force this week; he argues that it is unfairly penalising the north of England.
Citing past rough moments in the relationship between the north and south of England, the mayor said that they were ‘Being set up as canaries in the coalmine for an experimental regional lockdown strategy as an attempt to prevent the expense of what is truly needed.’
Greater Manchester, Liverpool city and Lancashire, he said were at the receiving end of the tightest of restrictions, together with an inadequate financial support package. He claimed the government was ‘willing to sacrifice jobs here to save them elsewhere’. Looking exasperated, he complained that the package offered to people in his region was ‘just not good enough’ as it didn’t take freelancers into account, thousands of whom contribute to the economy. He questioned ‘What happens to the people driving taxis around this city if the pubs etc close?’
The government insists that there is simply no more money available, after millions were paid out to businesses to support furloughed workers earlier in the year. But Andy Burnham was sceptical of this argument, saying that he had seen how much was being paid to consultants working on the failing ‘Test and Trace scheme’. Initially there were plans for Liverpool, Manchester and Lancashire to go into full lockdown or ‘Tier three’, but after the Mayor of Manchester’s protest, only Liverpool was put on high alert, with negotiations still ongoing regarding Manchester. It has been reported the government intends on putting the city on high alert, but is currently discussing with the local authorities what financial support will be put in place.
The coronavirus situation in Liverpool and Manchester is undoubtedly serious, with the Mayor of Liverpool declaring cases to be ‘out of control’. Intensive care beds are reportedly 95% full. It’s been said that the rate of cases in one part of Liverpool was as high as 1031 cases per 100,000, higher than the national average. A further 18,980 cases were reported across the UK on Thursday bringing the total to 673,622. The nature of the pandemic now in Britain is that it is more serious than at any time earlier in the year. More and more experts and politicians are calling for a national lockdown as the only way to curb the spread of coronavirus. The Mayors of Manchester and Liverpool are also asking for a nationwide lockdown. Andy Burnham yesterday quoted government medical adviser Jonathon Van Tam, who said that a national lockdown is the only way get the virus under control.
The government is, however, reluctant to impose another nationwide lockdown for fear of what it would do to the economy. Matt Hancock the Health Minister has asked the northern mayors to set aside party politics’ and ‘come together’ so the virus can be brought under control.
This is an important moment for the government. How it handles the crisis in the north-west of England could have a lasting impact on Boris Johnson’s legacy. Andy Burnham is already making references to the 1980s when then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was accused of ‘dividing the nation’ over her policies in the north of England. ‘The north is fed up of being pushed around’ Burnham said yesterday…’ [it] stands on the brink of where we were in the 1980s, forgotten, left aside.’ Such accusations of discrimination against the north could be potentially very harmful for an administration that said it would be a ‘levelling up government’.
In addition voters may remember Johnson’s words when we was elected in December last year, when he acknowledged that many Labour voters in the north had lended their vote to him: ‘You may only have lent us your vote, you may not think of yourself as a natural Tory and you may intend to return to Labour next time round. If that is the case I am humbled that you have put your trust in me. I will never take your support for granted.’
Now Boris Johnson will have to show that he does value the north, and prove Andy Burnham wrong. But perhaps the damage has already been done. The rhetoric of the Manchester mayor’s speech was desperate and defiant, of a politician abandoned and mistrusting of the government’s motivations. We’re at a critical juncture in the pandemic in Britain, when the government needs full compliance of the population in order to defeat the virus. It’s in Johnson’s interest to get the north of the country on board or face a bigger crisis than the one at the moment.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
“ A vaccine with those reaction rates could cause grave injuries in 1.5 billion humans if administered to “every person on earth”. That is the threshold that Gates has established for ending the global lockdown.”
According to the most recent poll conducted by the research firm Leger, roughly two out of every three Canadians intend to get the vaccine for COVID, once it has been approved by Health Canada. Only 17% of the Canadian population said “no.” [2]
That makes a certain amount of sense if you factor in the panic generated by the Sars-CoV-2 virus. No other known bug has brought our society to the point of shutting down. No one ever witnessed the economic desecration. None saw countries closing their borders. And now, many are starting to see face masks and social distancing as the new normal. So, if the promise that the world will return to pre-pandemic normal, once that magical elixir has been constructed, who wouldn’t risk the shot?
The Director General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is a major booster of immunization. He claims that vaccines are to credit for the near annihilation of smallpox, polio and other feared diseases. Now he promises that the COVAX facility, co-led by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and the WHO, will be delivering two billion doses of the COVID vaccine by the end of next year. [3]
The pharmaceutical corporations driving the vaccine push will certainly make tons of money getting a shot distributed to hundreds of millions around the world. But might there also be a risk associated with it? Is there another agenda that the authorities may be pursuing that patients may not even be aware of that will affect not only their health, but their prospect of freedom? This is the question that the Global Research News Hour investigates in part four of this special series on Coronavirus.
In our first half hour, the Global Research News Hour reassembles three of the guests from past episodes of this series, Sucharit Bhakdi MD, Meryl Nass MD, and Docs for an Open Debate, share their reservations about the COVID vaccine. In our second half hour, Peter Koenig, an economist and geopolitical analyst with background at the WHO, brings forward his perspective that includes an ID2020 nanochip that could ultimately raise the threat to a new level.
Sucharit Bhakdi, MD is a physician and a post-doctoral researcher. He was named chair of Medical Microbiology at the University of Mainz in 1990, where he remained until his retirement in 2012. He has published over three hundred articles in the fields of immunology, bacteriology, virology, and parasitology, for which he has received numerous awards and the Order of Merit of Rhineland-Palatinate. He is a specialist in microbiology and one of the most cited research scientists in German history. His book, co-authored by Karina Reiss, is Corona: False Alarm?Facts and Figures.
Docs for Open Debate is a group in Belgium doctors and health professionals intent on demanding more critical analysis of the pandemic fight, relaxation of the extreme emergency measures, and freedom to express their positions on mainstream media. They crafted an open letter to this end which has so far been signed by 515 physicians and 1767 medically trained health professionals. Their site is docs4opendebate.be
Meryl Nass, MD is a General Internal Medicine Physician with 40 years of experience. She is an epidemic and anthrax expert and composes a series of blogs for the site Anthrax Vaccine as well as Global Research. She’s based in Ellsworth, Maine.
Peter Koenigis 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. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
What’s happening in the US — with no significant relief in prospect — is unparalleled in the the nation’s history.
Unemployment, growing poverty, food insecurity, and overall deprivation are growing, not easing — while politicians in Washington prioritize war-making and self-interest over essential aid to needy households, small businesses, as well as cash-strapped states and local communities.
Both right wings of the US one-party state are guilty of crimes against humanity at home and worldwide.
Whatever the outcome of November 3 elections, nothing fundamental will change — unacceptable continuity assured like nearly always before.
On Thursday, another 898,000 jobless Americans filed new claims for unemployment insurance (UI).
Another 373,000 applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) — the federal program for workers ineligible for regular UI.
If not renewed, PUA will expire at yearend.
For the past 30 weeks, numbers of jobless US workers filing for unemployment benefits were double or more the highest ever single week total in US history.
What should make regular headlines gets short shrift at best.
The NYT gave the latest report scant attention, nothing on its front page about what should have been top-featured.
Separately, brief Times coverage of the latest filings for unemployment benefits published the wrong total.
Instead of 898,000 applying for UI, it reported 885,000 — omitting PUA filings.
Its business section published the correct number of UI filings, including mention of PUA ones.
WaPo was also dismissive about another 1.3 million Americans filing for unemployment benefits — burying the news in a related report, saying the following:
“The number of new unemployment claims jumped last week, the Labor Department reported on Thursday.”
No further elaboration was given, nothing about unprecedented numbers of jobless workers in need of federal aid to survive.
WaPo’s business section gave the news more attention, calling rising UI filings “a sign that recovery (sic) could be stalling.”
You’d think that when 1.3 million or more unemployed Americans file UI claims for 30 straight weeks it would be headline news — not in the US by most establishment media.
The Wall Street Journal gave the news prominent, but incomplete, coverage.
Its report omitted PUA claims, failing to explain that another 1.3 million jobless US workers filed for unemployment benefits in the latest week — not 898,000 alone.
To its credit, the Journal’s report explained the dismal state of the US jobs market in detail.
Federally funded $600 in weekly benefits expired at end of July.
Congress and the White House failed to agree on extending what’s vitally needed.
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader McConnell said the body will consider a small relief bill next week.
During the greatest ever US Great Depression that’s likely to be long-lasting, things worsening before improving at an unknown time ahead, small isn’t good enough when large-scale help is essential — now.
Before economic crisis happened this year, growing poverty in the US was the new normal
Today after economic collapse occurred, a grimmer new normal faces growing millions of Americans.
Without jobs and federal aid, when unemployment benefits end in the coming weeks, they’ll be no income without substantial federal help.
Today, millions of Americans are hard-pressed to pay rent, service mortgages, feed family members, afford medical care, and be able to have other essentials to life, health and well-being.
According to FoodPolitics.com, numbers of Americans “who say they cannot always afford enough food hit the highest level on record,” notably “among families with young children.”
Black households are hit hardest. They’re twice as likely as their white counterparts to face food insecurity. Latino households are nearly as hard hit.
Food, Research and Action Center president Luis Guardia said Covid related lockdowns “wreaked havoc on so many things: on public health, on economic stability and obviously on food insecurity.”
According to a Northwestern University report, food insecurity doubled because of economic crisis conditions — affecting about one in four households.
About 30% of US households with children are food insecure, the report explained.
Feeding America estimates that around 54 million people “face hunger and food insecurity every day” in 2020.
According to data reported by Axios.com, 103 million working-age Americans are considered “not in the labor force,” not unemployed.
It’s why official Labor Department reports distort reality.
Based on how calculated pre-1990, real US unemployment is 26.9% — not the phony BLS 7.86% figure, an affront to tens of millions of Americans who want work but can’t find it for lack of jobs.
Layoffs are rising, not falling. Greater numbers of furloughed workers lost jobs permanently.
Looking ahead to 2021 — regardless of November election results — hard times in the US are likely to get harder.
A weak economy at year’s end 2019 collapsed because of unacceptable Covid-related shutdown.
The toll from this policy has been infinitely more harmful to countless millions of Americans and the economy overall than public health concerns over
Covid disease.
In late August, Biden said the following:
“I would be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives (sic). We cannot get the country moving until we control the virus (sic).”
Civid is an illness, not a virus, a somewhat more contagious version of seasonal flu/influenza.
The latter is an annual occurrence in the US and most other countries — unaccompanied by fear-mongering induced mass hysteria and destructive shutdowns.
Asked if he’d shut down US economic activity if advised to take this step by “scientists,” Biden said: “I would shut it down.”
If he defeats Trump in November, his domestic agenda may worsen economic crisis conditions.
Trump is wrong on countless issues — his opposition to another shutdown, not one of them.
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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.”
Weapons-makers — aka merchants of death and mass destruction — fuel conflicts when occur.
The US by far dominates the global arms trade.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the US accounted for 36% of major conventional weapons sales from 2015 – 2019.
Throughout most of the post-WW II period, the US dominated the global arms market.
Arms and security expert William Hartung explained that for 25 of the past 26 years, “the United States has been the leading arms dealer on the planet, at some moments in near monopolistic fashion.”
Saudi Arabia and other Middle East countries are major buyers of US arms.
In areas where large amounts of heavy weapons are sold, wars often follow.
For nearly three weeks, Azerbaijan’s war on Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh (NK below) has been raging.
All-out efforts by Russia to broker a ceasefire haven’t taken hold.
Israel and Turkey are major suppliers of heavy weapons to Baku. The Jewish state reportedly provided 61% of its weapons last year — based on SIPRI data.
They include Israel’s IAI Harop, a loitering munition called a “suicide drone” — self-destructing when striking a target.
The Jewish state is also supplying missiles and banned cluster munitions.
Since conflict began in late September, Israel shipped significant amounts of arms to Azerbaijan.
According to the Asia Times, citing an anonymous Israeli war ministry “senior” official, “Azerbaijan would not be able to continue its operation at this intensity without our support.”
The anonymous Israeli source said they’ve been regular airlifts of heavy weapons to the country.
Azeri officials acknowledged buying them. In response to Israel’s involvement as an arms supply, Armenia recalled its envoy to the country.
While Israel has diplomatic relations with both countries, it’s more strategically tied to Azerbaijan.
According to the Asia Times, citing unexplained leaks, Azerbaijan “permitted Israel to use its airfields to strike nuclear targets in the Islamic Republic.”
In August, a spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said a July explosion causing damage to its Natanz nuclear site was “sabotage.”
Other Iranian officials believe cyber-sabotage was behind the blast, Israel and/or the US perhaps responsible for what happened.
The Asia Times also said that “Israeli intelligence has reportedly utilized Azerbaijani infrastructure to create listening posts and gather critical Iranian security information,” adding:
“These actions place Baku at great risk of Iranian retaliation. On Tuesday, Iran said its forces had shot down an Israeli-made drone that veered from the fighting in Karabakh on its territory.”
Turkey also is a major arms supplier to Baku.
Based on Turkish Exporters’ Assembly data, Reuters reported the following:
“Turkey’s military exports to its ally Azerbaijan have risen six-fold this year, with sales of drones and other military equipment rising to $77 million last month alone before fighting broke out over the (NK) region.”
From January through September this year, Turkey reportedly sold Azerbaijan around $123 million worth of heavy weapons — especially in August and September ahead of all-out Azeri war on Armenia in NK.
Russia supplies arms to both countries.
Sputnik News head Dmitry Kiselev spoke with Armenian and Azeri leaders.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called things in NK “very tense…a lot of losses on both sides.”
Weapons used by warring sides include “tanks, drones, aircraft and helicopters, armored vehicles, artillery, rocket artillery and so on.”
“And a lot of soldiers and troops are involved in these military activities.”
“I mean that very large-scale and fierce battles are going on.”
Pashinyan added that “there is concrete evidence that terrorist fighters from Syria are fighting” in NK.
“Turkey is the main sponsor of this war. Turkey has hired and deployed these terrorist fighters…”
As for compromises with Baku to end fighting, Pashinyan said (t)here is such a line…”
“It’s the right to self-determination of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. And at all times, Armenia was ready for such a compromise.”
“Azerbaijan refused to sign” an agreement on this issue, he claimed.
Azeri President Ilham Aliyev told Sputnik’s Kiselev that “Pashinyan is” supported by George Soros.
Aliyev’s position is that “under no circumstances can the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan be compromised, under no circumstances can Azerbaijan agree to recognize the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh.”
The enclave in Azeri territory has a majority Armenian population.
“Baku sees Karabakh…as a war of liberation, while Yerevan views it as conquest,” said Kiselev.
Differences between both sides are longstanding and deep-seated — why attempts to resolve fighting failed to succeed so far.
Aliyev believes that “the Armenian community and the Azerbaijani one can peacefully live and coexist in Nagorno-Karabakh in the future.”
They’re caught in the middle of fierce fighting. Unknown numbers of civilians were killed or wounded.
Aliyev claimed his forces destroyed over $1 billion worth of Armenian military equipment.
While each side blames the other for ongoing fighting, Baku launched it. Yerevan responded defensively.
On Thursday, Pashinyan urged the US and France to join with Russian efforts for ceasefire and conflict resolution diplomacy.
He called the humanitarian situation in NK “more than serious.”
He said what’s going on in the enclave is the result of “Turkey’s expansionist and imperialistic policies.”
He called Armenia “the last barrier to Turkey’s expansion to the east and southeast.”
Resolving weeks of fighting proved to be no simple matter.
Interviewed by RT, foreign doctors in NK to treat the wounded expressed “shock” over the severity of what they’ve seen — “horrible injuries,” according to one doctor saying:
“Some will die. Some will be disabled. It’s very hard from a psychological point of view. It’s a real shock for us…”
“(X)-rays show splintered bones and torn muscles…(H)igh energy explosives leave incomparable damage.”
In all wars, civilians suffer most. In NK, they’re hunkered down in basements, wanting an end to fighting.
The longer it continues, the greater the danger to their lives and welfare.
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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.”
Joseph Biden was asked during a recent interview on MSNBC whether he thought domestic unrest would occur in the streets of the United States if all votes were not counted on November 3, throwing the outcome of the upcoming presidential election into question.
He replied by saying,
“I’m not going even to entertain that, because I’m not anticipating that will happen…. The last thing we need is the equivalent of a coup. I mean, this is not who we are.”
History refutes Biden’s claim. The United States perpetrates coup d’états. It does so often. And it does so without apology.
Did Ukraine cross Biden’s mind when he was asked whether the legitimacy of the imminent American presidential election might be called into question? He was Barack Obama’s point man in the aftermath of the U.S. sponsored coup in 2014 that used neo-Nazis to bring sycophants of the IMF to power in Kiev precipitating a civil war.
And what about Honduras, where Obama passively accepted a coup against the democratically elected Zelaya government in 2009 that was undertaken by military graduates of the infamous School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia?
Exactly how would Biden characterize the removal of Muammar Gaddafi from power by Islamic extremists and NATO bombing in Libya as engineered by Obama in 2011, an action he and Secretary Clinton fully endorsed? A coup? Regime change? Biden has a history of vocally supporting the latter while calling it humanitarian intervention.
Biden fully advocated Obama’s dirty war on Syria that began in 2011, to dislodge the Ba’athist government of Bashar al-Assad from power. If elected president, he pledges to increase military spending and keep troops in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a broader plan to pressure Assad and confront Russia and Iran in the Middle East.
Biden is a neoliberal interventionist who is on the record as voting for Bush Jr’s war in Iraq that toppled the Ba’athist government of Saddam Hussein from power in 2003 after covert war planners realized that a coup could not eliminate the Iraqi president because of impenetrable security measures taken by the Iraqis.
Does Biden know anything about the secret history of U.S. covert interventionism? How about the events that unfolded in Iran in 1953? Guatemala in 1954? Congo (Zaire) in 1960? South Vietnam in 1963? Indonesia in 1965? Dominican Republic in 1961 and 1965? Greece in 1967? Chile in 1973?
Do the names Mohammed Mossadegh, Jacobo Arbenz, Patrice Lumumba, Ngo Dinh Diem, Sukarno, Rafael Trujillo, Juan Bosch, George Papandreou and Salvador Allende have any meaning for Biden?
Biden knows the fate of these leaders and the U.S. government’s complicity in their demise in the same way John Gotti and his underboss Sammy Gravano of the Gambino crime family knew the names of the victims on their hit list.
Biden is no less a mafioso than any of the underbosses of New York’s five crime families, having served as Obama’s Vice-President for eight years. For example, in 2015, he engaged in blackmail by threatening to withhold a billion dollars in U.S. loan guarantees from the leaders of Ukraine unless they fired the country’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin who was investigating Burisma, an energy company on whose board of directors sat the Vice-President’s son, Hunter Biden. The prosecutor was fired, and the investigation halted as Biden Jr. collected $83,000 per month to sit on the board of a gas company he knew nothing about in a country whose language he did not speak.
Mafia tactics are part and parcel of American foreign policy as evidenced by the history of U.S. intervention in Cuba. Besides imposing a 60 year economic embargo on the island, the U.S. government took part with the Italian-American mafia in several failed attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. The mafia had vast holdings in Havana casinos it was trying to protect, while the CIA wanted to safeguard the investments of U.S. corporations and banks in the Caribbean.
Coup d’états are not only reserved for the leaders of foreign government who displease the rulers of empire.
