Global Research

On 12 March 2020, British PM Boris Johnson, referring to COVID-19, informed the public:

“We’ve all got to be clear; this is the worst public health crisis for a generation.”

Since that time, we have seen lockdowns, on ongoing government-backed fear campaign, fundamental rights being stripped away, dissent censored, inflated COVID-19 death numbers and the use of a flawed PCR test to label perfectly healthy individuals as COVID-19 ‘cases’ in order to fit the narrative of a ‘second wave’.

But, just for a moment, consider an alternative scenario.

The government is extremely worried about a substance that could be contributing to a spiralling public health crisis that has been decades in the making. It has been detected in food and in urine. The government has therefore decided to carry out mass urine testing. It has found millions of ‘cases’. The more it tests, the more ‘cases’ it finds. The government and the media promote the message we are all at risk and should get tested. Hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent to allow for the testing of the entire population.

All cafes, pubs, restaurants and food stores are locked down, aside from those designated to sell only food that is regarded as ‘safe’ by the government. All weddings, parties and get-togethers are banned because contaminated food might be passed around.

Severe restrictions are put in place because this ‘stuff’ is in the air, water, plants, animals, grains, vegetables and meats. And it is in beer and wine, children’s breakfast cereal and snack bars and even in our vaccines. Everyone is under virtual house arrest until this public health crisis is addressed.

Daily government briefings are held on TV with the PM and health officials in attendance. The PM tells everyone that this thing is linked to various conditions, 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.

Imagine that scenario. But the substance being referred to is very real. It is heavily associated with all the conditions mentioned and is present in our urine and food. But the government does nothing. It does not just do nothing but actively facilitates the marketing of this substance and collude with its manufacturers.

And the name of this ‘stuff’? Glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide. The main culprit – Monsanto’s Roundup. But it is not just glyphosate. It is the cocktail of agricultural chemicals that have been in use for decades.

The real public health crisis

Earlier this year, in a 29-page open letter to Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason spent 11 pages documenting the spiralling rates of disease that she says (supported by numerous research studies cited) are largely the result of exposure to health-damaging agrochemicals, including glyphosate-based herbicides.

The amount of glyphosate-based herbicide sprayed by UK farmers on crops has gone from 226,762 kg in 1990 to 2,240,408 kg in 2016, a 10-fold increase. In her letter, Mason discussed links between multiple pesticide residues (including glyphosate) in food and steady increases in the number of cancers both in the UK as well as allergic diseases, chronic kidney disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, obesity and many other conditions.

Agrochemicals are a major contributory factor for the spikes in these diseases and conditions. This is the real public health crisis affecting the UK. Each year, there are steady increases in the numbers of new cancers in the UK and increases in deaths from the same cancers, with treatments not making any difference to the numbers.

While there is much talk of the coronavirus placing immense strain on an underfunded NHS, the health service is already creaking. And people’s immune systems are already strongly compromised due to what Mason outlines. But do we see a ‘lockdown’ on the activities of the global agrochemical conglomerates? Not at all.

We see governments and public health bodies working hand in glove with the agrochemicals manufacturers to ensure ‘business as usual’.

It might seem strange to many that the UK government is seemingly going out of its way (by stripping people of their freedoms) under the guise of a public health crisis but is all too willing to oversee a massive, ongoing one caused by the chemical pollution of our bodies.

Unlike COVID-19, this is a ‘silent’ crisis that actually does affect all sections of the population and causes immense widespread suffering. It is silent because the mainstream media and various official reports in the UK have consistently ignored or downplayed the role of pesticides in fuelling this situation.

Hundreds of lawsuits are pending against Bayer in the US, filed by people alleging that exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide caused them or their loved ones to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma and that Monsanto covered up the risks (Roundup is linked to cancers of the bone, colon, kidney, liver, melanoma, pancreas and thyroid).

The WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has declared glyphosate as a 2A carcinogen. In 2017, in a public hearing in Brussels, Dr Christopher Portier and Dr Kate Guyton defended IARC’s position. Portier drew attention to the significance of statistically significant tumour findings that had not been discussed in any of the existing reviews on glyphosate.

Portier concluded that as the regulatory bodies, the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency’s analyses were scientifically flawed. These organisations had also used industry studies that were not in the public domain for ‘reasons of commercial confidentiality’ to support their case that glyphosate was not carcinogenic.

Mason has written numerous open letters to officials citing reams of statistical data to support the contention that agrochemicals, especially Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup, have devastated the natural environment and have also led to spiralling rates of illness and disease, not least among children.

Regulators around the world have falsely assumed that it is safe to use pesticides at industrial scales across landscapes and the effects of dosing whole regions with chemicals have been largely ignored.

A report delivered to the UN Human Rights Council, says that pesticides have catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole.

Authored by Hilal Elver, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, and Baskut Tuncak, UN special rapporteur on toxics, the report states:

“Chronic exposure to pesticides has been linked to cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, hormone disruption, developmental disorders and sterility.”

The authors argue:

“While scientific research confirms the adverse effects of pesticides, proving a definitive link between exposure and human diseases or conditions or harm to the ecosystem presents a considerable challenge. This challenge has been exacerbated by a systematic denial, fuelled by the pesticide and agro-industry, of the magnitude of the damage inflicted by these chemicals and aggressive, unethical marketing tactics.”

Elver says:

“The power of the corporations over governments and over the scientific community is extremely important. If you want to deal with pesticides, you have to deal with the companies.”

Tuncak states:

“Paediatricians have referred to childhood exposure to pesticides as creating a “silent pandemic” of disease and disability. Exposure in pregnancy and childhood is linked to birth defects, diabetes and cancer. Because a child’s developing body is more sensitive to exposure than adults and takes in more of everything – relative to their size, children eat, breathe and drink much more than adults – they are particularly vulnerable to these toxic chemicals.”

According to Tuncak, increasing evidence shows that even at “low” doses of childhood exposure, irreversible health impacts can result. But most victims cannot prove the cause of their disability or disease, limiting our ability to hold those responsible to account.

He concludes:

“The overwhelming reliance of regulators on industry-funded studies, the exclusion of independent science from assessments and the confidentiality of studies relied upon by authorities must change.”

The authors were severely critical of the global corporations that manufacture pesticides, accusing them of the “systematic denial of harms”, “aggressive, unethical marketing tactics” and heavy lobbying of governments which has “obstructed reforms and paralysed global pesticide restrictions”.

Way back in 1962, Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring raised the red flag about the use of harmful synthetic pesticides; yet, despite the warnings, the agrochemical giants have ever since been poisoning humans and the planet, raking in enormous profits.

Michael McCarthy, writer and naturalist, says that three generations of industrialised farming with a vast tide of poisons pouring over the land year after year after year since the end of the Second World War is the true price of pesticide-based agriculture, which society has for so long blithely accepted.

Power is now increasingly concentrated in the hands of a handful of transnational agribusiness corporations which put profit and market control ahead of food security, health and nutrition and biodiversity. Due to their political influence and financial clout, these companies are waging a chemical warfare on nature and people, while seeking to convince us that their model of agriculture – based on proprietary seeds and chemicals – is essential for feeding a burgeoning global population.

Consider that none of the more than 400 pesticides that have been authorised in the UK have been tested for long-term actions on the brain: in the foetus, in children or in adults.

Theo Colborn’s crucial research in the early 1990s showed that endocrine disrupters (EDCs) were changing humans and the environment, but this research was ignored by officials. Glyphosate is an EDC and a nervous system disrupting chemical.

In the book published in 1996 ‘Our Stolen Future: How Man-made Chemicals are Threatening our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival’ Colborn and colleagues revealed the full horror of what was happening to the world as a result of contamination with EDCs. There was emerging scientific research about how a wide range of these chemicals can disrupt delicate hormone systems in humans. These systems play a critical role in processes ranging from human sexual development to behaviour, intelligence and the functioning of the immune system.

In addition to glyphosate, EDCs include polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). DDT, chlordane, lindane, aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, toxaphene, heptachlor, dioxin, atrazine and dacthal.

In 2007, 25 experts in environmental health from 11 countries (including from the UK) met on the Faroes and contributed to this statement:

“The periods of embryonic, foetal and infant development are remarkably susceptible to environmental hazards. Toxic exposures to chemical pollutants during these windows of increased susceptibility can cause disease and disability in infants, children and across the entire span of human life.”

The Department of Health’s School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme (SFVS) has residues of 123 different pesticides that impact the gut microbiome. Obesity is associated with low diversity of bacteria in the microbiome and glyphosate adversely affects or destroys much of the beneficial bacteria. Roundup (and other biocides) is linked to gross obesity, neuropsychiatric disorders and other chronic diseases, which are all on the rise and adversely impact brain development in children and adolescents.

Moreover, type 2 diabetes is associated with being very overweight. According to NHS data, almost four in five of 715 children suffering from it were also obese.

Graham MacGregor, a professor of cardiovascular health at Queen Mary University of London who is also the chair of the campaign group Action on Sugar, says:

“Type 2 diabetes is a disaster for the child and their family and for the NHS. If a child gets type 2 diabetes, it’s condemning them to a lot of complications of that condition, such as blindness, amputations and kidney disease.”

He went on to explain that we are in a crisis and that the government does not seem to be taking action. UK obesity levels now exceed those of the US.

The human microbiome is of vital importance to human health yet it is under chemical attack. Glyphosate disrupts the shikimate pathway within these gut bacteria and is a strong chelator of essential minerals.

Many key neurotransmitters are located in the gut. Aside from affecting the functioning of major organs, these transmitters affect our moods and thinking. There is strong evidence that gut bacteria can have a direct physical impact on the brain.

Image on the right: Mike Mozart/Flickr/cc

Dr Michael Antoniou of King’s College London has found that Roundup herbicide and its active ingredient glyphosate cause a dramatic increase in the levels of two substances, shikimic acid and 3-dehydroshikimic acid, in the gut, which are a direct indication that the EPSPS enzyme of the shikimic acid pathway has been severely inhibited. Roundup and glyphosate affected the microbiome at all dose levels tested, causing shifts in bacterial populations.

A quarter of all food and over a third of fruit and vegetables consumed in the UK contain pesticide cocktails, with some items containing traces of up to 14 different pesticides. 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.

Ian Boyd, the former Chief Scientific Adviser to Defra, says pesticides, once they have been authorised, are never reviewed.

Glyphosate is distributed to every organ of the body and has multiple actions: it is an herbicide, an antibiotic, a fungicide, an antiprotozoal, an organic phosphonate, a growth regulator, a toxicant, a virulence enhancer and is persistent in the soil. It chelates (captures) and washes out the following minerals: boron, calcium, cobalt, copper, iron, potassium, magnesium, manganese, nickel and zinc.

In a paper published in King’s Law Journal –  ‘The Chemical Anthropocene: Glyphosate as a Case Study of Pesticide Exposures’ – the authors Alessandra Arcuri and Yogi Hale Hendlin state:

“As the science against glyphosate safety mounts and lawsuits threaten its chemical manufacture’s profits, the next generation of GMO crops are being keyed to the pesticide dicamba, sold commercially as XtendiMax® – and poised to be the next glyphosate. Regulatory agencies have historically been quick to approve products but slow to reconsider regulations after the decades of accumulated harms become apparent.”

They add that the entrenched asymmetries between public and ecological health and fast-to-market new chemicals is exacerbated by the seeming lack of institutionalised precautionary policies.

Britain and the US are in the midst of a barely reported public health crisis. These countries are experiencing not merely a slowdown in life expectancy, which in many other rich countries is continuing to lengthen, but the start of an alarming increase in death rates across all our populations, men and women alike. People are needlessly dying early.

Research by US-based EWG found glyphosate residues on popular oat cereals, oatmeal, granola and snack bars. Almost 75% of the 45 samples tested had glyphosate levels higher than what EWG scientists consider protective of children’s health with an adequate margin of safety. Disturbing levels of such residues have been detected in the UK too.

There are shockingly high levels of weed killer in UK breakfast cereals. After testing these cereals at the Health Research Institute in Iowa, Dr Fagan, director of the centre, said:

“These results are consistently concerning. The levels consumed in a single daily helping of any one of these cereals, even the one with the lowest level of contamination, is sufficient to put the person’s glyphosate levels above the levels that cause fatty liver disease in rats (and likely in people).”

Glyphosate also causes epigenetic changes in humans and animals: diseases skip a generation. Washington State University researchers have 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.

Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers say they saw “dramatic increases” in several pathologies affecting the second and third generations. The second generation had “significant increases” in testis, ovary and mammary gland diseases as well as obesity. In third-generation males, the researchers saw a 30% incidence of prostate disease — three times the rate of a control population. The third generation of females had a 40% incidence of kidney disease, or four times the rate of the controls.

More than one-third of the second-generation mothers had unsuccessful pregnancies, with most of those affected dying. Two out of five males and females in the third generation were obese.

Researchers call this phenomenon “generational toxicology” and they have seen it over the years in fungicides, pesticides, jet fuel, the plastics compound bisphenol A, the insect repellent DEET and the herbicide atrazine. At work are epigenetic changes that turn genes on and off, often because of environmental influences.

A study published in February 2019 found glyphosate increased the risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma by as much as 41%. A Washington State University study published in December 2019 found state residents living close to areas subject to treatments with the herbicide are one-third more likely to die an early death from Parkinson’s disease.

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. He says that Monsanto also faces 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.

Moreover, strong science suggests glyphosate is the culprit in the exploding epidemics of celiac disease, colitis, gluten sensitivities, diabetes and non-alcoholic liver cancer which, for the first time, is attacking children as young as 10.

And yet, as Mason has described in her work, the UK government had colluded with Monsanto for many years.

Boris Johnson, in his first speech to parliament as PM, said:

“Let’s start now to liberate the UK’s extraordinary bioscience sector from anti-genetic modification rules…”

This could mean the irresponsible introduction of genetically modified Roundup Ready food crops to the UK, which would see the amount of glyphosate in British food reaching new levels (levels which are already disturbing).

So much for protecting public health.

Government collusion

David Cameron appointed Michael Pragnell, founder of Syngenta and former Chairman of CropLife International, to the board of Cancer Research UK (CRUK) in 2010. He became Chairman in 2011. At one time or another, CropLife International´s member list has included BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, FMC Corp, Monsanto, Sumitomo and Syngenta. Many of these make their own formulated glyphosate.

Syngenta is a member of the European Glyphosate Task Force, which sought to renew (and succeeded in renewing) European glyphosate registration. Not surprisingly, the CRUK website denies that there is any link between pesticides and cancer.

In February 2019, at a Brexit meeting on the UK chemicals sector, UK regulators and senior officials from government departments listened to the priorities of the Bayer Crop Science Division. 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 her 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.

That statement was merely for public consumption and 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.

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.

In Mason’s report, ‘Why Does Bayer Crop Science Control Chemicals in Brexit Britain’, she states that Bayer is having secret meetings with the British government to determine which agrochemicals are to be used after Brexit once Britain is ‘free’ of EU restrictions and becomes as deregulated as the US.

Such collusion comes as little surprise as the government’s ‘strategy for UK life sciences’ is already dependent on funding from pharmaceutical corporations and the pesticides industry.

Syngenta’s parent company was in 2010 AstraZeneca. At that time, Syngenta and AstraZeneca were represented on the UK Advisory Committee on Pesticides and the Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Foods, Consumer Products and the Environment. The founder of Syngenta, Michael Pragnell, was the Chairman of Cancer Research UK (CRUK) from 2011-2017. CRUK started by giving money (£450 million a year) to the Government’s Strategy for UK Life Sciences and AstraZeneca provided 22 compounds to academic research to develop medicines. AstraZeneca manufactured six different anti-cancer drugs mainly aimed at breast and prostate cancer.

It seems like a highly profitable and cosy relationship between the agrochemical and pharmaceuticals sectors and the government at the expense of public health.

In finishing, let us take a brief look at the Washington-based International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI). Its members have occupied key positions on EU and UN regulatory panels. It is, however, an industry lobby group that masquerades as a scientific health charity.

The ILSI describes its mission as “pursuing objectivity, clarity and reproducibility” to “benefit the public good”. But researchers from the University of Cambridge, Bocconi University in Milan and the US Right to Know campaign assessed over 17,000 pages of documents under US freedom of information laws to present evidence of influence peddling.

ILSI Vice-President, Prof Alan Boobis, is currently the Chairman of the UK Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (CoT).

He was directly responsible for authorising chemicals such as glyphosate, chlorothalonil, clothianidin and chlorpyrifos that are impacting human health and creating a crisis in biodiversity. His group and others have authorised glyphosate repeatedly. He and David Coggon, the previous Chairman of CoT (2008-2015), were appointed as experts on Science Advice for Policy by European Academies (SAPEA), a group allied with the agrochemical industry and is fighting for higher pesticide exposure.

The reality of the agrochemical industry is masked by well-funded public relations machinery. The industry subverts official agencies and regulatory bodies and supports prolific lobby organisations and (‘public scientists’) which masquerade as neutral institutions.

And for the record, it is possible to farm productively and profitably without the use of synthetic agrochemicals – and to achieve food security. For instance, see the article ‘A Skeptical Farmer’s Monster Message on Profitability’ based on one US farmers journey from chemical-dependent farming to organic on his 8,000-acre farm (discussed on the AgWeb site) or ‘The Untold Success Story of Agroecology in Africa’ in the journal Development (2015). From the Tigray region of Ethiopia to various high-level (UN) reports that have recommended agroecology there are many examples, too many to discuss here.

The UK government says it cares so much about the nation’s health (the infection mortality rate for COVID-19 appears to be similar to those of a bad seasonal flu) but has presided over and facilitated a genuine public health crisis for years. And it is now pumping billions of pounds of public money into a track, trace and test regime when it could have used it to boost overall NHS capacity; remember when the government stated that the initial lockdown was implemented to protect the NHS?

In fact, the government is spending the equivalent of 77% of the NHS annual revenue budget on an “unevaluated, underdesigned national programme leading to an insufficiently supported intervention – in many cases for the wrong people” says a recent editorial in the BMJ.

In the meantime, it is investing heavily in a (possibly mandatory) vaccine that based on the design of the trials – according to a recent article in the same journal – may have no discernible impact on saving lives or preventing serious outcomes or the transmission spread of infection.

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Readers can access all Rosemary Mason’s reports on the academia.edu site.

Rosemary Mason is a retired doctor and environmental campaigner.

Colin Todhunter is an independent writer. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Global Justice Now /Flickr/CC BY

At the June 2020 Annual Meeting, Council of Canadians’ members voted to endorse and promote a Canadian nominating process for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to go the Henry Reeve medical teams from Cuba for their international work in the context of COVID-19. 

In 2005, Cuba’s leaders looked ahead and saw a world increasingly beset by pandemics and natural disasters. This led them to initiate a program to train professional medical personnel to be able to respond quickly to emergency requests from other nations. This initiative resulted in the mobilization of thousands of Cuban medical personnel with the skills and training to deal with a variety of global calamities, known as the Henry Reeve brigades.

When COVID-19 hit in 2020, Cuba responded to emergency requests for trained medical personnel by sending 53 health teams to 39 countries on four continents. The health teams were able to assist countries with fragile health systems that were ill-equipped to deal with COVID-19.

Cuba’s response to COVID-19 eclipses all other front-line efforts from industrialized nations in the fight against COVID-19. This response is more remarkable given that the island nation has been under a decades-long embargo by the United States of America. The U.S. State Department has made it known since the beginning of the pandemic that they might retaliate against any country receiving Cuban medical personnel. Only one country has capitulated to these threats from the U.S., and that country is Canada.

We are fortunate to have Dr. John Kirk as the nominator. As an expert on Cuba’s humanitarian efforts and its medical internationalism and a professor at Dalhousie University’s Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies, Dr. Kirk easily meets all of the strict requirements outlined by Oslo for those individuals heading up a nomination process for the Nobel Peace Prize. Read Dr. Kirk’s nomination.

The Council of Canadians fully supports this nomination effort, and are honoured to be working in solidarity with the endorsers listed below.

Individual Canadian endorsers for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize Nomination for the international work of Cuban medical personnel

• The Hon. Lloyd Axworthy – Canadian politician, elder statesman and academic served as Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs under P.M. Chretien, invested as a Companion of the Order of Canada and honoured at a sacred pipe ceremony as Waappski Pinaysee Inini (Free Range Frog Man), Chair of the World Refugee Council, among other prestigious international and academic positions;
• Dr. Anna Banerji – Pediatrics and infectious disease specialist and Associate Professor at University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine, Faculty lead for Indigenous and Refugee Health, invested in the Order of Ontario, 2014 Women’s Courage Award International, among other citations;
• Jane Bunnett – Flautist, saxophonist and bandleader and jazz legend is a five-time Juno Award winner, invested in The Order of Canada and has more than a dozen albums featuring Cuban music, jazz, and classical as well as dance and pop music;
• John Cartwright – Chairperson of the Council of Canadians Board of Directors and a long-time labour leader and social justice advocate. He is also the President of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, and over the years helped develop the Campaign for Public Education, Public Transit for the Public Good, the Toronto Waterwatch and Toronto Hydro campaigns as well as crafting the “Green Jobs Strategy” for the Canadian Labour Congress.
• George Elliot Clarke – Canadian poet, playwright and literary critic, known for chronicling the experience and history of the Black Canadian communities of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick (“Africadia”), has served as Poet Laureate of Toronto and Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate, appointed to the Order of Nova Scotia and as an Officer of the Order of Canada, and has received many other distinctions;
• Bruce Cockburn – Canadian roots-rock legend, 13-time Juno Award winner, Officer of the Order of Canada, recipient of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, recipient of the environmental Earth Day Award, and many others honours;
• Elizabeth Hay – Prize winning author of numerous novels, short stories, non fiction and essays. Among many honours, she was the co-winner of the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction, received the Ottawa Book Award, won the Giller Prize in 2007, was accorded the 2012 Diamond Jubilee Medal, and most recently won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. Elizabeth worked for ten years as a CBC radio broadcaster in Yellowknife, and also did radio documentaries for CBC’s Sunday Morning.
• The Rt. Hon. Michaelle Jean – Canadian stateswoman, journalist and a refugee from Haiti, was the 27th Governor General of Canada and the third Secretary-General of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, named member of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada, and has received many Appointments, Medals, and Awards as well as multiple Honorary degrees;
• Dr. Noni E. MacDonald – Paediatrics infectious disease specialist and Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Dalhousie University, invested in the Order of Nova Scotia and in the Order of Canada, and recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Canadian Society for International Health, among other honours;
• MP Elizabeth May – Canadian politician who served as leader of the Green Party of Canada from 2006 to 2019. An environmentalist, author, activist and lawyer, May founded and served as Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada from 1989 to 2006. Elizabeth has been an officer of the Order of Canada since 2005, and has been named by the United Nations as one of the leading women environmentalists worldwide, among other citations.
• Senator Pierrette Ringuette – The first francophone woman to be elected to the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick. In the 1993 federal election she won a seat in the House of Commons of Canada as a Liberal Member of Parliament. In 2002 she was appointed to the Senate on the recommendation of Prime Minister Jean Chretien. In 2007 she received the grade of Officer of the Ordre de la Pleiade in recognition of her contribution to the development of francophone and Acadian culture.  In 2016 she chose to sit as part of the Independent Senators Group. Senator Ringuette continues to be a member of several standing committees and is currently a Counselor of The Inter-Parliamentary Forum of the Americas, Co-Chair of the Canada-Cuba Inter-Parliamentary Group.
• Svend Robinson – Canadian politician and Member of Parliament for the New Democratic Party, a strong environmentalist and outspoken advocate for the rights of indigenous peoples both in Canada and internationally, he was adopted into the Haida Nation (“White Swan”), J.S. Woodsworth Resident Scholar at Simon Fraser University, and among several awards…the Elena Iberoamerican Award on Ethics and the Hero Award, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity;
• David T. Suzuki – Canadian academic, science broadcaster and environmental activist is a Companion of the Order of Canada and invested in the Order of British Columbia, recipient of the Right Livelihood Award and has been awarded honorary degrees from over two dozen universities around the world, and is the host the CBC’s long running series The Nature of Things;

Organizational Canadian endorsers for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize Nomination for the international work of Cuban medical personnel

• Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research
• Canadian Society for International Health
• Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW)
• Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) 
• Canadian Unitarians for Social Justice
• Common Frontiers
• Council of Canadians
• Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW)
• Peace Brigades International – Canada
• Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC)
• Sisters of Providence of Saint Vincent de Paul
• Unifor
• United Church of Canada 
• United Steelworkers (USW)

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Erich Fromm, the renowned German-Jewish social psychologist who was forced to flee his homeland in the early 1930s as the Nazis came to power, offered a disturbing insight later in life on the relationship between society and the individual.

In the mid-1950s, his book The Sane Society suggested that insanity referred not simply to the failure by specific individuals to adapt to the society they lived in. Rather, society itself could become so pathological, so detached from a normative way of life, that it induced a deep-seated alienation and a form of collective insanity among its members. In modern western societies, where automation and mass consumption betray basic human needs, insanity might not be an aberration but the norm.

Fromm wrote:

The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.

Challenging definition

This is still a very challenging idea to anyone raised on the view that sanity is defined by consensus, that it embraces whatever the mainstream prefers, and that insanity applies only to those living outside those norms. It is a definition that diagnoses the vast majority of us today as insane.

