On May, 3, U.S. mercenaries and the American-backed Venezuelan opposition launched a half-baked coup d’etat attempt to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro and the ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV). Dubbed Operation Gideon, the “amphibious assault” was headed up by two U.S. former Special Forces members and 60 members of Venezuela’s opposition.
The plot was comically harebrained. The mercenaries were to storm the coastline just north of Caracas, defeat the Venezuelan military by inspiring an uprising, kidnap President Maduro, and transport him to the U.S. via a local airport. The “invasion” was set to begin with 300 men, yet the plan continued with only 62. The latest bungled attempt to upend the Bolivarian Revolution conjures up deja vu of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and comes as the Trump administration has plotted coup attempts, executed vicious acts of economic warfare, and is now offering a $15 million bounty of U.S. taxpayer money on Maduro.
The mercenaries were sponsored by a Trump-linked and Florida-based private security contractor, SilverCorps U.S.A. The plot — set up by longtime Trump bodyguard and security consultant, Keith Schiller — was originally hatched by Jordan Goudreau, an ex-Green Beret and head of SilverCorps, and the Venezuelan opposition led by Juan Guaidó. The Trump administration denied any involvement in the attempted coup, yet given the administration has ramped up displays of open hostilities towards Venezuela, this denial should be taken with a grain of salt.
Operation Gideon was unearthed by Venezuelan intelligence back in March, and before the two boats carrying the marauders could begin storming the beaches, they were intercepted by fishermen loyal to Maduro. Goudreau later acknowledged that the two captured former U.S. Special Forces members — Airan Berry and Luke Denman — were working with him. The ex-Green Beret previously ran security for Trump’s political events and at billionaire Richard Branson’s Live Aid event on the Venezuelan-Colombian border. According to a close friend of Goudreau’s, the plot to oust Maduro was likely a desperate bid to secure the U.S. State Department’s $15 million bounty.
After the maritime assault was foiled, a document obtained by the Washington Post showed that Operation Gideon was signed onto by Guaidó, with the goal of overthrowing Maduro, including an armed counter-insurgency. In an attempt to place a cushion between Guaidó and the would-be “invasion,” the agreement document’s validity was disputed by the Venezuelan opposition as a forgery. After the claim by the Venezuelan opposition, the documents were mysteriously retracted and replaced.
Bizarrely enough, Goudreau has sought out media attention to confirm Guaidó’s support for his failed raid releasing audio of the signing of the document and a general services agreement that he claims Guaidó was present for and signed. Goudreau is likely to remain in the headlines given that he is now under investigation by U.S. authorities. This most recent utterly baffling and seemingly implausible saga to topple a left-wing Latin American government by a dysfunctional cast of grifters amounts as a pandemic surges, having unprecedented impacts on health systems and economies.
While the U.S. is leading the world in COVID-19 cases and a skyrocketing death toll, murderous sanctions, and a knee-capping embargo are keeping medical necessities and aid away from the Venezuelan people. With the U.S. political and business class focusing instead on overthrowing and destabilizing governments rather than protecting working-class Americans from a pandemic and an economic meltdown, it’s time for the American people to condemn savage U.S. imperialism in Latin America, economic warfare against Venezuela, and stand up to their ruling class.
“Assuring an Adequate Supply of Petroleum for the U.S.”
Operation Gideon was not an outlying incident, the debacle occurred in accordance with decades, if not centuries, of U.S. foreign policy precedent in Latin America. Along with Bolivia’s lithium and other resource-rich Latin American nations, Venezuela’s plentiful oil deposits — the largest reserves in the world — have long been on the wish list for business interests and the U.S.’s political and financial elite.
In 1948, the American-backed right-wing dictator, Marcos Pérez Jiménez overthrew the democratically-elected government of Rómulo Gallegos. The regime developed tight ties with the U.S. oil industry, allowing companies like Exxon and Mobil to profit from the ample supply. Pérez Jiménez achieved U.S.-support through ruthless repression of his opposition, defaming anyone who opposed his regime and using his power to torture, imprison, and “disappear” dissidents.
Two years later, in 1950, official U.S. State Department objectives in Venezuela were stated as, “All policies toward Venezuela are affected in greater or less degree by the objective of assuring an adequate supply of petroleum for the U.S.” Washington also recognized the large iron deposits and encouraged development to supplement U.S. reserves.
In the decades following the U.S.-backed Pérez Jiménez regime, Venezuelan leaders mostly held a bipartisan neoliberal consensus that was marked by a further oil boom in the ’70s, a debt crisis in the ’80s, to widespread corruption and the failure of liberal institutions in the ’90s. The economy fluctuated regularly — yet a fundamental constant throughout this period was the Venezuelan government’s appeasement to the economic elite and U.S. business interests.
Three decades of allowing U.S. capital to profit from Venezuelan resources left little wealth contributed to the tax base, spurring millions into action, eager for change. In 1998, PSUV, led by Hugo Chávez created a movement that secured power through democratic elections. Initially, Chávez was met with little resistance as he obtained widespread popular support throughout the country. Yet, after promises to nationalize industry — including oil production — redistributing land to the poor, and reducing poverty with heavy investments in social programs, Chávez was quick to go on the defensive.
Delegitimizing and Toppling the Bolivarian Revolution
In 2002, the U.S.-backed opposition affirmed the policy of regime change when forces led by Pedro Carmona — a wealthy petrochemical tycoon — sought to oust Chávez in a coup d’etat. The coup ultimately failed and Chávez was restored to power only 48 hours after a massive uprising of PSUV supporters erupted, yet the attempted removal established U.S. precedent for regime change for years to come.
Just months after winning re-election, Hugo Chávez died at 58, leaving his mentee Nicolás Maduro as his successor. In 2013, new elections were called, in which PSUV and Maduro continued Chávez’s legacy, winning the Presidency and defeating centrist candidate Henrique Capriles by less than two percent of the vote. In the aftermath, Capriles called the election illegitimate — although disproven by international observers — and demanded a recount. Venezuela’s electoral officials conducted an audit in which Maduro came out on top, while Capriles continuously rejected the outcome. A year prior, during which Chávistas retained power, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter even remarked, “As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”
In the controversial 2018 election, Maduro was seeking to renew his bid from the Presidency, in what the Venezuelan opposition, the U.S., and popular media outlets have called a “show election” due to voter turnout plummeting to 46 percent — only ten percent less than voter turnout in the 2016 U.S. election. In an effort to further delegitimize Venezuelan democracy, all major western countries and the Venezuelan opposition condemned the elections as fraudulent. The opposition party preemptively chose to boycott the elections to qualify their false claim of election fraud, knowing their party would likely lose to Maduro’s PSUV.
Unlike the American electoral system, the Venezuelan electoral system includes paper ballot backups that make election fraud nearly impossible. Furthermore, over one hundred impartial international observers — who were present during the 2018 election — condemned the West’s claim of fraudulent elections, stating, “[these are] fabrications of the most disgraceful kind, based on hearsay and not on evidence.”
The U.S. and its allies responded with a barrage of sanctions that targeted Venezuela’s top exports — including petroleum products, crude oil, and gold — which was accompanied by cutting off the pipeline of imported food products. This resulted in further hobbling of the Venezuelan economy creating massive inflation as the government’s failed monetary policy struggled to keep pace with an international economic onslaught.
In 2019, with the economy increasingly in shambles, the U.S. created further destabilization by sponsoring a sort of “soft coup.” The recognition of opposition leader Juan Guaidó — who has never won a democratic election for President — as the legitimate President of Venezuela resulted in the further destabilizing effects on the country. By August, the Trump administration announced an embargo that will undoubtedly create more misery for ordinary Venezuelans.
As 2020 rolls on, March, 30, was marked by the Maduro government calling onGuaidó to respond to questioning for allegedly sponsoring an attempted coup and assassination attempt. On April 1, Trump ordered navy ships and surveillance planes to the Venezuelan coast, in the largest U.S. military buildup in Latin America since the invasion of Panama in 1989.
As the pandemic broke out, Guaidó and fellow opposition lawmakers approved a $5,000 monthly stimulus for themselves under the guise of protecting health professionals during the COVID crisis, while Venezuelan doctors and nurses got a one-time payment of $100. The latest scheme to destabilize and hopefully depose the Maduro government manifested in Operation Gideon and upon the seizure of 31 tons gold by the Bank of England from Venezuela’s holdings last May.
U.S. Economic Warfare Isn’t About Protecting Human Rights
As the COVID calamity rages on, U.S. economic warfare is exacerbating death rates and suffering. While ordinary Americans are struggling to make ends meet due to unprecedented pandemic, police and white supremacists violence — and now the testing of Trump’s secret police in Portland “disappearing” people off the streets — are ruthlessly being carried out against American citizens supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. The callousness of U.S. empire is being brought home, and Americans are getting a brief taste in the tactics, austerity, and disdain for human rights the U.S. has historically promoted in Latin America and Venezuela.
The U.S. had the stated intent of placing economic restrictions on the Bolivarian Republic to curtail alleged human rights violations, yet the sanctions and embargo placed on the Venezuelan economy have worked against that goal. Before the COVID crisis claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands, a report released by the Center For Economic and Policy Research found that U.S. sanctions from 2017 to 2018 have directly contributed to the deaths of 40,000 Venezuelans.
Pandemic aside, the report also states that the sanctions and recognition of a parallel, unelected government have intensified the humanitarian crisis. To turn a crisis into a catastrophe, Venezuelan and American business interests are also withholding products from the market resulting in capital strikes, while Western banks and states seize Venezuelan assets.
Acts of economic warfare by the U.S. foreign policy apparatus and business class are meant to strangle economies therefore sowing discontent among the common people. In Venezuela’s case — by cutting off the global supply of goods and resources, essentially blockading exports, seizures of assets, and capital strikes — the U.S. has ensured the poorest are most exploited by the economic effects. Ultimately, economic warfare is a ploy to set the stage for U.S.-sponsored regime change, while heightening a humanitarian crisis that creates the conditions for a counterrevolution through the American-sponsored Juan Guaidó.
Given the storied history of American meddling in overthrowing democratically-elected leftist governments in Latin America, mainstream attitudes regarding the crisis in Venezuela by U.S. politicians — housed by both liberals and conservatives — is disconcerting. While America’s ruling class must shoulder the blame, it is the ordinary American working-class citizens who must take responsibility for their government’s actions in depriving wealth and sovereignty to traditionally and continually exploited people, domestically and abroad.
U.S. acts of imperialism and economic warfare will not end until ordinary American citizens stand in solidarity with the people tortured by capital and the U.S. foreign policy apparatus. If the American people believe in human rights they must condemn their government and corporations’ brutal and tedious need for economic domination and call for a more equitable distribution of resources to the world’s working-class people, ceasing murderous acts of economic warfare, and recognizing the will of the people in sovereign nations.
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Jack Delaney is a former policy analyst, political communications specialist, federal lobbyist, and Congressional intern. Jack worked on issues relating to health care, disability, civil liberties, and labor policy, and is a member of the North Brooklyn chapter of Democratic Socialists of America and the National Writers Union. His work has appeared in Truthout and Jacobin and he can be found at www.jfdelaney.com, on Twitter @dadrespecter, and on Instagram @jfdelaney.
Featured image is from the Embassy Protection Collective
The joint Russian-Turkish patrol set to be held in southern Idlib on July 29 was delayed due to increased military tensions and the inability of Ankara to ensure the security of the patrol in its area of responsibility. And the situation does not seem to be improving.
According to pro-militant sources, on the evening of July 29th and morning of July 30th, the Syrian Army launched over 500 shells at militants’ positions in the Zawiya Mount area, including Kansafra, al-Bara, Kafar Aweed, Fatterah and Erinah. In response, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies struck Syrian Army checkpoints at Kafr Nabl, As Safa, Hakoura and in nearby areas.
In the last few days, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Turkistan Islamic Party reinforced their positions on the contact line with the Syrian Army, south of the M4 highway. Their forces reportedly remain on high alert. Pro-government sources say that the inability of Ankara to secure another joint patrol in southern Idlib is a signal that the militants are preparing for offensive actions there.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Army uncovered a hideout that had been used by militants working as organ traders in the village of al-Ghadfah in southern Idlib. According to Syria’s state-run news agency SANA, government forces found human organs, including hearts, livers and heads in the hideout. The organs were preserved in jars with chloroform. The jars carried the names of the victims. Personal IDs of the victims, men and women, were also found in the hideout.
The hideout included a room designated for religious studies with radical ideological publications. This indicates that the site had belonged to one of the multiple militant groups that still operate in Greater Idlib thanks to the Turkish opposition to counter-terrorism operations there.
Al-Ghadfah is located in the vicinity of the city of Maarat al-Numan and for a long time it has been controlled by Turkey’s main partner in Idlib – Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. The town was liberated by the Syrian Army and its allies in January 2020.
Lt. Sharif al-Nazzal of the Syrian Military Intelligence Directorate (MID) was assassinated in the town of Sahem al-Golan in western Daraa on July 29. The lieutenant was with another intelligence officer known as “Abu Haider”, when they were attacked by unidentified gunmen. Both officers were shot dead on the spot.
Opposition sources claimed that al-Nazzal, a native of Sahem al-Golan, was close to Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iranian forces. The officer headed a detachment of the MID in the western Daraa countryside. No group has claimed responsibility for the assassination. Nonetheless, in previous stages of the conflict Israel was extensively supporting militant groups in southern Syria. It is possible that Tel Aviv may have access to cells of these groups for support with particular operations.
Two members of the US-backed Revolutionary Commando Army militant group based in al-Tanf were detained by the Syrian Army near the US-controlled zone. The detained persons were moving on a motorcycle and possessed assault rifles and night-vision goggles. They were reportedly involved in an information gathering operation about civilian and military facilities in the Homs desert.
In the past, Damascus has repeatedly claimed that the US was planning to use its proxies in al-Tanf for destabilizing operations in the government-controlled area.
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Michael Moore presents Planet of the Humans, a documentary that dares to say what no one else will — that we are losing the battle to stop climate change on planet earth because we are following leaders who have taken us down the wrong road — selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America.
This film is the wake-up call to the reality we are afraid to face: that in the midst of a human-caused extinction event, the environmental movement’s answer is to push for techno-fixes and band-aids. It’s too little, too late.
Watch the full documentary below.
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In a letter to the New York Times in 1970, British historian Arnold Toynbee said the United States “has become the world’s nightmare.” It turned out they were just getting started. Through its many wars, covert operations and economic destabilizations, the U.S. government has immiserated and killed millions of people in the Global South. Washington’s aim in this carnage, under a thin cloak of liberal internationalism, has been to enrich itself and its Western client states including Canada, Britain and Australia.
Official documents that show the workings of this sordid enterprise are leaked once in a while by brave whistleblowers inside the U.S. empire. The most famous is surely Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1971, a year after Toynbee irritated the U.S. establishment with his judgment, released the Pentagon Papers containing the secret history of the Vietnam War, and became a hero for doing so.
Julian Assange continues this venerable tradition and is paying a high price for it. The WikiLeaks founder is currently being held at the high security Belmarsh prison in the U.K. while he awaits trial to determine if he will be extradited to the U.S. In a November letter to the British government, 60 doctors attested to Assange’s deteriorating physical and mental health and warned he could die in prison. The Trump administration has charged Assange with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act, introduced in 1917 to criminalize socialist opposition to the First World War. If found guilty, Assange could face up to 175 years in jail.
In 2010, WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. military and State Department documents leaked by U.S. army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, herself jailed in 2013 until former president Obama commuted her 35-year sentence in January 2017. (Manning was jailed again last year for refusing to testify about WikiLeaks before a grand jury, but she has since been released.) The “document dumps that shook the world,” as the BBC described the WikiLeaks cache, showed massive U.S. war crimes in Washington’s Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, including the killing of tens of thousands of civilians by U.S. forces, and the use of death squads, torture and kidnappings in both wars.
“The video was the key document: it shook people up by showing how badly the U.S. forces had behaved in Iraq,” says Julian Burnside, a human rights lawyer based in Melbourne, Australia and a supporter of Assange, who is an Australian citizen. He is referring to the infamous, grainy video revealed by WikiLeaks that showed the crew of a U.S. Apache helicopter in Iraq gunning down 12 civilians including two Reuters reporters. “Ha ha, I hit ‘em,” exults the helicopter pilot.
Six years later, WikiLeaks released “The Yemen Files,” which exposed U.S. complicity in Saudi Arabia’s devastating war on Yemen and Washington’s spying on U.N. officials. But its vast cache of U.S. diplomatic cables would also embarrass the Obama administration on its Libya policy and trade objectives (deregulation) for the failed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union, among other files. If the government didn’t move then to prosecute Assange it was “because it risked criminalizing subsequent national security journalism,” according to USA Today in a recent article.
The Trump Administration, with its much lower opinion of the free press, had no such qualms. Its prosecution of Assange is “very dangerous” for journalism and human rights, emphasizes Burnside. Even the U.S. mainstream press, which had been attacking Assange for years before the 17 charges were brought against him, seems to agree.
According to Charlie Savage of the New York Times,
the Assange case “could open the door to criminalizing activities that are crucial to American investigative journalists who write about national security matters.” Much of what Assange does at WikiLeaks “is difficult to distinguish in a legally meaningful way from what traditional news organizations like The Times do: seek and publish information that officials want to be secret, including classified national security matters, and take steps to protect the confidentiality of sources,” he wrote in May.
The Washington Post’s media columnist Margaret Sullivan called Trump’s indictment against Assange “despicable” in a May 2019 article. She said it was alarming how the case might result in “the architects of secret, and possibly illegal or immoral, government programs [being] the same people who get to decide whether information about them is made public.”
Ben Norton, assistant editor of The Grayzone, a leftist independent media website in the U.S., has said
“the U.S. government’s campaign against Julian Assange is one of the gravest threats to press freedoms in modern history.” Norton pointed out that, “in its relentless assault on civil liberties, the Trump administration has the dubious distinction of breaking two records at once: indicting a journalist under the Espionage Act for the first time, and indicting a non-U.S. citizen.”
This last point shows that the Trump indictment is an attack not only on the U.S. press but on journalists all over the world.
Norton blames the mainstream media, including the NewYorkTimes, for encouraging Trump’s indictment against Assange by denigrating the whistleblower for years.
“This is the ultimate irony,” Norton explains. “The very same institutions and people that stand to lose the most from Assange being thrown in prison are those that helped put the noose around his neck
“As journalists in the U.S. and around the world now stare down the barrel of a gun, it must be said clearly: Everyone who demonized WikiLeaks and Julian Assange put the ammo in that weapon, paving the way for Trump’s historic attack on press freedoms.”
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Conn Hallinan, an analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus, agrees with Norton and speaks gravely about a major crisis in the media.
U.S. news outlets have “covered up the criminal nature of American foreign policy [and] downplayed the major threats to humanity, like climate change and nuclear war,” he says. “Those chickens are coming home to roost. Will it change? Not by itself. Most ofthe media is owned by people who want to keep the public in the dark.”
In December 2010, Assange was charged with rape in Sweden and released on bail, after which he fled to the U.K. The leftist Correa government in Ecuador granted Assange citizenship and a place to stay in the country’s London embassy so that he would avoid extradition to Sweden to face trial. But this citizenship was withdrawn in 2019 by Correa’s successor, Lenin Moreno, who forced Assange out of the embassy and into the arms of waiting U.K. police. Later in 2019, Swedish prosecutors dropped the rape charge (which Assange denied), stating that “the evidential situation has been weakened to such an extent that there is no longer any reason to continue the investigation.”
Guillaume Long, Correa’s foreign minister, tells me he
“believed that Assange’s life, integrity and human rights were at risk for having exposed war crimes,” and that his role “was to uphold and defend Ecuador’s respect for the institution of asylum, at the same time as trying to find a way out of the diplomatic impasse while abiding to Ecuador’s commitments to protect Assange and to international law.”
While Assange was there, the Ecuadorian embassy in London hired UC Global, a Spanish security firm led by David Morales, to provide security for him. Shortly afterwards, according to charges brought against Morales in Spain, the company allegedly started spying on Assange and on Ecuadorian embassy staff on behalf of U.S. intelligence. Ex-employees of UC Global exposed the alleged arrangement to Assange’s lawyers after his arrest, and then to Spanish authorities, who jailed Morales last August. He was released on bail in October and charged with violating both Assange’s privacy and attorney-client privileges, along with bribery and money laundering.
According to an article in The Grayzone, the documents submitted in court, which come from UC Global computers, “detail an elaborate and apparently illegal U.S. surveillance operation in which the security firm spied on Assange, his legal team, his American friends, U.S. journalists, and an American member of Congress who had been allegedly dispatched to the Ecuadorian embassy by President Donald Trump. Even the Ecuadorian diplomats whom UC Global was hired to protect were targeted by the spy ring.”
Morales’s actions appear to have gone beyond spying. According to witness statements seen by TheGrayzone, Morales allegedly proposed breaking into Assange’s lawyer’s office (it was burglarized several weeks later). Witnesses have also testified to there being an alleged proposal to kidnap or poison Assange. Police found two handguns with serial numbers removed and stacks of cash at Morales’s home.
The alleged U.S. spying on the Ecuadorian embassy in London would amount to “a very serious violation of international law and the rules that regulate international diplomacy, as well as a very serious breach of Ecuadorian sovereignty,” says Long. “The fact that the Ecuadorian government has not protested this, or taken any action in response to it, speaks volumes about the new relationship that the Moreno government has established with the Trump administration: one of total surrogacy.”
Since 9/11, the U.S. national security state has been steadily eroding human and civil rights under the pretext of fighting terrorism, to the point where journalism itself is now under threat. Britain and Canada have followed suit, attempting to build all-powerful surveillance states whose policies are increasingly secret and so difficult to question.
“The case of Julian Assange is…the turning point,” warned WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson late last year. “It is the biggest and the most serious attack on journalism and the free press in decades, if not 100 years. If this extradition goes ahead, journalists around the world will have lost so much that it will be very hard, if not impossible, to get back the rights that we had before.”
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Medical doctors at an event in front of the US Supreme Court are accused of making false statements.
The video of their press conference was removed by Youtube and Facebook. They are accused by CNN of spreading “fake science”
The doctors put forth Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as an effective Covid-19 cure.
Why were they smeared by CNN? Why were they the object of censorship?
According to CNN, Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is sponsored by “Fake Pharma companies”. What utter nonsense. The unspoken truth is that the statement of the medical doctors goes against the interests of Big Pharma.
In this video, Professor Michel Chossudovsky reveals how a peer reviewed report in The Lancet was used “to kill” the legitimacy of HCQ as a cure of Covid-19. It was later revealed that the Lancet HCQ study was based on fake data. The author of the peer reviewed report apologized.
“I’m truly sorry”… And the report was retracted by The Lancet, which acknowledged that the data was fabricated. The media remained silent on what constitutes “Fake Science”.
With the new revelations of an impending broad-sweeping economic and military pact soon to be signed between Iran and China, war hawks in Israel and Washington have entirely melted down. “Iran is reportedly in the final stages of agreeing to a $400 billion economic and security deal with China, which includes infrastructure investment, discounted Iranian oil and enhanced cooperation on both defense and intelligence.”
These hawks who have been promoting an unwinnable war plan with both China, Iran and Russia for years should have come to recognize that their radical lust for global dominance has led the world to the precipice of nuclear annihilation and economic collapse.
Sadly, such self-awareness is not accessible to your radical Zionist or neocon zombie and so in the face of the beautiful potential of a multipolar alliance shaped by the New Silk Road through the middle east, and long term projects of win-win cooperation ushering in the 21stcentury and beyond, figures like Pompeo, Esper and Bibi are heard screaming for more sanctions.
Mossadegh and the Myth of the Islamic Bomb
War hawks in Israel and Washington have been quick to denounce Iran’s nuclear power ambitions for years with the repeated excuse that “Iran has so much oil that nuclear energy is irrelevant for them- unless they wanted to build an Islamic Bomb!”
Hogwash. As we shall come to see, not only has Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei created a 2003 fatwa declaring nuclear weapons forbidden under Islamic Law, but Iranian leaders were already calling for the need to transition to a new and superior form of energy in order to escape the geopolitical constraints of oil politics over 70 years ago… ironically through the help of the USA!
On December 8, 1953 a speech was delivered at the United Nations by President Dwight D. Eisenhower which has come to be known as his Atoms for Peace speech. As flawed as Eisenhower was as a political leader, this speech did provide a valuable gateway out of the unwinnable Cold War logic of Mutually Assured Destruction that had officially begun with the Soviet Union’s first detonation of their own atomic bomb in 1949. The U.S. had itself been reeling over an 8 year internal coup begun in 1945 over the Anglo-American deep state which had purged much of the U.S. intelligentzia of genuine patriots under the FBI-run red scare and 1947 creation of the CIA. Using a talented hive of sociopaths under the direction of the Dulles Brothers, the Deep State had perverted U.S. foreign policy by launching the Korean War in 1950, and worked as Britain’s dumb giant in the overthrow Iran’s nationalist leader Mohammed Mossadegh in August 1953 when the later attempted to nationalize Britain’s Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951 (1).
Though a competent General, Eisenhower was admittedly naïve and only realized the full extent of what had gone on under his watch during his last days as President in 1961 as outlined in his Military Industrial Complex speech.
This part of history is vitally important to revive now, since Eisenhower’s efforts to undo the terrible injustice caused by America’s complicity in the Iranian regime change as well as broader threat of nuclear annihilation remains the only functional pathway to a durable peace in Iran or globally today. Unless Trump breaks from neo-con pressure in ways that Eisenhower failed to do throughout the 1950s, and returns to this spirit, the future looks bleak indeed.
Atoms for Peace and the Birth of Iranian Atomic Energy
In his 1953 speech, Eisenhower laid out the threats and opportunities which the peaceful use of the atom created:
“The United States knows that if the fearful trend of atomic military build-up can be reversed, this greatest of destructive forces can be developed into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind. The United States knows that peaceful power from atomic energy is no dream of the future. The capability, already proved, is here today. Who can doubt that, if the entire body of the world’s scientists and engineers had adequate amounts of fissionable material with which to test and develop their ideas, this capability would rapidly be transformed into universal, efficient and economic usage?”
The president listed several domains where the peaceful application of the atom would be of value to humanity saying:
“Experts would be mobilized to apply atomic energy to the needs of agriculture, medicine and other peaceful activities. A special purpose would be to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world.”
He ended by dropping the conceptual bombshell which shook the foundations of the newly emerging Deep State by calling for a joint U.S.-Russia alliance to cooperate on deploying this new technology around the world under a spirit of goodwill and mutually assured survival when he said this vision would “allow all peoples of all nations to see that, in this enlightened age, the great Powers of the earth, both of the East and of the West, are interested in human aspirations first rather than in building up the armaments of war.”
An earlier attempt to establish U.S.-Russia entente was made by Stalin who welcomed a meeting with the newly elected President in December 1952. Stalin’s death in March 1953 ended this potential.
Many of the world’s nations who have suffered the most under the hands of the “dumb giant” deep state America in recent decades actually found a close ally in this better America. One might be surprised to discover that Atoms for Peace established the creation of atomic energy programs for Argentina, Brazil, India, Pakistan and Iran (to name but a few), through providing training to thousands of students internationally, as well as providing nuclear technology transfers, and financing (most of which ended in the wake of JFK’s assassination).
In 1955 the first International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy took place in Geneva under the leadership of Dr. Homi Bhaba (father of Indian Atomic Energy), and in 1957 the USA and Iran signed the Cooperation Concerning Civil Uses of Atoms that set the foundation for the 1959 creation of the Tehran Nuclear Research Center. Over the coming year, the first generation of Iranian nuclear scientists were trained in MIT and in 1967, the USA supplied Iran with a 5 megawatt research reactor and enriched uranium fuel. By 1969, the pace of nuclear development both within America and abroad had dropped drastically due in large measure to the deep state takeover of western governments and the imposition of a new logic of empire and post-industrial consumerism. This mis-anthropic agenda took the form of the 1970s CFR/Trilateral Commission-led “Controlled Disintegration of the Economy”.
The Controlled Disintegration Agenda
An important recipe in this Controlled Disintegration agenda took the form of the 1973-74 oil shocks which saw oil prices skyrocket four-fold as tankers replete with oil were kept harbored off the coasts of America under direction of Henry Kissinger. This operation was laid out in full by historian William Engdahl in his 1992 Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order.
An unexpected effect was that the Shah of Iran announced that his nation would refocus its energy policies on aggressive nuclear power development, funded by its vast oil revenues. In 1974 the Shah created the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO) saying “Petroleum is a noble material, much too valuable to burn… we envision producing, as soon as possible 23 000 mW of electricity using nuclear plants.”
In 1976, Iran’s nuclear energy budget was increased from $36 million to a whopping $1 billion and commitments to build 23 reactors were arranged with companies in Germany, France and the USA. Even President Ford, in a rare moment of sovereign thinking agreed to provide Iran with a reprocessing facility to complete the fuel cycle. Things were proceeding well as the two first 1190 mW reactors built by Germany were 80% and 50% completed when the Shah was suddenly overthrown by a regime change operation put into motion by none-other than the CFR’s Zbigniew Brzinzski, Cyrus Vance and Henry Kissinger in 1979. Within weeks ALL contracts were cancelled and the two reactors remained unbuilt for decades. A parallel derailing of a pro-nuclear orientation occurred with the execution of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who documented his fight with Kissinger over the latter’s denial of Pakistan’s right to access nuclear power (2).
Russia Revives Atoms for Peace
The anti-nuclear tides began to slowly turn in Iran’s favor in 1992 when China began supplying nuclear fuel to Iran and in 1995 Russia began to assist in the completion of the unfinished reactors. In 2011, the first 1000 mW reactor came online and a 2nd reactor was begun anew in 2019 under the guidance of Rosatom with several more planned for the coming decade.
While the American neocons and their Zionist brethren have continued a policy of asymmetric war, cyber war, economic war, assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists (and now military officials), Russia has proven herself to be the true heir to the spirit of Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace.
Rosatom has taken up the torch of nuclear energy diplomacy with gusto in recent years by providing valuable nuclear power assistance to both Iran and Turkey while aggressively building nuclear power reactors at home. The fact that these three nations are the guarantors of the Astana Peace Process for Syria should also not be missed.
Russia has also demonstrated an enlightened interest in assisting African nations in their nuclear ambitions with agreements signed with South Africa, Egypt, Zambia, Ghana, Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, Congo and Nigeria with scores of imperially-minded racists in London screaming of the “inappropriateness” of this advanced technology to the ‘dark continent’.
Under the guiding win-win framework of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Iran has been given a master key to permanently throw off the threat of nuclear annihilation. Does President Trump have the moral and intellectual stamina to resist the neo-con pressure now and return America to its better traditions or will he permit himself to be used as a tool of the deep state by unleashing the nuclear dogs of war?
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(1) The 2013 admission of primary guilt to the 1953 coup by the Obama/Brennan CIA is a major sleight of hand as both Obama and Brennan were (and are) tools of the British Fabian Society and 5 Eyes Intelligence Apparatus. More energy has been invested into maintaining the myth of the “American Empire” since WW2 than most readers can possibly imagine. Contrary to popular opinion, it isn’t Britain which serves America in the Anglo-American relationship but the reverse. Up until 1952, America had bilateral agreements in support of Mossadegh and it was always the British that ran Iranian oil politics and intrigue.
(2) Awaiting his execution in prison in 1979, Bhutto wrote of the sabotage of his fight for Pakistan energy sovereignty saying: “We were on the threshold of full nuclear capability, when I left the Government to come to this death cell. We know that Israel and South Africa have full nuclear capability. The Christian, Jewish, and Hindu civilizations have this capability. The Communist Powers also possess it. Only the Islamic civilization was without it but that position was about to change. Dr. Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State for the United States, has a brilliant mind. He told me that I should not insult the intelligence of the United States by saying that Pakistan needed the Reprocessing Plant for her energy needs. In reply, I told him that I will not insult the intelligence of the United States by discussing the energy needs of Pakistan, but in the same token, he should not insult the sovereignty and self-respect of Pakistan by discussing the plant at all. The General [Zia] got the lemon-“limbo”-from the President of France. Pakistan got the ladu. The PNA got the halva. I got the Death Sentence.”
ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102 Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling) PDF Edition: $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Reviews
“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.” –John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University
“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.” -Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations
Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction. –Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute
Turkey is looking for opportunities to shift the current balance of power in Libya after its proxies failed to break the Libyan National Army defenses and capture the port city of Sirte in northern Libya in an off-the-cuff advance.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced on Saturday 25 July that Turkey had signed a military cooperation agreement with Niger during his visit to the African nation, where he held meetings with a number of officials and discussed the effects of the Libyan situation on the region.
Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou also revealed Turkish interest in economic cooperation, especially in the areas of agriculture, mining, transport, construction and energy. As part of Turkey’s cooperation with Africa, the Anadolu Agency reported that the Turkish government has donated millions of dollars for infrastructure development on the continent and has sponsored hundreds of African students.
The deepening military and security cooperation with Niger gives Turkey a potential alternative bridgehead, logistical base and transport hub for its military operations in Libya. The Military Training Cooperation Agreement signed with Niger could also serve as a means to curb France’s influence and oppose the French military’s efforts in Africa’s Sahel region given that country’s vocal criticism of Turkey’s activities in and around the eastern Mediterranean and its shows of support for Greece and Egypt in recent times.
From the tactical point of view, Ankara seeks to undermine positions of the Libyan National Army and its supporters in southern Libya, near the border with Niger, and to force them to allocate resources to contain the Turkish influence there. This should limit the military capabilities of the allies in the countryside of Sirte.
At the same time, Turkey has continued deploying its own troops and members of Syrian militant groups to the Libyan combat zone. According to reports, just recently at least 5 transport aircraft with personnel and equipment arrived at the al-Watiya Air Base. The Turkish military also reactivated the Hawk medium-range air-defense systems deployed there. The firm position of Egypt, directly supported by the UAE, France and diplomatically by Russia, against a potential attack on Sirte prevented a Turkish military operation there because Ankara did not want to risk launching an open military confrontation with Cairo. Another factor is the reportedly growing presence of Russia-linked private military contractors in the country.
On July 24, the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) shared images claiming to show Russian forces and equipment in different parts of Libya. This included two Russian-made Pantsir-S1 air-defense systems, two Soviet-made Su-24 warplanes and a Russian L-76 military cargo plane in al-Khadim Air Base, and supposed positions of Russia-linked contractors near Sirte.
On July 26, two MiG-29 fighter jets were spotted flying at low-altitude over the coast near Sirte. These warplanes may have been some of the several jets of this type received by the Libyan National Army in May.
However, the Erdogan government has not abandoned its plans and is now looking for opportunities to turn the situation to its own advantage and thus finally capture the strategic port city.
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Until this year, Trump hailed what he called “tremendous progress in our relationship” with China — boasting about an “outstanding” bond between him and President Xi Jinping.
He claimed that a “giant trade deal” in the making would enhance US relations with China.
Before dubious “Wuhan virus” claims replaced Xi’s “great discipline” in dealing with COVID-19 outbreaks, Trump congratulated China’s president for “lead(ing) a very successful operation” against the virus.
In recent months, things changed dramatically. “(M)y good friend” Xi Jinping became a reinvented “yellow peril,” China now considered US public enemy No. 1 — despite no threat posed by its leadership or military.
Last week, Pompeo accused China of “designs for hegemony over other nations (sic)” — how the US operates worldwide in sharp contrast to how China seeks cooperative relations with other countries.
Pompeo claims that China poses a “threat (to) our economy…our liberty…the future of free democracies around the world (sic),” adding:
Beijing’s “ultimate ambition…isn’t to trade with the United States. It is to raid the United States (sic).”
China is a “Frankenstein…aggress(or) in its hostility to freedom everywhere else (sic).”
While war between two thermonuclear powers is highly unlikely, escalating cold war, initiated by Trump regime hardliners, risks possibly turning things hot.
Weeks earlier, US war secretary Esper threatened China, saying the US is engaged in a new “era of ‘great power competition,’ and that means we need to focus more on high intensity warfare going forward.”
Indicating that greater numbers of US forces will be deployed to the Asia/Pacific, he said Washington’s “longterm challenges are China No. 1 and Russia No. 2,” adding:
“(W)hat we see happening out there is a China that continues to grow its military strength, its economic power, its commercial activity, and it’s doing so, in many ways, illicitly (sic) — or it’s using the international rules-based order against us to continue this growth, to acquire technology, and to do the things that really undermine our sovereignty (sic), that undermine the rule of law (sic), that really question (its) commitment to human rights (sic).”
Ramping up US military forces in the Asia/Pacific to “compete with China” is a euphemism for escalating cold war that could turn hot by accident or design ahead.
Knowing how US hegemonic aims threaten China, Xi last year ordered stepped up military training and exercises, saying China’s armed forces must “prepare for a comprehensive military struggle from a new starting point,” adding:
“Preparation for war and combat must be deepened to ensure an efficient response in times of emergency.”
In mid-July, former Italian diplomat Marco Carnelos said with “Trump facing an uphill (reelection) battle…(i)s an October surprise in the offing?”
He and hardliners surrounding him “point to (Beijing) as the main threat to US national security (sic)” — a dramatic turnaround from decades of growing economic ties.
Intense China bashing is part of the US political landscape, the same true about Trump regime hostility toward Iran.
Carnelos asked whether DJT “may authorize limited strikes against Iran” as part of his reelection strategy.
False flags are a longstanding US tradition since the mid-19th century.
Ahead of November elections, could Trump regime hardliners plan one against China in the South China Sea or Iran in the Persian Gulf as a pretext to retaliate militarily in hopes of boosting DJT’s reelection chances?
Post-9/11, the mother of all false flags, GW Bush’s approval rating rose almost overnight from 51 to 85%, boosted by a rally ‘round the flag effect.
Will a similar false flag be used against China or Iran to help Trump’s flagging campaign without pushing things too far toward war with nations able to hit back hard if attacked aggressively?
Geopolitically and for the most part domestically, it matters little whether Trump or Biden is elected in November.
When US elections are held, notably federal ones, dirty business as usual wins every time.
Both right wings of the US war party/money party operate the same way on major issues mattering most.
On Tuesday, China’s Global Times (GT) said Beijing “will definitely retaliate” to defend its national security against a US military provocation if occurs.
Geopolitical analyst Jin Canrong believes that along with Trump’s mishandled coronavirus response, “hostility against China among US elites and policymakers, which we didn’t expect, will also make the US more aggressive,” adding:
“Direct China-US military conflicts, or even the severance of diplomatic ties, which used to be unimaginable, are being discussed more frequently by the mainstream media outlets and scholars, so the danger of military conflicts exists and is growing.”
US Professor Emeritus Ezra Stone expressed a similar view, saying while “(n)obody wants” a Sino/US military confrontation, “and everybody would lose if a war erupts…look at what happened in (the run-up to) WW I.”
Small incidents mushroomed to more serious ones. Numerous countries on both sides became involved.
From the guns of August 1914 to the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, an entire generation of youth was lost.
What happened twice before can happen again despite no one wanting belligerence if occurs to go this far — especially not in the nuclear age.
Minor incidents risk escalation to more serious ones — notably because of longstanding US hegemonic aims.
The presence of large numbers of US land, sea, and aerial forces in East Asia where they don’t belong risks unthinkable war that could go global if things are pushed too far.
Provocative US military exercises and regular reconnaissance flights near China’s territory risk possible confrontation.
If it happens by accident or design, all bets are off.
While war between the US and China is highly unlikely, provocatively pushing the envelope by the Trump regime could make the unthinkable possible.
A Final Comment
Sino/US geopolitical policies are worlds apart.
China seeks cooperative relations with other nations, confrontation with none.
The US drive for hegemony aims to achieve unchallenged global dominance by whatever it takes to achieve its objectives — endless wars by hot and other means its favored strategies.
China prioritizes world peace and stability. The US wages forever wars against one nation after another threatening no one.
If war erupts in East Asia or escalates in the Middle East, it’ll be made-in-the-USA.
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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.”
“It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freeman of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle.”—James Madison
We have become one nation under house arrest.
You think we’re any different from the Kentucky couple fitted out with ankle monitoring bracelets and forced to quarantine at home?
We’re not.
Consider what happened to Elizabeth and Isaiah Linscott.
Elizabeth took a precautionary diagnostic COVID-19 test before traveling to visit her parents and grandparents in Michigan. It came back positive: Elizabeth was asymptomatic for the novel coronavirus but had no symptoms. Her husband and infant daughter tested negative for the virus.
Now in a country where freedom actually means something, the Linscotts would have the right to determine for themselves how to proceed responsibly, but in the American Police State, we’ve only got as much freedom as the government allows.
That’s not saying much.
Indeed, it’s a dangerous time for anyone who still clings to the idea that freedom means the right to think for yourself and act responsibly according to your best judgment.
Image on the right: This Kentucky couple was placed under house arrest and put in ankle bracelets for declining to sign a self-quarantine order after Elizabeth Linscott, the wife, tested positive for the coronavirus. Image source: Facebook
In that regard, the Linscotts are a little old-school in their thinking. When Elizabeth was asked to sign a self-quarantine order agreeing to check in daily with the health department and not to travel anywhere without prior approval, she refused.
“I shouldn’t have to ask for consent because I’m an adult who can make that decision. And as a citizen of the United States of America, that is my right to make that decision without having to disclose that to somebody else,” said Elizabeth. “So, no, I wouldn’t wear a mask. I would do everything that I could to make sure that I wouldn’t come in contact with other people because of the fear that’s spreading with this. But no, I would have just stayed home, take care of my child.”
I will do my best to stay home, as I do every other time I get sick. But I cannot comply to having to call the public health department everytime that I need to go out and do something. It’s my right and freedoms to go where I please and not have to answer to anyone for it. There is no pandemic and with a survival rate of 99.9998% I’m fine. I will continue to avoid the elderly, just like PRIOR guidelines state, try to stay home, get rest, get medicine, and get better. I decline.
“We didn’t rob a store,” Linscott said. “We didn’t steal something. We didn’t hit and run. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
That’s the point, of course.
In an age of overcriminalization—when the law is wielded like a hammer to force compliance to the government’s dictates whatever they might be—you don’t have to do anything wrong to be fined, arrested or subjected to raids and seizures and surveillance.
Watch and see: just as it did in China, this pandemic is about to afford the government the perfect excuse for expanding its surveillance and data collection powers at our expense.
On a daily basis, Americans are already relinquishing (in many cases, voluntarily) the most intimate details of who we are—their biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.
COVID-19, however, takes the surveillance state to the next level.
There’s already been talk of mass testing for COVID-19 antibodies, screening checkpoints, contact tracing, immunity passports to allow those who have recovered from the virus to move around more freely, and snitch tip lines for reporting “rule breakers” to the authorities.
Except this isn’t exactly uncharted territory, is it?
It follows much the same pattern as every other state of emergency in recent years—legitimate or manufactured—that has empowered the government to add to its arsenal of technologies and powers.
The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.
It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be—civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”—as long as it allows the government to justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.
It’s hard to know who to trust anymore.
Certainly, in this highly partisan age, when everything from the COVID-19 pandemic to police brutality to football is being recast in light of one’s political leanings, it can be incredibly difficult to separate what constitutes a genuine safety concern versus what is hyper-politicized propaganda.
These conflicting and, in some cases, heavy-handed approaches to a pandemic that has locked down the nation for close to six months is turning this health crisis into an unnecessarily politicized, bureaucratic tug-of-war with no clear-cut winners to be found.
Certainly, this is not the first crisis to pit security concerns against freedom principles.
In this post-9/11 world, we have been indoctrinated into fearing and mistrusting one another instead of fearing and mistrusting the government. As a result, we’ve been forced to travel this road many, many times with lamentably predictable results each time: without fail, when asked to choose between safety and liberty, Americans historically tend to choose safety.
Failing to read the fine print on such devil’s bargains, “we the people” find ourselves repeatedly on the losing end as the government uses each crisis as a means of expanding its powers at taxpayer expense.
Whatever these mask mandates might be—authoritarian strong-arm tactics or health necessities to prevent further spread of the virus—they have thus far proven to be uphill legal battles for those hoping to challenge them in the courts as unconstitutional restrictions on their right to liberty, bodily autonomy, privacy and health.
In fact, Florida courts have upheld the mask ordinances, ruling that they do not infringe on constitutional rights and that “there is no reasonable expectation of privacy as to whether one covers their nose and mouth in public places, which are the only places to which the mask ordinance applies.”
In other words, the courts have concluded that the government has a compelling interest in requiring masks to fight COVID-19 infections that overrides individual freedoms.
Generally, the government has to show a so-called compelling state interest before it can override certain critical rights such as free speech, assembly, press, privacy, search and seizure, etc. Most of the time, the government lacks that compelling state interest, but it still manages to violate those rights, setting itself up for legal battles further down the road.
We can spend time debating the mask mandates. However, criticizing those who rightly fear these restrictions to be a slippery slope to further police state tactics will not restore the freedoms that have been willingly sacrificed on the altar of national security by Americans of all political stripes over the years.
As I’ve warned, this is a test to see how whether the Constitution—and our commitment to the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights—can survive a national crisis and true state of emergency.
It must be remembered that James Madison, the “father” of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the fourth president of the United States, advised that we should “take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.