Closer to home, ‘Russiagate’ and ‘Ukrainegate’ were attempts to remove Donald Trump from power by the intelligence community led by the CIA’s John Brennan, the NSA’s James Clapper and the FBI’s James Comey. They acted at the behest of Hillary Clinton, a member along with husband Bill, of the notorious Clinton crime syndicate of racketeers and war criminals.
Trump, rather than learn from the illegality of the exercise, ordered Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a de facto caporegime, to foment a coup in Venezuela by removing President Nicolas Maduro from power in favor of U.S. puppet Juan Guaido. The coup attempt has failed, but U.S. economic sanctions have killed over 40,000 Venezuelan people.
When examining the history of American coup d’états, the assassination of John Kennedy was the most dramatic. As was the murder of Robert Kennedy. The Kennedy brothers were impediments to the military-industrial complex during the cold war with the Soviet Union that threatened to go nuclear during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the hot war in Vietnam that was so divisive during the tumultuous year of 1968. Both were killed by acts of state.
The United States only supports elite democracy when the elites serve corporate interests and those of the national security autocracy. Even within this context, there are intense struggles to determine which faction of the ruling class will hold power.
American citizens should know their choice in the upcoming presidential election is limited to selecting the leader of the Democratic or Republican crime syndicates. The two-party system of American imperialism works on behalf of a rapacious owing class that uses murder, extortion, sanction, bribery, electoral fraud, war and mass violence to control the world.
There should be no illusion that a vote for the Democrat Biden or the Republican Trump, is a vote for the American political mafia, a ruthless outfit that protects the material interests of the corporate plutocracy in a very unfree global market, proving that capitalism is synonymous with organized crime.
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Donald Monaco is a political analyst who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He received his Master’s Degree in Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1979 and was radicalized by the Vietnam War. He writes from an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist perspective. His recent book is titled, The Politics of Terrorism, and is available at amazon.com
The World Health Organization’s Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge says governments should stop enforcing lockdowns, unless as a “last resort,” because the impact on other areas of health and mental well-being is more damaging.
In an interview with Euro News, Kluge cautioned against the imposition of more lockdowns unless they are “absolutely necessary.”
NEW: WHO Europe Director, Hans Kluge tells me, no government should enforce another national lockdown unless it is absolutely necessary, a last resort
He says damage to other health areas, mental health, domestic violence, schools and cancer treatment is too great pic.twitter.com/jzbh9YbH7z
“He says damage to other health areas, mental health, domestic violence, schools and cancer treatment is too great,” tweeted reporter Darren McCaffrey.
Kluge’s warning matches that of the WHO’s special envoy on COVID-19, Dr David Nabarro, who recently told the Spectator in an interview that world leaders should stop imposing lockdowns as a reflex reaction because they are making “poor people an awful lot poorer.”
It also resonates with numerous other experts who have desperately tried to warn governments that lockdowns will end up killing more people than the virus itself, but have been largely ignored.
Germany’s Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development, Gerd Muller, recently warned that COVID-19 lockdowns will result in “one of the biggest” hunger and poverty crises in history.
“We expect an additional 400,000 deaths from malaria and HIV this year on the African continent alone,” Muller said, adding that “half a million more will die from tuberculosis.”
Muller’s comments arrived months after a leaked study from inside the German Ministry of the Interior revealed that the impact of the country’s lockdown could end up killing more people than the coronavirus due to victims of other serious illnesses not receiving treatment.
Another study found that lockdowns will conservatively “destroy at least seven times more years of human life” than they save.
Professor Richard Sullivan also warned that there will be more excess cancer deaths in the UK than total coronavirus deaths due to people’s access to screenings and treatment being restricted as a result of the lockdown.
His comments were echoed by Peter Nilsson, a Swedish professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at Lund University, who said,
“It’s so important to understand that the deaths of COVID-19 will be far less than the deaths caused by societal lockdown when the economy is ruined.”
According to Professor Karol Sikora, an NHS consultant oncologist, there could be 50,000 excess deaths from cancer as a result of routine screenings being suspended during the lockdown in the UK.
Experts have also warned that there will be 1.4 million deaths globally from untreated TB infections due to the lockdown.
As we further previously highlighted, a data analyst consortium in South Africa found that the economic consequences of the country’s lockdown will lead to 29 times more people dying than the coronavirus itself.
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Featured image is a screenshot from a Youtube video
Israel has stopped granting any visas to employees at the United Nations’ human rights agency, effectively forcing the body’s top staff to leave, Middle East Eye can reveal.
In February, Israel announced it was suspending ties with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) after a report highlighted more than 100 companies that work in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Since June all requests for new visas have gone unanswered, with passports sent off for renewals coming back empty.
Nine of the organisation’s 12 foreign staff have now left Israel and the Palestinian territories for fear of being undocumented there, the OHCHR confirmed. Among those is country director James Heenan.
The other three have visas that are due to expire in the coming months. Three staff due to travel to Israel to start their work have been unable to do so.
Israeli and Palestinian staff continue to work and the organisation’s offices have not been closed.
“The absence of international staff from the occupied territory is a highly irregular situation and will negatively impact on our ability to carry out our mandate,” Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the OHCHR, told MEE.
“We continue to hope that this situation will be resolved soon, and we are actively engaged with various relevant and concerned parties to that end.”
All access to the Palestinian territories is controlled by Israel and the country has faced multiple allegations of quashing access to human rights workers in recent years.
Last year, Israel expelled Human Rights Watch’s country directorOmar Shakir, after accusing him of supporting calls for a boycott, a claim he denied. Also last year, the Israeli government refused to renew the mandate for an international force that monitored violations in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
Shakir said the “forcing out of UN human rights monitors marks yet another attempt by the Israeli government to curtail documentation of its systematic repression of Palestinians”.
“Denying visas in order to punish critics has now become a central tool in Israel’s sustained assault on the human rights movement,” he told MEE.
‘Victory march’
The OHCHR writes regular reports highlighting alleged Israeli rights abuses in occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip.
In February, it published a list of 112 companies that work in Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law. The report, which highlighted Tripadvisor, Airbnb and the truck and digger maker JCB, among others, was welcomed by Palestinians but sparked Israeli ire.
In retaliation, Israel’s then-Foreign Minister Israel Katz suspended ties with the organisation, which he hailed as an “exceptional and harsh measure”.
It was not clear at the time what the practical implications would be.
“This development is not surprising given OHCHR’s official embrace of efforts to damage the Israeli economy,” Anne Herzberg, a legal advisor for pro-Israel organisation NGO Monitor, said in a statement on Thursday. “These actions suggest OHCHR’s willingness to be a party to the conflict rather than abide by its humanitarian obligations of impartiality and non-politicisation.”
United Nations employees across the world are supposed to have automatic access to visas to carry out their work.
Backed by fervent support from US President Donald Trump, Israel has achieved a string of global diplomatic successes in recent years, including recent peace agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
Martin Konecny, director of the European Middle East Project think tank, said restricting the OHCHR was part of a wider trend.
“With the support of the US, Israel has won one victory after another in the international arena – such as the UAE and Bahrain agreements. Human rights scrutiny is kind of nuisance that stands in the way of this victory march,” he said.
“I think Israel feels emboldened, not least through the support of the Trump administration, to act against organisations with human rights remits.”
He said that while European governments had criticised Israeli policies regarding this, there had been little action to force Israel to change course.
A spokesperson for the Israeli foreign ministry said it had nothing to add to statements suspending relations in February.
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Featured image: The Israeli and American flags displayed on the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem (Photo: Yonatan Sindel)
“We’re number one!” The United States famously fails to actually lead the world in anything desirable, but it does lead the world in many things, and one of them turns out to be the poisoning of the Pacific and its islands. And by the United States, I mean the United States military.
A new book by Jon Mitchell, called Poisoning the Pacific: The US Military’s Secret Dumping of Plutonium, Chemical Weapons, and Agent Orange, tells this story. Like all such catastrophes, this one escalated dramatically at the time of World War II and has continued ever since.
Mitchell starts with the island of Okunashima where Japan produced chemical weapons during World War II. After the war, the United States and Japan dumped the stuff into the ocean, stuck it in caves and sealed them shut, and buried it in the ground — on this island, near it, and throughout various parts of Japan. Putting something out of sight was apparently going to make it disappear, or at least burden future generations and other species with it — which was apparently just as satisfactory.
“Between 1944 and 1970,” Mitchell tells us, “the U.S. Army disposed of 29 million kilograms of mustard and nerve agents, and 454 tons of radioactive waste into the ocean. In one of the codenames beloved by the Pentagon, Operation CHASE (Cut Holes and Sink ’Em) involved packing ships with conventional and chemical weapons, sailing them out to sea, and scuttling them in deep waters.”
The United States didn’t just nuke two Japanese cities and a wide area to which the radiation spread, but also numerous other islands. The United Nations actually handed islands over to the United States for safe keeping and the development of “democracy,” and it nuked them — including Bikini Atoll which the world had the decency to name a sexy swimsuit after, but not to protect, and not to compensate the people forced to evacuate and still unable to safely return (they tried from 1972 to 1978 with bad results). The islands of various atolls, when not utterly destroyed, have been ruined with radiation: the soil, the plants, the animals, and the surrounding sea and sealife. The radioactive waste produced was not a problem, thank goodness!, since all that was required was to hide it out of sight, for example under a concrete dome on Runit Island that was guaranteed to last for 200,000 years but is cracking already.
On Okinawa some 2,000 tons of unexploded WWII ordnance remains in the ground, periodically killing, and likely to take 70 more years to clean up. But that’s the least of the problems. When the United States was done dropping Napalm and bombs, it turned Okinawa into a colony that it labeled “the junk heap of the Pacific.” It moved people into internment camps so that it could build bases and ammunition storage areas and weapons testing areas. It displaced 250,000 out of 675,000 people, using such gentle methods as tear gas.
When it was spraying millions of liters of Agent Orange and other deadly herbicides on Vietnam, the United States military was sending it its troops and weapons from Okinawa, where a middle school suffered from a chemical weapons accident within 48 hours of the first troops being sent off to Vietnam, and it got worse from there. The USA tested chemical and biological weapons on Okinawans and on U.S. troops on Okinawa. Some of the chemical weapons stockpiles it shipped off to Johnston Atoll after Oregon and Alaska rejected them. Others it dumped in the ocean (in containers that are now wearing out), or burned, or buried, or sold to unsuspecting locals. It also dropped nuclear weapons into the sea near Okinawa accidentally, twice.
Weapons developed and tested in Okinawa were deployed to Vietnam, including napalm strong enough to burn flesh under water, and stronger CS gas. The color-coded herbicides were used in secret at first, because the United States didn’t know that it could count on the world to accept its claim that targeting plants rather than humans (except as collateral damage) made it legal to use chemical weapons. But the herbicides killed all life. They made the jungles go silent. They killed people, made them ill, and gave them birth defects. They still do. And this stuff was sprayed on Okinawa, stored on Okinawa, and buried in Okinawa. People protested, as people will do. And in 1973, two years after banning the use of deadly defoliants in Vietnam, the U.S. military used them against nonviolent protesters on Okinawa.
Of course, the U.S. military has lied, and lied, and lied some more about this sort of thing. In 2013, in Okinawa, people working on a soccer field dug up 108 barrels of Agent this and that color of poison. Confronted with the evidence, the U.S. military just kept lying.
“Although U.S. veterans are slowly receiving justice,” Mitchell writes, “there has been no such help for Okinawans, and the Japanese government has done nothing to help them. During the Vietnam War, fifty thousand Okinawans worked on the bases, but they have not been surveyed for health problems, nor have the farmers of Iejima or the residents living near Camp Schwab, MCAS Futenma, or the soccer field dump site.”
The U.S. military has been busy developing into the planet’s top polluter. It litters the globe, including the United States, with dioxin, depleted uranium, napalm, cluster bombs, nuclear waste, nuclear weapons, and unexploded ordnance. Its bases generally claim the right to operate outside the rule of law. Its live-fire (war rehearsal) sites poison surrounding areas with deadly water runoff. Between 1972 and 2016, Camps Hansen and Schwab on Okinawa also caused almost 600 forest fires. Then there’s dumping fuel over neighborhoods, crashing planes into buildings, and all variety of such SNAFUs.
And then there’s firefighting foam and the forever chemicals often referred to as PFAS, and written about extensively by Pat Elder here. The U.S. military has poisoned much of the ground water in Okinawa with apparent impunity, despite knowing about the dangers since 1992 or earlier.
Okinawa is not unique. The United States has bases in countries around the Pacific and in 16 colonies where people hold second-class status — places like Guam. It also has hugely destructive bases in places that have been made into states, like Hawaii and Alaska.
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Featured image: US naval base in Apra Harbor, Guam. (US Navy / Codie L. Soule / Flickr)
In this particular con game, every candidate dangled before us as some form of political savior—including Donald Trump and Joe Biden—is part of a long-running, elaborate scam intended to persuade us that, despite all appearances to the contrary, we live in a constitutional republic.
In foreign and security politics, the intellectual level is now such that it does not even seem strange to decision-makers that they never obtain peace advice or consult peace experts. The fantasy-assumption is that if only there is enough military’ security’ means applied to enough societal problems, peace will automatically come about.
“Closing down the Global Economy as a means to combating the Killer Virus. That’s what they want us to believe. If the public had been informed that Covid-19 is “similar to Influenza”, the fear campaign would have fallen flat…”
“In fact, there is no study to even suggest that it makes any sense for healthy individuals to wear masks in public. One might suspect that the only political reason for enforcing the measure is to foster fear in the population.”
A daily update published by the ACDC, an affiliate of the AU, reports as of October 14, that 1,593,472 cases have been confirmed on the continent while the death toll from the pandemic stands 38,884 with 1,319, 118 classified as recovered from COVID-19. There are approximately 1.3 billion people living in the AU member-states and therefore in comparison to other geo-political regions, the infection rate overall remains low.
In an October address at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper unveiled the Pentagon’s plan for the future Navy, saying it would consist of over 500 warships — almost twice the number now in the U.S. inventory.
Under this scenario, Russia could get involved to defend its CSTO partnered state — potentially drawing the US, UK, and other NATO countries into the conflict, Turkey as well more directly. The above is a nightmarish scenario Moscow and Tehran very much want avoided.
From Yemen to Libya to Egypt, sales by this country and its allies are playing a significant role in fueling some of the world’s most devastating conflicts. But Donald Trump, even before he was felled by Covid-19 and sent to Walter Reed Medical Center, could not have cared less, as long as he thought such trafficking in the tools of death and destruction would help his political prospects.
Along with the toppling of Columbus statues and the removal of a racial slur as a name for a major football team, this signals a shifting awareness in the United States of our colonial roots and ongoing Indigenous genocide and a desire for change.
This single slice of information should be sufficient to put Covid-19 in proper perspective. It makes plain that the risk that this disease poses to humanity as a whole does not differ categorically from the risk of seasonal flu – or, for that matter, from any of the many other perils that we humans routinely encounter.
The United States has the dubious distinction of being the world’s leading arms dealer. It dominates the global trade in a historic fashion and nowhere is that domination more complete than in the endlessly war-torn Middle East. There, believe it or not, the U.S. controls nearly half the arms market. From Yemen to Libya to Egypt, sales by this country and its allies are playing a significant role in fueling some of the world’s most devastating conflicts. But Donald Trump, even before he was felled by Covid-19 and sent to Walter Reed Medical Center, could not have cared less, as long as he thought such trafficking in the tools of death and destruction would help his political prospects.
Look, for example, at the recent “normalization” of relations between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel he helped to broker, which has set the stage for yet another surge in American arms exports. To hear Trump and his supporters tell it, he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for the deal, dubbed “the Abraham Accords.” In fact, using it, he was eager to brand himself as “Donald Trump, peacemaker” in advance of the November election. This, believe me, was absurd on the face of it. Until the pandemic swept everything in the White House away, it was just another day in Trump World and another example of the president’s penchant for exploiting foreign and military policy for his own domestic political gain.
If the narcissist-in-chief had been honest for a change, he would have dubbed those Abraham Accords the “Arms Sales Accords.” The UAE was, in part, induced to participate in hopes of receiving Lockheed Martin’s F-35 combat aircraft and advanced armed drones as a reward. For his part, after some grumbling, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to one-up the UAE and seek a new $8 billion arms package from the Trump administration, including an additional squadron of Lockheed Martin’s F-35s (beyond those already on order), a fleet of Boeing attack helicopters, and so much more. Were that deal to go through, it would undoubtedly involve an increase in Israel’s more than ample military aid commitment from the United States, already slated to total $3.8 billion annually for the next decade.
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
This wasn’t the first time President Trump tried to capitalize on arms sales to the Middle East to consolidate his political position at home and his posture as this country’s dealmaker par excellence. Such gestures began in May 2017, during his very first official overseas trip to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis greeted him then with ego-boosting fanfare, putting banners featuring his face along roadways leading into their capital, Riyadh; projecting a giant image of that same face on the hotel where he was staying; and presenting him with a medal in a surreal ceremony at one of the kingdom’s many palaces. For his part, Trump came bearing arms in the form of a supposed $110 billion weapons package. Never mind that the size of the deal was vastly exaggerated. It allowed the president to gloat that his sales deal there would mean “jobs, jobs, jobs” in the United States. If he had to work with one of the most repressive regimes in the world to bring those jobs home, who cared? Not he and certainly not his son-in-law Jared Kushner who would develop a special relationship with the cruel Saudi Crown Prince and heir apparent to the throne, Mohammed bin Salman.
President Donald Trump poses for photos with ceremonial swordsmen on his arrival to Murabba Palace, as the guest of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, Saturday evening, May 20, 2017, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
Trump doubled down on his jobs argument in a March 2018 White House meeting with bin Salman. The president came armed with a prop for the cameras: a map of the U.S. showing the states that (he swore) would benefit most from Saudi arms sales, including — you won’t be surprised to learn — the crucial election swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
Nor will it surprise you that Trump’s jobs claims from those Saudi arms sales are almost entirely fraudulent. In fits of fancy, he’s even insisted that he’s creating as many as half a million jobs linked to weapons exports to that repressive regime. The real number is less than one-tenth that amount — and far less than one-tenth of one percent of U.S. employment. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?
American Arms Dominance
Donald Trump is far from the first president to push tens of billions of dollars of arms into the Middle East. The Obama administration, for example, made a record $115 billion in arms offers to Saudi Arabia during its eight years in office, including combat aircraft, attack helicopters, armored vehicles, military ships, missile defense systems, bombs, guns, and ammunition.
Those sales solidified Washington’s position as the Saudis’ primary arms supplier. Two-thirds of its air force consists of Boeing F-15 aircraft, the vast bulk of its tanks are General Dynamics M-1s, and most of its air-to-ground missiles come from Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. And mind you, those weapons aren’t just sitting in warehouses or being displayed in military parades. They’ve been among the principal killers in a brutal Saudi intervention in Yemen that has sparked the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe.
A new report from the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy (which I co-authored) underscores just how stunningly the U.S. dominates the Middle Eastern weapons market. According to data from the arms transfer database compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in the period from 2015 to 2019 the United States accounted for 48% of major weapons deliveries to the Middle East and North Africa, or (as that vast region is sometimes known acronymically) MENA. Those figures leave deliveries from the next largest suppliers in the dust. They represent nearly three times the arms Russia supplied to MENA, five times what France contributed, 10 times what the United Kingdom exported, and 16 times China’s contribution.
In other words, we have met the prime weapons proliferator in the Middle East and North Africa and it is us.