When Fromm wrote his book, Europe was emerging from the ruins of the Second World War. It was a time of reconstruction, not only physically and financially, but legally and emotionally. International institutions like the United Nations had recently been formed to uphold international law, curb national greed and aggression, and embody a new commitment to universal human rights.

It was a time of hope and expectation. Greater industrialisation spurred by the war effort and intensified extraction of fossil fuels meant economies were beginning to boom, a vision of the welfare state was being born, and a technocratic class promoting a more generous social democracy were replacing the old patrician class.

It was at this historic juncture that Fromm chose to write a book telling the western world that most of us were insane.

Degrees of insanity

If that was clear to Fromm in 1955, it ought to be much clearer to us today, as buffoon autocrats stride the world stage like characters from a Marx Brothers movie; as international law is being intentionally unravelled to restore the right of western nations to invade and plunder; and as the physical world demonstrates through extreme weather events that the long-ignored science of climate change – and much other human-inspired destruction of the natural world – can no longer be denied.

And yet our commitment to our insanity seems as strong as ever – possibly stronger. Sounding like the captain of the Titanic, the unreconstructed British liberal writer Sunny Hundal memorably gave voice to this madness a few years back when he wrote in defence of the catastrophic status quo:

If you want to replace the current system of capitalism with something else, who is going to make your jeans, iPhones and run Twitter?

As the clock ticks away, the urgent goal for each of us is to gain a deep, permanent insight into our own insanity. It doesn’t matter that our neighbours, family and friends think as we do. The ideological system we were born into, that fed us our values and beliefs as surely as our mothers fed us milk, is insane. And because we cannot step outside of that ideological bubble – because our lives depend on submitting to this infrastructure of insanity – our madness persists, even as we think of ourselves as sane.

Our world is not one of the sane versus the insane, but of the less insane versus the more insane.

Intimate portrait

Which is why I recommend the new documentary I Am Greta, a very intimate portrait of the Swedish child environmental activist Greta Thunberg.

Before everyone gets started, let me point out that I Am Greta is not about the climate emergency. That is simply the background noise as the film charts the personal journey begun by this 15-year-old girl with Asperger’s syndrome in staging a weekly lone protest outside the Swedish parliament. Withdrawn and depressed by the implications of the compulsive research she has done on the environment, she rapidly finds herself thrust into the centre of global attention by her simple, heart-felt statements of the obvious.

The schoolgirl shunned as insane by classmates suddenly finds the world drawn to the very qualities that previously singled her out as weird: her stillness, her focus, her refusal to equivocate or to be impressed.

Footage of her father desperately trying to get her to take a break and eat something, if only a banana, as she joins yet another climate march, or of her curling up in a ball on her bed, needing to be silent, after an argument with her father over the time she has spent crafting another speech to world leaders may quieten those certain she is simply a dupe of the fossil fuel industries – or, more likely, it will not.

But the fruitless debates about whether Thunberg is being used are irrelevant to this film. That is not where its point or its power lies.

Through Thunberg’s eyes

For 90 minutes we live in Thunberg’s shoes, we see the world through her strange eyes. For 90 minutes we are allowed to live inside the head of someone so sane that we can briefly grasp – if we are open to her world – quite how insane each of us truly is. We see ourselves from the outside, through the vision of someone whose Asperger’s has allowed her to “see through the static”, as she too generously terms our delusions. She is the small, still centre of simple awareness buffeted in a sea of insanity.

Watching Thunberg wander alone – unimpressed, often appalled – through the castles and palaces of world leaders, through the economic forums of the global technocratic elite, through the streets where she is acclaimed, the varied nature of our collective insanity comes ever more sharply into focus.

Four forms of insanity the adult world adopts in response to Thunberg, the child soothsayer, are on show. In its varied guises, this insanity derives from unexamined fear.

The first – and most predictable – is exemplified by the right, who angrily revile her for putting in jeopardy the ideological system of capitalism they revere as their new religion in a godless world. She is an apostate, provoking their curses and insults.

The second group are liberal world leaders and the technocratic class who run our global institutions. Their job, for which they are so richly rewarded, is to pay lip service, entirely in bad faith, to the causes Thunberg espouses for real. They are supposed to be managing the planet for future generations, and therefore have the biggest investment in recruiting her to their side, not least to dissipate the energy she mobilises that they worry could rapidly turn against them.

One of the film’s early scenes is Thunberg’s meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron, shortly after she has started making headlines.

Beforehand, Macron’s adviser tries to pump Thunberg for information on other world leaders she has met. His unease at her reply that this her first such invitation is tangible. As Thunberg herself seems only too aware when they finally meet, Macron is there simply for the photoshoot. Trying to make inane small talk with someone incapable of such irrelevancies, Macron can’t help but raise an eyebrow in discomfort, and possibly mild reproof, as Thunberg concedes that the media reports of her travelling everywhere by train are right.

Cynically insane

The third group are the adults who line the streets for a selfie with Thunberg, or shout out their adulation, loading it on to her shoulders like a heavy burden – and one she signally refuses to accept. Every time someone at a march tells her she is special, brave or a hero, she immediately tells them they too are brave. It is not her responsibility to fix the climate for the rest of us, and to think otherwise is a form of infantilism.

The fourth group are entirely absent from the film, but not from the responses to it and to her. These are the “cynically insane”, those who want to load on to Thunberg a burden of a different kind. Aware of the way we have been manipulated by our politicians and media, and the corporations that now own both, they are committed to a different kind of religion – one that can see no good anywhere. Everything is polluted and dirty. Because they have lost their own innocence, all innocence must be murdered.

My latest: The more Greta Thunberg articulates the terrifying emotions of awakening to our impending extinction as a species – as she did at the UN this week – the more many of us dig in our heels to resist her role as an agent of change https://t.co/zEZYMuotZv

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) September 24, 2019

This is a form of insanity no different from the other groups. It denies that anything can be good. It refuses to listen to anything and anyone. It denies that sanity is possible at all. It is its own form of autism – locked away in a personal world from which there can be no escape – that, paradoxically, Thunberg herself has managed to overcome through her deep connection to the natural world.

As long as we can medicalise Thunberg as someone suffering from Asperger’s, we do not need to think about whether we are really the insane ones.

Bursting bubbles

Long ago economists made us aware of financial bubbles, the expression of insanity from investors as they pursue profit without regard to real world forces. Such investors are finally forced to confront reality – and the pain it brings – when the bubble bursts. As it always does.

We are in an ideological bubble – and one that will burst as surely as the financial kind. Thunberg is that still, small voice of sanity outside the bubble. We can listen to her, without fear, without reproach, without adulation, without cynicism. Or we can carry on with our insane games until the bubble explodes.

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Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

Even though there was virtually no debate on foreign policy during the recent presidential campaign, there has been considerable discussion of what President Joe Biden’s national security team might look like. The general consensus is that the top levels of the government will be largely drawn from officials who previously served in the Obama administration and who are likely to be hawkish. There has also been, inevitably, some discussion of how the new administration, if it is confirmed, will deal with Israel and the Middle East in general.

Israelis would have preferred a victory by Donald Trump as they clearly understand that he was and still is willing to defer to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on nearly all issues. Indeed, that process is ongoing even though Trump might only have about nine more weeks remaining in office. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is reportedly preparing to sanction several international human rights organizations as anti-Semitic due to the fact that they criticize Israel’s brutality on the West Bank and its illegal settlement policies. The White House is also prepared to free convicted but paroled Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard from travel restrictions so he can move to Israel, where he is regarded as a hero. Pollard was the most damaging spy in U.S. history and any mitigation of his sentence has been opposed by both the Pentagon, where he worked, and also by the intelligence community.

Finally, it is widely believed that before the end of the year Trump will declare that the United States accepts the legitimacy of Israeli intentions to declare annexation of nearly all the Palestinian West Bank. The White House will actually encourage such an initiative reportedly “to sow hostility between Israel and the Biden administration.” One should note that none of the pro-Israeli measures that are likely to come out of the White House enhance U.S. security in any way and they also do nothing particularly to benefit Trump’s campaign to be re-elected through legal challenges.

If Biden does succeed in becoming president, the special place that Israel occupies in the centers of American power are unlikely to be disturbed, which is why Netanyahu was quick off the mark in congratulating the possible new chief executive. Biden has proudly declared himself to be a “Zionist” and his running mate Kamala Harris has been a featured speaker at the annual gatherings of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington. Both are strongly supportive of the “special relationship” with the Israel and will make no effort to compromise America’s apparent commitment to protect and nourish the Jewish state.

Though Israel is central to how the United States conducts its foreign policy, the country was invisible in the debates and other discussions that took place among candidates during the recent campaign. American voters were therefore given the choice of one government that panders to Israel at the expense of U.S. security or another party that does exactly the same thing. To be sure, Biden did state that he would work to reinstate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) relating to Iran’s nuclear program, which was canceled by Trump. But he also indicated that it would require some amendment, meaning that the Iranians would have to include their missile program in the monitoring while also abandoning their alleged propensity to “interfere” in the Middle East region. The Iranian government has already indicated that additional conditions are unacceptable, so the deal is dead in the water. Israel has also privately and publicly objected to any new arrangement and has already declared that it would “save the option” of working through the Republican Senate to thwart any attempts by the Biden Administration to change things.

That Israel would blatantly and openly interfere in the deliberations of Congress raises some serious questions which the mainstream media predictably is not addressing. Jewish power in America is for real and it is something that some Jews are not shy about discussing among themselves. Jewish power is unique in terms of how it functions. If you’re an American (or British) politician, you very quickly are made to appreciate that Israel owns you and nearly all of your colleagues. Indeed, the process begins in the U.S. even before your election when the little man from AIPAC shows up with the check list that he wants you to sign off on. If you behave per instructions your career path will be smooth, and you will benefit from your understanding that everything happening in Washington that is remotely connected to the interests of the state of Israel is to be determined by the Jewish state alone, not by the U.S. Congress or White House.

And, here is the tricky part, even while you are energetically kowtowing to Netanyahu, you must strenuously deny that there is Jewish power at work if anyone ever asks you about it. You behave in that fashion because you know that your pleasant life will be destroyed, painfully, if you fail to deny the existence of an Israel Lobby or the Jewish power that supports it.

It is a bold assertion, but there is plenty of evidence to support how that power is exerted and what the consequences are. Senators William Fulbright and Chuck Percy and Congressmen Paul Findlay, Pete McCloskey and Cynthia McKinney have all experienced the wrath of the Lobby and voted out of office. Currently Reverend Raphael Warnock, who is running against Georgia Loeffler for a senate seat in Georgia demonstrates exactly how candidates are convinced to stand on their heads by the Israel Lobby. Warnock was a strong supporter of Palestinian rights and a critic of Israeli brutality. He said as recently as 2018 that the Israelis were shooting civilians and condemned the military occupation and settlement construction on the Palestinian West Bank, which he compared to apartheid South Africa. Now that he is running for the Senate, he is saying that he is opposed to the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement due to what he calls the movement’s “anti-Semitic overtones.” He also supports continued military assistance for Israel and believes that Iran is in pursuit of a nuclear weapon, both of which are critical issues being promoted by the Zionist lobby.

There is some pushback in Washington to Israeli dominance, but not much. Recent senior Pentagon appointee Colonel Douglas Macgregor famously has pointed out that many American politicians get “very, very rich” through their support of Israel even though it means the United States being dragged into new wars. Just how Israel gains control of the U.S. political process is illustrated by the devastating insider tale of how the Obama Administration’s feeble attempts to do the right thing in the Middle East were derailed by American Jews in Congress, the media, party donors and from inside the White House itself. The story is of particularly interest as the Biden Administration will no doubt suffer the same fate if it seeks to reject or challenge Israel’s ability to manipulate and virtually control key aspects of U.S. foreign policy.

The account of Barack Obama’s struggle with Israel and the Israeli Lobby comes from a recently published memoir written by a former foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes. It is entitled The World As It Is, and it is extremely candid about how Jewish power was able to limit the foreign policy options of a popular sitting president. Rhodes recounts, for example, how Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel once nicknamed him “Hamas” after he dared to speak up for Palestinian human rights, angrily shouting at him “Hamas over here is going to make it impossible for my kid to have his fucking bar mitzvah in Israel.”

Rhodes cites numerous instances where Obama was forced to back down when confronted by Israel and its supporters in the U.S. as well as within the Democratic Party. On several occasions, Netanyahu lecture the U.S. president as if he were an errant schoolboy. And Obama just had to take it. Rhodes sums up the situation as follows: “In Washington, where support for Israel is an imperative for members of Congress, there was a natural deference to the views of the Israeli government on issues related to Iran, and Netanyahu was unfailingly confrontational, casting himself as an Israeli Churchill…. AIPAC and other organizations exist to make sure that the views of the Israeli government are effectively disseminated and opposing views discredited in Washington, and this dynamic was a permanent part of the landscape of the Obama presidency.”

And, returning to the persistent denial of Jewish power even existing when it is running full speed and relentlessly, Rhodes notes the essential dishonesty of the Israel Lobby as it operates in Washington: “Even to acknowledge the fact that AIPAC was spending tens of millions to defeat the Iran deal [JCPOA] was anti-Semitic. To observe that the same people who supported the war in Iraq also opposed the Iran deal was similarly off limits. It was an offensive way for people to avoid accountability for their own positions.”

Many Americans long to live in a country that is at peace with the world and respectful of the sovereignty of foreign nations. Alas, as long as Israeli interests driven by overwhelming Jewish power in the United States continue to corrupt our institutions that just will not be possible. It is time for all Americans, including Jews, to accept that Israel is a foreign country that must make its own decisions and thereby suffer the consequences. The United States does not exist to bail Israel out or to provide cover for its bad behavior. The so-called “special relationship” must end and the U.S. must deal with the Israelis as they would with any other country based on America’s own self-interests. Those interests definitely do not include funding the Israeli war machine, assassinating foreign leaders, or attacking a non-threatening Iran while continuing an illegal occupation of Syria.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

In lieu of writing reviews of their own books – with the exception of Walt Whitman, who did that with Leaves of Grass – writers often write introductions or prefaces. The purpose of such introductions is to give the prospective readers a sense of what to expect in the pages that follow, as if the author knew exactly what he was writing when he was writing it, as if he weren’t waylaid by words along the way, or could possibly know what a reader may experience when reading them.  In a way, I too have done that, even while knowing that all writing, if it is any good, is a leap into the relative dark, both for the writer and the reader.  We can’t know beforehand how either will affect us.  What changes us in life and in books is always surprising.

Who knows?

The following is the Introduction to my new book, Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies.  I offer it here as an invitation to consider joining me in the book so we may seek together.  Sort of like Whitman’s invitation:

Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,/ To jump off in the midst of the sea, and rise again and nod to me and shout, and /laughingly dash with your hair.

Introduction

In putting together this selection of essays, I was reminded of what Albert Camus once wrote:

“A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.”

While I do not claim that all these essays are art, they are my efforts to say in the most eloquent way I can what really has mattered to me in recent years, not just politically but personally, since they are entwined. Upon reflection, I see that what matters to me now is what mattered to me when I was young. Although the issues have changed in certain ways as they must, I have not—unless, or because, my wanderings through life with all its changes have paradoxically meant, in Nietzsche’s words, that I have been becoming who I am.

This seems true to me, and the essaying of the words that follow are part of that becoming. Ortega y Gassett once said that “whether he be an original or a plagiarist, man is the novelist of himself.” I agree. While a book of essays is not a  novel, if read in its entirety, it does tell a story that reveals the times and the man who tells them; it expresses two stories simultaneously. And each story, if told well, always has a double dimension, the old and the new. Every life and every event is disclosed in an historical context, now and then and all the time in between.

While hoping I am an original, I know that I have learned and borrowed from many others. My greater hope is that what I say here is said in a way no other could, that it bears my original stamp. That it is novel. For I am convinced that we  cannot grasp the unique nature of our current era simply by repeating straightforward political analyses. That approach is necessary but not enough. For  it leaves out the hidden heart of a world that seems to be spinning madly toward some kind of denouement. It omits all the little thoughts, secrets, fears, and desires of so many people who wish to speak but can’t find the words to express their thoughts.

From a young age, I have been obsessed with truth, death, and freedom. As I recall, those words have been synonymous for God for many thinkers. So I suppose you could say that I have always been intoxicated with God or for God, or maybe God has been intoxicated with me. I don’t know, nor do I care to: knowledge overrated. I know what I feel. My concerns have been those of many writers throughout the ages—poets, rebels, journalists, philosophers, passionate writers of every stripe, desperados for truth and a peaceful world of love and kindness. Those I have admired the most, believers or unbelievers—it is often hard to tell the difference, nor does it matter—were those who  dismissed categories, distinctions, or labels, but who wrote freely because for them to write freely was to live freely and not to be caged by anyone’s restrictions as to what they should be saying or how they were saying it. For them truth was their God, and through the weaving of words down a page they were always seeking to disclose what was hidden from common sight. They used language to open up cracks in the consensus reality that the great poet and writer Kenneth Rexroth called the “social lie”:

“Since all society is organized in the interest of exploiting  classes and since if men knew this they would cease to work and society would fall apart, it has always been necessary, at least since the urban revolutions, for societies to be governed ideologically by a system of fraud.”

Indeed, we live in the era of massive fraud where the trans-national wealthy elites, led by the American war and propaganda machine, continue to try to convince the gullible that they are saviors of humanity even as they lie and cheat and murder by the millions.

So what follows are my efforts to unearth the fraud, while celebrating the beauty of life and telling little stories here and there that I hope exemplify its comedy and tragedy. I am always experimenting every time I sit down to write. Not consciously, since I let inspiration guide me. Often, as I think is evident in many pieces, thoughts come to me when walking, and from those initial thoughts comes the path I follow, not knowing exactly where I am headed. Some of these  essays are highly intellectual and structured; some, straightforwardly political; others are meanderings that seek to express essential truths I sense in the telling.

The process feels physical to me. It has a feel and smell. A rhythm. Like a song. Like a dawdling walk in the woods or by a flowing river. If I call them all essays, it is to indicate that they are my attempts, my experiments, my experience (Latin:  exigere: trial, attempt, try) to disclose to myself and anyone who might read them what is going on in the world that I find important and worth investigating. To use my artistic and sociological imagination to connect the dots between the personal and the social and in so doing to say something worth sharing with others.

Whatever my ostensible starting point—a major event, a book, an experience—you can usually be sure that by the time you have read to the end of the piece, I will have branched off down by-ways that lead to other trails that eventually reconnect to the main path. Or so I hope. While I usually see how the roads all lead back to one, sometimes I only intuit it and the reader is left to do the reconnoitering alone. I think this is good. For while these essays are set in ink within the covers of a book, verbal tenses and ink can be misleading. They suggest  that the author’s quest is over, that what motivated the initial words is past, that   the case is closed and the reader and writer are dead-heads satisfied with their knowingness. For me, that is far from true. The paradox of having written these  essays is that I have tried to do so in language that evokes in the reader the  exhilaration I felt in writing them, and that such aliveness will be carried into the  world as rebellion against war and injustice.

I have arranged the essays in no particular order, except to begin and end with a few that tell you something about me. I think it is always good to have some deeper sense of who the author is whose words you are reading, beyond the brief notices on the back of books.

These essays cover a wide variety of topics: propaganda, wars,  government assassinations, work, nature, time, the CIA, silence, poetry, digital dementia, etc. They range far and wide, as I try to connect the scattered dots to draw a coherent picture of our world today. Since I write with no particular goal in mind except truth as I see it, perhaps readers would be best served by randomly choosing a piece and seeing where it might lead them. As with living, I suspect that reading is best done somewhat randomly in the hope that one experiences a sense of liberation in the process. I have scattered some satirical pieces throughout to add a bit of levity to serious matters and hope the reader will not mistake their “authors” for the real me. But if so, that would add to the humor, something we need to survive.

Three authors whom I hold in high esteem and whose names I mention numerous times in this book are John Berger, Albert Camus, and James W. Douglass.

Berger is often described as a Marxist art critic, but such an appellation is misleading, for he was much more than that. While always situating his analyses in historical and cultural contexts, and never forgetting the class structure that  underlies the cruel capitalistic order, he was acutely aware that consumerism and therefore global capitalism as well as philosophical materialism rested upon a  “materialist fantasy” that denied the spiritual power of evil and the spiritual power of good to respond. As a counter-weight, Berger always made sure to cling close to human reality and include what he called “enclaves of the beyond” in his writing. These were often the marginalized hiding places of hope where the spiritual faith in human love and solidarity was nourished and sustained despite the world’s evil.

Albert Camus was very similar in many ways. An avowed atheist with a spiritual core, he was an artistic anarchist with a passionate spiritual hunger and an austere and moral Don Juan. He could not be pigeonholed. This drove many crazy. His allegiance was to truth, not ideologies. He tried to fight injustice while extolling life’s beauty and the human search for happiness. He grasped the essence of the ever-recurring plague that evil doers inflict upon the world. He was preoccupied with death, freedom, and an absent God, but never gave up hope and insisted that rebellion was the only honorable course. Yet the fight against the plague must go on; that was Camus’ message. If not, you will be destroyed by your own complicity in evil.

James W. Douglass, although a writer of a more overt spiritual sensibility, continues to write brilliantly about “the unspeakable” that has been used to cover-up the U.S. government’s assassinations of its greatest anti-war leaders: JFK, Malcom X, MLK, and RFK. The unspeakable is a term coined by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton in the mid-1960s. He meant it to point to a systemic evil that permeates American society that defies speech: “It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss. It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his obedience . . . .” It is, in other words, the plague that is us when we live in the nest of the unspeakable as obedient servants of the American Empire. Douglass makes the plague manifest in order to give us hope, and in speaking the unspeakable, he shows us both the radical evil and the redemptive courage that we are all capable of.

I mention these three brilliant writers here to say how grateful I am for their work. There are many others, of course, whom you will encounter in the course of reading these essays. For even when we write alone, even when we think we walk alone, we are always following in others’ footsteps.

As Camus says in one of his short stories, it is hard to distinguish between solitary and solidary.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Edward Curtin, Behind the Curtain.

Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He is the author of the new book: https://www.claritypress.com/product/seeking-truth-in-a-country-of-lies/

Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies

Author: Edward Curtin

ISBN: 9781949762266

Published: 2020

Options: EBOOK – Epub and Kindle, paper, PDF

Click here to order.

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This article was published more than 13 years ago.

Is it relevant to the ongoing political crisis in the US in the wake of 2020 Presidential Elections.

Read carefully.

The President of the US namely Donald Trump could invoke the John Warner NDAA 07 and thereby call  upon the unrestricted and arbitrary “Use” of the military in police and law enforcement functions, while bypassing the US Congress and the Judiciary.   

This is not the only piece of relevant legislaiton which repeals the Posse Comitatus Act.

Another important piece of legislation (National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) HR 1540) was adopted under the Obama administration:

HR 1540 (signed into law by president Obama on December 31, 2011) set the stage for the repeal of constitutional government,  not to mention the development of the “Surveillance State”, which has recently been the object of heated debate.

The adoption of  the “National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), HR 1540) reinforces NDAA 07. It is tantamount to the militarization of law enforcement, the repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act. 

Michel Chossudovsky, November 18, 2020

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In October 2006, Bush signed into law the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007, (also known under the title Department of Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007) [The John Warner NDAA 07 was adopted on 17 October 2006]

NDAA 07  includes specific provisions which allow the military to take control of  normal police and law enforcement functions at the Federal and State levels.

Sec. 1076 of the NDAA 07 overturns the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prevents the military from intervening in the conduct of civilian government activities, including the conduct of Justice and Law Enforcement. Posse Comitatus has been central to the functioning of constitutional government. (It should be noted that other previous pieces of legislation have already invalidated the substance of Posse Comitatus).

What is significant in these specific provisions of NDAA 07 (Sec. 1076) is that  they dovetail the provisions of Bush’s National Security Presidential and Homeland Directive (NSPD 51, HSPD 20) enacted on May 9, 2007.

NSPD 51 would essentially scrap Constitutional government in the case of a so-called  “Catastrophic Emergency”. .

If an emergency situation were to be called by the President, NSPD 51 would instate martial law under the authority of the White House and the Department of Homeland Security. It would suspend constitutional government under the provisions of Continuity in Government (COG). It would establish extraordinary powers for the president and vice-president.

The provisions of NSPD 51 are consistent with an existing body of legislation and regulations pertaining to alleged terrorist attacks on the Homeland and the declaration of martial law. Sec. 1076 of NDAA 07 (DDAA 07), however, goes much further in defining the role of the Military in the case of a “Catastrophic Emergency.”

Sec 1076 essentially defines the discretionary powers which would be conferred to the president and the vice president if  NSPD 51 were to be applied.

Sec. 1076 of the NDAA 07, which was apparently slipped in at the last minute at the request of the White House as an amendment of Sec. 333, pertains to the  “Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies.”

Sec 1076 is extremely explicit; it virtually creates a Pinochet style environment for the mass arrest of political dissidents without trial, the storming of public rallies, etc.

It provides specific details regarding the powers conferred to the President and Vice President in the case of a “Catastrophic Emergency” as envisaged under NSPD 51:

The president “may employ the armed forces … to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States” 

Unrestricted powers are granted to the White House. The President [Trump] would have the authority to suspend  civilian law enforcement at the federal and state levels and call in the Military, which would be in charge of  suppressing “domestic violence” “insurrection”( e.g. public rallies), or “conspiracy”, meaning anybody who might express dissent, indignation or opposition to the Bush Administration for having scrapped the Constitution.