Whether or not you consider these COVID-19 restrictions to be cause for alarm, they are far from the first experiment on our liberties. Indeed, whether or not you concede that the pandemic itself is cause for alarm, we should all be alarmed by the government’s response to this pandemic.
By government, I’m not referring to one particular politician or administration but to the entire apparatus at every level that conspires to keep “we the people” fearful of one another and under virtual house arrest.
This is what we’ve all been reduced to: prisoners in our skin, prisoners in our homes, prisoners in our communities—forced to comply with the government’s shifting mandates about how to navigate this pandemic or else.
Right now, COVID-19 is the perfect excuse for the government to wreak havoc on our freedoms in the name of safety and security, but as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, don’t believe for a minute that our safety is the police state’s primary concern.
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Despite evident nervousness about the possibility of economic retaliation from Beijing, Australia’s government this week scrambled to satisfy the demands of the Trump administration to fully commit to the escalating US military, diplomatic and economic confrontation with China.
The joint July 28 statement issued by the US and Australian foreign policy and military leaders from the Australia-US Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) in Washington DC read like a justification for war.
It broadcast all the Trump administration’s incendiary and unproven allegations against China—from “coercive and destabilizing actions across the Indo-Pacific” to “malicious interference” in other countries—and announced a classified military “Statement of Principles” to “advance force-posture cooperation” against China.
After the post-AUSMIN media conference, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo again lashed out at China, vowing to back and defend Australia from “intense continued coercive pressure from the Chinese Communist Party to bow to Beijing’s wishes.”
Without offering the slightest justification for his accusations, Pompeo declared:
“It is unacceptable for Beijing to use exports or student fees as a cudgel against Australia. We stand with our Australian friends.”
Like previous AUSMIN communiqués, the joint statement itself commenced by framing the relationship in terms of fighting wars together. It declared that the US-Australian alliance “remains unbreakable” more than a century “since we first fought side-by-side” in World War I.
The significance of these declarations was underscored by the fact that the Australian foreign affairs and defence ministers, Marise Payne and Linda Reynolds, travelled to Washington with an entourage that included their department heads and the Australian military chief, General Angus Campbell, despite the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the US population.
They met face-to-face with Pompeo and US Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who thanked them ostentatiously for making the trip.
“And your entire delegation will be quarantining when you get back,” Pompeo said. “Not many partners will do that for us, and so thank you to each of you and your teams for being with us here in person.”
No explanation was provided as to the top-secret classification of the “force-posture cooperation” agreement, entitled “Statement of Principles on Alliance Defense Cooperation and Force Posture Priorities in the Indo-Pacific.” The AUSMIN joint statement referred only to the establishment of a “bilateral Force Posture Working Group” seeking to “deter coercive acts and the use of force.”
Nevertheless, this pact is another indication of war preparations. The four leaders also announced the construction of a US-funded, commercially-operated strategic military fuel reserve in the strategic northern Australian city of Darwin. US marines already have been stationed, on rotation, in Darwin since the previous Greens-backed Labor government of Julia Gillard agreed to that in 2011.
The AUSMIN meeting unveiled several other joint operations, including a high-level working group to “vigorously” monitor and respond to “harmful disinformation”—clearly directed against China. No information was offered about the alleged kinds of “disinformation,” or how such activities would be attacked.
The AUSMIN statement also “reaffirmed” the two countries’ commitment to furthering military alliances designed to encircle China: “Trilateral dialogues with Japan and Quad consultations with Japan and India.”
At the joint media conference, the four refused to specifically answer questions from reporters about further details of what had been agreed, such as whether Australia had acceded to the mounting US requests for its warships to join provocative “freedom of navigation operations” within the 12-mile territorial waters surrounding Chinese-occupied islets in the South China Sea.
Esper, however, praised Australia for already joining US naval operations in the region.
“Last week, five Australian warships joined the USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group and a Japanese destroyer in conducting a trilateral naval exercise in the Philippine Sea ahead of the upcoming RIMPAC exercise in Hawaii,” he said. “These exercises not only bolster interoperability, but also send a clear signal to Beijing that we will fly, we will sail, and we will operate wherever international law allows and defend the rights of our allies and partners to do the same.”
Likewise, Esper did not directly answer a question about whether the US was continuing to explore the idea of deploying mid-range missiles in Australia, directed against China, but indicated that this was certainly being discussed.
“We had a very ranging discussion about the capabilities the US possesses and the capabilities Australia possesses and our desire to advance them—whether they are hypersonic or any other kind of capability,” he said.
These activities are just part of the gearing up for hi-tech warfare against a nuclear-armed country. Reynolds spoke about joint development of “hypersonics, electronic warfare and space-based capabilities,” to “ensure the alliance maintains its capability edge in a rapidly modernising environment,” without giving any details.
The assertion by the US and Australia that China is the source of the tensions and “malign behaviour” in the Indo-Pacific stands reality on its head. The Trump administration is increasingly resorting to anti-Chinese propaganda to blame a foreign “enemy” for the COVID-19 catastrophe in the US, while vying with the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, to be the most strident in doing so.
At the same time, the White House is ramping up the US “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia, which President Barack Obama formally initiated in the Australian parliament in 2011. It consists of continuous diplomatic, economic and military efforts to undermine Chinese influence and reassert American dominance over the region.
In the South China Sea, which is strategically vital to China, Washington has seized upon Beijing’s longstanding bilateral territorial disputes with other countries, the Philippines and Vietnam in particular, potentially creating the pretext for US-led military interventions to supposedly defend them against “Chinese bullying.”
US Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) journalist Nick Schifrin asked Payne to comment on Pompeo’s regime-change call in his speech last week in which he urged all “free nations” to rise as one against Chinese “tyranny,” regardless of the economic consequences. Schifrin asked Payne whether “the admonition to help the Chinese people change the Chinese government” was “possible and/or wise?”
Payne obfuscated, saying US policy was for itself to determine, while insisting that the Australian government had an “important” relationship with China, which Canberra had “no intention of injuring.”
The billion-dollar interests behind that nervousness, especially based on mining exports to China, received expression yesterday when a business-backed group, China Matters, warned that Australia could be “collateral damage” if US-China ties deteriorated further.
Regardless of these fears, however, the dominant sections of the Australian ruling class have concluded that they have no option but to back the US, on which they depend heavily for investment, as well as military and intelligence support.
While Payne claimed that the US-Australia relationship was “respectful,” she and Reynolds were at pains to recite the actions that the Australian government had taken in sync with the US. The list included banning the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from Australia’s proposed 5G network, opposing China’s Belt and Road infrastructure program, introducing “foreign interference” laws, blocking Chinese investment in certain industries, and denouncing Chinese actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.
It also included declaring “illegal” China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, collaborating on the mining and refining of “critical minerals” and allocating an extra $270 billion over the next decade to boosting Australia’s military capacity, especially for longer-range operations in China’s vicinity.
On every front, each Australian government over the past decade has increasingly integrated the country, militarily and strategically, into the drive by the US to block China from challenging the US domination of the region and the world, effectively placing the Australian population on the frontline of a potentially catastrophic war.
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Featured image: Reynolds and Payne with Pompeo (Credit: US Embassy in Canberra)
“When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out ‘Stop!’ When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable, the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.” — Bertolt Brecht
In war-torn Yemen, the crimes pile up. And children who bear no responsibility for governance or warfare endure the punishment.
In 2018, UNICEF said the war made Yemen a living hell for children. By the year’s end, Save the Children reported that 85,000 children under five had already died from starvation since the war escalated in 2015. By the end of 2020, it is expected that 23,500 Yemeni children with severe acute malnutrition will be at immediate risk of death.
Cataclysmic conditions afflict Yemen as people try to cope with rampant diseases, the spread of COVID-19, flooding, literal swarms of locusts, rising displacement, destroyed infrastructure, and a collapsed economy. Yet the war rages, bombs continue to fall, and desperation fuels more crimes.
The highest-paying jobs available to many Yemeni boys and men require a willingness to kill and maim one another, by joining militias or armed groups which seemingly never run out of weapons. Nor does the Saudi-Led Coalition, which kills and maims civilians; instead, it deters relief shipments, and destroys crucial relief infrastructure with weapons it imports from Western countries.
The aerial attacks displace traumatized survivors into swelling, often lethal refugee camps. Amid the wreckage of factories, fisheries, roads, sewage and sanitation facilities, schools, and hospitals, Yemenis search in vain for employment and, increasingly, for food and water. The Saudi-Led Coalition’s blockade, also enabled by Western training and weapons, makes it impossible for Yemenis to restore a functioning economy.
Even foreign aid can become punitive. In March 2020, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) decided to suspend most aid for Yemenis living in areas controlled by the Houthis.
Scott Paul, who leads Oxfam America’s humanitarian policy advocacy, strongly criticized this callous decision to compound the misery imposed on vulnerable people in Yemen.
“In future years,” he wrote, “scholars will study USAID’s suspension as a paradigmatic example of a donor’s exploitation and misuse of humanitarian principles.”
As the evil-doing in Yemen comes “like falling rain,” so do the cries of “Stop!” from millions of people all over the world. Here’s some of what’s been happening:
U.S. legislators in both the House of Representatives and the Senate voted to block the sale of billions of dollars in weapons and maintenance to Saudi Arabia and its allies. But President Trump vetoed the bill in 2019.
Canada’s legislators declared a moratorium on weapon sales to Saudi Arabia. But the Canadian government has resumed selling weapons to the Saudis, claiming the moratorium only pertained to the creation of new contracts, not existing ones.
The United Kingdom suspended military sales to Saudi Arabia because of human rights violations, but the U.K.’s international trade secretary has nevertheless resumed weapon sales, claiming that the 516 charges of Saudi human rights violations are all isolated incidents and don’t present a pattern of abuse.
French NGOs and human rights advocates urged their government to scale back on weapon sales to the Saudi-Led Coalition, but reports on 2019 weapon sales revealed the French government sold 1.4 billion Euros worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia.
British campaigners opposing weapon transfers to the Saudi-Led Coalition have exposed how the British Navy gave the Saudi Navy training in tactics essential to the devastating Yemen blockade.
In Canada, Spain, France, and Italy, laborers opposed to the ongoing war have refused to load weapons onto ships sailing to Saudi Arabia. Rights groups track the passage of trains and ships carrying these weapons.
On top of all this, reports produced by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and the International Commission of the Red Cross repeatedly expose the Saudi-Led Coalition’s human rights violations.
Yet this international outcry clamoring for an end to the war is still being drowned out by the voices of major military contractors with well-paid lobbyists plying powerful elites in Western governments. Their concern is simply for the profits to be reaped and the competitive sales to be scored.
Backpacks and placards carried during protest of the August 9, 2018 Saudi airstrike on a Yemeni school bus.
In 2019, Lockheed Martin’s total sales hit nearly $60 billion, the best year on record for the world’s largest “defense” contractor. Before stepping down as CEO, Marillyn Hewson predicted demand from the Pentagon and U.S. allies would generate an uptick between $6.2 and $6.4 billion in net earnings for the company in 2020 sales.
Hewson’s words, spoken calmly, drown out the cries of Yemeni children whose bodies are torn apart by Lockheed Martin’s bombs.
In August 2018, bombs manufactured by Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Lockheed Martin fell on Yemen like summer rain. On August 9, 2018, a missile blasted a school bus in Yemen, killing forty children and injuring many others.
Photos showed badly injured children still carrying UNICEF blue backpacks, given to them that morning as gifts. Other photos showed children helping to prepare graves for their schoolmates. One photo showed a piece of the bomb protruding from the wreckage with the number MK82 clearly stamped on it. That number on the shrapnel helped identify Lockheed Martin as the manufacturer.
The psychological damage being inflicted on these children is incalculable. “My son is really hurt from the inside,” said a parent whose child was badly injured by the bombing. “We try to talk to him to feel better and we can’t stop ourselves from crying.”
The cries against war in Yemen also fall like rain and whatever thunder accompanies it is distant, summer thunder. Yet if we cooperate with war-making elites, the most horrible storms will be unleashed. We must learn—and quickly—to make a torrent of our mingled cries and, as the prophet Amos demanded, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
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Kathy Kelly ([email protected]) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence.
Featured image: The blue backpacks stand for each one of the children killed in the Saudi bombing attack on a school bus. They used a 500 pound bomb manufactured by Lockheed-Martin.
As professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health, I have authored over 300 peer-reviewed publications and currently hold senior positions on the editorial boards of several leading journals. I am usually accustomed to advocating for positions within the mainstream of medicine, so have been flummoxed to find that, in the midst of a crisis, I am fighting for a treatment that the data fully support but which, for reasons having nothing to do with a correct understanding of the science, has been pushed to the sidelines. As a result, tens of thousands of patients with COVID-19 are dying unnecessarily. Fortunately, the situation can be reversed easily and quickly.
I am referring, of course, to the medication hydroxychloroquine. When this inexpensive oral medication is given very early in the course of illness, before the virus has had time to multiply beyond control, it has shown to be highly effective, especially when given in combination with the antibiotics azithromycin or doxycycline and the nutritional supplement zinc.
On May 27, I published an article in the American Journal of Epidemiology (AJE) entitled, “Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk COVID-19 Patients that Should be Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis.” That article, published in the world’s leading epidemiology journal, analyzed five studies, demonstrating clear-cut and significant benefits to treated patients, plus other very large studies that showed the medication safety.
Physicians who have been using these medications in the face of widespread skepticism have been truly heroic. They have done what the science shows is best for their patients, often at great personal risk. I myself know of two doctors who have saved the lives of hundreds of patients with these medications, but are now fighting state medical boards to save their licenses and reputations. The cases against them are completely without scientific merit.
Since publication of my May 27 article, seven more studies have demonstrated similar benefit. In a lengthy follow-up letter, also published by AJE, I discuss these seven studies and renew my call for the immediate early use of hydroxychloroquine in high-risk patients. These seven studies include: an additional 400 high-risk patients treated by Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, with zero deaths; four studies totaling almost 500 high-risk patients treated in nursing homes and clinics across the U.S., with no deaths; a controlled trial of more than 700 high-risk patients in Brazil, with significantly reduced risk of hospitalization and two deaths among 334 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine; and another study of 398 matched patients in France, also with significantly reduced hospitalization risk. Since my letter was published, even more doctors have reported to me their completely successful use.
My original article in the AJE is available free online, and I encourage readers—especially physicians, nurses, physician assistants and associates, and respiratory therapists—to search the title and read it. My follow-up letter is linked there to the original paper.
Beyond these studies of individual patients, we have seen what happens in large populations when these drugs are used. These have been “natural experiments.” In the northern Brazil state of Pará, COVID-19 deaths were increasing exponentially. On April 6, the public hospital network purchased 75,000 doses of azithromycin and 90,000 doses of hydroxychloroquine. Over the next few weeks, authorities began distributing these medications to infected individuals. Even though new cases continued to occur, on May 22 the death rate started to plummet and is now about one-eighth what it was at the peak.
A reverse natural experiment happened in Switzerland. On May 27, the Swiss national government banned outpatient use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19. Around June 10, COVID-19 deaths increased four-fold and remained elevated. On June 11, the Swiss government revoked the ban, and on June 23 the death rate reverted to what it had been beforehand. People who die from COVID-19 live about three to five weeks from the start of symptoms, which makes the evidence of a causal relation in these experiments strong. Both episodes suggest that a combination of hydroxychloroquine and its companion medications reduces mortality and should be immediately adopted as the new standard of care in high-risk patients.
Why has hydroxychloroquine been disregarded?
First, as all know, the medication has become highly politicized. For many, it is viewed as a marker of political identity, on both sides of the political spectrum. Nobody needs me to remind them that this is not how medicine should proceed. We must judge this medication strictly on the science. When doctors graduate from medical school, they formally promise to make the health and life of the patient their first consideration, without biases of race, religion, nationality, social standing—or political affiliation. Lives must come first.
Second, the drug has not been used properly in many studies. Hydroxychloroquine has shown major success when used early in high-risk people but, as one would expect for an antiviral, much less success when used late in the disease course. Even so, it has demonstrated significant benefit in large hospital studies in Michigan and New York City when started within the first 24 to 48 hours after admission.
In fact, as inexpensive, oral and widely available medications, and a nutritional supplement, the combination of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin or doxycycline, and zinc are well-suited for early treatment in the outpatient setting. The combination should be prescribed in high-risk patients immediately upon clinical suspicion of COVID-19 disease, without waiting for results of testing. Delays in waiting before starting the medications can reduce their efficacy.
Third, concerns have been raised by the FDA and others about risks of cardiac arrhythmia, especially when hydroxychloroquine is given in combination with azithromycin. The FDA based its comments on data in its FDA Adverse Event Reporting System. This reporting system captured up to a thousand cases of arrhythmias attributed to hydroxychloroquine use. In fact, the number is likely higher than that, since the reporting system, which requires physicians or patients to initiate contact with the FDA, appreciably undercounts drug side effects.
But what the FDA did not announce is that these adverse events were generated from tens of millions of patient uses of hydroxychloroquine for long periods of time, often for the chronic treatment of lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. Even if the true rates of arrhythmia are ten-fold higher than those reported, the harms would be minuscule compared to the mortality occurring right now in inadequately treated high-risk COVID-19 patients. This fact is proven by an Oxford University study of more than 320,000 older patients taking both hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, who had arrhythmia excess death rates of less than 9/100,000 users, as I discuss in my May 27 paper cited above. A new paper in the American Journal of Medicine by established cardiologists around the world fully agrees with this.
In the future, I believe this misbegotten episode regarding hydroxychloroquine will be studied by sociologists of medicine as a classic example of how extra-scientific factors overrode clear-cut medical evidence. But for now, reality demands a clear, scientific eye on the evidence and where it points. For the sake of high-risk patients, for the sake of our parents and grandparents, for the sake of the unemployed, for our economy and for our polity, especially those disproportionally affected, we must start treating immediately.
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Harvey A. Risch, MD, PhD, is professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health.
On July 17th, 2020, the Russian Ministry of Health published recommendations to schools to ban the use of Wi-Fi and cell phones in elementary schools. The Medical Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, prepared the recommendations together with the Russian Ministry of Health.
The information was provided to Children’s Health Defense by Professor Oleg Grigoriev, Dr.Sc, PhD, the Chairman for the Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection. Professor Grigoriev has been outspoken about the harms of wireless technology and has been leading the recent initiatives by the Russian government to protect children from harm. He also tweeted about the news.
Numerous studies show profound adverse effects from Wi-Fi. Professor Martin Pall’s 2018 meta-analysis paper “Wi-Fi is an important threat to human health” references studies showing Wi-Fi causes oxidative stress, sperm/testicular damage, neuropsychiatric effects including EEG changes, apoptosis (cell death), cellular DNA damage, endocrine changes, and calcium overload. Considering the evidence of harm, scientists and medical associations have called to ban the use of Wi-Fi in schools and use wired networks instead.
Russia is following other countries around the world that have taken action to reduce the use of Wi-Fi in schools and protect the health of children. In 2013, Israel became the first country in the world to adopt limitations on the use of Wi-Fi in schools. It banned Wi-Fi in kindergartens and limited the use of Wi-Fi in elementary schools. Wi-Fi is allowed for three hours per week in the first and second grade and six hours per week for the third grade. It must be turned off at all other times. In 2017, Cypress banned Wi-Fi in kindergartens and halted the deployment of Wi-Fi in elementary schools. In addition, The Cyprus National Committee on Environment and Child Health initiated a nationwide campaign to raise awareness about cell phone and wireless radiation exposures to children.
In the US, in 2016 the governor-appointed Maryland State Children’s Environmental Health and Protection Advisory Council (CEHPAC), issued a report advising the Department of Education to recommend that local school districts reduce exposure of schoolchildren to wireless devices and radiation, and to provide wired rather than wireless internet connections. No action was taken.
This action by the Russian Health Department follows another recent action by the ministry to encourage the reduction of children’s exposure to wireless devices. In March 2020, following the outbreak of Covid, Russia’s Department of Health together with the Scientific Research Institute of Hygiene and the Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection published Safety Recommendations for Children Who Use Digital Technologies to Study at Home. The recommendation encourages using the internet via a wired connection rather than Wi-Fi. (Children’s Health Defense also published a “step by step” guide on how to hardwire wireless devices for safe remote learning.)
In the US, the Federal Communication Commission, which regulates the safety of wireless technology, denies that wireless technology causes harm. The FCC health guidelines rely on the obsolete scientific assumption that the non-ionizing radiation emitted by microwave frequencies used for wireless technology can be harmful, only if they cause thermal change in tissue. That assumption has been proven false in thousands of studies, even before cell phones were commercialized in the 1980s. Contrary to the FCC’s position, in the 1970s, the Russians had already acknowledged that the radiation emitted from radio and microwave frequencies based technologies can be harmful at levels that are at least 1,000 times lowerthan the levels that create thermal effects.
Despite massive evidence of harm, in December 2019, the FCC published a decision that there is no evidence of harm from wireless technology and decided that a review of its health guidelines would not be required. As a result, in February 2020, Children’s Health Defense sued the FCC. The main brief in the case is due on July 29, 2020.
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Dafna Tachover is CHD’s Director of 5G & Wireless Harms Project.
While remembering their past has not prevented history from repeating itself, it is not possible for the descendants of the world’s first successful large-scale slave revolt to forget the trauma inflicted by their northern neighbours.
One hundred and five years ago today a brutal US occupation of Haiti began. To commemorate an intervention that continues to shape that country Solidarity Québec Haiti is organizing a sit in in front of the US Consulate in Montreal.
On July 28, 1915 the USS Washington, with 900-men and 20 canons, docked in Port-au-Prince. US troops withdrew in 1934 but Washington largely controlled the country’s finances until 1941 and the Banque de la République d’Haïti remained under US supervision until 1947.
The occupation wasn’t Washington’s first instance of interference in Haiti but rather consolidated its grip over the country. Six months beforehand US Marines marched on the treasury in Port-au-Prince and took the nation’s entire gold reserve.
At the height, 5000 US Marines were stationed in the country of less than 3 million. US-led forces brutally suppressed a largely peasant resistance movement, killing 15,000 Haitians.
In one of many instances of overt US racism, a top commander in the occupation, Colonel Littleton (Tony) Waller, descendent of a prominent family of slaveowners, said, “I know the nigger and how to handle him.”
To suppress the anti-occupation movement the US employed the nascent technique of aerial bombardment. Most of the fighting ended when rebel leader Charlemagne Peralte was killed, pinned to a door and left on a street to rot for days at the end of 1919. The US military described Peralte as the “supreme bandit of Haiti”.
In a famous mea culpa, an architect of the occupation confessed he was in fact the true “gangster”. Describing himself as a “high class muscle man for Big Business” and “gangster for capitalism”, Marine Corps General Smedley Butler wrote in an article years later, “I helped make Haiti … a decent place for the National City Bank Boys to collect revenues in.”
Opposition to the occupation was fed by conscription. US authorities captured civilians and compelled them to work on public roadway, buildings and other infrastructure. One reason the Marines wanted new roads was to help them bypass rugged terrain to suppress the resistance.
During the occupation the US established a new military. Created to crush resistance to the foreign presence, the National Guard “never fought anyone but Haitians.” For the next 70 years it would be used by Washington and the elite against Haiti’s poor. Haiti’s current government is seeking to revive that force.
In general, the occupation devastated the peasantry. Wealth extracted from the countryside was overwhelmingly channeled to infrastructure in the capital and foreign banks. The occupation spurred migration to Port-au-Prince and out of the country.
The US instigated other major changes to rural ways. In 1918 they rewrote the constitution to allow foreigners to purchase land, which had been outlawed since independence. A number of US corporations took advantage of the changes. The US controlled North Haytian Sugar Company and Haytian Pineapple Company both acquired hundreds of acres of land while the Haitian American Development Corporation, Haytian Corporation of America and Haytian Agricultural Corporation acquired tens of thousands of acres.
Toronto-based Sun Life Assurance Company initiated its operations in Haiti during this period. Canada’s largest bank also benefited from the US occupation. In 1919 the Royal Bank of Canada became the second bank in Haiti. RBC hired former finance minister Louis Borno as a legal advisor and officials of the Canadian firm subsequently financed his successful presidential bid during the US occupation.
Unfortunately, Solidarity Québec Haiti’s sit in is not only about drawing attention to a dark chapter in Haitian history. Washington retains significant influence over the country. In fact, the only reason the corrupt, repressive and illegitimate Jovenel Moïse is currently president of Haiti is due to US (and Canadian) support.
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Featured image: Rebel leader Charlemagne Peralte (Source: yvesengler.com)
“Fear is only reverse faith; it is faith in evil instead of good.” Florence Scovel Shinn
After several months of the COVID-19 crisis, relevant elements of analysis of this crisis are becoming clearer.
1. The enormous pressure to convince 7 billion people of the need to be vaccinated against a virus [1] whose mortality has been inflated [2] and which is said to be ubiquitous while it is disappearing or has even disappeared.
It reminds us of the 2009 operation, with the fake H1N1 pandemic [3]: same tactics, same complicity (media, political, government), same “experts”, same scenarios, same narratives with an emphasis on fear, guilt, haste and always the same stench of this omnipresent money in the form of huge profits on the horizon for the Big Pharma vaccine producing industry.
It is as if the H1N1 episode of 2009 has been used as a rehearsal.
This time, the COVID-19 episode of 2020 is poised to turn the trial into a success?
Monitoring Tests: Collect data on VIDOC-19. Source: sph.umich.edu
2. People submitting to authority
Despite clear signs of corruption, incompetence, ignorance about eminent personalities in politics, science, medicine, many people continue to obey them.
Despite confused, contradictory, unexplained, unjustifiable recommendations, people accept the directive of higher authority.
For example, many people continue to obey them:
1) In the midst of the epidemic, the wearing of masks is not mandatory and even discouraged for healthy people.
2) As the epidemic dies out, masks become mandatory everywhere for everyone.
Many general practitioners from several countries and the IHU Méditerranée-Infection de Marseilles, one of the largest infectious disease centers in the world, the largest in France, have demonstrated that hydroxychloroquine is an effective drug for treatment of SARS and COVID-19 [4].
In Belgium, “they” say that it is a dangerous and ineffective drug and “they” prevent general practitioners from prescribing it to their patients. In the US, a media campaign against HCQis ongoing.
Contradictions, lies, false truths…
Of course, fear and conformism may explain this fabricated obedience.
We know the experiences of Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram [5].
This tendency to submission and obedience to coercive measures varies from one country to another.
Thus in Serbia :
“Broken, the relentless progression of coronaviral terror. The recalcitrant Serbs rebelled against their president when he ordered them to return to house arrest. After two days of street battles with dozens of hospitalized police officers, the robust demonstrators won; the authorities surrendered and abandoned their plans to seal off Belgrade. Shops, bistros and restaurants in Belgrade will have a curfew in the early evening; but this is much better than the complete closure they had planned. ” [6]
On the other hand, in Belgium:
“In an incomprehensible way, while the epidemic, except for small outbreaks (clusters), is gradually disappearing [7], coercive measures are once again being imposed, even extended [8] with compulsory wearing of masks everywhere, for everyone, obligation to give their details in restaurants and bars for tracking purposes [9] …”.
There is no justification for all this.
All this revives fear, terror, and leads to fears of a return to partial or total confinement (house arrest), whereas today we know that this measure is useless and harmful! [10-11]
It is as if the COVID-19 crisis is being used by the authorities as a full-scale test to assess the degree of submission of their people [12], and to see how far they can go before they encounter sufficient opposition.
I hope that the Belgian people, the bravest people of Gaul according to Julius Caesar [13], will have the courage and lucidity of the Serbian people and will finally wake up.
3. The use of experts by creating the impression of a consensus that does not exist
Governments form expert committees to justify their actions.
For the citizen, why question the measures in question?
However, within organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Medicines Agency (EMEA), the COVID-19 committee in France (CARE) or in Belgium (Sciensano-committee COVID-19), being an expert does not mean being independent, free of any conflict of interest, or even being competent from a standpoint [14-15].
Every time a government says: “there is a consensus of experts on this issue“, it is in fact a lie.
It only means that their experts have agreed, they have established a consensus without analysis and the conduct of scientific debate.
In COVID-19, you can find on all the subjects presented as a part of a consensus :
Masks
Hydroxychloroquine
Containment
Tests used
Treatments
Vaccination
… other experts equally valid in terms of academic credentials, reputation and professional activities, whose opinions go against official diktats, with honest arguments, solid demonstrations and multiple references.
How does the citizen weigh this up?
A good criterion is to check for a conflict of interest.
Many qualified authors and scientists with opinions opposed to those of their government counterparts are not linked to the pharmaceutical industry or to governments that ultimately want to push an ideology, a political agenda and are increasingly accountable to Big Pharma.
These independent authors also have more to lose than to gain in this debate.
What else could drive them to take risks if not their honesty, their conscience?
It is neither fame, nor the hope of a contract in the private sector, nor money, in any case.
4. The fabrication of “fiction” may be inspired by a distorted understanding of real facts and for this, the use of a narrative that ends up being repeated over and over again, which then becomes a consensus which is no longer challenged.
COVID-19 is a fiction based on plausible facts: a virus, real deaths, a real disease, an epidemic of respiratory illnesses to which are added, little by little, distortions of truths or realities, or even outright lies (Cf. my series, COVID-19: as close to the truth as possible).
Coronaviruses are known. They exist. Two of them have already threatened humanity with deadly epidemics (SARS, MERS).
Regardless of the fact that the 2009 H1N1 pandemic was false and that experts had manipulated the figures, the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 set the stage for it is a threat and that only vaccination could save us.
Real sick people were hospitalized and some died. All of this made the “COVID-19” story plausible.
The COVID narrative was launched.
To perpetuate the fear campaign, a population-wide strategy of shock was put in place, tests presented as reliable were conducted, high mortality figures were released. not to mention indicators of contagiousness.
In this process, the role of the media in support of an official consensus was essential.
As always, they played their role well, announcing the number of deaths every day and attributing them to COVID-19 without supporting analysis.
Today, the fear campaign is sustained by an alleged second wave, requiring a new lockdown. So-called “positive”| PCR tests are casually presented as new cases of COVID-19.
Sweden and other countries, as well as some states in the USA, have not played the game, or have followed their own agenda.
They didn’t confine, they were less traumatized, they remained more human.
They is proof that the COVID-19 story in several countries (Belgium, France, Spain, Canada…) is indeed a fiction, based on manipulated data, plunging millions of people into a formidable “psychological trap”.
The COVID-19 story is a strategy of “shock therapy”. Strategies of this nature (implying social engineering) are never used for the good of the people.
The strategy of psychological shock is a reality, studied by several authors and researchers, including Naomi Klein [16], with her book published in 2007, “The Strategy of Shock: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”.
The aim is to make a tabula rasa, a blank page, and on this blank page, to reconstruct what we want.
How can we do this?
“On the scale of an entire population, by destroying a country’s heritage, its social and economic structures in order to build a new society, a new order after the planned and controlled chaos.
Once the people are deprived of their points of reference, shocked and infantilized, they find themselves defenceless and easily manipulated.
This process can occur following a serious economic or political crisis, an environmental disaster, an attack, a war or a health crisis. ” [17]
The strategy of shock was applied by economic means to Greece in the wake of the 2008 crisis, dragging millions of people into misery with the complicity of their politicians. [18]
The strategy of shock was applied by means of terrorism in the USA in 2001 and in France in 2015 with the establishment of states of emergency and emergency laws that have never again been abolished [19].
[19] The strategy of shock is now being applied by means of health crises, COVID-19, to a part of the world, including my country, Belgium.
“The terror induced on a large scale in a society leads to a kind of state of daze, a situation where control can easily be obtained from an external authority.
It is necessary to develop an immature state of mind in the population in order to control it as best as possible.
Society must be infantilized.“
These ideas have been studied and disseminated by the Tavistock Institute in London, which originated from a psychiatric clinic founded in 1920, specializing in psychological control and organized social chaos [17].
It is much easier to run a society through mental control than through physical control, through infantilization, confusion, misinformation and fear.
Isn’t that what is at work today?
People are being infantilized…
They are told which sidewalk they can walk on, which way, when they can go into a store and where they have to blow their nose.
Fear is omnipresent.
Those who refuse the masks are penalized, looked at sideways, excluded, insulted, hated.
Thousands of people see their work threatened, their whole life compromised without the possibility of demonstrating, or opposing the Covid-19 consensus imposed by their government.
Old people are abandoned.
Young people are imprisoned in a masked and confined world.
Adults are in a precarious situation
People from the same family, separated.
Thinking and reflection, not to mention dialogue and debate are paralysed.
Protest is prohibited
If this thesis is correct, it is to be expected that our government, through “experts” and media interposed, will continue this strategy of shock and announce us more and more infected, dead and waves of COVID, irrespective of the underlying reality. The facts will be manipulated.
The examples of Sweden and Belgrade are beacons of hope in this dark perspective.
Dr. Pascal Sacré, physician specialized in critical care, author and renowned public health analyst, Charleroi, Belgium. Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
Translation from French by Maya, Global Research
Featured image: Surveillance company. source: opiniojuris.org
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[13] Horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae, Wikipédia, “Of all the peoples of Gaul, the Belgians are the bravest”, often translated into French as “Of all the peoples of Gaul, the Belgians are the bravest.
We hope that by publishing diverse view points, submitted by journalists and experts dotted all over the world, the website can serve as a reminder that no matter what narrative we are presented with, things are rarely as cut and dry as they seem.
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The event, hosted by the organization America’s Frontline Doctors, a group founded by Dr. Simone Gold, a board-certified physician and attorney, and made up of medical doctors, came together to address what the group calls a “massive disinformation campaign” about the coronavirus. Norman also spoke at the event.
“If Americans continue to let so-called experts and media personalities make their decisions, the great American experiment of a Constitutional Republic with Representative Democracy, will cease,” reads the event’s information page.
Two million doses of HCQ are being sent by the Trump Administration to Brazil to help medical workers there safeguard themselves against the spread of the virus. But at the same time the FDA continues to block Americans’ access to this medication.
There is an ongoing battle to suppress Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a cheap and effective drug for the treatment of Covid-19. The campaign against HCQ is carried out through slanderous political statements, media smears, not to mention an authoritative peer reviewed “evaluation” published on May 22nd by The Lancet, which was based on fake figures and test trials.
The study was allegedly based on data analysis of 96,032 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 between Dec 20, 2019, and April 14, 2020 from 671 hospitals Worldwide. The database had been fabricated. The objective was to kill the Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) cure on behalf of Big Pharma.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, advisor to Donald Trump, portrayed as “America’s top infectious disease expert” has played a key role in smearing the HCQ cure which had been approved years earlier by the CDC. Dr. Fauci has been the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since the Reagan administration. He is known to act as a mouthpiece for Big Pharma.
In late June, Dr. Fauci launched Remdesivir a “corona wonder drug” developed by Gilead Sciences Inc. It’s a $1.6 billion dollar bonanza. It is $3200 treatment per patient. HCQ has been banned by Fauci. Medical doctors are threatened of loosing their licenses if they prescribe HCQ.
Is the media interested in a cure for Covid-19? Or is it in lockstep with Big Pharma, which seems to have little interest in an existing treatment for the disease?
What better strategy than for these financial interests to manufacture a hydroxychloroquine controversy?
A June 17 article titled “Behind the French controversy over the medical treatment of Covid-19: The role of the drug industry,” reveals just how such a tactic has been brought to bear on the issue.
A few years ago the British medical journal, The Lancet, published a paper touting the safety of HCQ.But this was before HCQ with zinc was found effective if used earlier enough against Covid-19.Covid-19 turned HCQ’s effectiveness into a big problem for Big Pharma’s big profits.
The solution was another study by medical professionals some of whom have ties to Big Pharma and none of whom, apparently, are involved in the treatment of Covid patients.The study lumps together people in different stages of the disease and undergoing different treatments. It touts its large sample, but many of the patients in the sample received treatment too late after the virus had reached their heart and other vital organs.Most likely the people who died from heart failure died as a result of the virus, not from HCQ.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose “expert” advice to President Trump has resulted in the complete shutdown of the greatest economic engine in world history, has known since 2005 that chloroquine is an effective inhibitor of coronaviruses.
How did he know this? Because of research done by the National Institutes of Health, of which he is the director. In connection with the SARS outbreak – caused by a coronavirus dubbed SARS- CoV – the NIH researched chloroquine and concluded that it was effective at stopping the SARS coronavirus in its tracks. The COVID-19 bug is likewise a coronavirus, labeled SARS-CoV-2. While not exactly the same virus as SARS-CoV-1, it is genetically related to it, and shares 79% of its genome, as the name SARS-CoV-2 implies. They both use the same host cell receptor, which is what viruses use to gain entry to the cell and infect the victim.
Iran is the leading Middle East proponent of peace, stability, and cooperative relations with other countries.
It hasn’t attacked another nation in centuries, threatening none now except in retaliation against aggression by a foreign power if occurs — the right of all countries.
Self-defense is a universal right, affirmed by the UN Charter’s Article 51, stating:
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”
Since establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979 ended a generation of US installed fascist tyranny, Republicans and Dems have been at war on Iran by other means.
Their aim is all about seeking to regain control over the country, its vast hydrocarbon resources and population, along with wanting Israel’s main regional rival neutralized.
Iran’s ruling authorities understand the threat posed by US/Israeli hegemonic aims.
New millennium forever wars against invented enemies are their favored strategies, a new era of world peace and stability considered a threat to their national security, as well as to key NATO allies partnering in endless wars on humanity.
Commenting while large-scale military exercises are ongoing, Iran’s IRGC commander General Hossein Salami said Tehran’s defensive strategy aims to develop advanced weapons as a deterrent against possible aggression, adding:
“Development of our equipment and arms are proportional to the threats and a real understanding of the enemy’s weak and strong points.”
Ongoing drills in the Persian Gulf are designed to mirror real war conditions to prepare and be ready to counter aggression by a foreign adversary if occurs.
Salami stressed that Iran “will never start an attack on any country, but our tactics and operations are totally offensive” to be ready to counter a possible strike on the nation’s territory.
IRGC military exercises include simulated countermeasures against a possible threat posed by a US aircraft carrier in or near the strategically important Strait of Hormuz.
The 90 nautical mile long/21 nautical mile wide waterway is one of the world’s most important chokepoints.
Around two-thirds of world oil pass through waters bordering Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman en route to world markets — millions of barrels daily through the Hormuz Strait.
IRGC naval and air forces participated in offensive and defensive drills against a mock US carrier, including use of long-range anti-ship ballistic missiles.
Unlawful Trump regime “maximum pressure” on Iran includes wanting its legitimate ballistic missiles eliminated to limit its defensive capabilities against the US and Israel if attacked by their forces.
Pompeo and other regime hardliners falsely claim Iran’s ballistic missiles and related technology are prohibited by Security Council 2231 (July 2015) — unanimously adopting the JCPOA nuclear deal, the US abstaining.
Iran’s missile development, testing, and production comply fully with SC Res. 2231. Solely for defense, Iranian missiles are designed to carry conventional warheads exclusively.
No evidence suggests otherwise. No Iranian nuclear weapons program exists, what IAEA inspectors affirm time and again.
False claims to the contrary by Pompeo and other Trump regime hardliners are part of longstanding US aims to replace its sovereign government with US controlled puppet rule.
Last fall, Iranian Admiral Alireza Tangsiri said
“(n)ew (IRGC) weapons are assessed, tested and used in the war games, and new arms produced inside the country will be used in future drills,” adding:
“(T)he IRGC Navy is fully prepared and this readiness is increased day by day.”
The final phase of so-called Payambar-e A’zam (The Great Prophet) 14 military drills began Tuesday, IRGC spokesman General Abbas Nilforoushan, saying:
Exercises include “the interception of ballistic and cruise missiles,” along with testing of “long-range ballistic missiles capable of striking intruding vessels floating at a distance” away.
In response to Iran’s simulated attack on a mock up of a US aircraft carrier, a Pentagon Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet statement called the defensive exercise “irresponsible and reckless (sic).”
Ignored was how US military exercises operate in similar fashion to assess the destructive capability of its weapons. Other nations do the same thing.
Days earlier, Trump regime envoy for regime change in Iran Brian Hook pushed for a Security Council resolution to indefinitely extend an international conventional arms embargo on Iran that expires in mid-October, falsely claiming the following:
“Failure to extend this resolution will mean more dangers for all peoples of the region and its countries and for our friends in the Gulf and in the world (sic).”
“It would mean more arms exports from Iran to Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, and more Iranian weapons to Hezbollah, Hamas, and others (sic).”
“We reject this altogether and in detail, and we consider that it is in the interest of peoples of the region and its countries to support development efforts and improve the conditions of peoples and eliminate the deep causes of extremism and terrorism, including poverty, tyranny and the absence of a rational government (sic).”
Left unexplained by Hook was the Trump regime’s unlawful abandonment of the JCPOA in May 2018, abandoning as well any say over its implementation and enforcement.
Russia and China oppose the aim of its hardliners to impose a permanent ban on Iran’s legitimate right to buy conventional weapons from other countries.
Trump, Pompeo, Hook and others want the landmark JCPOA agreement eliminated, Iran isolated and weakened, its people immiserated, its government toppled.
For over 40 years, Iran withstood US war on the country by other means, overcoming everything tried by Washington to transform it into a vassal state.
Hostile Trump regime policies have been no more successful than its predecessors.
While US war on Iran is unlikely because of the IRGC’s military capabilities that could hit back hard against regional Pentagon bases and Israel if attacked, what’s unthinkable is possible because both wings of its war party seek control over all other nations, their resources and people.
That’s the stuff endless wars are made of. Two global conflicts taught belligerent USA nothing.
A third one in the nuclear age would be madness, yet possible because of diabolical US aims to rule the world even at the risk of destroying it.
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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
On July 27, fighting broke out between Israeli forces and Hezbollah along the Israeli-Lebanese contact line. This became the heaviest open confrontation between the sides in about a year. The incident occurred in an area known as Chebaa Farms, which was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
Israeli shelling started at around 3:30 p.m. local time which lasted for about an hour and a half. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that they had repelled an infiltration attempt by a Hezbollah unit and there were no casualties among IDF forces. The exchange of fire came as the IDF was on heightened alert for a possible attack by Hezbollah, after an Israeli airstrike in Syria killed a Hezbollah member earlier in July.
In a televised address, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hezbollah that it is “playing with fire,” and stated that “Hezbollah and Lebanon bear full responsibility for this incident and any attack from Lebanese territory against Israel.”
In its own turn, pro-Hezbollah sources claimed that Hezbollah targeted a vehicle and a battle tank of the IDF with anti-tank guided missiles.
Hezbollah itself described Israeli claims about the outcome of the clashes as fake and aimed to boost the morale of Israeli forces by fabricating fictitious victories. It also rejected reports about strikes on IDF targets.
“The answer to the martyrdom of [our] brother, Ali Kamel Mohsen, in the vicinity of Damascus airport has not been given yet. Zionist occupiers must still wait for that answer and their punishment at the hands of the resistance forces,” Hezbollah said.
A few hours after the incident on the Lebanese-Israeli contact line, rockets struck US-operated military bases in Iraq. The strike on Camp Speicher, located near Tikrit, caused a large explosion on the site. At the same time, at least three rockets targeted another US-operated military base – Camp Taji, located near Baghdad. According to local media, one rocket hit an Iraqi helicopter while another landed in an artillery weapon depot. The third rocket landed in the area of the 2nd Air Force Squadron but did not explode.
Local sources claim that the strikes came in response to a drone strike on the al-Saqer military camp, south of Baghdad, on July 26. This camp is operated by the Popular Mobilization Units. This branch of the Iraqi Armed Forces is often described by Washington and mainstream media as Iranian proxies and even terrorists.
Even if the incidents in Iraq and the Lebanese-Israeli border were not linked, they serve as strong evidence of the escalating tensions in the Middle East. Despite the defeat of ISIS and the relative de-escalation of the conflict in Syria, the region still remains in a permanent state of escalation. However, now, the source of these tensions is the developing conflict between the Israeli-US bloc and Iranian-led forces.
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President Donald Trump’s recent reelection campaign advertisement is straight out of the plot of a horror movie. Just days after he deployed federal officers to the streets of Portland, Oregon, his campaign released a 30-second television spot featuring an elderly white woman watching on her television the news of activists demanding a defunding of police. The woman shakes her head in disapproval as she notices a figure at her door trying to enter her house. She nervously calls 911, but apparently the activists she disapproves of have been so effective in their nefarious demands that the universal emergency hotline Americans rely on now goes unanswered. The vulnerable woman drops her remote control as the intruder enters her home, and we are only left to imagine the horror of what he does to her as the words “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America” appear on the screen. In this dystopian version of America, only Trump promises law and order.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, supports the defunding of American police. He does not, and in fact, in keeping with his historic support for police, Biden has demanded increased funding for law enforcement. But Trump has already proven that he will not let truth get in the way of his desires, and therefore a little more digging on the part of voters and a little more forthright reporting on the part of journalists is necessary to understand exactly who is breaking American laws.
The paramilitary units from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that Trump has deployed to Portland have engaged in disturbing violations of human rights. They have used munitions to injure people, and acted like “thugs and goons” in the words of a Navy Veteran who was beaten with batons and pepper-sprayed in the face. They have arrested and detained people without documentation. Trump has defended their tactics saying the targets “are anarchists. These are not protesters… These are people that hate our country.”