The influence of U.S. arms in this conflict-ridden region is further illustrated by a striking fact: Washington is the top supplier to 13 of the 19 countries there, including Morocco (91% of its arms imports), Israel (78%), Saudi Arabia (74%), Jordan (73%), Lebanon (73%), Kuwait (70%), the UAE (68%), and Qatar (50%). If the Trump administration goes ahead with its controversial plan to sell F-35s and armed drones to the UAE and brokers that related $8 billion arms deal with Israel, its share of arms imports to those two countries will be even higher in the years to come.
Devastating Consequences
None of the key players in today’s most devastating wars in the Middle East produce their own weaponry, which means that imports from the U.S. and other suppliers are the true fuel sustaining those conflicts. Advocates of arms transfers to the MENA region often describe them as a force for “stability,” a way to cement alliances, counter Iran, or more generally a tool for creating a balance of power that makes armed engagement less likely.
In a number of key conflicts in the region, this is nothing more than a convenient fantasy for arms suppliers (and the U.S. government), as the flow of ever more advanced weaponry has only exacerbated conflicts, aggravated human rights abuses, and caused countless civilian deaths and injuries, while provoking widespread destruction. And keep in mind that, while not solely responsible, Washington is the chief culprit when it comes to the weaponry that’s fueling a number of the area’s most violent wars.
In Yemen, a Saudi/UAE-led intervention that began in March 2015 has, by now, resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians through air strikes, put millions at risk of famine, and helped create the desperate conditions for the worst cholera outbreak in living memory. That war has already cost more than 100,000 lives and the U.S. and the United Kingdom have been the primary suppliers of the combat aircraft, bombs, attack helicopters, missiles, and armored vehicles used there, transfers valued in the tens of billions of dollars.
There has been a sharp jump in overall arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia since that war was launched. Dramatically enough, total arms sent to the Kingdom more than doubled between the 2010-2014 period and the years from 2015 to 2019. Together, the U.S. (74%) and the U.K. (13%) accounted for 87% of all arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia in that five-year time frame.
In Egypt, U.S.-supplied combat aircraft, tanks, and attack helicopters have been used in what is supposedly a counterterror operation in the Northern Sinai desert, which has, in reality, simply become a war largely against the civilian population of the region. Between 2015 and 2019, Washington’s arms offers to Egypt totaled $2.3 billion, with billions more in deals made earlier but delivered in those years. And in May 2020, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced that it was offering a package of Apache attack helicopters to Egypt worth up to $2.3 billion.
According to research conducted by Human Rights Watch, thousands of people have been arrested in the Sinai region over the past six years, hundreds have been disappeared, and tens of thousands have been forcibly evicted from their homes. Armed to the teeth, the Egyptian military has also carried out “systematic and widespread arbitrary arrests — including of children — enforced disappearances, torture, extrajudicial killings, collective punishment, and forced eviction.” There is also evidence to suggest that Egyptian forces have engaged in illegal air and ground strikes that have killed substantial numbers of civilians.
In several conflicts — examples of how such weapons transfers can have dramatic and unintended impacts — U.S. arms have ended up in the hands of both sides. When Turkish troops invaded northeastern Syria in October 2019, for instance, they faced Kurdish-led Syrian militias that had received some of the $2.5 billion in arms and training the U.S. had supplied to Syrian opposition forces over the previous five years. Meanwhile, the entire Turkish inventory of combat aircraft consists of U.S.-supplied F-16s and more than half of its armored vehicles are of American origin.
In Iraq, when the forces of the Islamic State, or ISIS, swept through a significant part of that country from the north in 2014, they captured U.S. light weaponry and armored vehicles worth billions of dollars from the Iraqi security forces this country had armed and trained. Similarly, in more recent years, U.S. arms have been transferred from the Iraqi military to Iranian-backed militias operating alongside them in the fight against ISIS.
Meanwhile, in Yemen, while the U.S. has directly armed the Saudi/UAE coalition, its weaponry has, in fact, ended up being used by all sides in the conflict, including their Houthi opponents, extremist militias, and groups linked to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. This equal-opportunity spread of American weaponry has occurred thanks to arms transfers by former members of the U.S.-supplied Yemeni military and by UAE forces that have worked with an array of groups in the southern part of the country.
Who Benefits?
Just four companies — Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics — were involved in the overwhelming majority of U.S. arms deals with Saudi Arabia between 2009 and 2019. In fact, at least one or more of those companies played key roles in 27 offers worth more than $125 billion (out of a total of 51 offers worth $138 billion). In other words, in financial terms, more than 90% of the U.S. arms offered to Saudi Arabia involved at least one of those top four weapons makers.
In its brutal bombing campaign in Yemen, the Saudis have killed thousand of civilians with U.S.-supplied weaponry. In the years since the Kingdom launched its war, indiscriminate air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition have hit marketplaces, hospitals, civilian neighborhoods, water treatment centers, even a school bus filled with children. American-made bombs have repeatedly been used in such incidents, including an attack on a wedding, where 21 people, children among them, were killed by a GBU-12 Paveway II guided bomb manufactured by Raytheon.
A General Dynamics 2,000-pound bomb with a Boeing JDAM guidance system was used in a March 2016 strike on a marketplace that killed 97 civilians, including 25 children. A Lockheed Martin laser-guided bomb was utilized in an August 2018 attack on a school bus that slaughtered 51 people, including 40 children. A September 2018 report by the Yemeni group Mwatana for Human Rights identified 19 air strikes on civilians in which U.S.-supplied weapons were definitely used, pointing out that the destruction of that bus was “not an isolated incident, but the latest in a series of gruesome [Saudi-led] Coalition attacks involving U.S. weapons.”
It should be noted that the sales of such weaponry have not occurred without resistance. In 2019, both houses of Congress voted down a bomb sale to Saudi Arabia because of its aggression in Yemen, only to have their efforts thwarted by a presidential veto. In some instances, as befits the Trump administration’s modus operandi, those sales have involved questionable political maneuvers. Take, for instance, a May 2019 declaration of an “emergency” that was used to push through an $8.1 billion deal with the Saudis, the UAE, and Jordan for precision-guided bombs and other equipment that simply bypassed normal Congressional oversight procedures completely.
At the behest of Congress, the State Department’s Office of Inspector General then opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding that declaration, in part because it had been pushed by a former Raytheon lobbyist working in State’s Office of Legal Counsel. However, the inspector general in charge of the probe, Stephen Linick, was soon fired by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for fear that his investigation would uncover administration wrongdoing and, after he was gone, the ultimate findings proved largely — surprise! — a whitewash, exonerating the administration. Still, the report did note that the Trump administration had failed to take adequate care to avoid civilian harm by U.S. weaponry supplied to the Saudis.
Even some Trump administration officials have had qualms about the Saudi deals. The New York Times has reported that a number of State Department personnel were concerned about whether they could someday be held liable for aiding and abetting war crimes in Yemen.
Will America Remain the World’s Greatest Arms Dealer?
If Donald Trump is re-elected, don’t expect U.S. sales to the Middle East — or their murderous effects — to diminish any time soon. To his credit, Joe Biden has pledged as president to end U.S. arms and support for the Saudi war in Yemen. For the region as a whole, however, don’t be shocked if, even in a Biden presidency, such weaponry continues to flow in and it remains business as usual for this country’s giant arms merchants to the detriment of the peoples of the Middle East. Unless you’re Raytheon or Lockheed Martin, selling arms is one area where no one should want to keep America “great.”
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In an October address at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper unveiled the Pentagon’s plan for the future Navy, saying it would consist of over 500 warships — almost twice the number now in the U.S. inventory.
A larger fleet was needed, he said, to counter the Chinese naval buildup and to ensure U.S. naval dominance well into the future. Esper indicated, however, that a Navy of 500 ships would not constitute an enlarged version of the current force — a feat probably far beyond the Navy’s fiscal and shipbuilding capabilities. Rather, it would contain approximately the same number of conventional warships now in the fleet plus “between 140 to 240 unmanned and optionally manned surface and subsurface vessels of all types.”
Huh? What are these unmanned vessels and what will they do? Can unmanned and “optionally manned” (whatever that means) vessels supplant conventional warships and provide the seapower advantage Esper claims we require? Nowhere in his October 6 speech or in other Pentagon statements can you find answers to these critical questions.
That the Navy, the Defense Department, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have been investigating the potential for replacing human crews with command-and-control (C2) systems powered by artificial intelligence (AI) on naval vessels is no secret. In April 2016, DARPA announced the initial launch of the Sea Hunter, a 132-trimaran designed to patrol the high seas in search of enemy submarines with no humans aboard. A similar initiative, with the suggestive name “Ghost Fleet Overlord,” was conducted by the Strategic Capabilities Office of the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2018 and 2019. Both efforts sought to explore the possibilities of combining commercially available hulls and hardware with cutting-edge computer software to enable uncrewed vessels to navigate themselves and perform a variety of military missions.
For Navy leaders, the development of unmanned vessels is thought to have many advantages. To begin with, they do not require extensive crew quarters and so can be made smaller and for less money. At a lower price, you can buy more of them than you can of conventional, manned warships, so you can build a bigger fleet — that aspirational 500 number — without busting the budget.
In fact, Navy strategists now speak of a “distributed” fleet, consisting of a larger number of smaller, unmanned vessels in place of a smaller force of large capital ships. And, in an era in which large surface warships are becoming increasingly vulnerable to enemy anti-ship missiles, you can risk sending unmanned ships into highly contested waters, such as the South China Sea, where you might not want to send a carrier with thousands of sailors aboard.
All this represents “a shift in mindset,” said the Navy’s Surface Warfare Director, Rear Admiral Ronald Boxall.
“Instead of putting as much stuff on the ship for as much money as I have, you start thinking in a different way…. You start saying: ‘How small can my platform be to get everything I need on it?… And when I look at the force, I think, ‘Where can we use unmanned to so that I can push it to a smaller platform?’”
Inspired by this “mindset,” the Navy has invested billions of dollars in the development of two new classes of warships: a medium unmanned surface vessel (MUSV) and a large unmanned surface vessel (LUSV). Contracts have been awarded for the design of both types, with no conception of what they might look like, how they will be propelled, or what functions they may perform once put to sea.
In Fiscal Year 2020, the Navy was awarded $408 million to conduct research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) on two large unmanned surface vessels, and the Pentagon requested another $464 million for RDT&E work on an additional pair of LUSVs in FY 2021, with some of those funds intended for research on enabling technologies for an MUSV. If the Navy’s five-year shipbuilding request is fully funded, it will invest a total of $3.3 billion on LUSV and MUSV development and procurement over fiscal years 2021 to 2025.
Look through Pentagon procurement documents, however, and you will find scant information about the nature or function of these vessels. All that is said about them in the Fiscal Year 2021 Budget Request submitted to Congress in February by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) is these are “low-cost, high-endurance, reconfigurable ships able to accommodate various payloads for unmanned missions.” And, in an acknowledgement of the Navy’s uncertainty about these ships’ ultimate role, it added, “Future missions and payloads will be informed as the concept of operations is developed.”
Defense industry journalists have suggested a variety of missions for these vessels. Some say their primary task will be to hunt for enemy submarines. Paul McLeary, writing in Breaking Defense, says they could be used to deploy small underwater drones for detecting submarines in advance of manned vessels. Others suggest they will serve as floating “missile magazines,” providing the Navy with added firepower. According to David Larter of Defense News, they will be equipped with vertical launch tubes for ballistic missiles of various types. The truth of the matter is, however, that no one knows for sure what these ships will do, as the Navy has yet to figure this out.
Questions have also arisen about the software that will govern these ships in the absence of human pilots and commanders. The Sea Hunter has succeeded in undertaking long voyages on its own, navigating the seas and returning to base, but this is not the same as conducting military operations in contested areas under wartime conditions. Much of the C2 technology is still in the experimental stage, and Navy officials cannot be certain when all the necessary components will be capable of functioning together harmoniously. Some analysts worry, for example, that AI-governed ships could lose connectivity with manned vessels and “go rogue,” firing their missiles or undertaking other military actions not intended by their human overseers.
The fact that the Navy cannot specify the future role of these ships or guarantee that all the necessary software will perform as intended has caused unease among many in Congress. In its FY 2021 markup of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the House Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces banned the use of funds for the procurement of large unmanned surface vessels until the Secretary of the Navy certifies in writing that all of its key components, including the hull, mechanical system, and autonomous features have been fully tested and proved to be reliable; roughly similar language is contained in the Senate version of the bill. The House and Senate have yet to reconcile their versions of the NDAA, so it is unclear whether a requirement of this sort will appear in the final text of the bill, but it is likely that the Navy’s plans to push ahead with the development and production of unmanned vessels will be subjected to ongoing Congressional scrutiny and limitations.
The Navy clearly hopes that by floating a few prototype LUSVs and MUSVs, it can win over skeptics and demonstrate the utility of unmanned vessels. Ships of these types obviously have their admirers among senior Pentagon officials, and so we can assume they will figure prominently in future Navy budget requests — whoever sits in the White House next year. But it would be wise to view such requests with a great deal of skepticism.
Do unmanned vessels fill an actual naval requirement? If so, what is that requirement, and why will such ships best satisfy it? It seems highly imprudent to begin building LUSVs and MUSVs until these questions can be answered — especially given the concerns about relying on wholly autonomous weapons systems. Reducing the risk to American sailors is obviously a desirable objective, but if the solution involves the creation of a “ghost fleet” of possibly unreliable unmanned vessels that Navy commanders feel free to deploy in highly-contested waters, the final outcome may not be reduced danger to our sailors but far greater.
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In his much discussed Being Mortal, Atul Gawande claims modern medicine is ill-equipped to cope with the aged and people near death not because the medical community has a faulty view about what matters most in life, but rather because “they have had almost no view at all”. [1] Gawande is wrong. Medicine does have a view. It is about survivability.
Medicine espouses a view about life: More time on Earth is always better.
It’s no wonder people experience FOMO so acutely, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘Fear of Missing Out’ is social anxiety induced from the belief that others are having a better life than you. FOMO isn’t just about comparison with others. The anxiety can arise from thinking about the life you might have had, compared to your reality.
FOMO is fear of regret of missed opportunities, be it social events, novel experiences or acquisition of things. However, FOMO is really about an unwillingness to give up—an unwillingness to sacrifice.
Terry Eagleton notes sacrifice is what defines a martyr. [2] A martyr is willing to give up what is most precious to her—her life—in the hope that the cause will be realized. It is sacrifice that connects us to our humanness.
But Medicine tries to offer security in the face of change and decay. The goal is to patch up the patient and extend life. Medicine’s view about life promotes the belief that we should not have to give up anything. It contributes to an attitude of resistance to change, to death.
And so, we don’t grow. We do not know reality as it is. Resistance to change, loss and sacrifice warps our relation to the world: It is an attitude that assumes the self is at the center of it all. We falsely think that life and death are diametric opposites that can be separated, instead of being part of the same phenomenon. Life, however, is messy, just as we don’t control death.
We need to correct our relation to the world and things in it if we’re to better face something like COVID. Lalin Anik suggests adopting JOMO, ‘Joy of Missing Out’ to counter FOMO. [3] This approach is superficial. It merely shifts the objects of one’s desire. Its false life-affirming optimism doesn’t tackle the problem, because it still assumes the self is at the center of everything.
Thomas Merton says when we “forget ourselves on purpose,” we right our relation to the world. [4] His point is the existential purging of the self, the ego, allows us to really play in the world as we would like and avoid missing out. It’s a paradox: We miss out less if we give up more. We aren’t preoccupied by what the meaning of it all is, instead we simply are—we exist.
Suffering is constructive when it brings the insight we can accept change, which makes us suffer less. This isn’t to say that suffering experienced is any less profound or short-lived. The point is merely that resistance makes one suffer twice. Ceaseless hyperactivity to avoid suffering is suffering upon suffering. It is the wrong way to cope.
Gawande fails to acknowledge that modern medicine doesn’t equip us with the tools to face mortality, because its inherent life-extending stance is a denial of death, and as such a denial of life. It promotes FOMO and clinging on to life, making it sterile. We haven’t always been so. Past cultures practised ars moriendi, the art of dying. They cultivated an awareness of death and how to achieve a good death. The art of dying is the art of living. Recognition of death and the pursuit of a good death restores vitality, because it jolts us out of mundane stupor. They understood the messiness of life. Honest, hard conversations about death and life must happen while we are living. This isn’t about a frenzied search for deeper meaning where there is none. Rather, it involves patience and compassion with ourselves and others.
Mistakenly some think to reconcile oneself to death is to give up on life. It’s seen as resignation in the final battle. However, awareness of death delivers truth about human existence. It is to see life as a gift. It’s something we have not asked for, but has been bestowed to us all the same. This revelation helps us face reality as it is, not how we wish it to be. Enabling human well-being is about clarity and knowing one’s place in the world.
The Bardo Thödol, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, tells us there’s no mission more urgent than preparing for death, because it is life affirming. Zen Master Bunan Zenji says it best:
While alive, be dead,
Thoroughly dead—
All is good then,
Whatever you may do.
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Notes
[1] Gawande, Atul. 2014. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. New York, New York: Metropolitan Books. 128
[2] Eagleton, Terry. 2018. Radical Sacrifice. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. 88.
[3] Trepany, Charles. 2020. “Quarantine FOMO: Why You May Still Fear Missing Out, Even When Everything Is Canceled.” USA Today, August 11.
[4] McDonnell, Thomas P. 1996. A Thomas Merton Reader. New York, New York: Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. 505.
Since March, the coronavirus has been treated as if it is a danger categorically different from other dangers, including other viruses. But this treatment is deeply mistaken. The coronavirus is not a categorically different danger. It occupies a location on the same spectrum that features other viruses. Reasonable people can and do debate just where this location is – that is, how much more dangerous is the coronavirus than are ordinary flu viruses and other ‘novel’ viruses that plagued us in the past. But the coronavirus is well within the same category as other viruses.
Yet humanity has reacted – and continues to react – to the coronavirus as if it is a beast that differs from other health risks categorically. The hysterical overreaction by the press, public-health officials, and politicians – an overreaction undoubtedly supercharged by social media – has convinced many people that humanity is today being stalked by a venomous monster wholly unlike anything to which we are accustomed.
Only by assuming that this virus differs fundamentally from other risks can governments continue to get away with unprecedented and arbitrary restrictions on peaceful human activities – restrictions on activities such as working at the factory or office, on dining out, on attending religious services, on going to school, and even on seeking medical treatments for non-Covid-related ailments. Only by being convinced that the coronavirus poses a threat categorically unique are ordinary men and women led to change their ways of living and interacting as fundamentally as many have done, and to tolerate the categorical change in governments’ responses to epidemics.
Quaking with fear that the angel of death lurks as never before in every stranger’s breath, on every person’s fingertips, and around every corner, people today treat each other categorically differently from how they treated each other until this past March. They leap frantically away from approaching strangers on sidewalks. They “meet” their co-workers only online. Neighbors no longer visit each other’s homes, while those who still dare to chat outside stand far apart, as if each is about to morph any moment from a Dr. Jekyll into a Mr. Hyde. When they stage athletic events, the stands are filled not with human beings but with eerie cardboard cutouts.
Other human beings are no longer treated as potential partners in productive social cooperation, whether for work or pleasure. Now regarded as meaty and mobile vials of unprecedented poison, other human beings are treated by so many of us in a way that differs categorically from how we treated them for centuries up until just a few months ago. “Social distancing” is undermining social cooperation – which means that it’s undermining civilization itself.