The emphasis of Sec. 1076 is in relation to actions directed against “domestic enemies” rather than bona fide “defense” in relation to attacks by foreign forces, which is part of the Military’s mandate.

Taken together, NSPD 51 and Sec 1076 of the NDAA 07 define the contours of a “democratic dictatorship” in America  under the authority of the White House.

We are not dealing, however, with “Military Rule” or “Military Government” as normally understood, because the authority to govern under the provisions of NSPD 51 is vested in the President and the Vice President.

What is at stake  is the unrestricted and arbitrary “Use” of the Military by the President /Vice President in the conduct of police and law enforcement functions, while bypassing the US Congress and the Judiciary.

Below is the full text of Sec 1076 of NDAA 07 which amends Sec 333. 

[Please note a correction was brought to this article on June 28, 2007. What was initially reproduced in Annex was Sec.1042 of the initial bill DDAA 07 which amends Sec. 333. In substance Sec 1076 of NDAA 07 with some minor changes in emphasis is similar to Sec 1042 of DDAA 07. Both amend Sec 333.

Below is the relevant excerpt (Sec 1076) of the John Warner NDAA 07 signed into law by President Bush in October 2006. ]  

SEC. 1076. USE OF THE ARMED FORCES IN MAJOR PUBLIC EMERGENCIES.

(a) Use of the Armed Forces Authorized-

(1) IN GENERAL- Section 333 of title 10, United States Code, is amended to read as follows:

`Sec. 333. Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law

`(a) Use of Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies- (1) The President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to–

`(A) restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that–

`(i) domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order; and

`(ii) such violence results in a condition described in paragraph (2); or

`(B) suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy if such insurrection, violation, combination, or conspiracy results in a condition described in paragraph (2).

`(2) A condition described in this paragraph is a condition that–

`(A) so hinders the execution of the laws of a State or possession, as applicable, and of the United States within that State or possession, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State or possession are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or

`(B) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.

`(3) In any situation covered by paragraph (1)(B), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.

`(b) Notice to Congress- The President shall notify Congress of the determination to exercise the authority in subsection (a)(1)(A) as soon as practicable after the determination and every 14 days thereafter during the duration of the exercise of that authority.’.

(2) PROCLAMATION TO DISPERSE- Section 334 of such title is amended by inserting `or those obstructing the enforcement of the laws’ after `insurgents’.

(3) HEADING AMENDMENT- The heading of chapter 15 of such title is amended to read as follows:…

The Imperative to Achieve National Improved Medicare for All

By Margaret Flowers, November 17 2020

Health care will be a major issue early in the new Biden/Harris administration. Unemployment is still high with over a million people applying for unemployment benefits last week and 42.6% of working age people without a job.

Video: Are We Being Told the Truth About COVID-19?

By Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, November 17 2020

According to Prof. Bhakdi, “this virus is no more deadly than a seasonal flu and for people under 70, it is even less deadly than the seasonal flu. If you are under 70, your chances of dying with this virus are less than 0.1 percent. In fact, there are about 0.05 percent.”

Don’t Call the Cops. Especially if Your Loved Ones Are Old, Disabled or Have Special Needs

By John W. Whitehead, November 17 2020

Walter Wallace Jr.—a troubled 27-year-old black man with a criminal history and mental health issues—was no saint. Still, he didn’t deserve to die in a hail of bullets fired by two police officers who clearly had not been adequately trained in how to de-escalate encounters with special needs individuals.

Will Biden Seek to De-escalate Tensions with China and Russia?

By Shane Quinn, November 17 2020

A crucial advantage that China enjoys over its Western rivals, principally the United States, is the country’s rebuffing of neoliberalism. Under its present leadership, Beijing’s influence over corporations and private power has increased substantially.

Jammu and Kashmir: Implications for Regional and Global Peace

By Robert Fantina, November 17 2020

By looking at what the Israeli model, that Chakravorty is so anxious to implement in Kashmir, has meant for the Palestinians and for peace in the Middle East, we can draw some conclusions on what the result may mean for Kashmir and peace there and in neighboring countries.

Hollywood’s ‘Songbird’: “Puts the Scare” in People during a “Pandemic”

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, November 17 2020

Hollywood knows how to put the scare in people. Songbird, a new film produced by Michael Bay and directed by Adam Mason exploits the Covid-19 pandemic which complements the mainstream-media’s (MSM) fear campaign among its audience.

Oxford University’s Ties to Nuclear Weapons Industry Revealed

By Ben Jacob, November 17 2020

Freedom of Information requests have revealed that Oxford University accepted at least £726,706 from the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), the designer and producer of the UK’s nuclear warheads, during the years 2017-19 alone.

Video: German Lawyer Sues the World Over Coronavirus

By Reiner Fuellmich and Patrick Bet-David, November 17 2020

Patrick Bet-David has a virtual sit down with consumer protection trial lawyer Reiner Fuellmich to talk about the Coronavirus and his work on the German Corona investigation committee.

Former Pfizer Vice-President Dr. Michael Yeadon Questions Company’s Vaccine ‘Breakthrough’ Spin

By John O’Sullivan, November 17 2020

Yesterday Pfizer announced to much media fanfare that it has a breakthrough in the search for a reliable COVID-19 vaccine claiming studies showed it can prevent 90% of people contracting the virus. But respected former vice-president of Pfizer, Dr. Michael Yeadon, raises serious concerns.

Trump Administration Rushes to Auction Off Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Drilling Rights Before Biden Inauguration

By Brett Wilkins, November 17 2020

In what critics are calling a parting gift to the fossil fuel industry, the Trump administration on Tuesday will ask oil and gas companies to choose which areas of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska—which is the sacred homeland of the Gwich’in Indigenous people—they would like to drill.

Foto : il missile sm-6 della  raytheon da cui la lockheed martin derivera’ il missile balistico nucleare a medio raggio da installare in europa

Oltre cinque anni fa titolammo sul Manifesto (9 giugno 2015) «Ritornano i missili a Comiso?». Tale ipotesi fu ignorata dall’intero arco politico e liquidata da qualche sedicente esperto come «allarmistica». L’allarme, purtroppo, era fondato.

Pochi giorni fa, il 6 novembre, la Lockheed Martin (la stessa che produce gli F-35) ha firmato un primo contratto da 340 milioni di dollari con lo US Army per la produzione di missili a medio raggio, anche a testata nucleare, progettati per essere installati in Europa.

I missili di tale categoria (con base a terra e gittata tra 500 e 5500 km) erano stati proibiti dal Trattato Inf, firmato nel 1987 dai presidenti Gorbaciov e Reagan: esso aveva eliminato i missili balistici nucleari Pershing 2, schierati dagli Stati uniti in Germania Occidentale, e quelli nucleari da crociera Tomahawk, schierati dagli Stati uniti in Italia (a Comiso), Gran Bretagna, Germania Occidentale, Belgio e Olanda, e allo stesso tempo i missili balistici SS-20 schierati dall’Unione Sovietica sul proprio territorio.

Nel 2014, l’amministrazione Obama accusava la Russia, senza alcuna prova, di aver sperimentato un missile da crociera (sigla 9M729) della categoria proibita dal Trattato e, nel 2015, annunciava che «di fronte alla violazione del Trattato Inf da parte della Russia, gli Stati uniti stanno considerando lo spiegamento in Europa di missili con base a terra».

Il testimone è quindi passato all’amministrazione Trump, che nel 2019 ha deciso il ritiro degli Stati uniti dal Trattato Inf, accusando la Russia di averlo «deliberatamente violato».

Dopo alcuni test missilistici, è stata incaricata la Lockheed Martin di realizzare un missile da crociera derivato dal Tomahawk e uno balistico derivato dallo SM-6 della Raytheon. Secondo il contratto, i due missili saranno operativi nel 2023: quindi pronti tra due anni ad essere installati in Europa.

Va tenuto presente il fattore geografico: mentre un missile balistico nucleare Usa a medio raggio, lanciato dall’Europa, può colpire Mosca dopo pochi minuti, un analogo missile lanciato dalla Russia può colpire le capitali europee, ma non Washington. Rovesciando lo scenario, è come se la Russia schierasse missili nucleari a medio raggio in Messico.

Va inoltre tenuto presente che lo SM-6, specifica la Raytheon, svolge la funzione di «tre missili in uno»: antiaerea, anti-missile e di attacco. Il missile nucleare derivato dallo SM-6 potrà quindi essere usato dalle navi e installazioni terrestri dello «scudo» Usa in Europa i cui tubi di lancio, specifica la Lockheed Martin, possono lanciare «missili per tutte le missioni».

In una dichiarazione del 26 ottobre 2020, il presidente Putin riafferma la validità del Trattato Inf, definendo un «grave errore«» il ritiro statunitense, e l’impegno della Russia a non schierare missili analoghi finché gli Usa non schiereranno i loro a ridosso del suo territorio. Propone quindi ai paesi Nato una «reciproca moratoria» e «reciproche misure di verifica», ossia ispezioni nelle reciproche installazioni missilistiche.

La proposta russa è stata ignorata dalla Nato. Il suo segretario generale Jens Stoltenberg ha ribadito, il 10 novembre, che «in un mondo così incerto, le armi nucleari continuano a svolgere un ruolo vitale nella preservazione della pace».

Nessuna voce si è levata dai governi e parlamenti europei, pur rischiando l’Europa di trovarsi in prima linea in un confronto nucleare analogo o più pericoloso di quello della guerra fredda. Ma questa non à la minaccia del Covid e quindi non se ne parla.

L’Unione Europea, di cui 21 dei 27 membri fanno parte della Nato, ha già fatto sentire la sua voce quando, nel 2018, ha bocciato alle Nazioni Unite la risoluzione presentata dalla Russia sulla «Preservazione e osservanza del Trattato Inf», dando luce verde alla installazione di nuovi missili nucleari Usa in Europa.

Cambierà qualcosa una volta che Joe Biden si sarà insediato alla Casa Bianca? Oppure, dopo che il democratico Obama ha aperto il nuovo confronto nucleare con la Russia e il repubblicano Trump lo ha aggravato stracciando il Trattato Inf, il democratico Biden (già vice di Obama) firmerà l’installazione dei nuovi missili nucleari Usa in Europa?

Manlio Dinucci

Introduction

A dangerous, life-threatening sequence of events has unfolded since The Lancet’s fraudulent[i] hydroxychlorquine (HCQ) article appeared May 22, followed by headlines demonizing this ancient anti-malarial drug – aka quinine, aka chloroquine, and known to antiquity as the “sacred bark”.[ii]

The false news that 96,032 hospitalized patients on six continents were at risk for lethal heart rhythms sent shock waves throughout the world. Immediately, many randomized control trials (RCT’s) at the World Health Organization and elsewhere were suspended until the Lancet article was finally retracted two weeks later, June 5.

But the damage was done. The WHO had ordered countries to stop using it, and European Union countries had banned its use (outside clinical trials) for Covid-19 treatment.  Clinical trials themselves, such as the NAID trial announced by the US National Institutes of Health on May 14,[iii] were cancelled.  A hostile press frightened people from re-entering clinical trials that might have cleared it for use.

Worst of all, newly symptomatic people who had formerly benefitted from early outpatient treatment were now progressing to Phase 2 of the disease, during which the dangerous immune system “cytokine” storm[iv] often leads to hospitalization and death.

On May 27, less than a week into this disaster, a top world epidemiology journal, the American Journal of Epidemiology, issued an urgent call from award-winning Yale Professor, Harvey Risch: “Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk Covid-19 Patients that Should be Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis.”

The abstract reads:

“Hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin has been widely misrepresented in both clinical reports and public media, and outpatient trials results are not expected until September. Early outpatient illness is very different than later hospitalized florid disease and the treatments differ. Evidence about use of hydroxychloroquine alone, or of hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin in inpatients, is irrelevant concerning efficacy of the pair in early high-risk outpatient disease. Five studies, including two controlled clinical trials, have demonstrated significant major outpatient treatment efficacy…These medications need to be widely available and promoted immediately for physicians to prescribe.”(author’s bolding)[v]

A Google News search reveals the astonishing truth that the corporate media, with the exception of Fox News,[vi] did not report this article.

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?

As one analyst reported,

“The possibility of a cheap and easy treatment for Covid from re-purposed generic drugs, especially hydroxychloroquine, is a mortal threat to these financial interests.[vii] As France Soir put it: the trial management must ‘never put low-cost hydroxychloroquine therapy in direct competition with remdesivir’. Or with mass vaccination.”[viii]

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.[ix]

When did the hydroxychloroquine “controversy” first appear? 

Santa Monica cariologist Dr. Dan Wohlgelernter reported on June 18 that “there was never controversy about hydroxychloroquine right up until March 20, 2020.”[x]

He was referring to Donald Trump’s tweet of March 21:

“HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains – Thank You! Hopefully they will BOTH (H works better with A, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents)…..”[xi]

Dr. Wohlgelernter continues:

“We had data from China and from France well before that in February showing a significant beneficial impact of hydroxychloroquine – yet you saw physicians, politicians, journalists, saying that hydroxychloroquine is all hype and it’s all due to the president pushing it. That’s revisionist history.

The fact is there was a great deal of excitement in the medical community internationally a month before President Trump ever mentioned it, because of the data reported from China and from Dr. Raoult in France and it said that people used whatever political animosity they had towards the President to attack the medication that in fact had helped many people with coronavirus and could have helped many more had it and its reputation not been so sullied by political accusations and by poorly designed studies and by medical journals allowing publications that were negative as far as their conclusions – publications that never should have reached print because they hadn’t been adequately vetted.[xii]

What has been the role of Dr. Raoult in France?

Dr. Didier Raoult (image on the right) was born in Senegal in 1952.  His parents, a nurse and a French military doctor, moved the family to Marseille in 1961, where Raoult later became a physician and microbiologist, holding both M.D. and PhD degrees. He is married to psychiatrist and novelist Natacha Caïn, and they have three children together.

Raoult is the director ofthe Infectious and Tropical Emergent Diseases Research Unit (URMITE) in Marseille (Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire (IHU) Méditerranée Infection), with 200 staff.  He also teaches infectious diseases in the Faculty of Medicine of Aix-Marseille University.

He has received numerous honours and awards, including Officer of the Legion d’honneur, Price Excellence in Clinical Medicine, Netherlands; J.D. Williams Award, United Kingdom; and Award of Excellence from the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.[xiii]

With more than 2,300 indexed publications to his name, he is the most cited microbiologist in France, and is cited seventh in the world. He has 625,000 followers on Twitter.

Raoult is also active in Africa, returning every year to laboratories he set up in Dakar, and conducting tropical disease research all over Senegal.[xiv]

On June 25, Professor Raoult and his COVID-19 Task Force published their much-anticipated research on 3,737 COVID-19 patients, in the journal Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease.[xv]

(The team, knowing their treatment was effective, had decided not to conduct randomized controlled studies, which would have meant denying treatment to large numbers of placebo patients, letting their disease evolve untreated, and sending many to their deaths. The team’s approach reflects the “Ethical Principles for Medical Research” from the Declaration of Helsinki.[xvi])

The long-awaited article reported an overall 1.1% case fatality rate for the patients included in its study. More specifically:

“Our approach of early diagnosis and care of as many patients as possible results in much lower mortality rates than other strategies. The test-and-treat strategy adopted in Marseille also seems capable of shortening the duration of the outbreak when compared to data from France overall by identifying infected people and reducing their viral shedding duration. In fact, more people were tested in Marseille than in most other areas, and the outbreak lasted only 9 weeks…

Conclusion: 

“Results suggest that early diagnosis, early isolation and early treatment of COVID-19 patients, with at least 3 days of HCQ-AZ lead to a significantly better clinical outcome and a faster viral load reduction than other treatments.”

On the day of Raoult’s publication, the Dr. Been Medical Lectures on YouTube, with 176,000 subscribers, explained the study in graphics, but could not find media coverage.[xvii]

On the days following its publication, Google News showed no English-speaking media coverage appearing under Raoult’s name, or under the first words of the title, “Outcomes of 3,737 COVID-19 patients”.

On June 24, the day before the article’s publication, Raoult had testified at the French National Assembly, saying that the article had been refused by The Lancet the very same week that the journal accepted the fraudulent and now retracted anti-HCQ article by Mehra et al.[xviii]

The hydroxychloroquine “controversy” thus shows clear signs of having been manufactured and orchestrated by the immensely wealthy drug industry through its power over the “captured media,”[xix] government agencies,[xx] and reluctant journal editors.[xxi]

How the media’s “randomized control” strategy is fueling the controversy 

The day before the Lancet’s hydroxychloroquine embarrassment[xxii] was published May 22, the New York Times had updated its feature May 12 hit piece on Dr. Raoult Didier – having sent a reporter to France to round up Raoult’s critics and to report, in an epic 7,500 words, on “the man behind Trump’s favorite unproven treatments.”

The article dwelled at length on Raoult’s unorthodox methods and forthright personality, using an ad hominem approach rather than actual evidence against the microbiologist’s position.[xxiii]

The NYT provides a high-level example of the media trivializing hydroxychloroquine on the basis that it has not been proven in randomized control trials (RCTs) – which take months, if not years, to perform.

Meanwhile, the global pandemic is killing hundreds of thousands of people.

There is no vaccine for the common cold, which is caused by strains of the coronavirus and the rhinovirus. If a safe, effective Covid-19 vaccine can even be developed, at least a year will be needed to produce enough for worldwide use.

Four hundred years before randomized control trials existed, quinine, made from the “sacred bark” of the South American quina-quina tree, was used to treat malaria. Pharmacologically, it has been synthesized as chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). This cheap abundant drug has been on the WHO list of essential medicines since the list began in 1977.

Thousands of doctors are reporting that in the early phase of COVID-19, patients given a low dose of this drug in combination with azithromycin and zinc, get better.[xxiv]

However, this ancient gift to humankind was immediately outlawed for Covid-19 use in many countries following the fraudulent May 22nd Lancet study. Treatment is still denied to untold numbers of people, many of whom will have certainly died.

Additionally, HCQ’s bad press from the drug industry’s scare media has driven people away from enrolling in HCQ prophylaxis trials.

Instead, the media is giving good press to randomized control trials.  It is true that in many settings RCT’s are considered to be the gold standard. But what is their value in the midst of a crisis such as Covid-19, when susceptible people require early prevention within days?

Hydroxychloroquine proponents do not claim that HCQ works on seriously ill Covid-19 patients in the hospital setting.  Instead they understand the reality that HCQ+azithromycin succeeds only during Phase 1,[xxv] when people first show symptoms.

But others have been designing studies (including the disgraced Lancet and NEJM studies, and the abandoned NIH study) that examine HCQ in precisely the opposite context to its reported efficacy in Phase 1. And not in combination with zinc and azithromycin, but by itself.

This strategy is known as the “straw-man fallacy” – where you attribute a false position to your opponent, then easily knock it down.

These studies are systematically setting hydroxychloroquine up to fail. As stated by Dr. Wohlgelernter below, it is sabotage, pure and simple.

With the help of a colluding media, confusion now reigns supreme while the world awaits a profitable vaccine from the drug industry.

We will turn now to frontline doctors who have been protesting the suspension of this inexpensive, plentiful, generic drug that they have used successfully – while in some countries their patients are now dying without it.

Frontline doctors testify that HCQ works – and protest its sabotage

An April 2020 survey of 6200 doctors in 30 countries showed that globally, half of the doctors polled said they had used hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19.[xxvi]

On April 6, wider access to the drug was urged in a petition signed by nearly 500,000 French doctors and citizens.[xxvii]

On April 7, U.S. physician Jeffrey A. Singer wrote about prescribing HCQ in an independent (non-corporate-media) magazine:

“The FDA lets doctors prescribe off-label drugs all the time. Now that there’s a pandemic, some governors have decided doctors can’t make those decisions for themselves.

Doctors should not be prohibited from using their best clinical judgment and recommending it to patients—especially considering the fact that these drugs have been around for a long time, which means we are familiar with their risks and complications. The government should stay out of this and let clinicians practice medicine, provided they get their patients’ informed consent.”[xxviii]

On May 5, it was reported in France:

As France scrambles to prepare to lift its 2-month lockdown from 11 May, a group of doctors has published a new study they say proves the efficacy of the controversial malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, combined with the antibiotic azithromycin, in treating Covid-19.

The trial carried out on nearly 100 infected doctors and their families found that an HCQ and azithromycin combination at the first sign of symptoms, substantially reduced the viral load of Covid-19.[xxix]

On May 28, in consternation over the false Lancet article, an open letter from 200 scientists to the authors and The Lancet requested details of the data and an independent audit. The letter was “signed by clinicians, medical researchers, statisticians, and ethicists from across the world.”[xxx]

On June 1, Professor Harvey Risch, at the Yale Schools of Medicine and Public Health, was interviewed about HCQ:

The combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin has been used for decades in hundreds of thousands of people with rheumatoid arthritis. There is a concern that these medications do change the heart pacing a little and could cause cardiac arrhythmias. However, these arrhythmias are still very rare in people using these medications.[xxxi]

Santa Monica cardiologist Dr. Dan Wohlgelernter said in a June 18 interview:

“I’ve prescribed it…recommended it to people…had conversations with physicians literally around the globe in Israel and Italy and England and the east coast of the United States, and I’ve read the literature extensively. Hydroxychloroquine definitely has a role; that role is specific.  It’s an antiviral agent that is effective in early stages of infection; when used in that context it is effective and it is safe.  Unfortunately, there have been studies that have looked at hydroxychloroquine in the wrong context; looked at it in severely critically ill people in the hospital setting.  At that point the antiviral isn’t effective because you’ve gone beyond viral infection to an immune mediated widespread inflammatory reaction, so that was the wrong population to look at hydroxychloroquine.

That kind of study, that sabotage, is the whole story about hydroxychloroquine…it was obvious that hydroxychloroquine would fail in that context. Hydroxychloroquine has been reported to have heart toxicity and as a cardiologist I’m intimately aware of this literature and I’m familiar with hydroxychloroquine.

The study that was most specific in looking at the cardiac issues specifically with rhythm abnormalities was done in the East Coast in the New York area where they looked at 200 patients and carefully monitored their EKGs and looked for arrhythmias and they found no serious arrhythmias in any of those patients.

This is an FDA approved drug for 65 years; it’s generic, cheap, widely available. We give it to pregnant women, to breastfeeding women, to elderly patients, to patients who are immune-compromised…”[xxxii]

On a June 12 radio talk show in St. Louis, Missouri, Doctor Steve Crawford, Medical Director at Festus Manor, reported a 100% survival rate with early administration of hydroxychloroquine.[xxxiii]

On June 25 in India, where the media is not under western corporate control, the New Indian Express reported that Mandya district, which had a record number of Covid-19 cases, “has been recording an impressive turnaround despite continuing arrivals from hot spot states. Health officials claim that one of the reasons is because they are giving hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to all those quarantined…They also quoted the government guidelines which permit prophylactic usage of HCQ (prevention).” Furthermore, “health workers and police personnel are given seven-week doses of HCQ as a preventive measure.”[xxxiv]

On June 19, the Economic Times in Jaipur, India reported:

“More than 4,300 healthcare workers including doctors and nurses have been given HCQ to help them prevent the infection as there are high chances of them getting infected while treating Covid patients.”[xxxv]

The right-wing medical group, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) asked, in a June 17 press release:

“How can we trust the established authorities or prestigious journals when, in this perilous time, trials of an available, inexpensive, long-established drug appear to be designed to fail, while risking the lives of their subjects through deliberate or negligent drug overdoses?”[xxxvi]

The US media did not pick this up.

Nor did it pick up a second AAPS Press Release, June 22, which should have been more than newsworthy:

TUCSON, Ariz., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Today the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons files its motion for a preliminary injunction to compel release to the public of hydroxychloroquine by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), in AAPS v. HHS, No. 1:20-cv-00493-RJJ-SJB (W.D. Mich.). Nearly 100 million doses of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) were donated to these agencies, and yet they have not released virtually any of it to the public…

“Why does the government continue to withhold more than 60 million doses of HCQ from the public?” asks Jane Orient, M.D., the Executive Director of AAPS. “This potentially life-saving medication is wasting away in government warehouses while Americans are dying from COVID-19.”[xxxvii]

Conclusion

When a pandemic is raging across the entire planet, with people social distancing and national economies in turmoil, what is the most urgent approach to drug therapy?

To do nothing while randomized control trials await results months or years later?

Or to follow recommendations that have emerged from infectious disease specialists after treating thousands of cases using a consistent protocol?

The media shapes society’s common reality. This over-arching power carries a pervasive and commensurate responsibility.

The drastic failure to report honestly on HCQ goes far beyond incompetence:  it is abetting the unspeakable forces who do not want people to be reliably cured during this pandemic until they can realize pandemic-level profits.

*

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Notes

[i] Evidence of the origin of this fraudulence is given in: Elizabeth Woodworth, “Leaked: ‘Deadly’ HCQ:  How the world’s top medical journals, The Lancet and NEJM, were cynically exploited by Big Pharma,” Global Research, 14 June 2020 (https://www.globalresearch.ca/leaked-deadly-hcq-world-top-medical-journals-lancet-nejm-exploited-big-pharma/5715859).

[ii] The anti-malarial natural substance quinine, taken from the bark of the South American quina-quina tree, is now sold as chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine. Jane Achan, et al., “Quinine, an old anti-malarial drug in a modern world: role in the treatment of malaria,” Malaria Journal,  24 May 2011 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3121651/).