Violence Coming From White House
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Director Chad Wolf took Trump’s characterization of protesters as “anarchists” to comical extremes in his public record of how and why his officers engaged with protesters. Saying that he “Condemns The Rampant Long-Lasting Violence In Portland,” Wolf used the words “violent” 76 times to describe what protesters have done to justify arrests and repression. Wolf’s definition of violence seems to almost entirely encompass property damage such as vandalism and graffiti. The closest that Portland protesters came to actual violence, it seems, was when they apparently, “attempted to cause eye damage to officers with commercial grade lasers,” and in another instance, “proceeded to launch aerial fireworks at federal property.”
The DHS records used the term “violent anarchists” 70 times and the term “protesters” only once, without making any effort to explain how exactly they distinguished “violent anarchists” from protesters, journalists or passersby. Nowhere in the document was there any documented behavior by protesters that came close to an attack on vulnerable elderly white women like the fictitious one in Trump’s ad. In not a single instance reported in the DHS account did a protester – or in Wolf’s words, violent anarchist – actually commit intentional violence against a human being.
Trump’s policy violates an idea that Republicans have long supported – that states ought to have the right to set their own laws and rules and that the federal government ought to respect that right. It also goes against the warnings that pro-gun Republicans have echoed for years – that mass gun ownership is necessary so that vigilant citizens can counter federal government tyranny of the sort that Trump has unleashed. Now that the kind of federal government overreach they have warned against for years is actually unfolding, there is nary a peep from the “gun rights” crowd.
Orwellian Patriot Act
It isn’t just Republicans who have embraced the march toward authoritarianism. Eighteen years ago Congress passed the Homeland Security Act to create the DHS – an agency with an Orwellian name – with 88 Democrats joining more than 200 Republicans in voting yes. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks prompted a reconfiguring of American society and government that reverberates today, unleashing excessive surveillance and harsh immigration enforcement, while doing little to address the factors that provoked the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in the first place.
Yet year after year, Democrats have voted to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act and other aspects of the post-9/11 authoritarian architecture. Now even as DHS officers are being deployed by a president they strongly criticize, Democratic lawmakers are trying to tie up funding for the DHS with that of the Department of Health and Human Services, which, according to the Intercept’s Ryan Grim, is “making it more difficult for progressive Democrats to oppose.”
But Trump has abused the infrastructure of the post-9/11 state repression to a far greater extent than either Presidents George W. Bush or President Barack Obama. The Washington Post reported that Tom Ridge, the notorious DHS secretary under Bush, denounced Trump’s move saying the agency was formed to counter “global terrorism,” and that, “It was not established to be the president’s personal militia.” A former Bush-era DHS official, Paul Rosenzweig, characterized the deployment as “lawful but awful,” while seeing the phenomenon as clearly unconstitutional. Michael Chertoff, another Bush-era DHS secretary, told a Washington Post columnist, “While it’s appropriate for DHS to protect federal property, that is not an excuse to range more widely in a city and to conduct police operations, particularly if local authorities have not requested federal assistance.” Chertoff added that Trump’s move is “very problematic,” and “very unsettling.” If those GOP officials who served under Bush – who were considered the political villains of their time – are disturbed, Trump has indeed crossed a line.
But another figure from the Bush years is rearing his head under Trump and encouraging his authoritarianism. John Yoo, the infamous lawyer who helped craft the “torture memos” during the Bush administration’s “war on terror” to justify the CIA’s use of torture during interrogations, is apparently advising the Trump administration on how best to use his executive power to skirt congressional authority, the Guardian reports. In June, Yoo wrote in an article in the National Review, “Even if Trump knew that his scheme lacked legal authority, he could get away with it for the length of his presidency.”
Trump has made clear that norms, ethics, laws, and even the US Constitution are merely suggestions that mildly constrain him and that can be tossed aside when needed. His modus operandi is to push the limits of what he can do and dare the nation to stop him. Will we?
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This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations.
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Our thanks to Mark Taliano for bringing this to our attention.
The CEO of the U.S.-based Telsa car manufacturer has admitted to involvement in what President Morales has referred to as a “Lithium Coup.”
“We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” was Elon Musk’s response to an accusation on twitter that the U.S. government organized a coup against President Evo Morales, so that Musk could obtain Bolivia’s lithium.
Foreign plunder of Bolivia’s lithium, in a country with the world’s largest known reserves, is widely believed to be among the main motives behind the November 10, 2019 coup.
Lithium, a critical component of the batteries used in Tesla vehicles, is set to become one of the world’s most important natural resources as manufacturers seek to obtain it for use in batteries for electric cars, computers, and industrial equipment.
The defacto administration of Jeanine Añez has already announced its plan to invite numerous multinationals into the Salar de Uyuni, the vast salt flats in Potosi, which holds the precious soft metal.
Right-wing Vice Presidential candidate and running mate to Añez, Samuel Doria Medina, proposed a Brazilian-Bolivian project which would use lithium from the town of Uyuni.
Meanwhile, letter from the coup regime’s Foreign Minister Karen Longaric to Elon Musk, dated march 31st, says “any corporation that you or your company can provide to our country will be gratefully welcomed.”
Authorities from Chayanta, Norte Potosi say Bolivia's lithium is being ransacked from the indigenous peoples. pic.twitter.com/S1NQJED1C0
Social movements have repeatedly warned that lithium and natural resources would be surrendered to foreign capital by coup authorities, in a reversal of plans by Evo Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) administration to process the lithium within Bolivia rather than exporting the raw material to the global north.
The project represented a rejection of the neocolonial relationship Latin American countries have often had with the imperialist cores.
Bolivia’s former MAS government oversaw the production of batteries and its first electric car by the Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) state company, in partnership with German company ACISA. In the deal, the Bolivian state kept majority control.
With the agreement now scrapped along with countless other state projects, and with elections now thrice delayed by the illegitimate defacto authorities, the people of Uyuni and social movements around the country say they’ll continue to oppose the ongoing privatization and are organizing against the return of looting of Bolivia’s natural resources by ruthless and exploitative foreign capital.
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Featured image: Tesla CEO Elon Musk (L) Authorities of Chayanta (R), Norte Potosi, Bolivia. May 24, 2020 | Photo: Twitter/ @KawsachunCoca
The British government, regulators and global agrochemical corporations are colluding with each other and are thus engaging in criminal behaviour. That’s the message put forward in a new report written by environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason and sent to the UK Environment Agency. It follows her January 2019 open letter to Werner Baumann, CEO of Bayer CropScience, where she made it clear to him that she considers Bayer CropScience and Monsanto criminal corporations.
Her letter to Baumann outlined a cocktail of corporate duplicity, cover-ups and criminality which the public and the environment are paying the price for, not least in terms of the effects of glyphosate. Later in 2019, Mason wrote to Bayer Crop Science shareholders, appealing to them to put human health and nature ahead of profit and to stop funding Bayer.
Mason outlined with supporting evidence how the gradual onset of the global extinction of many species is largely the result of chemical-intensive industrial agriculture. She argued that Monsanto’s (now Bayer) glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide and Bayer’s clothianidin are largely responsible for the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef and that the use of glyphosate and neonicotinoid insecticides are wiping out wildlife species across the globe.
In February 2020, Mason wrote the report ‘Bayer Crop Science rules Britain after Brexit – the public and the press are being poisoned by pesticides’. She noted that PM Boris Johnson plans to do a trade deal with the US that could see the gutting of food and environment standards. In a speech setting out his goals for trade after Brexit, Johnson talked up the prospect of an agreement with Washington and downplayed the need for one with Brussels – if the EU insists the UK must stick to its regulatory regime. In other words, he wants to ditch EU regulations.
Mason pondered just who could be pulling Johnson’s strings. A big clue came in February 2019 at a Brexit meeting on the UK chemicals sector where UK regulators and senior officials from government departments listened to the priorities of Bayer Crop Science. During the meeting (Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum Keynote Seminar: Priorities for UK chemicals sector – challenges, opportunities and the future for regulation post-Brexit), Janet Williams, head of regulatory science at Bayer Crop Science Division, made the priorities for agricultural chemical manufacturers known.
Dave Bench was also a speaker. Bench is a senior scientist at the UK Chemicals, Health and Safety Executive and director of the agency’s EU exit plan and has previously stated that the regulatory system for pesticides is robust and balances the risks of pesticides against the benefits to society.
In an open letter to Bench, Mason responded:
“That statement is rubbish. It is for the benefit of the agrochemical industry. The industry (for it is the industry that does the testing, on behalf of regulators) only tests one pesticide at a time, whereas farmers spray a cocktail of pesticides, including over children and babies, without warning.”
It seems that post-Brexit the UK could authorise the continued use of glyphosate. Of course, with a US trade deal in the pipeline, there are major concerns about glyphosate-resistant GMOs and the lowering of food standards across the board.
Mason says that glyphosate causes epigenetic changes in humans and animals: diseases skip a generation. Washington State University researchers found a variety of diseases and other health problems in the second- and third-generation offspring of rats exposed to glyphosate. In the first study of its kind, the researchers saw descendants of exposed rats developing prostate, kidney and ovarian diseases, obesity and birth abnormalities.
Glyphosate has been the subject of numerous studies about its health effects. Robert F Kennedy Jr, one of the attorney’s fighting Bayer (which has bought Monsanto) in the US courts, has explained that for four decades Monsanto manoeuvred to conceal Roundup’s carcinogenicity by capturing regulatory agencies, corrupting public officials, bribing scientists and engaging in scientific fraud to delay its day of reckoning.
Kennedy says there is also cascading scientific evidence linking glyphosate to a constellation of other injuries that have become prevalent since its introduction, including obesity, depression, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, kidney disease, inflammatory bowel disease, brain, breast and prostate cancer, miscarriage, birth defects and declining sperm counts.
In her new document sent to the UK Environment Agency, Mason argues there is criminal collusion between the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Chemicals Regulation Division and Bayer over Brexit. She also claims the National Farmers Union has been lying about how much pesticides farmers use and have ignored the side effects of chlorpyrifos, chlorothalonil, glyphosate and neonicotinoids. The NFU says farmers couldn’t do without these inputs, even though they destroy human health and the environment.
Of course, farmers can and do go without using these chemicals. And the shift away from chemical-intensive agriculture is perfectly feasible. In a recent article on the AgWeb site, for instance, US farmer Adam Chappell describes how he made the shift on his 8,000-acre farm. Chappell was not some dyed-in-the-wool organic evangelist. He made the shift for financial and practical reasons and is glad he did. The article states:
“He was on the brink of bankruptcy and facing a go broke or go green proposition. Drowning in a whirlpool of input costs, Chappell cut bait from conventional agriculture and dove headfirst into a bootstrap version of innovative farming. Roughly 10 years later, his operation is transformed, and the 41-year-old grower doesn’t mince words: It was all about the money.”
Surely there is a lesson there for UK farmers who in 2016 used glyphosate on 2,634,573 ha of cropland. It is not just their bottom line that could improve but the health of the nation. Mason says that five peer-reviewed animal studies from the US and Argentina released in July 2020 have focused minds on the infertility crisis being caused by glyphosate-based herbicides. Researchers at The National University of Litoral in Sante Fe, Argentina, have published three concerning peer-reviewed papers including two studies on ewes and rats and one review. In one study, researchers concluded that glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides are endocrine disruptors. They also stated that glyphosate-based herbicides alter reproductive outcomes in females.
But such is the British government’s willingness to protect pesticide companies that it is handing agrochemical giants BASF and Bayer enormous pay-outs of Covid-19 support cash. The announcement came just weeks after Bayer shareholders voted to pay £2.75 billion in dividends. The fact that Bayer then went on to receive £600 million from the government speaks volumes of where the government’s priorities lie.
According to Mason, the new Agriculture Bill provides a real opportunity for the UK to adopt a paradigm shift which embraces non-chemical farming policy. However, Defra has stated that after Brexit Roundup Ready GA21 glyphosate tolerant crops could be introduced.
It is also concerning that a post-Brexit funding gap could further undermine the impartiality of university research. Mason refers to Greenpeace, which notes that Bayer and Syngenta, both sell neonicotinoid insecticides linked to harmful effects on bees, gave a combined total of £16.1m to 70 British universities over five years to fund a range of research. Such private funding could create a conflict of interest for academics and after Brexit a potential shortage of public money for science could force universities to seek more finance from the private sector.
Neonicotinoids were once thought to have little or no negative effects on the environment because they are used in low doses and as a seed coating, rather than being sprayed. But evidence has been mounting that the chemicals harm bees – important pollinators of food crops. As a result, neonicotinoids have been banned by the EU, although they can still be used under license.
According to Bayer’s website, academics who reviewed 15 years of research found “no adverse effects to bee colonies were ever observed in field studies”. Between 2011 and 2016, the figures obtained from the 70 universities – about half the total in the UK – show Bayer gave £9m to fund research, including more than £345,000 on plant sciences. Syngenta spent nearly £7.1m, including just under £2.3m on plant sciences and stated that many years of independent monitoring prove that when used properly neonicotinoids do not damage the health of bee populations.
However, in 2016, Ben Stewart of Greenpeace UK’s Brexit response team said that the decline in bee populations is a major environmental and food security concern – it’s causes need to be properly investigated.
He added:
“But for this research to command public confidence, it needs to be independent and impartial, which is why public funding is so crucial. You wouldn’t want lung cancer studies to be heavily reliant on funds from tobacco firms, nor research on pesticides to be dependent on the companies making them.”
Stewart concluded:
“As Brexit threatens to cut off vital public funds for this scientific field, our universities need a cast-iron guarantee from our government that EU money will not be replaced by corporate cash.”
But Mason notes that the government long ago showed its true colours by refusing to legislate on the EU Directive (2009/128/EC) on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides. The government merely stated that current statutory and voluntary controls related to pesticides and the protection of water, if followed, afford a high degree of protection and it would primarily seek to work with the pesticides industry to enhance voluntary measures.
Mason first questioned the government on this in January 2011. In an open letter to the Chemical Regulation Directorate. The government claimed that no compelling evidence was provided to justify further extending existing regulations and voluntary controls.
Lord Henley, the Under-Secretary of State for Defra, expanded further:
“By making a small number of changes to our existing approach we can continue to help feed a growing global population with high-quality food that’s affordable – while minimising the risks of using pesticides.”
In her numerous reports and open letters to officials, Mason has shown that far from having ‘high-quality food’, there is an ongoing public health crisis due to the pesticides being used.
She responded to Henley by stating:
“… instead of strengthening the legislation, the responses of the UK government and the CRD have considerably weakened it. In the case of aerial spraying, you have opted for derogation.”
Mason says that, recently, the day that Monsanto lost its appeal against Dewayne Lee Johnson the sprayers came around the Marina in Cardiff breaking all the rules that the EU had set for Roundup.
We can only wonder what could lie in store for the British public if a trade deal is done with the US. Despite the Conservative government pledging that it would not compromise on the UK’s food and environment standards, it now proposes that chlorine-washed chicken, beef treated with growth hormones, pork from animals treated with ractopamine and many other toxic foods produced in the US will be allowed into the UK. All for the bottom line of US agribusiness corporations. It is also worth mentioning at this point that there are around 2,000 untested chemicals in packaged foods in the US.
Ultimately, the situation comes down to a concentration of power played out within an interlocking directorate of state-corporate interests – in this case, global agrochemical conglomerates and the British government – and above the heads of ordinary people. It is clear that these institutions value the health of powerful corporations at the expense of the health of the population and the state of the environment.
Readers can access Mason’s new paper ‘Criminal collusion between Defra, the Chemicals Regulation Division and Bayer over Brexit Agenda’ via academia.edu website (which cites relevant sources), where all her other documents can also be found.
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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.
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Belgrade and Pristina have resumed dialogue in Brussels, but the recent delivery of American-made armored vehicles to Kosovo could make the talks difficult and signifies Washington is once again attempting to destabilize the Balkans. Serbia and Kosovo returned to the negotiating table on July 16 after a long hiatus; however the hopes of Josep Borrell, head of European diplomacy, to allow a constructive dialogue could now be in jeopardy. Washington’s delivery of Humvee armored vehicles to Pristina is a clear message to Belgrade that the U.S. will continue recognizing Kosovo’s independence. Washington purposefully sent the armored vehicles knowing it will create tensions in negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina.
The U.S. is putting pressure on Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić to recognize Kosovo’s independence. However, this is in detriment to international law and UN Security Council resolution 1244, which is still valid and specifies that Kosovo is a Serbian province despite Washington’s recognition of its illegal independence. Although the delivery of Humvee armored vehicles makes little impact on the military capabilities of Kosovo, it is a symbolic gesture by the Americans to show they still have significant influence over Kosovo. Hashim Thaçi, the President of Kosovo and alleged war criminal, has always said that Washington should be an important player in negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo.
Kosovo is recognized as an independent state by the majority of Western countries, with the exception of five EU members who still refuse to recognize its independence: Spain, Romania, Greece, Cyprus and Slovakia. Russia and China, permanent members of the UN Security Council, have not recognized this either and are de facto preventing Kosovo from joining the United Nations.
There is clear proof that tensions are still high between Belgrade and Pristine, especially after Vučić attacked with virulence Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Avdullah Hoti, after the last round of negotiations:
“Is it nice to sit at the other end of the table facing Hoti and listen to his gibberish, saying that they are the only victims and that we are the only bad guys? No.”
The fact that Kosovo recently received a new shipment of armored vehicles from the U.S. will not help normalize relations between the two parties, but this is not surprising considering the Albanians are key to Washington’s policy in controlling the Balkans. Therefore, Belgrade likely recognizes that it cannot trust Washington to bring a resolution to the Kosovo issue, especially since Serbia maintains strong relations with Moscow that it is not willing to sacrifice.
The special relationship between Belgrade and Moscow is viewed negatively by both Brussels and NATO. They would rather bring Serbia under its influence. This is further complicated by the fact that Beijing has an ever-increasing strong presence in Serbia and is investing a lot in the country. Beijing always supports the preservation of Serbia’s territorial integrity, especially regarding Kosovo, which could mean that the Balkan country might be a future flash point between the growing rivalry between China and the U.S.
In 2012, Belgrade highlighted that officials during the presidency of Bill Clinton, who were in charge at the time of the brutal NATO bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999, returned to Kosovo to invest – particularly General Wesley Clark and former U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. Today Kosovo is a hub for drug trafficking, human trafficking and organ harvesting, something that Brussels and Washington are happy to turn a blind eye to.
Albanians are trying to unite in a Greater Albania that would serve the interests of U.S. foreign policy. The arming of Kosovo could be a consequence of this vision, especially since American arms deliveries to Kosovo contradict international law and could trigger a new armed conflict. This may be the hidden goal of the U.S. It is possible that Germany is also pushing in this direction, especially since Berlin was a key player in the dismemberment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The recognition of Kosovo’s independence opens the door to further destabilization, violence and potentially even a new Balkan war. With the U.S. delivering Humvee’s to Kosovo, it has signified that it has no interest in finding a lasting resolution between the rebel province and Serbia.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
Agribusiness is the center of the Brazilian economy, corresponding to more than 20% of the national GDP. In fact, Brazilian economy has suffered a heavy blow in recent years, with the country being subjected to an advanced process of deindustrialization. At that time, the agricultural sector is one of the few that still stands, further increasing its importance for the country. The pandemic strongly threatened Brazilian agribusiness and, at first, affected exports, but, contrary to initial expectations, the market overcame difficulties and emerged victorious from the crisis, mainly due to the heightened tensions in the US-China trade war.
In June, the data of Brazilian exports in agribusiness broke a record, with more than 10 billion dollars – about 25% more than the same period last year. There is a country that is of central importance in this overwhelming growth of Brazilian exports: China. With the growth of the trade and tariff war between Beijing and Washington, China has found in Brazil an excellent source of supply for its demand for agribusiness products.
Another factor that strengthened the ties between Brazil and China was the Chinese need for the Brazilian meat market, mainly due to the increase in cases of African swine fever and foot-and-mouth disease in Asia, which led Beijing to increase exports from Brazil – which broke a record and exceeded in more than 10% of the records in 2019. Still, China was the first country to overcome the crisis caused by the pandemic, which made it seek to fill its demands in this sector sooner. China currently buys about 40% of all Brazil exports. As Brazil competes with the USA in agribusiness, the Sino-Brazilian partnership, from a strategic point of view, only tends to be strengthened.
But relations between Brazil and China could be affected by the geopolitical dispute between Beijing and Washington. As it is known, the Bolsonaro government has maintained an automatic alignment relationship with the United States. Brazil did not cut relations with China, but, on several occasions, it was involved in diplomatic crises and diverse tensions that obstructed many possible economic cooperation. The biggest Chinese interest now is the technological sector, with concern about Huawei’s participation in the Brazilian auction of 5G technology. Bolsonaro at first had vetoed China but reversed his decision to apologize for the diplomatic crisis generated by his son – who offended China with conspiracy charges about the new coronavirus. Since then, a scenario of internal tensions has been created, where one part of the government insists on stopping Chinese participation, while another, more strategist, supports such participation.
The main problem is that it is not known precisely when the auction will take place – which has already been postponed several times due to the pandemic and, until it occurs, tensions will continue and Chinese participation will be uncertain. The main fear of representatives of Brazilian agribusiness is that, if China is vetoed, there will be economic retaliation applied precisely in this sector – which is to be expected, since it is the most important sector of the Brazilian economy. Currently, Brazilian agribusiness truly depends on China – not only due to the increased demand for meat and other products, but for years, China has been the largest buyer of Brazilian soybeans, being an indispensable partner in Brazil.
Still, there is a fundamental political factor. Although the ideological wing of the government is absolutely opposed to the cooperation relations between Brazil and China, Bolsonaro was elected with strong support from agribusiness representatives, who have a great parliamentary base. Without this support, the electorate of the current president would be insufficient to guarantee the election. Now, this same sector demands from Bolsonaro an attitude that confronts that demanded by the ideological wing. Without the support of agribusiness, Bolsonaro will not be able to re-elect himself in 2022 and even perhaps he will not even finish his term. So he has no alternative but to give space to China in 5G and maintain neutrality in the trade war, which, on the other hand, will remove support from the ideological sector. Thus the coalition that elected Bolsonaro is broken.
Currently, Brazil does not have a third choice: it either gives up participation to China or adheres to alignment with Washington in the trade war while its economy is ruined. The most strategically acceptable choice is visible, but there is no guarantee that this will be Bolsonaro’s decision. In short, China can at this moment save Brazilian agribusiness and consequently the national economy. But for that, the government should allow Huawei to participate in the 5G auction.
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Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
It wasn’t supposed to take this long to eliminate the independence movement of the backward land of the living Bible. A coalition of the world’s major military powers, led by the US, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Britain and Israel, expected Yemen’s Houthi movement to fall in a matter of weeks after their attacks started on March 25th, 2015. Five years later, it is only the hidden member of the Coalition leaders, Israel, that is motivated to continue the genocidal bombing and blockade that has created “the world’s greatest humanitarian catastrophe”. It is arguably because of Israel’s hidden role that the genocide is continuing despite the attempts of the other Coalition leaders to end their roles in the Yemeni slaughter.
Until 2015, Yemen, one of the poorest countries on earth, was a fabulous, unspoiled country of ancient cities, thousand-year-old buildings and pristine islands; some scholars believe that Yemen may have been the site of the Old Testament. Socotra island, called the Galapagos of the Gulf, was one of Yemen’s four UNESCO World Heritage sites. The small, spectacular country had another ten tentative World Heritage sites.
Yemen has the misfortune to inhabit strategic real estate. Lying at the southern end of the Arabian peninsula, Yemen is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea down to the Bab el-Mandeb strait to its west, the Gulf of Aden to the south and Oman to its east. Its territory also includes islands in the Red Sea and around the Bab el-Mandeb strait. The strait, an 18-mile gap between the east coast of Africa and the Arabian peninsula, is a potential chokepoint for the heavily-used shipping route from the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean.
Yemen’s struggle for independence from Saudi/western control
Yemen’s conflict with western powers arose when many Yemenis, like those in the Houthi movement, wanted to end their Saudi-controlled government’s support for the West’s so-called “war on terror”, such as its support for the destruction of Iraq and its approvals for U.S. drone strikes on Yemenis. The Houthis, also referred to as the Ansarullah movement, is a north Yemen Shi’ite sect that first organized politically to protest regional discrimination; they are more oriented to justice issues than to religion.
Yemeni independence from Saudi control seemed to be within reach after a successful Arab Spring rebellion in 2011 ended the 33-year presidency of Ali Abdullah Saleh (image on the right). Vice President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi replaced Saleh with a two-year term to oversee the transition to an independent government. In order to produce a new constitution and an electoral process for the upcoming 2014 election, a National Dialogue Conference was held in 2013-2014. Yemenis were disappointed with the results; the constitution resembled Iraq’s and the electoral process was not workable for Yemen’s parties. The conference results had been hijacked by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) (1), an economic and security coalition of Gulf states allied with western interests. At the end of the conference, representatives of Yemen’s parties met to vote on whether to extend Mansour Hadi’s term to January, 2015; the Houthi representative, the dean of Sana’a University law school, was assassinated en route to the meeting. Negotiations between the Houthis and Hadi’s government broke down in the fall of 2014, at which point the Houthis, along with allies, started to take control of the government.
It was at this point, that the coalition of states that wanted Yemen to remain under Saudi/western control must have coalesced. The leaders of the Coalition, the US, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the UK and secretly, Israel, recruited other allies which have included France, Sudan, Egypt, Pakistan, Qatar, Bahrain, Morocco, Jordan, and Somalia. Tens of thousands of experienced mercenaries were hired, primarily from Sudan but also from Columbia and Nepal, as well as specialized organizations such as Blackwater and the Navy Seals.
It is ironic that the US, Britain and Israel, which claim to stand for democracy, were leaders in a coalition to ensure that Yemen would not be permitted its own democratic government.
President Mansour Hadi was forced to resign in January 2015, after his extended term had expired, and the Houthis started to put a new government together with other parties. In early February, the UN envoy to Yemen, Jamal Benomar, reported to the UN Security Council that all of Yemen’s factions were negotiating together to form a unity government. The news spurred the Coalition to action.
The Coalition sets United Nations Security Council up to destroy Yemen’s independence movement
The Coalition immediately acted to end the possibility of an independent Yemeni government by obtaining legal cover to protect its planned aggression. Just one week after Jamal Benomar had reported that Yemen’s factions were negotiating to form a government, UN SC Resolution 2201 was passed, which permitted military action to force the return of Hadi’s Saudi- backed government and the implementation of the (Yemeni-rejected) GCC- backed constitution and electoral plan. Hadi quickly withdrew his resignation, creating a legal morass. The Coalition attacks started several weeks later, on March 25, 2015, just before Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia and called on it to bomb Yemen to reinstate him.
Three weeks after the start of the attacks, the UN SC passed Resolution 2216 which grotesquely blamed the Houthis for the violence, insisted that the GCC- backed plan of government be implemented, that the “legitimate” Mansour Hadi (image on the left) government be restored, and it called for an arms embargo on the Houthis.
While giving lip service to Yemeni sovereignty and territorial integrity, the Security Council resolutions gave the Coalition the tools and the legal cover for its destruction of Yemen.
The various motives of Coalition leaders
While the Coalition was supposedly attacking Yemen in order to restore the Saudi-backed government, it soon became apparent that some Coalition leaders had the ulterior motive of grabbing Yemen’s strategic real estate. Saudi Arabia quickly occupied Yemen’s Hanish islands in the Red Sea, and part of Socotra island, at the mouth of the Bab el Mandeb.
The UAE created Yemen’s separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) party, aiming to assume ultimate control of the south of Yemen, including Aden and other ports. “President” Hadi gave the UAE a 95-year lease of Socotra island and the UAE offered Emirati citizenship to its residents. The UAE is building a base on the island; the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are expected to follow suit.
As its price for participating in the Coalition, Israel demanded that it be given the use of Yemen’s strategic Tariq air base, near Yemen’s third largest city of Taizz. Israel, which usually invokes its “security” to justify bombing Syria or occupied Gaza, claims that control of the Bab el-Mandeb strait is another “security” requirement because most Israeli shipping passes through that strait. To monitor strait traffic, Israel has already acquired bases in Eritrea and has the apparent use of Yemen’s Perim island in the strait (2).
Israel’s role in the coalition
Yemenis discovered Israel’s role in the coalition soon after the attacks started. When they downed two planes in an initial attack on its air defense system, they noticed that something didn’t add up: while the planes were marked as belonging to the Saudi air force, they were F-16s that Saudi Arabia had never possessed. In fact, they were Israeli planes with Israeli pilots disguised to appear Saudi. (3) Days later, what many observers identified as a neutron bomb was dropped on Yemen (4); while no country admitted responsibility for it, there were few countries other than Israel with the ability or motive to commit such an act. Israel’s ongoing participation was confirmed a couple of months later when a Yemeni attack on a Saudi base killed 20 Mossad officers along with 63 Saudi military planners.
It appeared that while Saudi Arabia, along with the UAE, were paying the bills, the attacks were directed by American and Israeli surveillance and military planners. Israeli “cyber companies, gun traders, terror warfare instructors and even paid hit men” were part of the coalition’s workforce. When the Saudis decided to take control of Houdaydah port, through which an estimated 90% of Houthi food and humanitarian aid passed, it was Israel Defense Force instructors that trained Coalition mercenaries in Israel’s Negev desert.Although there has been no subsequent publicized evidence of Israeli air attacks on Yemen — since Yemen is no longer able to down planesto identify them — many of the hundreds of thousands of “Saudi” bombing attacks could be Israeli. While Saudi Arabia claimed it was offering a unilateral ceasefire on April 8th as a peace gesture, there was strangely no let up in “Saudi” air attacks on Yemen.
Yemen crucified:“Yemen has all but ceased to exist as a state”
Since the vicious western-backed invasion of Yemen started, the Houthis have become more popular than ever in Yemen. But the cost to Yemen has been horrific, with the magnificent ancient land and infrastructure not only in ruins but, like parts of Iraq and Vietnam, too contaminated with radioactivity and toxic chemicals to support life.
Yemen is now divided in three parts, with the Houthis controlling the northern third of the country with 70% of the population, the separatist STC, backed by the UAE, declaring its session of the south of Yemen, including Aden and southern ports, and the east of Yemen under Hadi’s contested control.
The UN calls Yemen “the world’s greatest humanitarian catastrophe”. A quarter of a million of Yemen’s 30 million population have died and significantly more than that have been injured. An estimated 10 million are starving; 80% need aid to survive. Hundreds of thousands of children have died of starvation and many have died after being forcibly recruited as child soldiers by Saudi Arabia.
The Coalition’s members should face the International Criminal Court because most of their attacks indicate a genocidal intent. Only a third of the 250,000 bombing attacks have targeted the Houthi’s military: the majority target civilians and infrastructure, such as the bombing of over 1,000 mosques, most of the hospitals and medical facilities, farms, food markets and food storage buildings, factories, water treatment plants, schools and school busses, weddings, funerals, and even a rally of 100,000 in support of the Houthis. The UAE and the Saudis prevent Yemeni fishermen from fishing and have destroyed thousands of fishing boats. The UAE and Saudi Arabia have operated unmonitored torture facilities in Yemen in which an unknown number have perished.
The Coalition has used illegal, banned weaponry against civilians such as skin-melting white phosphorus. Despite holding international aid events to raise money for humanitarian aid for Yemen, Saudi Arabia blockades the food and humanitarian aid from land, sea and air — and has been documented stealing food that did reach Yemen. When Yemen suffered the worst cholera outbreak in history, the Coalition tried to block medicine. To ensure that Yemenis caught the COVID-19 virus, Saudis dropped what were believed to be infected masks on the most densely- populated Houthi areas and had infected people go to Yemen. Yemen’s health system collapsed.
Every two hours one Yemeni woman loses her life in labor because of the lack of obstetric help. (5)
The destruction of Yemen’s cultural heritage is reminiscent of the US destruction and theft of Iraq’s antiquities. Despite UNESCO providing the Coalition with the coordinates of the World Heritage Sites, these sites — often remote– were bombed, as well as major Yemeni museums. There has been a lively market for Yemen’s antiquities, which have been appearing in auction houses and museums, with Judaica particularly popular in Israel.
Sabotaging peace
Because the purpose of the Coalition’s attack on Yemen is to ensure a western puppet government, the Coalition has sabotaged all peace initiatives that would have included the Houthis in future governments. The Houthis were blamed in 2018 for not attending peace talks in Geneva: the Saudis, who controlled the airspace, would not allow them to attend! The Dec. 2018 Stockholm peace agreement on Houdaydah between the Houthis and the Coalition was not implemented despite the Houthis immediate compliance. The UN claimed the wording was too fuzzy to actually enforce.
Media misrepresentation
The Coalition claims that its war on Yemen’s Houthis is actually a “proxy” war with Iran, which, it claims, controls the Houthis: a claim that both the Houthis and Iran deny. While Iran sympathizes with the Houthis, there has been no evidence of control. Leaked State Department cables show that the U.S. government was well aware that the Houthis are not controlled by Iran. (6) The claim of Iran’s control, even if it had been legitimate, could not justify the Coalition’s devastation of Yemen and its people because Iran has not threatened any country. Some articles on war crimes in Yemen describe the guilt of “both/all parties”, ignoring the fact that the Coalition has no moral right to attack Yemenis, who have been forced to defend themselves.
Despite the Houthi’s overwhelming popularity in Yemen, mainstream media presents only the Coalition’s position as legitimate. The Houthis are described as the “Iran-backed Houthis” or the “Houthi rebels” even though 60% of Yemen’s military forces supports them. The rejected president and government is described variously as “legitimate President Hadi”, “the internationally recognized government”, or “Yemen’s government”. In reality, Yemenis would not accept Hadi’s return because of his demand that Saudi Arabia bomb Yemen to reinstate him.In 2017, Yemenis convicted Hadi of treason and sentenced him, in absentia, to death; he is widely reviled.
Yemen’s voice has been largely silenced: almost 300 Yemeni reporters have been killed and 23 media outlets damaged since 2015. The most recent murder, award-winning RT and AFP photojournalist Nabil Hasan al-Quaety, was shot by unidentified gunmen leaving his home on June 4, 2020.
Coalition members want out: so why is it still attacking Yemen?
Pictures of starving children in Yemen’s ruins as well as the Houthis spirited defense finally shamed the Coalition’s western members. The British Parliament and the U.S. Congress both tried to extricate their governments’ involvement in the Coalition bypassing legislation that includes ending weapons sales to it.
The UAE announced in August, 2019, that it was finished with its role in the Coalition: it had what it wanted. Besides its 99-year lease on Socotra island, the UAE is expected to assume protectorate status of south Yemen if its STC party is successful in its secession attempts.
Saudi Arabia is in financial trouble and has long wanted a face-saving way to end its participation in the Coalition. It has not only paid $200 billion for weaponry and mercenaries, but it continues to cost Saudi Arabia over $53 million every day that it continues; it can no longer afford the bills and it has little to show for it. In May, 2020, it announced that it will no longer cover the Hadi government’s living expenses in Saudi Arabia.
Since the Coalition leaders want to end the war on Yemen, why is it continuing?
The answer came in award-winning journalist Vanessa Beeley’s March, 2020, interviews with Yemeni leaders. She was told the various ways in which the United Nations continues to betray the interests of Yemenis. While the UN praises Coalition leaders for pledged donations of $2 billion — at least 80% of which disappears or is skimmed off the top — the UN does not criticize the same leaders for their theft of $15 billion/year from Yemen’s oil and gas resources. The move of Yemen’s bank from Sana’a to Coalition-controlled Aden prevents Houthis from accessing bank services such as social assistance and paying for various kinds of aid.
The most stunning information came from Beeley’s interview with Yemen’s ambassador to Damascus, Naif Ahmed Al Qanes, who told her that that the initial coalition attack on Yemen started at dawn of March 25th, 2015 — the day that five Yemeni representatives, under the auspices of the UN and including Al Qanes, were to have met at noon to choose their new president. The timing of the attack ensured that the leaders of Yemen’s parties could not name a legitimate president or proceed with an independent government.
Al Qanes told her that only two Coalition leaders refuse to allow its war on Yemen to end: the United States and Israel, who will continue “until they get what they want”. (7)
The U.S. and Israel are forcing the Coalition to continue. To assign blame where it is due, the Coalition should now be referred to as the “US/Israel-led Coalition”.
Because of its hidden role in the Coalition, Israel has nothing to lose and everything to gain from the Coalition’s continuing attacks on Yemen. If Yemen’s independence movement is wiped out, Israel gains its base near Taizz as well as the silencing of a critical regional voice. In the meantime, Israel wants the supportive American military presence in the region.
Israel also has good reason to keep its role in Yemen hidden because it is responsible for the other “world humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. Israel is facing boycott, divestment and the threat of sanctions because of its treatment of the indigenous Palestinians: ethnic cleansing and apartheid in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and in occupied Gaza, genocidal treatment as well as the theft of major gas resources off Gaza’s coast. Israel has blockaded food, fuel, medicine and other humanitarian aid since September, 2006, for two million incarcerated on land that a UN report declared too contaminated to support life. Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gazans since June, 2006, have killed thousands and demolished Gaza’s infrastructure.
Is Trump’s defiance of Congress for Israel’s agenda treasonous?
Trump won the presidency on a popular platform that included extricating the US from Middle East wars, and Congress has repeatedly passed legislation to end the American role in the Coalition. It cannot be clearer that Americans want to end the U.S. role in Yemen.
Congress has the right and the obligation to check the executive powers of the President when he oversteps them. President Trump appeared to overstep those rights when he fired the State Department Inspector General Steve Linick when he was about to publish a report criticizing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo‘s “emergency” lie to circumvent Congress’s ban on selling arms to the Coalition. Congress caught the Government sneaking further arms sales to the Coalition in June, 2020. Trump is defying Congress and the American public to satisfy Israel’s demand that the war on Yemen continue until the Houthis are defeated and Yemen has a puppet government.
Americans have been led to believe that the US and Israel share identical interests: they don’t. President Trump’s accommodation with Israel’s demand is not only destroying an innocent people fighting for independence, but it is damaging the Constitutional underpinnings of the American government.
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Karin Brothers is a freelance journalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
“We are slipping back from the age of reason into the mire of mystery, into a world of gods and devils, ghouls and angels. The difference this time is that we have chosen ignorance over knowledge, vapidity over insight, folly over realism. Consequently, we only have ourselves to blame when the rich and powerful take advantage of us.” – Andrew Davenport
Introduction
Why do we need to talk about Romanticism? What is Romanticism? And how does it affect us in the 21st century? The fact is that we are so immersed in Romanticism now that we cannot see the proverbial wood for the haunted-looking trees. Romanticism has so saturated our culture that we need to stand back and remind ourselves what it is, and examine how it has seeped into our thinking processes to the extent that we are not even aware of its presence anymore. Or why this is a problem. The Romanticist influence of intense emotion makes up a large part of modern culture, for example, in much pop music, cinema, TV and literature, e.g. genres such as Superheroes, Fantasy, Horror, Magical realism, Saga, Westerns. I will look at the origins of Romanticism, and its negative influence on culture and politics. I will show how Enlightenment ideas originally emerged in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Church and led to the formation of a working class ideology and culture of resistance.
Romanticism and the modern world
“The whole exuberance, anarchy and violence of modern art … its unrestrained, unsparing exhibitionism, is derived from [Romanticism]. And this subjective, egocentric attitude has become so much a matter of course for us … that we find it impossible to reproduce even an abstract train of thought without talking about our own feelings.” Arnold Hauser
Romanticism arose out of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century as a reaction to what was perceived as a rationalisation of life to the point of being anti-nature. The Romantics were against the Industrial Revolution, universalism and empiricism, emphasising instead heroic individualists and artists, and the individual imagination as a critical authority rather than classical ideals.
The Enlightenment itself had developed from the earlier Renaissance with a renewed interest in the classical traditions and ideals of harmony, symmetry, and order based on reason and science. On a political level the Enlightenment promoted republicanism in opposition to monarchy which ultimately led to the French revolution.
The worried conservatives of the time reacted to the ideas of the Enlightenment and reason with a philosophy which was based on religious ideas and glorified the past (especially Medieval times and the ‘Golden Age’) – times when things were not so threatening to elites. This philosophy became known as Romanticism and emphasised medieval ideas and society over the new ideas of democracy, capitalism and science.
Romanticism originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1890. It was initially marked by innovations in both content and literary style and by a preoccupation with the subconscious, the mystical, and the supernatural. This period was followed by the development of cultural nationalism and a new attention to national origins, an interest in native folklore, folk ballads and poetry, folk dance and music, and even previously ignored medieval and Renaissance works.
The Romantic movement “emphasized intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe—especially that experienced in confronting the new aesthetic categories of the sublimity and beauty of nature.” The importance of the medieval lay in the pre-capitalist significance of its individual crafts and tradesmen, as well as its feudal peasants and serfs.
Thus Romanticism was a reaction to the birth of the modern world: urbanisation, secularisation, industrialisation, and consumerism. Romanticism emphasised intense emotion and feelings which over the centuries came to be seen as one of its most important characteristics, in opposition to ‘cold’, ‘unfeeling’ Enlightenment rationalism.
Origins of Enlightenment emotion
“Whence this secret Chain between each Person and Mankind? How is my Interest connected with the most distant Parts of it?” – Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746)
However, this ‘cold’, ‘unfeeling’ scenario is actually very far from the truth. In fact, the Enlightenment itself had its origins in emotion. Enlightenment philosophers of the eighteenth century tried to create a philosophy of feeling that would allow them to solve the problem of the injustice in the unfeeling world they saw all around them.
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671 – 1713) believed that all human beings had a ‘natural affection’ or natural sociability which bound them together, Francis Hutcheson (1694 – 1746) wrote that “All Men have the same Affections and Senses”, while David Hume (1711 – 1776) believed that human beings extend their “imaginative identification with the feelings of others” when it is required. Similarly, Adam Smith (1723 – 1790), the writer of Wealth of Nations, believed in the power of the imagination to inform us and help us understand the suffering of others. [1]
Image on the right: Portrait of Denis Diderot (1713-1784), by Louis-Michel van Loo, 1767
For the Enlightenment philosophers the relationship between feeling and reason was of absolute importance. To develop ideas that would progress society for the better, a sense of morality was essential. Denis Diderot (1713–1784) a prominent French philosopher of the Enlightenment in France, for example, had strong views on the importance of the passions. As Henry Martyn Lloyd writes:
“Diderot did believe in the utility of reason in the pursuit of truth – but he had an acute enthusiasm for the passions, particularly when it came to morality and aesthetics. With many of the key figures in the Scottish Enlightenment, such as David Hume, he believed that morality was grounded in sense-experience. Ethical judgment was closely aligned with, even indistinguishable from, aesthetic judgments, he claimed. We judge the beauty of a painting, a landscape or our lover’s face just as we judge the morality of a character in a novel, a play or our own lives – that is, we judge the good and the beautiful directly and without the need of reason. For Diderot, then, eliminating the passions could produce only an abomination. A person without the ability to be affected, either because of the absence of passions or the absence of senses, would be morally monstrous.”
Moreover, to remove the passions from science would lead to inhuman approaches and methods that would divert and alienate science from its ultimate goal of serving humanity, as Lloyd writes:
“That the Enlightenment celebrated sensibility and feeling didn’t entail a rejection of science, however. Quite the opposite: the most sensitive individual – the person with the greatest sensibility – was considered to be the most acute observer of nature. The archetypical example here was a doctor, attuned to the bodily rhythms of patients and their particular symptoms. Instead, it was the speculative system-builder who was the enemy of scientific progress – the Cartesian physician who saw the body as a mere machine, or those who learned medicine by reading Aristotle but not by observing the ill. So the philosophical suspicion of reason was not a rejection of rationality per se; it was only a rejection of reason in isolation from the senses, and alienated from the impassioned body.”
Michael L. Frazer describes the importance of Enlightenment justice and sympathy in his book The Enlightenment of Sympathy. He writes:
“Reflective sentimentalists recognize our commitment to justice as an outgrowth of our sympathy for others. After our sympathetic sentiments undergo reflective self-correction, the sympathy that emerges for all those who suffer injustice poses no insult to those for whom it is felt. We do not see their suffering as mere pain to be soothed away when and if we happen to share it. Instead under Hume’s account, we condemn injustice as a violation of rules that are vitally important to us all. And under Smith’s account, we condemn the sufferings of the victims of injustice as injustice because we sympathetically share the resentment that they feel toward their oppressors, endorsing such feelings as warranted and acknowledging those who feel them deserve better treatment.” [2]
Cooper, Hume and Smith were living in times, not only devoid of empathy, but also even of basic sympathy. Robert C. Solomon writes of society then in A Passion for Justice: “There have always been the very rich. And of course there have always been the very poor. But even as late as the civilized and sentimental eighteenth century, this disparity was not yet a cause for public embarrassment or a cry of injustice. […] Poverty was considered just one more “act of God,” impervious to any solution except mollification through individual charity and government poorhouses to keep the poor off the streets and away from crime.” [3]
Enlightenment emotion eventually gave rise to social trends that emphasised humanism and the heightened value of human life. These trends had their complement in art, creating what became known as the ‘sentimental novel’. While today sentimentalism evokes maudlin self-pity, in the eighteenth century it was revolutionary as sentimental literature
“focused on weaker members of society, such as orphans and condemned criminals, and allowed readers to identify and sympathize with them. This translated to growing sentimentalism within society, and led to social movements calling for change, such as the abolition of the death penalty and of slavery. Instead of the death penalty, popular sentiment called for the rehabilitation of criminals, rather than harsh punishment. Frederick Douglass himself was inspired to stand against his own bondage and slavery in general in his famous Narrative by the speech by the sentimentalist playwright Sheridan in The Columbian Orator detailing a fictional dialogue between a master and slave.”