Is there any evidence to justify this categorical change in behavior?
Covid’s Risks
My always wise friend and sometime co-author Lyle Albaugh has from the start understood that Covid, while certainly no nothingburger, is not remotely close to being the extraordinary monster that it has become in the popular mind. And so he’s having the following information printed on business-card-sized notices:
COVID-19 INFECTION SURVIVAL RATES (per CDC)
Ages 0-19: 99.997%
Ages 20-49: 99.98%
Ages 50-69: 99.5%
Ages 70+: 94.6%
Seasonal Flu Infection Survival Rate (for population as a whole): 99.90%
This single slice of information should be sufficient to put Covid-19 in proper perspective. It makes plain that the risk that this disease poses to humanity as a whole does not differ categorically from the risk of seasonal flu – or, for that matter, from any of the many other perils that we humans routinely encounter. And because these figures show the estimated chances of survival of those who are infected with Covid, even for persons 70 years of age or older Covid obviously is not a categorically unique threat.
And yet, again, humanity has reacted to Covid in a manner categorically unique. It’s as if a hornet rather than a honeybee found its way into our home, and so to protect ourselves from the somewhat-more-threatening invader we commenced to frantically scour every room of our home with a flamethrower.
But I despair that the information shared by Lyle – or even the more extensive information shared by my courageous colleagues at AIER – will have any noticeable impact. Very many people today seem almost eager to be misled about the danger posed by Covid. Much of humanity today appears to perversely enjoy being duped into the irrational fear that any one of us, regardless of age or health, is at the mercy of a brutal beast categorically more lethal than is any other danger that we’ve ever confronted. I hope that my despair proves misguided.
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Prof. Donald J. Boudreaux is a senior fellow with American Institute for Economic Research and with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; a Mercatus Center Board Member; and a professor of economics and former economics-department chair at George Mason University.
Since July, Turkish and Azeri troops participated in joint air and ground military exercise.
Most often these type drills are defensive. They’re conducted to prepare for possible attacks on the territory of participating nations.
Azeris launched war on Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh (NK below), its campaign for control of the enclave backed and likely encouraged by Ankara.
The same likely holds for the US and UK, supporting the agenda of one country over another and their own interests.
Most often when conflicts erupt, their fingerprints are all over them, especially in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Why would the US and Britain support Turkey over Armenia? One reason could be to draw Moscow into the conflict.
Along with Russia and four other regional countries, Armenia is a Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) state.
If the territory of any CSTO member state is attacked by a foreign power, other alliance members are obligated to provide military support.
NK is not Armenian territory, so conflict there doesn’t require other CSTO countries to aid Yerevan militarily.
Turkey is a NATO member.
Despite uneasy relations between Ankara and the West, notably the US and UK, alliance Article 4 calls for members to “consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence, or security of any” is threatened.
Article 5 considers an armed attack (real or otherwise) against one or more members, an attack against all. Collective self-defense is called for.
Based on what’s now known, Turkey helped Azerbaijan prepare for preemptive war on Armenia in NK.
Preparation included training, supplying Baku with heavy weapons, providing command and control involvement, along with deploying jihadist fighters to aid Azeri troops.
If Turkish commanders are harmed by ongoing fighting, accidentally or otherwise, Ankara could retaliate against Armenia militarily.
Azerbaijan borders Russia. Iran borders Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The US and maybe Britain would very much like to draw Iran into the NK conflict.
If fighting spills into its territory, its forces might respond in self-defense, giving the US and UK a pretext to terror-bomb Iranian targets.
On Wednesday, Armenia’s Defense Ministry accused Azerbaijan of striking military equipment in its territory.
Saying Armenian forces reserve the right to respond in kind against an Azeri military facility risks expanding conflict to the territory of both countries.
Under this scenario, Russia could get involved to defend its CSTO partnered state — potentially drawing the US, UK, and other NATO countries into the conflict, Turkey as well more directly.
The above is a nightmarish scenario Moscow and Tehran very much want avoided.
During a Wednesday interview on the NK conflict, I was asked what more can Russia do resolve it.
Major differences between Armenia and Azerbaijan on the one hand, Yerevan and Ankara on the other, are longstanding.
Resolving them to halt fighting might be beyond the diplomatic skills of any negotiator.
I responded to the question, saying Sergey Lavrov’s strategy may be to keep talking to his counterparts and leadership of both warring sides — in person as much as possible, otherwise by phone, urging a halt in fighting.
Protracted conflict in NK assures losers, not winners, he understands.
With Turkish help, Azeri forces could gain an advantage over Armenia’s military.
Baku perhaps could drive Yerevan out of NK partially or entirely.
If fighting continues for weeks or months, mass slaughter and destruction in the enclave will leave no prize for either side to claim.
The prevailing side, if things turn out this way, will have countless numbers of corpses to bury and likely billions of dollars needed for reconstruction.
On Wednesday, Lavrov proposed deploying Russian peacekeepers to monitor things along the line of control in NK.
He clarified his proposal, saying “not even peacekeepers (should participate in the verification mechanism), but military observers that would be sufficient.”
“We believe that it would be perfectly correct if these were our military observers, but the final word should be with the sides (of the conflict).”
“Of course, we proceed from the fact that both Yerevan and Baku will take into account our amicable relations, relations of strategic partnership.”
Stressing his country’s close ties to Turkey, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev said Baku, Yerevan, and Ankara would have to agree on Russia’s involvement this way.
On October 14, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Azerbaijan wants total control of NK, calling the situation on the ground “very difficult.”
He claimed Baku and Ankara do not want “to stop their aggression.”
NK defense forces accused Azerbaijan of “violat(ing) the humanitarian truce, targeting peaceful settlements,” adding:
“In addition to shelling the city of Martakert, the enemy (Baku) also employed air force (warplanes) in the northeastern direction.”
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry accused Armenia of shelling the town of Tartar, causing at least seven casualties.
It’s unclear if they’e civilians or military personnel.
Lavrov criticized Turkey’s involvement in the fighting.
Calling a military solution unacceptable, he said “(w)e do not agree with the position voiced by Turkey, that was also expressed several times by (Azeri) President Aliyev,” adding:
“It is not a secret that we cannot agree with a statement that a military solution to the conflict is permissible.”
International Committee of the Red Cross director for Eurasia Martin Scheupp called on both sides to halt fighting.
“We project that at least tens of thousands of people across the region will need support over the next few months,” he stressed, adding:
“Civilians are dying or suffering life-changing injuries.”
“Homes, businesses and once-busy streets are being reduced to rubble.”
“The elderly and babies are among those forced to spend hours in unheated basements or to leave their homes for safety.”
Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu spoke to his Armenian and Azeri counterparts, urging them to observe ceasefire.
Conflict is in its third week with no signs of either side backing down.
Russia continues trying to get them to halt fighting and discuss differences diplomatically.
Ceasefire agreed to by their foreign ministers in Moscow didn’t take hold.
On Tuesday, Armenia’s Defense Ministry said Azeri forces launched attacks in “three to four directions, and battles continued throughout the day.”
“Particularly intense fighting occurred in the northern sector.”
“It was probably among the most difficult battles in this war.”
Fighting could continue for weeks if Russia’s best efforts fail to get both sides to observe ceasefire agreed to last Friday.
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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.”
The leader of the coronavirus vaccine team at Oxford University declared Tuesday that nothing is going to approach returning to normal until at least next Summer.
Professor Andrew Pollard said that face masks and social distancing rules are not going away any time soon, declaring that a vaccine is still months away and would only become available for key workers during the first phase of its rollout anyway.
“Life won’t be back to normal until summer at the earliest. We may need masks until July,” Pollard said during an online seminar with Oxford alumni.
“If we end up with a vaccine that’s effective in preventing the disease, that is by far the best way to control the virus. But in the medium term, we’ll still need better treatments,” the professor added.
“When does life get back to normal? Even if we had enough vaccine for everyone, in my view it’s unlikely that we’re going to very rapidly be in a position where the physical distancing rules can be just dropped,” he added.
Politicians and health advisors to governments have repeatedly said that strict measures will have to remain in place until a vaccine is available.
“Until we’ve got a high level of immunity in the population so that we can stop the virus so most vulnerable people are immune, there is going to be a risk. Initially, we’re going to be in a position where mask-wearing and social distancing don’t change,” Pollard reiterated.
“Only when there is a big drop in serious cases will governments feel able to relax these measures. This is a very easily transmissible virus,” he further commented.
Back in May, scientists expressed doubts over the effectiveness of Oxford’s coronavirus vaccine, after all of the monkeys used in initial testing later contracted coronavirus.
While funding is pouring into vaccine trials, other research on coronavirus treatments has all but been ignored, despite some scientists claiming to have discovered anti-bodies that can completely block COVID-19 or effectively neutralise the virus.
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Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov’s suggestion to deploy Russian peacekeepers and military observers into the universally recognized Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and its seven surrounding districts under Armenian occupation pending both sides’ agreement raises the prospect of Moscow’s military intervention in this conflict, which is worthwhile examining since this scenario isn’t as far-fetched as some might think.
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Dramatic Developments
Wednesday saw two dramatic developments in the Nagorno-Karabakh Continuation War which suggest that it’s either spiraling further out of control or might almost counterintuitively be on the brink of being brought back under control depending on which direction events proceed in the coming days. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov suggested that his country could deploy peacekeepers and military observers into the universally recognized Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and its seven surrounding districts under Armenian occupation pending both sides’ agreement in order to monitor the ceasefire. This was proposed after reports that Azerbaijan struck several missile launchers inside Armenia earlier that day which were allegedly preparing to hit targets in its territory and possibly repeat last weekend’s Ganja attack or some similar crime against civilians.
Intervention Pretexts
In theory, any external attack against the territory of Russia’s CSTO Armenia ally could trigger Moscow’s conventional military intervention on Yerevan’s side, but the legal dilemma that the Eurasian Great Power would face (apart from already being wary of Armenia’s attempts to draw it into the war) is that Azerbaijan can argue that it was preemptively defending itself from unprovoked acts of aggression and therefore enforcing the ceasefire in its own way. Nevertheless, as the saying goes for better or for worse, “might makes right” so Russia could always act first and then make its legal case after having already changed the facts on the ground. That scenario is unlikely though for the earlier mentioned reason that Russia wants to avoid being dragged into this conflict, let alone potentially squaring off against Azerbaijan’s Turkish NATO ally.
It might be for that reason why the peacekeeper and military observer proposals were openly floated by the Russian Foreign Minister since they represent a “middle ground” of sorts for Moscow. The emerging narrative that Syrian and Libyan militants are entering the conflict zone to fight on Azerbaijan’s side with Turkey’s support — which is vehemently denied by both Baku and Ankara — adds a sense of urgency to this proposal from the perspective of Russian domestic politics. Even so, however, it wouldn’t at this moment be a plausible enough pretext since the potential deployment of those Russian forces there pending all sides’ agreement wouldn’t stop any speculative spread of foreign militants into the North Caucasus. After all, it wouldn’t make sense for such fighters — if they’re actually even there — to travel to Russia via Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia.
The “Dark Scenario”
The likelihood therefore exists that the emerging militant narrative might be refined, perhaps with forthcoming reports from the Russian side, in order to make it more convincing, though that would presumably entail suggesting that those fighters might enter Russia via its border with Azerbaijan or even outright make an accusation to that effect. It’s unclear whether Russia would be willing to proverbially “cross the Rubicon” in such a way which would reverse the past decade of progress on bilateral relations just to create the pretext for the unilateral military intervention that would probably follow in that instance, which it hasn’t shown any signs of seriously considering contrary to some “wishful thinking” narratives. Still, since the purpose of this piece is to forecast scenarios, it can’t be outright dismissed even though it’s very unlikely.
In the event that any progress is made on that aforementioned front, then it would amount to the rupturing of relations with Azerbaijan and probably also Turkey, the latter consequence of which might be felt most immediately in Syria. This scenario would also suggest that either some lobbying efforts were successful in Russia and/or that Moscow decided to intervene in advance of its own currently unclear reasons but felt uncomfortable doing so under the pretext of supporting Armenia’s American- and Soros-backed leader, hence the focus on foreign militants. That said, the author feels obligated to state that he doesn’t believe that this scenario is plausible at the moment because no credible indications have been observed. Russia’s impressive restraint in resisting the pressure of some interest groups to intervene shows its commitment to neutrality.
Armenian & Azerbaijani Concerns
Having dismissed the “dark scenario” of a unilateral Russian military intervention under the anti-militant pretext which could quickly spark a CSTO-NATO crisis, it’s now time to explore the ways in which an intervention could be managed by most or all of the concerned stakeholders in order to advance the long-overdue political solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Armenia is increasingly operating as a “rogue state” through its attacks on Azerbaijani targets outside the conflict zone, to say nothing of those against civilians, but if Russia can rein in its wayward ally, then it might be able to convince it to accept the deployment of peacekeepers and military observers in order to prevent its total loss in the war. Both sides trust Russia, yet there are also some reservations about what its ultimate role would be following any possible intervention.
For example, some Azerbaijanis are concerned that Russia might simply seek to formalize the status quo and thus prevent the implementation of the four UNSC Resolutions (822, 853, 874, 884) that Russia itself voted for demanding the Armenian military’s full, immediate, and unconditional withdrawal from universally recognized Azerbaijani territory. Likewise, some Armenians might fear that Russia would “betray” them (as they might misleadingly frame it) by pressuring them to abide by the same international legal demands that Moscow itself reiterated on four separate occasions in 1993 through the UNSC. Sputnik’s live update feed from Wednesday reported that “Armenian PM Says Azerbaijan Demanded That Yerevan Surrender 7 Regions Around Karabakh in Exchange for Peace”, which Pashinyan rejected, meaning that he openly flaunts his defiance of international law.
The Speculative Scenario
Since Russia never misses the chance to publicly reiterate its commitment to international law, it can be safely assumed that Moscow disagrees with Yerevan’s illegal stance. Still, Russia might leverage its world-class diplomatic skill to convince Armenia that it won’t seek to implement the relevant UNSC Resolutions if all sides agree to its military intervention, at least not right away that is, though that might then make Baku balk at supporting this for the above-mentioned reason related to its suspicion that this scenario would just formalize the pro-separatist status quo. That might be avoided if Russia secretly coordinates its diplomatic outreaches to Armenia with Azerbaijan, which could lead to Baku not objecting to this scenario as long as it was assured that Moscow would indeed seek to implement those UNSC Resolutions (even if not right away).
Taking Turkish Interests Into Account
The so-called “elephant in the room” is Turkey, which Azerbaijan previously said must be involvedin the peace process in one way or another. Armenia is obviously against that so it wouldn’t agree to anything that could result in its hated foe’s military intervention in the conflict. This rules out any bilateral agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan to allow a joint Russian-Turkish peacekeeping and military observer force to operate in the occupied territories, except of course if Russia pressures Armenia to accept it or the Turkish force follows the Russian one per a secret agreement between Moscow, Ankara, and Baku sometime after the Russian forces are deployed. This is of course speculative and there aren’t any indications suggesting that it’s being considered at the moment, but it might be the “surprise twist” needed to peacefully end the conflict once and for all.
To explain, replicating the Russian-Turkish Syrian scenario of joint patrols and diplomatic coordination might result in a much-needed breakthrough for resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. This hasn’t happened in Syria for a variety of reasons related to that conflict’s uniqueness, but in the unexpected event that Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to a joint Russian-Turkish mission or a comparatively more likely Russian peacekeeping and military observer deployment that was eventually followed by a Turkish one after the separatists were under Russia’s control (per a secret agreement between Moscow, Ankara, and Baku), then the facts on the ground could theoretically be changed in favor of advancing a political solution in according with the Madrid Principles. Russia might operate in Nagorno-Karabakh, Turkey in five of the seven surrounding occupied districts, and joint patrols in the two remaining ones linking Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia.
Can Russian Diplomacy Save The Day?
The reader must remember that Armenia is extremely unlikely to ever agree to this and that the speculated scenario could probably occur only if it and Azerbaijan reach an initial agreement solely allowing for the deployment of Russian forces, but if Moscow has the political will to cut a secret pragmatic deal with Baku and Ankara to the end that the author wrote about, then it could truly be a game-changer for reining in the “rogue state” of Armenia and finally implementing the four UNSC Resolutions. It would first and foremost require trust between Russia and Azerbaijan since Baku would need to have absolute faith that Moscow would keep its word in any secret trilateral arrangement with Ankara, and then Russia would need to convince Armenia that its proposed deployment wouldn’t ever involve any Turkish component. This would be a herculean task for Russian diplomats.
If they can pull it off, though, then it might eventually end the war by non-military means. Specifically, it provides a formula for implementing the Madrid Principles related to the “return of the seven surrounding districts to Azerbaijani control” (five of which would have a Russian-facilitated Turkish peacekeeper and military observer presence); “an interim status for Nagorno-Karabakh providing guarantees for security and self-governance” (which would be the responsibility of Russian forces); and “a corridor linking Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh (under the joint control of Russian-Turkish forces). In theory, Russian and Turkish forces would “keep each other in check” to prevent either from too openly siding with the warring party that they’re most closely associated with, and joint control of the corridor would ensure that neither side exploits it for their own purposes.
Concluding Thoughts
What the author aimed to do in this analysis was forecast the most likely scenarios in which a Russian military intervention into the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict might occur. The “dark scenario” of a unilateral one risking a dual war with Azerbaijan and Turkey (perhaps even with NATO too) was discounted since it’s not at all in Russia’s interests, but the pragmatic one of having Russian forces there later open the door for Turkish ones to join them might present the breakthrough that’s needed to finally implement the four UNSC Resolutions on peacefully resolving this long-standing issue. To be absolutely clear, the author is not predicting that any of this will definitely happen nor is he imposing any plan onto anyone, but all that he’s doing is provoking out-of-the-box thinking by all sides in order to hopefully inspire a creative solution that could pave the way for peace.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released an extraordinary statement on Tuesday, decrying a political scene he said “has moved away from spirited debate to a vile, vituperative, hate-filled morass, that is unbecoming of any free nation.” “The world is watching America with abject horror,” he added.
Romney tweeted his statement under the title “My thoughts on the current state of our politics.” “I have stayed quiet,” he said, “with the approach of the election.” “But I’m troubled by our politics,” the sole Republican to vote to impeach Trump added in his statement.
“The president calls the Democratic vice-presidential candidate ‘a monster’. He repeatedly labels the Speaker of the House ‘crazy.’ He calls for the justice department to put the prior president in jail. He attacks the governor of Michigan on the very day a plot is discovered to kidnap her. Democrats launch blistering attacks of their own, though their presidential nominee refuses to stoop as low as others,” Romney, a Utah senator who was the 2012 Republican nominee for president, complained in the statement.
Though superficially trying to appear “fair and balanced” in the didactic sermon patronizingly delivered by the only adult in the room full of political upstarts, Romney’s perceptible bias in the polemical diatribe was hard not to be noticed.
It defies explanation if he didn’t watch the presidential debate or consciously elided over the sordid episode where the Democratic presidential nominee contemptuously sneered at his political rival with derogatory epithets such as “a clown, a racist and Putin’s puppy.”
I’m not sure if Biden was high on meth during the debate, as Trump had repeatedly been insinuating, or he lacks basic etiquette to act like a dignified statesman, but only amphetamines could make a person take leave of his senses and insolently yell at the president of the US, “Will you shut up, man,” while ironically complaining, “This is so unpresidential.”