[iii] “NIH begins clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin to treat COVID-19,”NIH News Release, 14 May 2020 (https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-begins-clinical-trial-hydroxychloroquine-azithromycin-treat-covid-19). This trial has not been re-instated.

[iv] Amber Dance, “What is a cytokine storm?” Knowledge Magazine, 10 April 2020 (https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/health-disease/2020/what-cytokine-storm).

[v] Harvey A. Risch, “Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk Covid-19 Patients that Should be Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis,” Amer. J. Epid, 27 May 2020 (https://academic.oup.com/aje/advance-article/doi/10.1093/aje/kwaa093/5847586). Risch is Professor at the Yale Schools of both Medicine and Public Health.

[vi] “Yale paper finds strong evidence for efficacy of use of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as COVID treatment,” Fox News, “The Ingraham Angle,” 29 May 2020 (https://video.foxnews.com/v/6160199007001#sp=show-clips).

[vii] The financial interests referred to were Gilead, Big Data, and Astra-Zeneca, which is “in merger talks with Gilead in a plan to create the world’s largest pharmaceutical company”.

[viii] Edmund Fordham, “RECOVERY: The plot sickens,” The Conservative Woman, June 19, 2020 (https://conservativewoman.co.uk/recovery-the-plot-sickens/).

[ix] Laurent Mucchielli, “Behind the French controversy over the medical treatment of Covid-19: The role of the drug industry,” Journal of Sociology, 17 June 2020 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1440783320936740).

[x] “SECOND OPINION: Doctors Discuss the Politicization of Hydroxychloroquine,” June 18, 2020, at 3:42 min. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=m_JIz780i5w&feature=emb_logo).

[xi] Twitter:  https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1241367239900778501

[xii] SECOND OPINION, at 10:21 min. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=m_JIz780i5w&feature=emb_logo).

[xiii] Elsevier, “Meet the Editor-in-Chief,” Human Microbiome Journal, 2020 (https://www.journals.elsevier.com/human-microbiome-journal/news/meet-editor-in-chie).

[xiv] Marième Soumaré, “Coronavirus: Didier Raoult the African and chloroquine, from Dakar to Brazzaville,” The Africa Report, 15 April 2020 (https://www.theafricareport.com/26264/coronavirus-didier-raoult-the-african-and-chloroquine-from-dakar-to-brazzaville/).

[xv] Jean-Christophe Lagier, et al, “Outcomes of 3,737 COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin and other regimens in Marseille, France: A retrospective analysis,” Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease, 25 June 2020 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477893920302817). This investigation by the 19 members of the IHU COVID-19 Task force was conceptualized by Raoult. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

[xvi] Declaration of Helsinki Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects

HELSINKI WORLD MEDICAL ASSOCIATION STATEMENT – Section No. 32:

“32. In the treatment of a patient, where proven prophylactic, diagnostic and therapeutic methods do not exist or have been ineffective, the physician, with informed consent from the patient, must be free to use unproven or new prophylactic, diagnostic and therapeutic measures, if in the physician’s judgement it offers hope of saving life, reestablishing health or alleviating suffering. Where possible, these measures should be made the object of research, designed to evaluate their safety and efficacy. In all cases, new information should be recorded and, where appropriate, published. The other relevant guidelines of this Declaration should be followed.”  (https://www.who.int/bulletin/archives/79(4)373.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0dyzXSt12H0fvt6xL7Zk-29FPprs7i0EDCPKWk5Ux1UiES17J2Nr0-YjY).

[xvii] “Hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin Two Studies,” DrBeen Medical Lectures, 25 June 2020 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgQqT2xbXlo).

[xviii] The Lancet, “RETRACTED: Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis, by Mandeep R. Mehra et al,” Lancet,5 June 2020 (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext).

[xix] Anya Schiffrin, “Government and corporations hinder journalists with ‘media capture,’”Columbia Journalism Review, August 29, 2017 (https://www.cjr.org/watchdog/media-capture.php).

[xx] Laurent Mucchielli, “Behind the French controversy over the medical treatment of Covid-19: The role of the drug industry,” Journal of Sociology, 17 June 2020 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1440783320936740).

[xxi] Woodworth, “Leaked: ‘Deadly’ HCQ” (https://www.globalresearch.ca/leaked-deadly-hcq-world-top-medical-journals-lancet-nejm-exploited-big-pharma/5715859).

[xxii] Ibid.

[xxiii] Scott Sayare, “He was a Science Star. Then He Promoted a Questionable Cure for Covid-19,” New York Times, 12 May 2020, updated May 21, 2020 (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/magazine/didier-raoult-hydroxychloroquine.html).

[xxiv] “The esteemed Dr Cristiana Altino de Almeida, who is a specialist in nuclear medicine with over 50 years of experience, is part of a movement of thousands of Brazilian medical doctors who are now treating COVID-19 patients at the early stage of the disease, with hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, zinc and other medications, mostly through telemedicine, the patients not being hospitalized.” In: “Interview with Dr Altino de Almeida, from Recife, Brazil,” Posted on June 28, 2020 (http://covexit.com/interview-with-dr-altino-de-almeida-from-recife-brazil/?fbclid=IwAR3Q-P3Uml5_5gTAIz33ZZX_RnWPgMsoQfs3Qh5BkHUmT0CVi4oEB4LrP8Y.)

[xxv] Dr. Raoult has explained in relation to the Oxford RECOVERY Trial, that “at the first viral stage, one must give medicines against the virus; in the second inflammatory phase, one needs to give medications against that reaction; and then in the third phase, it’s work to be done in intensive care units. Therefore, the same medication cannot be used for the three stages of the disease. He insists that it was a trial that was designed before one had an understanding of the disease, and that such randomized clinical trials should not be done before one has such an understanding.” Summarized from Didier Raoult, at: “The Marx Brothers are Doing Science: the Example of RECOVERY,” 9 June 2020 (http://covexit.com/professor-raoult-compares-the-oxford-recovery-trial-academics-to-the-marx-brothers/).

[xxvi] Katharina Buchholz, “Prescription Rate of Hydroxychloroquine Varies Widely,” Statista, 21 April 2020

(https://www.statista.com/chart/21411/share-of-doctors-using-hydroxychloroquine-for-covid-19/).

[xxvii] Lee Mclaughlan, “Covid-19 France: petition for wider chloroquine access,” 6 April 2020 (https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Time-wasted-over-use-of-choroquine-coronavirus-drug-says-petition-by-former-French-health-minister).

[xxviii] Jeffrey A. Singer, “Doctors, Not Politicians, Ought To Decide Whether Off-Label Drug Use of Hydroxychloroquine Is Appropriate for COVID-19 Patients,” Reason Magazine, 7 April 2020 (https://reason.com/2020/04/07/doctors-not-politicians-ought-to-decide-whether-off-label-drug-use-of-hydroxychloroquine-is-appropriate-for-covid-19-patients/).

[xxix] Christina Okello, “French doctors renew bid to clear HCQ to treat Covid-19 ahead of lockdown exit,” RFI, 5 May 2020 (http://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20200505-french-doctors-renew-push-to-clear-malaria-drug-hydroxychloroquine-to-secure-covid-19-lockdown-exit).

[xxx] The full-text letter and signatories appear

at https://zenodo.org/record/3862789#.XuQiNmYTGhM

[xxxi] Harvey Risch, “Using Hydroxychloroquine and Other Drugs to Fight Pandemic,” Yale School of Public Health Newsletter, 01 June 2020 (https://publichealth.yale.edu/news-article/25085/).

[xxxii] “SECOND OPINION: Doctors Discuss the Politicization of Hydroxychloroquine,” June 18, 2020, 0:14 min. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=m_JIz780i5w&feature=emb_logo).

[xxxiii] “Local physician has 100% survival rate with early administration of hydroxychloroquine,” 97.1 FM Talk, Marc Cox Morning Show, 12 June 2020 (https://971talk.radio.com/blogs/the-marc-cox-morning-show/dr-steve-crawford-of-festus-manor-on-hydroxychloroquine?fbclid=IwAR2MjR2RBoJeofbg01eLuuAc3d4X543zpW_G_cClxxikzii3mAq0A3vvUeM).

[xxxiv] M.S. Ajith, “Hydroxychloroquine helped Mandya fight virus: Officials,” New Indian Express, 25 June 2020 (https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/karnataka/2020/jun/25/hydroxychloroquine-helped-mandya-fight-virus-officials-2161022.html).

[xxxv] Economic Times HealthWorld (India Times), 19 June 2020 (https://health.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/diagnostics/hcq-beneficial-as-preventive-drug-sms-doctors-told-icmr/76464620).

[xxxvi] Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, “Researchers Overdosing COVID-19 Patients on Hydroxychloroquine,” States Association of American Physicians & Surgeons (AAPS), Tucson, Arizona, 17 June 2020 (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/researchers-overdosing-covid-19-patients-on-hydroxychloroquine-states-association-of-american-physicians–surgeons-aaps-301078986.html).

[xxxvii] Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, “Preliminary Injunction Sought to Release Hydroxychloroquine to the Public, in the Lawsuit by the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons (AAPS),” Tucson, Arizona, 22 June 2020 (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/preliminary-injunction-sought-to-release-hydroxychloroquine-to-the-public-in-the-lawsuit-by-the-association-of-american-physicians–surgeons-aaps-301081160.html).

Kosovo Albanians via their allies in Tirana are once again attempting to antagonize Serbia, this time through the Self-Determination Movements initiative. The Movement is trying to push through the Albanian Parliament a declaration condemning the so-called “Serbian genocide in Kosovo.” The initiative, launched by the representative of the Self-Determination Movement in Albania, Elvis Hoxha, is a response to the trials in The Hague against the Kosovo Liberation Army’s (KLA) terrorist leaders. It is an attempt to distract attention from Albania’s terroristic role in the 1999 Kosovo War and put it back onto Serbia.

Despite attempts by the Self-Determination Movement to distract indictments against the top KLA leaders, there were nervous reactions in the de facto Kosovo capital of Pristina and in the Albanian capital of Tirana after Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić made a statement comparing the situation in Kosovo to that of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), i.e. an indigenous population being replaced and ruled over by a later migratory and invading force.

Kosovo Albanians are trying through Tirana what they cannot do alone. It is for this reason that the Self-Determination Movement launched this initiative in the Parliament of Albania and not in the Parliament of Kosovo. This would suggest that the Movement is aware that the self-proclaimed independent state of Kosovo does not have international legal subjectivity, which is why they are trying to see the international aspect of this initiative done through Albania. It is in the belief that because Albania is a NATO member it is afforded extra international privileges that Serbia does not enjoy.

Despite the initiative having no factual basis, if it is accepted and a resolution is passed in the Albanian parliament, it is possible that it will be presented before international forums such as the Council of Europe and the United Nations. If the declaration on genocide were adopted in the Albanian parliament, and later possibly in the European one, the image of the Specialized Court in The Hague would be significantly changed and could lead to accused KLA leaders, such as former Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi, being found innocent.

The indictment against the KLA leadership also mentions three military training camps close to Kukës in northern Albania near the border with Kosovo. It is generally known that the first KLA brigades entered the Serbian province from northern Albania where training centers were located. In addition, active officers of the Albanian military commanded KLA forces. We also cannot forget that Kosovo’s former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj is alleged to have been a mastermind behind the kidnapping of Kosovo Serbs who were taken to the infamous “Yellow House” in Albania where their organs were harvested.

The entire Serbian military, political and police leadership were tried and convicted before the Hague Tribunal because of the war in Kosovo. However, now that KLA figures will be tried for their terrorist and human rights breaking activities, the Albanians are attempting to distract The Hague with cheap tricks. Albanian politicians will try to turn the story around by claiming that Serbia is solely responsible for the crimes in Kosovo and not the KLA leadership and certain political structures in Albania.

Considering that the borders between Serbia and Albania have been open since November 10 within the framework of the “Little Schengen,” and that relations between Belgrade and Tirana have never been better, the adoption of such a declaration would lead to a cooling of relations between the two countries. However, despite these attempts by members in the Albanian Parliament, it is unlikely that such a resolution on genocide will be adopted.

Taking into account the insistence of Brussels and Washington that it is necessary for Belgrade and Tirana to raise their level of mutual cooperation, and considering that both countries are EU member candidates, it is doubtful the resolution will be passed in the Albanian Parliament. Given that, except for the former Minister of Defense and the current president of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Albanian Parliament, Mimi Kodheli, none of the key political players in Albania support the initiative for now.

As far as Serbian-Albanian relations are concerned, Tirana has already acted as a dosed patron of the Kosovo Albanians. This is not such a significant leap from the usual strategy of Tirana. What can be observed is that Albania’s tactics are hot and cold, especially if we remember the constant inappropriate statements made by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and other Albanian officials, which replaced the so-called conciliatory rhetoric towards Serbia at international conferences and forums.

According to Mimi Kordelja, a similar initiative existed in 1998. However, it failed due to, as she said, the poor coordination of Kosovo and Albanian politics. Therefore, it appears that Albania is far more emboldened today due to its accession into NATO and its advanced pathway into the European Union.

Serbia for the foreseeable future, despite pressure from liberal forces within the country, is neither an EU or NATO member, or in an advance position in the accession processes. Because of this, Albania has the option to utilize its NATO membership and more advanced pathway towards EU membership to continue pressuring Serbia over the Kosovo issue. This is despite the hopes of Brussels and Washington for the two countries to cooperate under their own liberal vision. Despite the Self-Determination Movements initiative to distract The Hague from KLA crimes, which includes ethnic cleansing, drug and human trafficking, organ harvesting and destruction of historical religious sites, it is likely that it will not amount to anything as it is a cheap attempt to make a mockery of the international court.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Freedom of Information requests submitted by Cherwell have revealed that Oxford University accepted at least £726,706 from the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), the designer and producer of the UK’s nuclear warheads, during the years 2017-19 alone.

The majority of this money was awarded to the Oxford Centre for High Energy Density Science (OxCHEDS), which advertises AWE as one of its “national partners” on its website.

AWE’s funding is mostly used by OxCHEDS to fund individual research projects and studentships, with a substantial portion (£82,863 in 2019) funding the department’s William Penney Fellowship, named after the head of the British delegation for the Manhattan Project and ‘father of the British atomic bomb’. According to the AWE website, William Penney Fellows “act as ambassadors for AWE in the scientific and technical communities in which they operate”.

This fellowship is currently shared by two professors, Justin Wark and Peter Norreys, both of whom collaborate closely with US state laboratories that develop nuclear weapons, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

AWE donations have also funded projects at the University’s Departments of Chemistry, Engineering, and Physics, a number of which are directly linked to the design of nuclear weapons. One AWE-funded paper, published in 2019, investigated fusion yield production, a vital way of testing the destructive power of a warhead prior to manufacturing, whilst another project researched methods used by nuclear weapons designers for simulating the interior of a detonating warhead.

This research also has civilian applications, and does not in itself point towards the development of nuclear weapons. A spokesperson from Oxford University stated: “Oxford University research is academically driven, with the ultimate aim of enhancing openly available scholarship and knowledge. All research projects with defence sector funding advance general scientific understanding, with a wide range of subsequent civilian applications, as well as potential application by the sector.”

However, AWE is not a civilian organisation. As Andrew Smith of Campaign Against the Arms Trade told Cherwell, “the AWE exists to promote the deadliest weaponry possible. It is not funding these projects because it cares about education, but because it wants to benefit from the research and association that goes with it”. Mr. Smith concluded: “Oxford University should be leading by example, not providing research and cheap labour for the arms industry”.

Responding to Cherwell’s findings, Dr Stuart Parkinson, Director of Scientists for Global Responsibility, described Oxford University’s ties with AWE as “shocking” and called for the work to be “terminated immediately”. He said that the findings “point very clearly to Oxford University researchers being involved in the development of weapons of mass destruction”.

In the face of this criticism, the University spokesperson claimed: “All research funders must first pass ethical scrutiny and be approved by the University’s Committee to Review Donations and Research Funding. This is a robust, independent system, which takes legal, ethical and reputational issues into consideration.”

However, there are growing concerns over the ethics and efficacy of this process, which has seen controversial donations from the Sackler family, Wafic Saïd, and Stephen Schwarzman given the green light despite internal and public protests. The committee’s deliberations are frequently subject to Non-Disclosure Agreements, meaning that they are not accountable to members of the University and to the wider public. Moreover, Freedom of Information requests submitted earlier this year revealed that the committee accepts over 95% of the funding it considers, with congregation members describing the committee as a “smokescreen” and a “fig leaf”.

In recent years, the University has faced increased opposition from student groups such as the Oxford Climate Justice Campaign and Oxford Against Schwarzman over the companies Oxford chooses to affiliate itself with through investments and donations. From this term onwards, a newly formed student group, Disarm Oxford, will be campaigning against the University’s numerous ties with the arms industry. Oxford Amnesty International is working with Disarm Oxford on the global Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, and to strive for the disarmament of the University more broadly.

Dr Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury and Chair of the Trustees of the Council for the Defence of British Universities, told Cherwell: “The recent publicity around university divestment from fossil fuels has highlighted the need for university bodies to be transparent about the ethical standards they apply to their funding, and it is encouraging to see this crucial question being raised also in the context of armaments-related funds and research.”

The combination of Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic has created a particularly difficult time for university research finances. In a marketised higher education system, seeking and welcoming money from industry partnerships seems like an inevitability. However, while some industries rely on academic research to save lives, others are predicated on taking them. With the UK confirmed this year as the world’s second biggest exporter of arms, the University’s significant ties to the development of weaponry has an alarming global significance which is now beginning to be called into question.

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Former Vice President Joe Biden has not been officially declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, but that has not stopped him from forming a coronavirus task force. The task force is composed of supporters of increased government control.

One idea Biden and his task force are considering is a four to six weeks nationwide lockdown. However, supporting a nationwide lockdown would violate Biden’s campaign pledge to “listen to the science.” The evidence regarding lockdowns is so overwhelming that even the World Health Organization (WHO) has been forced to admit the truth: lockdowns do more harm than good.

Lockdowns result in more instances of depression, suicide, domestic violence, and alcohol and drug abuse. Lockdowns also cause people to not go to hospitals or doctors’ offices, leading to people dying because they failed to obtain medical assistance in a timely manner.

Biden also is working with governors, mayors, and other state and local officials to create a de facto national mask mandate. Biden has also declared he will mandate mask wearing in all federal buildings and for people traveling interstate. A mask mandate for interstate travel could mean you will be required to wear a mask on airplanes, trains, and even when driving in your own car if you cross state lines.

Yet again, Biden is ignoring the science. In this case the science has demonstrated that most masks are ineffective at preventing the spread of a virus. Medical science also shows that wearing a mask for extended periods of time can cause health problems. For example, mask wearing interferes with proper breathing. Long-term mask wearing may also cause serious dental problems. Ironically, major victims of mask mandates include low-wage workers Biden and his fellow progressives claim to care so much about. Many of these workers are required to wear masks on the job.

Biden has also proposed raising an army of “culturally competent” contact tracers. According to the University of California, San Francisco, which is helping train that California’s contact tracers, contract tracers “….ask questions related to topics that can be sensitive, including health, work, living arrangements and food resources” in order to identify someone who should be quarantined. These contract tracers could also be able to enforce masks or other mandates — including a potential vaccine mandate — by helping ensure that those who refuse to comply are indefinitely quarantined.

Biden is not the only politician pushing authoritarian “solutions” to coronavirus. The government of Washington, DC is considering authorizing vaccinating of children without parental consent. This ignores the science that some people will have a negative reaction even to a generally safe vaccine, so individuals should make their own decision in consultation with their physician. This is especially important these days, as we are dealing with a vaccine that is being rushed into production for political reasons and that even the manufactures admit will have serious side effects.

Lockdowns, masks, and other authoritarian measures do little or nothing to promote health. Instead, they erode freedom and create their own health problems. Those who know the truth must make Joe Biden and other authoritarians listen to the true science. While those more at risk — such as the elderly and people with certain health problems — could be encouraged to take extra precautions, all Americans should be given back the liberty to make their own healthcare decisions.

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A Muslim prayer app with over 98 million downloads is one of the apps connected to a wide-ranging supply chain that sends ordinary people’s personal data to brokers, contractors, and the military.

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The U.S. military is buying the granular movement data of people around the world, harvested from innocuous-seeming apps, Motherboard has learned. The most popular app among a group Motherboard analyzed connected to this sort of data sale is a Muslim prayer and Quran app that has more than 98 million downloads worldwide. Others include a Muslim dating app, a popular Craigslist app, an app for following storms, and a “level” app that can be used to help, for example, install shelves in a bedroom.

Through public records, interviews with developers, and technical analysis, Motherboard uncovered two separate, parallel data streams that the U.S. military uses, or has used, to obtain location data. One relies on a company called Babel Street, which creates a product called Locate X. U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), a branch of the military tasked with counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and special reconnaissance, bought access to Locate X to assist on overseas special forces operations. The other stream is through a company called X-Mode, which obtains location data directly from apps, then sells that data to contractors, and by extension, the military.

The news highlights the opaque location data industry and the fact that the U.S. military, which has infamously used other location data to target drone strikes, is purchasing access to sensitive data. Many of the users of apps involved in the data supply chain are Muslim, which is notable considering that the United States has waged a decades-long war on predominantly Muslim terror groups in the Middle East, and has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians during its military operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Motherboard does not know of any specific operations in which this type of app-based location data has been used by the U.S. military.

The apps sending data to X-Mode include Muslim Pro, an app that reminds users when to pray and what direction Mecca is in relation to the user’s current location. The app has been downloaded over 50 million times on Android, according to the Google Play Store, and over 98 million in total across other platforms including iOS, according to Muslim Pro’s website.

“The Most Popular Muslim App!,” Muslim Pro’s website reads. The app also includes passages and audio readings from the Quran. Another app that sent data to X-Mode was Muslim Mingle, a dating app that has been downloaded more than 100,000 times.

Do you work at Babel Street, X-Mode, Venntel, or one of the apps mentioned in this piece? Did you used to, or know anything else about the location data industry? We’d love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email [email protected].

Some app developers Motherboard spoke to were not aware who their users’ location data ends up with, and even if a user examines an app’s privacy policy, they may not ultimately realize how many different industries, companies, or government agencies are buying some of their most sensitive data. U.S. law enforcement purchase of such information has raised questions about authorities buying their way to location data that may ordinarily require a warrant to access. But the USSOCOM contract and additional reporting is the first evidence that U.S. location data purchases have extended from law enforcement to military agencies.

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Featured image is by Cathryn Virginia via Vice

In what critics are calling a parting gift to the fossil fuel industry, the Trump administration on Tuesday will ask oil and gas companies to choose which areas of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska—which is the sacred homeland of the Gwich’in Indigenous people—they would like to drill. 

The Washington Post reports the administration’s call for nominations is a key part of a rush to lock in drilling rights before President Donald Trump leaves office on January 20. The president has made drilling on public lands and waterways a key component of what he calls his “America First” energy agenda, while President-elect Joe Biden has said he opposes such action.

The Republican-controlled Congress approved drilling in the massive, pristine ANWR in 2017. The reserve is home to the Gwich’in people, who call it “Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit,” or, “the sacred place where life begins.” ANWR boasts some 270 species, including all of the world’s remaining South Beaufort Sea polar bears, 250 musk oxen, Arctic foxes, and hundreds of thousands of snow geese and other birds which fly there from all 50 states and around the world.

The Gwich’in rely on the region’s rich biodiversity, especially its 200,000-strong porcupine caribou herd, for their survival. “What impacts the caribou, impacts the Gwich’in,” Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, told Yes!.

Quannah Chasinghorse is continuing the legacy of Gwich’in women working to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.https://t.co/lJdWHtBD7P

— YES! Magazine (@yesmagazine) November 16, 2020

In addition to opening ANWR to oil and gas drilling, the Trump administration is also redefining what constitutes a “critical habitat” for endangered species, as well as when corporations are deemed liable for killing migrating birds.

While the Iñupiat—another Alaska Native people who call ANWR their home—cautiously welcome the possibility of drilling and the economic benefits they believe it will bring, the Gwichin’in and their allies, which include environmental groups and progressive lawmakers, have vowed to fight any attempts to defile the unspoiled land.

🚨 ARCTIC REFUGE NEWS ALERT 🚨
The Trump administration has announced that the sacred and pristine Arctic Refuge is open for a lease sale. RT to voice your opposition! #ProtectTheArctic #StandWithTheGwichin pic.twitter.com/f91h7nJKho

— Sierra Club (@SierraClub) November 16, 2020

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) strongly opposes drilling, telling the Post that “this administration is ending as it began, with a desperate push for oil drilling regardless of the human or environmental costs.”

Rep. Donald McEachin (D-Va.) tweeted that drilling in the refuge “would threaten the climate, wildlife, and Indigenous rights.”

“Despite a last-second push to complete oil leases, it is no wonder major banks are pledging not to finance these destructive drilling projects,” he added.

Indeed, after decades of grassroots pressure from environmentalists and Indigenous activists and in the face of an ever-worsening climate crisis, numerous major banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, have announced they will not finance ANWR drilling projects.

We cannot allow Trump to put the fossil fuel industry's short-term profits ahead of the climate and rights of indigenous peoples.