As Solomon notes:
“What distinguishes us not just from animals but from machines are our passions, and foremost among them our passion for justice. Justice is, in a word, that set of passions, not mere theories, that bind us and make us part of the social world.”[4]
Writers such as the Scottish author Henry Mackenzie tried to highlight many things that he perceived were wrong during his time and showed how many of the wrongs were ultimately caused by the established pillars of society. In his book, The Man of Feeling, he has no qualms about showing how these pillars of society had, for example, abused an intelligent woman causing her to become a prostitute (p44/45), destroyed a school because it blocked the landowner’s view (p72), and hired assassins to remove a man who had refused to hand over his wife (p91), etc. [5] Mackenzie shows again and again the injustices of British military and colonial policy, and who is responsible. As Marilyn Butler writes:
“Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771), is pointedly topical when it criticizes the consequences of a war policy – press-ganging, conscription, the military punishment of flogging, and inadequate pensions – and when, like the same author’s Julia de Roubigné (1777), it attacks the principle of colonialism. An interest in such causes was the logical outcome of art’s frequently reiterated dedication to humanity. It was a period when the cast of villains was drawn from the proud men representing authority, downwards from the House of Lords, the bench of bishops, judges, local magistrates, attorneys, to the stern father; when readers were invited to empathize with life’s victims”. [6]
It took a long time for the ideas of sentimentalism (emotions against injustice) to filter down to the Realism (using facts to depict ordinary everyday experiences) that Dickens used in the nineteenth century to finally evoke some kind of empathy for people impoverished by society. As Solomon notes: “It wasn’t until the late nineteenth century that Dickens shook the conscience of his compatriots with his riveting descriptions of poverty and cruelty in contemporary London, […] that the problem of poverty and resistance to its solutions [e.g. poorhouses] has become the central question of justice.” [7]
Dickens’s Dream by Robert William Buss, portraying Dickens at his desk at Gads Hill Place surrounded by many of his characters
European literary sentimentalism arose during the Enlightenment, and partly as a response to sentimentalism in philosophy. In England the period 1750–1798 became known as the Age of Sensibility as the sentimental novel or the novel of sensibility became popular.
Romanticist emotionalism: the opposite of Enlightenment sentimentalism
“Classicism is health, romanticism is sickness.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)
However, sensibility in an Enlightenment sense was very different from the Romanticist understanding, as Butler notes: “It is, in fact, in a key respect almost the opposite of Romanticism. Sensibility, like its near-synonym sentiment, echoes eighteenth-century philosophy and psychology in focusing upon the mental process by which impressions are received by the senses. But the sentimental writer’s interest in how the mind works and in how people behave is very different from the Romantic writer’s inwardness.” [8]
She writes that ‘neither Neoclassical theory nor contemporary practice in various styles and genres put much emphasis on the individuality of the artist’ (p29). This is a far cry from the apolitical, inward-looking, self-centered Romantic artists who saw themselves outside of a society that they had little interest in participating in, let alone changing for the better. Butler again:
“Romantic rebelliousness is more outrageous and total, the individual rejecting not just his own society but the very principle of living in society – which means that the Romantic and post Romantic often dismisses political activity of any kind, as external to the self, literal and commonplace. Since it is relatively uncommon for the eighteenth-century artist to complain directly on his own behalf, he seldom achieves such emotional force as his nineteenth-century successor. He is, on the other hand, much more inclined than the Romantic to express sympathy for certain, well-defined social groups. Humanitarian feeling for the real-life underdog is a strong vein from the 1760s to the 1790s, often echoing real-life campaigns for reform.” [9]
This movement over time towards the Romanticist inward-looking conception of emotion and feelings has had knock-on negative effects on society’s ability to defend itself from elite oppression (through cultural styles of self-absorption, escapism and diversion rather than exposure, criticism and resistance), and retarded ‘art’s frequently reiterated dedication to humanity’. Solomon describes this process:
“What has come about in the past two centuries or so is the dramatic rise of what Robert Stone has called “affective individualism,” this new celebration of the passions and other feelings of the autonomous individual. Yet, ironically, it is an attitude that has become even further removed from our sense of justice during that same period of time. We seem to have more inner feelings and pay more attention to them, but we seem to have fewer feelings about others and the state of the world and pay less attention to them.”[10]
Thus while Enlightenment sentimentalism “depicted individuals as social beings whose sensibility was stimulated and defined by their interactions with others”, the Romantic movement that followed it “tended to privilege individual autonomy and subjectivity over sociability”.
Romanticism as a philosophical movement of the nineteenth century had a profound influence on culture which can still be seen right up to today. Its main characteristics are the emphasis on the personal, dramatic contrasts, emotional excess, a focus on the nocturnal, the ghostly and the frightful, spontaneity, and extreme subjectivism. Romanticism in culture implies a turning inward and encourages introspection. Romantic literature put more emphasis on themes of isolation, loneliness, tragic events and the power of nature. A heroic view of history and myth became the basis of much Romantic literature.
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, painted by Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier
It was in Germany that Romanticism took shape as a political ideology. The German Romanticists felt threatened by the French Revolution and were forced to move from inward-looking ideas to formulate conservative political answers needed to oppose Enlightenment and republican ideals. According to Eugene N. Anderson:
“In the succeeding years the danger became acutely political, and the German Romanticists were compelled to subordinate their preoccupation with the widening of art and the enrichment of individual experience to social and political ideas and actions, particularly as formulated in nationalism and conservatism. These three cultural ideals, Romanticism, nationalism and conservatism, shared qualities evoked by the common situation of crisis. […] The Germans had to maintain against rationalism and the French a culture which in its institutional structure was that of the ancien régime. German Romanticism accepted it, wished to reform it somewhat, idealized it, and defended the idealization as the supreme culture of the world. This was the German counter-revolution. […] They endowed their culture with universal validity and asserted that it enjoyed the devotion of nature and God, that if it were destroyed humanity would be vitally wounded.” [11]
The reactionary nature of German Romanticism was demonstrated in its hierarchical views of society, its chauvinist nationalism, and extreme conservatism which would have serious implications for future generations of the German populace. As Anderson writes:
“The low estimate of rationalism and the exaltation of custom, tradition, and feeling, the conception of society as an alliance of the generations, the belief in the abiding character of ideas as contrasted with the ephemeral nature of concepts, these and many other romantic views bolstered up the existing culture. The concern with relations led the Romanticists to praise the hierarchical order of the Ständestaat and to regard everything and every-one as an intermediary. The acceptance of the fact of inequality harmonized with that of the ideals of service, duty, faithfulness, order, sacrifice – admirable traits for serf or subject or soldier.” [12]
Anderson also believes that the Romanticists remained swinging “between individual freedom and initiative and group compulsion and authority” and as such could not have brought in fundamental reforms, because: “By reverencing tradition, they preserved the power of the backward-looking royalty and aristocracy.” [13]
Thus Romanticist self-centredness in philosophy translated into the most conservative forms for maintaining the status quo in politics. Individual freedoms were matched by authoritarianism for the masses. The individual was king alright, as long as you weren’t a ‘serf or subject or soldier’.
Beyond morality: Working Class perspectives on Reason and Sentiment
“We have never intended to enlighten shoemakers and servants—this is up to apostles.” – Voltaire (1694–1778)
Around the same time of the early period of Romanticism, Karl Heinrich Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) were born. They grew up in a very different Germany. Capitalism had become established and was creating an even more polarised society between extremely rich and extremely poor as factory owners pushed their workers to their physical limits. On his way to work at his father’s firm in Manchester, Engels called into the offices of a paper he wrote for in Cologne and met the editor, Marx, for the first time in 1842. They formed a friendship based on shared values and beliefs regarding the working class and socialist ideas. They saw a connection between the earlier Enlightenment ideas and socialism. For example, as Engels writes in Anti-Duhring: “in its theoretical form, modern socialism originally appears ostensibly as a more logical extension of the principles laid down by the great French philosophers of the eighteenth century. Like every new theory, modern socialism had, at first, to connect itself with the intellectual stock-in-trade ready to its hand, however deeply its roots lay in economic facts.” [14]
However, once they had connected themselves to the Enlightenment they soon saw the limitations of both Enlightenment concepts of reason and sentiment. They realised that the new bourgeois rulers would be limited by their conceptions of property, justice, and equality, which basically meant they only applied universality to themselves and their own property. The new rulers were buoyed up by the victory of their ideological fight over the aristocracy but incapable of applying the same ideas to the masses who helped them to victory. Thus Marx and Engels viewed the struggle for reason as important but limited to the new ruling class’ world view, just like the aristocracy before them:
“Every form of society and government then existing, every old traditional notion was flung into the lumber room as irrational; the world had hitherto allowed itself to be led solely by prejudices; everything in the past deserved only pity and contempt. Now, for the first time, appeared the light of day, henceforth superstition, injustice, privilege, oppression, were to be superseded by eternal truth, eternal Right, equality based on nature and the inalienable rights of man. We know today that this kingdom of reason was nothing more than the idealised kingdom of the bourgeoisie; that this eternal Right found its realisation in bourgeois justice; that this equality reduced itself to bourgeois equality before the law; that bourgeois property was proclaimed as one of the essential rights of man; and that the government of reason, the Contrat Social of Rousseau, came into being, and only could come into being, as a democratic bourgeois republic. The great thinkers of the eighteenth century could, no more than their predecessors, go beyond the limits imposed upon them by their epoch.” [15]
As for sentiment, they were well aware of the Realist critical nature of modern writers (the Realist movement rejected Romanticism) and indeed praised them (e.g. G. Sand, E. Sue, and Boz [Dickens]), but limited themselves to offering some advice. While recognising that progressive literature had a mainly middle class audience (and were happy enough with these authors just ‘shaking the optimism’ of their audience), they knew that this was not by any means a socialist literature and were well aware of sentimentalist limitations. Engels states:
“I think however that the purpose must become manifest from the situation and the action themselves without being expressly pointed out and that the author does not have to serve the reader on a platter — the future historical resolution of the social conflicts which he describes. To this must be added that under our conditions novels are mostly addressed to readers from bourgeois circles, i.e., circles which are not directly ours. Thus the socialist problem novel in my opinion fully carries out its mission if by a faithful portrayal of the real conditions it dispels the dominant conventional illusions concerning them, shakes the optimism of the bourgeois world, and inevitably instills doubt as to the eternal validity of that which exists, without itself offering a direct solution of the problem involved, even without at times ostensibly taking sides.” [16]
Sentimental literature focused on individual misfortune, and constant repetition of such themes certainly appeared to universalise such suffering, so that, as David Denby writes, “In this weeping mother, this suffering father, we are to read also the sufferings of humanity.” Thus, “individualism and universalism appear to be two sides of the same coin”. Sentimental literature gives the reader the ‘spectacle of misfortune’ and a representation of the reaction of a ‘sentient and sensible observer’ who tries to help with ‘alms, sympathy or indeed narrative intervention.’ Furthermore, the literature of sentiment “mirrors eighteenth-century theories of sympathy, in which a spontaneous reaction to the spectacle of suffering is gradually developed, by a process of generalisation and combination of ideas, into broader and more abstract notions of humanity, benevolence, justice.” [17]
Workers in the fuse factory, Woolwich Arsenal late 1800s
This brings us then to the problem of interpretation, as Denby suggests: “should the sentimental portrayal of the poor and of action in their favour be read as an attempt to give a voice to the voiceless, to include the hitherto excluded? Or, alternatively, is the sentimentalisation of the poor to be interpreted, more cynically, as a discursive strategy through which the enlightened bourgeoisie states its commitment to values of humanity and justice, and thereby seeks to strengthen its claims to universal domination?” [18]
While such ideas of giving a ‘voice to the voiceless’ was a far cry from monarchical times, and claims of commitment to humanity and justice were laudable, the concept of universality had a fundamental flaw: “The universal claims of the French Revolution are opposed to a [aristocratic] society based on distinctions of birth: it is in the name of humanity that the Revolution challenges the established order. But for Sartre this does not change the fact that the universal is a myth, an ideological construct, and an obfuscation, since it articulates a notion of man which eliminates social conflict and disguises the interests of a class behind a facade of universal reference.” [19]
Striking teamsters battling police on the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 1934
Thus for Marx and Engels defining concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, that is, a universal moral theory, could not be achieved while society is divided into classes:
“We maintain […] that all moral theories have been hitherto the product, in the last analysis, of the economic conditions of society obtaining at the time. And as society has hitherto moved in class antagonisms, morality has always been class morality; it has either justified the domination and the interests of the ruling class, or ever since the oppressed class became powerful enough, it has represented its indignation against this domination and the future interests of the oppressed. That in this process there has on the whole been progress in morality, as in all other branches of human knowledge, no one will doubt. But we have not yet passed beyond class morality. A really human morality which stands above class antagonisms and above any recollection of them becomes possible only at a stage of society which has not only overcome class antagonisms but has even forgotten them in practical life.”
Marx and Engels worked towards that morality through their activism with working class movements and culture. Their critical writing also formed an essential part of working class ideology and culture of resistance and has remained influential in resistance movements the world over.
The culture of resistance today still uses realism, documentary, and histories of oppression to show the harsh realities of globalisation. Like during the Enlightenment, empathy for those suffering injustice forms its foundation. And unlike Romanticism, reason and science are deemed to be important tools in its struggle for social emancipation and progress.
Conclusion: Enlightenment and Romanticism today
“When we are asked now: are we now living into an enlightened age? Then the answer is: No, but in an age of Enlightenment.”– Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
There is no doubt that the influence of Romanticism has become ever stronger in twentieth and twenty-first century culture. Romanticist-influenced TV shows on Netflix are watched world wide. Love songs dominate the pop industry and superheroes are now the mainstay of cinema. Even Romanticist nationalism is making a comeback. Now and then calls for a new Enlightenment are heard, but like the original advocates of the Enlightenment, they are limited to the conservative world view of those making the call and whose view of the Enlightenment could be compared to a form of Third Way politics, that is, they avoid the issue of class conflict.
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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Notes
[1] Anthony Pagden, The Enlightenment: And Why it Still Matters (Oxford Uni Press, 2015) p72/73
[2] Michael L Frazer, The Enlightenment of Sympathy: Justice and the Moral Sentiments in the Eighteenth Century and Today (Oxford Uni Press, 2010)p126/127
[3] Robert C Solomon, A Passion for Justice: Emotions and the Origins of the Social Contract (Rowman and Littlefield Pub., 1995) p13
[4] Robert C Solomon, A Passion for Justice: Emotions and the Origins of the Social Contract (Rowman and Littlefield Pub., 1995) p45
[5] Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling ( Oxford World’s Classics Oxford Uni Press, 2009)
[6] Marilyn Butler, Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries: English Literature and its Background 1760-1830(Oxford Uni Press, 1981) p31
[7] Robert C Solomon, A Passion for Justice: Emotions and the Origins of the Social Contract (Rowman and Littlefield Pub., 1995) p13
[8] Marilyn Butler, Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries: English Literature and its Background 1760-1830(Oxford Uni Press, 1981) p29/30
[9] Marilyn Butler, Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries: English Literature and its Background 1760-1830(Oxford Uni Press, 1981) p30/31
[10] Robert C Solomon, A Passion for Justice: Emotions and the Origins of the Social Contract (Rowman and Littlefield Pub., 1995) p37
[11] Eugene N. Anderson, German Romanticism as an Ideology of Cultural Crisis, p301-312. Source: Journal of the History of Ideas , Jun., 1941, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Jun., 1941), pp. 301-317. Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/2707133
[12] Eugene N. Anderson, German Romanticism as an Ideology of Cultural Crisis, p313/314 Source: Journal of the History of Ideas , Jun., 1941, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Jun., 1941), pp. 301-317. Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/2707133
[13] Eugene N. Anderson, German Romanticism as an Ideology of Cultural Crisis. p316. Source: Journal of the History of Ideas , Jun., 1941, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Jun., 1941), pp. 301-317. Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/2707133
[14] Marx and Engels, On Literature and Art (Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1978) p270
[15] Marx and Engels, On Literature and Art (Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1978) p271
[16] Marx and Engels, On Literature and Art (Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1978) p88
[17] David J. Denby, Individual, universal, national: a French revolutionary trilogy? (Studies of Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 335, Voltaire Foundation, 1996) p28/29
[18] David J. Denby Sentimental Narrative and the Social Order in France, 1760–1820 (Cambridge Studies in French, 1994) p117
[19] David J. Denby, Individual, universal, national: a French revolutionary trilogy? (Studies of Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 335, Voltaire Foundation, 1996) p27
Featured image: Satire on Romantic Suicide (1839) by Leonardo Alenza y Nieto (1807–1845)
Facebook has removed a video posted by Breitbart News earlier today, which was the top-performing Facebook post in the world Monday afternoon, of a press conference in D.C. held by the group America’s Frontline Doctors and organized and sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots.
The press conference featured Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) and frontline doctors sharing their views and opinions on coronavirus and the medical response to the pandemic. YouTube (which is owned by Google) and Twitter subsequently removed footage of the press conference as well.
The video accumulated over 17 million views during the eight hours it was hosted on Facebook, with over 185,000 concurrent viewers.
The livestream had accumulated over 17 million views by the time of its censorship by Facebook.
In terms of viral velocity, the post was beating content from many other prominent accounts on Facebook today, including Hillary Clinton, Rev. Franklin Graham, and Kim Kardashian.
Over 185,000 viewers were concurrently watching the stream when it aired live Monday afternoon.
The event, hosted by the organization America’s Frontline Doctors, a group founded by Dr. Simone Gold, a board-certified physician and attorney, and made up of medical doctors, came together to address what the group calls a “massive disinformation campaign” about the coronavirus. Norman also spoke at the event.
“If Americans continue to let so-called experts and media personalities make their decisions, the great American experiment of a Constitutional Republic with Representative Democracy, will cease,” reads the event’s information page.
The event was organized and sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots.
“We’ve removed this video for sharing false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19,” a Facebook company spokesman, Andy Stone, told Breitbart News. The company did not specify what portion of the video it ruled to be “false information,” who it consulted to make that ruling, and on what basis it was made.
Stone replied to New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose on Twitter regarding the video:
Interestingly, the fact that a news org posted this video may be why it's still up on FB. (Breitbart could claim it was just covering a newsworthy press conference, not promoting the views of the doctors.)
Stone then added that the platform would direct users who had interacted with the post to information on “myths debunked by the WHO.”
As Mark recently wrote about newsworthiness: "A handful of times a year, we leave up content that would otherwise violate our policies if the public interest value outweighs the risk of harm." It being from a publisher has zero to do with it."
Facebook’s decision to censor the livestream was quickly followed by YouTube, the Google-owned video-sharing platform. The video had over 80,000 views on YouTube prior to its removal.
Following Facebook and YouTube’s removal of the video, Twitter followed suit, removing Breitbart News’s Periscope livestream of the press conference. Jack Dorsey’s platform also then limited the Breitbart News official account, indicating that tweets containing links to multiple stories about the press conference violate the platform’s COVID-19 policies.
Twitter limits Breitbart News account
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Two million doses of HCQ are being sent by the Trump Administration to Brazil to help medical workers there safeguard themselves against the spread of the virus. But at the same time the FDA continues to block Americans’ access to this medication.
More than 150 million doses have been donated to the strategic national stockpile controlled by the federal government, but unjustified FDA restrictions limit its use to only hospitalized patients for whom a clinical study is unavailable. Hospitals are even returning HCQ to the stockpile because they are not able to use it effectively.
“It is shocking that medical workers in Brazil will have access to HCQ as a prophylaxis while Americans are blocked by the FDA from accessing the same medication for the same use,” observes AAPS Executive Director Jane Orient, M.D.
“There is no legal or factual basis for the FDA to limit use of HCQ,” states AAPS General Counsel Andrew Schlafly. “The FDA’s restrictions on HCQ for Americans are completely indefensible in court.”
Many foreign nations, including China, India, South Korea, Costa Rica, United Arab Emirates, and Turkey, use HCQ for early treatment and prevention of COVID-19, AAPS points out.
“Entrenched, politically biased officials at the FDA should not be allowed to interfere with Americans’ right to access medication donated to the federal government for public use,” Schlafly says. “By preventing Americans’ use of HCQ as a prophylaxis, the FDA is infringing on First Amendment rights to attend religious services or participate in political events such as political conventions, town halls, and rallies in an important election year.”
“FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn states that the FDA does not interfere with physicians’ ability to prescribe HCQ, and yet at the same time the FDA denies access by millions of Americans to 150 million doses of it in the national stockpile,” Schlafly adds. “This irrational hoarding by government is an abuse of power.”
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The American people are under attack, the country is under attack, and democracy is under attack. At present, the enemy is conducting a three-pronged assault on the presidency the objective of which is to remove the existing administration and install their own sock-puppet replacement. This has been the goal from the very beginning although the great swirl of events has confused many as to the true nature of what is actually taking place. What we are seeing is a dirty tricks campaign (Russiagate) inflated into a full-blown, scorched earth, winner-take-all assault on the presidency.
Ostensibly, the target of the attack is Donald Trump, the brash New York real estate tycoon who was swept into office in November 2016. The real target, however, is the office itself, the universally-recognized “seat of power” which the enemy believes should remain under the control of the people who own the country. These are the ruthless oligarchs whose octopus-like tentacles are wrapped around Wall Street, the MSM, the courts, the Congress, the Democratic Party, and powerful elements within the National Security State. They own it all and they have no intention of putting it up for grabs by honoring the results of an arbitrary and scattershot election that failed to produce the outcome they sought.
Once again, this isn’t about Trump, it’s about the unscrupulous people behind the scenes who have secretly worked the levers of power for the last 4 years in order to roll back the 2016 elections and install the candidate of their own choice. If the new revelations about Obama’s involvement in the spying operation aimed at removing Trump from office have not yet convinced you that senior-level officials (in the administration, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the DOJ, the DNC and MSM) were all actively engaged in a coup on the elected government, then you should probably stop reading this article now and put your head back in the sand where it belongs. This is for the people who know how to pick through the disinformation and figure out, in broad terms, what is actually going on. And what’s going on is a cold-blooded, take-no-prisoners power struggle, pure and simple.
The Confluence of Destabilizing Crises; Coincidence or Calculated Treachery?
At present, the country is beset by multiple crises: A public health crisis (Covid-19), an economic crisis (Ballooning unemployment and impending Depression), and widespread social unrest. All of these crises are real but–at the same time– all of them are clearly being manipulated for political advantage. The presidency is just one of many targets in this vast operation, in fact, the entire society is being leveled and made-over before our very eyes. Every institution down to public education and the nature of work itself is being challenged, revised and callously savaged. Our history, our icons, our heroes, our customs and our traditions are all under fire. We’re no longer one people sharing a mutual culture, background and ideology, but contemptable slave traders and racists undeserving of basic security, undeserving of respect, and undeserving of even our own account of how the country was formed, who assisted in its creation, and upon which principles the state was built. All of that is now being wiped clean, erased by faceless group of scheming elites who operate behind the smokescreen of media propaganda, political chicanery and, now, a “racial justice” movement.
Do you believe as I do that most of these crises will miraculously vanish just hours if not days after the November balloting? Suddenly a life-saving vaccine will appear from the ether, the legions of BLM activists will decide to pack it in and go home, and the economy will magically rebound when the Dems take office promising another round of grueling austerity followed by lavish handouts to Wall Street. Is that too cynical or are our rulers really devious enough to concoct such a plan?
That question would be better put to the tens of thousands of victims of US barbarism around the world. They’re the ones who understand the lengths to which these mercenary puppet-masters will go to tighten their grip on power to ensure that US multinationals continue to rake in obscene profits. As Harold Pinter opined in 2005 in his Nobel acceptance speech:
“The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”
Only it’s not so witty when the weapons are turned on Americans themselves and we suddenly find our own tenuous existence in the globalist crosshairs. No one really expected that, but then, here we are.
Have you watched the escalating street violence in Seattle and Portland? Have you wondered why the police have stood down while black-hooded thugs destroy public property, topple monuments and launch attacks on police precinct headquarters? Have you wondered why the mayor and media continue to applaud the hooliganism and downplay the vast destruction to public and private property? Is this really about George Floyd, police brutality and racial justice or is this a premeditated insurrection executed by DNC shock troops aimed at destabilizing the country in order to get rid of Trump and usher in an authoritarian police-state?
Who is served by BLM-generated violence and destruction? Who benefits from Antifa? A comment by an anonymous reader at The Unz Review summed it up pretty well. He said:
“Antifa is supported by the State. FBI and CIA have long term contacts with them and they are allowed to operate as a street militia for Neoliberalism against people the State actually hates. The plan was to cause a civilian massacre to be used against Trump, so far that has not panned out.
It is a joke. Antifa could be rolled up in days if the State turned against them. Antifa operates with impunity on social media and chat servers because the FBI views them as friendlies. This could change if Antifa ever did anything against the System, but for now they are the attack dog of the Deep State.”
There’s no doubt that the government knows who these troublemakers are. There’s also no doubt that the riots and looting are part of a political agenda aimed at spreading chaos and racial violence far and wide in order to convince the weary public that the country is rapidly devolving into an ungovernable free-fire zone. Of course, the danger for the Democrats is that they might overshoot their goal and persuade voters that they’re stealthily spearheading the nation’s descent into mayhem. And that’s where the media comes in, it’s their job to shape the narrative by removing the Dems fingerprints from the murder weapon. So far, the strategy appears to be working.
In short, the widening social unrest is not a spontaneous eruption of pent-up indignation over the treatment of blacks in America. It’s part of a sinister political ploy to beat Trump and to discredit his mainly-white, working class supporters from the de-industrialized American heartland that have been pummeled by the Democrats immigration and free trade policies for the last 30 years, and who now represent the biggest obstacle to the globalist plan to reduce the economy to rubble, rewrite the nation’s history, and reassemble the state so that balanced budgets and the free movement of Capital are adopted as the government’s primary organizing principles. In other words, elites are prosecuting a war on America to pave the way to Capitalist Valhalla, the majestic temple of the insatiable Monopolists.
This also explains why the Dems are not emphasizing inclusion or assimilation in their cynical analysis of the BLM phenom. It’s because the Dems don’t want inclusion or assimilation, they want to use “identity” and “diversity” as truncheons to batter their nationalist opponents, that is, the working class people who used to vote Democrat but switched sides when they realized that the party would no longer give them even tables scraps for their support. Keep in mind, nationalism or patriotism (whatever you choose to call it.) is the arch enemy of globalism which envisions a borderless world in which multinationals dominate and Capital flows unobstructed to any potential source of profit or investment around the planet. A recent post by Paul Craig Roberts helps to clarify the conflict between “assimilation and diversity”. Here’s what he said:
“Multiculturalism might have worked in America if the emphasis had stayed on assimilation and had not been intentionally shifted to diversity.…It was the white liberals who destroyed the prospects of multiculturalism by teaching blacks to hate whites for oppressing them. And it was the global corporations that dismantled the ladders of upward mobility….
Multiculturalism can work if there are no strains and no animosities, but when strains and animosities are intentionally created, there is no prospect of successful multiculturalism. Antifa, Black Lives Matter, the white liberal media, and the white liberal Democrats and professors are furiously at work making certain that multiculturalism in America fails. This means, obviously, that the America that they hate will also fail.” (“White Liberals Have Destroyed the Prospects of US Multiculturalism”, Paul Craig Roberts)
He’s right, isn’t he? And he’s also right to suggest that the Democrats are fueling racial animosities. They’re not feeding these polarizing feelings because they intend to improve black lives through better education, universal health care, higher-paying jobs, or basic security. Oh no, in fact they won’t even talk about these things. It’s like they don’t even exist. Instead, BLM, Covid-19 and the sinking economy are being used to obliterate Trump’s prospects for victory and prepare the American people for the shocking economic reckoning that will take place soon afterwards. It’s all part of the Great Reset, an elitist scheme to restructure the economy so more wealth flows upward to the parasite class.
The Covid-19 Scamdemic is an even more vile component of the 3-pronged offensive. The “fairly mild” infection (that kills between 1 in every 200 to 1 in every 1,000) has been greatly exaggerated by the media to scare the public, undermine normal relations, prevent physical intimacies, and inflict maximum damage of the fragile psyches of millions of people worldwide. It’s a terror campaign aimed at isolating people so they become more fearful, more dependent, and more easily controlled by the monsters who concocted this pernicious psyops. Check out this excerpt from an article by Russ Bangs at the Off-Guardian:
“Western civilization, led by the US government and media, has embarked upon a campaign of mass psychological terrorism designed to cover for the collapsing economy, set up a new pretext for Wall Street’s ongoing plunder expedition, radically escalate the police state, deeply traumatize people into submission to total social conformity, and radically aggravate the anti-social, anti-human atomization of the people…..
So far, the people are submitting completely to a (Covid-19) terror campaign dedicated to the total eradication of whatever community was left in the world, and especially whatever community was starting to be rebuilt…Any kind of human relations, from personal friendship and romance to friendly social gatherings and clubs to social and cultural movements become impossible under such circumstances. This threatens to be the end of the very concept of shared humanity..…As Hannah Arendt said in The Origins of Totalitarianism:
‘It has frequently been observed that terror can rule absolutely only over people who are isolated against each other and that therefore one of the primary concerns of tyrannical government is to bring this isolation about. Isolation may be the beginning of terror; it certainly is its most fertile ground; it always is its result…. isolated people are powerless by definition.” (“The Ultimate Divide and Conquer“, The Off-Guardian)
Indeed, the goal of Covid conditioning is to create a population of frightened, compliant and powerless people willing to do whatever wretched task is asked of them for skimpy sweatshop wages. It’s all about money and power.
We believe that the American people and their institutions are under attack and that Covd-19, BLM, and the planned demolition of the economy are part of a 3-pronged offensive designed to splinter the country, rewrite its history, enslave its people, and set the stage for an alternate system in which the bulk of the nation’s wealth will be controlled by a handful of power-mad Mandarins who will stop at nothing to achieve their ambitions.
It will take a colossal effort to scupper the plan.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The book of hours on Julian Assange is now being written. But the scribes are far from original. Repeated rituals of administrative hearings that have no common purpose other than to string things out before the axe are being enacted. Of late, the man most commonly associated with WikiLeaks’ publication project cannot participate in any meaningful way, largely because of his frail health and the dangers posed to him by the coronavirus. Having already made an effort to attend court proceedings in person, Assange has come across as judicial exotica, freak show fodder for Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s harsh version of Judge Judy. He was refused an application to escape his glass commode when he could still attend in person, as permitting him to descend and consult his defence team in a court room would constitute a bail application of some risk. This reading by the judicial head was so innovative it even puzzled the prosecutors.
What we know to date is that restrictions and shackles on Assange’s case are the order of the day. Restricted processes that do nothing to enable him to see counsel and enable a good brief to be exercised are typical. Most of all, the ceremonial circus that we have come to expect of British justice in the menacing shadow of US intimidation has become gloomily extensive. On July 27, that circus was given yet another act, another limping performance. As before, the venue was the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London.
During the proceeding, Assange did appear via video link from Belmarsh Prison, albeit it an hour late, and only at the insistence of his legal team. The Guardian report on his presence reads like an account of a sporting engagement. “Wearing a beige sweater and a pink shirt, Assange eventually appeared from Belmarsh prison after an earlier attempt was aborted.”
Others were alarmed. During his call-over hearing, noted Martin Silk of the Australian Associated Press, “neither the Australian, nor his guards, were wearing face masks. I don’t understand the reason for that given we have to wear them inside shops.” This point was also made by Assange’s partner, Stella Moris: “Belmarsh hasn’t provided Julian with a face mask throughout this #covid crisis. The prison guards he interacts with don’t wear them either.” WikiLeaks supporter Juan Passarelli also felt that Assange “was having trouble following the proceedings due to the Judge and lawyers not speaking loud enough and into the microphones.”
Arrangements for the hearing for observers proved characteristically sloppy. Freelance journalist Stefania Maurizi was unimpressed by being on the phone for two hours during which she “couldn’t understand more than 20 percent of what has been discussed.” She was adamant that “UK authorities don’t care at all about international reporters covering” the Assange proceedings. “Dial in system is, as usual,” agreed Passarelli, “a shambles!”
The topic of discussion during this administrative hearing was what was announced by the US Department of Justice on June 24, namely the second superseding indictment. That document proved to be a naked exercise of political overreach, adding no further charges to the already heavy complement of eighteen, seventeen of which centre on the US Espionage Act. The scope of interest, however, was widened, notably on the issue of “hacking” and conferencing. Assange is painted as devilish recruiter and saboteur of the international secret order, a man of the conference circuit keen to open up clandestine governments and make various reasons for doing so. “According to the charging document, Assange and others at WikiLeaks recruited and agreed with hackers to commit computer intrusions to benefit WikiLeaks.”
Edward Fitzgerald QC, in representing Assange, fulfilled his norm, submitting that the recently revised document did little to inspire confidence in the nature of clarified justice. “We are concerned about a fresh request being made at this stage with the potential consequences of derailing proceedings and that the US attorney-general is doing this for political reasons.” Fitzgerald reminded the court that US President Donald Trump had “described the defence case as a plot by the Democrats.”
This should have been obvious, but Baraitser’s court would have none of it. To admit at this point that Assange is wanted for political reasons would make it that much harder to extradite him to the United States, given that bar noted in the US-UK Extradition Treaty. Whilst it was good of Fitzgerald to make this point, he should know by now that his audience is resolutely constipated and indifferent to such prodding. Assange is to be given the sharpest, rather than the most balanced, of hearings. Accordingly, Baraitser insisted that Fitzgerald “reserve his comments” – she, in the true tradition of such processes, had not been supplied, as yet, with the US indictment. This made the entire presence of all the parties at the Westminster Magistrates’ not merely meaningless but decidedly absurd.
Assange’s defence team could draw some cold comfort from Baraitser’s comments that July 27 was the deadline for any further evidence to be adduced by the prosecution before the September extradition hearing. One exception was permitted: psychiatric reports.
The current chief publisher of WikiLeaks Kristinn Hrafnsson had a few choice words for the prosecutors of Wikileaks. “All the alleged events have been known to the prosecution for years. It contains no new charges. What’s really happening here is that despite its decade start the prosecution are still unable to build a coherent case.” The scrapping of the previous indictments suggested that they were “flagrantly disregarding proper process.”
Assange is facing one of the most disturbing confections put together by any state that claims itself to be free. Should this stratagem work, the publisher will find himself facing the legal proceedings of a country that boasts of having a free press amendment but is keen on excluding him from it. What is even more troubling is the desire to expand the tent of culpability, one that will include press outlets and those who disseminate classified information.
To the next circus instalment we go: a final call-over hearing in Westminster Magistrates’ Court on August 14, then the September 7 extradition hearing, to be held at the Central Criminal Court most of us know as the Old Bailey. Will justice prove blind, or merely blinded?
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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]
Fast advances in brain science, supported by government’s fundings of billions of dollars and euros, resulted since the begining of the 21st century in the birth of a new branch of science – neuroetics. In publications on this topic are engaged scientists, who are familiar with the advances in brain research and realize the risks which those advances mean for the life of society. James Girodano, a Georgetown University professor and the employee of the American research agency for advanced military technologies DARPA proposed in the article in the magazine Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that the U.S. Government should monitor brain research around the world in order to prevent the development of neuroweapons.
As well he stated that the U.S. Government and its allies should “support efforts to improve the Biological Weapons Convention to account for neuroweapons threats“. At the end of the article he admitted that he is not expressing the opinions of the DARPA agency or American Department of Defense. However as an employee of DARPA he must have been aware that the CIA and different U.S. Defense agencies are working on this type of weapon since the 1950’s of the past century (see this). As an employee of the American state he could not talk about it in order to not disclose U.S. National security information. He only wrote that the governments are hiding their research by “state-secret classifications“.
Dr. Sarah Lisanby from the National Institute of Mental Health in Maryland can produce movements in different parts of the human body, which the subjects of her experimentation can not suppress, by magnetic stimulation of their brain (see this). She only needs to send frequencies of magnetic pulses corresponding to frequencies of neuronal activities in those brain locations which control body movements, and it does not depend on the subject’s free will any more, what movement his or her body parts will perform. There are several technologies, which can be used to control the activity of the human brain (see this), behavior and thoughts even at a distance, but they remain classified, because the governments are not willing to admit to their citizens that they are in possesion of such technologies. The reason is that they are aware that their citizens would demand their immediate ban.
The only government official who admitted the existence of those weapons was Polish minister of defense Antoni Macierewicz in 2016. When after several months the Polish journalists asked the Polish Department of Defense, whether there was established the investigation commission, which was supposed to investigate electromagnetic attacks on Polish citizens, as was promised by Antoni Macierewicz, the department of defence replied that this is a matter of state secret, connected with the defense of the nation (see this).
Robert MC Creight, who worked for 35 years at the U.S. State Department among others as a U.S. delegate at the United Nations Organisation in negotiations on arms control (see this), wrote:
“What nation would hesitate to develop and field a weapon that could control, shape, or redirect human thoughts and actions—given the power such a weapon would yield?… The power to influence or direct the thoughts and behaviors of others without them knowing crosses a threshold in human behavior and criminal conduct we have never seriously encountered or examined…. Can we know whether civil insurrections, staged coups, urban riots, or border uprisings were naturally occurring or externally induced?“.
He added that production of neuroweapons does not require such a wide scientific and technological knowledge as the production of nuclear weapons and concurred with James Giordano that international agreements are necessary to prevent the abuse of discoveries of neuroscience to deform human free will. He concluded:
“The fact is that unless a globally enforceable mechanism is devised and agreed upon for controlling the conduct and outcomes of neuroscience research itself, we can expect to find no real safeguards and no guarantees“ (see this).
Professor of philosophy and psychiatry at the prestigious German university in Heidelberg Thomas Fuchs wrote:
“Researchers are beginning to identify brain processes that are related to experiences and concepts such as free will, agency, moral judgment, self and personality.
At the same time, those processes become increasingly accessible to specific modifying techniques. This development raises ethical problems whose importance is likely to surpass even the implications of modern genetics. What are the social and cultural consequences of technologies that enable humans to manipulate their own minds?“ and “new methods and techniques, by laying bare neural correlates of personal identity, cause problems of individual rights of privacy, noninterference and inviolability“ (of personal identity) (see this and this).
Askin Sokman, who specializes at Istanbul University among others in international security and arms control wrote in the article “Using Nano Technologies and Neuroscience Technologies in Combating Terrorism“ that it is possible to use neuroscientific research “to increase the capacity of soldiers (such as fighting for an extended period, courage) as well as to collect intelligence, to wipe-out the enemy’s capacity to fight, to direct the behavior of masses in psychological operations and to make them surrender without fighting“ (see this).
As early as 1997 the Institute of Strategic Studies at the U.S. Army War College published a study, where the following picture of the future was described:
”Potential or possible supporters of the insurgency around the world were identified using the comprehensive Interagency Integrated Database. These were categorized as ”potential” or ”active”, with sophisticated personality simulations used to develop, tailor and focus psychological campaigns for each (see this)”.
The system, which should be able to find those people, is already being designed in the USA (see this and this).
Those methods of remote control of human thinking can be used in advertisement as well. A group of Canadian and American scientists wrote that there are already at least ten companies whose explicit goal is to use those advanced technologies to start offering neuromarketing (see this).
In this way a human being and its “free will“ can easily become a subject of manipulations by state, industrial and commercial organizations or foreign intelligence services. The fact that the existence of those technologies is not published only contributes to the impression that the governments are getting ready to use them and turn their citizens into slaves (or as the Russian politician Vladimir Lopatin put it – into biorobots (see this)), which will implement the elites’ ideas about the next development of mankind. If this was not the case the governments should be able to come to an agreement and ban internationally weapons enabling remote control of human brains. Instead they are taking advantage of the fact that their citizens are not aware of the existence of those weapons and for that matter do not apply any pressure on them to work on legislations banning remote manipulation of human minds at home as well as internationally.
In the meantime even the brain research that is not classified advances in more than a fast pace. Scientists work on a silicon chip containing living neurons, which could be inserted in the brain and then used to produce false memories (see this) (in 2006 they already produced false memories in mice brain using electrodes.
According to the non-profit organization Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), following the development of technologies benign to mankind, at Berkeley University in 2018 a “stimulation dust“ was produced. Those are particles 3 to 4 times smaller than a grain of rice containing piezzo crystal as an atenna. It is possible to transport this “dust“ into the brain and then communicate with it using a computer and “read“ the activity of the brain and control it. It is capable, for example, of preventing epileptic seizures or a heart arythmia. When scientists placed this particle on a motion neuron of a rat, they were capable to move its leg independently of its situation or its will (see this).
Cell phone companies develop devices which could transport the brain activity directly into the cell phones or computers and from there to the Internet (see this). To take down one’s ideas without using the keyboard and to execute one’s thoughts without using mouse or keyboard will certainly accelerate every action. People eager to be effective in their office work will not be able to avoid use of this technology if they will wish to remain competitive. It is expected that the sixth generation of cell phones will connect the brain to the Internet (see this) and already the fifth generation will be omnipresent and there will be no chance for the human being to escape from its reach.
Scientists have also developed “nanobotes“ – particles which they would insert in the blood and through which the brain could communicate with the Internet. In this way the brain will be able to draw knowledge without learning. Professor of mechanical engineering at the University in San Diego James Friend believes that effective use of “nanobotes“ could start within five years (see this).
As soon as the brain is connected to Internet it will be possible to control its activity from Internet as well. Hackers will just have to expand their activities in order to play with the brain waves using the internet. Will politicians decide to ban, in a verifiable manner, the remote control of the activity of the human brain and as well the control of its activity from the Internet? So far there are no hints that anywhere in the world the governments would be working on legislation to protect the brain activity from external manipulation.
It is good to know that to interfere with the brain activity energies more than hundred times smaller are needed than the energies needed to produce firing of neurons (see this) and that, in experiments with remote control of the animal nervous system, more than hundred times smaller energies were needed to produce its activity, than are the limits of exposure to electromagnetic fields set by the majority of the world governments (see this).
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Featured image: Neurotechnology could help people with disabilities use their thoughts to control devices in the physical world. It may also be useful in weapons systems. Private companies, militaries, and other organizations are funding neurotechnology research. Credit: US Army.
Revelations by a former police spy upend the official story blaming Iran for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, and suggest a cover-up by dirty war elements may have let the real culprits off the hook.
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The July 18, 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina was one of the worst pre-9/11 terrorist attacks in the Western hemisphere, killing 85 and injuring 300.
For over a quarter century, the US and Israeli governments have blamed Iran for the bloodshed, citing it as primary evidence of Tehran’s role as the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism.
This narrative remains part of the propaganda offensive against Iran, and has been exploited by the Donald Trump administration to justify a campaign of economic strangulation aimed at either destabilizing the Islamic Republic or achieving regime change.
Soon after the bombing, the United States and Israel placed heavy pressure on the Argentine government to implicate Iran. At the time, however, officials in the embassy in Buenos Aires were well aware there was no hard evidence to support such a conclusion.
In an August 1994 cable to the State Department, US Ambassador James Cheek boasted of the “steady campaign” the embassy had waged that “kept the Iranians in the dock where they belong.” In a striking comment to this writer in 2007, Cheek conceded, “To my knowledge, there was never any real evidence” of Iranian responsibility.
Bill Brencick, the chief of the political section in the US embassy from 1994 to 1997, also acknowledged in a 2007 interview that US insinuations of Iranian responsibility were based solely on a “wall of assumptions” that had “no hard evidence to connect those assumptions to the case.”
Brencick recalled that he and other US officials recognized “enough of a Jewish community [in Buenos Aires] and a history of anti-Semitism that local anti-Semites had to be considered as suspects.” But this line of investigation was never pursued in any official capacity, likely because it contradicted the interests of a US national security state that was dead-set on indicting Iran for the bombing.
However, a dramatic development has threatened to upend the official US-Israeli narrative on the AMIA attack. In 2014, the public learned that a former spy who had infiltrated the Jewish community in Buenos Aires on behalf of Argentina’s Federal Police had revealed to two investigative journalists that he had been ordered to turn over blueprints to the AMIA building to his Federal Police case officer.
The spy was convinced the building plans were used by the real culprits behind the bombing. His stunning revelation prompted a series of articles in the Argentine press.
The former infiltrator’s account provided the first clear indication that anti-Semitic veterans of Argentina’s “Dirty War” and their allies in the Argentine police and intelligence service orchestrated the explosion.
But Argentina’s legal system — still heavily influenced by the intelligence agency that influenced the official investigation to blame Iran and a prosecutor whose career had been based on that premise — stubbornly refused to investigate the former police spy’s account.
Infiltration, torture, anti-Semitic conspiracies
Image on the right: Jose Alberto Perez infiltrated Argentina’s Jewish community on behalf of the Federal Police. He went by the name “Iosi.”