Though a longtime Republican senator, Mitt Romney’s loyalty to the GOP was compromised due to a personal spat with Trump. In the Republican primaries of the 2016 US presidential elections, Romney severely castigated Trump, calling him “a phony and a fraud.”
After Trump was elected president, he dangled the carrot of the secretary of state appointment to Romney, invited him to a dinner in a swanky New York restaurant, made him eat his words and fawn all over Trump like a servile toady. But later, he gave one of the most coveted appointments in the US bureaucratic hierarchy to oil executive Rex Tillerson.
Romney felt humiliated to the extent that in Trump’s vulnerable moment, after impeachment proceedings were initiated against him in the Senate in February, Romney became the only US senator in the American political history who voted against his own Republican Party president.
Though lacking intellect and often ridiculed for frequent spelling errors on his Twitter timeline, such as “unpresidented” and “covfefe,” implying he gets his news feed from television talk shows and rarely reads book and articles, Donald Trump is street smart and his anti-globalization agenda and down-to-earth attitude appeal to the American working classes.
Nevertheless, it’s quite easy for the neuroscientists on the payroll of the national security establishment to manipulate the minds of such impressionable politicians and lead them by the nose to toe the line of the deep state, particularly on foreign policy matters. No wonder national security shills disparagingly sneer at the president as the “toddler-in-chief.”
In 2017, a couple of caricatures went viral on social media. In one of those caricatures, Donald Trump was depicted as a child sitting on a chair and Vladimir Putin was shown whispering something into Trump’s ears from behind. In the other, Trump was portrayed sitting in Steve Bannon’s lap and the latter was shown mumbling into Trump’s ears, “Who is the big boy now?” And Trump was shown replying, “I am the big boy.”
The meaning conveyed by those cunningly crafted caricatures was to illustrate that Trump lacks the intelligence to think for himself and that he was being manipulated and played around by Putin and Bannon. Those caricatures must have affronted the vanity of Donald Trump to an extent that after the publication of those caricatures, he became ill-disposed toward Putin and sacked Bannon from his job as the White House Chief Strategist in August 2017, only seven months into the first year of the Trump presidency.
Bannon was the principal ideologue of the American alt-right movement. Though the alt-right agenda of the Trump presidency has been scuttled by the deep state, Trump’s views regarding global politics and economics are starkly different from the establishment Democrats and Republicans pursuing neocolonial world order masqueraded as globalization and free trade.
Besides the Trump supporters in the United States, the far-right populist leaders in Europe are also exploiting popular resentment against free trade and globalization. The Brexiteers in the United Kingdom, the Yellow Vest protesters in France and the far-right movements in Germany and across Europe are a manifestation of a paradigm shift in the global economic order in which nationalist and protectionist slogans have replaced the free trade and globalization mantra of the nineties.
Donald Trump withdrawing the United States from multilateral treaties, restructuring trade agreements and initiating a trade war against China are meant to redress, at least cosmetically, the legitimate grievances of the American working classes against the wealth disparity created by laissez-faire capitalism and market fundamentalism.
Michael Crowley reported for the New York Times [1] last month that American allies and former US Officials fear Trump could seek NATO exit in a second term. According to the report,
“This summer, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser John R. Bolton published a book that described the president as repeatedly saying he wanted to quit the NATO alliance. Last month, Mr. Bolton speculated to a Spanish newspaper that Mr. Trump might even spring an ‘October surprise’ shortly before the election by declaring his intention to leave the alliance in a second term.”
The report notes,
“In a book published this week, Michael S. Schmidt, a New York Times reporter, wrote that Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff John F. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, told others that ‘one of the most difficult tasks he faced with Trump was trying to stop him from pulling out of NATO.’ One person who has heard Mr. Kelly speak in private settings confirmed that he had made such remarks.”
Crowley adds,
“Donald Trump now relies on ‘a team of inexperienced bureaucrats’ and has grown more confident and assertive, as he has already sacked seasoned national security advisers, including John F. Kelly; Jim Mattis, another retired four-star Marine general and Trump’s first defense secretary; and H.R. McMaster, a retired three-star Army general and Trump’s former national security adviser.”
In fact, the Trump administration announced plans in July to withdraw 12,000 American troops from Germany and sought to cut funding for the Pentagon’s European Deterrence Initiative. About half of the troops withdrawn from Germany were re-deployed in Europe, mainly in Italy and Poland, and the rest returned to the US.
Similarly, although full withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan was originally scheduled for April next year, according to terms of peace deal reached with the Taliban on February 29, President Trump hastened the withdrawal process by making an electoral pledge this week that all troops should be “home by Christmas.” “We should have the small remaining number of our BRAVE Men and Women serving in Afghanistan home by Christmas,” he tweeted last week.
Even the arch-foes of the US in Afghanistan effusively praised President Trump’s peace overtures. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahidtold CBS News [2] in a phone interview last week,
“We hope he will win the election and wind up US military presence in Afghanistan.”
The militant group also expressed concern about President Trump’s bout with the coronavirus.
“When we heard about Trump being COVID-19 positive, we got worried for his health, but it seems he is getting better,” another Taliban senior leader confided to reporter Sami Yousafzai.
Moreover, Iran-backed militias recently announced [3] “conditional” cease-fire against the US forces in Iraq on the condition that Washington present a timetable for the withdrawal of its troops. The US-led coalition has already departed from smaller bases across Iraq and promised to reduce its troop presence from 5,200 to 3,000 in the next couple of months, though Iraq’s parliament passed a resolution urging the full withdrawal of US troops in January.
There is no denying the fact that the four years of the Trump presidency have been unusually tumultuous in the American political history, but if one takes a cursory look at the list of all the Trump aides who resigned or were otherwise sacked, almost all of them were national security officials.
In fact, scores of former Republican national security officials recently made their preference public that they would vote in the upcoming US presidential elections for Democrat Joe Biden instead of Republican Donald Trump against party lines.
What does that imply? It is an incontrovertible proof that the latent conflict between the deep state and the elected representatives of the American people has come to a head during the Trump presidency.
Although far from being a vocal critic of the deep state himself, the working-class constituency that Trump represents has had enough with the global domination agenda of the national security establishment. The American electorate wants the US troops returned home, and wants to focus on national economy and redress wealth disparity instead of acting as global police waging “endless wars” thousands of miles away from the US territorial borders.
Addressing a convention of conservatives last year, Trump publicly castigated his own generals, much to the dismay of neoliberal chauvinists upholding American exceptionalism and militarism, by revealing: “I learn more sometimes from soldiers what’s going on, than I do from generals. I do. I hate to say it. I tell the generals all the time.”
At another occasion, he ruffled more feathers by telling the reporters:
“I’m not saying the military’s in love with me. The soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because they want to do nothing but fight wars so all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.”
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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Notes
[1] Allies and Former U.S. Officials Fear Trump Could Seek NATO Exit in a Second Term:
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic there was much concern about the impact the virus would have on the African continent.
Predictions focused on the underdeveloped healthcare, transportation and educational sectors of the African Union (AU) member-states stemming from their dependent neo-colonial economies, suggesting that this would prove disastrous once the virus penetrated the region.
The major outbreaks of COVID-19 infections are centered in the more developed economies within the AU. South Africa, the continent’s most industrialized state with a population of close to 60 million, has borne the brunt of the pandemic with approximately 700,000 cases and 18,000 deaths.
Other states reporting high numbers of cases include Ethiopia, Nigeria, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco, all of which are major hubs for urbanization, tourism, international trade and strategic resources extraction. Early on in the beginning of the pandemic, the African Center for Disease Control and Prevention (ACDC) began to track the spread of the potential deadly illness and strengthened cooperation with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other international public health agencies.
Image on the right: Africa CDC Director coordinates efforts across the continent
A daily update published by the ACDC, an affiliate of the AU, reports as of October 14, that 1,593,472 cases have been confirmed on the continent while the death toll from the pandemic stands 38,884 with 1,319, 118 classified as recovered from COVID-19. There are approximately 1.3 billion people living in the AU member-states and therefore in comparison to other geo-political regions, the infection rate overall remains low.
Western corporate and governmental media agencies are perplexed by the situation in Africa which has undergone numerous public health crises over the last two decades. Most recently, the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in three West African states during 2014-2015, resulted in the deaths of more than 11,000 people. (See this)
Over the last year, there was an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which has been contained through the courageous efforts of Congolese healthcare personnel and research scientists working in collaboration with international groupings such as the WHO. Vaccines to prevent Ebola, along with sophisticated contact tracing mechanisms, have served to prevent a wider proliferation of the disease both domestically and in other contiguous states in Central and East Africa.
Africa Attempts to Coordinate Responses to the Pandemic Unlike the U.S.
Various projects are underway to maintain vigilance against the pandemic. A workshop was held during September on the need to rapidly increase the production of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the AU member-states.
According to a report on the enhanced efforts aimed at producing PPE within the region, the ACDC says that:
“The Infection Prevention and Control Technical Working Group of the Africa Task Force for Coronavirus Response (AFTCOR) held a special virtual workshop to promote manufacturing of personal protective equipment (PPE) in Africa on Thursday, 3 September 2020. Over 300 participants representing policymakers, regulatory agencies, the private sector, government and non-government institutions, manufacturers and distributors of PPE, PPE technical experts, multilateral and bilateral organizations, attended the workshop.”
The lack of PPE is by no means exclusively an African problem. In the United States, this was one of the major complaints leveled against the privately-owned healthcare industry which failed its own workers and patients by not providing adequate protections. Healthcare workers in the U.S. have stated that within the senior convalescent facilities, managers often told employees not to wear masks because it could alarm the residents and patients. Such disregard for protocols and the safety of employees and patients undoubtedly lead to many unnecessary deaths.
President Donald Trump deliberately minimized the threat of the pandemic in the critical months of February and March. After the economic consequences of the rapid spread of infections and consequent deaths, the stock market fell precipitously prompting the appointment of a now-defunct White House Task Force and the eventual passage of a stimulus package in April.
Trump was reluctant to evoke the Defense Production Act and instead sought to bailout large corporations, banks and institutions which experienced drastic declines in revenues and profits.
Today in the U.S., tens of millions remain jobless while facing the potential of foreclosures and evictions in equally as great numbers.
The ACDC stressed during the September workshop the need for the continent to be self-reliant in PPP production, saying:
“In his opening address, Dr. John Nkengasong, Director of Africa CDC, said with a population of about 1.3 billion Africa cannot continue to import over 95% of its PPE requirements. He said adequate and continuous supply of PPE is needed to protect vulnerable healthcare workers from being infected while caring for others…. Key issues discussed included the need for uniform continental standards for PPE manufacturing (including domestication of international standards), enforcement of the standards, greater collaboration between national regulatory agencies for sharing best practices, resource mobilization, procurement of raw materials, post-marketing surveillance, and the protection of intellectual property rights and patents.”
Anyone observing the public health crisis in the U.S. would note the lack of a national policy related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Each state, county and municipality has largely been left to its own devices related to mitigation efforts.
Although the White House has issued guidelines through the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Trump routinely ignores the wearing of masks and the necessity of social distancing. After contracting the virus, the president was given an early detection test and experimental treatments which are not available to the majority working and oppressed peoples in general.
Statistical Comparisons and the Need for Socialized Medicine
Considering the population and economic status of Africa in comparison to other regions of the world, medical experts, social scientists and journalists are seeking explanations of the disparity in rates of infection and deaths. Some of the analysis centers on the relative youthful nature of the African people where those under 30 years of age make-up a substantial portion of the population in most AU member-states.
Others have attempted to claim that the low numbers are a result of the lack of testing capability across the continent. Also there is the notion that the number of cases is being underreported due to lack of access to testing locations within clinics, hospitals and public places.
Yet, in Zimbabwe, for example, the number of infections remains low particularly when compared to neighboring Republic of South Africa. Zimbabwe remains under the yoke of western imperialist sanctions from Britain and the U.S. and has undergone labor difficulties in the healthcare sector. Nonetheless, the government has been able to keep the number of infections to 8,000 with less than 250 deaths.
Zimbabwe First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa wearing masks along with other government officials
An article published on October 14 in The Hill by Dr. Steven Phillips, an epidemiologist formerly employed by the CDC, raised the questions:
“How can the earth’s poorest continent by almost any health, income, or education measure, including the UN’s Human Development Index, lead the world? How can a continent where 56 percent of its urban population is concentrated in non-social distanced slums, and where only 34 percent of households have access to basic handwashing facilities, largely avoid this viral scourge? These conditions have resulted in Africa having the highest rates of malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS and measles deaths in the world. Not only does COVID not follow this dismal trend, but it has reversed it — demonstrating a dramatically lower toll than any other continent.”
Contrasting the African situation with the U.S. and the world illustrates the dangerous social conditions under which people are living in the most advanced industrialized state in the world, where the number of infections and deaths are continuously climbing. The U.S. remains the most dangerous place to be in the world with more than 7 million infections and 215,000 deaths from COVID-19. The global share of COVID deaths to the world’s population is 5 for the U.S., 2.3 for Europe and 0.26 for Africa. (See this)
This worldwide pandemic has revealed the vulnerability of the U.S. capitalist and imperialist system. These lessons must be learned by the working class and oppressed in order to re-energize the struggle for national health insurance and socialized medicine. Quality healthcare is a fundamental human right despite the avoidance of this pertinent issue within the 2020 presidential debates.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
All images in this article are from the author; featured image: African Union and African Center for Disease Control in parnership against COVID-19
This weekend, celebration of Indigenous People’s Day will replace the federal holiday, Columbus Day, in at least eight states and over 130 cities in 34 states. Along with the toppling of Columbus statues and the removal of a racial slur as a name for a major football team, this signals a shifting awareness in the United States of our colonial roots and ongoing Indigenous genocide and a desire for change.
If, like me, you are not indigenous, there are ways each of us can educate ourselves and those around us about the land we live on, to whom it belonged and how it was taken away from them. We can learn about the ways our actions may silence indigenous voices or otherwise contribute to their oppression. We can support indigenous people by buying from their businesses, contributing to their organizations or showing up to assist with their struggles. Taylor Payer (Anishinaabe) wrote this guide for ways to celebrate Indigenous People on this day and every day.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States,” writes,
“By and large the history of relations between Indigenous and settler is fraught with conflict, defined by a struggle for land, which is inevitably a struggle for power and control. Five hundred years later, Native peoples are still fighting to protect their lands and their rights to exist as distinct political communities and individuals.”
Here are a few of the current efforts by Indigenous Peoples to protect their sovereignty, right to exist and lands.
Image on the right: Navajo and Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund.
Prioritizing Health During COVID19
Indigenous communities in the United States are more likely than other communities to lack basics such as running water, electricity, access to the internet and other necessities that support public health measures, the ability to get information and to stay at home.
The Navajo Nation, which was hit very hard early in the pandemic, received federal funds after a long delay, but this money has to be spent by the end of the year or they lose it. While much of it was used to provide protective equipment, food and health care, leaders argue they also need to build infrastructure to support health now and in the long term, but those projects take time. There is a bill in Congress to extend the deadline for when the funds must be used, but it is not likely to pass in time.
In the Great Sioux Nation, tribes such as the Cheyenne River Sioux and the Oglala Sioux created checkpoints at the entrances to their reservations to screen people for COVID-19. This is a public health measure used by nations around the world to control the spread of the virus. In South Dakota, where cases are rising, Governor Kristi Noem is opposed to the checkpoints and is threatening to withdraw aid if they aren’t dismantled. The tribes refuse to take them down and have filed a complaint with the federal government.
Protest at border wall. Rafael Carranza/The Republic.
Respecting Sacred Sites
There is a long history in the United States of failure to understand Native American culture and respect sacred sites. Think of an indigenous sacred site as a church, mosque or temple. Now imagine what the reaction would be if a government or corporation tried to destroy those structures or refuse access to them. Religious freedom is protected under the First Amendment in the United States, except for Indigenous Peoples.
Sacred sites have been destroyed, such as the San Francisco Peaks where a ski resort, Snowbowl, was built. In February, the Trump administration granted permission for mining and logging on Bears Ears land. The Black Hills have long been a target for development. Cal State Long Beach is facing consequences for dumping construction debris, including asphalt, metal and concrete, on a sacred site that is registered as a national historic place.
At present, a conflict is taking place along the US-Mexico border where construction of the wall is violating indigenous sovereignty and rights. A group of tribes in the Kumeyaay Nation are suing the federal government for blocking their access to “sacred sites, trails, plants and medicines, as well as a number of historic landmarks.” And activists in Arizona from the Tohono O’odham Nation are waging a direct action campaign to physically block construction of the wall there that will stop them from having access to a sacred site and source of water, the Quitobaquito Springs.
From the Toronto Star.
Stopping Fossil Fuel Projects
The struggle to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline is perhaps one of the most well-known efforts to stop fossil fuel infrastructure from invading and degrading indigenous land, and that struggle continues, but there are many similar struggles going on. Resistance is rising in Greater Chaco against fracking, which began there in 2010.
Two major conflicts are in Western Canada, the Trans Mountain Pipeline on Secwepemc and Ktunaxa land and the Coastal Gaslink Pipeline on Wet’suwet’en Territory. The Trans Mountain Pipeline project was bought by the Canadian government in 2018 when Kinder Morgan was about to give up on it. Construction has begun and people are trying to block it through tree sits and targeting corporations that insure the project. Similarly, the Wet’suwet’en have used blockades, and been treated violently by militarized police, and are now asking the Supreme Court to halt the project because of the violence to their communities associated with the pipeline workers’ “man camps.”
Phoenix, Arizona. Jenni Monet.
Ending Violence Against Women
The kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of indigenous women is at a crisis level. Clearing the FOG spoke with Annita Luchesi (Cheyenne) about it last year. She has been working to document the cases through the MMIW Database, win policy changes to solve the cases and prevent them from occurring through the Sovereign Bodies Institute. Red dresses are used in protests to symbolize the women and girls who have disappeared or have been killed. Not only are “man camps” that exist around fossil fuel projects directly correlated with increased violence towards women, but law enforcement, who are supposed to investigate the violence, are perpetrators of it too.
From Real Peoples Media.
Reclaiming the Land
Land defenders from the Six Nations in Canada are waging a struggle to prevent a development from being built on their land. They established a camp on the land, which is disputed territory, in July and named it 1492 Land Back Lane. Police arrested them last month and now the land defenders are receiving more support and solidarity through rallies and marches.
In this interview, two Haudenosaunee land defenders explain how settlers are encroaching upon their land with development and restricting their land base as their population grows. They describe how they need land for their sources of food, such as plants and game, and how development destroys that. It is easy to see the parallels with the situation faced by colonized people all over the world, and particularly Palestinians who are being constrained to smaller spaces and attacked right now for harvesting their olives.
This is the “American Way of War,” as Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz describes it. It has its roots in the tactics used by settlers when they first came to the Americas of destroying land, housing and crops to weaken Native Americans and drive them off their land. It continues today in places like Yemen and Syria where there are food crises and with the use of economic coercive measures against countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Iran that prevent them from buying food and medicine. It’s time for the people of the United States to demand an end to these destructive practices.
From Last Real Indians.
Moving Forward
Celebrating Indigenous People’s Day is a step towards recognizing that colonization exists. We can do more to end that colonization and respect the sovereignty of indigenous nations.
Climate Justice Alliance developed a set of proposals for an indigenous-led just transition to a green economy. They write:
“A just nation-to-nation relationship means breaking the cycle of asking Indigenous nations to choose between a colonial imposed model of an extractive economy or preservation of their Indigenous sovereignty, including protection of their traditional lands, waters and air, and the right to practice their spirituality and cultural lifeways.”