We must stand with the Gwich'in Nation, stop this drilling in the Arctic, and aggressively transition away from fossil fuels. pic.twitter.com/ka69Bq9jGq

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) August 17, 2020

The Gwich’in and several environmental groups including the National Audobon Society, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and Natural Resources Defense Council (NDRC), have sued the administration in a bid to stop drilling plans from proceeding. Erik Grafe, deputy managing attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental law firm representing the plaintiffs, condemned what he called a “midnight effort to sell off irreplaceable lands in the refuge before a new day dawns.”

“We are already in court challenging the administration’s decision to open the whole coastal plain to leasing, and we’ll hold the line against this rushed attempt to implement the unlawful program,” Grafe said in a statement. “As the majority of Americans know, the Arctic Refuge is no place to drill.”

Gwich’in Nation launches lawsuit in effort to stop oil drilling in #Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.@OurArcticRefuge@bernademientief#StandWithTheGwichin #ProtecttheArctichttps://t.co/D0BMq2JlN6

— Land is Life (@landislife) October 24, 2020

Ellen Montgomery, public lands campaign director for Environment America, issued a statement asserting that “there is no way to do massive, industrial-level oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Refuge without damaging vital habitat.”

“Building roads and bringing in heavy equipment disfigures the landscape before the drilling even begins,” she said. “Once ruined, the refuge cannot be restored.” Montgomery called on fossil fuel companies to “read the tea leaves and take a pass” on ANWR drilling.

However, it is the Gwich’in who are standing the firmest in the face of the administration’s attack on their sacred land.

“Any company thinking about participating in this corrupt process should know that they will have to answer to the Gwich’in people and the millions of Americans who stand with us,” Demientieff told the Post. “We have been protecting this place forever.”

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Featured image: Caribou graze on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. (Photo: USFWS/Flickr cc)

Results of the Nagorno-Karabakh war continue shaping the balance of power of the South Caucasus. The ceasefire regime established as a result of the Russian diplomatic intervention and the deployment of the Russian peacekeeping force in the region nears the end of its first week.

As the outcome of the war, Azerbaijan achieved an important victory over Armenian forces and seized the symbolic Armenian stronghold of Shusha. Baku and Yerevan also reached an agreement that is set to allow Azerbaijan to return districts lost during the first Karabakh war excluding the Lachin corridor as well as finally establish a transport link between Azerbaijan’s mainland and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, a landlocked Azerbaijani exclave bordering Armenia, Turkey and Iran. The latest development is in fact even more important for Azerbaijani national interests than any propaganda achievements in the war with the Armenians. This will not only allow to finally establish a ground link between the main territory Azerbaijan and the country’s autonomous region, but also strengthen economic and cultural cooperation with Turkey, a traditional Azerbaijani ally. Ankara, together with Israeli weapon suppliers, played an important role in the Azerbaijani victory through providing its forces with weapons, ammunition, intelligence and military advisers and specialists that helped to plan and turn into reality the Karabakh advance.

For years, Turkey has been employing the “two states, one nation” concept in its relations with Azerbaijan as a part of the wider claim to be the formal, military and spiritual leader of the so-called Turkic world and the Muslims in the Greater Middle East and Central Asia in general. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who sees himself as the Sultan of the New Neo-Ottoman Empire, does not hide Turkish plans to annex territories of northern Syria and northern Iraq, where Ankara already has a permanent military presence. Azerbaijan is seen by Erdogan and his circle as a logical and important part of this Greater Turkey project with a particular autonomy. Therefore, the Turkish military presence in Azerbaijan and the further expansion of the economic, political and cultural links between the countries is a logical step in this plan. During the past years, Ankara has repeatedly announced the plans to build a new railway road to Nakhchivan. Now, the preparations for the implementation of this project will likely reach their finishing straight.

At the same time, there are some factors often ignored by pro-Turkish analysts boasting about the great Neo-Ottoman victory in Karabakh. First of all, the control over the so desired by Turkey ground link with Azerbaijan will be in the hands of the Russians under the Moscow-brokered deal between Baku and Yerevan. The control over the transport link between Nakhchivan and the Azerbaijani mainland will be exercised by the Border Service of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). At the same time, the Russian peacekeeping force will also control the corridor between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, and a large part of the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, including the largest regional city Stepanakert.

Russian forces supported by combat helicopters, electronic warfare systems, BTR-80A armoured personnel carriers and various armoured vehicles of other types already established 25 observation points (18 permanent and 7 temporary) in the region. One of the posts is in fact located at the gates of Shusha. Additionally to the 1960-strong contingent in Karabakh, the Russian military also created a gathering center, in other words a temporary military base, in the Armenian city of Goris, near the border. Battle tanks and multiple rocket launching systems spotted in the area indicate that the operation there involves additional means and forces. Moscow is also creating a special humanitarian center for Karabakh. The center will be controlled by Russia and overseen by the FSB thus cutting off the possibility of looting of humanitarian aid for the region.

Taking into account the deep crisis of the current pro-Western Armenian government, led by Nikol Pashinyan who is still hiding in some basement in Yerevan, the control over Nagorno-Karabakh territories, which should not been returned to Azerbaijan as the part of the November 10 deal, has been in fact transferred to Russia.

Now, Russia has officially established a military presence on the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan for the next 5 years. This term also can be prolonged under the existing deal. This unprecedented development for the modern South Caucasus caused little happiness in Ankara causing the Turkish attempt to promote the idea of the deployment of some ‘Turkish peacekeepers’ to the combat zone. However, all what it achieved was the draft plan for the creation of a joint Russian-Turkish ceasefire monitoring center on the territory of Azerbaijan. According to the Russian foreign minister, the center will be located in the part of the territory that is not close to Karabakh and no field missions are planned. The posture of Azerbaijan, which did not support the Turkish field deployment in Karabakh, in this unfortunate situation for Ankara became an unpleasant surprise for Turkish commentators.

Furthermore, Baku demonstrated an unexpected softness by shifting the schedule of the Armenian withdrawal from the contested region. Under the initial deal, the Kalbajar district was set to be transferred to Azerbaijan by November 15, a top aide to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced that the deadline was extended till November 25. These steps show the readiness of the Azerbaijani side for the constructive actions in the framework of the existing Yerevan-Moscow-Baku format. Summing up, it seems that Mr. Aliyev is not going to pay back by turning Azerbaijan into the province of Erdogan’s Neo-Ottoman Empire. In this case, the closer cooperation with Russia, which is also an important economic and security partner of Azerbaijan, is an apparent solution.

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Drafted in 2015, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) was signed in 2016, involving a dozen nations, including the US before Trump pulled in 2017.

It’s now the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) among seven Asian nations — excluding China and the US — plus Canada, Chile, Mexico, and Peru.

It’s separate from the newly consummated Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

Involving 10 ASEAN nations along with Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, it was signed on November 15 in a virtual ceremony, hosted in Hanoi by Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

The US is not part of the world’s largest ever free trade agreement RCEP or CPTPP.

Nations involved in the former account for nearly a third of world trade, GDP and population.

As Asia’s largest economy, on a path toward surpassing the US as world’s No. One, China is a winner in what was agreed on.

So are other RCEP participating nations, the US a loser for opting out.

It’s rare for the US to be on the sidelines when major international agreements are consummated.

Following Sunday’s virtual signing ceremony, it awaits ratification by nations involved to become effective, a process likely to take months or longer.

Countries involved are among the world’s fastest growing ones, this deal to advance their growth further.

The deal reduces tariffs, prohibits others, unifies rules of origin among participating nations, strengthens supply chains, and establishes e-commerce rules.

Noninvolvement by India in RCEP disadvantages its trade with bloc nations.

The same is true for the US, a regional loser in stark contrast to China’s gain.

Washington’s anti-China agenda under Obama/Biden, hardened by Trump, failed to achieve its objectives.

CNBC noted that “RCEP may cement China’s position more firmly as an economic partner with Southeast Asia, Japan and Korea, putting the world’s second-biggest economy in a better position to shape the region’s trade rules.”

If Biden/Harris succeed Trump in January, what’s most likely but not certain, it’s unclear if the new US regime will pursue membership in what its predecessor rejected.

A joint statement by participating nations said RCEP “is an unprecedented mega regional trading arrangement that comprises a diverse mix of developed, developing and least developed economies of the region.”

China’s Premier Li Keqiang  called RCEP “not only a landmark achievement of East Asian regional cooperation, but also a victory of multilateralism and free trade.”

China’s official People’s Daily broadsheet said the agreement “will play an important role in building the region’s resilience through inclusive and sustainable post-pandemic economic recovery.”

Sunday’s signing ceremony came after 30 rounds of negotiations, begun in November 2012.

China’s Global Times called RCEP’s signing a “framework that works to benefit all Asian economies…a landmark step toward achieving closer economic integration in East and Southeast Asia.”

Noninvolvement by the US leaves it “detach(ed) from the process of Asia’s economic integration.”

Will Dems call RCEP a new China threat? Will Republicans join them to call for US involvement in the CPTPP and/or RCEP?

Terms of both deals were agreed on by member states.

If the US seeks involvement in either or both agreements, it won’t be able to demand changes, favorable to its own interests.

Unilateralism by Trump regime hardliners aimed to contain China on the world stage, wanting its development curtailed, a failed agenda shorter and longer-term.

Will Biden/Harris go a different way or continue waging war on China by other means — the latter approach most likely.

Neither country will hold back the other’s development.

China pursues a longterm winning strategy by seeking cooperative relations with other nations.

It’s in stark contrast to US-sought global dominance by whatever it takes to achieve its aims, including wars by hot and other means.

ASEAN countries initiated RCEP, China and other nations invited to participate, India as well.

The Modi government withdrew from talks in November 2019, a strategic error.

What benefits participating nations through RCEP and CPTPP mutual cooperation excludes the US.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is by Pepe Escobar / Asia Times

Hollywood knows how to put the scare in people. Songbird, a new film produced by Michael Bay and directed by Adam Mason exploits the Covid-19 pandemic which complements the mainstream-media’s (MSM) fear campaign among its audience. Last month, The Guardian reported that the film “portrays a love story between Nico (Riverdale’s KJ Apa) and Sara (Sofia Carson) during America’s 214th week of lockdown in 2024, as a late-stage version of “Covid-23” mutates to infect people’s brains.” The report describes the most disturbing aspects of the film:

The film appears to extract the worst of the past six months, strip it of sensitivity and then paint it on doubly thick in big-budget, Hollywoodized, exaggerated style. In the trailer a Los Angeles billboard ticks up to 8.4m deaths, infected Americans are forced into quarantine camps, and sanitation “police” raid homes for suspected patients. 

This shoehorning of a real and ongoing tragedy which has killed 229,000 Americans and counting has not gone down well with some still in the grips of the pandemic, which is to say: the movie going American public outside of Hollywood

Although it’s just another exaggerated Hollywood-style film that goes beyond today’s reality, it is a film that will sell fear to its audience.

Fear is a weapon used against humanity.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) said that certain words cause fear, but he decided to use that word, “Pandemic”. USA Today reported back in March that “Tedros said WHO was aware the word could “cause unreasonable fear, or unjustified acceptance that the fight is over,” if incorrectly used.” Words and inflated numbers used by politicians and “health experts” paid by Big Pharma know how to use the pandemic to their advantage in order to gain power and control over the people, especially in modern Western societies.

Hollywood is in partnership with the MSM, therefore both are in the service of the establishment.  If Biden is declared the winner on January, it will mean more lockdowns and facemask mandates because they want total control of the population to enforce its dangerous vaccines.  The MSM and Hollywood use propaganda and fear that is crippling todays society, and because of that, they are complicit in crimes against humanity.

Here is the trailer to Songbird:

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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.

Featured image is from SCN

Russia’s draft deal to open up a Red Sea naval base in Sudan amounts to a strategic recalibration of its careful “balancing” act between the GCC and Turkey after moving more closely to the latter following the end of the Nagorno-Karabakh War, which in turn shows how important Moscow regards its “Ummah Pivot” as being by seeking to maintain equally excellent relations with all majority-Muslim countries without any of its bilateral relations being misperceived as directed against any third country in this civilizational sphere.

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When Gutenberg introduced the printing press in 1440, the world had no idea that things were about to drastically change. Prior to the release and production of the printing press, books were incredibly expensive, rare, mostly written in Latin, and reserved for royalty and clergy.

The spread of information was kept under lock and key.

However, in just a few decades after its spread throughout the world, Gutenberg’s press had rolled out hundreds of millions of books. The operation of a printing press became synonymous with the enterprise of printing and lent its name to a new branch of media, the press.

The world was becoming informed.

Hailed as one of the most important inventions in human history, the printing press helped societies break free from the ignorance and bondage imposed upon them by the keepers of information. Over the next 400 years, those with access to information about peace and freedom began to rise up against their oppressors. Instead of monarchies and dictatorships, republics and democracies were born.

The world was well on its way to becoming a Land of the Free. Unfortunately, however, with information — comes propaganda and censorship.

Not being able to control the dissemination of information, tyrants decided to control the actual information instead. Certain books were burned, banned, and shunned. Only establishment-supporting nationalistic books were promoted which led to entire societies believing their patriotic stories about how their countries ‘played the key role in the development of the modern world’ — up to and including societies like Nazi Germany who were convinced that murdering millions of Jews was the right thing to do.

For decades, the world was tricked by slick establishment propagandists, who wrote their version of heroic history. Tyrants were painted as saviors; mass murderers hailed as great discoverers. The world was slipping back into a dark age of control and manipulation.

Luckily, there were a few voices who resisted mass censorship, the book banners and burners, and the last century has seen incredible growth and freedom of speech. But, like all empires inevitably do, America is increasingly slipping into despotism and, once again, the alleged “arbiters of truth” are attempting to silence information with which they disagree.

One example of this new “book burning” is taking place in California. Schools in Burbank, California have banned multiple books after a handful of parents expressed concern over them. To be clear, these books do not advocate racism, violence, hatred, or anything of the sort. These books have won multiple awards and have achieved literary godliness.

Burbank schools are now being forced to teach other titles because a small group (exactly 4) of offended parents have succeeded in depriving thousands of other children from reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Theodore Taylor’s The Cay and Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.

That’s right, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry — that was written by a black woman about racism in America during the Jim Crow era — was banned because it is supposedly racist. Someone should probably ask Newbery Award-winning author, Mildred DeLois Taylor, how she feels about her book, written about her own life experiences, getting banned for being racist.

To be fair, the parents said their children experienced racism in schools which is unacceptable — but also exceedingly improbable that this racism was derived from a child reading a novel.

As Newsweek reports, Carmenita Helligar said her daughter, Destiny, was approached by a white student in math class using a racial taunt including the N-word, which he’d learned from reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry while both attended the David Starr Jordan Middle School.

“My family used to own your family and now I want a dollar from each of you for the week,” another boy is said to have told Destiny.

“My daughter was literally traumatized,” Helligar said. “These books are problematic … you feel helpless because you can’t even protect your child from the hurt that she’s going through.”

While no one wants their child to experience the horrific scenario described above, the idea of a classic book — that is actually anti-racist — turning a child into a racist is absolutely absurd. If someone is so hateful that they are willing to say this to a child in middle school, blaming a book is asinine. This kid was either brought up as a racist or, he made a tone deaf, disgusting attempt at teasing.

Either way, it doesn’t matter what actually transpired as the results are the same — books are banned in the land of the free. Sadly, it is indeed likely that those calling for banning these books, have never even read them. If they did actually read them, they would understand that they are not at all racist and, in fact, inspire kids to do the right thing, well, because it’s the right thing.

Luckily, the banning of these books did not go unnoticed and the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) sent a letter to BUSD urging the district to allow teaching of the books while the challenges are under review.

“[W]e believe that the books… have a great pedagogical value and should be retained in the curriculum,” read the letter from the NCAC.

Some of the children are speaking out against the banned books as well. Sungjoo Yoon, 15, a sophomore at Burbank High School, also launched an online petition on Change.org to stop what he called a “ban on antiracist books.”

“In a time where racism has become more transparent than ever, we need to continue to educate students as to the roots of it; to create anti-racist students,” Yoon wrote. “These literatures, of which have been declared ‘Books that Shaped America’ by the Library of Congress, won Newbury Medals, and are some of the most influential pieces, cannot disappear.”

PEN America (an acronym for Poets, Essayists, Novelists) also released a petition calling to reinstate the banned books.

“Each of the books in question deal with difficult subject matter from our country’s complicated and painful history, including systemic racism,” an excerpt from the petition reads. “Blocking engagement with these important books is also avoiding the important role that schools can and should play in providing context for why these books inspire and challenge us still today.”

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Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Minds.

Featured image is from The Free Thought Project

Patrick Bet-David has a virtual sit down with consumer protection trial lawyer Reiner Fuellmich to talk about the Coronavirus and his work on the German Corona investigation committee.

Dr Reiner Fuellmich is one of four members of the German Corona Investigative Committee, which since July 10, 2020, has been listening to large number of international scientists’ and experts’ testimonies, to find answers to questions about the pandemic, being asked by people worldwide.

Patrick Bet-David is CEO, author and Founder of Valuetainment Media. Patrick has interviewed athletes, notorious individuals, politicians, authors and entrepreneurs from all walks of life.

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This is the greatest public health fiasco in the history of the world, and the media has distorted it so badly, that much of the general public is celebrating villains and hissing at heroes. And, even — perversely enough — celebrating the destruction of their own lives and their children’s lives.

According to Thomas E. Woods, Jr., “Cult seems to describe what we are dealing with. Outside the cult are sub-human and selfish, to be shamed and ridiculed.

They have slogans “Listen to the science”.

Maybe that slogan is meant to be funny because these are the least scientific people I have ever encountered in my life.”

Watch full presentation below.

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The current situation in India’s  illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJ&K) is not without current, tragic precedent. Bringing non-native Kashmiris into the territory, and since April, two million non-natives have been approved to do so, with the goal of eliminating Kashmiri culture and the nation itself follows the Israeli model in Palestine. This is not lost on Indian government officials. On November 16 of last year, Sandeep Chakravorty, India’s consul-general to New York City, was attending a private event in New York. He told Kashmiri Hindus and Indian nationals that India will build settlements modelled after Israel to bring the Hindu population to Kashmir. He did not mince words; said he: “you will be able to go back … and you will be able to find security, because we already have a model in the world. I don’t know why we don’t follow it. It has happened in the Middle East. If the Israeli people can do it, we can also do it.” We can refer to Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which reads, in part, “Everyone has the right to a nationality”.  India’s actions violate that basic right.

By looking at what the Israeli model, that Chakravorty is so anxious to implement in Kashmir, has meant for the Palestinians and for peace in the Middle East, we can draw some conclusions on what the result may mean for Kashmir and peace there and in neighboring countries.

1. We can expect the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris; this slaughter has been ongoing for decades and will only continue. There will also be the displacement of millions more with no place to go except refugee camps in their own or neighboring countries. Typically, such camps are grossly overcrowded; have limited sanitary facilities; provide few, if any, educational opportunities for children and youth, and are breeding grounds for despair.
   • Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care, etc.”
   • Article 26 states that “Everyone has a right to education.”
2. We can expect ongoing clashes between the marginalized Kashmiris and the Indian settler-colonists, resulting in the deaths of many innocent Kashmiri men, women and children and long imprisonment for others who, like the Palestinians, are only exercising their internationally-guaranteed right to resist the occupation. Resistance to occupation is not terrorism, as both India and Israel would have us all believe.
   • United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/33/24 of November 29, 1978 reads, in part, as follows: “Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, particularly armed struggle.”
3. We will see the slow obliteration of Kashmiri culture. As more non-Kashmiris settle in Kashmir, driving out the Kashmiris, the settlers, again in the same style as the Israelis in Palestine, will destroy mosques, museums, cemeteries and other landmarks vital to Kashmiris and their culture. Let’s not forget that Israel bulldozed the ancient cemetery, Ma’man Allah in Palestine to create a ‘museum of tolerance’ on the site. The hypocrisy is astounding.
   • Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, in part, that ‘Everyone has the right to freely participate in the cultural life of the community….”

These actions are, of course, components of genocide.

4. Another result will be heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, both nuclear states. We know that even a so-called ‘limited’ nuclear war would have catastrophic impacts on the entire planet. Even a conventional war between those nations would draw in other countries, leading to disastrous results in loss of human life, ecological damage and global economic disruption.

We may see some limited action in the United Nations, since what India is doing in Kashmir violates various Security Council resolutions and international laws. But, again drawing conclusions from the Palestine-Israel situation, the people of Kashmir cannot rely on the U.N. to bring them peace and justice. Kashmiris have known this as long as the Palestinians have.

But the situation is certainly not without hope, because people around the world can and must help. There are several things we can all do. Not everyone can do all of these, perhaps, but everyone can certainly do some of them.

1. Become educated. Webinars such as this are an excellent way to gain knowledge, which will enable each of us to better articulate the specifics of the suffering of the Kashmiri people, and how it is India that is fully culpable for that suffering. Join groups and get on mailing lists.
2. Write to news organizations. Doing a search on ‘contact CNN’ or ‘contact MSNBC’ or any other news agency will bring you to a site explaining how to contact that agency. Generally, there is a form on the site that you will be asked to complete. Ask specific questions such as this: “Social media sites have been shut down or greatly limited in Kashmir by India for over a year. Why has your outlet not covered this?” Or: “The Indian government is forbidding foreign news correspondents from entering Kashmir, and is harassing those already in the country. Why have I not seen this information on your news programs?”
3. Contact your member of Parliament; write and visit, and do it more than once. Hold them accountable for allowing India’s crimes against humanity.
4. Write to newspapers. Letters to the editors of different publications serve two purposes: they inform the editors that their readers are concerned about and interested in this issue, and, when letters are published, they inform other readers.
5. Fight Islamophobia. It seems that since it is a mainly Muslim country that is being victimized, the level of outrage is very low. We must be cognizant of the fact that attitudes in the U.S. influence those in Canada and the rest of the world. As a candidate in 2016, Donald Trump said this: “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” Trump’s one-time national security advisor, Michael Flynn, said that “Fear of Muslims is rational”. This attitude is nothing new. In 2010, Sarah Palin, who ran for vice-president in 2008, tweeted this when a mosque was proposed in downtown New York City: “Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing.” This ridiculous statement, of course, unjustly associates Islam with the September 11, 2001 attacks.

We fight Islamophobia by countering every anti-Muslim comment we hear. If it’s in a tweet, we respond that way. If on a news program, we contact that program. If in a newspaper, we write a letter to the editor, refuting what was said. If it’s a comment made by an acquaintance, we calmly counter whatever statement has been made. I include ‘calmly’, because, although I am not Muslim, Islamophobic comments anger me, so I need to remind myself to respond calmly and politely.

I would like to close with one of my favorite quotations, this one by the anthropologist Margaret Mead; it is one you are probably familiar with. She said this:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, organized citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

We have formidable foes in our quest to liberate the people of Kashmir from Indian oppression, and to assist them in achieving their basic right to self-determination. Our task is not an easy one, but it is a moral imperative.

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A crucial advantage that China enjoys over its Western rivals, principally the United States, is the country’s rebuffing of neoliberalism. Under its present leadership, Beijing’s influence over corporations and private power has increased substantially.

By contrast to America, almost all of China’s 25 largest corporations are state-owned. The Chinese president Xi Jinping, in power since March 2013, has indeed tightened his administration’s control over big business. He is correct to do so, and it is in fact of high importance that a government is free to move and intervene freely when required, unshackled from the chains of private power. In the West and elsewhere under the neoliberal assault, governments cannot even act without the consent of corporate executives which is a recipe for disaster.

China is led through a system in which power is centralised around the government, with Xi himself possessing huge influence, more so than any Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. The 67-year-old Xi is to remain in control “indefinitely”, presumably for as many years as he deems fit. Beijing’s centralisation of power is consistently portrayed in a negative light by Western media and politicians – but in reality the Xi administration, and the Chinese Communist Party, constitute much stronger institutions by comparison to the Western neoliberal model, that is increasingly in shambles.

This autumn, China’s government outlined bluntly that private businesses will “firmly listen to the party and follow the party”, while president Xi stresses that “the party exercises overall leadership” through “all endeavours across the country” (1). The political scientist Steve Tsang, a noted professor of Chinese studies, said that “Ever since the 19th congress [in October 2017], Xi has made it clear that the party would be at the centre of everything, private businesses included”.

For a number of years the world’s foremost neoliberal country, the US, has shown the hallmarks of being a failed state (2). America continues to be called a “democracy” by its top brass, which is plainly untrue. About 70% of the American population is effectively disenfranchised, having no influence on policy formation. A democracy scarcely equates to the masses being called upon to vote for an elite candidate every four years, thereafter slipping back into isolation. America consists of a plutocratic state, in which the key decisions are made by the richest business class who engineer government policy. America’s two largest political parties, slightly more so the Republicans than the Democrats, have sunk deep into corporate pockets since the early 1980s.

There is something dismal about government leaders who bend to the will of multinational corporations, and it is an indication of how far the political system has declined in the West over the past 40 years. The advent of modern day neoliberalism was championed firstly by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Reagan said that “government is the problem, not the solution” while Thatcher spoke of “no society, just individuals”, as both revealed their disregard for democratic ideals.