The former police infiltrator, Jose Alberto Perez, believed the AMIA building blueprints he had provided to the Federal Police were used by those who planned the bombing. He had learned from his police counter-terrorism training course that such building plans could be valuable tools for planning such an operation.
Perez was also convinced that the bomb had detonated inside the building, rather than in front, and had been placed in the interior of the AMIA building through a gap between it and a neighboring building. Experts of Argentina’s Gendarmerie had come to the same conclusion, and leaked it to Clarin, Argentina’s largest tabloid, just two days after the bombing.
Perez also provided crucial evidence that those who had used him to spy on Jewish community leaders were motivated by the same anti-Semitic beliefs that had led the Argentine military dictatorship to single out Jews for especially cruel treatment during the “dirty war” in the 1970s: his case officer, whom he knew only as “Laura”, had ordered him to find out as much he could from the Jewish community about the so-called “Andinia Plan.”
According to that alleged plan, Jewish immigrants and foreign Zionists had been secretly plotting to take control of the vast Patagonia region of southern Argentina and create a Jewish state to be called “Andinia.”
The myth of the “Andinia Plan” followed the rise of anti-Semitism as a major social force in Argentina during the 1930s and became a staple of the anti-Semitic right’s narrative during the heyday of military domination of the Argentine society and politics from the 1960s through the “dirty war” against leftists in the 1970s.
At least 12 percent of those subjected to interrogation, torture, and murder during the dirty war were Jews, according to an investigation by the Barcelona-based Commission of Solidarity with Relatives of the Disappeared, although they represented only 1 percent of the population. Nearly all were interrogated about the “Andinia Plan.”
The crusading Argentine journalist Jacobo Timerman, who was born to Jewish parents and whose newspaper provided critical coverage of the military regime’s “dirty war,” was among those detained in the junta’s secret prisons.
Timerman recalled in his memoir how he was asked repeatedly to reveal what he knew about the “Andinia Plan” during extended interrogation and torture sessions. His interrogator refused to accept his answer that it was merely a fiction.
Jose Alberto Perez, for his part, was wracked with guilt about having enabled the AMIA terror bombing. He had become an integral part of the Jewish community, studying Hebrew for three years, marrying a Jewish woman who was the secretary of an Israeli Embassy official and even taking the Jewish version of his Spanish surname, Jose. Within the Jewish community, he was known as “Iosi” Perez.
As he fell into despair, Iosi contacted investigative journalists Miriam Lewin and Horacio Lutzky to ask their help. The two journalists had tried for years to find a foreign sponsor to grant the former spy asylum abroad but to no avail.
Meanwhile, Iosi had secretly taped a video with the prominent Argentine journalist Gabriel Levinas in which he narrated his work penetrating the Jewish community and the unusual request for the blueprints. Levinas posted the video online in early July 2014, just prior to the publication of the second edition of his own book on the AMIA bombing, which included Iosi’s story.
The release of that video prompted Lewin and Lutzky to arrange for Iosi to join Argentina’s Witness Protection Program. The two journalists also urged Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman (image on the left), who had spent a decade accusing Iran of the bombing, to meet Iosi in person.
But according to Lewin, Nisman would only agree to speak with Iosi on the phone. The prosecutor insisted on having three of his employees interview Iosi in person, she recalled in an interview with The Grayzone, then signed a declaration about that July 2014 meeting as though he had been present, and “did not show interest in interrogating him any further.” Iosi entered the Witness Protection Program the same day as the interview, according to Lewin.
Iosi’s Federal Police case officer “Laura,” who was retired by then, was released by the minister of security from the normal secrecy requirement about Iosi’s work. But she rejected Iosi’s testimony, according to Lewin, claiming his reports had been judged “poor.” Her claims stood in stark contrast to the actual reports obtained by prosecutors which clearly showed his findings had been evaluated as “excellent” year after year.
Lewin told The Grayzone she was confident that Iosi would have been able to provide “solid information about the local connection of the bombing,” but none of the four prosecutors who inherited the unsolved AMIA case after Nisman’s death were willing to follow up on the leads he provided.
Lewin noted that several of the senior Federal Police officials who would have been involved in the decisions to infiltrate the Jewish Community and request the AMIA blueprints were still active in 2015. That fact helps to explain why the case was left to die despite Iosi’s explosive revelations.
SIDE covers the junta’s back
Another key factor in the corruption of the AMIA investigation was the role of the state intelligence agency, known as SIDE, in influencing the lead prosecutor, Judge Juan Jose Galeano. Not only was a special unit within SIDE tasked with overseeing the Galeano’s investigation, another SIDE unit operated directly inside Galeano’s office, as journalist Sergio Kiernan reported.
SIDE proceeded to exploit its power to divert attention away from the logical suspects within the junta, circling the wagons to protect its own.
As Sergio Moreno and Laura Termine reported in the daily La Prensa, November 28, 1994, the SIDE unit handling the AMIA investigation was notorious for its hatred of Jews. The group consisted of veterans of the dirty war known as the “Cabildo” group, their name inspired by a right wing anti-Semitic magazine published in the early 1980s that had republished an infamous tract detailing the “Andinia Plan” conspiracy.
The chief of the Cabildo group unsuccessfully sued Moreno and Termine for labeling his unit anti-Semitic. Following complaints by Jewish community leaders about the Cabildo group’s role in the AMIA investigation, it was removed from the case – but not before it deflected public attention away from leaders of the dirty war and onto an alleged Iranian conspiracy.
SIDE’s PR strategy depended on the theory that the AMIA explosion emanated from a vehicle-born suicide bomb, thereby casting suspicion on Iran and its ally, Hezbollah.
The intelligence services claimed a white light commercial van had been used in the bombing. Its engine was supposedly found in the rubble on July 25, a week after the explosion.
The identification number on the engine was traced to Carlos Alberto Telleldin (image on the right), the Shia owner of a shady “chop shop” operation that rebuilt damaged cars for sale. Telleldin was accused of being an accessory to the terror plot and jailed on other charges.
But the official AMIA case files revealed that Telleldin had been targeted before the AMIA bombing. This stunning fact was noticed by a “private prosecutor” hired by the organization of AMIA victims Memoria Activa.
According to a close analysis of the official evidence by Alberto L. Zuppi, a request by Federal Police to wiretap Telleldin’s phone was issued on July 20 — at least five days before the alleged discovery of the engine that led investigators to blame Telleldin.
In the weeks that followed the AMIA explosion, more evidence surfaced that pointed to Telledin’s role as a patsy.
In September 1994, five Lebanese nationals were detained as they tried to leave Argentina for Paraguay. Through a series of leaks, SIDE planted stories in the media suggesting the suspects were linked to a terrorist network.
The following month, a part-time agent for SIDE and former chief of a notorious prison camp where suspects were tortured during the “dirty war,” Captain Hector Pedro Vergez, began visiting Telleldin in prison.
In four meetings between September 1994 and January 1995, Vergez offered the jailed suspect $1 million and his freedom if he would identify two of the Lebanese nationals who were then detained in Paraguay as having purchased the van from him — thus making it possible to accuse them of the bombing. But Telleldin refused to lie, and the SIDE plan was derailed.
It was not long, however, before SIDE and Galeano initiated a new plan to implicate two Buenos Aires provincial policemen as Iranian-sponsored culprits.
Resorting to bribery, Mossad info, and MEK sources to blame Iran
In July 1996, Juan Jose Galeano personally visited Carlos Telleldin in prison and offered him $400,000 to blame the two police officers. The scandalous scene was captured in a video shown on Argentine television in 1997.
The case against the two policemen was thrown out in court in 2004, but Galeano and Anzorreguy went unpunished for another 15 years. It was not until 2019 that they were sentenced to prison terms for their role in the affair, highlighting the culture of impunity that surrounded SIDE.
Once the Galeano case imploded, Alberto Nisman attempted to craft yet another narrative blaming Iran for the bombing. For this, he depended on information provided by Israel’s Mossad to Jaime Stiuso, the SIDE official in charge of counterintelligence.
Nisman’s 2006 indictment of seven Iranian officials for the terror plot relied completely on the claims of senior members of the Mujahedin-E-Khalq (MEK), the Israeli and Saudi-backed Iranian exile cult.
Not only were none of the MEK members in any position to provide reliable information about a supposedly high-level Iranian plot because they had been actively engaged in a terrorist campaign of their own against the Islamic government by helping Iraq’s then-President Saddam Hussein select targets in Iran.
Nisman’s reliance on such unscrupulous sources demonstrated his own apparent determination to reach preordained conclusions about Iran’s guilt. It was hardly a surprise, then, that Nisman ignored Iosi’s revelatory testimony.
Nisman’s other major source, Jaime Stiuso of SIDE, was a notorious manipulator who had spent years collecting wiretaps on Argentine politicians. In 2014, the intelligence chief was working to build a case against President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner for supposedly conspiring with Iran to eliminate the official Argentine accusation of Iranian guilt. Few observers believed the case would hold up under close scrutiny.
In January 2015, Nisman was found dead in his apartment of a gunshot wound to the head. Though political opponents of Kirchner were convinced the prosecutor’s death was the result of a government-sponsored murder, a recent documentary detailing the various investigations of his death, “Nisman: el fiscal, la presidenta y el espía,” concluded that he had committed suicide.
By the time of his death, Nisman was helping direct a disinformation campaign that allowed SIDE to cover for shadowy figures from Argentina’s violently anti-Semitic past, and to bury their likely role in the AMIA bombing.
Iosi’s testimony should have ended that cover-up, but Nisman, SIDE, and the Federal Police colluded to quash a serious investigation.
A quarter-century after the bombing, impunity for the real AMIA terrorists continues.
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Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist who has covered national security policy since 2005 and was the recipient of Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2012. His most recent book is The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis co-authored with John Kiriakou, just published in February.
China has been increasing its soft power in Latin America since it began heavily investing in the region since the mid-2000s. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has taken an ineffective and aggressive approach to try and counter Beijing in Latin America, a region that Washington calls its “own backyard.” Relations between China and Latin American countries are flourishing, but at the same time they face new challenges as the region deals with several crises. Meanwhile, the influential Brookings Institute think tank has concluded that the U.S. is losing its influence in the region.
The U.S. began to pay attention to China’s growing influence in Latin America and came to understand that its historic role as the main power in the region was at risk. The Washington D.C.-based think tank highlighted that the Trump administration has failed to change this trend, with the author of the article, Ted Piccone, emphasizing that Washington needs a more generous and sophisticated approach. With Trump coming into power, Latin American countries began to perceive China as an even more viable partner since the U.S. president repeatedly resorted to nationalist and anti-immigration rhetoric.
Beijing seeks to secure energy, metal and food flows to feed its robust economy and its growing middle class. In 2000, the volume of trade between China and Latin America was $12 billion. In 2019 it had reached almost $315 billion. Today, Beijing is the main trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Peru and Argentina. China lends money in large quantities to Latin American governments and is reimbursed by some countries with raw materials such as oil.
However, the elites of Latin America continue to be divided between those who have benefited from closer economic relations with Beijing and those who have suffered from cheap imports that affects local manufacturing. Despite all adversities, China’s economic activity appears to have a positive effect on the region.
There is no denying that China’s actions in Latin America have led to the enrichment of the upper class and, therefore, have increased inequality. Beijing’s presence however is a counterweight to U.S. domination of the region. Most Latin American governments, according to the Brookings study, recognize that they cannot get out of the severe recession caused by the coronavirus outbreak without Chinese investments and trade.
The author argues that “after decades of interventionist and hegemonic behavior in the region, the United States after the Cold War shifted to playing a more benign, pro-reform role.” However, “after three years of the Trump administration, the United States is practically displaced, largely absent, or has reverted to type as the threatening hegemon” that forced a decline in “favorable opinions toward Washington and a renewal of ‘Yanqui go home’ antagonism.”
This was in major contrast to the administration of President Bill Clinton, according to the study, that advocated an ambitious agenda that would involve the entire Western Hemisphere – a policy of uniting the region on the basis of representative liberal democracy, free trade and the market economy as a way to achieve sustainable development. The George W. Bush administration, especially after September 11 attacks, took a more costly approach to national security and the fight against terrorism in the region. At the same time, it remained faithful to the financing of development aid for Latin American countries. The Obama administration, focused on the immigrant crisis in Central America, made significant progress in ties with governments in the region. Piccone points out that the Obama administration improved relations with Cuba and facilitated the signing of a peace agreement in Colombia between the government and communist rebels.
In general, U.S. influence in Latin America and the Caribbean significantly improved in the years preceding Trump, but this has begun to wane. The study argued that Trump has “revived the interventionist rhetoric of the Monroe Doctrine of two centuries ago.”
Joe Biden, the Democrat presidential candidate for the upcoming November presidential elections, blames his own country more than Beijing for the deplorable state of relations between Washington and Latin America, but says that the U.S. has a great advantage in the region. According to Biden, China and Russia do not have the same ties and common history with the Latin American peoples, something that is objectively true, and in which Piccone highlights by stating that “natural geographic, cultural, familial, security, educational, and historic ties to its neighbors” gives the U.S. “a distinct advantage over China.”
Piccone concludes that Washington must provide alternatives to Latin American countries that do not resort to an “us or them” ultimatum in their relations with China.
“The bipolar world has arrived at the U.S. doorstep — it can build walls and threaten sanctions, or it can find ways to help [Latin American] governments address their countries’ deep problems, with or without China,” he said.
As China engages in a no-strings attached diplomacy and trade with Latin America, it will continue gaining influence in the U.S.’ “backyard.” Therefore, Piccone’s suggestion that the U.S. is no longer a hegemon of Latin America, as he terms it, is an honest assessment and one that Washington must acknowledge if it does not want to lose more influence in the region. China is in Latin America to stay, and Washington must acknowledge this.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
A flurry of recent news shows that international development banks have ramped up public money to factory farms and mega-dairies in the last decade. The World Bank alone spent US$1.8 billion on these operations, with over half of the funds going to Big Dairy, contributing to both rising emissions and increasing corporate concentration. IATP’s Milking the Planet report shows that 13 of the largest dairy producers increased their greenhouse gas emission by 11% in just two years, their combined emissions greater than U.K.’s annual emissions. They did this as rural dairy producers went out of business due to debt and disenfranchisement. These publicly funded institutions, such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the World Bank’s private arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), with missions to reduce poverty and help countries develop, have instead spent billions funneling money into some of the most powerful dairy and meat corporations in the world.
The EBRD took a stake in Danone’s subsidiaries in eastern Europe and central Asia. These “investments” made 10 years ago were intended to expand Danone’s business in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Danone’s sales generated 25.9 billion euros last year. Global pork giant Smithfield Foods, Inc. (subsidiary of WH Group) received $60 million for its subsidiary in Romania. In 2009, The New York Times reported: “In Romania, the number of hog farmers has declined 90 percent — to 52,100 in 2007 from 477,030 in 2003 — according to European Union statistics, with ex-farmers, overwhelmed by Smithfield’s lower prices, often emigrating or shifting to construction.” Poor use of development money combined with EU farm policy has led to the loss of thousands of small farms in Romania. And yet, this is not the first time Smithfield Inc. has gained from taxpayers. The company received millions of U.S. taxpayer money in 2018 through the Trump administration’s bailout during its trade war with China.
IATP joined 30 organizations this month in an open letter to the heads of the IFC and EBRD stating:
“In a time of climate crisis, public finance institutions such as the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) have an urgent responsibility to align their lending with the goals of the Paris Agreement. As calls come from economists and environmentalists alike to ‘build back better’ following the pandemic, it is essential that we include agriculture in considerations of how we finance a sustainable future.”
The European Investment Bank is the lending arm of the European Union and self-described as the “largest multilateral financial institution in the world and one of the largest providers of climate finance.” It has pledged to raise its share of finance for climate and environmental sustainability to 50% of its overall funding by 2025 in support of the European Green Deal. As part of this Climate Bank Roadmap for 2021-2025, it sought input from various entities. In its position paper on the roadmap, the EIB states that it is considering investment support to the meat and dairy industry that is “based on sustainable animal rearing contributing to improved GHG efficiency.” IATP and the Global Forest Coalitionprovided our input last week on its lending to the meat and dairy industry, stating:
“Improved GHG efficiency” is simply an inadequate indicator for mitigation and adaptation of the sector. The EIB must integrate both concepts (mitigation and adaptation) into its agricultural investment portfolio. The EIB is right to include socio-economic, environmental and animal welfare impacts in its definition of sustainability, however a narrow metric of resource efficiency should be altered to integrate ecosystem restoration as a definition of sustainability which includes GHGs but also vital additional metrics for transformative change.
Such metrics include 1) measures for ecosystem restoration 2) biodiversity generation 3) soil health 4) water retention and 5) trajectory of absolute emissions. The EIB’s approach to both the meat and dairy sector and the bioeconomy overall should be reframed to prioritize ecosystem restoration following ecosystem-based approaches (EBA) with significant mitigative and adaptive potential.
The EIB asks in the consultation paper, “how can the EIB best support the meat and dairy industry to be consistent with a low-carbon pathway?” to which we responded:
The EIB should define what it means by the “meat and dairy industry” it intends to support. Numerous livestock producers in the Global South and North are dramatically impacted by different aspects of the industry — for instance, market concentration in various parts of the supply chain, including processing and production. The range of intensive/extensive animal production systems are incentivized or thwarted by the inordinate level of market power that different parts of the industry wields on the supply chain. This market power combined with significant political power prevents transformative change in the livestock sector. The EIB’s investment strategy that incentivizes transformation of agricultural practices towards the metrics suggested above can help send a clear market and political signal towards such transformation. It can also help EIB focus in on the parts of the supply chain, including producers and workers and not simply its middlemen, that need support to transform the sector. EIB should refrain from investments that facilitate perverse incentives to expand livestock production and which lead directly or indirectly to deforestation and land degradation.
We suggested that the EIB take a two-pronged approach to their investment strategy on livestock. They must take away investments from the meat and dairy industry where further intensification leads to rising absolute emissions and perverse incentives for expansion of livestock production, declining biodiversity and negative impacts on the metrics identified above. Second, the EIB should support agricultural practices, food hubs, decentralized food markets that support rights-based approaches and restore ecosystems. The goal should be climate resilience and mitigation that helps empower local communities, indigenous peoples and workers while diminishing market power of oligopolies in agribusiness that drives social and environmental standards towards a race to the bottom.
The EIB will publish the results of its consultations in the last quarter of this year with the aim to have the new lending roadmap in place by next year. The EIB’s lending will play a critical role in public money going to either transformative change of the livestock sector or compounding the problems we face with public handouts to Big Meat and Dairy. Choosing transformative change could also send the right signals to EU institutions tasked with the roll out of the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy under the European Green Deal and reforming its Common Agriculture Policy (CAP). The CAP funnels 18-22% percent of the EU budget towards livestock, largely benefitting Big Meat and Dairy. Public sops for this powerful global industry, whether international or national, must stop if we want real food system transformation for the planet.
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“I’m automatically attracted to beautiful [women]—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
Channel surfing this AM I caught a meeting of ‘Evangelicals for Trump’ on C-Span. White House Spiritual Advisor Paula White-Cain was addressing the group on the importance of re-electing Trump.
Funny, how I have heard from more than one acquaintance that Trump was actually ‘Sent by God’. Where? I asked. Here? Donald Trump AKA THE DONALD, who makes the late John Gotti look like an amateur in the area of Teflon? HE was sent by God to do what, perhaps hasten up the coming Armageddon? After all, those phony ‘Love Israel while we await the Rapture’ Christians care as much for Jews as the Israeli Jews care for the Palestinians: ZERO! No, Trump represents what all those right wing Christians (Perhaps including Trump’s press secretary with her always visible crucifix?) really care about: Family values, no abortions and freedom from the Blacks and Browns… except when they need a Nanny or landscape worker on their estates. Oh yeah, and of course making sure that Amerika’s jackboot is permanently on the neck of those 3rd world countries… especially where the A-Rabs live.
So, Mr. Trump has had a history of misogynist behavior. The transcript from the conversation he had in 2005 about those ‘Kitty cats’ he just loved to grab and dominate could come straight out of what, The New Testament? Yet, those Bible thumping fools who think They own both Jesus AND our flag seem to overlook all he has said and done… for decades! I mean, because Trump said he made those comments in a ‘Private conversation’ trumps (no pun intended) any critique of it. It is like when we played stoopball, and someone yelled out ‘Hindu’ and said ‘Do over’. After all, this writer comes from Brooklyn, NYC and was blue collar all the way. I have made many foolish comments at times, but never speaking of women in that manner. Never!! I have had many wild times as a young man, but never behaved insuch a low class and savage manner. For it is low class and savage to grab a woman by her genitals and have with her. Oh, I forgot, Trump was such a star that the woman in question would not mind being manhandled that way. I have known ‘Working Women’ as they call them, who would not put up with that behavior… even at a price! Yet, the holy rollers just loved him in 2016 and again this year.
When the economy sinks faster than ‘A speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive..’ we won’t have Superman to save the day. If the ‘Trump thumping Evangelicals have their way, like it or not, we will step into a Fascist/Neo Nazi rabbit hole that will assure that the coming Time of Tribulation is before us!
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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, Countercurrents.org, and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].
Featured image: Donald Trump on the campaign trail in March 2016. Credit: Windover Way Photography
The Middle East is rapidly moving towards a new round of confrontation between the US-Israeli bloc and Iranian-led Shiite forces.
On July 26, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) deployed M109 Doher howitzers near the separation line with Lebanon. The deployment of howitzers became the latest in a series of broad measures employed by the IDF near Lebanon recently. Earlier, the 13th “Gideon” Infantry Battalion of the IDF’s elite 1st “Golani” Brigade reinforced troops near the border. The number Israeli Hermes 450 drone reconnaissance flights also significantly increased over southern Lebanon. Additional IDF units were also deployed in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. On top of this, the IDF announced that it will hold the Lebanese government responsible “for all actions emanating from Lebanon”.
These measures followed the July 20 Israeli strike on Syria, which resulted in the death of a member of Lebanese Hezbollah. Over the past years, Hezbollah has been one of the main supporters of Syrian Army operations against ISIS and al-Qaeda. Tel Aviv increases its strikes on what it calls Hezbollah and Iranian-affiliated targets in Syria every time when the Syrian Army launches active actions against terrorists and seems to be very concerned by the possibility of a Hezbollah response to the July 20 attack.
If Israel is really set to conduct strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon to the retaliatory action by Hezbollah, this scenario could easily evolve into a wider border confrontation between Hezbollah and the IDF.
At the same time, tensions between local resistance groups and the US-led coalition grew in Iraq. On July 24, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, Ashab al-Kahf, announced that its forces had shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle of the US military over the province of Saladin. The group claimed that the UAV was downed by some ‘new weapon’ and released a photo showing the launch of what appears to be an anti-aircraft missile, likely a man-portable air-defense system.
On the same day, four unguided rockets struck the Pasmaya military camp, which is located 60km south of Baghdad. One of the rockets hit a garage for armoured vehicles, while another one targeted the barracks of the security unit. Two other rockets landed in an empty area. Despite causing some material damage, the rocket attack did not result in any casualties. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Pasmaya military camp is known to be hosting troops of the U.S.-led coalition and is used for training of Iraqi troops. On July 25, the coalition withdrew its forces from the camp and handed it over to the Iraqi military. According to the official statement, the coalition trained 50,000 personnel and invested $5 million into the creation of training infrastructure there.
Earlier in 2020, the US-led coalition withdrew its forces from several smaller military camps across the country. Some sources tried to present this as a withdrawal from Iraq due to the increasing attacks on coalition forces by anti-US Shiite paramilitary groups. These attacks increased significantly after the assassination of Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units Deputy Commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Iranian Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike on Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020. The attack put the region on the brink of the US-Iranian war and caused a public outcry against the US military presence in Iraq. However, in fact, the US has not been withdrawing its troops from the country, but rather redeploying them to larger bases. The US military even brought Patriot surface-to-air missile systems to provide additional protection to its forces. It also continues isolated attacks on positions of the Popular Mobilization Units, an official branch of the Iraqi Armed Forces that Washington describes as terrorist groups and Iranian proxies.
On July 26, several large explosions rocked the al-Saqer military camp near the district of Dora south of Baghdad. The Al-Saqer military camp hosts forces of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) as well as the Iraqi Federal Police. Large quantities of ammunition, which were stored in the camp, exploded. Iraqi Security Media said the ammunition exploded as result of “high heat” and “poor storage”. Nevertheless, sources affiliated with the PMU rejected these speculations. Local sources claimed that the explosions were caused by US drone strikes. An MQ-1 Predator combat drone was spotted over the al-Saqer military camp just after the incident. This was the second situation of this kind that happened in al-Saqer. In 2019, a US drone strike hit a weapon depot at the camp.
The current situation sets almost no prospects for a de-escalation in Iraq. The main goal of attacks by local Shiite groups is to force the US to withdraw troops from the country. At the same time, the US is not planning to withdraw its forces and uses these attacks to justify the increase of its campaign against pro-Iranian forces in the Middle East.
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Trump militarized Portland last week and then threatened to send federal police and military forces to Chicago and other Democrat Party-led cities. Then Democrats squealed in opposition. But it’s phony. Both political parties are playing a cynical game designed to keep the public’s attention on the drama of Trump while they work together to advance the agenda of the ruling class.
The public has been told the two parties can’t seem to agree on vital issues facing the working class, such as extending unemployment protection and a moratorium on rent and mortgage evictions. But there didn’t seem to be much problem for the parties in the U.S. House of Representatives when they decided a pathetic proposal to reduce the Department of Defense budget by 10 percent was too dangerous. In fact, 139 Democrats joined Republicans in voting down that amendment to the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) before approving another obscene military budget of $740 billion.
Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), the Black mouthpiece for the right-wing neoliberal corporate wing of the Democratic Party, took the lead on advising Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) that her proposal for a federal “paycheck guarantee,” while efficient in that it would cover workers’ salaries for three months, was much too expensive. The cost? For six months of coverage, it was estimated at $654 billion.
The priorities are clear. Money is available for the military-industrial complex, but lifesaving support for workers is just too expensive.
And yet the games continue. Trump shut down the Chinese consulate in Houston as both parties are in fierce competition to demonstrate their toughness on China. Neither party can explain to the people why China is such a threat today. Just a few months ago, Russia was the main threat.
That is why the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) takes the unequivocal and unambiguous position that we will never allow the U.S. state and its ideological henchmen to push us into opposition against any external enemy. We say, “no to a new cold war with China,” no to militarism, no to domestic repression, and no to the continued neglect of millions of workers and poor people in the United States.
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On 13 July an international newscast reported that the European Commission will discuss as a priority on how the EU should react to China’s national security law for Hong Kong, a sovereign decision taken by Beijing to protect the citizens of the Chinese territory, Hong Kong, from western instigated riots and acts of terror. This is apparently an issue close to the heart of the German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, as he raised the issue as a priority for the EC to be discussed.
Can you imagine! The audacity of the EC to even suggest debating on what should be the reaction of Europe on an entirely internal affair of Sovereign China?
What would Europe, Germany, France, or any other EU member state say if China would comment on their EU-collective or individual sovereign internal affairs? – It’s not difficult to see the hypocrisy of the west, vis-à-vis the east, especially China and Russia.
Or, in the words of RT:
The economic sanctions imposed on China in the Huawei affair will be returned several-fold by Beijing. If the Queen Elizabeth goes too far, the Chinese Navy has more than what it takes to sink her.
And if the three million Chinese arrive from Hong Kong, it is not immediately clear where they will be housed or where they will work in Britain’s broken economy. In fact, perhaps the most cunning plan would be for China to open the Hong Kong floodgates now and force London to own up to its words.
Why is the west so much interested in Hong Kong? – Could it be that Hong Kong has been serving mostly western oligarchs and corporate and financial giants for illegal fiscal transactions, like money laundering and tax evasion? Why not shifting dubious financial transactions simply to Singapore? – Hong Kong is much closer still to the British Crown (until 1997), than Singapore which was dissolved as Crown colony in 1963, when it became a state of Malaysia, ending 144 years of British rule. In August 1965, Singapore became officially the independent Republic of Singapore. Since then Singapore has built up a strictly controlled financial and fiscal regime.
This – just as an introduction to the Big Picture that China may want to keep in mind for their future economic policy and planning vision. The west cannot be counted on. The west, under the leadership of the dying Anglo-American empire is in its last breath hell-bent to stop, to destroy China’s economic advances – if it could. But it can’t.
Mind you, China’s are fully legitimate economic advances that do no harm anybody, to the contrary, China keeps seeking peaceful cooperation with the west. A prime example is President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the New Silk Road – designed as bridge that spans the world with projects and initiatives intended to bring humanity closer together, developing jointly her economic potential, attempting to respect and better understand cultural differences and learn from the variety of their richness. A “win-win” for all.
In the words of famous Russian economist, Mikhail Khazin, While the world economy is collapsing as it never did in the history we can remember – maybe by as much as 50%, the Chinese economy is growing.
When SARS-2-Cov, later renamed by WHO to COVID-19 – was first discovered in Wuhan, China, Wuhan and Chinese authorities reacted immediately with a total lockdown, extending from Wuhan (11 million population) to the entire Hubei Province (60 million) – and subsequently beyond, covering the whole country. China’s reaction was decisive, immediate and with full discipline of the population.
The origin of the “new” corona virus, is still debated, but all substantiated evidence leads to conclude that the virus originated outside of China and was transported to China in one way or another. Patient zero was with high probability somewhere in the United States and emerged likely sometime between August and October 2019.
We also know about the 2010 Rockefeller Report that predicted a pandemic outbreak at the beginning of 2020 – with what the report calls “The Lockstep Scenario” – precisely what the world is living now and has been going through since the beginning of 2020, especially since the worldwide lockdown of everything in mid-March 2020. This already looks like a meticulously planned global “pandemic”. Something that has never happened since the existence of mankind- that a pandemic virus hits the world population at the very same time, at once. This in itself is already too much of a coincidence to be a natural occurrence.
Now, add to this, Event 201 of 18 October 2019, sponsored by the Johns Hopkins University School of Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and the cream of the elite, the WEF (World Economic Forum), an event, whose key purpose was to computer simulate – yes, you guessed it – a corona pandemic that not only killed (by computer simulation) over a period of 18 months, 65 million people, but also destroyed the stock market and by and large the world economy, leaving behind uncountable bankruptcies, untold misery, poverty, famine and desperation – a way of transferring wealth from the “grassroots” to the top.
Doesn’t the current global economic annihilation that is uprooting the world as we know it, look very similar? From mid-March to mid-May 2020 – two intense Covid-months – US billionaires have added US$ 434 billion to their wealth, according to an CNBC report. And we haven’t even seen the tip of the iceberg yet in terms of bankruptcies, unemployment, misery and famine, nor in terms of asset transfers from the bottom to the top. Let alone what’s to follow over the coming one to three years.
Whoever directs this “coincidental” covid-scenario, may have a multi-purpose in mind. For example, creating a new world economic paradigm of a fear-infested broken society of poverty and slavehood, led by a corporate financial elite – and, perhaps equally or more important – eliminating the perceived Chinese competition for world hegemony. Western perceived and propagated, of course. Devoid of reality. As China doesn’t have hegemonic ambitions. Never had such ambitions, as thousands of years of Chinese history indicate. It’s not part of her Tao philosophy. With the endless bashing of China, who could expect the west having the slightest idea of Chinese history and Taoism?
China’s disciplinary lockdown wiped out – temporarily – more than two thirds of her production apparatus. Yet, this very lockdown and discipline was also what saved China from total disaster, as has happened in other countries, notably the US.
As of 13 July 2020, China had 83,602 cases of infection and 4,634 deaths, out of a total population of 1.4 billion. Compare this to the US, with 3.4 million infections and 137,000 deaths, by 13 July and according to official US statistics. The US has a population of about 330 million, less than a fourth of the Chinese population.
The consequential halt to the Chinese economy – a vital supply chain to western economies, especially the US but also Europe – plus the western border and harbor closings due to Covid, had a disastrous impact on the world economy. Once the corona peak was reached in China and the disease slowly abated, around May / June 2020, China gradually re-opened her borders and restarted her economy. Today, the Chinese economy has basically fully recovered. The outlook for China is good.
The IMF initially predicted an unrealistic global GDP contraction of 3%, later adjusted to 5.5%, for 2020 with a slight growth for 2021. This is far from reality. In truth, nobody can predict the full global calamity at this point. But the social dimension of global misery, poverty, famine and the related death toll is a human disaster way outranking the 1929-33 Great Depression; a socioeconomic blow unheard of in human history.
Outlook and Forward Strategy
Realizing China’s rapid recovery, but also taking into account the western trade war against China, the IMF predicted a 1% growth for 2020 and rising in 2021 to maybe 3%. Given China’s preparedness for western aggressions, economic and otherwise, China estimates a 2020 growth of around 3.5% and reaching 5% to 6% in 2021.
Western propaganda media would like the world to believe that the decline of China’s phenomenal growth of 12% and higher, to a “mere” 5% to 6% is an indication for China’s big economic problems. Never mind that an expansion of 5% to 6% is still more than double that of the west. China has decided to convert vertical growth – based on production and consumption and the use of natural resources – to horizontal or “quality growth”, meaning using her extensive network of public banking and other public financial institutions to address territorial and sectorial weak spots and inequalities in the country.
This approach allows dealing specifically with local (mostly western China) infrastructure shortcomings which have sustained inequalities of living standards between the eastern Pacific Rim and the country’s interior, notably the western and north-western provinces. Many of these local investments, by local public banks may be based on long-term financing at highly favorable conditions. What the west would call “subsidies”, a derogatory term in western neoliberal economies which function on the concept of ‘instant profit’.
China sees this differently. A long-term financial instrument at favorable conditions is a contribution to the communal, regional and national economy. It increases the general welfare and productivity of people, the “happiness factor” – which is an indicator of the overall improvement of a country’s equilibrium and wellbeing.
China is currently confronted with western aggressions of several kinds – all led by Washington and supported by its subservient allies. One is the on-and-off but seemingly never-ending trade war by the Trump Administration against China. The US knows, of course, that the trade war in reality has nothing to do with trade, but rather with launching bad publicity against China, and bashing China’s currency – meaning, attempting to destroy world confidence in the yuan. This will not happen.
Most of the United States’ still functioning industries (those not yet outsourced) and the biggest contributor to US GDP – consumption – depend largely on the Chinese supply chains. They all need Chinese goods and inputs to survive, in particular, the medical industry which depends to 80% on imports from China. This refers especially to pharmaceuticals and inputs to pharmaceutical products, manufactured in the US or Europe. In the case of antibiotics, the percentage is a s high as 90%. This is only one sector. Imagine, China would stop selling iPads and iPhones – or other computer parts to the US, what that would mean for the US economy, let alone for the US consumer’s wellbeing and comfort.
China knows the threat of trade war and of cutting off China’s supply chains, is a bluff, but China is ready to call the bluff, by reorienting and enhancing her trade relations with Asia and the members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which include, in addition to China and Russia, most Central Asian countries, and also India, Pakistan, with Iran, Malaysia and Mongolia in observer status, preparing to be fully incorporated.
China is also boosting trade among the ASEAN+3 countries (Association of Southeast Asian Nations – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam; plus 3 = Japan, South Korea and China). Monetary transactions will take place mostly in yuan and local currencies, not the US dollar.
In the first three months of 2020, China’s trade with ASEAN countries surpassed both the EU and the United States. During this period, ASEAN-China trade increased by 6 percent year-on-year to US$140 billion and accounting for 15 percent of China’s total trade volume, expected to increase to 30% or higher by 2025. Some of this shift may be due to the EU’s almost total covid-lockdown during this period. However, the reoriented and intensified trade with ASEAN+3, away from the western aggression, is sustainable with a visible tendency to grow.
Screenshot from ASEAN Briefing
Trading with ASEAN and SCO countries, monetary transfers will be carried out in yuan or local currencies, outside the dollar domain and avoiding the SWIFT payment scheme. Instead, monetary transfers will use the Chinese CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System), or, alternatively, the Russian MIR (meaning ‘peace’), at present mostly used for Russian internal transactions, but gradually being internationalized.In addition, the Chinese People’s Bank of China controlled crypto yuan is just about ready to be launched internationally – see below for more details.
SCO and ASEAN+3 account for about half the world population and for one third of the globes economic output. While continuing offering partnerships with the west, as China non-belligerently does, China is no longer dependent on the west’s good will. Far from it.
China may also expand its concentration onto the super-continent of Eurasia which is connected to Africa and includes the Middle East. To serve this enormous landmass no seas have to be crossed. Its easy trading, friendly relations, no conflicts, because equal partners strive for the real meaning of trade, no losers, only win-win.
Not to forget, Eurasia has been for the past century a thorn in Anglo-American empire’s eye. It is a huge market, covering about 55 million square kilometers (21 million sq. mi), or around 36.2% of the Earth’s total land area; with a population of about 5 billion people (2020 est.), about 65% of the world population. In addition, the supercontinent harbors enormous riches of natural resources. An estimated at least two thirds of still available natural resources are located in Eurasia. This is a formidable resource and market.
Dominating Eurasia is part of the self-declared Anglo-American hegemon’s objective – and it is a key reason for Washington’s relentless aggression against China and Russia. One of the strategies Washington applies is the thousands of years-old “divide to conquer” – separating Western Europe from Russia and China. For hundreds of years before the ascent of the Anglo-American empire, western European countries and territories were natural trading partners of Russia, as well as of China, the latter largely thanks to the old (2100-year-old) Silk Road.
WWII and the subsequent Cold War with its “Iron Curtain” was supposed to “finish” the socialist Soviet Union and at the same time sever western Europe from her traditional alliance with the Eurasian Continent, notably with Russia, but also with more distant China. The elaborate construct of building a post WWII united Europe with eventually a unique currency, an idea initiated by the CIA with European Atlantists of the Club of Rome in the 1950s – was supposed to finally make Western Europe a US ally and to separate Europe definitely from the concept of socialism, notably from the Soviet Union.
The plan almost succeeded. But dynamics sometime seek out justice and equilibrium. The Soviet Union was finally destroyed by the west, starting in the mid-1980s with the final collapse in 1991, helped by such traitors as Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-1991) and Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999). Yeltsin sold out much of the riches of the Soviet Union to the western-allied Russian elite and through them, to the west.
However, in 2000 Vladimir Putin was elected as Russia’s new President. He saw through this western fraud – and changed it all. He took firm control over Russia and successfully ended western usurpation of Russia. Today, under President Putin, and despite endless western sanctions, Russia has regained full sovereignty and has become self-sufficient in the three life-pillars, food, education and health. Russia has also become one of the world’s foremost food grain exporters, like wheat, as well as a military power with technologically the most advanced defense systems in the world. In alliance with China, a solid pact between the two countries – the East, the Eurasian Continent is unbeatable by the west.
This politico-socioeconomic success of Mr. Putin’s, away from western exploitation and for the benefit of the Russian people, has unleashed a firestorm of wrath by the Occident against Putin and Russia. There is hardly a day when Putin or Russia bashing – and also China bashing, for that matter – is not on the western news menu.
Europe, still oscillating somewhere in between west and east, may eventually join (or re-join) her natural partners in the east. Indications to that end are the clearest in Germany, where the corporate world is already allied with Russia and by extension, with China – and this despite Madame Merkel, whose official position has until recently been fully pro-Washington. However, more recently she has also been propagating independence from Washington.
Without much ado, pioneered by Greece and Italy, and against protests from Washington, Europe is gradually also becoming part of China’s BRI. Predictably, new alliances will emerge and that with the idea of a multi-polar world. Both Beijing and Moscow have been propagating moving away from a unipolar hegemonic system towards a multi-polar world, favoring peace and cooperation.
Away from the sanction-prone west, a priority for China is also developing her own internal market and infrastructure.This has already begun, addressing primarily China’s western and north-western provinces. It is the conversion from China’s traditional vertical growth, reaching in the past at times 12% or more per year, to what is called “quality growth”, bringing about socioeconomic development to the Chinese “hinterland” – people’s wellbeing and more equilibrium of the Chinese economy, comparing the country’s eastern and western regions.
Another territorial area of contention is the South China Sea. This is nothing new. Already under Obama’s infamous “Pivot to Asia” (2012 onward) – a political disaster – he “occupied” the South China Sea with about 60% of the US navy fleet, yes, almost two thirds of US war ships were menacingly circulating and watching over Chinese movements and activities – in what is China’s historically sovereign territory. Under President Trump, the aggression has become even fiercer.
On 14 July RT reports China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian as saying to reporters that the US has been “the troublemaker and the disruptor of peace and stability in the region”. He added,
“China enjoys indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea and the islands. China’s stand is based on historical facts and international law. China’s sovereign rights and positions are formed in the course of history and this position has been held by Chinese Government for long.” And further, “Beijing has never sought to establish “an empire” in the region. However, he argued that China’s territorial claims and interests“have sufficient historical and legal basis,” and are legal under international law.”
What are the real bones of contention of China’s rightful territorial claims to much of the South China Sea? – There are between 42 and 70 billion barrels of oil under the South China Sea, possibly more – and close to 300 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas.
China is less wary about her territorial partners in the South China Sea (Brunei, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.), than about western / NATO interference and bullying of these partners into conflicts and belligerence with China. The non-confrontational approach of China is bound to find resources sharing arrangements with these regional partners.
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A key issue for the US is China’s strong currency, the yuan. The yuan is poised to gradually replace the US-dollar as a major world reserve currency. The international strength of the yuan is being enhanced by a blockchain-based and gold-backed People’s Bank of China (PBC) controlled crypto-yuan.
China’s central bank (PBC) has launched a trial run in a number of cities, including Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu, and Xiong’an, of her new crypto-currency, the e-RMB (Ren Min Bi, meaning People’s Money), or Yuan. So far it has been fully accepted by the people and is used virtually for everything, from salary deposits, to on-line purchases, to rent payments, street shopping and more.
Eventually the new cyber money will be rolled out internationally for trade, commodity pricing – and even to be used as a safe and stable reserve currency. The digital blockchain money assures the users total security, no interference from outside. It is a protection from ”sanctions” and arbitrary confiscation of financial assets. As such, the new cyber yuan may become an attractive international trading / transfer alternative to the US-dollar. This will add a new dimension to China’s economic strength. Not only will her economy soon outrank that of the United States, the yuan may also gradually become one of the main reserve currencies of the world.
With sanctions and threats of war – from trade, to biological, to cyber, to hard warfare by missiles and bombs – China is once again on her way to a new autonomy, a trustworthy Asian market – even including Australia and Japan – as well as a large potential internal market. The west, the US and Europe, may continue to depend on China’s supply chains, but these can no longer be used as instruments for sanctions and coercion.
China is embedded in a solid alliance with Russia and in a strategic coalition with the SCO. In addition, President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative – BRI, or also called the New Silk Road – is about to become the world’s economic development revolution of the 21st Century. In this sense, China will continue to relentlessly work in a non-aggression style forward, towards a world community with a shared future for mankind.
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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO); RT; Countercurrents, Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press; The Saker Blog, the and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced the so-called Health, Economic Assistance, Liability Protection and Schools (HEALS) Act.
It’s long on benefitting US business interests, woefully short on helping tens of millions of jobless, homeless, food insecure, and other needy Americans.
Below is what’s in it:
$1,200 for single taxpayers and heads of household, $2,400 for married couples filing jointly, plus an additional $500 per child up to age-17 and other dependents in recipient households with no income of their own.
The amount is identical to the months earlier CARES Act adopted in March.
The above amounts apply to singles earning $75,000 or less, heads of households with income of $112,500 or less, and married couples earning up to $150,000.
Scaled down amounts go to households earning up to $99,000/$198,000 for married couples.
Amounts received are free from federal and state debt collection — except for past due child support payments.
So-called now expired Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) benefit of $600 weekly to qualified recipients is cut to $200 through September.
Beginning October 1, this amount would be replaced by 70% of lost wages — combined with state unemployment insurance (UI) up to a maximum of $500 weekly.
States would be given $2 billion to upgrade their UI systems — to be more able to handle a surge in claims of over one million weekly for 18 straight weeks.
Companies with 300 or fewer workers that experienced at least a 50% reduction in revenues would get $190 billion to prevent layoffs — even though CARES Act recipient firms used earlier amounts gotten for other purposes, including executive pay and bonuses.
HEALS Act recipient firms would be able to borrow up to 2.5 times their monthly payroll amounts up to $2 million.
The amount received would be forgivable if at least 60% of the total is used to pay workers.
The Small Business Administration (SBA) would also be authorized to provide up to $100 billion in 20-year maturity/1% interest loans to so-called “recovery sector businesses.”
They include firms in low-income areas with 500 or fewer workers who’ve had at least a 50% decline in revenues.
The so-called Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC) will increase from 50% on certain wages to 65% for qualified firms.
The HEALS Act would permit the ERTC for firms up to 500 employees on all their wages.
The GOP bill would also temporarily expand the work opportunity tax credit (WOTC) to employers hiring individuals in qualified groups, including COVID-19 unemployment recipients.
A new refundable 50% payroll tax credit of firms’ qualified employee protection expenses would be created, including for COVID-19 testing and personal protection equipment (PPE).
Current federal tax law permits 50% of business meals to be expensed. The HEALS Act increases the deduction to 100%.
$306 billion would be provided for so-called health-related emergencies, including $105 billion for schools to reopen in the coming weeks.