The proposals include respecting the sovereignty of indigenous nations, requiring their consent for policies and projects, repairing the damage done through broken agreements and investment in indigenous communities. These principles can be applied more broadly than just addressing the climate crisis to become a template for all interactions with indigenous nations.
There is a path forward to a future where the rights of indigenous peoples are respected and protected. As we participate in the current movement to end systemic anti-black racism in the United States, let’s include the ways systemic racism and colonization impact Native Americans. Let’s show our solidarity with indigenous people through our actions to support their resistance.
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This is a con game, a scam, a grift, a hustle, a bunko, a swindle, a flimflam, a gaffle, and a bamboozle.
In this carefully choreographed scheme to strip the American citizenry of our power and our rights, “we the people” are nothing more than marks, suckers, stooges, mugs, rubes, or gulls.
We are victims of the Deep State’s confidence game.
Every confidence game has six essential stages:
1) the foundation to lay the groundwork for the illusion;
2) the approach whereby the victim is contacted;
3) the build-up to make the victim feel like they’ve got a vested interest in the outcome;
4) the corroboration (aided by third-party conspirators) to legitimize that the scammers are, in fact, on the up-and-up;
5) the pay-off, in which the victim gets to experience some small early “wins”; and
6) the “hurrah”— a sudden manufactured crisis or change of events that creates a sense of urgency.
In this particular con game, every candidate dangled before us as some form of political savior—including Donald Trump and Joe Biden—is part of a long-running, elaborate scam intended to persuade us that, despite all appearances to the contrary, we live in a constitutional republic.
In this way, the voters are the dupes, the candidates are the shills, and as usual, it’s the Deep State rigging the outcome.
Terrorist attacks, pandemics, civil unrest: these are all manipulated crises that add to the sense of urgency and help us feel invested in the outcome of the various elections, but it doesn’t change much in the long term.
No matter who wins this election, we’ll all still be prisoners of the Deep State.
We just haven’t learned to recognize our prison walls as such.
It’s like that old British television series The Prisoner, which takes place in a mysterious, self-contained, cosmopolitan, seemingly idyllic retirement community known only as The Village.
Perhaps the best visual debate ever on individuality and freedom, The Prisoner (17 episodes in all) centers around a British secret agent who abruptly resigns only to find himself imprisoned, monitored by militarized drones, and interrogated in The Village, a beautiful resort with parks and green fields, recreational activities and even a butler.
While luxurious, the Village is a virtual prison disguised as a seaside paradise: its inhabitants have no true freedom, they cannot leave the Village, they are under constant surveillance, all of their movements tracked. Residents of the Village are stripped of their individuality and identified only by numbers.
First broadcast in Great Britain 50-some years ago, The Prisoner dystopian television series —described as “James Bond meets George Orwell filtered through Franz Kafka”—confronted societal themes that are still relevant today: the rise of a police state, the loss of freedom, round-the-clock surveillance, the corruption of government, totalitarianism, weaponization, group think, mass marketing, and the tendency of human beings to meekly accept their lot in life as prisoners in a prison of their own making.
The series’ protagonist, played by Patrick McGoohan is Number Six.
Number Two, the Village administrator, acts as an agent for the unseen and all-powerful Number One, whose identity is not revealed until the final episode.
“I am not a number. I am a free man,” was the mantra chanted on each episode of The Prisoner, which was largely written and directed by Patrick McGoohan, who also played the title role.
In the opening episode (“The Arrival”), Number Six meets Number Two, who explains to him that he is in The Village because information stored “inside” his head has made him too valuable to be allowed to roam free “outside.”
Throughout the series, Number Six is subjected to interrogation tactics, torture, hallucinogenic drugs, identity theft, mind control, dream manipulation, and various forms of social indoctrination and physical coercion in order to “persuade” him to comply, give up, give in and subjugate himself to the will of the powers-that-be.
Number Six refuses to comply.
In every episode, Number Six resists the Village’s indoctrination methods, struggles to maintain his own identity, and attempts to escape his captors. “I will not make any deals with you,” he pointedly remarks to Number Two. “I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.”
Yet no matter how far Number Six manages to get in his efforts to escape, it’s never far enough.
Watched by surveillance cameras and other devices, Number Six’s attempts to escape are continuously thwarted by ominous white balloon-like spheres known as “rovers.” Still, he refuses to give up. “Unlike me,” he says to his fellow prisoners, “many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment, and will die here like rotten cabbages.”
Number Six’s escapes become a surreal exercise in futility, each episode an unfunny, unsettling Groundhog’s Day that builds to the same frustrating denouement: there is no escape.
As journalist Scott Thill concludes for Wired, “Rebellion always comes at a price. During the acclaimed run of The Prisoner, Number Six is tortured, battered and even body-snatched: In the episode ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,’ his mind is transplanted to another man’s body. Number Six repeatedly escapes The Village only to be returned to it in the end, trapped like an animal, overcome by a restless energy he cannot expend, and betrayed by nearly everyone around him.”
The series is a chilling lesson about how difficult it is to gain one’s freedom in a society in which prison walls are disguised within the seemingly benevolent trappings of technological and scientific progress, national security and the need to guard against terrorists, pandemics, civil unrest, etc.
As Thill noted, “The Prisoner was an allegory of the individual, aiming to find peace and freedom in a dystopia masquerading as a utopia.”
The Prisoner’s Village is also an apt allegory for the American Police State: it gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like a prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable.
The American Police State, much like The Prisoner’s Village, is a metaphorical panopticon, a circular prison in which the inmates are monitored by a single watchman situated in a central tower. Because the inmates cannot see the watchman, they are unable to tell whether or not they are being watched at any given time and must proceed under the assumption that they are always being watched.
Eighteenth century social theorist Jeremy Bentham envisioned the panopticon prison to be a cheaper and more effective means of “obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”
Bentham’s panopticon, in which the prisoners are used as a source of cheap, menial labor, has become a model for the modern surveillance state in which the populace is constantly being watched, controlled and managed by the powers-that-be while funding its existence.
Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide: this is the new mantra of the architects of the Deep State and their corporate collaborators (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Instagram, etc.).
Government eyes are watching you.
They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.
Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to amass a profile of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.
When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.
Apart from the obvious dangers posed by a government that feels justified and empowered to spy on its people and use its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and technology to monitor and control them, we’re approaching a time in which we will be forced to choose between obeying the dictates of the government—i.e., the law, or whatever a government official deems the law to be—and maintaining our individuality, integrity and independence.
When people talk about privacy, they mistakenly assume it protects only that which is hidden behind a wall or under one’s clothing. The courts have fostered this misunderstanding with their constantly shifting delineation of what constitutes an “expectation of privacy.” And technology has furthered muddied the waters.
However, privacy is so much more than what you do or say behind locked doors. It is a way of living one’s life firm in the belief that you are the master of your life, and barring any immediate danger to another person (which is far different from the carefully crafted threats to national security the government uses to justify its actions), it’s no one’s business what you read, what you say, where you go, whom you spend your time with, and how you spend your money.
Unfortunately, George Orwell’s 1984—where “you had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized”—has now become our reality.
A byproduct of this new age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior.
This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.
Stingray devices mounted on police cars to warrantlessly track cell phones, Doppler radar devices that can detect human breathing and movement within in a home, license plate readers that can record up to 1800 license plates per minute, sidewalk and “public space” cameras coupled with facial recognition and behavior-sensing technology that lay the groundwork for police “pre-crime” programs, police body camerasthat turn police officers into roving surveillance cameras, the internet of things: all of these technologies (and more) add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence—especially not when the government can listen in on your phone calls, read your emails, monitor your driving habits, track your movements, scrutinize your purchases and peer through the walls of your home.
This is the electronic concentration camp—the panopticon prison—the Village—in which we are now caged.
It is a prison from which there will be no escape. Certainly not if the government and its corporate allies have anything to say about it.
As Glenn Greenwald notes:
“The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what [government officials] do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals. This dynamic – the hallmark of a healthy and free society – has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That’s the imbalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consequential acts of those who wield political power are completely unknown to those to whom they are supposed to be accountable.”
None of this will change, no matter who wins this upcoming presidential election.
And that’s the hustle, you see: because despite all of the work being done to help us buy into the fantasy that things will change if we just elect the right candidate, the day after a new president is sworn in, we’ll still find ourselves prisoners of the Village.
This should come as no surprise to those who haven’t been taking the escapist blue pill, who haven’t fallen for the Deep State’s phony rhetoric, who haven’t been lured in by the promise of a political savior: we never stopped being prisoners.
So how do you escape? For starters, resist the urge to conform to a group mind and the tyranny of mob-think as controlled by the Deep State.
Think for yourself. Be an individual. As McGoohan commented in 1968, “At this moment individuals are being drained of their personalities and being brainwashed into slaves… As long as people feel something, that’s the great thing. It’s when they are walking around not thinking and not feeling, that’s tough. When you get a mob like that, you can turn them into the sort of gang that Hitler had.”
You want to be free? Remove the blindfold that blinds you to the Deep State’s con game, stop doping yourself with government propaganda, and break free of the political chokehold that has got you marching in lockstep with tyrants and dictators.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, until you come to terms with the fact that the government is the problem (no matter which party dominates), you’ll never be free.
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The majority of French people say they are in favor of protectionism, according to the latest OpinionWay poll by Le Printemps de l’Économie and Inseec U. In fact, the figure has risen sharply since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and the European Union’s weak response to external threats like Turkey. This is a fundamental trend that could lead to a referendum on France’s exit from the European Union.
According to OpinionWay polls, the share of French people in favor of protectionism has gone from 51% in March to 60% in September. The survey confirms the desire for protectionism in France, which has only been reinforced since the pandemic began. The survey shows that 60% of the French people questioned consider globalization as “a threat to France” and 65% believe that “France must protect itself more from the world today,” a level never observed since polling began.
In the event of a major crisis, a country will first and foremost try to protect and supply its own population, even if it comes to the detriment of others. This was seen all across the European Union in the first months of the pandemic when most member states abandoned inter-European solidarity to the detriment of other member states. For example, in March, Germany banned the export of protective medical equipment at a time when France did not have enough.
As popularity for protectionism is increasing in France, according to the OpinionWay survey, support for free trade went down from 46% to 35%. Supporters of free trade try to pass off protectionism as authoritarianism and isolationism. However, during the Trente Glorieuses (The Glorious Thirty), which between 1945-1975 saw unprecedented economic growth and development in France, trade was carried out in a fair framework which limited distorted competition, unlike what happens with free trade.
The polls also show that the tide is turning for 18-24-year old’s, “traditionally known to be in favor of opening up to the world,” as Pierre-Pascal Boulanger, president and founder of Printemps, highlighted in the La Tribune article. “The gaps are narrowing sharply since now 44% of very young people are in favor of protectionism against 37% in March.”
Therefore, for all the rhetoric of European sovereignty by French President Emmanuel Macron, it means absolutely nothing as sovereignty can only be national. This year alone we saw Italy abandoned by its partners at the peak of the pandemic, while European Union member states still refuse to pass sanctions against Turkey despite its violations of Greek and Cypriot sovereignty, and constant threats of war.
Any European protectionist inclination is directly undermined by national interests. France is now beginning to prioritize its national interests over that of the European Union, especially with the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, suggesting an implementation of a European carbon tax at its borders, something that Paris considers essential but does not please Berlin.
The same thing could be seen concerning the taxation of GAFAM [Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft]. The subject has been on the table for years but Germany is blocking taxes against GAFAM because the U.S. is its major trading partner and Berlin is afraid that Washington will retaliate by taxing imported vehicles which would hurt the German economy.
An Elabe poll released on February 12 showed that 80% of the French people questioned were opposed to a new duel between Macron and opposition leader Marine Le Pen in the 2022 elections. However, recent opinion polls show that the two candidates are indeed neck-to-neck and marginally ahead of other opponents. However, the European question encompasses all political and economic dimensions and must be put at the center of discussions. The European question goes beyond the left-right divide and a referendum on France’s exit from the European Union may be at the heart of the political debate. It will blur the ideological divides as people from different political positions would campaign for a “yes” or “no” vote, as we saw with Brexit.
Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit Party and considered the great architect of the UK’s exit from the European Union, has never won the general elections. But he put such pressure to obtain a referendum and succeeded in creating a real debate on the question of sovereignty and protectionism.
The Brexit referendum has shown that it is possible. If a similar debate can get into the French spotlight, strong Frexit sentiment can build off the back of increasing popularity in protectionist policies. The French in 2005 voted against the treaty to establish a European constitution despite all predictions it would be unanimously passed. Although detached from the European Union, the French also withdrew from NATO for several decades, demonstrating there is a high sense of independence and sovereignty in France.
With Brussels unwilling to take a strong position against external threats like Turkey and/or showing a lack of solidarity when the pandemic was spreading across the continent, France’s possible exit from the European Union can build momentum and popularity.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
The discourse about, or for, peace has mostly disappeared over the last 2-3 decades. It applies to research (and its non-governmental funding possibilities), to politics in general and to the media.
In foreign and security politics, the intellectual level is now such that it does not even seem strange to decision-makers that they never obtain peace advice or consult peace experts. The fantasy-assumption is that if only there is enough military’ security’ means applied to enough societal problems, peace will automatically come about.
I can’t remember having heard a parliamentarian or minister mention or conceptualise peace beyond the level of the state dinner speech – that is, devoid of theoretical and factual content as well as of meaning.
The mainstream media have no one who can focus on peace – not to mention, do peace journalism with professional conflict analysis. Military, political, psychological and economic warfare as well as interventions – usually in the fake-and-omission mode – dominate the reporting.
Remarkably, that applies also to those who are firmly against these types of policies: the focus is critical but seldom constructive: What should and can be done? Think Chomsky.
Living in Sweden, I cannot remember the last 20 or so years to have seen a peace perspective applied to the world or a particular conflict by any mainstream media in the Nordic countries. There is simply no editors, reporters or journalists who are specialised in such a perspective. And “peace people” seem barred from those media.
So the peace discourse has vanished. Peace made invisible. Peace being treated as the big benign Godot in the middle of the room that everybody, knowingly or not, pretends will never come and is unrealistic – that is, irrelevant and much more unrealistic than the ongoing militarism, nuclearism, interventionism and ongoing destruction of that Nature on which we are all dependent and with which we must all have a partnership.
Eutopia #18 @ Jan Oberg
Those of us who have been engaged in international matters for about half a century are seen as survivors of a culture gone by – the culture, thinking, researching and action for peace. Welcome to the Museum of Peace and its niks…
In other words, in the corridors of today’s more or less kakistocratic (” a government that is ruled by the least suitable, able, or experienced people”) power circles, the word ‘peace’ will be met with silence, ridiculed, considered overly idealistic/unrealistic out of time and place.
Conclusion on those points: We should simply just continue in spite of all – lit the light in that darkness ’cause the times will change. If you work out of conviction, passion or talent – like, say, a composer – you don’t stop just because you don’t get attention. You continue because you are passionate about your values and goals and because – precisely in these times – you have a delightfully different story to tell: that peace is possible and by no measure unrealistic but requires different thinking, knowledge and policies.
This leads me to continue saying that we must change this fact: 95% of the people in the West, devote 95% of their energies to the world as it is – criticising this or that, producing diagnoses and prognoses, predicting catastrophes, issuing warnings and fighting each other about the right interpretation or making up conspiracies and propaganda.
But such negative energy will get us exactly nowhere:
When you fall ill, you don’t fancy a doctor who does only diagnosis and prognosis but hasn’t got a clue about your treatment, do you?
The focus ought to be on the better futures that are possible – imagining them and finding ways to reach them – together. Dear Elise Boulding always rightly told us that what people cannot imagine they won’t work for.
We know more than enough about today’s problems to now attend creatively to what could be instead of what is: that is, a little of wisdom built on top of knowledge – as E F” Small is Beautiful” Schumacher expressed it: We are now so knowledgeable that we cannot do without wisdom.
In short, positive energy put into visualising and “visionising”…
This leads me in this short article – as well as in my own life – to the question: What about art?
Can the arts become one of the building blocks of the necessary bridge between what is and what could be? Between criticism and constructivism? Between now/here and vision/strategy towards different future(s)? Between the blindness of the information avalanche and the seeing of a better future?
I believe it can – however with the qualification “in principle” or ”theoretically”.
Art is fundamentally about seeing something less visible or not readily visible. It’s about realising something that does not yet exist but comes bursting out of the imagination. It’s about doing old things in new ways or doing what has never been done before.
Art is based on an emotionally/intuitively expressive urge to say something – also beyond empirical reality – to make a wake-up call to fellow global citizens. It’s the thing the artist does because she or he can do nothing better than exactly that.
True art is existential – no matter today’s perverted commercial “art market” and “art industry” (and some who are inside that are indeed true artists anyhow, complicated and contradictory as it may seem).
If you can’t hear those defining qualities in, say, Beethoven’s symphonies or in Dylan’s poetry-music, if you cannot see it in Helen Frankenthaler’s paintings, sense it in Tolstoy’s writings, or in Boulding’s writings – and Gandhi’s and King’s too – there is nothing I can do to explain what I mean.
But there is still at least one problem on my mind: Why is so much of the arts also focused more – much more – on violence, war, evil, death, drama, killing, aggression and suffering?
Why is so little of it motivated by or conveying life-confirming stuff such as reconciliation, forgiveness, harmony, diversity, development, cooperation, joy, conviviality … and peace?
Why is so much of it on problems rather than solutions? On history/present more than on the future?
The classical discussion – are humans fundamentally good or evil? – can be extended to: Do humans pay attention mostly to good or to evil? To problems or solutions? And that is much more easy to answer.
Perhaps you now think that I am exaggerating and that these matters can simply not be quantified. That’s a valid argument but I believe we should try to dialogue about it anyhow.
Many of the great works in literature, films, music, and paintings build on themes of violence and destruction and take their inspiration in the dark sides of human and societal nature, behaviour and actions. They ask the question why the past and present world is evil – rather than stimulate our imagination to perceive the better world as it could be – to paraphrase George Bernhard Shaw.
I was reminded of that when recently I went to the leading photography festival in Sweden, if not in Scandinavia – the Landskrona Photo Festival – which I always visit because I am also an art photographer.
Beyond any doubt, it shows high average quality, considerable diversity, many and highly topical themes – all the attributes defining fine curatorship.
So what was my problem?
Well, that at least 40% of the exhibited works focus on war, genocide, massacre, concentration camps, the suffering of particular groups of people, refugees and other ‘damned of the earth.’ And that much of the rest is either expressive of de-politicising identity issues or experimental photography, constructed, stage-set or hybrid, formalistic.
And it’s all pretty lifeless! No humour, satire, no attempt to depict beauty, conviviality, happiness. Or make the spectator think about peace and other positive values.
I mean, what is the point of displaying yet another series of (documentary) images of skeletons from various massacres in the narrow, dark prison cells of a Citadel?
two of my own photos from the festival
Is the assumption, perhaps, the – naive – one like the one surrounding Hiroshima and hibakusha films and photos, namely that by showing them the audience will be appalled and become more critical or warfare and other types of violence?
Is it part of the broader “violence industry” in which we also find the museums of wars and massacres and Holocaust?
Or is it that it hits us emotionally and get an “automatic” mileage, a little like if a photographer takes portraits of celebrities rather than non-celebrities, then she or he becomes famous more easily?
Why are there so many more images in this world of destruction than of construction, of violence than of peace?