With corporations continuing to dictate across much of the world, it has meant that governments have been unable to sufficiently address their rising carbon emission levels. Just over 97% of scientists agree that “humans are primarily responsible for recent global warming” (3). As of December 2019 only two countries on earth, Morocco and the Gambia, had committed fully to reducing their carbon emissions to meet agreed targets. Global emissions reached an all time high in 2019, but during the first six months of 2020 worldwide emissions dropped by nearly 9%, as outlined by reports – due to a temporary slow down in human activity related to Covid-19, not because of governments tackling climate change. (4)

It can be important to provide an insight into the advantage that a non-neoliberal state, like China, has over its opposite numbers, America and Britain. Regarding healthcare, US and British hospitals have been stripped of “non-essential items” in recent decades, as health services are run according to neoliberal policy, ensuring that profiteering rules over patient needs. The result? In 1975 there were 1.45 million hospital beds in America, by 2018 it had dropped to 924,000 beds in US hospitals.

In Britain there were 240,000 hospital beds there in 2000, and by 2019 it had dropped to less than 164,000 beds in UK hospitals. Moreover, in both American and British hospitals there is often a critical shortage of medical equipment, from ventilators and drip stands to oxygen cylinders (5) (6). All of this has occurred while executives receive large sums in bonuses, an indication of how rotten the system is with governments unwilling to intervene.

In China, through the state’s direct intervention, the number of hospital beds increased from almost 3 million in 2008, to 6.5 million by 2018, more than doubling in the space of a decade (7). Chinese hospitals are well stocked with medical equipment and supplies, ensuring they are prepared in advance for a health crisis.

One consequence of handing power over to corporations – which are unaccountable to public scrutiny – is the significant rightward shift on the political spectrum across the world’s richest countries, most notably in America. Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican president from the 1950s who continued Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs including social security, would now be considered a somewhat radical figure. Mainstream Democrats today hold similar attitudes to mainstream Republicans from half a century ago. Barack Obama’s policies as president were those of a moderate Republican from two generations before.

Bernie Sanders’ political beliefs consist of a New Deal Democrat, placing him modestly to the left on the political spectrum. Many of Sanders’ policies would have been acceptable to Eisenhower, neither would they have surprised Richard Nixon, another Republican president. Yet Sanders is erroneously called “a socialist”, an almost extreme figure, by the political elite and media commentators. The establishment has been petrified of Sanders, mainly due to the popular support which he gathered around him. Sanders was unfairly denied the Democratic presidential nominee over four years ago, in favour of an unpopular candidate in Hillary Clinton. Sanders would most probably have defeated Donald Trump by a considerable margin in 2016.

The Republican Party of the 21st century, according to veteran US authors Thomas E. Mann and Norman Ornstein, is “a radical insurgency – ideologically extreme, scornful of facts and compromise, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition”. It has abandoned the pretense of being a normal parliamentary party, and will remain “ideologically extreme” with Trump at its head.

It is quite likely also that Sanders would have enjoyed a more comfortable victory than Joe Biden has in recent days. Worryingly, Trump has officially received over 10 million more votes than in 2016. Yet Trump’s exit from the White House early next year should be regarded as a very positive outcome. Though Biden can hardly be described as a progressive figure – he endorsed the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq while he is a strong NATO supporter – the next US president is still moderate in comparison to his soon-to-be predecessor.

The Biden administration could prove receptive to the left-leaning mass activism mobilised by Sanders, an indication of the latter’s success. Many Sanders supporters later voted for Biden, part of the reason for the high turnout. Trump may well run for the presidency again in 2024, when he will be 78, just a few months older than Biden is now.

During the past four years, Trump’s policies led most seriously to an increased risk of nuclear war occurring, while the press were distracted with disingenuous attempts to tie him to Moscow. Trump’s dismantling of arms control treaties resulted in “lowered barriers to nuclear war” according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Four more years of Trump could have culminated in a nuclear war erupting though, remarkably enough, this crucial topic was barely raised in campaign discussions. He still has two more months to wield his wrecking ball.

Entering office in January 2021, among Biden’s most pressing issues should be to safeguard and restore the weapons treaties, while establishing a civil dialogue with China and Russia. This is pertaining to global security risks and the threats posed by thermonuclear weapons and advanced delivery systems – near the borders of China and Russia we can note, not in the Western hemisphere. Whether Biden will actually seek de-escalation with America’s main rivals is doubtful, however. At least a third of Biden’s 23 member Pentagon transition team has links to the weapons industry. (8)

Another critical area is to reinstate America to the Paris Climate Agreement, as Biden has promised, but the nuclear threat remains the more severe of the two. The military analyst and author Daniel Ellsberg said last year, “It is true that climate change may totally disrupt civilization as we know it, but how many lives would it cost? Whatever the number, some form of civilization would probably survive. By contrast a nuclear winter, which has a non-zero possibility of occurring, would occasion near extinction”. (9)

In spite of how serious climate change becomes, the likelihood is that it will not result in the extinction of humans, nor in the end of our planet. The earth endured greater upheavals in the past and it survived, such as absorbing a large asteroid impact about 66 million years ago, which resulted in apocalyptic scenes and the dinosaurs’ rapid demise. Life returned to flourish again.

Climate change may eventually render organised human existence difficult, if not impossible, but that is not an extinction scenario, as Ellsberg suggests. Unlike with nuclear conflict, some people will surely survive, such as those residing in countries where the climate is still comfortable overall – like northern parts of America, Canada, China, Russia, etc. Though a warming world will negatively impact on the majority of species, some are currently thriving because of rising temperatures. These include mammals such as wild boar and red fox, both growing in numbers globally, along with increasingly common birds like Eurasian wren and long-tailed tit.

Climate change over the past 50 years has benefited much more bird species, for example, in England than it has harmed (10). Whereas one harsh winter always results in lasting declines in small birds, who do not have the bodily strength to withstand prolonged cold weather. A nuclear war between America and Russia or China, which within weeks would bring about the Ice Age-like nuclear winter, is a death knell for the above species, including humanity.

In July 1955 president Eisenhower, addressing a Russian delegation in Geneva, said that “It is essential we find some way of controlling the threat of the thermonuclear bomb. You know we both have enough weapons to wipe out the entire Northern Hemisphere from fallout alone. No spot would escape the fallout from an exchange of nuclear stockpiles” (11). Eisenhower’s warnings remain relevant. Dating to 1945 Eisenhower sharply criticised the atomic bombings of Japan, speaking of his “grave misgivings” and how he believed correctly, “Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary”. (12)

Atomic attacks on Japan were the instigation for the nuclear proliferation which later followed. Ellsberg noted that, “We have survived the nuclear danger for seventy years, although we have come close to conflict more frequently than the public realizes. I am not talking about just the Cuban Missile Crisis; in 1983, for example, we were also at the brink of a nuclear exchange, and there have been other instances. The risk of conflagration remains continuous and potentially catastrophic”.

A major failure of the mainstream press has been the lack of coverage it affords to the nuclear threat. The scant analysis devoted to nuclear weapons is limited largely to the Cuban Missile Crisis and atomic bombings of Japan, while some mass media outlets report on the annual Doomsday Clock announcement in January. There are powerful vested interests involved here, as nuclear arsenals are controlled by the arms corporations and military-industrial complex. Tens of billions in profits accrue for US arms manufacturers, like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, in the maintenance and upgrading of nuclear weapons systems (13). The US nuclear budget has been increasing year-on-year since 2015, dating to Barack Obama’s second term.

Expenditure on nuclear weapons rose further under the current US president, and Ellsberg observed that, “It didn’t start under Trump. But right now, under Trump, we are budgeting 40% higher than in the Cold War. It is obscene, it is crazy, it is wrong” (14). The potential consequences for the world are obvious, and the Atomic Bulletin noted in January of this year how, “any belief that the threat of nuclear war has been vanquished is a mirage”. (15)

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

1 Laura He, “Xi Jinping wants China’s private companies to fight alongside the Communist Party”, CNN, 22 September 2020

2 Tom Engelhardt, “The US Is a Failed State”, The Nation, 10 September 2020

3 Dana Nuccitelli, “Millions of times later, 97 percent climate consensus still faces denial”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 15 August 2019

4 Leslie Hook, “Global carbon emissions fell by 8.8% in first half of 2020, study shows”, Financial Times, 14 October 2020

5 Denis Campbell, “NHS hospitals facing serious shortages of vital equipment”, The Guardian, 25 January 2018

6 Chaun Powell, Soumi Saha, “The Untold Reality of Medical Device Shortages in the US”, The Health Care Blog, 5 November 2019

7 Lai Lin Thomala, “Number of hospital beds in China from 2008 to 2018”, Statista, 4 November 2019

8 Sarah Lazare, “One third of Biden’s Pentagon transition team hails from organizations financed by the weapons industry”, In These Times, 11 November 2020

9 Daniel Ellsberg, Allen White, “The Truth-Teller: From the Pentagon Papers to the Doomsday Machine”, Global Research, 19 May 2019

10 Adam Vaughan, “Climate change has created more bird losers than winners in England”, New Scientist, 2 September 2019

11 Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente (Viva Books, New Delhi, 1 Jan. 2005) p. 10

12 Timothy P. Carney, “’It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing’ — Why dropping the A-bombs was wrong”, Washington Examiner, 8 August 2013

13 Jon Schwarz, “How to dismantle the absurd profitability of nuclear weapons”, The Intercept, 4 May 2019

14 Daniel Ellsberg, Dennis Bernstein, “A conversation with legendary whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg”, Newcoldwar.org, 17 October 2019

15 John Mecklin, “Closer than ever: It is 100 seconds to midnight”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 23 January 2020

Featured image is by Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

“Anyone who cares for someone with a developmental disability, as well as for disabled people themselves [lives] every day in fear that their behavior will be misconstrued as suspicious, intoxicated or hostile by law enforcement.”—Steve Silberman, The New York Times

They shot at him fourteen times.

Walter Wallace Jr.—a troubled 27-year-old black man with a criminal history and mental health issues—was no saint. Still, he didn’t deserve to die in a hail of bullets fired by two police officers who clearly had not been adequately trained in how to de-escalate encounters with special needs individuals.

Image on the right: A screenshot taken from a video of a dispute between two police officers and Walter Wallace, Jr. (Fair use photo)

Wallace wasn’t unarmed—he was reportedly holding a knife when police confronted him—yet neither cop attempted to use non-lethal weapons on Wallace, who appeared to be in the midst of a mental health crisis. In fact, neither cop even possessed a taser. Wallace, fired upon repeatedly by both officers, was hit in the shoulder and chest and pronounced dead at the hospital.

Wallace’s death is yet one more grim statistic to add to that growing list of Americans—unarmed, impaired or experiencing a mental health crisis—who have been killed by police trained to shoot first and ask questions later.

It’s also a powerful reminder to think twice before you call the cops to carry out a welfare check on a loved one. Especially if that person is autistic, hearing impaired, mentally ill, elderly, suffering from dementia, disabled or might have a condition that hinders their ability to understand, communicate or immediately comply with an order.

Particularly if you value that person’s life.

There are some things that don’t change. Even as the nation grapples with the twin distractions of political theater and a viral pandemic, there are still deadlier forces at play.

This is one of them.

At a time when growing numbers of unarmed people have been shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety, even the most benign encounters with police can have fatal consequences.

Unfortunately, police—trained in the worst case scenario and thus ready to shoot first and ask questions later—increasingly pose a risk to anyone undergoing a mental health crisis or with special needs whose disabilities may not be immediately apparent or require more finesse than the typical freeze-or-I’ll-shoot tactics employed by America’s police forces.

Just last year, in fact, Gay Plack, a 57-year-old Virginia woman with bipolar disorder, was killed after two police officers—sent to do a welfare check on her—entered her home uninvited, wandered through the house shouting her name, kicked open her locked bedroom door, discovered the terrified woman hiding in a dark bathroom and wielding a small axe, and four seconds later, shot her in the stomach.

Four seconds.

That’s all the time it took for the two police officers assigned to check on Plack to decide to use lethal force against her (both cops opened fire on the woman), rather than using non-lethal options (one cop had a Taser, which he made no attempt to use) or attempting to de-escalate the situation.

The police chief defended his officers’ actions, claiming they had “no other option” but to shoot the 5 foot 4 inch “woman with carpal tunnel syndrome who had to quit her job at a framing shop because her hand was too weak to use the machine that cut the mats.”

This is what happens when you empower the police to act as judge, jury and executioner.

This is what happens when you indoctrinate the police into believing that their lives and their safety are paramount to anyone else’s.

Suddenly, everyone and everything else is a threat that must be neutralized or eliminated.

In light of the government’s ongoing efforts to predict who might pose a threat to public safety based on mental health sensor data (tracked by wearable data such as FitBits and Apple Watches and monitored by government agencies such as HARPA, the “Health Advanced Research Projects Agency”), encounters with the police could get even more deadly, especially if those involved have a mental illness or disability.

Indeed, disabled individuals make up a third to half of all people killed by law enforcement officers. (People of color are three times more likely to be killed by police than their white counterparts.) If you’re black and disabled, you’re even more vulnerable.

A study by the Ruderman Family Foundation reports that “disabled individuals make up the majority of those killed in use-of-force cases that attract widespread attention. This is true both for cases deemed illegal or against policy and for those in which officers are ultimately fully exonerated… Many more disabled civilians experience non-lethal violence and abuse at the hands of law enforcement officers.”

For instance, Nancy Schrock called 911 for help after her husband, Tom, who suffered with mental health issues, started stalking around the backyard, upending chairs and screaming about demons. Several times before, police had transported Tom to the hospital, where he was medicated and sent home after 72 hours. This time, Tom was tasered twice. He collapsed, lost consciousness and died.

In South Carolina, police tasered an 86-year-old grandfather reportedly in the early stages of dementia, while he was jogging backwards away from them. Now this happened after Albert Chatfield led police on a car chase, running red lights and turning randomly. However, at the point that police chose to shock the old man with electric charges, he was out of the car, on his feet, and outnumbered by police officers much younger than him.

In Georgia, campus police shot and killed a 21-year-old student who was suffering a mental health crisis. Scout Schultz was shot through the heart by campus police when he approached four of them late one night while holding a pocketknife, shouting “Shoot me!” Although police may have feared for their lives, the blade was still in its closed position.

In Oklahoma, police shot and killed a 35-year-old deaf man seen holding a two-foot metal pipe on his front porch (he used the pipe to fend off stray dogs while walking). Despite the fact that witnesses warned police that Magdiel Sanchez couldn’t hear—and thus comply—with their shouted orders to drop the pipe and get on the ground, police shot the man when he was about 15 feet away from them.

In Maryland, police (moonlighting as security guards) used extreme force to eject a 26-year-old man with Downs Syndrome and a low IQ from a movie theater after the man insisted on sitting through a second screening of a film. Autopsy results indicate that Ethan Saylor died of complications arising from asphyxiation, likely caused by a chokehold.

In Florida, police armed with assault rifles fired three shots at a 27-year-old nonverbal, autistic man who was sitting on the ground, playing with a toy truck. Police missed the autistic man and instead shot his behavioral therapist, Charles Kinsey, who had been trying to get him back to his group home. The therapist, bleeding from a gunshot wound, was then handcuffed and left lying face down on the ground for 20 minutes.

In Texas, police handcuffed, tasered and then used a baton to subdue a 7-year-old student who has severe ADHD and a mood disorder. With school counselors otherwise occupied, school officials called police and the child’s mother to assist after Yosio Lopez started banging his head on a wall. The police arrived first.

In New Mexico, police tasered, then opened fire on a 38-year-old homeless man who suffered from schizophrenia, all in an attempt to get James Boyd to leave a makeshift campsite. Boyd’s death provoked a wave of protests over heavy-handed law enforcement tactics.

In Ohio, police forcefully subdued a 37-year-old bipolar woman wearing only a nightgown in near-freezing temperatures who was neither armed, violent, intoxicated, nor suspected of criminal activity. After being slammed onto the sidewalk, handcuffed and left unconscious on the street, Tanisha Anderson died as a result of being restrained in a prone position.

And in North Carolina, a state trooper shot and killed a 29-year-old deaf motorist after he failed to pull over during a traffic stop. Daniel K. Harris was shot after exiting his car, allegedly because the trooper feared he might be reaching for a weapon.

These cases, and the hundreds—if not thousands—more that go undocumented every year speak to a crisis in policing when it comes to law enforcement’s failure to adequately assess, de-escalate and manage encounters with special needs or disabled individuals.

While the research is relatively scant, what has been happening is telling.

Over the course of six months, police shot and killed someone who was in mental crisis every 36 hours.

Among 124 police killings analyzed by The Washington Post in which mental illness appeared to be a factor, “They were overwhelmingly men, more than half of them white. Nine in 10 were armed with some kind of weapon, and most died close to home.”

But there were also important distinctions, reports the Post.

“This group was more likely to wield a weapon less lethal than a firearm. Six had toy guns; 3 in 10 carried a blade, such as a knife or a machete — weapons that rarely prove deadly to police officers. According to data maintained by the FBI and other organizations, only three officers have been killed with an edged weapon in the past decade. Nearly a dozen of the mentally distraught people killed were military veterans, many of them suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of their service, according to police or family members. Another was a former California Highway Patrol officer who had been forced into retirement after enduring a severe beating during a traffic stop that left him suffering from depression and PTSD. And in 45 cases, police were called to help someone get medical treatment, or after the person had tried and failed to get treatment on his own.”

The U.S. Supreme Court, as might be expected, has thus far continued to immunize police against charges of wrongdoing when it comes to use of force against those with a mental illness.

In a 2015 ruling, the Court declared that police could not be sued for forcing their way into a mentally ill woman’s room at a group home and shooting her five times when she advanced on them with a knife. The justices did not address whether police must take special precautions when arresting mentally ill individuals. (The Americans with Disabilities Act requires “reasonable accommodations” for people with mental illnesses, which in this case might have been less confrontational tactics.)

Where does this leave us?

For starters, we need better police training across the board, but especially when it comes to de-escalation tactics and crisis intervention.

A study by the National Institute of Mental Health found that CIT (Crisis Intervention Team)-trained officers made fewer arrests, used less force, and connected more people with mental-health services than their non-trained peers.

As The Washington Post points out:

“Although new recruits typically spend nearly 60 hours learning to handle a gun, according to a recent survey by the Police Executive Research Forum, they receive only eight hours of training to de-escalate tense situations and eight hours learning strategies for handling the mentally ill. Otherwise, police are taught to employ tactics that tend to be counterproductive in such encounters, experts said. For example, most officers are trained to seize control when dealing with an armed suspect, often through stern, shouted commands. But yelling and pointing guns is ‘like pouring gasoline on a fire when you do that with the mentally ill,’ said Ron Honberg, policy director with the National Alliance on Mental Illness.”

Second, police need to learn how to slow confrontations down, instead of ramping up the tension (and the noise).

In Maryland, police recruits are now required to take a four-hour course in which they learn “de-escalation tactics” for dealing with disabled individuals: speak calmly, give space, be patient.

One officer in charge of the Los Angeles Police Department’s “mental response teams” suggests that instead of rushing to take someone into custody, police should try to slow things down and persuade the person to come with them.

Third, with all the questionable funds flowing to police departments these days, why not use some of those funds to establish what one disability-rights activist describes as “a 911-type number dedicated to handling mental-health emergencies, with community crisis-response teams at the ready rather than police officers.”

Increasingly, funds are being directed towards technologies that support predictive policing and behavioral and health surveillance. For instance, HARPA (a healthcare counterpart to the Pentagon’s research and development arm DARPA) would take the lead in identifying and targeting “signs” of mental illness or violent inclinations among the populace by using artificial intelligence to collect data from Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google Home. The Trump Administration has already awarded contracts worth $22.8 million to seven major corporations to develop artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning connected to smartphone apps, wearable devices and software that can identify and trace contacts of “infected individuals,” keep track of “verified” COVID-19 test results, and monitor the health states of infected and “potentially” infected individuals.

It wouldn’t take much for these nascent predictive programs to give rise to healthcare versions of red flag gun laws, which allows the government to preemptively take action against individuals who may be perceived as potential threats. Where the problem arises is when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.

In the end, while we need to make encounters with police officers safer for people with suffering from mental illness or with disabilities, what we really need—as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People—is to make encounters with police safer for all individuals all across the board.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Professor Bhakdi is a Thai-German specialist in microbiology and co-author of Corona, False Alarm?: Facts and Figures.

According to Prof. Bhakdi, “this virus is no more deadly than a seasonal flu and for people under 70, it is even less deadly than the seasonal flu.

If you are under 70, your chances of dying with this virus are less than 0.1 percent. In fact, there are about 0.05 percent.”

Watch full interview below.

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Any discussion of Arab Americans must consider, at the outset, both the deep diversity as well as the shared attitudes and concerns that exist within the community. As is the case with most ethnic groups, Arab Americans are not a monolith. They hail from 22 Arabic-speaking countries. They are of different religious traditions. And while three-quarters are native born, some being fourth-generation American born, the rest are foreign-born naturalised citizens. Despite this rich diversity, a recent poll conducted by the Arab American Institute (AAI) revealed a great number of shared attitudes among significant numbers of respondents from all demographic subgroups.

While it has already been reported that the AAI poll found Arab American voters favouring Joe Biden over Donald Trump by a 59 per cent to 35 per cent, also explored were how Arab Americans viewed a number of Middle East related issues and how they evaluated both candidates’ handling of many of these same issues.

Weighed against a list of 14 major policy concerns, only 5 per cent of Arab Americans ranked resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a priority issue in determining their vote for President, the only foreign policy issue included in the list. Nevertheless, 44 per cent of the respondents indicated that resolving this conflict was one of the most important foreign policy challenges facing the US administration. In fact, this issue was ranked the most important of the seven Middle East-related concerns covered in the poll. In second place, at 33 per cent, was “meeting the humanitarian needs in Syria.“ Addressing the political and economic crisis in Lebanon” was third, at 28 per cent. These were followed by the ending the war in Yemen, improving relations with the Arab World, countering the threat posed by Iran, and stabilising and rebuilding Iraq, seen as important by between 16 per cent to 11 per cent of Arab Americans.

A strong plurality of Arab Americans saw Donald Trump’s handling of each of these foreign policy challenges as ineffective. And by a margin of 48 per cent to 32 per cent, the community’s voters said they believed that Joe Biden would be best at improving ties with the Arab World.

When asked for their attitudes about “several nations across the Middle East who are playing increasingly important roles”, Arab Americans were most favourably disposed toward Egypt, with 73 per cent saying they had favorable attitudes towards that country. Next in line was Turkey, with a 68 per cent favourable rating, followed by the United Arab Emirates at 66 per cent, Saudi Arabia at 56 per cent and Iran at 47 per cent.

Seventy-eight per cent of Arab Americans said they viewed the recently signed UAE and Bahrain agreements with Israel as a positive development, with 63 per cent expressing the hope that “it may contribute to making the Middle East a more peaceful region” and 57 per cent hoping that “it might contribute to advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace”.

The AAI poll also asked Arab Americans how they are most likely to define themselves, whether by country of origin, religion, or as Arab American. The preferred identity was simply “Arab American” (29 per cent), followed by country of origin (27 per cent), and religion as the preferred self-identity of only 15 per cent. “All three”, Arab American, country of origin and religion, was the choice of 17 per cent.

More than three-quarters of all Arab Americans said they were “very proud” of their ethnic heritage. It is important to note that they maintain this pride despite the fact that 61 per cent claim they have “personally experienced discrimination because of my ethnicity or country of origin”. This fear remains strong, with 70 per cent of all Arab American respondents saying they are “concerned about facing future discrimination because of their ethnicity or country of origin”.

In the end, what emerges from this survey of Arab Americans is that with all of its diversity, it is a community proud of its heritage, concerned with discrimination and sharing many attitudes on a range of issues both foreign and domestic.

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James J. Zogby is president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute.

This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Ho Chi Minh, in his eternal abode, will be savoring it with a heavenly smirk. Vietnam was the – virtual – host as the 10 Asean nations, plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, on the final day of the 37^th Asean Summit.

RCEP, eight years in the making, binds together 30% of the global economy and 2.2 billion people. It’s the first auspicious landmark of the Raging Twenties, which started with an assassination (of Iran’s Gen. Soleimani) followed by a global pandemic and now ominous intimations of a dodgy Great Reset.

RCEP seals East Asia as the undisputed prime hub of geoeconomics. The Asian Century in fact was already in the making way back in the 1990s. Among those Asians as well as Western expats who identified it, in 1997 I published my book 21st: The Asian Century (excerpts here.)

RCEP may force the West to do some homework, and understand that the main story here is not that RCEP “excludes the US” or that it’s “designed by China”. RCEP is an East Asia-wide agreement, initiated by Asean, and debated among equals since 2012, including Japan, which for all practical purposes positions itself as part of the industrialized Global North. It’s the first-ever trade deal that unites Asian powerhouses China, Japan and South Korea.

By now it’s clear, at last in vast swathes of East Asia, that RCEP’s 20 chapters will reduce tariffs across the board; simplify customs, with at least 65% of service sectors fully open, with increased foreign shareholding limits; solidify supply chains by privileging common rules of origin; and codify new e-commerce regulations.

When it comes to the nitty gritty, companies will be saving and be able to export anywhere within the 15-nation spectrum without bothering with extra, separate requirements from each nation. That’s what an integrated market is all about.

When RCEP meets BRI

The same scratched CD will be playing non-stop on how RCEP facilitates China’s “geopolitical ambitions”. That’s not the point. The point is RCEP evolved as a natural companion to China’s role as the main trade partner of virtually every East Asian player.

Which brings us to the key geopolitical and geoeconomic angle: RCEP is a natural companion to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which as a trade/sustainable development strategy spans not only East Asia but delves deeper into Central and West Asia.