Companies, hospitals, and schools would get COVID-19-related liability protection — preventing lawsuits except in cases of gross negligence.
The GOP bill largely excludes aid to states and local governments.
GOP and the Dems so-called Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions HEROES legislation are $2 trillion dollars apart in benefits.
On Monday, Dem House Speaker Pelosi issued a statement saying:
“I call upon the Republican leadership of the House and Senate and representatives of the President to come to the Speaker’s Office and join Leader Schumer and me within a half an hour of releasing their plan today to negotiate and get the job done.”
The GOP bill largely favors business, offering crumbs alone to tens of millions of jobless Americans.
Congress is scheduled to recess on August 7, a week from Friday, leaving around 10 days for Republicans and Dems to resolve major differences in their bills.
At a time of unprecedented hardships to countless millions of US households because of economic collapse not likely to ease any time soon, vital aid is needed to help ordinary Americans get by as long as crisis conditions last.
Note: The GOP HEALS Act omits mention of extending a moratorium on evictions from residences with federal guaranteed mortgages.
It’s essential in a final bill to prevent a potential explosion of the nation’s homeless.
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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.”
Current Western human rights industry practice has nothing to do with establishing the truth. Increasingly in recent years, US and allied elites have sought to legitimize illegal aggression by exploiting human rights motifs in their attempts to recolonize the majority world.
In any given crisis, human rights NGOs funded by the US and allied corporate elites and governments deploy sensationalist false claims, for example of police murdering peaceful protestors, so as to create a cognitive limbo of doubt and suspicion aimed at disabling opposition to the West’s recolonization campaigns. Over the medium and long term, the steady drip of false accusations against countries resisting recolonization, like Syria and Iran, or Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, creates false memories, corrupting and distorting the historical record and obscuring the West’s crimes against those and so many other countries in the majority world.
Western ruling elites have corrupted human rights organizations and institutions at practically every level using corporate grant making and government funding. The practical results of this corruption mirror corporate techniques of control fraud and strategic avoidance of regulation. Economics writers like Michael Hudson and William Black, among others, have explained how corrupt US and allied corporations have exploited these fraudulent abuses for decades. Control fraud is essentially no different from ancient practices like debasing coins, adulterating food products or selling defective goods as fit for use. They all fool people into accepting something that causes them loss, hurt and damage.
In the United States, powerful corporations control US political and institutional life sufficiently to be able to co-opt justice and escape criminal prosecution. This reality crowds out honest, socially responsible business and financial practice. Parallel to control fraud by major financial institutions, other multinational corporations, for example oil, mining or information technology corporations, operate what various writers call a “veil of tiers” strategy misrepresenting their earnings so as to avoid tax or other regulation, and legal prosecution. More legitimately, in the field of insurance, the “veil of tiers” strategy spreads risks associated with potential litigation. The international human rights industry uses similar techniques to justify and cover up Western attacks against the peoples of the majority world.
The dependence of international human rights NGOs on corporate and government funding and on publicity via corporate media and public relations over time has generated the osmosis of corrupt corporate practice into the human rights industry. Writers like Cory Morningstar have analyzed exhaustively how this takeover by corporate culture of the “non-profit industrial complex serves hegemony as a sophisticated fine-tuned symbiotic mechanism in a continuous state of flux and refinement. The ruling elite channel an immeasurable amount of resources and tools through these organizations to further strengthen, protect and expand existing forms of power structures and global domination.”
In a human rights context, control fraud takes the form of politically motivated, false, sensationalist accusations based on egregiously one-sided, often fact-free research, sometimes using fake pseudo-scientific reconstructions. Accountability for these false accusations is rendered negligible by means of a “veil of tiers” strategy starting at a low level with small, local or national human rights NGOS, progressing via larger international human rights NGOs and auxiliary private contractors to regional human rights institutions, then reaching United Nations organizations and ultimately the highest levels of the international human rights legal system. By excluding independent corroboration, the interchange from one level to the next imparts spurious mutual legitimacy of varying degrees between the organizations and institutions involved.
The process is quasi-judicial with zero accountability, such that attempting to counteract false accusations is extremely difficult if not impossible, especially in the short term. If anything, the human rights industry is even less accountable than multinational corporations. Two recent examples, among innumerable others, confirm the creeping monopolization of the human rights industry by corrupt corporate practice. Against both the Ukraine government in February 2014 and against the Nicaraguan government in May 2018, Western human rights NGOs made very similar accusations that their police forces murdered peaceful protestors indiscriminately. In both cases, the accusations were false.
The context of the killings in both cases was a violent attempt at regime change by a US government funded political opposition. In Ukraine’s case, the opposition had been supported for over twenty years with US government funding amounting to over US$5 billion as confirmed in 2013 by Victoria Nuland, then US Assistant Secretary of State. That US government finance was in addition to funding from US corporate oligarchs like Pierre Omidyaar andGeorge Soros. The most notorious event in the regime change campaign in Ukraine took place over February 18th-20th in 2014 when over 70 people were killed in Kiev’s Maidan square during violent confrontations between police and protestors. The massacre led to the overthrow of the legitimate government and its replacement by a fascist US client regime.
After the event, even CNN felt bound to report a leaked conversation between Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs in which Paet confirmed that a pro-opposition doctor treating wounded protestors claimed opposition snipers, not government security forces, had shot the protestors. That report was followed by the broadcast from Italy’s Mediaset Matrix television channel of interviews, here and here, with mercenary snipers confessing they had fired on both protestors and police during the Maidan protests in February 2014. The mercenaries had come forward aggrieved at not getting paid by the opposition aligned figures who hired them. Even so, the Ukraine authorities announced their investigation into the shootings was complete, simply repeating the false accusations against the former Ukrainian government despite categorically clear evidence to the contrary.
A prominent part of the Ukraine prosecutors’ false case was a virtual reconstruction of events by a private New York contractor called SITU Research whose human rights work is funded by US oligarch owned grant making bodies, like the MacArthur Foundation, the Oak Foundation and the Open Society Foundations. Ivan Katchanovski of the University of Ottawa has exposed as phony the SITU Research reconstruction of the Maidan shootings, demonstrating, for example, that in various cases SITU Research’s imaging moved wound locations indicated in the respective forensic autopsy reports in order to suit the video’s conclusions. Katchanovksi’s detailed analysis draws on other evidence omitted by SITU Research which also contradicts their claims, for example witness testimony from 25 wounded opposition supporters that they were shot from opposition controlled buildings.
Katchanovski points out that numerous video and TV footage shows opposition snipers and shooters in buildings controlled by the opposition. That footage is supported by over 150 witness testimonies confirming snipers were firing from those locations. Katchanovski also notes that Brad Samuels, founding partner of SITU Research “said in a video [start at 55:16] that ‘…eventually, there is a consensus that there was a third party acting. It is clear from forensic evidence that people were shot in the back. Somebody was shooting from rooftops.’ ” Katchanovski remarks that Samuels’ “striking observation was not included anywhere in the SITU 3D model report that he produced.” Katchanovski’s critical analysis of SITU Research’s material and of the broader official Ukraine investigation into the Maidan massacre has never been seriously challenged.
Similar false accusations ignoring readily available contradictory evidence and also using SITU Research modeling were made against Nicaragua’s government earlier this year. On May 30th the Organization of American States subsidiary body the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), the Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team and SITU Research jointly published a video allegedly proving that Nicaragua’s police shot and killed unarmed protesters at a demonstration on May 30th 2018. But detailed analysis of the video shows that in this case too SITU Research have misrepresented data, namely the distance between the police and the protestors which was in fact about 175 metres, in order to harmonize the reality of what happened with their virtual reconstruction which claims police snipers fired from a distance of around 250 metres.
The video footage of the protests in Nicaragua contains no scenes where Nicaraguan police use their firearms. Similarly, just as in their false reconstruction of events in Kiev’s Maidan square, SITU Research omitted a substantial body of information contradicting their account of the shootings in Managua on May 30th. The context in this case too was of extremely violent protests by organizations funded by the US government with over US$15 million just in 2017-2018. For example, local human rights organizations received over US$3 million from the US government that year as did local media NGOs. Although, two solidarity organizations wrote and published an open letter to the organizations who produced the video, respectfully questioning their findings, to date the letter has received only a formal acknowledgment without replying to the questions.
In both Ukraine and Nicaragua, the US government funded local opposition aligned NGOs to make false allegations of very serious human rights violations. A private company contractor was funded by US corporate interests to produce false pseudo-scientific material unfairly incriminating the governments for those violations. International human rights NGOs repeated the false accusations on the basis of that same false evidence. Regional human rights institutions accused the governments concerned on the basis of that same material.
The accusations are false but the Nicaraguan government and accused members of the former Ukrainian government are denied a fair defense. This same process has been repeated over and over again against governments resisting US and allied policies. Western human rights organizations share the same corrupt methodology as their corporate and government patrons. They make false claims, suppress inconvenient evidence, do all they can to avoid independent scrutiny and systematically evade accountability.
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The scientists conclusions are damning: They said,
“the January to June 2020 prolonged heat was made at least 600 times more likely as a result of human-induced climate change.”
They warned that the region, which is warming at least three times faster than the rest of the world, could experience a worse case scenario of seven degrees of warming by 2050.
They added,
“by 2050 the Siberian region could expect to have temperatures increase by at least 2.5 degrees compared to 1900, but this increase could be as high as 7 degrees.”
If this happens, the region as we know it will be no more, with a spiraling chaos of extreme heat, fires, methane releases, and the decimation of iconic species.
This extreme heat is impacting the sea ice. Yesterday an article in Mashable warned that the Arctic sea ice just crashed to an extreme, record low. In total, Mashable warned “Arctic sea ice is about 500,000 square kilometers (some 193,000 square miles) under the previous record low for this time of year.”
Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, told the site, “right now it’s quite extreme.” He is not the only one worried. Meteorologist Simon Lee tweeted:
The unprecedented disappearance of sea ice in the Arctic this summer is a mind-blowing manifestation of the changes we are causing to Earth's climate. pic.twitter.com/NZmcCt5wlZ
The loss of sea ice is having a devastating impact on polar bears, who use it to hunt for seals.
A new study, published in Nature Climate Change, warns that under a business as usual scenario, polar bears could nearly be extinct by the end of the century, now only present in the Queen Elizabeth Islands, the northernmost cluster in Canada’s Arctic.
“It’s been clear for some time that polar bears are going to suffer under climate change,” Péter Molnár, a biologist at the University of Toronto, and lead author of the study, told the Guardian. “Even if we mitigate emissions, we are still going to see some subpopulations go extinct before the end of the century.”
The news from the South Pole, Antarctica, is equally depressing, with scientists discovering active leaks of methane, the most potent greenhouse gas, from the sea floor. This is deeply troubling as Antarctica is estimated to contain as much as a quarter of earth’s marine methane reserves. If this escapes into the atmosphere it could seriously worsen our climate emergency.
“It is not good news…The methane cycle is absolutely something that we as a society need to be concerned about. I find it incredibly concerning.”
We all need to be worried. As the Independent added about the research, “as the climate crisis means ice shelves retreat, the release of methane from subsurface marine reservoirs is expected to become increasingly common.”
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The Supreme Court decided on June 15 that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects gay and transgender workers from workplace discrimination. Discrimination ‘because of sex’ is unlawful. But what is it that makes discrimination morally wrong? It is useful to examine this from a Kantian standpoint because Immanuel Kant lays the foundation for recognizing the inherent dignity of every individual – and discrimination is indeed an affront to human dignity.
Kant’s moral philosophy – or deontology (‘deon’ referring to duty) – maintains that what makes an act right is that it is done for the sake of the moral law. Consequences, intended or otherwise, are irrelevant in determining the moral worth of an action. What matters is whether the action is motivated by duty, which is to say, respect for the moral law.
Kant offered several formulations of the moral law which he described as a categorical imperative, as opposed to a hypothetical imperative. A hypothetical imperative says “If you want to accomplish x… then you must do y.” A categorical imperative on the other hand says, “Do x!” Your ends, aims or desires are irrelevant. That is what makes it categorical: it is not conditional upon anything. It commands us all the same irrespective of empirical or psychological contingencies.
Two formulations of the categorical imperative are particularly important. The first is the principle of human dignity and it says, never treat another rational being merely as a means but always as an end-in-themselves. In other words, treat every human being as possessing intrinsic value and never simply as a means to your own ends. From this standpoint, slavery is wrong precisely because it reduces the human being to a mere object, a thing, an instrument for satisfying another’s interests and fails to recognize their infinite and intrinsic worth as an end-in-themselves.
The second formulation of the categorical imperative is the principle of universalizability. It tells us to act only on those maxims that we can universalize. In other words, ask yourself if the action I am about to take can be rationally universalized – could I rationally, self-consistently will that everyone act in the same way as I am about to? Suppose I want to break a contract and renege on my promise: could I rationally will that everyone act on the maxim, renege on your promise when it suits you? The answer is no. I cannot rationally universalize the maxim, break your contract whenever it suits you, because in that case the entire institution of making contracts would collapse. No one would enter into a contract if there was not a reasonable expectation that it would be honored. When I renege on an agreement what I am actually doing is making an exception of myself – I am saying that everyone else should abide by their agreements but the same rule does not apply to me.
In fact, it is fair to say that the capital sin from a Kantian standpoint is precisely making an exception of myself, failing to recognize that the same rules apply to me as they do to anyone else. Discrimination therefore violates the very core of Kantian moral theory. When I discriminate against another person or group, I am saying that they do not count as much as I do. Discrimination is always morally wrong from a Kantian standpoint because it means that I allow myself to count more than the other does: the same rules do not apply to us equally. But morality requires that no one, and no group, counts more than any other. The rules apply to us all equally and no one is permitted to make an exception of themselves or the group to which they happen to belong.
There is another aspect to the deontological critique of discrimination. Kant famously writes in the Conclusion to his Critique of Practical Reason (1788): “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence… The starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” What is so wonderful about the moral law? There is something about it which gives humanity a touch of the divine and the reason has to do with autonomy.
To say that we are capable of acting on the basis of the moral law is to say that we are capable of autonomy – that is, literally, self-lawgiving. If we are able to give the law to ourselves then we are truly free. There is no freedom without autonomy. Freedom is not being able to do whatever you want. It is being able to act on a law that you legislate to yourself.
The alternative to autonomy is heteronomy. I may be physically free but if I live my life satisfying every base inclination then I am not really free at all. In that case, I am heteronomous – ruled by an other. I am still being ruled by an other, even if that other is my own inclinations and desires. As Martin Luther King observed, “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” Freedom is being able to govern yourself through a kind of self-legislation.
Kant admits that we may never know whether anyone ever truly acted solely out of respect for the moral law: “One need not be an enemy of virtue but only a cool observer… to become doubtful at certain moments… whether any true virtue is to be found in the world.” We can say of any act that it was partially motivated by self-interest or inclination. But if it is impossible to act on the basis of the moral law then freedom is also impossible. When we act on the basis of self-interest or inclination we are not acting with true freedom. Although we cannot know that any act consistent with duty was motivated solely by the moral law, neither can we know that it was not. And not only are we permitted to think that moral freedom is indeed possible, in fact we have to assume it is possible for morality to make any sense at all.
We cannot arrive at any theoretical knowledge pertaining to freedom, according to Kant, because our knowledge is limited to the world of phenomena, or appearances. To the extent that our knowledge is bound by phenomena, nothing in the world including ourselves is free – as Kant observed: “[If] I were only a part of the world of sense [all my actions] would be assumed to conform wholly to the natural law of desires and inclinations, i.e., to the heteronomy of nature.” But it is also because our knowledge is limited that we are allowed to think of ourselves as free; and indeed, for the sake of morality we have to. We do not know what we are in ourselves, so to speak: “Even as to himself, the human being cannot claim to cognize what he is in himself…” – for we cannot know things in themselves, or the world as noumena. And since we cannot know, it is possible that we are free as noumenal beings.
What then is morally wrong with discrimination from a Kantian standpoint? When we discriminate against persons what we are effectively doing is saying this person or group of people lack moral worth. We have moral worth because we have the capacity for autonomy or freedom. That is why one is to be treated always as an end-in-itself, because we are rational agents capable of acting on the basis of a law that reason itself legislates. When I am prejudiced against someone I am, consciously or not, denying their capacity for moral freedom.
But we have also seen that Kant denies that we can have any such knowledge about others or even ourselves. Therefore, when I deny another’s capacity for autonomy I am assuming a knowledge I do not possess. I have to assume that all rational beings are capable of freedom, and as such they possess infinite worth. Discrimination is morally wrong then because it is based on a false premise – namely, that I can truly know the other.
Kant teaches that we have to acknowledge the limits of human knowledge. When I recognize that the other as a noumenal being eludes me I have to admit that I can no more deny their freedom then I can deny my own. And if they are free then they possess infinite self-worth and must be treated as end-in-themselves and never simply as a means.
From a Kantian standpoint discrimination based on race – or religion, or gender – is fundamentally wrong. It is wrong, first of all, because it is dehumanizing, a denial of human dignity. When I racially discriminate, I am denying the person’s intrinsic self-worth, I am, in fact, denying their very right to exist, whether I know it or not. The moral law demands that I treat every individual as a free person equal to everyone else. If the moral law grants each of us a kind of infinite worth, it does not grant someone greater worth than anyone else.
As Patrick Linden, a professor of philosophy at New York University, said to me in an email, it is “more consonant with Kant’s ethics to disregard group membership – black, white, sex, tribe, etc. – and focus on the person as a source of freedom and value. To treat a person on the basis of their essential humanity rather than according to other categories they may be members of. That is what we want to be the universal law. This is why Kant is usually seen as morally opposed to affirmative action whatever its expedience may be. It also contradicts traditionalist understandings of workplace gender segregation.”
Discrimination is morally egregious when we use it to justify treating another human being as anything less than a human being, as anything less than a person possessed with inherent dignity, and immeasurable intrinsic value. Each one of us is an end-in-itself, a citizen within a “kingdom of ends,” as Kant put it. When I discriminate, I do not treat that person any longer as an end-in-themselves – I identify them with some group of which they are a member and allow that to define who and what they are. What I have invariably overlooked is their humanity: when I respect their humanity, I treat them with dignity, because I know they have the capacity for moral freedom and therefore infinite worth.
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Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
“Americans should not blame others in vain,” Iranian general Esmail Gha’ani has declared, “this is a fire they have lit and today has engulfed them.” Gha’ani, a veteran military commander who heads the Quds Force, the branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) responsible for extraterritorial operations, was speaking about the massive fire that has overtaken a U.S. navy vessel in San Diego.
Gha’ani chose his words carefully. He skirted suggesting that Iran had a role in the blaze, instead saying it was the “result of the actions and crimes of the American government” and was “carried out by American elements” themselves. But he signaled American actions abroad will have costs at home, saying that “very difficult days and harsh incidents lie ahead” for the U.S. and Israel.
The repeat incidents suggest a broader sabotage operation at play. Israel and the U.S. are not strangers to such operations in Iran. However, coming months before the U.S. presidential election, such actions smack of desperation and a last-ditch effort to goad Iran into overreaction and dangerously spike U.S.-Iran tensions yet again.
Israel’s Drive for a U.S. War with Iran
“This is a historic opportunity,” an aid to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told journalist Ben Caspit late last year. “You have no idea what we can wheedle from the Americans now, what a golden opportunity we face when the US is about to enter an election year—if we have a unity government headed by [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.”
That government has now been formed and Netanyahu is at its helm despite his ongoing trial on corruption charges. But what might the “historic opportunity” look like? Caspit asserts: “Netanyahu’s people, headed by minister Yuval Steinitz clearly state that a widespread war is likely to erupt in the next six months between Iran and its adversaries in the region, including Israel.” Caspit adds that Israeli defense minister Naftali Bennet has been “ramping up the warmongering” and “threatens Iran on an almost daily basis.”
Netanyahu has a long history of agitating for war with Iran. Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said that during the nuclear negotiations that led to the July 2015 nuclear accord, the Israeli leader “urged” then-U.S. President Barack Obama to “bomb Iran.” Netanyahu himself nearly attacked Iran at least three times in 2010 and 2011, but was blocked to a large degree by President Obama, who opposed such strikes and feared they would lead to a region-wide conflict that the U.S. would be dragged into.
The situation could not be more different with the Trump administration. President Trump has given carte blanche to Netanyahu, whether on annexation of the West Bank, recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, or adopting a regime change policy toward Tehran. Trump has boasted that reneging on the Iran nuclear deal was “probably the biggest thing I did for Israel.”
According to John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor turned nemesis, Trump has already greenlighted Israeli military strikes against Iran. Trump for his part believes a war with Iran would be short.
“I’m not talking boots on the ground,” he proclaimed last year. “I’m just saying if something would happen, it wouldn’t last very long.”
He has also said that he would not need an “exit strategy” in the event of a war with Iran.
As one Trump administration official has stated, the “ultimate goal” of the current U.S. pressure campaign against Iran is to “draw Iran into an armed conflict with the United States.” But for all the Trump administration’s efforts, the Iranian government has neither taken the bait nor imploded or capitulated.
Iranian Restraint Being Tested
In the face of overt aggression from the Trump administration, Iran has alternated between restraint and careful counter-escalation. As the Iranian economy has come under a brutal chokehold, Iran has responded in calibrated fashion to demonstrate the costs of maximum pressure while isolating the U.S. internationally and keeping the nuclear deal alive.
Iran is widely believed to be responsible for attacks on Emirati oil tankers last summer and Saudi oil facilities last fall, which occurred after the U.S. ended sanctions waivers for importers of Iranian oil. After the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, Iran also retaliated by launching a ballistic missile barrage at a base that houses U.S. troops in Iraq. Significantly, there were no fatalities in any of these incidents (Iran reportedly gave forewarning to Iraqi officials regarding the Iraq attack).
Iran has enjoyed widespread international support for its efforts to preserve the nuclear deal and restraint in the face of U.S. and Israeli provocations. The U.S. is currently fixated on a far-fetched plan to reimpose United Nations sanctions on Iran, but remains extraordinarily isolated on Iran, including from its European allies. This was exemplified at a recent UN Security Council meeting on Iran, where one country after another lined up to voice support for the nuclear accord and rebuke the U.S. for its approach to Iran.
It now seems possible that the nuclear deal will survive Trump’s sabotage and be resuscitated. Trump is dwindling in the polls and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has pledged to return to the accord and get the U.S back on a diplomatic track toward Iran. For Netanyahu and his allied hawks in Washington, this is the worst-case scenario. Despite all their efforts, they will have lost the “golden opportunity” of the Trump presidency to decisively kill the nuclear deal and trigger a head-on U.S.-Iran war. It is perhaps for this reason that Bolton, longtime ally of Netanyahu and staunch advocate of war against Iran, recently proclaimed that “the next few months are an optimal time for Israel to act in its own national security interests.”
A Hot Summer Ahead
The string of blasts on mostly civilian infrastructure throughout Iran should be seen in the context of ongoing efforts to ratchet up U.S.-Iran hostilities. The pernicious pressure campaign against Iran being taken inside the country’s borders tests the limits of Iran’s restraint and invites more fierce reprisals. Already, a media narrative has taken hold that Iran’s “limited response” to U.S. actions “could be an incentive for further operations against it,” as the New York Times has stated.
The recent remarks of Gha’ani, who is Soleimani’s successor, indirectly warns the U.S. of increased costs to America if it continues its current policy. However, Netanyahu and his allies in Washington have likely pinned their hopes on Iran providing a casus belli for further escalation. Any violent reaction from Iran could be seized upon to shift global opinion and engulf the U.S. in a conflict that a Biden administration could not easily undo.
President Trump remains committed to escalating against Iran even as the U.S. battles a worsening pandemic, an economic depression, and internal discord not seen in decades. In May, Trump even vetoed legislation that would prevent military actions against Iran without Congressional authorization. As Trump’s prospects for re-election fade, a dangerous stage has been set for conflict in the months ahead.
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Brazil’s Trade Union Network UniSaude filed a complaint in the International Criminal Court (ICC) against President Jair Bolsonaro for crimes against humanity and genocide during the COVID-19 crisis.
“Bolsonaro’s management of the pandemic has been criminal and negligent. He has risked the lives of health professionals and the people,” UniSaude denounced.
Despite testing COVID-19 positive, the far-right politician refuses to take preventive measures to protect citizens. He has also been seen greeting his supporters without wearing a mask, promoting meetings, and minimizing the pandemic’s impact in the country.
On Saturday, after learning that he had already overcome the disease, Bolsonaro drove his motorcycle without a mask around the Alvorada Palace.
"Bolsonaro is more than a political problem, he became a public health problem," leaders of Brazilian opposition parties said. https://t.co/lnHP6yqjpt
UniSaude has also condemned the fact that Brazil has been without a health minister for over two months. Since the last health minister resigned from office in May, the inexperienced General Eduardo Pazuello has temporarily occupied this position.
“Brazil’s situation is extremely serious, and this has happened because of Bolsonaro’s unreliable decisions,” UniSaude said.
“Our accusation shows the people’s pain and concern about the health crisis,” nurse Jhuliana Rodrigues assured.
As of Monday, Brazil recorded 2,419,091 COVID-19 infections and 87,004 deaths. Among the infected people, 195,516 are health workers.
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Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry hit back at the Trump administration after it offered US $5 million for information leading to the arrest of Supreme Court President Maikel Moreno last week.
“The Venezuelan government once again rejects the Donald Trump administration’s illegal and coercive actions against the Venezuelan people…by way of false accusations and bounties in the style of cowboys and the Wild West,” Caracas said in a statement.
“The US people… deserve institutions dedicated to resolving the serious problems in society, including the justice system, such as determining the truth and perpetrators… in the Epstein case,” the statement continued, referring to notorious paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his high-profile establishment connections.
The Foreign Ministry also pledged to include the move as additional evidence in its case before the International Criminal Court, in which Caracas argues that Washington’s sanctions constitute “crimes against humanity.”
Last week, the US State Department accused Moreno of “participating in transnational organized crime” and of “personally receiv[ing] money or property as bribery payments to influence the outcome of civil and criminal cases in Venezuela.” Moreno has categorically dismissed the allegations as “unfounded.”
The bounty is the latest in a series of similar compensations offered for the arrest of high-profile Venezuelan officials, including US $15 million for President Nicolas Maduro and US $10 million for other important figures, including National Constituent Assembly President Diosdado Cabello and Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami. All three men, alongside Moreno, were indicted by US federal prosecutors in March.
Moreno, who took over as Supreme Court president in 2017, was blacklisted by the US and Canada the same year, alongside dozens of other top officials, including President Maduro. The top judge was likewise sanctioned by Switzerland, Panama and the European Union in 2018.
Since declaring Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security in 2015, Washington has targeted scores of senior Venezuelan officials, freezing their foreign assets and imposing travel bans. Beginning in 2017, the Trump administration levied crippling financial sanctions, which it later escalated into an oil embargo and sweeping ban on dealings with Venezuelan state entities, enforced via secondary sanctions against third parties.
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Featured image: Venezuela’s chief justice Maikel Moreno, who now has a US $5 million bounty on his head, addresses the Supreme Court. (@MaikelMorenoTSJ / Twitter)
If some Congress members get their way, the Federal Reserve may soon be able to track many of your purchases in real time and share that information with government agencies. This is just one of the problems with the proposed “digital dollar” or “fedcoin.”
Fedcoin was initially included in the first coronavirus spending bill. While the proposal was dropped from the final version of the bill, there is still great interest in fedcoin on Capitol Hill. Some progressives have embraced fedcoin as a way to provide Americans with a “universal basic income.”
Both the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee held hearings on fedcoin in June. This is the first step toward making fedcoin a reality.
Fedcoin would not be an actual coin. Instead, it would be a special account created and maintained for each American by the Federal Reserve. Each month, Fed employees could tap a few keys on a computer and — bingo — each American would have dollars added to his Federal Reserve account. This is the 21st century equivalent of throwing money from helicopters.
Fedcoin could effect private cryptocurrencies. Also, it would limit the ability of private citizens to protect themselves from the Federal Reserve-caused decline in the dollar’s value.
Fedcoin would not magically increase the number of available goods and services. What it would do is drive up prices. The damage this would do to middle- and lower-income Americans would dwarf any benefit they receive from their monthly “gift” from the Fed. The rise in prices could lead to Congress regularly increasing fedcoin payments to Americans. These increases would cause prices to keep rising even more until we face hyperinflation and a dollar crisis. Of course, we are already on the path to an economic crisis thanks to the Fed. Fedcoin will hasten and worsen the crisis.
Fedcoin poses a great threat to privacy. The Federal Reserve could know when fedcoin is used, who is using it, and what they use it for. This information could be shared with government agencies, such as the FBI or IRS.
The government could use the ability to know how Americans are spending fedcoin to limit our ability to purchase goods and services disfavored by politicians and bureaucrats. Anyone who doubts this should recall the Obama administration’s Operation Choke Point. Operation Choke Point involved financial regulators “alerting” banks that dealing with certain businesses, such as gun stores, would put the banks at “reputational risk” and could subject them to greater regulation.
Is it so hard to believe that the ability to track purchases would be used in the future to “discourage” individuals from buying guns, fatty foods, or tobacco, or from being customers of corporations whose CEOs are not considered “woke” by the thought police? Fedcoin could also be used to “encourage” individuals to patronize “green” business, thus fulfilling Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s goal of involving the Fed in the fight against climate change.
Fedcoin could threaten private cryptocurrencies, increase inflation, and give government new powers over our financial transactions. Fedcoin will also speed up destruction of the fiat money system. Whatever gain fedcoin may bring to average Americans will come at terrible cost to liberty and prosperity.
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By its own admission, Israel’s IDF conducted numerous airstrikes on Syrian targets in recent years.
Last week, Lebanon’s Al-Manar television reported that an Israeli strike near Damascus International Airport killed Hezbollah fighter Ali Kamel Mohsen and four others.
In response, Hezbollah MP Sheikh Hassan Ezzedine said “war between us and this enemy (Israel) will continue, and this path that the martyrs have taken with their blood will continue.”
Along with Iranian military advisors and Russian air support, Hezbollah fighters are involved in aiding Syria combat US aggression, including its ISIS, al-Nusra and other jihadist proxies.
Israeli airstrikes in Syria killed Hezbollah fighters before. Its leadership vowed to retaliate against Israeli aggression when any of its personnel are harmed.
For days, tensions along the Lebanese/Israeli border remain heightened.
On Monday, Lebanese Al-Manar television reported the following:
Israel’s IDF “claim(ed) that “Hezbollah attempted to carry out an infiltration operation and that the Israeli army frustrated the attack and killed a number of its fighters,” adding:
“Hezbollah then issued a statement to refute the Israeli claims and stress that the Israeli army unilaterally opened fire for fear of Hezbollah response to the killing of the martyr Ali Mohsen in the latest raid on Syria.”
Netanyahu regime claims otherwise “are absolutely untrue and aim at fabricating fake victories.”
“The Islamic Resistance did not engage in any clash, nor did it open fire during (the border) incident.”
Gunfire was “from (the Israeli) side only…”
Israeli aggression “will not remain unanswered.”
Last weekend, Lebanon’s military reported that numerous Israeli surveillance drones entered the country’s airspace illegally.
On Monday, explosions and gunfire were heard along the Lebanese/Israeli border — in illegally occupied Sheba’a Farms.
From its 1982 preemptive war on Lebanon until May 2000, Israeli illegally occupied the country’s south to the Litani River.
It still illegally occupies the Ghajar Lebanese village bordering Golan, along with Sheba’a Farms, a 14-square mile water-rich area near Syria’s Golan.
In 1982, Oded Yinon’s document titled “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties” laid out a divide and conquer strategy.
It was and remains all about wanting the Middle East map redrawn in cahoots with the US so both countries can dominate the region.
For Israeli hegemonic plans to succeed, it believes Arab states and Iran must be partitioned along ethnic and sectarian lines, transformed into client states.
Israel’s preemptive June 1967 Six Day War followed the plan — illegally seizing the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Syria’s Golan and Lebanese territory.
Both countries have the misfortune of bordering the Jewish state with designs on expanding into their territory.
Israel preemptively attacked Lebanon in 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996, and 2006, along with subsequent Jewish state initiated cross-border incidents.
Does Netanyahu have another war in mind, a possible wag the dog scenario to distract attention from his ongoing corruption trial and days of street protests calling for him to resign?
According to deputy Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem,
“(t)he atmosphere does not indicate a war…in the next few months,” adding:
“There is no change of rules of engagement and the deterrent equation with Israel exists and we are not planning to change it.”
Last summer after two Hezbollah fighters were killed by the IDF in Syria, its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah vowed to respond defensively if Israeli attacks strike its forces again.
On Monday, Southfront reported that Israel deployed “M109 Doher howitzers” along its border with Lebanon, adding:
Gideon infantry and Golani brigade troops were also sent to the border area in Occupied Golan.
The Netanyahu regime warned that it holds Lebanon’s government responsible “for all actions emanating from” the country — ignoring its own hostile cross-border actions.
If further clashes with Hezbollah fighters occur, retaliation will be highly likely, risking more war in this tinder box part of the world.
Israel and the US partner in each each other’s preemptive wars.
Last week, US Joint Chiefs chairman General Mark Milley met with his IDF counterpart General Aviv Kochavi, former IDF chief/current Netanyahu regime war minister Benny Gantz, and other Israeli officials on a visit to an airbase in country to coordinate regional strategy ahead.
Netanyahu was involved by videoconference.
The Jerusalem Post asked if beleaguered Netanyahu seeks US support for striking Iran before US November elections while the most pro-Israel ever Trump regime remains in office.
AP News reported that Milley visited Israel at a time of heightened Middle East tensions — punctuated by the Israeli/Lebanon border incident that could escalate to something more serious.
While Israeli war with Lebanon is unlikely, beleaguered Netanyahu might try anything to stay in power and out of prison.
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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.”
Medical doctors at an event in front of the US Supreme Court are accused of making false statements.
The video was removed by Youtube and Facebook. They are accused by the corporate media of spreading “fake science”:
“(CNN Business) A video featuring a group of doctors making false and dubious claims related to the coronavirus was removed by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube after going viral online Monday.
The video, published by the right-wing media outlet Breitbart News, featured a group of people wearing white lab coats calling themselves “America’s Frontline Doctors” staging a press conference in front of the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC. …
During the press conference, a speaker who identifies herself as a doctor makes a number of dubious claims, including that “you don’t need masks” to prevent spread of the coronavirus, and that recent studies showing hydroxychloroquine is ineffective for the treatment of Covid-19 are “fake science” sponsored by “fake pharma companies.”<
“This virus has a cure, it’s called hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and Zithromax,” the woman claims. “You don’t need masks, there is a cure.”
The claims run contrary to multiple studies on the anti-malarial drug and advice from public health officials to prevent spread of the virus.” (CNN, Business, emphasis added)
Here we have a REAL CASE OF FAKE CNN NEWS which is involved in CENSORING “DUBIOUS CLAIMS” by medical doctors. A desperate attempt to silence American medical doctors, smearing medical professionals. It’s cheap dirty journalism. It’s fake corporate news at its best, applauding outright censorship of medical professionals. Why, because their statement goes against the multibillion interests of Big Pharma.
According to the CNN report, Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), is allegedly sponsored by “Fake Pharma companies”. What utter nonsense. Who are these fake pharmaceutical companies?The corporate fake media did not even show up to ask questions to the medical doctors.
The Video is down but we have the entire transcript below. (Scroll down). You can check the credentials of the doctors.
Guess Who is behind this censorship?
Dr. Anthony Fauci, advisor to Donald Trump, portrayed as “America’s top infectious disease expert” has played a key role in smearing the HCQ cure which had been approved years earlier by the CDC. Dr. Fauci has been the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since the Reagan administration. He is known to act as a mouthpiece for Big Pharma.
In late June, Dr. Fauci launched Remdesevir a “corona wonder drug” developed by Gilead Sciences Inc. It’s a $1.6 billion dollar bonanza. It is $3200 treatment per patient. HCQ has been banned by Fauci. Medical doctors are threatened of loosing their licences if they prescribe HCQ.
Read more on LancetGate. How a peer reviewed May report in The Lancet was used to “kill HCQ”, portraying it as a dangerous drug. It was then discovered that the data to support these claims had been fabricated. The authoritative article was retracted by The Lancet. The Harvard Medical Doctor in charge of the study apologized, “I am sorry”:
It is now clear to me that in my hope to contribute this research during a time of great need, I did not do enough to ensure that the data source was appropriate for this use. For that, and for all the disruptions – both directly and indirectly – I am truly sorry. (emphasis added)
Dr. Mehra’s report is fake science. Fake data used to undermine HCQ in favor of Big Pharma’s Remdesivir.
This is the unspoken truth, Read it carefully:
The Lancet study on HCQ was allegedly based on data analysis of 96,032 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 between Dec 20, 2019, and April 14, 2020 from 671 hospitals Worldwide. The database had been fabricated. The objective was to kill the Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) cure on behalf of Big Pharma.
The US corporate media was instructed not to cover Lancetgate. And Fauci gave the green-light to Gilead Sciences Inc. to distribute Remdesevir, a $1.6 billion dollar bonanza.
Dr. Fauci is in “conflict of interest”. He suppresses HCQ while endorsing Gilead Sciences Inc.
Read the transcript below. We must ensure that the voice of medical doctors be upheld.
CNN is fake. The Medical doctors are real.
Below is the summary as well as the transcript. The video has been removed by Youtube and Facebook.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, July 28, 2020
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Listen to the testimony of American medical doctors.
Thousands of American physicians have been silenced.
“Americans are captured by Fear”.
We cannot live with a spiderweb of fear.
We’re being held down by the spider web of fear. That spiderweb is all around us and it’s constricting us and it’s draining the lifeblood of the American people, American society, and American economy.
Fear is sustained Worldwide by the media and the governments.
But HCQ is being suppressed by Anthony Fauci, who is behind the “Spiderweb of Fear” campaign.
When you apply the lockdown. People are confined. It creates health problems. It triggers alcoholism and drug addiction.
In turn, with the closing down of the national economy, this creates unemployment and poverty. Inevitably the closing down of the economy also triggers a public health crisis.
Thank you. Thank you so much congressmen. So we’re here because we feel as though the American people have not heard from all the expertise that’s out there all across our country. We do have some experts speaking, but there’s lots and lots of experts across the country. So some of us decided to get together. We’re America’s Frontline Doctors. We’re here only to help American patients and the American nation heal. We have a lot of information to share. Americans are riveted and captured by fear at the moment. We are not held down by the virus as much as we’re being held down by the spider web of fear. That spiderweb is all around us and it’s constricting us and it’s draining the lifeblood of the American people, American society, and American economy.
Scroll down for complete transcript
VIDEO
The video was censored all over Facebook, Google, Youtube, Twitter.
Thank you. Thank you so much congressman. So we’re here because we feel as though the American people have not heard from all the expertise that’s out there all across our country. We do have some experts speaking, but there’s lots and lots of experts across the country. So some of us decided to get together. We’re America’s Frontline Doctors. We’re here only to help American patients and the American nation heal. We have a lot of information to share. Americans are riveted and captured by fear at the moment. We are not held down by the virus as much as we’re being held down by the spider web of fear. That spiderweb is all around us and it’s constricting us and it’s draining the lifeblood of the American people, American society, and American economy.
This does not make sense. COVID-19 is a virus that exists in essentially two phases. There’s the early phase disease, and there’s the late phase disease. In the early phase either before you get the virus or early, when you’ve gotten the virus, if you’ve gotten the virus, there’s treatment. That’s what we’re here to tell you. We’re going to talk about that this afternoon. You can find it on America’s Frontline Doctors, there’s many other sites that are streaming it live on Facebook. But we implore you to hear this because this message has been silenced. There are many thousands of physicians who have been silenced for telling the American people the good news about the situation, that we can manage the virus carefully and intelligently, but we cannot live with this spider web of fear that’s constricting our country.
So we’re going to hear now from various positions. Some are going to talk to you about what the lockdown has done to young, to older, to businesses, to the economy, and how we can get ourselves out of the cycle of fear. Dr. Hamilton.
Thank you, Simone. And thank you all for being here today. I’m Dr. Bob Hamilton. I’m a pediatrician from Santa Monica, California. I’ve been in private practice there for 36 years. And today I have good news for you. The good news is the children as a general rule are taking this virus very, very well. Few are getting infected. Those who are getting infected are being hospitalized in low numbers. And fortunately the mortality rate of children is about one fifth of 1%. So kids are tolerating the infection very frequently, but are actually asymptomatic.
I also want to say that children are not the drivers of this pandemic. People were worried about, initially, if children were going to actually be the ones to push the infection along. The very opposite is happening. Kids are tolerating it very well, they’re not passing it on to their parents, they’re not passing it onto their teachers. Dr. Mark Woolhouse from Scotland, who is a pediatric infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist said the following. He said, “There has not been one documented case of COVID being transferred from a student to a teacher in the world.” In the world.
I think that is important that all of us who are here today realize that our kids are not really the ones who are driving the infection. It is being driven by older individuals. And yes, we can send the kids back to school I think without fear. And this is the big issue right now, as Congressman Norman alluded to, this is the really important thing we need to do. We need to normalize the lives of our children. How do we do that? We do that by getting them back in the classroom. And the good news is they’re not driving this infection at all. Yes, we can use security measures. Yes, we can be careful. I’m all for that. We all are. But I think the important thing is we need to not act out of fear. We need to act out of science. We need to do it. We need to get it done.
Finally, the barrier, and I hate to say this, but the barrier to getting our kids back in school is not going to be the science, it’s going to be the national unions, the teachers union, the National Education Association, other groups who are going to demand money. And listen, I think that it’s fine to give people money for PPE and different things in the classroom. But some of their demands are really ridiculous. They’re talking about, where I’m from in California, the UTLA, which is United Teachers Union of Los Angeles, is demanding that we defund the police. What does that have to do with education? They’re demanding that they stop or they shut all private charter schools, privately funded charter schools. These are the schools that are actually getting the kids educated.
So clearly there are going to be barriers. The barriers will not be science. There will not be barriers for the sake of the children. That’s going to be for the sake of the adults, the teachers, and everybody else, and for the union. So that’s where we need to focus our efforts and fight back. So thank you all for being here and let’s get our kids back in school.
Hello, I’m Dr. Stella Emmanuel. I’m a primary care physician in Houston, Texas. I actually went to medical school in West Africa, Nigeria, where I took care of malaria patients, treated them with hydroxychloroquine and stuff like that. So I’m actually used to these medications. I’m here because I have personally treated over 350 patients with COVID. Patients that have diabetes, patients that have high blood pressure, patients that have asthma, old people … I think my oldest patient is 92 … 87 year olds. And the result has been the same. I put them on hydroxychloroquine, I put them on zinc, I put them on Zithromax, and they’re all well.
American doctors are holding a “White Coat Summit” in Washington, D.C. to address “a massive disinformation campaign” by the media about coronavirus.
Watch as Dr. Stella Immanuel tackles the media's narrative about hydroxychloroquine 👇 pic.twitter.com/5oymtU7TQV
For the past few months, after taking care of over 350 patients, we’ve not lost one. Not a diabetic, not a somebody with high blood pressure, not somebody who asthma, not an old person. We’ve not lost one patient. And on top of that, I’ve put myself, my staff, and many doctors that I know on hydroxychloroquine for prevention, because by the very mechanism of action, it works early and as a prophylaxis. We see patients, 10 to 15 COVID patients, everyday. We give them breathing treatments. We only wear surgical mask. None of us has gotten sick. It works.
So right now, I came here to Washington DC to say, America, nobody needs to die. The study that made me start using hydroxychloroquine was a study that they did under the NIH in 2005 that say it works. Recently, I was doing some research about a patient that had hiccups and I found out that they even did a recent study in the NIH, which is our National Institute … that is the National … NIH, what? National Institute of Health. They actually had a study and go look it up. Type hiccups and COVID, you will see it. They treated a patient that had hiccups with hydroxychloroquine and it proved that hiccups is a symptom of COVID. So if the NIH knows that treating the patient would hydroxychloroquine proves that hiccup is a symptom of COVID, then they definitely know the hydroxychloroquine works.
I’m upset. Why I’m upset is that I see people that cannot breathe. I see parents walk in, I see diabetic sit in my office knowing that this is a death sentence and they can’t breathe. And I hug them and I tell them, “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to live.” And we treat them and they leave. None has died. So if some fake science, some person sponsored by all these fake pharma companies comes out say, “We’ve done studies and they found out that it doesn’t work.” I can tell you categorically it’s fixed science. I want to know who is sponsoring that study. I want to know who is behind it because there is no way I can treat 350 patients and counting and nobody is dead and they all did better.
I know you’re going to tell me that you treated 20 people, 40 people, and it didn’t work. I’m a true testimony. So I came here to Washington DC to tell America nobody needs to get sick. This virus has a cure. It is called hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and Zithromax. I know you people want to talk about a mask. Hello? You don’t need mask. There is a cure. I know they don’t want to open schools. No, you don’t need people to be locked down. There is prevention and there is a cure.