The very important World Press Photo contest is another – worse – example. Just look at the photos on the link.
It’s filled with violence and suffering – and I am relatively sure that those who run these contests and festivals are not even aware of that bias or have discussed it. As if reality or the imagination or the creative impulse could not also be expressed through images of beauty and peace?
Perhaps we have come so far down the mental slippery slope that war and destruction is considered (un- or subconsciously) to be more ‘realistic’ and significant or ‘normal’ and everyday-like than peace, love, cooperation and beauty?
We live in an age influenced much more by images than by text and even sound – also because everybody has become a kind of photographer.
What the hundreds of images we more or less consciously perceive during a day through all sorts of media tell us about the world is extremely important in shaping our worldview.
Well, you may say, it’s always been the case that the negative dominated and fascinated us, hasn’t it? Perhaps.
But if so, let’s become a bit more peace-creative and re-balance it all!
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If masks don’t stop infection, yet cause known and probable harms, what’s the point of wearing them? What motive would governments have for mandating them? In their new book, Drs. Karina Reiss PhD and Dr. Sucharit Bakdi MD provide one possibility:
“In fact, there is no study to even suggest that it makes any sense for healthy individuals to wear masks in public. One might suspect that the only political reason for enforcing the measure is to foster fear in the population.”
Fear of a pandemic that never was. Fear of those hiding their face. Fear of those without a mask. Fear of a government that violates human rights.
Professor Karina Reiss holds a PhD in biology and has received prestigious honors and awards for academic contributions to fields of infection and biochemistry. Dr. Bhakdi has published over three hundred articles in the fields of immunology, bacteriology and virology for which he has received the Order of Merit of Rhineland-Palatinate.
You can order a copy of their fact-rich book, Corona, False Alarm?, from the publisher, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk or your local, struggling bookstore. In June 2020, the original German version sold 200,000 copies and 75,000 e-books in six weeks. Let’s help make the English version a New York Times Bestseller.
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John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, as well as naturopaths, chiropractors and Ayurvedic physicians. He publishes the COVID-19(84) Red Pill Briefs – an email-based newsletter dedicated to preventing the governments of the world from using an exaggerated pandemic as an excuse to violate our freedom, health, privacy, livelihood and humanity. He is also writing a novel, Brave New Normal: A Dystopian Love Story. Visit his website at: MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
“…the allegedly new and highly dangerous corona virus has not caused any excess mortality anywhere in the world… But the anti-corona measures, whose only basis are the PCR tests results… have, in the meantime, caused the loss of innumerable human lives and have destroyed the economic existence of countless companies and individuals worldwide.”
“In Australia, for example, people are thrown into prison if they do not wear a mask, or do not wear it properly (as deemed by the authorities). In the Philippines, people who do not wear a mask… are getting shot in the head.”
It’s no wonder, Dr. Fuellmich refers to the COVID-19 scandal as “the greatest crime against humanity ever committed.”
Dr. Fuellmich is one of four members of the German Corona Investigative Committee. The Committee is filing a class action lawsuit against those responsible for the German lockdowns — including the WHO and many pharmaceutical companies, as well as the German government.
You can listen to the committee’s full and articulate statement of the facts of their case in the video below or in this BitChute video.
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John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, as well as naturopaths, chiropractors and Ayurvedic physicians. He publishes the COVID-19(84) Red Pill Briefs – an email-based newsletter dedicated to preventing the governments of the world from using an exaggerated pandemic as an excuse to violate our freedom, health, privacy, livelihood and humanity. He is also writing a novel, Brave New Normal: A Dystopian Love Story. Visit his website at: MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
For several weeks people prevented AT&T from installing 5G devices in the first two locations in Berkeley. A key part of the project consisted of placing antennas on utility poles at the corner of Gilman and Neilson streets and near the Monterey Market on Hopkins Street. These are tiny business districts with coffee shops, restaurants, a natural grocery and other small shops in a residential area.
Residents and workers feared negative health effects from the radiation, that 5G just might even turn the district into a slow-acting microwave oven. So whenever AT&T’s installation crews showed up with trucks and equipment, small groups of activists and residents would gather around the base of the poles, occupying the sites and blocking the work. Thus, eight installation attempts were thwarted.
Police did not intervene. Mayor Jesse Arreguin and the city council were allowing AT&T to proceed with their installation plans, while at the same time not allowing police to intervene or arrest protesters. But since a multibillion dollar corporation was involved, it was not certain how this might play out.
Finally, in October, AT&T came up with a new tactic. Instead of coming in the daytime and having the locals meet and block them, they decided to come on Monday, October 5th at one A.M., put up a fence around the pole to keep protesters away, enabling the subcontractors to install the antenna.
To counter this our home team called for a midnight vigil, sending out an email saying in part, “This looks like the crucial moment. . . . If you cannot come at midnight, please come at 7 AM for the second shift.” The idea was to get there first.
Midnight? I’d attended one or two of the previous events, in the daytime of course. I didn’t really know how dangerous this 5G might be, but anyone who’s ever put food into a microwave oven must know that microwaves can burn. Even high voltage power lines are not harmless to people who are unfortunate enough to live under them. A friend of mine is an electronics engineer who worked around antennas and radio frequency radiation for many decades, considering that to be harmless till he developed symptoms of leukemia.
Our city should exercise caution. The fact that this 5G project was being approved almost on the sly, without notifying people of hearings, without openness, suggested to me that there might be something unhealthy about this. People who had written to Berkeley city officials asking for hearings received no replies.
Looking for more information, I found a signed statement from “more than 180 scientists and doctors from 35 countries, recommending a moratorium on the roll-out of the fifth generation, 5G, for telecommunication until potential hazards for human health and the environment have been fully investigated by scientists independent from industry.” It’s about three pages, well written and readable.
Of course if we can ignore climate change, GMOs, dangers of nuclear radiation and other hazards that scientists so inconveniently warn us about, I suppose we can also live with 5G. Or can we?
The pole at 1321 Gilman street is a ten minute walk from where my neighbor Steve and I live. We arrived shortly after midnight. By 1 a.m. a dozen of us had gathered, Phoebe Sorgen, a co-founder of Wireless Radiation Education & Defense (WiRED), and others, some of whom I knew, some I didn’t. Someone had brought folding chairs, and someone else brought cookies. We sat near the pole chatting, getting to know each other and updating on events.
We wore masks. We remarked that since this spring we’d been living with Covid 19, for the last few weeks with bad air from forest fires, and now the prospect of 5G. This evening the air wasn’t that bad; we looked up and saw the silvery moon. A couple of nights ago the moon had been a frightful deep orange. And of course there’d been that day about a month ago when the sun hadn’t come up.
Hours passed. The street was quiet, very few cars passed, it was just our small group out here by the dark street. Were the antenna installers actually coming? Maybe they’d decided not to.
A large orange kitty cat came by, possibly, it seemed, with intentions of joining our demonstration. Did the kitty share our fear of 5G? Maybe he did. He stayed with us for a while.
More time went by. It was after three o’clock and it didn’t look to us like the installers were coming. Sierra and another person were setting up a tent, they’d be camping next to the pole. Some would be sleeping in their cars. Others left to go home. Steve and I were also about to leave, but just then a construction vehicle drove past, and parked up the street. On the side it read “Modus,” the name of AT&T’s subcontractors.
Two or three more trucks arrived, also parking up the street. One pulled a portable generator. We jumped up, standing close to the pole. Another truck arrived, this one pulling a trailer, parked on the street right beside us. What was this? I wondered. “It’s the fence truck,” someone said. The trailer was loaded with the fences. After a few minutes it drove off, apparently leaving.
The other vehicles remained parked about a block up the street. They didn’t seem to be going anywhere. It looked like this would be another standoff, such as had occurred on several occasions by now. Elizabeth was hurriedly phoning the people who’d left, asking them to return.
Fog was descending on the scene, drifting in to fill up the air, visible in the street lights. I assumed it was fog, not smoke from the wildfires which so often covers the sky these days.
There were about nine of us now. Nothing seemed to be actually happening at the moment. There weren’t any police around.
Another truck arrived, the letters “B A T” on its side. This was said to be traffic control; they put out cones, and block and direct traffic around construction sites.
I glanced at my watch. Four o’clock. Minutes later, three police cars drove up, and at least six police got out. The sergeant in charge walked up to us, and with a disarming smile she said, “Hi Phoebe!”
Phoebe returned the greeting; they knew each other by name from previous events here at this pole. The officer, Sergeant Ronnie Hernandez, told us we had to leave, and said the order came from the city, though she said she didn’t know whether from the City Manager (Dee Williams-Ridley), Public Workers Director (Liam Garland), or Supervising Engineer (Ron Nevels). AT&T will reimburse the city for the expenses, she said. That needs to be verified, but if true, the Berkeley Police Department is a rent-a-cop service for corporations. The surprising thing is that they could be so open about it.
Rather than leave, Phoebe and several others sat down on the sidewalk. Sergeant Hernandez gave the word, and two cops, huge musclemen, dragged them away from the pole and across the street. Asking us each our names, it looked like they were going to arrest all of us, though as it turned out they didn’t arrest anyone.
Our team near the Monterey Market were treated worse. Cynthia Papermaster told us that two of the officers threatened to take her service dog, Luck-Key, and put him in the pound if she didn’t move away from the pole. “One of the threats about Luck-Key was made as the officer was grabbing my arm and twisting it,” Cynthia said. “I thought they were going to break my arm. More important than my pain is that we were removed so that a private multibillion dollar company could perform non-essential work in the middle of the night against Berkeley’s laws.”
Meave O’Connor, also at the Monterey site, has many large bruises on her arms and on one hand that was slammed into the pole. Jason Winnett sustained pulled muscles in his left shoulder and neck. “I had to change this week’s work plans in order to rest and rehabilitate,” he said. “I was appalled to witness women in their 70s, concerned citizens, who after being up in vigil all night, were being roughly handled by a large number of young, strong police officers.”
According to the scientific reports, microwaving from 5G can cause memory loss, so maybe we’ll forget all about it.
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Sometimes it can be useful to be brief. Last year, the wave of worry, promoted by the Swedish Alberich, without at least the artistic virtue of her deceased compatriot, Birgit Nilsson, stimulated predictions of imminent Götterdämmerung. This virtually Wagnerian kitsch was further dramatised by the pretensious performers of troupes apocalyptical like Extinction Rebellion. As 2019 ended we were all to believe that indeed Valhalla lay around the corner- at least for the sustainable. Instead we should have anticipated the Götzendämmerung. Yet 2020 proved that the idols are worshipped more than ever, albeit with the collusion of the gods.
The general tendency (or intention) to focus public attention on phenomena which require religious faith is a very old means of exerting control and diverting attention from the destructive activities of those in whom control has been concentrated.
The reluctance to attribute climate change to universal — in the sense of phenomena in the universe — processes like solar activity, planetary motion etc. lies in the fact that this would weaken clerical claims to authority (whether as priests or scientists).
By attributing events — most of which we only “know” from mass media depictions — as “climate change” and due to CO2, it is possible to promote a pseudo-scientific argument that implicates the masses without necessarily subjecting the “clergy” to the same accusations. CO2 has the same function as “sin” for the Church. So the rich and powerful can say “we are all sinners” but there are only a few of us and many more of YOU — the masses of CO2 sinners. What is demanded then is submission and penance, while the rich — literally have recourse to indulgences.
The crimes of mass poisoning and destruction of the habitable environment — we need only remember that mega-cities are the product of land theft and wage or other forms of slave labour — are entirely withdrawn from the scope of specific (e.g. class) human responsibility. They become non-events.
Often it is said that climate activists are like religious fanatics. However, to adequately respond to the problem — not merely condemn it — one has to pay more attention to how religion as such functions, especially in a culture polluted by Christendom.
On another level, and levels are always being confused, the demands for less waste and unnecessary consumption — rooted in the Puritan morality of non-conformist clergy — has more appeal given the forty years of declining incomes for labouring people. It suggests to the frugal and ordinary that they could preserve what little they have accumulated if they could only live in an environment where conservation was a generally accepted practice and value. Meanwhile monopolies and cartels — the rulers of the economy — dress their business models in new garb like “sustainability” and “carbon neutrality”. For them sustainability is foremost sustainable profit and carbon neutrality a fiction achieved by trading in environmental indulgences (e.g. emission certificates). Having accrued their tonne of wealth, they would have us believe they will be satisfied with a few tonnes less.
(Well, a tonne of wealth comes from creating several tonnes of poverty too. But that has never stopped anyone interested in wealth for its own sake.)
A few years after the Club of Rome (1968) was founded and began its crusade, a German-speaking engineer was endowed with the resources to begin in 1971 what would become the World Economic Forum (WEF), a kind of ecumenical council for the episcopate and prelates of capitalism. In 1972, the Club of Rome published the eugenic epistel, The Limits to Growth. Soon Klaus Schwab became a kind of permanent prefect of this college of cannibals. One is tempted to say pontiff. His role seems clearly to be that of a bridge between the rapacious, vicious, and obscenely wealthy and those who deliver their messages to the true believers and the masses compelled to be faithful. For nearly 50 years, the pontiff of profit has preached to the flock how they may expect to be sacrificed in future. The most recent version of this message is the encyclical “The Fourth Industrial Revolution”.
A particularly obnoxious aspect of the WEF theology is implicit in the call for a “fourth” industrial revolution, the blatant disregard for the violence of the previous three. Industrial revolutions were not revolutions so much as they were wars against labour at each time when the risk swelled that such labour would demand its share of the fruits it had produced.
Among others Andre Gunder Frank (e.g. in ReOrient) explained, the so-called Industrial Revolution (the first one) in the Western peninsula, in part, as propelled by a population shortage. In contrast to the centre of human civilisation, Asia, labour was always relatively expensive in what came to be known as Europe (except slaves, whose labour generated much if not most of the capital for the Industrial Revolution). In fact, what we now know as western capitalism and white supremacy are directly related to chronic shortages of reliable (subservient) labour in the West. However, the overproduction that soon resulted regularly from industrial manufacture also required the destruction of competitors and later the inducement to desire rather than need products. Massive industrial strength wars, leading to atomic weapons, were the other means by which profitability was restored and surplus population slaughtered, starved or killed by disease.
The WEF anticipates a “4th industrial revolution” because since the 1950s labour in the West has been considered too expensive at any price. Now having stripped almost all benefits of the wage/ salary and non-wage growth as well as pensions (employees’ deferred income- deceptively called a “benefit” by the State) from the declining labour force, there is a need to redesign industry again to eliminate all but the most essential workers at any educational level. It must be remembered that the WEF represents the pinnacle of profitability and control. The rhetoric of stakeholder v. shareholder notwithstanding, the overall social objective of the class represented in these alpine atrocities is the means by which wealth can be further amassed. It would be more useful to understand “stakeholder” as a reference to those who may be burned at the stake, to sustain the benefits to elite shareholders.
The apparent paradox is that this will eliminate the capacity for consumption and hence an economic model based on low or no consumption is needed in the West.
Hence drug addiction is the best model there is for this kind of economy. The never-ending wars in Latin America, the Middle East and South Central Asia assure the supply of illicit drugs. Expanding the drug addiction beyond narcotics to what might be called “life entitling” substances; e.g., medicines and vaccines, offers the potential to reduce political opposition/resistance while maintaining income streams as the population declines. This was, in fact, the business model of the British East India Company, producing opium in India to smuggle into China. That model has never really been abandoned, merely its legal forms have been changed.
The 4th industrial revolution will be just as criminally violent as the previous three but it will involve applying old techniques — religion and drugs — to subject at least 20-30 per cent of the world population. This is to be eased by the viral and climate crusades designed to prepare the pious masses to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the alpine conclave. The rest of us are just industrial waste, green indeed, like soylent green.
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The nation I grew up in long ago no longer exists, the disturbing reality of today’s US.
As a boy, adolescent and youth with nothing special going for me, advantages I had are gone.
On Wednesday, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) said workers in the US aged-16 to 24 “face high unemployment and an uncertain future,” adding:
Countless millions of US workers “of all ages” are enduring high unemployment — at a time of economic collapse that could be long-lasting.
Job prospects for new grads are bleak. Dire economic conditions “may persist for years.”
“Young workers have experienced worse outcomes than older workers leading up to and during the” the current depressed conditions.
“Over one-third of young workers (with jobs) are underemployed.”
Women are impacted more than men, Blacks and Latinos hit hardest.
In a weeks earlier column, former Reagan budget director David Stockman described the Wall Street owned and controlled Fed as follows:
It’s “a rogue institution that comprises a clear and present danger to the future of prosperity and liberty in America,” adding:
Wall Street speculators and US politicians don’t grasp the danger of “the most egregiously inflated financial bubble ever.”
“(W)e’re on the cusp of a economic crisis that could eclipse anything we’ve seen before. And most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming.”
When Stockman was appointed Reagan budget director in 1980, “US public debt was…$863 billion.”
It took “192 years and 39 presidents to get there.”
During a 30-day period last summer, Washington borrowed more than the nation’s lawmakers fom inception of the republic in 1776 through 1980.
According to the US Debt Clock, the national debt today exceeds $27 trillion and keeps exploding higher.
Current US federal spending is more than double federal tax revenues.
On October 1, Wall Street on Parade explained that the Fed handed Wall Street over $9 trillion this year that produced speculative excess.
From 2007 – 2010, the Fed doled out $29 trillion in “secret bailouts.”
Something similar is going on today — secretive emergency lending, giveaways to monied interests.
The Fed isn’t “provid(ing) information on to whom or how much it” handed out trillions of dollars.
How much more free money for speculative excess will follow ahead?
In the run-up to and following the 2008-09 financial crisis, the Fed “arbitrarily decided to provide an unlimited money spigot to Wall Street’s trading houses whenever they are at risk of blowing themselves up as a result of their own hubris,” Wall Street on Parade explained.
Conditions today are far more dire than then. The open-ended Fed money spigot most likely will pour out countless more trillions of dollars than already.
A day of reckoning awaits one day. The greater the speculative excess, the more damaging the eventual price to pay.
Like always before, ordinary people will be hardest hit.
Current hard times may continue for years, the lives and welfare of countless millions of Americans adversely affected.
According to the Economic Collapse blog, citing Social Security Administration 2019 wage data, median annual income for Americans was $34,248.
With current unemployment at nearly 27% today — based on the pre-1990 calculation model, median income is much lower.
When I was at a young working age, single-income households could support middle class living standards — no longer.
To get by today, households need two or more jobs. According to the Social Security Administration:
Nearly one-third of US workers earned less than $20,000 annually last year.
Around 45% of US workers made less than $30,000.
Over 56% earned under $40,000.
Around two-thirds of US workers made less than $50,000 annually.
Unemployment, underemployment, and poverty affect millions of US households, things likely to worsen ahead.
For years, especially during the new millennium, America has been systematically thirdwordized.
The nation is heading toward becoming a full-blown ruler-serf society — controlled by police state harshness.
At a time of economic collapse, hard times are especially hard for most people to get by.
Analyst Doug Casey calls what’s happening today “one for the record books.”
The “house of cards (US economy is) built on quicksand, with a tsunami on the way,” he stressed in his latest commentary.
Casey predicts a “Greater Depression” ahead — to be “(m)uch different, much longer lasting, and much worse than the unpleasantness of 1929-1946.”
If Trump v. Biden November election results are disputed no matter who wins, what Casey considers likely, “mass unrest…stock market convulsions, a dollar collapse, and much more” could happen in the post-election period.
Clearly these are no ordinary times.