The Global Times analysis is correct: the West has not ceased to distort BRI, without acknowledging how “the initiative they have been slandering is actually so popular in the vast majority of countries along the BRI route.”

RCEP will refocus BRI – whose “implementation” stage, according to the official timetable, starts only in 2021. The low-cost financing and special foreign exchange loans offered by the China Development Bank will become much more selective.

There will be a lot of emphasis on the Health Silk Road – especially across Southeast Asia. Strategic projects will be the priority: they revolve around the development of a network of economic corridors, logistic zones, financial centers, 5G networks, key sea ports and, especially short and mid-term, public health-related high-tech.

The discussions that led to the final RCEP draft were focused on a mechanism of integration that can easily bypass the WTO in case Washington persists on sabotaging it, as was the case during the Trump administration.

The next step could be the constitution of an economic bloc even stronger than the EU – not a far-fetched possibility when we have China, Japan, South Korea and the Asean 10 working together. Geopolitically, the top incentive, beyond an array of imperative financial compromises, would be to solidify something like Make Trade, Not War.

RCEP marks the irredeemable failure of the Obama era TPP, which was the “NATO on trade” arm of the “pivot to Asia” dreamed up at the State Department. Trump squashed TPP in 2017. TPP was not about a “counterbalance” to China’s trade primacy in Asia: it was about a free for all encompassing the 600 multinational companies which were involved in its draft. Japan and Malaysia, especially, saw thought it from the start.

RCEP also inevitably marks the irredeemable failure of the decoupling fallacy, as well as all attempts to drive a wedge between China and its East Asian trade partners. All these Asian players will now privilege trade among themselves. Trade with non-Asian nations will be an afterthought. And every Asean economy will give full priority to China.

Still, American multinationals won’t be isolated, as they will be able to profit from RCEP via their subsidiaries within the 15-nation members.

What about Greater Eurasia?

And then there’s the proverbial Indian mess. The official spin from New Delhi is that RCEP would “affect the livelihoods” of vulnerable Indians. That’s code for an extra invasion of cheap and efficient Chinese products.

India was part of the RCEP negotiations from the start. Pulling out – with a “we may join later” conditional – is once again a spectacular case of stabbing themselves in the back. The fact is the Hindutva fanatics behind Modi-ism bet on the wrong horse: the US-fostered Quad partnership cum Indo-Pacific strategy, which spells out as containment of China and thus preclude closer trade ties.

No “Make in India” will compensate for the geoeconomic, and diplomatic, blunder – which crucially implies India distancing itself from the Asean 10. RCEP solidifies China, not India, as the undisputed engine of East Asian growth amid the re-positioning of supply chains post-Covid.

A very interesting geoeconomic follow-up is what will Russia do. For the moment, Moscow’s priority involves a Sisyphean struggle: manage the turbulent relationship with Germany, Russia’s largest import partner.

But then there’s the Russia-China strategic partnership –which should be enhanced economically. Moscow’s concept of Greater Eurasia involves deeper involvement both East and West, including the expansion of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), which, for instance, has free trade deals with Asean nations such as Vietnam.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is not a geoeconomics mechanism. But it’s intriguing to see what President Xi Jinping said at his keynote speech at the Council of Heads of State of the SCO last week.

This is Xi’s key quote:

“We must firmly support relevant countries in smoothly advancing major domestic political agendas in accordance with law; maintaining political security & social stability, and resolutely oppose external forces interfering in internal affairs of member states under any pretext.”

Apparently this has nothing to do with RCEP. But there are quite a few intersections. No interference of “external forces”. Beijing taking into consideration the Covid-19 vaccine needs of SCO members – and this could be extended to RCEP. The SCO – as well as RCEP – as a multilateral platform for member states to mediate disputes.

All of the above points to the inter-sectionality of BRI, EAEU, SCO, RCEP, BRICS+ and AIIB, which translates as closer Asia – and Eurasia – integration, geoeconomically and geopolitically. While the dogs of dystopia bark, the Asian – and Eurasian – caravan – keeps marching on.

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Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: China’s Belt and Road Initiative will be given new momentum with new RCEP trade pact. Photo: iStock

Both Lithuania and Poland are attempting to challenge Russian and Belarusian energy dominance in the Baltics. Although Poland is trying to wean itself off Russian energy reliance, Lithuania is acting far more aggressively by attempting to force Latvia to follow their anti-Russian/Belarusian agenda.

The Lithuanian Seimas (Parliament) called for strict political pressure on neighboring Latvia, a fellow Baltic member of the EU and NATO. This response by the Seimas is because of Latvia’s pragmatic desire to ensure energy security through trade relations with Russia and Belarus.

The Lithuanian Seimas agreed that relations with Latvia needed to move from friendly appeals to direct political pressure, which also includes threats and blackmail. The Seimas Committee on European Affairs called on the Conservative-led new government to increase pressure on Latvian leaders in Riga over alleged violations of Latvia’s 2018 tripartite agreement on electricity trade with third countries.

Latvia buys electricity produced by the Belarusian Astrava nuclear power plant, and this is a major problem for Lithuanian leaders. Lithuania considers the Astrava power plant to be a threat, not only to the health of the Lithuanian citizens, but also to the energy security of the entire European Union.

“After the start of operation of the Belarusian nuclear power plant, the analysis of electricity flows shows that Latvia successfully sells the electricity entering Lithuania through the Lithuanian-Belarusian connection, which remains exclusively in Lithuania. In this way, Lithuanian consumers finance Lukashenko’s regime,” said MP Dainius Kreivys from the conservative Homeland Union Party.

This means that calls for political pressure against Riga are not empty words, but an action program of the Lithuanian government. This pressure will also come with approval from Brussels and Washington as they claim Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is illegitimate. Thus, Minsk and Moscow must prepare for a difficult confrontation not only on the political front, but also on the Baltic energy one.

Baltic States are rapidly preparing to synchronize their energy networks with Europe so they can disconnect from the BRELL (Belarus, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) energy ring in 2025. This means that Vilnius and Riga will have to rely mainly on Poland and a submarine power cable with Sweden, which breaks several times a year.

It becomes clear that from 2025, Riga will become fully dependent on European electricity transit through the territory of Lithuania. It is clear that transit must also be paid for, meaning Latvia will become entirely reliant on Lithuania for the sake of European electricity. This is especially curious considering electricity from the Belarusian nuclear power plants is perhaps the closest source of cheap energy.

Approved by the Ministries of Energy of the three Baltic States, Latvia and Estonia reserve the right to import missing amounts of electricity from Russia until their complete disconnection from BRELL. However, according to Lithuanian conservatives, there is no guarantee that Russia will not supply electricity via Belarus to Latvia and Estonia. This means that there is a real threat that this so-called “dangerous electricity” will enter the Lithuanian and pan-European electricity networks. It is this uncertainty that causes much outrage in the new Lithuanian government. Thus, Riga must be ready for the Lithuanians to try and overthrow their government in the next four years and essentially turn Latvia into their vassal.

Lithuania’s pressure against Latvia also comes at a time when Russian state-owned Gazprom has applied for changes in the price of gas supplied to Poland under the Yamal contract. The Polish oil and gas company PGNiG expressed confidence that Gazprom did not meet their contractual requirements. Poland has previously asked for gas prices to be reviewed and reduced; however, this is not provided for in the contract.

An agreement on the supply of gas to Poland was concluded in 1996 to the tune of about 10 billion cubic meters per year. This agreement does not conclude until 2022. In addition, Warsaw must receive at least 8.7 billion cubic meters under the “take it or pay it” rule. Poland’s reaction is all the more surprising given that the country has no plans to extend the long-term gas supply agreement with Russia anyway. Moreover, Poland is filing counterclaims.

Earlier this year, a Polish company won a dispute over the revision of gas prices for supplies from November 2014. Gazprom transferred $1.5 billion to PGNiG, but is still challenging the decision in the Court of Appeal. This is a significant risk for Warsaw as it may lose more than one lawsuit as a result. This penalty – compensation for Gazprom’s allegedly high prices when Poland went to arbitration in spring 2015 – gave the impression that the gas price was not in line with the situation on the European energy market.

In addition, this autumn Poland filed a new $7.6 billion claim against Gazprom’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Poland does not consider itself a major consumer of gas but rather a potential energy hub despite having no gas distribution center, no free gas volume, and no business approach. Rather, Warsaw is hinging its bets on the Baltic Pipeline which intends to connect Poland with Norwegian energy via Denmark by October 2022.

However, there is a noteworthy nuance: the construction of the pipeline requires permission from Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2, and one of the main shareholders of both companies is Gazprom.

Therefore, no matter what Poland attempts, it finds itself in the same position – needing to cooperate and coordinate with Russia to achieve its energy interests. The rest of the Baltics is in this same position too, and although Latvia may recognize this reality, Lithuania is still trying to bully its Baltic neighbor to move it away from Russian and Belarusian energy sources.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Health care will be a major issue early in the new Biden/Harris administration. Unemployment is still high with over a million people applying for unemployment benefits last week and 42.6% of working age people without a job.

In the United States, losing employment often means losing health insurance. On top of the 30 million people who are already uninsured, it is estimated that nearly 15 million people lost their health insurance due to becoming unemployed as of June. The current number of people without health insurance is not known, but as Biden takes office, it could surpass the 44 million who were uninsured when Obama took office in 2008.

Biden’s healthcare plan looks like a replay of the health reform process of 2009-10 when the Democrats effectively divided the movement in support of national improved Medicare for all and pushed through the so-called Affordable Care Act (ACA), which passed without Republican support.  Health insurance and pharmaceutical corporate profits have soared since then while people struggle to afford healthcare.

In a time of the COVID-19 pandemic when over 250,000 people have already died and the University of Washington predicts over 500,000 deaths by the end of February, we cannot allow a repeat of the failed ACA. It is unconscionable to create anything less than a universal single payer healthcare system.

2012, rally outside the Supreme Court. Popular Resistance.

The ACA Challenge in the Supreme Court

This week, oral arguments in a case against the ACA were heard by the US Supreme Court. This is the third Constitutional challenge to the law and the second time the individual mandate, which requires people to have health insurance or pay a penalty, has been questioned.

During the first challenge, I was part of a group of fifty physicians and lawyers who filed an amicus brief with the court arguing that national improved Medicare for all is the most Constitutionally-sound healthcare system. Read the open letter here: amicus-brief-open-letter.

Traditional Medicare has been our national healthcare system for seniors and people with certain health conditions since 1965. It meets the definition of “taxation for the general welfare” in Article 1 section 8 of the Constitution. On the other hand, the ACA uses our public dollars to subsidize private health insurers with hundreds of billions of dollars every year. Those health insurers then pay their CEOs multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses and dividends to their stockholders. The Congressional Budget Office estimates those subsidies will be $920 billion in 2021.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, private health insurers are taking over our public insurances, Medicaid and Medicare. Most Medicaid enrollees are in plans managed by private insurers. Over a third of seniors are in private “Medicare Advantage” plans that rip them off when they have health problems. Private insurers are working aggressively to increase their Medicare takeover. Private insurers also provide health plans to public employees and the military. Modern Healthcare reports that by 2017, 50% or more of the revenue of the top health insurance corporations came from the government.

Many of us saw what the ACA actually was, a bailout for the private insurance industry that had raised premiums so high people couldn’t afford them. The ACA not only subsidized people purchasing health insurance, it required the government to sell the plans and forced people to buy them with the individual mandate.

Ten years after its passage, the ACA has left our healthcare system in a similar state to when it began. Healthcare costs are too high. People are delaying and avoiding necessary care. Hundreds of thousands of households still become bankrupt each year due to medical illness. And at a time when support for national improved Medicare for all is high, the incoming president is advocating for more of the same.

Understanding the Biden Health Plan

During the 2009-10 health reform process, the Obama/Biden administration used the idea of a “public option” to divide progressives away from the movement for national improved Medicare for all. Tens of millions of dollars went to unions and so-called progressive organizations whose task was to convince people that national improved Medicare for all was asking for too much but what was “on the table” was a public option that they argued was achievable and could lead to single payer healthcare.

None of what they said made sense from a health policy perspective but with enough groups saying it, people were convinced it was true. In reality, adding one more insurance to the mix of thousands of plans doesn’t change much. As exists with Medicare and Medicare advantage plans, the healthy population is courted for the private plans and when people become ill, they leave those private plans for the public plan. This puts the burden of paying for care on the underfunded public plan. When it struggles, this is used to reinforce the myth that private is better.

If a public option, the foundation of the Biden plan, were created, it would struggle to compete with the well-marketed private plans. Eventually, it would turn into a high-risk pool and fail. If anything, it would be a relief valve for the private insurers where they could offload expensive patients.

What was most striking during the last health reform process is that all along the widely-promoted “public option” was never intended to be in the final legislation. It was a ploy to keep progressives from demanding single payer healthcare. In December, 2009, when the Senate was being pressured by groups to include a public option in their legislation, as the House had done, the White House started pushing the Senate not to include it. Their plan, which they executed, was to have two different bills from the House and Senate so the final legislation would be crafted in a conference of a select group from the House and Senate in order to pick and choose what was in it. And, of course, the public option was not in the final bill.

Biden claims that he will take action to reduce the costs of pharmaceuticals. The most effective way to do this is through a national single payer healthcare system. When the government is the single purchase of goods, like medicines, it has the most leverage to reduce the prices. Without that, reducing prices in one part of the healthcare system, such as Medicare, which Biden proposes, will result in higher prices in another sector. The pharmaceutical corporations have a legal responsibility to protect their investors’ interests. They always find a way.

A single payer system also has the ability to nationalize parts or the whole pharmaceutical industry if needed to protect the public good. Imagine if production of lifesaving medications like insulin was public. Nobody would have to ration their doses or die because they couldn’t afford it. Imagine if a COVID-19 vaccine were publicly manufactured. The government could increase production and instead of selling to the highest bidder, it could prioritize giving the vaccine to those who need it the most. This is how other nations operate their healthcare systems.

A final point is that, as happened in 2009-10, an important issue will be used to win the support of Democratic Party voters and convince them to support it. Last time, they used pre-existing conditions and the cost of healthcare for women. This time, it is reproductive rights. People will be pushed to support an inadequate reform because they will be told that not supporting it means they will take away reproductive rights. This issue will also be used to differentiate the Democrats from the Republicans.

What we ought to be demanding is what we need: a national universal publicly-financed healthcare system such as national improved Medicare for all or a fully public system as exists in the United Kingdom that includes all necessary care, which means reproductive care. We must not allow the Democrats to weaken our demand that every person in the United States have access to the care they need without fear of financial ruin. The private health insurers must go. They are parasites sucking the blood out of our healthcare system and they will never be satisfied until they have it all.

How We Win Universal Healthcare

The Democrats are using the same tactics they used in the last go-round because they work. People cannot allow themselves to be fooled again. How to avoid that was the subject of last week’s newsletter. It is critical that people know what those tactics are, recognize them when they are being used and take action to counter them.

If we are able to hold firm in our demand that we will accept nothing less than healthcare for everyone, not promises of healthcare for everyone but an actual healthcare system that can deliver that, then we will win. At every turn, when the Democrats offer less than that, their offer must be forcefully rejected.

Over the years, the biggest impediment to not achieving a universal healthcare system is that people don’t believe we have the power to win it. They believe the excuses that are used such as it is asking for too much or there isn’t the “political will” to pass it. Who creates “political will”? The people do!

The majority of people in the United States support a universal healthcare system. The opportunity to win it is now because the recession means our uninsured numbers will soar and the current healthcare system cannot address the COVID-19 crisis. As the crisis worsens, our voices must be louder. Universal healthcare is imperative.

And when we win this struggle, it will have two major impacts that will lead to more victories. First, it will demonstrate that people have power to achieve transformational systemic change. And second, it will create a social solidarity – everyone rich or poor in the same system – which will demonstrate that universal systems are superior to the privatized and complicated mess we have now. When we are all in the same system, we all have an interest in making it the best it can be instead of poor systems for the poor and high-quality systems for the rich. We will go on to demand other universal rights such as housing, education, internet access, jobs with a living wage and more.

This time around, the “Yes we can” slogan so common under Obama must mean that, yes, the people can overcome the plutocrats and put people over profits.

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Margaret Flowers writes on and directs Popular Resistance where this article was originally published. 

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Dispel the “Magical Belief in Authority”. Confront The Greed For Power and Violence. Strengthen Community Feelings

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, November 16 2020

Autonomy is the state and attitude to life of self-determination, independence and self-administration. Philosophically, it is the ability to see oneself as a being of freedom and to act from this freedom. Equipped with these special abilities, however, man always hands over to another person the power to decide on his life and his future.

Joe Biden’s Love Affair with the CIA

By Daniel Boguslaw, November 16 2020

The CIA and its assemblage of operatives, directors, and informants are easy targets for the ire of anyone with even a dim awareness of the terror and harm they have caused. But none of these crimes could have come to pass without the combination of tacit and explicit approval from politicians like Joe Biden, charged with regulating an arm of government defined by its will to crush democracy at home and abroad.

Canadian Military Wants to Establish New Organization to Use Propaganda, Other Techniques to Influence Canadians

By David Pugliese, November 16 2020

The Canadian Forces wants to establish a new organization that will use propaganda and other techniques to try to influence the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of Canadians.

Even a Military-Enforced Quarantine Can’t Stop the Virus, Study Reveals

By Jeffrey A. Tucker, November 16 2020

No national news story that I have found highlighted the most important finding of all: extreme quarantine plus frequent testing and isolation among military recruits did nothing to stop the virus.

UK Health Study Found 26,000 “Extra” Non-COVID Deaths at Home Amid Lockdowns

By Zero Hedge, November 16 2020

BBC recently reported some shocking statistics regarding UK health, but which will perhaps come as no surprise to those critics who warned that far-reaching national lockdowns would cause other unseen adverse effects.

COVID-19: Politicisation, “Corruption,” and Suppression of Science

By Kamran Abbasi, November 16 2020

Politicians and governments are suppressing science. They do so in the public interest, they say, to accelerate availability of diagnostics and treatments. They do so to support innovation, to bring products to market at unprecedented speed. Both of these reasons are partly plausible; the greatest deceptions are founded in a grain of truth. But the underlying behaviour is troubling.

Remembering “The Never Ending War” During the Time “We Should Never Forget”

By Michael Welch, Richard Sanders, and Dr. Jacques R. Pauwels, November 14 2020

This past year was the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. While the targets of that war absolutely needed to be brought down, the role of Great Britain and the United States in building up the Nazi military and its capability of engaging other powers should also be recalled.

Making Sense of the Oriental Mindframe

By Prof. Ruel F. Pepa, November 15 2020

The oriental mind’s presupposition is: We speak from experience. What therefore matters more is not solely what is spoken of (though of course, it has also its own degree of importance) but the experience — shallow or deep — that leads to the utterance.

US Coup d’Etat? Joe Biden “President-Selected” Not Elected. Evidence of Systemic Fraud

By Stephen Lendman, November 16 2020

The ‘Great Reset’: A Technocratic Agenda that Waited Years for a Global Crisis to Exploit

By Tim Hinchliffe, November 16 2020

In the face of a global pandemic, an un-elected body of global bureaucrats based in Davos, Switzerland has asked the world to trust its vision of a technocratic “great reset,” knowing full well the public would never go for such a request had it not been for the golden opportunity they’d all been waiting for.

Biden’s Pentagon Transition Team Members Funded by the Arms Industry

By Dave DeCamp, November 16 2020

On Tuesday, Joe Biden released a list of transition teams for the various departments in his future White House. The Pentagon transition team for Biden consists of 23 people, many of whom hail from hawkish think tanks.

“Biggest Monster Rebounds!” COVID “Pandemic” Has Triggered a Global Hunger and Population Displacement. UN Report

By Carla Stea, November 15 2020

The Report Shows how the Pandemic has Driven up Food Insecurity and Increased Vulnerability Among Migrants, Families Reliant on Remittances and Communities Forced From their Homes by conflict, violence and Disasters.

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See more articles on Asia-PacificResearch.com

The Asia-Pacific Research website at www.asia-pacificresearch.com publishes news and feature articles, background research and analysis on social, economic, geopolitical and environmental issues with a specific focus on the dynamics of the Asia-Pacific region.  APR combines Asia-Pacific country level news with a broader regional and international perspective of World events. Click here to visit Asia-PacificResearch.com.

The New England Journal of Medicine has published a study that goes to the heart of the issue of lockdowns. The question has always been whether and to what extent a lockdown, however extreme, is capable of suppressing the virus. If so, you can make an argument that at least lockdowns, despite their astronomical social and economic costs, achieve something. If not, nations of the world have embarked on a catastrophic experiment that has destroyed billions of lives, and all expectation of human rights and liberties, with no payoff at all. 

AIER has long highlighted studies that show no gain in virus management from lockdowns. Even as early as April, a major data scientist said that this virus becomes endemic in 70 days after the first round of infection, regardless of policies. The largest global study of lockdowns compared with deaths as published in The Lancet found no association between coercive stringencies and deaths per million.

To test further might seem superfluous but, for whatever reason, governments all over the world, including in the US, still are under the impression that they can affect viral transmissions through a range of “nonpharmaceutical interventions” (NPIs) like mandatory masks, forced human separation, stay-at-home orders, bans of gatherings, business and school closures, and extreme travel restrictions. Nothing like this has been tried on this scale in the whole of human history, so one might suppose that policy makers have some basis for their confidence that these measures accomplish something.

A study conducted by Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in cooperation with the Naval Medical Research Center sought to test lockdownism along with testing and isolation. In May, 3,143 new recruits to the Marines were given the option to participate in a study of frequent testing under extreme quarantine. The study was called CHARM, which stands for COVID-19 Health Action Response for Marines. Of the recruits asked, a total of 1,848 young people agreed to be guinea pigs in this experiment which involved “which included weekly qPCR testing and blood sampling for IgG antibody assessment.” In addition, the CHARM study volunteers who did test positively “on the day of enrollment (day 0) or on day 7 or day 14 were separated from their roommates and were placed in isolation.”

What did the recruits have to do? The study explains, and, as you will see, they faced an even more strict regime that has existed in civilian life in most places. All recruits, even those not in the CHARM group, did the following.

All recruits wore double-layered cloth masks at all times indoors and outdoors, except when sleeping or eating; practiced social distancing of at least 6 feet; were not allowed to leave campus; did not have access to personal electronics and other items that might contribute to surface transmission; and routinely washed their hands. They slept in double-occupancy rooms with sinks, ate in shared dining facilities, and used shared bathrooms. All recruits cleaned their rooms daily, sanitized bathrooms after each use with bleach wipes, and ate preplated meals in a dining hall that was cleaned with bleach after each platoon had eaten. Most instruction and exercises were conducted outdoors. All movement of recruits was supervised, and unidirectional flow was implemented, with designated building entry and exit points to minimize contact among persons. All recruits, regardless of participation in the study, underwent daily temperature and symptom screening. Six instructors who were assigned to each platoon worked in 8-hour shifts and enforced the quarantine measures. If recruits reported any signs or symptoms consistent with Covid-19, they reported to sick call, underwent rapid qPCR testing for SARS-CoV-2, and were placed in isolation pending the results of testing.

Instructors were also restricted to campus, were required to wear masks, were provided with preplated meals, and underwent daily temperature checks and symptom screening. Instructors who were assigned to a platoon in which a positive case was diagnosed underwent rapid qPCR testing for SARS-CoV-2, and, if the result was positive, the instructor was removed from duty. Recruits and instructors were prohibited from interacting with campus support staff, such as janitorial and food-service personnel. After each class completed quarantine, a deep bleach cleaning of surfaces was performed in the bathrooms, showers, bedrooms, and hallways in the dormitories, and the dormitory remained unoccupied for at least 72 hours before reoccupancy.

The reputation of Marine basic training is that it is tough going but this really does take it to another level. Also, this is an environment where those in charge do not mess around. There was surely close to 100% compliance, as compared with, for example, a typical college campus.

What were the results? The virus still spread, though 90% of those who tested positive were without symptoms. Incredibly, 2% of the CHARM recruits still contracted the virus, even if all but one remained asymptomatic. “Our study showed that in a group of predominantly young male military recruits, approximately 2% became positive for SARS-CoV-2, as determined by qPCR assay, during a 2-week, strictly enforced quarantine.”

And how does this compare to the control group that was not tested and not isolated in the case of a positive case?

Have a look at this chart from the study:

New England Journal of Medicine

Which is to say that the nonparticipants actually contracted the virus at a slightly lower rate than those who were under an extreme regime. Conversely, extreme enforcement of NPIs plus more frequent testing and isolation was associated with a greater degree of infection.

I’m grateful to Don Wolt for drawing my attention to this study, which, so far as I know, has received very little attention from any media source at all, despite having been published in the New England Journal of Medicine on November 11.

Here are four actual media headlines about the study that miss the point entirely:

• CNN: “Many military Covid-19 cases are asymptomatic, studies show”
• SciTech Daily: “Asymptomatic COVID-19 Transmission Revealed Through Study of 2,000 Marine Recruits”
• ABC: “Broad study of Marine recruits shows limits of COVID-19 symptom screening”
• US Navy: “Navy/Marine Corps COVID-19 Study Findings Published in New England Journal of Medicine”

No national news story that I have found highlighted the most important finding of all: extreme quarantine plus frequent testing and isolation among military recruits did nothing to stop the virus.