And let me tell you something, all you fake doctors out there that tell me, “Yeah. I want a double blinded study.” I just tell you, quit sounding like a computer, double blinded, double blinded. I don’t know whether your chips are malfunctioning, but I’m a real doctor. I have radiologists, we have plastic surgeons, we have neurosurgeons, like Sanjay Gupta saying, “Yeah, it doesn’t work and it causes heart disease.” Let me ask you Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Hear me. Have you ever seen a COVID patient? Have you ever treated anybody with hydroxychloroquine and they died from heart disease? When you do, come and talk to me because I sit down in my clinic every day and I see these patients walk in everyday scared to death. I see people driving two, three hours to my clinic because some ER doctor is scared of the Texas board or they’re scared of something, and they will not prescribe medication to these people.
I tell all of you doctors that are sitting down and watching Americans die. You’re like the good Nazi … the good one, the good Germans that watched Jews get killed and you did not speak up. If they come after me, they threaten me. They’ve threatened to … I mean, I’ve gotten all kinds of threats. Or they’re going to report me to the bots. I say, you know what? I don’t care. I’m not going to let Americans die. And if this is the hill where I get nailed on, I will get nailed on it. I don’t care. You can report me to the bots, you can kill me, you can do whatever, but I’m not going to let Americans die.
And today I’m here to say it, that America, there is a cure for COVID. All this foolishness does not need to happen. There is a cure for COVID. There is a cure for COVID is called hydroxychloroquine. It’s called zinc. It’s called Zithromax. And it is time for the grassroots to wake up and say, “No, we’re not going to take this any longer. We’re not going to die.” Because let me tell you something, when somebody is dead, they are dead. They’re not coming back tomorrow to have an argument. They are not come back tomorrow to discuss the double blinded study and the data. All of you doctors that are waiting for data, if six months down the line you actually found out that this data shows that this medication works, how about your patients that have died? You want a double blinded study where people are dying? It’s unethical. So guys, we don’t need to die. There is a cure for COVID.
My gosh. Dr. Emmanuelle also known as warrior. Before I introduce the next guest, I just want to say that I wish all doctors that are listening to this bring that kind of passion to their patients. And the study that Dr. Emmanuel was referring to is in Virology, which talks about a SARS viral epidemic that affects the lungs that came from China. And they didn’t know what would work. The study showed that chloroquine would work. It sounds exactly like it could have been written three months ago, but in fact, that’s study in Virology, which was published by the NIH, the National Institute of Health when Dr. Anthony Fauci was the director. Again, the official publication of the NIH, Virology, 15 years ago showed that chloroquine … we use hydroxychloroquine, it’s the same … little safer … works. They proved this 15 years ago when we got this novel coronavirus, which is not that novel, it’s 78% similar to the prior-
… coronavirus, which is not that novel. It’s 78% similar to the prior version. The COV-1, not surprisingly. It works. I’m now going to introduce our next speaker. Sorry. I forgot to say your name. Sorry.
That’s all right. Dr. Dan Erickson, Dr. Gold asked me to talk about the lockdown, how effective they were and do that cause anything nonfinancial? They always talk about the financial, but you have to realize that lockdown, we haven’t taken a $21 trillion economy and locked it down. So when you lock it down, it causes public health issues. Our suicide hotlines are up 600%, our spousal abuse. Different areas of alcoholism are all on the rise. These are public health problems from a financial lockdown. So we have to be clear on that fact that there is, it’s not like you just lock it down and have consequences to people’s jobs. They also have consequences, health consequences at home. So we’re talking about having a little more of a measured approach, a consistent approach. If we have another spike coming in cold and flu season, let’s do something that’s sustainable.
What’s sustainable. Well we can socially distance and wear some masks, but we can also open the schools and open businesses. So this measured approach I’m talking about, isn’t made up, it’s going on in Sweden and their deaths are about 564 per million. UK, full lockdown, 600 deaths per million. So we’re seeing that the lockdown aren’t decreasing significantly, the amount of deaths per million. Some of their Nordic neighbors have less deaths for a variety of reasons, I don’t have time to go into today. So what, my quick message here in a minute or two is just that we need to take an approach that’s sustainable. A sustainable approach is slowing things down, opening up schools, opening up businesses. And then we can allow the people to have their independence and their personal responsibility to choose to wear masks and socially distance, as opposed to putting edicts on them, kind of controlling them. Let’s empower them with data and let them study what other countries have done and make their own decision. That’s what I’d like to share. Thank you.
You know, South Dakota did something interesting. It’s interesting that you’re from there. So the governor did not restrict access to hydroxychloroquine.
Right. And you were, I believe you were the only state in the union that did that. And there’s been studies out there that attempt to show that it doesn’t work. They’re inaccurate because they’re given at the time, the wrong dose, the wrong patient either too much or a long time. So South Dakota did better because it had access to hydroxychloroquine. Thank you so much.
Okay. So if someone we love does get sick with COVID and you said the word hydro, or however you say it, it’s restricted. How do we get access to that?
Yeah. That’s the number one question we’re all asked every day. I want you to know that you’re not alone. I’ve had many congressmen ask me, how can I get it? So the congressmen can’t get it, it’s tough luck for the average American Joe getting it. It’s very difficult. You have to overcome a few hurdles. Your doctor has to have read the science with a critical eye and have eliminated the junk science. Many studies have been retracted as you know, and number two, the pharmacist has to not restrict it. Many states have empowered their pharmacists to not honor physician prescription. That’s never happened before. That interferes with the doctor patient relationship where the patient talks to the doctor, honestly, and the doctor answers the patient honestly has been violated.
So you have a very difficult time as the average American. Some of the information we’ll share later this afternoon is to show the mortality rates in countries where it’s not restricted and the mortality rates where it is restricted. So I have friends all over the world now because of this. And in Indonesia, you can just buy it over the counter. It’s in the vitamin section. And I’m here to tell the American people that you could buy it over the counter in Iran. Because the leaders in Iran, the mullahs in Iran, think that they should have more freedom than Americans. I have a problem with that. My colleagues have problems with that. We don’t like to watch patients die.
So when people have problems, they should be picking up the phone, they should be calling their state and their federal representatives and senators and say, we are the American people.
Thank you. Thank you, Julie. That is exactly right. If you hear what you’re, when you hear this, if you’re concerned and wondering why you may not be able to get access to it, we need to make four calls, call your governor, call both of your senators and call your Congressman and tell them that you want to know why you’re not able to get access to a drug that doctors are telling you will help end this and help us reduce the number of hospitalizations and reduce the number of deaths. Urge them to read Dr. Harvey Rich’s study from Yale. He’s a Yale professor of epidemiology. And from there you’ll find other studies.
Yes. I wanted to ask how do people trust the data that they are looking at every day? The numbers are so variable when you go to Johns Hopkins, CDC, which divides COVID deaths in different categories related to pneumonia, other things where we get the right information to make sense?
So the only number that I think is worth paying any attention to, and even that number is not so helpful is mortality because that’s a hard and fast number. So the case number is almost irrelevant. And that’s because there’s a lot of inaccuracies with the testing. And also even if the test is accurate, most people are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic. So it’s not that important to know. So the case number, which you see rising all the time in the news is basically irrelevant. And if you had told us a few months ago, that that was the number that the media was going to go crazy over, we all would have just laughed at that. I mean, that’s essentially herd immunity. There’s lots of people out there who have tested positive without symptoms or with very mild symptoms. So the only number that’s worth paying attention to is mortality.
When you look at the mortality, this is a disease that takes, that unfortunately kills our most frail members of society. People with multiple comorbid conditions, specifically diabetes, obesity is a big one. We don’t talk about that, but it is. It’s a fact. Coronary artery disease, severe coronary artery disease, people like that. And also if you’re older, it’s a risk factor. But the biggest risk factor is if you have comorbid conditions. If you’re young and healthy, this is not … You’re going to recover. If you’re under 60 with no comorbid conditions, it’s less deadly than influenza. This seems to come as great news to Americans because this is not what you’re being told. I would say the answer is it’s very difficult to get accurate numbers.
Listen to the doctors. [inaudible 00:19:21] the frontline doctors. Have a meeting with the frontline doctors, and maybe I need to say that into the microphone. My message to Dr. Anthony Fauci is to have a meeting with these frontline doctors who are seeing real patients. They’re touching human skin. They’re looking people in the eye, they’re diagnosing them and they’re helping them beat the virus. They’re the ones who are talking to the patients, have meetings with them and do it every single day and find out what they are learning about the virus firsthand. And this is, and it’s important to understand, we have doctors here who are not emergency room doctors. They’re preventing patients from even hitting the emergency room. So if they’re only listening to emergency room or ICU at the very tragic end of a person’s life they’re not getting the full story. They need to come back in here the earlier portion. And they also need to understand what the lockdown and the fears are doing to patients around this country, because there are a lot of unintended consequences, which the doctors can speak about.
Can I say something. My message to Dr. Anthony Fauci is when is the last time you put a stethoscope on a patient? That when you start seeing patients like we see on a daily basis, you will understand the frustration that we feel. You need to start feeling for American people like we, the frontline doctors, feel. I need to start realizing that. They are listening to you. And if they are going to you, you got to give them a message of hope. Got to give them a message that goes with what you already know that hydroxychloroquine works.
Dr. Emmanuel, okay. You mentioned before some remarkable results that you’ve had treating your own patients. She said, I believe she said 300 patients.
We’re working on publishing it right now. We’re working on that, but this is what I’ll say. People like Dr. Samuel [inaudible 00:21:29] published the data. And my question is, and? That will make you see patients. There’s no data around the world. Yes. My data will come out. When that comes out. That’s great. But right now people are dying. So my data is not important for you to see patients. I’m saying that to my colleagues out there that talk about data, data, data.
May I just interject. There is a lot of [crosstalk 00:21:49] data on this. Not every clinician needs to publish their data to be taken seriously. The media has not covered it. There is a ton. I’ve got a compendium on americasfrontlinedoctors.com, there is a compendium of all the studies that work with hydroxychloroquine. The mortality rate was published in Detroit, less than a … It was July 4th weekend. They published it. Mortality by half in the critically ill patients, the patients who are get it early, it’s been estimated that one half to three quarters of those patients, wouldn’t be dead. We’re talking 70,000 to 105 … 70 to 100,000 patients would still be alive if we followed this policy. There’s plenty of published data. [crosstalk 00:22:27].
If I can ask one more question. There was a little girl who just a few days ago [inaudible 00:22:37] otherwise healthy and it was concluded that she died of COVID-19 so I was curious from your perspective, you feel that this little girl possibly died from some other condition and it was attributed to COVID-19 or is there some other reason why she [crosstalk 00:00:22:52].
I will not. I will not be able to say that till I look at the little girl’s history and whatever happened. I know I’ve taken care of a lot of family members and I see a lot of children and they usually get mild symptoms, but I cannot talk about kids that I have not looked at.
Okay. So listen, there are children who are dying of this infection. And the reality is that when they do die, they seem to have comorbidities. Really, you have to kind of look at each individual case. Uniquely there have been a little over 30 patients in the entire country, in the age category of 15 and below who have died of COVID. Frequently they do have comorbidities like heart disease. They have asthma, they have other pulmonary issues. So I don’t know, we don’t know the answer to this nine year old girl, tragically. She passed, and she’s no longer with us, but there’s probably, if you dig into it, there’s probably a story behind it.
I mean, I think that it is common knowledge that with the schools not being open, when you think about what your experience in junior high and high school-
… not being open. When you think about your experience in junior high and high school, what do you think about? You think about parties and you think about football games, socializing. Those are the things we think about. Those are all being shut down, folks. Nobody is having fun anymore. And I will tell you that these are critical years of life to be out mixing with other kids, other people, and that has been shut down. So yes, there are lots of comorbidities that go along with shutting down. We’re talking about anxiety, we’re talking about depression, loneliness, abuse is happening, and kids who have particular… Children who have special needs, kids are not doing well either. So, there is a long list of complications that occur when you quarantine and lockdown people.
So an extension to what you were just talking about, we hear all these studies and all this polling that moms are afraid to go back to work because of letting their children go to school, they shouldn’t go to school because then they’re exposed, and if the moms go back to school, then the elderly grandparents, they’re [crosstalk 00:25:04].
Sure. Yeah, this is a big issue because people are afraid not that their children are going to get particularly ill, because I think they’re learning the truth is that this infection is being tolerated well by children. But certainly, they look at their environment, their particular unique family, and I think in some situations that may be an appropriate fear. However, I do think that as a general comment, a general rule through the country, kids can go back to school. Maybe a few kids here and there, their living situation, who they’re being cared for, that can be a potential problem. But again, for younger children in particular, they’re not the ones passing on the disease to the adults.
We’re talking about, we can’t open our businesses. We can’t go to school and parents are scared to get treated. And I personally, have put over a hundred people on hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis. Doctors, teachers, people who are health care workers, my staff, me, I see over 15 to 20, sometimes 20, 15, 10 patients a day. I use a surgical mask. I’ve not been infected. Nobody I know has been infected that’s around me. So this is the answer to this question. You want to open schools, everybody get on hydroxychloroquine. That is the prevention for COVID. One tablet every other week is good enough. And that is what we need to get across to the American people. There’s prevention and there is cure. We don’t have to lock down schools. We don’t have to lockdown our businesses. There’s prevention, and there is cure. So instead of talking about a mask, instead of talking about lockdowns, instead of talking about all these things, put our teachers on hydroxychloroquine.
Put those that are high risk on hydroxychloroquine. Those that want it. If you want to catch COVID, that’s cool, but you should be given the right to take it and be prevented. So that’s the message. All this stuff that we’re putting together, it’s not necessary because hydroxychloroquine has a prevention. Hydroxychloroquine is a prevention for COVID.
And you guys also said that previous doctors have used it, but they’ve used it in the wrong dosage. So I keep hearing the drug, but then what is the right dosage. What is the right mixture?
Yeah, that’s a great question. Because the whole political situation has driven the fear towards this drug. So let’s address that. This drug is super safe. It’s safer than aspirin, Motrin, Tylenol. It’s super safe. All right. So what the problem is in a lot of those studies, they did very, very high doses, massive doses all through the country. They did the remaps study, the solidarity trial. That was the world health organization trial, and also the recovery trial. They use 2,400 milligrams in the first day. All you need is 200 twice a week for prophylaxis. They used massive toxic doses. And guess what they found out? When you use massive toxic doses, you get toxic results. The drug doesn’t work when you give toxic doses. It’s a very safe drug. It concentrates in the lungs, 200 to 700 times higher in the lungs.
It’s an amazing drug because in the bloodstream, you’re not going to get high levels, but you get massive levels in the lungs. So you’re going to find yourself, if you prophylax, that as soon as the virus gets there, it’s going to have a hard time getting through because the hydroxychloroquine blocks it from getting in. And then once it gets in, it won’t let the virus actually replicate. Bring in zinc and zinc will mess up the copy machine called the RDRP. So with the combination of drugs, it’s incredibly effective in the early disease. By itself, it’s incredibly effective as a prophylaxis. Does that answer to the question?
Yeah. I want to emphasize on something that Dr. [inaudible 00:29:20] just said, because I love the question. This is a treatment regimen that’s very simple, and it should be in the hands of the American people. The difficult aspect of this is that at the moment, because of politics, it’s being blocked from doctors prescribing it, and it’s being blocked from pharmacists releasing it. They’ve been empowered to overrule the doctor’s opinion. Why is this not over the counter? As you can get it in much of the world and almost all of Latin America, in Iran, in Indonesia, in Subsaharan Africa, you can just go and buy it yourself. And the dose, my friends is 200 milligrams twice in a week and zinc daily. That’s the dose. I’m in favor of it being over the counter. Give it to the people. Give it to the people.
Hi, Dr. James Todaro [inaudible 00:30:13]. I just want to add a couple of comments to what Dr. Gold was saying. If it seems like there is an orchestrated attack that’s going on against hydroxychloroquine it’s because there is. When have you ever heard of a medication generating this degree of controversy? A 65 year old medication that has been on the World Health Organization’s safe, essential list of medications for years. It’s over the counter in many countries. And what we’re seeing is a lot of misinformation. So I coauthored the first document on hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for coronavirus. This is back in March and that kind of kicked off a whole series of a storm on it. And since then, there’s been a tremendous amount of censorship on doctors like us and what we’re saying. And a number of us have already been censored. That Google document that I coauthored was actually pulled down by Google. And this is after now, many studies have shown that it is effective and it is safe. You still can’t read that article. And there’s also this misinformation out there. And unfortunately, this has reached the highest orders of medicine. In May there was an article published in The Lancet. This is one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals in the world. The World Health Organization stopped all their clinical trials on hydroxychloroquine because of this study. And it was independent researchers like us who care about patients, who care about the truth that dug into this study and determined that it was actually fabricated data. The data was not real. And we did this so convincingly that this study was retracted by The Lancet less than two weeks after it was published. This is almost unheard of, especially for study of this magnitude.
So I apologize to everyone for the fact that there is so much misinformation out there, and it’s so hard to find the truth. And unfortunately, it’s going to take looking at other places for the truth. That’s why we formed frontline doctors here to try to help get the real information out there.
Most of my thoughts, I actually publish on Twitter. Twitter has been great lately. So, James Todaro, M D. T-O-D-A-R-O M-D but I also have a website medicineuncensored.com, which contains kind of a lot of the information about hydroxychloroquine I think is much more objective than what’s going on in other media channels.
One point, in terms of Twitter. That’s important because as I understand not only from doctors, but from other people in the media, that YouTube has blocked information specifically about hydroxychloroquine.
I’ll go ahead and address that real quickly. I would say Facebook and YouTube have taken the most draconian measures to silence and censorship people. And this is coming from the CEO of YouTube, as well as Mark Zuckerberg saying anything that goes against what the World Health Organization has said is subject to censorship. And we all know the World Health Organization has made a number of mistakes during this pandemic. They have not been perfect by any means. Twitter, although they have some flaws and faults and flag certain content and stuff, they really still remain one of the freest platforms to share dialogue, intelligent discussion regarding this information. And many of us here today actually connected on social platform mediums like that.
Sure thing. I’m Dr. Joe. Ladapo. I’m a physician at UCLA and I’m a clinical researcher also. And I’m speaking for myself and not on behalf of UCLA. So I want to say that I’m thinking of the people who are behind the screens that are watching what you guys were broadcasting. And I want to share with you because there’s so much controversy and the atmosphere is so full of conflict right now that what this group of doctors is trying to do fundamentally, is really to bring more light to this conversation about how we manage COVID-19 and the huge challenge. And that’s what this is ultimately about. And bringing light to something means thinking more about trade offs, about one of my colleagues said on unintended consequences. And I actually think that’s not even the right word, the right word is unanticipated consequences. Really thinking about the implications of the decisions we’re making in this really, really extraordinary time that we’re in.
So, I’m sure people are listening to some of the discussion about hydroxychloroquine and wondering, what are these doctors talking about? And, these are doctors that take care of patients, board certified, med school, great med schools, all of that. How could they possibly be saying this? I watch CNN and NBC, and they don’t say anything about this. And that’s actually, that’s the point. There are issues that are moral issues, that really there should be a singular voice. So for me, issues related to whether people are treated differently based on their sex or race, or their sexual orientation. I personally think those are moral issues and there’s only one position on those. But COVID-19 is not a moral issue. COVID-19 is a challenging, complex issue that we benefit from having multiple perspectives on. So it’s not good for the American people when everyone is hearing one perspective on the main stations. There’s no way that’s going to service. So, the perspective most people have been hearing is that hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work. That’s the perspective that most people have been hearing on the mainstream television.
That’s the perspective that most people have been hearing on the mainstream television, and I believe that perspective too, until I started talking to doctors who would look more closely than some of the physicians behind me here, who would look more closely at the data and at the studies.
So it is a fact that several randomized trials have come out so far, that’s our highest level of evidence, and have shown that hydroxychloroquine… Their findings have generally been that there’s no significant effect on health benefit. So, that’s a fact, that the randomized control trials have come out… So far that have come out. In fact, there were two or three big ones that came out over the last two weeks, [inaudible 00:36:44] Internal Medicine, New England Journal of Medicine, and I think one other journal.
It is also a fact that there have been several observational studies. These are just not randomized controlled trials, but patients who are getting treated with this medication that have found that hydroxychloroquine improves outcomes. So both of those things are true. There’s evidence against it and there’s evidence for it. It is also a fact that we are in an extraordinarily challenging time. Given those considerations, how can the right answer be to limit physician’s use of the medication? That can’t possibly be the right answer. And when you consider that this medication before COVID-19 had been used for decades, by patients with rheumatoid arthritis, by patients with lupus, by patients with other conditions, by patients who were traveling to West Africa and needed malaria prophylaxis, we’ve been using it for a long time, but all of a sudden it’s elevated to this area of looking like some poisonous drug. That just doesn’t make sense.
Then when you add onto that the fact that we’ve had two of the biggest journals in the world, New England Journal of Medicine, and Lancet, as my colleagues say, retract studies that found, interestingly, that hydroxychloroquine harmed patients. Both of these studies. They had to retract these studies, which really is unheard of. That should raise everyone’s concern about what is going on. At the very least, we can live in a world where there are differences of opinion about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, but still allow more data to come, still allow physicians who feel like they have expertise with it use that medication, and still talk, and learn, and get better at helping people with COVID-19.
Listen, let me just put a little bit of that. I have seen 350 patients and counting. Put them on hydroxychloroquine. They all got better. This is what I would say to all those studies, they had high doses, they were given to wrong patients. I will call them fake science. Any study that says hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work, is fake science and I want them to show me how it doesn’t work. How is it going to work for 350 patients for me and they’re all alive, and then somebody say it doesn’t work? Guys, all them studies, fake science.
I’ve heard there’s an increase in anxiety, suicidal ideation, substance abuse, and various mental health issues as a result of school closures and shutdowns. Is it your recommendation that [inaudible 00:39:48] federal funding for programs will help deal with those issues?
Yeah, I don’t understand how you would go to that conclusion. If the problem was that the schools are shut down, and it’s causing it, then we need to open up the schools.
Yeah. I would go to the school. I would open up the schools, because the most important thing for children is to socialize, and to be with other kids, and to learn. Yeah. [crosstalk 00:40:14] Yeah. Let’s get kids back in school.
Kids back in school. We’re in favor of kids back in school.
Speaker 15: (40:22)
Thank you everyone. [crosstalk 00:04:24]. Thank you very much. And we are going to be going back live continuing our summit, so you can continue watching. Once we get back, we may be running.
That depression is caused by low zinc levels. When you go into a hospital nowadays, they don’t test for those zinc levels. Low zinc levels are manifested by loss of sense of smell, loss of taste. Why are these also symptoms of COVID, right? COVID, loss of sense of smell, loss of taste, right? And the reason is because zinc is the natural thing that used to fight the COVID. What happens is the zinc stops RNA polymerase, and the hydroxy chloroquine allows the zinc to go into the cells.
Let me explain it a little bit better. The zinc stops RNA polymerase, and it’s used up by your cells in the normal fighting of COVID. So if you never took hydroxychloroquine, you’d still be zinc depleted. We’re in a natural state of zinc depletion in the United States, but the COVID decreases your zinc even more, and you need it to fight off any virus. That’s why your mom always said, “Take your zinc,” right?
Okay. My question was about if federal funds should be diverted to helping therapists, social workers and other frontline workers to deal with the psychological issues that were mentioned by your colleague, that shut downs in the government and school closures cause an increase in suicidal ideation, and substance abuse, and anxiety. So those environmental factors are what caused those mental health issues. Doesn’t it stand to reason that then funds to help those institutions deal with the problem should be receiving more funding?
Oh no, it’s not really about… It’s not my expertise either, actually. But I was wondering since your colleague said that as a result of school closures and government shutdowns, which caused an increase in suicidal ideation, anxiety, substance abuse, and a variety of other issues, I’m wondering if federal funding should be diverted to frontline workers, social workers, mental health therapists?
The answer your question is this, I see it this way, harm has already come is what we’re saying. So the answer to the question is, harm has already come. What should we do about that harm? I don’t know the inner workings of the government, but to say that harm has already come, and to say that we’re going to do something about it, it makes sense. To me as a doctor, I think if we know harm is coming, if you and I know we already got run over by a car, I think it makes sense to let me go ahead and go to the hospital to get my-
Dr. Fauci has played a central role in blocking HCQ:
Dr. Anthony Fauci, advisor to Donald Trump, portrayed as “America’s top infectious disease expert” has played a key role in smearing the HCQ cure which had been approved years earlier by the CDC as well as providing legitimacy to Gilead’s Remdesivir.
Dr. Fauci has been the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since the Reagan administration. He is known to act as a mouthpiece for Big Pharma.
Dr. Fauci launched Remdesivir in late June . According to Fauci, Remdesevir is the “corona wonder drug” developed by Gilead Science Inc. It’s a $1.6 billion dollar bonanza.
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For the last forty years, neo-liberalism has dominated economic thinking and the formulation of economic policies Worldwide.
But the corona virus crisis has exposed, in a dramatic way, its internal contradictions, its incapacity to deal with the corona crisis and its incompetence to restore the real economy ruined by the crisis.
In this article, we will focus on the relationship between Neoliberalism and the Corona Crisis:
Neoliberalism has prevented the governments from controlling effectively the initial outbreak of the corona virus.
Neoliberalism has made the wave of virus propagation higher and wider, especially in the U.S.
Neoliberalism can shake the foundations of the U.S. economy.
Neoliberalism may not survive the corona virus crisis in the U.S.
To save democracy and the global economy, We need a new economic model which supports the future of humanity, which sustains human livelihood Worldwide.
1. Neoliberalism and the initial Outbreak of the Corona Virus
The most important part of neoliberalism is the relation -often of a corrupt nature- between the government and large corporations. By corruption, we mean illegal or immoral human activities designed to maximize profit at the expense of people’s welfare. In this relation, the government may not be able to control and govern the large corporations. In fact, in the present context, the corporations govern and oversee national governments.
Hence, when the corona virus broke out, it was difficult for the government to take immediate actions to control the virus break-out to save human lives; It was quite possible that the price of stocks and large corporations’ profit had the priority.
The theory known as neoliberalism distinguishes itself from the old liberalism prevailing before the Great Depression.
It became widely accepted mainly because of its adoption, in the 1970s and 1980s, by Ronald Reagan, president of the U.S. and Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Great Britain as an economic policy agenda applied nationally and internationally.
The justification of neoliberalism is the belief that the best way to ensure economic growth is to encourage “supply activities” of private sector enterprises.
Now, the proponents of neoliberalism argue that public goods (including health and education) can be produced with greater efficiency by private companies than by the State. Therefore, “it is better” to let the private enterprises produce public goods.
In other words, the production of public goods should be “privatized”. Neoliberals put profit as the best measure of efficiency and success. And profit can be sustained with government support. In turn, the private companies’ policy is that of reducing the labour costs of production.
Government assistance includes reduction of corporate taxes, subsidies and anti-labour policies such as the prohibition of labour unionization and the abolition of the minimum wage.
Reduction of labour cost can be obtained by the automation of the production of goods
Under such circumstances, close cooperation between the government and the private corporations is inevitable; even it may be necessary.
But, such cooperation is bound to lead to government-business collusion in which the business receives legal and illegal government support in exchange of illicit money such as kick-backs and bribes given to influential politicians and the people close to the power.
As the collusion becomes wider and deeper, an oligarchy is formed; it is composed of corporations, politicians and civil servants. This oligarchy’s raison d’être is to make money even at the expense of the interests of the people.
Now, in order to protect its vested interests, the oligarchy expands its network and creates tight-knit political community which shares the wealth and privileges obtained.
In this way, the government-business cooperation can be evolved by stage to give birth to the corruption culture.
Some of the neoliberal countries may be at the stage of the collusion; some of them may find themselves at the stage of oligarchy; some of them may be at the stage of corruption culture.
South Korea
When the progressive government of Moon Jae-in took over power in 2017, South Korea under the 60-year neo-liberal rule by the conservatives was at the stage of corruption culture.
The progressive government of Moon Jae-in has declared a total war against the corruption culture, but it is a very long way to go before eliminating corruption.
In South Korea, of six presidents of the conservative government, four presidents were or are in prison for corruption and abuse of power. This shows how deeply the corruption has penetrated into the fabrics of the Korea society
In Japan, since 1957, there were twenty-one prime ministers of whom 75% were one-year or two-year prime ministers despite the four-year term of prime ministers. The short life span of Japanese prime ministers is essentially due to the short term interest pursued by the corrupted golden triangle composed of big business, bureaucrats and politicians. Unless, Japan uproots the corruption culture, it will be difficult to save the Japanese economy from perpetual stagnation.
Lobbying and “Corruption Culture”
Many of the developed countries in the West are also the victims of corruption culture. In the U.K. the City (London’s Wall Street) is the global center of money laundry.
In the U.S. the big companies are spending a year no less than $2.6 billion lobbying money for the promotion of their interests, while the Congress spends $ 2.9 billion and the Senate, $860 million for their respective annual operation. Some of the big companies deploy as many as 100 lobbyists.
It is unbelievable that the amount of lobbying is as much as 70% of the annual budget of the whole legislative of the U.S.
True, in the U.S., lobbying is not illegal, but it may not be morally justified. It is a system where the law makers give privileges to those who spend more money, which can be considered as bribes
Under such lobbying system, each group should deploy lobbyists to promote their interests. The immigrants, the native Indians, the Afro Americans, the alienated white people and other marginal groups cannot afford lobbyists and they are often excluded from fair treatment in the process of making laws and policies
Some of the developed European countries are also very corrupted. The international Transparency Index rank, in 2019, was 23 for France, 30 for Spain and 51 for Italy.
In the case of the U.S. its rank increased froom18 in 2016 to 22 in 2019. Thus in three years, the degree of corruption increase by 22.2%
What is alarming is that, in the corruption culture, national policies are liable to be dictated by big businesses.
In South Korea, under the conservative government, it was suspected that the national policies were determined by the Chaebols (large industrial conglomerates), not by the government.
As matter of fact, during the MERS crisis in 2015, the anti-virus policy was dictated by the Samsung Group. In order to save its profit, Samsung Hospital in Seoul hid the infected so that the number of non-MERS patients would not decrease.
In Japan, the Abe government made the declaration of public health emergency as late as April 6, 2020 despite the fact that the infections were detected as early as January, 2020.
This decision was, most likely, dictated by Keiretsu members (grouping of large enterprises) in order to save investments in the July Olympics. Nobody knows how many Japanese had been infected for more than three months.
Similarly, Trump was well aware of the sure propagation of the virus right form January, but he waited until March 13, 2020 before he declared the state of effective public health emergency. The obvious reason was the possible fear of free fall of stock price and the possible loss of big companies’ profits.
The interesting question is: “The delayed declaration of public health emergency, was it Trump’s decision or that of his corporate friends?” It doesn’t matter whose decision it was, because the government under neoliberal system is controlled the big businesses.
So, as in Japan, Italy, Spain, France and especially, the U.K, Trump lost the golden time to save human lives to keep profit of enterprises.
God knows how many American lives were sacrificed to save stock price and company profit!
Thus, the neoliberal governments have lost the golden chance to prevent the initial outbreak of the dreadful virus.
2. Neo-liberalism and the Propagation of Corona-Virus
We saw that the initial outbreak of the virus was not properly controlled leading to the loss to golden time of saving human lives, most likely because of the priority given to business and political interests.
The initial outbreak of the virus was transformed into never-ending propagation and, even now, in many states in the U.S. the wave of the virus is getting higher and wider.
This tragic reality can be explained by four factors:
people’s mistrust in the government,
unbounded competition,
inequitable income distribution,
the absence of public health system.
These four factors (above) are all the legacies of neoliberalism.
The people know well that the corrupted neoliberal government’s concern is not the welfare of the people but the interest of a few powerful and the rich. The inevitable outcome is the loss of people’s trust in the unreliable government.
This is demonstrated by Trump’s indecision, his efforts of ignoring the warning of the professionals, his fabricates stories and above all, his perception of who should be given the right to receive life-saving medical care at the hospital.
Under such circumstances, Americans do not trust the government directives and guidelines, allegedly implemented to protect people from the virus.
The guideline of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) for self quarantine, social distancing and wearing face masks has little effect. There is another product of neoliberalism which is troublesome. I mean its credo of unbounded competition.
It is true that competition promotes efficiency and better quality of products. However, as competition continues, the number of winners decreases, while that of losers rises. The economy ends up being ruled by a handful of powerful winners. This leads to the segregation of losers and leads to the discrimination of people by income level, religion, race and colour of skin.
In the present context, largely as a result of government policy, there is little to no social solidarity; each individual has to solve his or her own problems. I was sad when I saw on TV a young lady in California saying:
“To be killed by the COVID-19 or starve to death is the same to me. I open my shop to eat!”
This shows how American citizens are left alone to fight the coronavirus. Furthermore, neoliberalism has another unhappy legacy; it is the widening and deepening income inequality.
The U.S. is the richest country in the world, but it is also a country where income inequality is the most pronounced. I will come back to this issue in the next section. In relation to the corona virus crisis, income inequality means an army of those who are most likely to be infected and who are unable to follow CDC guidelines of testing, self quarantine and social distancing. Finally, the privatization of public health services has made the whole country unprepared for the onslaught of the virus.
In fact, in the U.S. there is no public health system. For three months after the first breakout of the virus, the country lacked everything needed to fight the virus.
There was shortage of testing kits and PPE (personal protective equipment);
there were not enough rooms to accommodate the infected;
there was shortage of qualified medical staff;
there was lack of face masks.
Thus, neoliberalism has made the U.S not only to lose the golden time to prevent the initial breakout but also it has let the wave of virus to continue. Nobody knows when it will calm down. As a matter of fact, on July 4, there were 2.9 million infected and 132,000 deaths; this gives a death rate of 4.6%. Given U.S. population of 328 million, we have 402.44 deaths per million inhabitants which is one of highest among the developed countries. The trouble is that the wave of virus is still going higher and wider. On July 4, the confirmed cases increased by 50% in two weeks in 12 states and increased 10% to 50% in 22 states.
3. Neo-liberalism and the very Foundation of the U.S. Economy
The message of this section is this. The foundation of the American economy is the purchasing power of the consumers and the job creation by small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The consumer demand is 70% of the GDP, the SMEs create 66% of jobs. Unfortunately, because of neoliberalism, the consumers have become very poorer and the SMEs have been neglected in the pro-big-company government policies. The COVID-19 has destroyed the SMEs and impoverished the consumers. Nobody would deny the contribution of neo-liberalism to globalization of finance, the creation of the global value chain and, especially the free trade agreement.
All these activities have allowed GDP to grow in developed countries and some of new industrial countries. However, the wealth created by the growth of GDP has gone to countries already developed, some developing countries and a small number of multinational enterprises (MNE). The rich produced by GDP growth has led to the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few privileged. What is more serious is this. If the skewed income distribution in favour of a decreasing number of people continues for long, the GDP will stop growing and decades-long deflation is quite possible, as it has happened in Japan.
According to the OECD data, in the period, 1975-2011, the GDP share of labour income in OECD countries fell by 13.8% from 65% to 56%. In the case of the U.S., in the same period, 1970-2014, it fell by 11%. The falling labour-income share is necessarily translated into unequal household income distribution. There are two popular ways of measuring income distribution: the decile ratio and the Gini coefficient.
The decile ratio is obtained by dividing the income earned by the top 10% income earners by the income earned by the bottom 10% income earners . The decile ratio in 2019 was 18.5 in the U.S. as compared to 5.6 in Finland. The decile ratio of the U.S. was the highest among the developed countries. Thus, in the U.S. the top 10 % has an income 19 times more than the bottom 10%, while, in Finland, the corresponding ratio is only 6 times. This shows how serious the income gap is in the country of Uncle Sam.
The Gini coefficient varies from zero to 100. As the value of the Gini increases, the income distribution becomes favourable to the high-income households. Conversely, as the value of the Gini decreases, the income distribution becomes favourable to low-income households. There are two types of Gini: the gross Gini and the net Gini. The former refers to Gini before taxes and transfer payment, while the latter refers to Gini after taxes and transfer payment. The difference between the gross and the net Gini shows the government efforts to improve the equality and fairness of income distribution The gross U.S.- Gini coefficient in 2019 was 48.6, one of the highest among the developed countries.
Its net Gini was 38.0 so that the difference between the gross and the net Gini was 12.3%. In other words, the U.S. income distribution improved only by 12.3% by government efforts as against, for example, an improvement of 42.9% in the case of Germany, where the gross Gini was 49.9 while the net Gini was 28.5 The net Gini of the U.S. was the highest among the developed countries. The implication is clear. The income distribution in the U.S. was the most unequal. To make the matter worse, the government’s effort to improve the unequal income distribution was the poorest among the developed countries. There are countless signs of unfortunate impacts of the inequitable income distribution in the country called the U.S. which Koreans used to admire describing it as “mi-gook-美國미국 – Beautiful Country”. Now, one wonders if it is still a “mi-gook”.
The following data indicates the seriousness of poverty in the U.S. (data below prior to the Coronavirus crisis).
In the U.S. the richest 1% of the population has 40% of all household wealth. (2017 data)
More than 20% of the population cannot pay monthly bills.
About 40% do not have savings.
31% of private sector worker do not have medical benefits.
57% of the workers in the service sector have no medical benefits.
These data give us an idea on how so many people have to suffer from poverty in a country where per capita GDP is $65,000 (2019 estimate), the richest country in the world. Most of the Americans work for small- and medium-sized companies (SMEs). In the U.S., there are 30 million SMEs. They create 66% of jobs in the private sector. The SMEs are more severely hit than big companies by the coronavirus.
In fact, 66% of SMEs are adversely affected by the virus against 40% for big firms. As much as 20% of SMEs may be shut down for good within three months, because of the virus. Under the forty years of neoliberal pro-big corporation policies, available financial resources and the best human resources have been allocated to big firms at the expense of the development of SMEs.
The most damaging by-product of neoliberalism is no doubt the widening and deepening unequal income distribution for the benefit of the big corporations and the uprooting of SMEs. This trend means the shrinking domestic demand and the disappearance of jobs for ordinary people.
The destruction of the domestic market caused by the shrinking consumer demand and the disappearance of SMEs can mean the uprooting of the very foundation of the economy.
The experience of Japan shows how this can happen. The economic depression after the bubble burst of 1989, Japan had to endure 30-year deflation. The government of Japan has flooded the country with money to restore the economy, but the money was used for the bail-out of big corporations neglecting the healthy development of the SMEs and impoverishing the ordinary Japanese people. South Korea could have experienced the Japanese-type economic stagnation, if the conservative government ruled the country ten more years.
The neoliberal pro-big company policy of Washington has greatly depleted consumer demand and SMEs even before the onslaught of the coronavirus. But, the COVID-19 has given a coup de grâce to consumer demand and SMEs To better understand the issue, let us go back to the ABC of economics. Looking at the national economy from the demand side, the economy consists of private consumer demand (C), the private investment demand (I), the government demand (G) and Foreign demand represented by exports of domestic products (X) minus domestic demand for imported foreign products (M).
GDP=C + I + G + (X-M)
In 2019, the consumer expenditure (C) in the U.S. was 70% of GDP, whereas the government’s spending (G) was 17%. The investments demand (I) was 18%. The net exports demand (X-M) was -5%.
In 2019 the composition of Canadian GDP was: C=57%; I=23 %; G=21 %; X-M=-1%.
Thus, we see that the U.S. economy heavily depends on the private domestic consumption, which represents as much as 70% of GDP compared to 57% in Canada. The government’s contribution to the national demand is 17% as against 21% in Canada. In the U.S. a small government is a virtue according to neoliberals. In the U.S. the private investments account for only 18% of GDP as compared to as much as 23% in Canada. In the U.S., off-shoring of manufacturing jobs and the global value chain under neo-liberalism have decreased the need for business investments at home. It is obvious then that to save the American economy, we have to boost the consumers’ income. But, the consumer income comes mainly from SMEs. We must remember that the SMEs create 66% of all jobs in the U.S. Therefore, if consumer demand falls and if SMEs do not create jobs, the US economy may have to face the same destiny as the Japanese economy. This is happening in the U.S. The corona virus crisis is destroying SMEs and taking away the income of the people.
The coronavirus crisis is about to demolish the very foundation of the American economy.
4. Corona Virus Crisis and the Survival of Neoliberalism
The interesting question is this. Will neo-liberalism as economic system survive the corona virus crisis in the U.S.?
There are at least four indications suggesting that it will not survive.
First, to overcome major crisis such as the corona virus invasion, we need strong central government and people-loving leader. One of the reasons for the successful anti-virus policy in South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore was the strong central government’s role of determining and coordinating the anti-virus policies. As we saw, the gospel of neo-liberalism is the minimization of the central government’s role. Having little role in economic policies, the U.S. federal government has proved itself as the most incompetent entity to fight the crisis. It is more than possible that the U.S. and all the neoliberal countries will try to get away from the traditional neoliberal governance in which the government is almost a simple errand boy of big business.
Second, the people’s trust in the neoliberal leaders has fallen on the ground. It will be difficult for the neoliberal leaders to be able to lead the country in the post-corona virus era.
Third, the corona virus crisis has made the people aware of the abuse of power by the big companies; the people now know that these companies are interested only in making money. So, it may be more difficult for them to exploit the people in the era of post-COVID-19.
Fourth, the U.S. economy is shaken up so much that the neoliberal regime will not able to recover the economy. Thus, the survival of neo-liberalism looks uncertain. But, if the coronavirus crisis continues and destroys SMEs and if only the big corporations survive owing to bailout money, neo-liberalism may survive and we may end up with authoritarian governance ruled by the business-politics oligarchy.
5. Search for a New Economic Regime: Just-Liberalism
One thing which the corona-virus crisis has demonstrated is the fact that the American neo-liberalism has failed as sustainable regime capable of stopping the virus crisis, restore the economy and save the democracy. Hence, we have to look for a new regime capable of saving the U.S. economy and democracy. We would call this new regime as “Just-liberalism” mission of which is the sustainable economic development and, at the same time, the just distribution of the benefits of economic development. Before we get into the discussion of the main feature of the new regime, there is one thing we should discuss. It is the popular perception of large corporation. Many believe that they make GDP grow and create jobs. It is also the popular view that the success of these large corporations is due to the innovative managing skills of their founders or their CEOs. Therefore, they deserve annual salary of millions of dollars. This is the popular perception of Chaebols in South Korea.
But, a great part of Chaebols income is attributable to the public goods such as national defence, police protection, social infrastructures, the education system, enormous sacrifice of workers and, especially tax allowances, subsidies and privileges. In other words, a great part of the Chaebols’ income belongs to the society, not the Chaebols. Many believe that the Chaebols create jobs, but, in reality, they crate less than 10% of jobs in Korea. We may say the same thing about large corporations in the U.S. In other words, much of the company’s income is due to public goods. Hence, the company should equitably share its income with the rest of the society. But do they?
The high ranking managers get astronomical salaries; some of them are hiding billions of dollars in tax haven islands.
We ask. Are large corporations sharing equitably their income with the society? Are the corporate tax allowances they get too much? Is the wage they pay too low? Is CEO’s income is too high?
It is difficult to answer these questions.
But we should throw away the mysticism surrounding the merits of large corporations; we should closely watch them so that they do not misuse their power and wealth to dictate national policies for their own benefit at the expense of the welfare of the people. The new regime, just-liberalism, should have the following eight features.
First, we need a strong government which is autonomous from big businesses; there should be no business-politics collusion; there should be no self-interest oligarchy of corruption.
Second, it is the time we should reconsider the notion of human right violation. There are several types of human right violation in developed countries including the U.S. For example, the racial discrimination, the inequality before the law, the violation of the right of social security and the violation of the right of social service are some cases of violation of human rights defined by the U.N. The Western media have been criticizing human right violation in “non-democratic countries”, but, in the future, they should pay more attention to human right violation in “democratic countries.”
Third, the criterion of successful economy should not be limited to the GDP growth; the equitable distribution of the benefits of GDP growth should also be a criterion; proper balance between the growth and the distribution of growth fruits should be maintained.
Fourth, market should not be governed by “efficiency” alone; it must be also “equitable”. Efficiency may lead to the concentration of resources and power in the hands of the few at the expense of social benefit; it must be also equitable. As an example, we may refer to the Chaebols (big Korean industrial conglomerates) which kill the traditional village markets which provide livelihood to a great number of poor people. The Chaebols may make the market efficient but not equitable. The Korean government has limited Chaebols’ penetration into these markets to make them more equitable.
Fifth, we need a partial direct democracy. The legislative translates people’s wish into laws and the executive makes policies on the basis of laws. But, in reality, the legislative and the executive may pass laws and policies for the benefit of big companies or specific group of individuals and institutions close to the power. Therefore, it is important to provide a mechanism through which the people – the real master of the country – should be allowed to intervene all times. In South Korea, if more than 200,000 people send a request to the Blue house (Korean White House) to intervene in matters judged unfair or unjust, the government must intervene.
Sixth, those goods and services which are essential for every citizen must be nationalized. For example, social infrastructure such as parks, roads, railways, harbours, supply of electricity should not be privatized. Education including higher education should be made public goods so that low income people should get higher education as do high income group.
This is the best way to maximize the mass of innovative minds and creative energy to develop the society. Above all, the health service should be nationalized. It is just unbelievable to see that, in a country where the per capita GDP is $63,000, more than 30 million citizens have no medical insurance, just because it is too expensive. Politicians know quite well that big companies related to insurance, pharmaceutical products and medical professions are preventing the nationalization of medical service in the U.S. But, the politicians don’t seem to dare go over these vested interests groups and nationalize the public health system. Remember this. There are countries which are much poorer than the U.S. But, they have accessible universal health care insurance system.