Endless US wars by hot and other means rage abroad.
State-sponsored health and welfare harm affects ordinary Americans.
Around 100,000 small business suspended operations or shut down permanently. Growing numbers of medium-sized and large ones filed for bankruptcy.
At a time of Depression-level unemployment, growing hunger and homelessness, along with deepening deprivation overall, US politicians prioritize their own interests, and those of corporate America they support — at the expense of essential to life and welfare needs of ordinary people.
Looking ahead to next year and beyond, things may get much worse for a protracted period with little relief for most Americans in need.
It took global war 2.0 to end the 1930s Great Depression.
Will something similar happen in the 2020s at a time when super-weapons can to kill us all if their full destructive power is unleashed?
It’s the wrong time to be young or working-age at a time when future prospects in America may be dire for a protracted period.
Instead of bipartisan efforts in Washington to turn things around, the worst of times are likely to continue.
Will they exceed Great Depression hardness throughout the 2020s?
No one of Franklin Roosevelt’s stature exists in Washington today.
There’s no likelihood of all-out efforts to create jobs for unemployed workers — no matter which right wing of the one-party state controls the White House and/or Congress.
Ordinary Americans are largely on their own during the hardest of hard times, likely to get harder in the months 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.”
A recent RAND study prepared for the US Army suggests with remarkable accuracy who might be behind what will undoubtedly become a major threat to Russian security in coming months.
Under cover of this manufactured ‘public health crisis’ the global elite is fundamentally reshaping global society to serve its own purpose with millions being marginalized and millions being killed in the process.
In addition to the other brutal deprivations the general population suffers as a result of the sanctions, the sanctions deprive doctors of crucial medical equipment necessary to restore to heath and restore to life a huge number of citizens in the targeted countries, including the most vulnerable, the elderly, disabled, and women and children.
Seven months into the pandemic, as many US states inch back toward ‘normal’, New York is in the grips of a crime wave, reinvigorated lockdowns, and widespread fear of pretty much everything. Thank local government.
For the Palestinians it is the breaking of this pan-Arab consensus by the UAE and Bahrain that is viewed as a stab in their backs. The sentiment is unmistakeable. The Palestinian cause is no longer the centre of some Arab states’ politics. The refusal of the Arab League to condemn the Abraham Accords, as demanded by the Palestinian Authority, cannot but prove this betrayal.
The tide has been turning against UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Oafishly, he has managed to convert that tide into a deluge of dissatisfaction assisted by the gravitational pull of singular incompetence.
France is in crisis. Official and unofficial Christian French radical extremism, legitimising itself under the umbrella of what the French ostentatiously call laicité, continues to increase its attacks on French and non-French Muslims.
Because Assange’s message has been so powerful in dissolving the hawk narrative of the Washington status quo, his leadership has heralded a new era of progressive politics. This new era threatens to smash the tight consensus grafted together by elites, so they have responded by enforcing a global mass propaganda program by stealth to defame Assange and his supporters.
P14 Medical signed the huge contract to supply medical gowns in May, even though the firm suffered significant financial losses in 2019, and its previous track record in PPE procurement is unclear. Transparency campaigners say the deal “reeks of cronyism”.
The Ministry of Agriculture had previously expected to produce 850,000 tons of olives this season from more than 87 million trees, said Engineer Muhammad Habu in August. Possibly more than 9,000 hectares of forests and agricultural lands burned between Friday and Saturday, while three people had died due to the fires, and 70 were treated at local hospitals with breathing difficulties.
On 16 August 1819, an estimated 60,000 pro-democracy and anti-poverty activists were peacefully protesting the utterly corrupt nature of the Parliament in Westminster and demanding the reform of parliamentary representation (which afforded less than 2% of people the right to vote). The gathering took place in St Peter’s Field, Manchester in England.
The protest was precipitated by the acute economic slump, including chronic unemployment and harvest failure, following the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars as well as by enforcement of the Corn Laws which kept the price of bread high, by blocking (or imposing tariffs on) the import of cheap grains, at the expense of ordinary people.
After arresting some key figures on the speaker’s cart at the gathering, the cavalry was ordered to disperse the crowd. Charging with sabres drawn, approximately eighteen people were killed and nearly 700 seriously injured, with the event dubbed the ‘Peterloo massacre’ by radical media in a bitterly ironic reference to the bloody Battle of Waterloo some four years earlier. See ‘The Peterloo Memorial Campaign’.
In his evocative tribute to those peaceful activists gathered at St Peter’s Field, Percy Shelley penned what might be considered the first modern words to capture a sense of nonviolent resistance in his poem ‘The Masque of Anarchy’. The poem’s 38th verse, repeated in the 91st (and final) one, is as follows:
Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you —
Ye are many — they are few.
The history of much of human existence since the Neolithic Revolution 12,000 years ago can be written simply: the endless struggle by those who are oppressed and enslaved against the insane elite that oppresses, enslaves and kills them. For brief explanations,
For insight into the terrified psychology that traps members of the elite, and their agents, in an endless cycle of profit-making and wealth accumulation at the expense of the rest of us, see
Of course, nothing has changed although four important points have given the latest manifestation of this perpetual struggle a profound importance that far exceeds earlier (and other ongoing) versions.
1. The elite coup currently being conducted is taking place under cover of a ‘virus’ that has been labeled SARS-CoV-2.
There is no proof that the ‘virus’ labeled SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated, purified and proven to cause a consistent set of disease symptoms among those it ‘infects’, which is then labeled Covid-19. So far, the many of us who have searched for this document – including some of the world’s leading virologists – have not found it.
2. This coup involves all of humanity, not just a local, provincial or national population.
A drive by design towards ironclad concentration of power and geoeconomic diktats was first conceptualized – under the deceptive cover of “sustainable development” – already in 2015 at the UN (here it is, in detail).
Now, this new operating system – or technocratic digital dystopia – is finally being codified, packaged and “sold” since mid summer via a lavish, concerted propaganda campaign.
The whole Planet Lockdown hysteria that elevated Covid-19 to post-modern Black Plague proportions has been consistently debunked…
The de facto controlled demolition of large swathes of the global economy allowed corporate and vulture capitalism, world wide, to rake untold profits out of the destruction of collapsed businesses.
And all that proceeded with widespread public acceptance – an astonishing process of voluntary servitude.
3. Unless we succeed completely in defeating this coup the very essence of what it means to be human will be taken from us.
Introducing her careful explanation of the agenda of the transhumanists, in her video Dr. Carrie Madej opens with the following words:
So what do you think about going from human 1.0 to human 2.0?… Transhumanism… is about taking humans, as we know ourselves, and melding with artificial intelligence…. That might seem kinda cool to you, we might have some superhuman abilities… that’s the idea, that’s what you see in sci-fi movies… Thinking about this topic… I [had thought that it was] many years in the future.
However, this question, this idea is now right in this moment. We need to make a decision… because I investigated the proposed Covid-19 vaccine and this is my alarm call to the world. I looked at the pros and cons and it frightens me.
And I want you to know about this, you need to be very well informed because this new vaccine is not like your normal flu vaccine. This is something very different, this is something brand new, something completely experimental on the human race. And it’s not just about being a different vaccine. There are technologies that are being introduced with this vaccine that can change the way we live, who we are and what we are. And very quickly….
Some people… like Elon Musk, who is the founder of SpaceX and Tesla Automotive, as well as Ray Kurzweil, who is one of the bigwigs of Google, … are self-proclaimed ‘transhumanists’. They believe that we should go to human 2.0 and they are very big proponents of this. There’s a lot of other people… involved with this…. I think the easiest way to explain this to you is to go with one of the frontrunners for the vaccine and go into a little bit of the history and tell you how they want to make the vaccine and I think that will speak volumes. So, for instance, Moderna is one of the frontrunners for the Covid-19 vaccine…. Watch the video ‘Human 2.0 – Transhumanist Vaccine – A Wake Up Call to the World’.
Whitney Webb provides further insight into the elite intention in this regard. In one of her meticulously-researched articles – ‘Coronavirus Gives a Dangerous Boost to DARPA’s Darkest Agenda’ – she outlines the hidden technological agenda behind the Covid-19 coup that might well be delivered as part of any vaccination program by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Technology developed by the Pentagon’s controversial research branch is getting a huge boost amid the current coronavirus crisis, with little attention going to the agency’s ulterior motives for developing said technologies, their potential for weaponization or their unintended consequences.…
Those who are fearful and desperate will not care that the vaccine may include nanotechnology or have the potential to genetically modify and re-program their very being, as they will only want the current crisis that has upended the world to stop.
In this context, the current coronavirus crisis appears to be the perfect storm that will allow DARPA’s dystopian vision to take hold and burst forth from the darkest recesses of the Pentagon into full public view. DARPA’s transhumanist vision for the military and for humanity presents an unprecedented threat, not just to human freedom, but an existential threat to human existence and the building blocks of biology itself.
4. And among the possible consequences of this coup are nuclear war, the collapse of biodiversity, the deployment of 5G, the climate catastrophe.
But to highlight just one symptom of the accelerating climate crisis, for example, you can read the daily update on the 100 or so extreme wildfires in the western United States (including Alaska) on the National Interagency Fire Center website. Importantly, however, you can also read or watch Dane Wigington’s accounts of the role of climate engineering in precipitating these catastrophic fires to destroy forests on GeoEngineering Watch.
Unfortunately, despite the enormous gravity of the situation in which we find ourselves, most people remain too frightened to seriously investigate and consider the evidence regarding what is taking place and to respond powerfully. Why? Because our parenting and education models mass-produce unconsciously terrified and submissively obedient individuals. See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.
For these individuals, it is far less frightening to simply accept the elite-driven narrative, promulgated by the World Health Organization, the medical industry, governments and the corporate media, and to submissively accept the savage curtailment of our rights and freedoms. And to powerlessly hope that this assault on our identity, liberty and future will all go away ‘once we have the “virus” under control’.
But as anyone who understands political history or has even the vaguest genuine understanding of modern geopolitics well knows, this will not happen. If we do not struggle, it will be our own obedience, our own cooperation that will condemn us all to the fate being orchestrated by the global elite.
Moreover, given the depth, complexity and multifaceted nature of the threats we now face, unless we struggle strategically there is no real prospect of succeeding.
Resisting the Elite Coup so Far
Fortunately, courageous individuals all around the world are doing what they can to inform and mobilize people before it is too late. These range from individuals writing articles or producing videos to expose the simple fact that the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 does not exist and the non-existent disease labeled Covid-19 is being used to ‘cover’ the elite coup, it involves individuals working to defend our hard-won rights and freedom by using legal challenges to the Covid-19 lockdown measures and, vitally, it involves those people taking nonviolent action to defeat the coup or aspects of it.
And, of course, these measures are having impact as evidenced by the actions being taken by elite agents to suppress awareness of this effort and to thwart it. These actions range from censorship of resistance documents and videos, public disparagement of those resisting (perhaps by being labeled ‘conspiracy theorists’ or ‘anti-vaxxers’), the corporate media ignoring or misrepresenting those protesting, and sham scholarship purporting to describe those resisting as psychologically disordered – see
But for a taste of the most recent mobilizations, here are some examples.
At the rally in Berlin on 29 August 2020, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke the following words:
The pandemic is a crisis of convenience for the elite who are dictating these policies. It gives them the ability to obliterate the middle class, to destroy the institutions of democracy, to shift all of our wealth to a handful of billionaires [while] impoverishing the rest of us. And the only thing between them and our children is this crowd that has come to Berlin…. Thank you all very much for fighting. See ‘Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Speaks at Berlin Rally for Freedom and Peace’.
At the Unite for Freedom Rally in Trafalgar Square, London, also on 29 August, David Icke spoke as follows:
We gather here today because a dangerous disease, a deadly disease is sweeping across this land and across this world and it’s not Covid-19, it is fascism…. This world is controlled by a tiny few people because of a simple sequence of imposition and acquiescence. All the way down the pyramid: imposition-acquiescence…. How do we break that sequence? We stop acquiescing! Human race get off your knees!… Stay in your home? No! Wear a mask? No! Let your kids be psychologically dismantled? No!
It is well past the time when we learn the lessons of history. The entirety of human history is one of the few controlling the many because the many acquiesce to the few. Enough!… And I say to the police opposite: ‘You have children, you have grandchildren. And you are enforcing the fascism which your own children and grandchildren will have to live with. Join us, for goodness sake and stop serving the psychopaths.’ There are billions of us and the core of the core of these psychopathic wimps…. I think I can see a way out of this. Come on people of the world. Let’s go! See ‘David Icke’s Speech at the Unite for Freedom Rally’.
But apart from earlier gatherings of large numbers of people to protest the coup that I have previously reported – see, for example,
Meanwhile, the government of the state of Victoria (in south-eastern mainland Australia) continues to cling tenaciously to its record as the most repressive police state on Earth, even arresting people for encouraging others to attend protest rallies.
This is occurring despite the obvious illegality of federal and state government actions in Australia (and Victoria particularly) which have been carefully detailed, for example, by Victorian lawyer Serene Teffaha who explains the substantial range of laws that are being violated by the government of Victoria (including sections 60, 61, 88, 90, 91, 92 and 95 of the Australian ‘Biosecurity Act 2015’ which takes precedence over its Victorian equivalent,
If you thought that the rule of law would protect you from government overreach, it might be a good time to review your belief. The law is simply another tool in the elite’s armory against you and it is being used with devastating impact right now. See
In his 77-minute recorded statement to police after his own arrest – ‘The accused at Greater Melbourne between the 16th of August 2020 and the 27th of August 2020 did incite another person/persons to pursue a course of conduct that involved the commission of an offence by promoting a planned protest with the intention to incite person/persons to contravene namely s 203 (1) of the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 by encouraging them to not wear masks and also to leave their residence without a specified reason as provided by the stay at home directions’:
We live in a supposedly free society, surely we can debate…. Then we use our intellect and our ability to choose. It is stifled, it is censored everywhere by the Australian government, by the Victorian government, by unfortunately the police, who in my words are supporting extortion because [Victorian premier Daniel Andrews] knows that the way to people’s hearts is through their pockets and so he is extorting money from us to make us do his will and, of course, everyone is filled with fear. This is not an epidemic of a virus, it is an epidemic of fear….
I follow the value of truth, I follow the value of unconditional love, I follow the value [of] virtue… (‘help ever, hurt never’), [I follow] the value of peace and the value of nonviolence…. Our behaviour has to be Godly, it has to be pure, it has to be peaceful. However, the sword that we hold in our hand is the sword of truth…. And that is what’s not being allowed. And you will find that I have been arrested because I have a particular point of view which is against these dictates of the health minister…. So I have been arrested.
And within two seconds I can… prove to you there is no pandemic. Just some simple arithmetic: How many people have died [in Australia]? Three, four hundred? How many Australians are there? 26,000,000. How long has this nonsense been going? Seven months. This is rubbish! And they are stealing – and this is absolutely guaranteed scientifically – they are stealing old-age deaths, with comorbidity features – cancer, heart attacks, pneumonia, diabetes – and they are assigning those old-age deaths to Covid-19. And you know if you look on the Australia Bureau of Statistics website all they have to do is assume Covid-19. They don’t even have to test for it! Watch ‘Solihin Millin Interview with Victorian Police After Arrest’.
Resisting the Elite Coup
So while there is considerable ongoing resistance to this coup, given the extraordinary nature of what is at stake, my own preoccupation is to encourage and facilitate a strategically-focused resistance to it so that we have the impact we need in each of the dimensions – including those threatening human extinction – necessary for us to be successful.
Hence, if you already understand what is at stake – or you are willing to consider the evidence more carefully – but you are not yet ready to act powerfully in response, I invite you to focus more intently on how you feel in response to the threats posed and to give yourself adequate time to do so. By gaining a clearer sense of your emotional response – fear, anger, despair, frustration… – you will be better able to utilize this, along with other mental faculties such as your intellect, conscience and intuition, to craft an integrated and powerful way forward.
And, depending on your interests and circumstances, there is a range of possible responses that will each make an important difference (with many entailing no risk whatsoever).
Fundamentally, you might consider making ‘My Promise to Children’ which will include considering what an education for your children means to you, particularly if you want powerful individuals – not ones who are submissively obedient to elite directives and project their fear onto others – who can perceive reality and resist violence.
You might also consider how your diet and healthcare could usefully be revised to empower you to resist medical propaganda, particularly given the extensively documented death-dealing for which corporate medicine is responsible.
If you wish to strategically resist the elite coup, you can read about nonviolent strategy, including strategic goals for doing so, from here: Coup Strategic Aims.
Remaining pages on this website fully explain the twelve components of the strategy, as illustrated by the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel, as well as articles and videos explaining all of the vital points of strategy and tactics, such as those to help you understand ‘
Given the complexity of the configuration of this conflict, however, which involves the need to fight simultaneously to retain our essential humanity, defeat the elite coup and avert near-term human extinction, it is important that our tactical choices are strategically-oriented (as are those listed on the Strategic Aims page nominated above). Hence, three further considerations assume importance.
First, choose/design tactics that have strategic impact, that is, they fundamentally and permanently alter, in our favor, the power relationship between the elite and us.
Second, when tactical choices are made, focus them on undermining the elite coup, not just features of it, such as ‘social distancing’ or the lockdowns. At its most basic, this can be achieved by using tactical choices that mobilize people to act initially, as is happening, but then inviting them to consider taking further, more focused, action as well (such as those nominated in the strategic goals referenced above). This is important if our actions are to have impact on key underlying measures, such as those being taken by the elite to advance the fourth industrial revolution, including the robotization of humans for work and war-fighting.
Third, choose/design tactics that also have strategic impact on the greatest threats to human survival, including the collapsing biodiversity on Earth, the threat of nuclear war, the climate catastrophe and the deployment of 5G. Given the incredibly short timeframe in which we are now working to avert human extinction, while people are mobilizing it is important to use this opportunity to give them the chance to perceive the ‘big picture’ of what is taking place – beyond lockdowns and other measures supposedly being used to tackle Covid-19 – and to act powerfully in response.
Fortunately, as more people become aware of the deeper strands of what is taking place, the energy to break the lockdowns, resist other limitations on our rights and freedoms (such as contact tracing, Covid-19 testing/temperature checks, mask-wearing and vaccinations) as well as resist the coup itself will gather pace. As I have previously outlined, using a locally relevant focus, or perhaps several, for which many people would traditionally be together – a cultural, religious or sporting event, a nonviolent action, a community activity such as working to establish a community garden to increase local self-reliance, a celebration and/or a return to work – we can mobilize people to collectively resist. As has been happening.
Conclusion
Under cover of this manufactured ‘public health crisis’ the global elite is fundamentally reshaping global society to serve its own purpose with millions (in industrialized countries) being marginalized and millions (in countries throughout Africa and Asia particularly, where disruption of food distribution systems has hit hardest) being killed in the process.
Fortunately, awareness of what is at stake is now steadily rising.
And so is the resistance.
ANNEX
If you wish to focus on powerfully resisting one of the primary threats to human existence – nuclear war, the deployment of 5G, the collapse of biodiversity and/or the climate catastrophe – you can read about nonviolent strategy, including strategic goals to focus your campaigns, from here: Campaign Strategic Aims.
You might also consider joining those who are powerful enough to recognize the critical importance of reduced consumption and greater self-reliance as essential elements of these strategies by participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’. While you over-consume or are dependent on the elite for your survival, in any way, you are vulnerable.
I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
I will not own or use a mobile (cell) phone
I will not buy rainforest timber
I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.
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Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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