Seventh, the economy should allow the system of multi- generational technologies in which not only high-level technologies but also mid-level technologies should be promoted in such a way that both high- tech large corporations and middle-tech SMEs can grow. This is perhaps only way to insure GDP growth and create jobs.
Eighth, in the area of international relations, it is about the time to stop wasteful ideological conflict. The difference among ideologies is narrowing; the number of countries which have abandoned the U.S. imposed democracy has been rising; the ideological basis of socialism is weakening. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, 48% of countries are democratic, while 52% are not. According to Freedom House, in 2005, 83 countries had net gain in democracy, while 52 countries had net loss in democracy.
But in 2019, only 37 countries had net gain while 64 countries had net loss. Between 2005 and 2018, the number of countries which were not free increased by 26%, while those which were free fell by 44%. On the other hand, it is becoming more and more difficult to find authentic socialism. For example, Chinese regime has lost its pure socialism long time ago. Thus, the world is becoming non-ideological; the world is embracing ideology-neutral pragmatism.
To conclude, the corona virus pandemic has given us the opportunity to look at ourselves; it has given us the opportunity to realize how vulnerable we are in front of the corona virus attack.
Many more pandemics will come and challenge us. We need a world better prepared to fight the coming pandemics. It is high time that we slow down our greedy pursuit for GDP growth; it is about the time to stop a wasteful international ideological conflict in support of multibillion dollar interests behind Big Money and the Military industrial complex.
It is therefore timely to find a system where we care for each other and where we share what we have.
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Professor Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics and co- director of the Observatoire de l’Asie de l’Est (ODAE) of the Centre d’Études de l’Intégration et la Mondialisation (CEIM), Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). He is Research Associate of the Center of Research on Globalization (CRG).
On July 26th, Germany’s Die Welt (The World) Sunday newspaper headlined “USA threatens German Nord Stream 2 contractors” and reported that, “The construction of the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline has long been a thorn in the US’s side. Now they are increasing the pressure on German and European companies involved in the project — and announce sanctions. German politicians are outraged.”
The U.S. regime is demanding that Germany cut pipelined gas from Russia and replace it with far costlier gas from U.S. fracking companies, which are facing hard economic times and are desperate to increase their exports. The news-report said:
The United States had previously legally enforced the implementing provisions of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) [which started] on July 15. The companies and their banks are threatened if they continue to participate in the pipeline’s construction. The sanctions include complete exclusion from the US market and entry bans for employees. At a press conference in Washington, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo summarized the aim of the measure for the companies concerned as follows: “Get out now or bear the consequences.” …
When asked by WELT AM SONNTAG, the German energy company Uniper “regretted that with the announced revision of the CAATSA guidelines, the US is still trying to undermine an important infrastructure project that we believe is important for Europe’s energy security.” “A clear encroachment on European sovereignty”. …
For the parliamentary director of the CDU/CSU group in the European Parliament, Markus Pieper (CDU), the American threat of sanctions is “a clear violation of everything we understand by commercial law”. Pieper criticized the recent expansion of the CAATSA sanctions law of 2017 “German companies are now on par with Iran”. “The fun is slowly coming to an end.” Germany and Europe “urgently need to develop a counter-strategy”.
For the very first time, the U.S. regime is so desperate to crush Russia, as to endanger America’s continued alliance with Europe and especially with Germany.
This is unprecedented, and must be marked as a turning-point in post-World-War-II history, because if the U.S. empire ends up losing Germany, then it will cause the end of America’s anti-Russia military alliance, NATO, and maybe even the end of America’s anti-Russia diplomatic and economic alliance, the EU. (The Cold War was against Russia, not actually against communism.)
On June 30th, Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper had bannered “Former Chancellor Schröder: USA Ending Transatlantic Partnership” (“Altkanzler Schröder: USA kündigen transatlantische Partnerschaft auf”) and reported that “Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has condemned possible new US sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline as ‘deliberate termination of the transatlantic partnership’.” Schröder was from Germany’s mainstream non-conservative Party, the Social Democrats. But now Germany’s mainstream — and ruling — conservative Party, the CDU/CSU, is rejecting the U.S. regime for its imposing “a clear violation of everything we understand by commercial law,” and German industry is more bluntly asserting the broader reality, that the U.S. regime’s demand is “a clear encroachment on European sovereignty.”
That last phrase includes “a clear encroachment on German sovereignty” but goes even further because it presumes (correctly) that to violate Germany’s sovereignty is simultaneously to violate Europe’s sovereignty, because Germany is part of Europe. The statement is, by its underlying truthful assumption, an assertion that today’s Germany is a state in the nation of Europe, and that THEREFORE any violation of German sovereignty is a violation also of European sovereignty. That speaker captured the full significance of what is actually at stake here.
Reluctantly, Germany’s conservative mainstream Party (which happens to be the Party that was in power when the U.S. regime ordered Germany in 1991 that the Cold War against communism would secretly continue as being a war against Russia) finds itself forced finally by German public opinion to join Germany’s non-conservative mainstream Party (Schröder’s Social Democrats), in rejecting the demand by the U.S. imperial regime — its demand to terminate participation in the new pipeline to bring into the EU gas from Russia.
If the Trump administration of the U.S. regime will continue, instead of abandon, its demand that Europe replace Russian gas by American gas (and other non-Russian gas), then The Atlantic Alliance (Europe’s participation in America’s permanent war against Russia and against any Government — such as Iran — that is on friendly terms with Russia) will consequently end.
However, if the Trump Administration will abandon its demand, then the U.S. President will find himself at war against his own country’s legislative branch, because both houses of it, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House, voted over 90% for this demand, and Trump personally signed it into law. Therefore, in order for him to abandon the demand now would be for him to violate a U.S. law, which expresses the virtually unanimous will of the U.S. aristocracy (the billionnaires who funded the careers of those members of Congress). He would be like a King who has become abandoned by his own aristocracy. No monarch can stay in power who violates the will of his own aristocracy. This would virtually guarantee his political opponent’s, Joe Biden’s, win in America’s upcoming Presidential election: Biden would be the almost unanimous choice of America’s billionaires, both Republican and Democratic Party billionaires.
Consequently, Trump now faces a difficult choice: Either he will break up and end The Atlantic Alliance, or else he will continue it and lose the Presidency to his domestic opponent, Biden and the Democratic Party. It’s his choice. If he opts to continue The Atlantic Alliance, he will hand the White House to his domestic opponent, who is likely to win it in any case. However, by Trump’s backing down and accepting Germany’s new-found insistence upon its and the EU’s independence from the U.S. regime, Mr. Biden would be inheriting an empire that is, and will continue to be, inevitably in decline. A turning-point in world history has been reached, and there will be no turning back from it.
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When it comes to overinflated coronavirus death counts, we recently outlined how a fatal motorcycle accident in Florida was added to the state’s COVID-19 death toll. Still, no precise data shows just how overinflated death counts are on a state by state level.
We have to rely on real journalism, such as a new report via CBS12 West Palm, that made a shocking discovery about deaths being incorrectly attributed to the virus.
CBS12 said a 60-year old man who died from a gunshot blast to the head was labeled as a virus death. A 90-year old man who fell and died from a hip fracture was another. Even a 77-year old woman who died of Parkinson’s disease was somehow labeled a virus-related death.
Source: CBS12
CBS12’s I-Team investigated these statistical anomalies by combing through the Medical Examiner’s spreadsheet of all people who recently died of the virus in Palm Beach County.
What they found are “eight cases in which a person was counted as a COVID death, but did not have COVID listed as a cause of contributing cause of death.”
For more color on how a COVID-19 death is determined, it must be an immediate or underlying cause of death. So a gunshot to the head, a falling accident, and or Parkinson’s disease certainly doesn’t fit the defined criteria of classifying these deaths as virus-related.
Residents in South Florida are furious about the overinflated death toll:
“I think it is completely misleading,” said Rachel Eade, a Palm Beach County resident who has been researching the same issue.
“We need to remove those cases that are not COVID exclusive, and we need to be giving people that information,” said Eade, who is one of the plaintiffs suing Palm Beach County for its mask mandate.
Eade told the I-Team she’s been digging around in medical reports and said, out of the 581 deaths, only 169 deaths are listed as COVID-19 without any contributing factors.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently told Fox News that his staff has been informed about virus deaths being incorrectly reported.
DeSantis said, “I think the public, when they see the fatality figures, they want to know who died because they caught COVID.”
“If you’re just in a car accident – and we have had other instances where there is no real relationship, and it’s been counted, we want to look at that and see how pervasive that issue is as well.”
Palm Beach County Medical Examiner’s office and Operations Manager Paul Petrino told the I-Team the eight cases were, in fact, errors. He said his medical staff was in the process of relabeling those deaths.
Readers may recall, here’s Dr. Scott Jensen on Fox News in April providing more color on the situation.
If virus-related deaths are being overinflated in Florida, is the same being done in other states?
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With hindsight, a few years from now, it may well appear to us that the year 2020, the beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century, marked the dawn of a new parasitic age. We can tell this much even by looking at one of the year’s most popular films. Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite (2019) tells the story of the poor Kim family living in a basement apartment of a decrepit house (a banjiha) in a Seoul ghetto. Both parents, Ki-taek and Chung-sook, as well as their young adult children, Ki-woo and Ki-jung, are all precarious gig workers. They scramble together to make ends meet, taking on every and any odd job they can find.
The apartment sits mostly below ground, but a window pane in the kitchen breaches the surface somewhat, giving them a ground level perspective of the outside world. The space, in this way, is an apt metaphor for the subordination (sub-ordination) of the poor, festering below the surface of ordinary life.
One day, the family is visited by Ki-woo’s friend, Min-hyuk, a university student who is about to go abroad for a study trip. Min works as a tutor for the daughter of the wealthy Park family and he invites Ki (who also goes by the name Kevin) to take over in his absence. But in order to work as a tutor, Ki must forge documents proving his credibility. After being accepted as a legitimate tutor and gaining the trust of the Park family, Ki recommends his sister as an art therapy tutor for the young son of the Park family. Jung, however, must also hide her identity and forge her credentials. The Kims further encroach upon the Park family as the children recommend their parents (again, hiding their real identities) to work for the household to replace the current chauffer and the trusted family housekeeper, whom the children frame in order to have them fired and replaced. Far from a dubious act, their scam is seen more as a necessary strategy of subsistence for precarious workers, an effect of the “entrepreneurialization” of labour and new competitive struggles of workers amongst each other over scarce temporary jobs. Meanwhile, Mr. Park, the patriarch of the family, works in the field of “legitimate”/capitalist scamming, otherwise known as high finance. The contrast between the Kims and Parks in this way evokes the vast cleavages between the precariat class and the wealthy, in whose favour the system is undoubtedly rigged.
Contrasting Living Conditions
The film is stunning in its visual depiction of the class differences between the families, especially through the juxtaposition of the two homes, particularly the kitchen and living spaces of each. Both homes have kitchens and living areas that have a window that looks out upon the world outside. For the Kims living in the banjiha, the window only breaches slightly above ground, where they are able to see the largely grungy slums of the inner city. The family witnesses a drunken man urinating in front of their kitchen window, apparently a regular occurrence as they recount to each other. Inside, the claustrophobic space of the kitchen is grimy and confining, an apt visual portrayal of the constraints of the poor.
This contrasts well with the home of the Parks, whose kitchen and living areas are spacious and pristine, appearing in some ways quite sterile, a perception augmented by the distanced engagement between the members of the Park family, who appear largely separate from each other, the children escaping into their own separate bedrooms, with Mrs. Park spending most of her time alone, while Mr. Park is off at work, in comparison with the very close and tight-knit family relationship of the Kims, a trope not uncommon in the depiction of the individuality and independence of the wealthy. The living area in the Parks’ home backs onto a large window expanding the size of one wall of the entire room. Through the window, the family gazes onto the fresh green space of the backyard, a stark departure from infested streets of the inner city. The class distinction between the two families couldn’t be more apparent.
One night, while the Parks are on a family camping trip, the Kims (now all employed by the Park family) decide to enjoy the luxuries of the empty house together. In the middle of their festivities, late at night, the doorbell rings. They see on the external security camera that it is the old housekeeper, Moon-gwang, waiting there in the rain. She tells them that in her haste to leave the house after being fired she forgot to take something with her. She is let into the house and quickly runs to the basement where she uncovers a secret bunker below the house. Her husband has been hiding in the bunker from loan sharks and she’s come to rescue him. However, amidst the commotion, she discovers the Kims’ secret, that they’ve fooled the Park family, and threatens to turn them in. Ultimately, the two families struggle and fight with each other over who will maintain access to and feed off of the wealthy Park family, hence the title of the film, “parasite.”
The title, of course, seems appropriate given that the two families’ struggle over who will be able to devour and thrive off of the wealthy living of the Park family. The visual metaphor of the underground bunker, and the basement apartment reflect the parasitic portrayal of the poor feeding off of the rich. But things are surely not so clear cut. While the poor families battle against each other like vermin, beneath the surface of the shiny veneer of the rich, we might do well to turn things around and to ask what in fact is the source of their poverty in the first place?
Capitalism is the Parasite
Popular opinion is sure to read the parasite from the gaze of the elite, in which case it is the poor who are parasitic upon the wealthy. This, after all, is the leading practice of perceiving the abject and the excluded. The poor are typically portrayed as scum; vultures living off of the remainders and shreds of life of the rich. But by asking about the source of the wealth of the elite we are able to understand the reverse. Doing so lets us connect the film to a great number of issues facing us today, which intersect in the capitalist system. As Marx famously put it in Capital, Volume 1, “Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” From the perspective of capital, then, Marx notes, the labour-power that it has paid for is its property and it is its right to so consume it during the time in which it has paid for the labour commodity. “If the worker consumes his [own] disposable time for himself, [it appears to capital that] he robs the capitalist.”1 As in a camera obscura, Marx’s words describe here the inverted form with which the capitalist parasite is commonly misperceived or kept hidden by the very form of its own crises.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, most of us have had to limit and self-regulate our everyday lives, going into lockdown and quarantine. While millions of people are laid off of work as businesses have ceased operations and are no longer making any profit, the world’s wealthiest few, including big tech giants like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk, have increased their wealth substantially.2 As the old socialist saying goes, during times of prosperity, profits are privatized and rise to the top, whereas during times of crisis, risk, debt, and loss are socialized, and endured by the expanding bottom. The neoliberal myth of trickle down, it would seem, is only true in the case of socializing losses. It is loss that trickles down while the parasitic capitalists appropriate the world’s wealth, especially and even during a time of great crisis for many. What we see all too often is that the capitalist system, much like a parasite, exhausts and devours global resources, leaving the majority to scramble and fight amongst ourselves for access to basic needs. In this sense, we should see the Park family, not the Kims, as the real parasites of the movie.
We should think about the coronavirus in these terms, as well. The virus, not unlike a parasite, infects and replicates, and eats away at all forms of life confronting it. The culprit of the pandemic seems to be the virus itself, this nonhuman force of nature; but what we have been seeing is that, as another popular meme has put it, the real virus is capitalism– that is, the capitalist system that erects further barriers to our collective treatment of the virus. The true crisis is not simply the virus itself, but the limited capacities in the public health care system to meet the needs for treatment amongst the population.3 This is a system, we should add, that has become relatively starved due to decades of neoliberal austerity measures and cutbacks to social and public services, benefits, and institutions that subsidize the costs of life and living, and that provide access to needs. In this sense, capitalism is very much the real virus, indeed.4
Systemic crises are all around us, and not least as we are also currently seeing with the mass Black Lives Matter protests against racism, police violence, and police murders of African Americans, like George Floyd, in the United States.5 The police, Donald Trump, and much of the Right Wing media all want to make the protesters look parasitic upon society.6 Trump has referred to the protesters as “thugs,” while Fox News personality, Tucker Carlson has said that debates about racism are driven by “hysteria” that is spreading like a “disease.”7 But we must remember that, while the corporate media creates the illusion that the people are the robber-looters of society – just as it appears to the capitalist that workers’ use of their own disposable time robs the capitalist from consuming the labour commodity – it is in fact the capitalist, neoliberal and very much white supremacist system that continues to be the true vampire-like parasite, sucking the lifeblood out of the people.8
Beyond Posthumanism
Viewed from this angle, we can see how truly topsy-turvy is the parasite metaphor when it originates in the ruling ideology that deflects attention from the parasitic system of capital and projects its own contradictions onto false enemies. This practice is even deployed in much of the critical literature on climate change and the environment. For instance, we should even be hesitant deploying concepts like the Anthropocene and subscribing the fashionable idea that there is an Anthropocentrism at the core of our environmental troubles, for this merely abstracts from the historical relations of empire, capital, and class, as Jason W. Moore describes, displacing environmental and ecological crises onto an ill-conceived notion of humanity as a collective actor, and ignoring the class disparities so well represented in films like Parasite.9 Also unhelpful are the Object-Oriented Ontology and New Materialist thinkers, like Timothy Morton, who are on the brink of declaring that humans are the real parasite of the Earth.10 As Morton himself puts it, “In symbiosis, it’s unclear which is the top symbiont… Am I simply a vehicle for the numerous bacteria that inhabit my microbiome? Or are they hosting me? Who is the host and who is the parasite?”11
The danger in Morton’s contrasting of innocent and alive but nonhuman nature with the guilty and parasitical human species, is that it has the potential to devolve into nihilistic activism, such as “death politics.” For example, Patricia MacCormack’s The Ahuman Manifesto advocates for the cessation of human reproduction and the death of humans with calls for “an end to the human both conceptually as exceptionalized and actually as a species.”12 The risk in seeing humans (as a whole) as the uniform culprit of the global environmental catastrophe is that it misses the systemic forest for the individual trees. While right-wing governments compel and guilt the working class back to work to revivify the coronavirus-slumping economy, and while the anti-racist protesters are labelled “thugs” when demonstrating against a system that degrades and even murders their comrades, the theory of the Anthropocene ends up portraying the victims of the vampiristic system as themselves virus-like and parasitic. In this way, the theory of the Anthropocene ends up supporting the ruling capitalist ideology by portraying humanity, not the capitalist system, just as so much of the historical portrayals of racialized and colonized peoples, as well as the working class, as viruses and parasites leeching off of the system.
With so much attention being paid to the problems of the Anthropocene, and less to those of the social relations of capitalism, it is no wonder that post-humanism is becoming the dominant ideology of twenty-first century capitalism. Post-humanism, that is, both as a critique of the hubris of previous historical humanisms, and as an ideology of transhumanist technological transcendence of the limitations of corporeal humanity. On both ends, the critique of humanism displaces the cause of our collective inter-species problems from the capitalist system onto humanity as such. Instead, we should focus our critical attention on the capitalist system, and demonstrate how capitalism is incompatible with all life. We need to move from the prism of the Anthropocene to that of the Capitalocene.
Capitalism, rather than the people, is the real virus, the true parasite upon our thriving in the world today. What we need to learn is, not how to be post-human, but how to build and rethink a neo-humanism, in which, as Kate Soper puts it, human beings acknowledge our collective responsibility to each other, to the planet, and to other species – a humanism, that is, in which emancipation is both universal and equitably post-capitalist, and in which human agency drives action rather than the “objective” laws of the market.13 In other words, if capitalism is the parasite, then perhaps the project of Democratic Socialism, or something like it, is the cure.
Fantasies of Emancipated Futures
Parasite concludes, first with a bloody and violent climax where Ki-taek stabs Mr. Park to death in the middle of the family’s backyard party in a burst of violent outrage. Ki-taek then flees the scene and disappears from sight, confusing the police and the media about his whereabouts. Rather than read the film’s conclusion as an expression of the inevitable violence of the degraded and humiliated working class in the absence of a Socialist alternative, we might instead reflect upon the final moments of the film in which Ki-woo fantasizes about his father’s survival. It is unclear whether or not the final moments of the film are a fantasy scenario that he dreams up about his father. He seems to imagine that his father was able to go back into the bunker, hiding and evading the authorities after killing Mr. Park. Ki-woo imagines that one day he will be able to then earn enough money to buy the house and in that way set his father free.
For some Posthumanist thinkers, such as Donna Haraway, the problem of the Anthropocene is in perceiving a time called the future that prohibits us from being fully present.14 Futurisms, according to her are what inevitably lead us toward our demise in a kind of dystopian chaos. We need to, as the title of her book claims, “stay with the trouble.” But can we really imagine telling those suffering from the exploitative and degrading conditions of capitalism, or those suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic, or those affected by rampant racism from an integrated system of white supremacy – can we really imagine saying to the abject: “don’t worry, just stay with the trouble”? Far from offering this un-sagely advice we should instead reflect upon the strategy of the film. It is not by staying with the trouble, but by imagining emancipated futures that we will be driven to set ourselves free from the capitalist parasite.
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Matthew Flisfeder is an associate professor of Rhetoric and Communications at The University of Winnipeg. He is the author of Algorithmic Desire: Toward a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media(Northwestern University Press, Forthcoming 2021), Postmodern Theory and Blade Runner (Bloomsbury, 2017), The Symbolic, The Sublime, and Slavoj Žižek’s Theory of Film (Palgrave Macmillan 2012), and co-editor of Žižek and Media Studies: A Reader (2014). He is currently working on project called “The Hysterical Sublime,” a critical study of the aesthetics, rhetorics, and ethics of new materialist and posthumanist critical theory, funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant.
Notes
Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1, translated by Ben Fowkes (New York: Penguin Classics, 1990), p. 342.
Both Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and New Materialism are schools of thought that make it their mission to trouble an apparent Anthropocentrism, focusing respectively on the reduction all things equally, human and non-human, real and unreal alike, to objects of different sorts, or to the vibrancy of all matter. See for instance Graham Harman, Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything(New York: Pelican Books, 2018); Levi R. Bryant, The Democracy of Objects (London: Open Humanities Press, 2011); and, Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). Elsewhere, I have argued that the turn to OOO and New Materialism is the product of the neoliberal period and the reification of all human life as “human capital.” Both approaches and their critique of Anthropocentrism have been popularized, in other words, at the moment when capitalism has finally reified all of life and living. Despite the long history of colonialism and sexism, where non-European, non-masculine people were not even regarded as human, OOO and New Materialism emerge at the moment when the White middle classes are now, too, being dehumanized as a result of global neoliberal capitalist governance. But this is equally the product of a misguided attempt to grapple with the twin crises of climate change and the rise of digital automation and artificial intelligence. See Matthew Flisfeder, Algorithmic Desire: Toward a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2021).
Timothy Morton, Humankind: Solidarity With Nonhuman People (New York: Verso, 2019), p. 1. Morton, here, echoes the work of the post-humanist philosopher, Michael Serres in The Parasite, translated by Lawrence R. Schehr (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minesota Press, 2007), p. 14.
Patricia MacCormack, The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the end of the Anthropocene (New York: Bloomsbury, 2020), p. 5. Like Morton, MacCormack’s book is also influenced by Serres’ scholarship.
Kate Soper, “The Humanism in Posthumanism.” Comparative Critical Studies 9 (2012): 377. I draw here, too, upon Andreas Malm’s critique of posthumanism in The Progress of This Storm (New York: Verso, 2018).
We should be clear about one thing: “news” is a commercial product, like toothpaste or chewing gum. It is also designed more or less according to the same principles and with few exceptions “sold” by the same kind of hawkers.
The term “fake news” has one effect which many apparently do not understand– it implies that there is news which is not “fake”.
It might be useful to consider how advertising works– news is a form of advertising. A product is announced with “less sugar” or even with “zero sugar”. I think everyone here can imagine the products to which I am referring. Of course the “less sugar” or “zero sugar” seem like positive qualities. But in the products concerned the difference is like saying “gentler slavery” or “zero whipping” of slaves. It begs the question whether the product that has less or none of some currently fashionable “negative content” is in and of itself a desirable product.
Is a mystery liquid sold as a beverage– originally with addictive cocaine– virtuous or more virtuous by reducing its official sugar content?
Is “news product” — actually an advertising vehicle from its very inception– better when it is not “fake”?
The luxury goods business spends an appreciable amount of money lobbying for police interdiction of counterfeit products. However, all industry insiders know that counterfeiting is beneficial advertising for the “real” goods. If the counterfeits were entirely eliminated it would devalue those very brands. The contrast between “real” luxury goods and “fakes” is part of the vanity the promotes the brand as such.
In the same way when people of whatever political persuasion complain about “fake news” their pleas in fact support the illusion that the “news” per se is not fake. In fact there is no objective news. Moreover the news items are actually destructive since they are designed to undermine the notion of necessary information, i.e. historical background and context to interpret events or facts that are to be understood as events.
“Conspiracy theory” as a pejorative is really an attack not on “news” which is actually senseless but on any attempt to establish context, historical or otherwise, for data that needs interpretation. The “news” is a TV dinner packaged as if it were a Lego kit. If you spread all the Lego pieces on your table and have never seen the box, it will certainly take a while to build what is intended. You might build something else. But a TV dinner needs no box. Rip off the foil and you have the reconstituted turkey product with all the artificial ingredients, clearly separated in the aluminum tray. The big compartment is the meat, the smaller ones are for potatoes and veg. If you prefer to cook your own meals then you are a conspiracy theorist…
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Malaysia’s politicians were crowing. “We are confident that we are securing more money from Goldman Sachs compared to previous attempts, which were far below expectations,” statedFinance Minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz. “We are also glad to be able to resolve this outside the court system, which would have cost a lot of time, money and resources.”
The second part of this statement is worth pondering. Not willing to go the distance with Goldman? Costs in terms of litigation and time? Such language is surely not the sort a sovereign power uses regarding a corporation, which speaks much to the problem. Malaysians would have reason to be suspicious, wondering if their government had thrown in the towel a bit too early against a company famed for its financial vigilantism. The very fact that the Malaysian government made a deal with Wall Street’s Mephistopheles should have also done its bit to cause alarm.
Whichever way the financial mind looks at this, Goldman is certainly getting more out of the bargain than their despoiled clients. In the current settlement, no one from their piratical outfit will spend time behind bars for the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal, which saw the hearty plundering of Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund under their watch. The company will have to fork out a manageable $3.9 billion, a heavily discounted sum considering the original total being sought: $7.5 billion. Having been one of its clients, the Malaysian government pursued the bank, which had underwritten and arranged bond sales for the fund to the vast sum of $6.5 billion. Enabling the raising of capital in 2012 and 2013 was something the bank was also handsomely remunerated for: $600 million, no less.
Goldman’s tactics of negotiation lived up to expectations and down to base ethical considerations. First came a compensation offer of $243.73 billion last year, rejected by the then prime minister Mahathir Mohamad for its slap-in-the-face value. It was “peanuts”, he scoffed at the time.
The offer was duly increased. In November 2019, Mahathir rejected the sum of $1.75 billion. “We are not satisfied with that amount so we are still talking to them … If they respond reasonably we might not insist on getting that $7.5 billion.” A key feature of Goldman’s negotiating strategy had worked: their accusers and prosecutors were not going to get full satisfaction. Attrition seemed to be working.
Both parties are indelibly stained in this enterprise. Malaysian politics is fairly adept at funnelling funds and looting assets in the name of the public good and there was no more fitting company than Goldman to oversee the pinching. Despite Chief Executive David Solomon’s apology to the Malaysian people, the bank has also made it clear that it was not working for the easiest of clients. As it asserted in a statement in December 2018, “Certain members of the former Malaysian government and 1MDB lied to Goldman Sachs, outside counsel and others about the use of proceeds from these transactions.”
Those proceeds – some $4.5 billion – were certainly put to use, implicating former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak and his wife Rosmah Mansor in numerous indulgent purchases. (When robbing the public purse, do it with appropriate extravagance.) Most fittingly, some of the proceeds went to fund a Hollywood film whose very premise is animal greed as virtuous, self-destructive pursuit. Razak’s stepson, Riza Aziz, was the producing arm behind The Wolf of Wall Street, using amounts drawn from 1MDB amounting to $248 million.
For some time, it was alleged that the entire effort had one name behind it: Low Taek Jho, known as Jho Low. In an effort to shift the keenly focused spot light on his sizeable contribution, the Malaysian financier insisted in January that he was merely a humble operator, greasing the palms, oiling the wheels. “People and companies act as introducers or intermediaries all the time.” He had been asked “to assist because of my good relationships with influential foreign businessmen and decision makers.” Jho Low is right – to a point – and certainly in his interlocutor’s claim that he is “an easy target for all those above given the fact that I’m not a politician.” More thought had to be given to “global and financial and other institutions and advisers that actually organised and facilitated the fundraisings at issue”.
When lawsuits were filed in July 2016, the US attorney general Loretta Lynchdescribed the 1MDB affair as “the largest kleptocracy case” in US history. “A number of corrupt IMDB officials treated this public trust as a personal bank account.” Lynch spoke of the laundering of money “through a complex web of opaque transactions and fraudulent shell companies, with bank accounts in countries around the world, including Switzerland, Singapore and the United States.” The enigmatic hand prints of Goldman go far.
The Wall Street giant is also facing the prospect of another settlement with the DOJ which threatens to raid its profits. The staff are no doubt ready, and additional money is already being put aside for regulatory reasons. With supreme insincerity, the bank promises to reflect about this latest chapter in international financial kleptocracy. “There are important lessons to be learned from this situation, and we must be self-critical to ensure that we only improve from the experience.” The sinner, chastened, readies for the next transgression.
Mahatma Gandhi, in one of his more quoted remarks, observed that “the world has enough for everyone’s need, but not everyone’s greed.” The Goldman approach has a different take to his sagacious observation: the greed will always come before the need and there is ample amount to be had. It is a philosophy that has enabled it to escape the calamities of the subprime market collapse in 2009 and survive such catastrophes as the Wall Street crash. While it has received something of a battering, the company has seen worse. Expect much and more of the same: greed sells, and while stumbles are bound to take place, budget for them.
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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]
When an event is unexplained, it can’t be repeated. Cuba’s astonishing internationalism, the “good news” of the pandemic, is talked about (outside Cuba) as if a miracle, without cause. Support grows for the Nobel Prize nomination but the justification for the Henry Reeve Brigade, established in 2005, is left out. The explanation is ideas.
It is urgent according to Eddie Glaude in a new book on James Baldwin.[i] Well, he doesn’t exactly say that. But for Baldwin, “what kind of human beings we aspire to be” is most important and the explanation for Cuba’s success is precisely that.
In Zona Roja, Enrique Ubieta Gómez says Cuban medical workers – fighting Ebola in 2014 — know about existence: We exist interdependently. Ubieta describes Cuban internationalism as an “inescapable ethic”. Once you’ve lived it, you cannot not live it.
You know human connection – a fact of science – and you learn its energy.
Ubieta’s explanation is existential. Baldwin used similar language. In 1963, he wrote, “Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we … imprison ourselves … to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.” Glaude supports Baldwin’s call to “begin again”, with the “America idea”, shedding its “old ideas”. He might look South. Latin American independistas raised precisely Baldwin’s question: how to resist the “lie at the heart of the [imperialist] nation” when it is about “love, life and death”, that is, everything.
Truth is not enough. If Galileo had just provided truths, he wouldn’t have been condemned. Galileo became threatening when he made those truths plausible with a larger picture of “cosmic humility”, contradicting the establishment’s comforting identity. One thing we might learn from Galileo, according to astrophysicist Mario Livio in a new book, is that he didn’t just observe truths and tell stories about them. His “phenomenal capacity for abstraction” let him see where those truths led.[ii]
Truths are easy when unexplained. Consider Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights. It gives truth about people traveling everywhere “escaping their own lives, and then being safely escorted right back to them”.[iii] We see people running through airports with “flushed red faces, their straw hats and souvenir drums and masks and shell necklaces”. All this “moving around in a chaotic fashion … [to] increase their likelihood” of being in the “right place at the right time”even has meaning. A “travel psychologist” explains that such chaos “appears to call into question the existence of a self understood non-relationally”.
It is funny to expect deeper meaning regarding people “moving around in a chaotic fashion” to increase their likelihood of being in the right place at the right time from a “travel psychologist” at an airport between flights. We laugh because we do in fact expect that, absurdly.
We get truth from Flights but it’s dismissible. Annushka, for instance, escapes her unbearable life : to “go, sway, walk, run, take flight”. She finds happiness when “she does not have a single thought in her head, a single care, a single expectation or hope.” She’s “happy”, free of her identity, her life, her responsibilities. But she is also cold, hungry, dirty, alone, tired, and homeless. The image is silly.
In fact, the idea underlying it is silly, namely, that to have no thoughts, you should have no identity, no responsibilities. It’s as pervasive as friction, from which Galileo abstracted to get truth about inertia. In fact, to be happy with no expectations or hope, as Annushka is, is not silly. But understanding how that is so requires a “phenomenal capacity for abstraction” from social expectations.
Flights doesn’t do that. It responds to an expectation identified by Cuban philosopher and diplomat Raúl Roa in 1953 as the “world’s gravest crisis”.[iv] It was indeed the “America idea”: Human beings imprisoned in discrete selves, defined by action and results. It is not humanist, as claimed, Roa argues, because it omits “the fact of death”, as Baldwin recognized. There were “few dissenters” to the “man of action” during the Renaissance, and Roa saw there would now be none because of US power.
Baldwin tried to escape that power by living outside the US. He struggled with what it had “made of him”. But “American power follows one everywhere”.
Emily Dickinson, “the greatest poet in the English language”, abstracts from expectations Flights dignifies. According to biographer Martha Ackman, Dickinson lived as if busyness and travel is not progress.[v] She never apologized for, nor defended, the priority she gave to silence and solitude. As result, we get truth from her poetry: about what it means to be human. For, she was in fact not detached from a world she never visited physically or had any desire to.
She lived as if isolation and detachment are not synonymous. But to know where this leads, you must abstract from the “America idea” that equates human worth and utility. Comfortably, though, Dickinson is odd — “America’s most enigmatic and mysterious poet”– and her way of life therefore dismissible.
Lord of all the Dead, like Flights, leaves comforting “old ideas” in place.[vi] Javier Cercas tells the story of his great-uncle who fought a “useless war” for Franko. His memoire does give truth but doesn’t explain it, so his story, which for him is just a story, cannot itself explain, and is dismissible.
Achilles in The Odyssey is “lord of all the dead” because he died young and beautiful, and gained immortality. That his great uncle was “politically mistaken, there’s no doubt.” But was he a human failure? Cercas’ answer is no. At one level, Cercas rejects the Greeks’ ideal of “beautiful death” because it denies the existential reality of decrepitude: There is no escaping it. But on the other hand, Cercas assumes the separation of mind and body that makes “beautiful death” worth speculating about: the idea that the body decays and that the mind somehow escapes nature’s universal laws of causation.
He ends the book speculating about immortality. Nobody dies, he writes. We’re just transformed, physically. He himself, at book’s end, is in the “eternal present”. It doesn’t explain what needs to be explained, given the real story of this book which is what Cercas calls the “silent wake of hatred, resentment and violence left over by the war”. The “silent wake” is explained by ignorance precisely of shared humanity Cercas names but doesn’t explain. It is decrepitude: “the fact of death”.
It is known by every human being. Cercas tells a story about his great uncle but denies the significance of that story because he tells it with the “old ideas” in place, the ones Glaude says need to be shed, like “swaddling clothes” to “begin again” as Baldwin urged. Glaude is not sure it can happen. But it has happened. That’s the “good news” about the Henry Reeve Medical brigade, if it were explained.
On Friday, March 20, Cuban president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, speaking nationally, outlined new measures to slow the pandemic. The good news, he said, is that Cuban people supported the decision to accept the Braemar, a UK cruise ship refused docking elsewhere because of infected passengers. A century ago, another ship sought aid from Cuba. Its passengers were Jews. It was turned away.
That, Diaz-Canel said, was before the Revolution. The good news was the expectation that the Braemar should be helped. That expectation is the success of the Cuban revolution. It explains the Henry Reeve Brigade. Expectations come from practises, from what is lived. Diaz-Canel then said, “one day the truth will be known.” But what truth? It’s not the truth that solidarity is good. No, the truth that will be known is not moral. Instead, it is what that truth– the moral one about solidarity — does existentially when acted upon, and lived, and why that matters in a global crisis.
Baldwin’s humanism wasn’t easy to understand. Glaude’s thoughtful book goes some distance toward explaining. It’s not clear, though, whether he knows the consequences. Bill V. Mullen, in a 2019 book, says Baldwin should be “understood the way we understand Fanon, García Marquez, Assata Shakur”: They wrote outside the US, aware of imperialism.[vii]
It may be what it takes for Cuba to cease being a dismissible miracle.
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If you watch the US mainstream media’s 24 hour news coverage on recent events around the world no matter what time of the day it is, Covid-19 and China dominate the headlines while ignoring recent escalations in the Middle East involving Israel and its Arab neighbors as they come closer to another war in an already devastated region.
The Times of Israel reported that the Israeli government
“sent a message to Hezbollah warning the Lebanese terror group against any retaliatory action in response to the killing of one of the organization’s fighters in an airstrike in Syria on Monday night, which was attributed to Israel.”
According to various reports, Israel has killed one of Hezbollah’s fighters Ali Kamel Mohsen Jawad in another cross-border attack in Syria last week and now fears that Hezbollah will retaliate, but Israel’s military and intelligence community has issued a statement aimed at Hezbollah, Lebanon and Syria warning them not to retaliate considering that Israel would most likely launch a multi-front attack on all entities involved. The report said that “the airstrike attributed to Israel on Monday night hit weapons depots and military positions belonging to Syrian regime forces and Iran-backed militia fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.”
For the record, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) is a UK government funded pro-opposition group to the Assad Government. In a statement by the Israeli army, “The IDF holds the Syrian regime responsible for the fire against Israel earlier today” and that “the IDF will continue operating with determination and will respond to any violation of Israeli sovereignty.” What was revealing was an unannounced meeting between the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley and Israel’s top military leaders including Defense Minister Benny Gantz:
US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, made an unannounced visit to Israel, meeting with Defense Minister Benny Gantz, IDF chief Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi and Mossad director Yossi Cohen, along with other top brass.
Israeli television commentators speculated on the possible significance of the visit, particularly regarding the threat posed by Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah. “In light of a situational assessment in the IDF and in accordance with the Northern Command’s defense plan, the IDF’s deployment will change in both the military and civilian arena. with the goal of strengthening defenses along the northern border,” the IDF said in the statement. In a tacit threat, the IDF preemptively warned Beirut that it sees the state of Lebanon as “responsible for all actions emanating from Lebanon”
Something big is about to take place as the IDF “cleared some troops out of positions directly along the border, moving them deeper into Israel, so that they would not represent a clear target for Hezbollah, while still allowing them to defend the frontier” according to the report.
However, Milley’s visit at the Nevatim Air Base in southern Israel is significant according to another report by the Times of Israel ‘US military chief visits Israel to talk regional threats, amid tensions in north’ stating that “the visit came at a time of heightened tensions with Iran and its allies across the Middle East.” General Milley was briefed by Israel’s Intelligence agencies including Mossad and Israel’s military intelligence unit, Aman on the threat they face from Iran and its allies. After the briefing, Gantz declared that “the need to continue the pressure on Iran and its proxies that threaten regional and global stability” signaling to it’s neighboring enemies “not” to test Israel.
Lebanon has two major problems to deal with besides another catastrophic war, for starters it has a severe economic crisis with a collapsing currency.
The other problem is their newly discovered offshore oil and gas reserves which the US and Israel would love to get their hands on. Lebanon’s offshore oil reserves is estimated to be at 865 million barrels and has gas reserves that range from 25 trillion cubic feet (an estimate published in 2018 by the Chatham House which is part of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a think tank based in London) to 96 trillion cubic feet in 2013, an estimate claimed by the Lebanese Energy Minister at the time, Gebran Bassil. Either way, Lebanon hosts Hezbollah on its territory and has discovered an abundance of natural resources in its offshore territories, its a prime target for Israel and the US.
War Will Begin in the Middle East, Not Asia?
The recent incident involving Iran’s Mahan air passenger plane traveling from Tehran to Beirut over Syria and a US F-14 fighter jet who apparently came dangerously close to the plane according to Iranian media is a sign of aggression that sends a message to Iran and its allies including Hezbollah that the US and Israel is prepared for war. Israel does not want Washington to focus on China since the upcoming US elections are months away and Israel is not sure what is going to happen come this November with Trump and his pro-Israel administration. Israel cannot afford to have Washington start a new war with China so for the time being tensions between the US and China will lead to a new Cold War 2.0.
The Middle East is an important region that remains a strategic part of the world’s economy with its valuable natural resources, a fact too important to ignore for western Big Oil interests and Israel. The meeting between US and Israeli military officials is significant and should be taken seriously, but the world is consumed with news on Covid-19 and China. Another Middle East war can happen either before or after the November elections and that depends on how desperate Israel becomes. Israel can pull Washington’s strings and ignite a war between the US and Iran before the situation intensifies in the South China Sea.
While the world is occupied by a virus and the tensions in the South China Sea continue between the US and China and an upcoming Presidential election, a new conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors is a real possibility, making it one of the most dangerous periods in human history.
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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Made-in-the-USA economic collapse is the most diabolical scheme ever concocted by dark forces in the country.
It’s all about engineering the largest ever wealth transfer from ordinary people to corporate favorites and the nation’s super-rich.
It also aims to consolidate corporate America to greater size and dominance by eliminating many tens of thousands of small, medium-sized, and some large businesses.
There’s nothing accidental about what’s going on, including COVID-19 outbreaks nationally and worldwide.
What’s happening was planned many months in advance before unleashed on Americans and humanity in January — an unprecedented high crime, war by other means on ordinary people worldwide.
The diabolical scheme’s toll rises daily — more people becoming ill, more losing jobs because of shuttering businesses, many never to reopen.
A permanent US underclass exploded in size that includes mass joblessness, impoverishment, and misery far exceeding the worst of the 1930’s Great Depression.
Instead of New Deal jobs creation programs and other initiatives to help ordinary people during hard times, the Trump regime and GOP congressional leadership reportedly is set to unveil a let ‘em eat cake scheme this week. See below.
Based on what’s known, it includes scant extended benefits for ordinary Americans in contrast to trillions of dollars of free money for the nation’s privileged class.
Both right wings of the nation’s one-party state are miles apart on agreeing to extended benefits for the nation’s unemployed and otherwise needy.
In May, House Dems passed the so-called $3 trillion Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act.
Opposed by the GOP controlled Senate, its leadership and party faithful want aid going largely to corporate America, crumbs alone for ordinary people in need.
Reportedly this week, maybe on Monday, GOP House and Senate leadership will introduce a $1 trillion scheme it wants unfolded in stages.
It replaces unemployment benefits of $600 weekly with about 70% of lost wages, less than half of current benefits.
On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin falsely claimed expiring benefits disincentivize America’s unemployed to seek jobs — citing no evidence as proof because none exists.
He added that GOP proposed benefits will reduce what’s expiring to about $200 weekly, one-third the current amount, along with another $1,200 for qualified low-income households.
Trump and congressional GOP leadership want benefits largely going to corporate favorites and the nation’s privileged class — including protection of businesses from COVID-19 related lawsuits.
Reportedly, the GOP plan extends the eviction moratorium for residential buildings that have federally guaranteed mortgages.
Government aid for millions unemployed Americans with no prospect of returning to work near or longer-term is essential — because of the unavailability of jobs for millions of jobless who want them.
Whatever is agreed on this week by Republicans and Dems, if anything, is likely to be much less than what’s needed.
The hardest of hard times ever in America continue with no end of them in prospect for the nation’s working class.
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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
The law firm of former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon confirmed this week that it will represent a Venezuelan businessman sanctioned by the Trump administration and facing extradition from Cape Verde.
Alex Saab, 48, was arrested on the archipelago island in June while on a technical stop-over in his private jet. He was allegedly en route to the Islamic Republic of Iran to negotiate food import contracts on behalf of the government’s subsidised CLAP food program, as well as medicine and other imports needed to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
A Colombo-Venezuelan entrepreneur of Lebanese descent, Saab was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department last year for allegedly running a “vast corruption network” profiting from overpriced contracts with the CLAP food program, which benefits an estimated six million of Venezuela’s poorest families. He also faces federal indictments in Florida, New York and Washington DC-based courts.
After receiving a US extradition request on June 29, the Cape Verde government decided to authorize it on July 14, moving Saab’s legal team to start an appeals process.
Prior to Garzon’s arrival, the defense had two habeas corpus requests denied and filed an injunction with the Barlavento Appeals Court to have the extradition request annulled.
For its part, Garzon’s Madrid-based law firm, ILOCAD, said in a statement on Tuesday that Saab’s case is an example of the White House using judicial process to “pressure Venezuela on the level of international politics.”
“Mr Saab’s rights are being violated by this extradition process,” the statement went on to say, with ILOCAD pledging to take the case to the African Union and the United Nations.
Garzon made his name in 1998 when he attempted to extradite former Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet to face justice in Spanish courts. He is currently coordinating Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s defense against extradition from the UK to the US.
Following the first financial sanctions in August 2017, the US Treasury Department has moved to target strategic sectors of the Venezuelan economy, including banking, shipping, and especially oil. Washington has likewise imposed sanctions against companies allegedly involved in food imports for the CLAP program and torpedoed oil-for-food agreements with Mexican firms.
With additional reporting by Lucas Koerner from Philadelphia.
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