The study is important because of the social structure of control here. It’s one thing to observe no effects from national lockdowns. There are countless variables here that could be invoked as cautionary notes: demographics, population density, preexisting immunities, degree of compliance, and so on. But with this Marine study, you have a near homogeneous group based on age, health, and densities of living. And even here, you see confirmed what so many other studies have shown: lockdowns are pointlessly destructive. They do not manage the disease. They crush human liberty and produce astonishing costs, such as 5.53 million years of lost life from the closing of schools alone.

The lockdowners keep telling us to pay attention to the science. That’s what we are doing. When the results contradict their pro-compulsion narrative, they pretend that the studies do not exist and barrel ahead with their scary plans to disable all social functioning in the presence of a virus. Lockdowns are not science. They never have been. They are an experiment in social/political top-down management that is without precedent in cost to life and liberty.

[The earliest version of this article misstated the conditions of the control group. They were equally locked down with those who participated in the study. The difference between the two concerned testing frequency and the isolation response. This does not affect this article’s conclusion; indeed it strengthens it: even under extreme measures, the virus spread, and more so with the extra measure intended to control the virus. Nearly all infections were without symptoms.]

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Featured image is from AIER

This question could have both positive and negative implications. It is positive, on the one hand, if taken in the context of security and protection as in a situation where one is in a particularly unfamiliar place at an unholy hour where s/he feels uneasy and worried. Police presence is usually what we have in mind (not necessarily in places like the Philippines where ordinary people fear the police and feel uncomfortable when and where there are policemen milling around), at least in the context of a civilized European city. Are we being watched by police authorities ready to protect us in troubled times, i.e., when disturbance or disorder presents the possibility of a clear and present danger, so to speak?

On the other hand, the question could take a negative undertone in the context of a police state where the same police authorities are being used by the dictatorial leadership of a country to closely watch and monitor the activities of people, particularly those suspected to be involved in clandestine undertakings with the intent to topple the powers-that-be. In this circumstance, the police and the armed forces as well are given extrajudicial powers to implement draconian measures and execute tyrannical orders issued by the despotic leadership. This is basically a condition in a country where there is curtailment of the citizens’ freedom to congregate and ventilate in public their opinions critical of the failures of government to deliver and fulfill its mandate for the welfare and benefit of the nation.

In less economically developed – or to put it in a more sociologically technical parlance, developing – countries, this ambiance takes the semblance of legitimacy through the imposition of martial rule whose conditions are appropriated from the nation’s constitution itself. In so many instances, victims of police and military intimidation, persecution, and brutality are ordinary and innocent people initially set up by an all-encompassing state surveillance network and later unjustly indicted through the unilateral decision orchestrated within a judicial system that absolutely functions at the behest of its authoritarian overlords.

It is in this negative aspect of “being watched” – or to put it in a more politically accurate term, surveillance – that makes the question “Are we being watched?” worth considering. Nevertheless, a deeper question that spontaneously arises from its affirmation, i.e., if we really believe that we are watched, is, “Why are we being watched?” This question doesn’t, however, apply across the board since it is not accurate to assume the universality of the issue presented by the first question. In other words, we affirm that we are being watched if and only if we are subjects of particular interest for those who have realized and decided afterward that we are worth watching for whatever serious and compelling reason(s) they have.

The art and practice of surveillance have already reached their apex with the leaps and bounds achieved in the “third wave civilization” (with apologies to Alvin Toffler) also known as the Information Age. Tracking lairs of criminal elements has already become a no-sweat operation. However, on a more disturbing side of the coin, even the shrouded activities and conspiratorial schemes of undercover agents of powerful countries operating outside of their territorial jurisdictions are very efficient and effective in tracking down government enemies through the information superhighway.

Though not exactly in a totalitarian political milieu, this situation is now a reality in the present dispensation known as the “Age of Information”. The condition may not be as harsh as the tyrannical ambiance in Orwell’s fiction but in our time, the constant flow of information via online monitoring even on the most guarded secrets of an individual person’s daily conduct of life may be accessed through the most sophisticated instruments and devices electronically connected/linked to computers and hand-held equipment we use and without which life doesn’t seem liveable to many of us on a daily basis. In other words, we denizens of the post-modern world are generally in one way or another being subjected to constant surveillance by the powers that be both in global and domestic landscapes. There may not be commensurate punishment yet at this point in time for every misdeed and misconduct people do but the fast-evolving information technology we have had in the post-modern reality could sooner or later be utilized by despotic and authoritarian regimes as a concrete tool to effect oppressive and onerous measures against their own citizens. If actual oppression is conceived as a real possibility in 1984 by sowing widespread terror even with all the technological limitations in the plot’s context, could such possibility be more highly conceivable in the present post-modern era with all the sophisticated technological devices the age of cyberspace has at its beck and call? [“Nineteen Eighty-Four or Brave New World?” by Prof. Ruel F. Pepa]

Yet, more than what we may associate with intimidation, harassment, and oppression in the political context, we could, at this point, advance the general notion that surveillance of subjects of interest in whatever conceivable context we could think of is fundamentally effected for manipulative purposes and more sophisticatedly for exploitative intentions. It has almost become an effortless endeavor for these manipulators and exploiters to watch the movements and activities of people of interest through well-formulated machinations utilizing the seemingly unlimited power of the Internet with all the available software applications and tracking devices that unceasingly evolve in the boundless realm of the cyberspace.

This entire scenario triggers the question, “Who among us are being watched?” In other words, who among us are the subjects of interest that have drawn the attention of these manipulators and exploiters? The truth is, there are millions of us who are wired to the inexhaustible reaches of the cyberworld’s information superhighway. We have left traceable “footprints” of habits, predispositions, liabilities, proclivities, enchantments, desires, hopes and wishes, among others which are all recorded and thus detectable within and through the universal archive of a “global village” (with apologies to Marshall McLuhan) accessed online via the World Wide Web. In the most trivial consideration, a lot of us have already exposed online our vulnerabilities and weaknesses. At this point, we get into a cycle and return to the original question,

“Are we being watched?” and of course, the re-affirmation that yes, we who have been wired are definitely being watched.

But the crucial issue is, are we being watched for our safety and protection, or are we within the amplitude of a landscape ruled and overseen by the mighty controllers of the world order for the safety and protection of their very own jealously guarded global interest?

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

Featured image is from Countercurrents

According to the findings of the human sciences of anthropology, sociology and psychology, human beings have a healthy mind and natural powers of judgement by nature. This common sense works empirically, i.e. it makes concrete judgements based on everyday life experience and observation. Man is also autonomous. Autonomy is the state and attitude to life of self-determination, independence and self-administration. Philosophically, it is the ability to see oneself as a being of freedom and to act from this freedom. Equipped with these special abilities, however, man always hands over to another person the power to decide on his life and his future.

In the democracies of the Western world, for example, corrupt politicians are elected to high government offices and are regarded as respectable authorities. With this attribution, politicians immediately associate claims to power, create a relationship of superiority and subordination and enforce the instructions of their clients – the global “power elite” – on the citizens. In doing so, they pursue policies at the expense of the working population that enable a nefarious “billionaire clique” to steal together so many billions of dollars that they can buy almost anyone: from corrupt politicians to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Many adults react to these politicians like children or like primitive man reacted: in the form of a “magical belief in authority”: uncritical and clouded by moods, feelings and promises of happiness. And that has consequences: The belief in authority inevitably leads to a sense of belonging to authority, which usually triggers the reflex of absolute spiritual obedience and paralysis of the mind.

Hand over power to no one! To no other human being, but also to no supernatural being. After all, we are embedded in the community of conspecifics on whose support and solidarity we could build. However, the majority of adult humans cling to an imaginary supernatural power and try to influence it favourably. Is this an expression of human helplessness and lack of self-confidence?

Not only is the intelligence of full-minded adults intimidated and degraded, but also their will and self-confidence. In many cases this leads to fatalism, feelings of guilt, depression and the inability to connect with fellow citizens. For this reason, all possible motivations of the deplored human reaction patterns must be explored – in particular authoritarian and religious education at home and school and the influence of society.

All those involved in the education of children and young people should do their utmost to avoid using authoritarian education methods to make the adolescent generation “obedient” and “compliant” on its way into adult life. Nor should they burden them with the mind-numbing “ballast” of religion. Only in this way can the young people, as free thinking, courageous and compassionate citizens, one day steer the world in a different direction.

Fostering and strengthening community feelings rather than violence and greed for power

Human nature

It is an incontrovertible insight of scientific psychology that man is a naturally social being, oriented towards the community of his fellow human beings and endowed with a rational faculty, with a natural inclination towards the good, the knowledge of truth and community life. This characteristic helps him to better recognise the laws of nature or what is right in nature. “Natural law” says that there is something that is right by nature. It differs from the so-called “positive right” established by man in that man is entitled to it simply because he is human.

Since it is not created by any ruler or majority decision of any kind, it is pre-state law. This means that the laws of a state must be measured critically against natural law. Knowing what is right by nature makes it possible to confront totalitarian ideologies and dictatorships from a firm human standpoint and to feel a sense of outrage against injustice and inhumanity. (1)

People also always strive for a better life. The desire for peace and freedom is at the forefront. All people want to be free and live in peace, without war and without violence. But the reality is different. As long as people remain silent, we have democracy. As long as they remain silent, pay taxes and join the military at the right time, we have democracy. But this democracy is nothing more than a “silent dictatorship”.

The clandestine “transformation” of the “silent” into the “open” dictatorship

Not only the events of the past 120 years, with two World Wars and countless other wars, but also the events surrounding the corona pandemic declared by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in early 2020 have given us a thorough lesson in the historical significance of power and violence. In the following months, the “transformation” of the form of government of democracy or “silent dictatorship” into the form of “open dictatorship” was initiated in countless countries on behalf and for the benefit of the global “billionaire and power elite”.

The fear of the supposedly highly infectious virus led to many people being paralysed, public life in several states being shut down, at the same time fundamental civil liberties were “honed” and the military was also brought into readiness. It seemed as if “time had gone out of joint” (Shakespeare). (2) However, some alert contemporaries suspected even then that something was “rotten in the state of Denmark”. But there was no public social discourse about the narratives of the ruling class. Dissenters are either not listened to at all or discredited by the media and society.

The “hidden agenda” of the so-called elite

But gradually it became clear what sinister plans the self-appointed “elite” was pursuing: For example, all citizens of the world are to be vaccinated and, in addition, controlled by implanted nano-chips. This “mass protection vaccination” may well lead to a population decline. Two of these “world citizens” who have been pursuing such plans for a long time are former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the wealthy US entrepreneur William “Bill” Henry Gates III. (3) On 1 April 2020 the “Washington Post” published an article by Gates to this effect. (4)

But Kissinger and Gates are not the only elite figureheads. All the others also command and use a whole range of controlling, disease-causing or even deadly “tools” for their diabolical plans: One of them is a technology for mind control, the “mind control technology”. These include microwaves, artificial intelligence, quantum computers, robotics, 5 G and 6 G, nanotechnology, identification chips and much more. It is also worth mentioning the philosophical line of thought they favour, “transhumanism”, one of the most dangerous ideas in the world. Transhumanism seeks to expand the limits of human possibilities intellectually, physically or psychologically by using technological processes.

“(They) don’t rob banks, they become bank executives.”

If one sifts through the biographies of the “elite” in politics, business, the military and also in science and art, it reads in places like pure “psychopathology”, the doctrine of pathological changes in the life of the soul. The Canadian criminal psychologist Robert D. Hare lists a total of 20 criteria for this in his Psychopathology Checklist (PCL-R). (5) People with this personality disorder are not only overrepresented among criminals and in prisons, but also in leading positions. But with one difference, the founder of psychopathology research said: “(They) do not rob a bank, they become bank directors.” (6)

The call for “social distancing” also has hidden aims

“Social Distancing” is not proven to be an effective protection and is highly controversial among medical and psychological experts because the relationship with conspecifics is as important to us humans as the air we breathe. The restriction of social contacts is therefore an attack on human nature and leads to serious consequential damage for young and old.

We must also be concerned about school children and young people. Due to the increasing digitalisation of the entire education system and the lack of relationships with teachers and classmates through homeschooling, socially disadvantaged children are deprived of educational opportunities and stand out due to hyperactivity, emotional problems and behavioural disorders. The isolation also leads to isolation of the young people. Despite countless virtual contacts with their peers, a large number of them live alone in their own “Facebook world”, where internet addiction is on the rise. This development has been consciously driven forward for years. Because the isolated young person, isolated from his peers, whose family and community roots are cut off, can be better controlled, manipulated and instrumentalised for violent excesses and wars. (7)

Fomenting irrational fears as a means of discipline and domination

When citizens get their fears and panic under control, they see through the lies of the rulers and their diabolical plans. This is why people’s natural fears of illness and death are constantly being fuelled by the mass media. This leads to a “flooding of reality by the imaginary” (Klaus-Jürgen Bruder), to a “high level of aggressive emotionality” and a “return of the block-keeper mentality and denunciation”. (8)

Fear and anxiety are part of human life. But when unscrupulous despots – whether medieval popes, modern dictators or supposed “philanthropists” – deliberately fuel this everyday fear from the outside, they want to satisfy their greed for power and discipline and dominate peoples. In doing so they are doing the work of the devil and not the work of God (F. J. Strauß). Most people react to this diabolical “game” of the ruling class with a reflex of obedience.

The human reflex of absolute obedience

Large parts of the population are like confused and paralysed because of the “hysterisation of the pandemic fear” (K.-J. Brother). Very quickly they declare themselves willing to accept the drastic and questionable restrictions of basic rights guaranteed by the state without contradiction as necessary and without alternative –  such as the fundamental right of personal freedom and the right to physical integrity. (9)

If one looks at the worldwide horror scenario and the shock paralysis of the citizens, one is reminded of Naomi Klein’s bestseller “The Shock Strategy”. In it, she demonstrates that neo-liberal governments have single-mindedly exploited the confusion and paralysis of the people after political and economic crises or natural disasters to quickly crack the capitalist economic system in its purest form. It was a “shock treatment” before the population had the strength to resist again. This geopolitical operation of the “global elite” with its diabolical agenda is a crime against humanity.

The pitiful and sinister role of the “Journaille” (press rabble)

The mass media could make an important contribution to educating and encouraging people, as they are committed under international agreements to providing truthful information to citizens and to peace. But the opposite is the case. In 1883, John Swinton, the former veteran of the New York Press Corps, gave a speech to fellow journalists on the occasion of his retirement. This honest and sharp reckoning with his own guild is highly topical and does not only concern America:

“There is no such thing as an independent press in America, (…) You are all slaves. You know it and I know it. Not one of you dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know in advance that it would never appear in print. (…) The journalist’s business in New York is to twist the truth, to lie bluntly, to pervert, to revile, to grovel at the feet of mammon, and to sell his own country and people for his daily bread, or, which is the same thing, for his salary. (…) We are tools and servants of rich men backstage. We are jumping jacks. They pull the strings and we dance. Our time, our skills, our life, our possibilities are all the property of other people. We are intellectual prostitutes.” (10)

From “Great Reset” to the “Great Transformation”

On 3 June 2020, the World Economic Forum WEF in Geneva announced a “unique twin summit” in Davos as a consequence of the “global health crisis” for 2021. The theme is to be “The Great Reset”. The WEF defines the “Great Reset” as “a commitment to jointly and urgently build the foundations of our economic and social system for a fairer, more sustainable and resilient future”. (11) Klaus Schwab, founder and Chairman of the World Economic Forum, writes:

“We can bring a better world out of this crisis, (…). To achieve a better outcome (than the 1930s Depression, R.H.), the world must act together and quickly to renew all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to technology, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‘major reset’ of capitalism”. (12)

Despite many promises of salvation made by the Kabbalistic World Economic Forum and the predatory International Monetary Fund IMF, it is not to be expected that there will be a de-globalisation and a turning away from inhuman neo-liberalism. The ruling “elite” will use the meeting in Davos to further advance the global control of citizens by destroying nation states.

The announcement of a “Great Reset” is now complemented by the call for a “Great Transformation”, a shift of power in the global political and economic sector that goes hand in hand with the pandemic. What is meant is a “great transformation” of the global industrial society towards a society of sustainability. (13) This demand must be considered together with the “UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development” and its 17 sustainable development goals. According to this, a “One World Government” is planned under the UN umbrella – and, since China’s totalitarian regime serves as a model, a socialist “One World Government”.

What to do? A mid-term review

“Have the courage to use your own intellect!” (Sapere aude!)

The worldwide exceptional situation requires us to be wise, to distinguish between truth and lie and to act accordingly. But it is not only the “simple” people who are failing in their resistance against the emerging totalitarianism and fascism. The academic circles are also failing to live up to their responsibility. Immanuel Kant defined “Enlightenment” (image below) in 1784 as follows:

“Enlightenment is man’s exit from his self-inflicted immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s intellect without the guidance of another.” (14)

According to Kant, human immaturity is self-inflicted when it is not a lack of understanding that is the reason, but the fear of using one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. Kant coined the motto of the Enlightenment: “Have the courage to use your own intellect!” Enlightenment is thus the maxim to think for oneself at all times.

According to Kant, one reason for immaturity is laziness and cowardice. Being underage is comfortable and independent thinking is a “grumpy business”. In this way it becomes easy for others, says Kant, to become “guardians” of these underage people. These guardians would also do everything possible to ensure that the underage people would not only find the step to maturity arduous, but also dangerous.

Reducing greed for power and violence by fostering and strengthening community feelings

Since politics is being prepared in people’s minds and hearts and people tomorrow will act as they think today, a priority task for the future will be to educate our fellow citizens: The purpose of enlightenment efforts is to purify human consciousness from individual and collective prejudices.

More important than the Enlightenment, however, is education. Deep psychological insight has made clear the immense importance of education. We know today that man is the product of his education to such an extent that one can hope to educate people through better, i.e. psychological, methods of education who will be immune to the entanglements of the power madness.

Thus, pedagogy at home and at school must renounce the authoritarian principle and the use of violence. Educators must adapt to the child’s spiritual life with true understanding, respect the child’s personality and turn to him or her in a friendly manner. Such an education will produce a type of person who has no “subject mentality” and will therefore no longer be a docile tool for those in power in our world.

In today’s violent culture, however, the path of the individual inevitably comes under the influence of the desire for power and domination. All models and ideals under which the child of our culture grows up are coloured by the will to power. The illusion of violence takes possession of the soul of the individual at a time when he or she has neither conscious insight nor a developed sense of justice. Our task for the future is therefore above all to nurture and strengthen community feelings.

Common sense instead of belief in authority and magic worldview

Religious and authoritarian education – and the reflex of absolute spiritual obedience

A vivid example of the psychological problem of absolute obedience is provided by the autobiographical notes of Rudolf Höß, the former commander of Auschwitz. In his childhood, Höß underwent an upbringing based on strictly religious and military principles and therefore reacted as an adult with unrestricted obedience, a “cadaver obedience”. (15)

Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, wrote an illuminating text in the middle of the 16th century, to which the German word “Kadavergehorsam” is derived. In the version published by the Congregation of the Order in 1558 it reads:

“We should be aware that each one of those who live in obedience must be guided and directed by Divine Providence through the Superior, as if he were a dead body that can be taken anywhere and treated in any way, or like an old man’s staff that serves wherever and for whatever purpose he wishes to use it.” (16)

Common sense versus magic worldview

In the following critical thoughts about religion and its effect on human feeling, thinking and acting, the author draws on the science of psychology. A further basis are the works of the French enlightener and encyclopaedist Baron Paul-Henri Thiry d’Holbach and other critics of religion. Holbach’s religion-critical book “System of nature or of the limits of the physical and moral world” was published in 1770 under fictitious authorship and caused a scandalous stir. (17) A short excerpt from the author’s foreword gives an idea of this:

“Man is unhappy only because he misjudges nature. His mind is so polluted by prejudice that one might think he was condemned to error forever: it is so firmly bound up with the veil of opinion that has been spread over him since childhood that it can only be removed with the greatest difficulty. A dangerous ferment has been added to all his knowledge, making it necessarily wavering, unclear and false; to his misfortune he wanted to cross the boundaries of his sphere and tried to rise above the visible world; (…).” (18)

Two years after the publication of “System of Nature”, the religion-critical book “Common Sense” appeared. To escape persecution by the “holy inquisition”, Holbach published his thoughts under the name of the already deceased free-thinking priest Jean Meslier. (19) 1878 a German translation was published. Orthography, punctuation and sentence order are adopted unchanged in the following quotations. Already in the introduction Holbach writes:

“It is a wasted effort to want to heal people from their vices, if one does not begin with the healing of their prejudices. One must show them the truth so that they may know their most expensive interests and the true motives which lead them to virtue and their true happiness. (…) Let us tell people to be righteous, charitable, moderate and sociable, not because their gods demand it, but because one must seek to please one’s neighbours; let us tell them to abstain from sin and vice, not because one is punished in another world, but because evil punishes itself already in this life. (…).” (20)

Religion versus science

The term “religion” encompasses a multitude of different world views, the basis of which is the respective belief in certain supernatural, supernatural or extrasensory powers. The teachings of a religion about the sacred and transcendental are based on the belief in communications of certain mediators. They are not provable in the sense of the theory of science. Sceptics and critics of religion, on the other hand, seek only controllable knowledge through rational explanations.

For example, there is the question of the doubling of human existence in body and soul and the corresponding doubling of nature into a this world and a hereafter. These “doublings” are an “original sin” of religion. Common sense assumes the unity of body and soul. Therefore man does not have to strive for a reunification beyond earthly life. There are also no double truths, one historical and one religious.

In contrast to the worldview and science based on causality, religion is a magical worldview. Religious belief places a magical illusory world next to reason and knowledge, to which scientific analysis does not have to come too close. Religions consider themselves to be something above all else, something that cannot – and should not – be the subject of empirical-rationalist investigation. They are of the opinion that science is not at all capable of grasping the field of religion, which is of divine origin, in its totality. Of course, it remains the inalienable right of religious man to draw revelations of the highest religious truths from the words of the Bible. But it is also the unconditional duty of the researcher to infer historical truths only from absolutely perfect testimonies.

The religious willingness to believe is supported to a large extent by the more or less great suggestibility of almost all people. “Suggestibility” is a personality trait that expresses the extent of “receptivity” to suggestions. Thoughts, feelings, perceptions or ideas are taken over from outside which do not correspond to reality and which are supposed to influence the person mentally and psychologically in a manipulative way. Suggestibility in children is very high, which is why young people are particularly susceptible to manipulative influence. In addition, children can tend to confuse suggested information with what they have experienced. (21)

Through religious suggestion not only the intelligence is intimidated, but also the will and the self-confidence, because apostasy and leaving the church has been considered a grave sin since apostolic times and as infidelity and Judas’ deed. The healthy person, who is not mentally or psychologically manipulated, only expresses judgements after he has checked them against experience and recognised them as not contrary to reason.

The influence of society on people’s religious attitudes

Man is not only a natural being, but also a socialised being. This means that his so-called metaphysical need to believe in a supernatural being is also influenced and directed by social factors: by class factors, especially economic factors. Religion will therefore continue to exist as long as material and thus spiritual and mental need exists.

Every form of society has at all times its specific religious-philosophical-ethical ideologies. It is the thought structures of the respective ruling class that serve to spiritually legitimise their rule – ultimately their political and economic power over the minds of the people. This power is founded on the ideological concept of “authority”. And this in turn is supported by the idea of the “absolute”, which eludes any possibility of control through experience. In the sense of the ruling class, the highest power of such an ideology is “God” – as “unrecognisable”, “ultimate” cause and ethical legislator.

According to Karl Marx the metaphysical need of man is only a protest against the misery of this world. He came to the conclusion that man could not change until the structure of society had changed. As long as not everyone could live in this world with dignity and without fear, there would be a belief in a better hereafter, in a balancing justice. (22)

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the founder of psychoanalysis, was also a critic of religion. He taught that religious ideas were so effective because they were illusions, arising from very old, fierce human desires: the desire for a just world order, for freedom from want, and the desire for eternity of personal existence.

The intimidation of reason and reason begins in childhood

Man is born neither religious nor believing in God. The mentally healthy child, however, is born into a society where delusional ideas and illusions predominate. As soon as the little child shows the first emotional impulses and learns to speak, it is “taken into care” by society, i.e. by its parents and the church. It is made clear to him that his nature must not develop freely with regard to his feeling for nature and his world view.

If the consciousness of the “I” then forms in the 3rd year of life, God and the devil of the religion concerned already intervene and teach the child not to trust in itself, but to let itself be led and dominated by supernatural powers and to pray fervently so as not to fall prey to their revenge. The child gets to know the fear of demons. The “virtues” of submissiveness, obedience and humility are imprinted. The belief in demons taught to the child finds its crystallisation point in the ideas of devil and hell.

Fear generates emotional reactions in the child which are directed against the human being: it is afraid of the human being. The young person grows up and as an adult is not able to cooperate and live together. One uses the years of man’s strongest suggestibility to inoculate him with mystical ideas, to make him immune to the use of reason in religious and ideological matters and to bind him to a certain religious institution. The child must not be allowed to develop naturally and without force. This puts very strong and paralysing pressure on the child’s souls.

Outlook

The church’s religious doctrine presupposes the world view of primitive man. This prerequisite is no longer given by modern science. We find the “divine”, the ideal in nature, in the lawful, no longer in the mystical. We must no longer allow ourselves to be distracted by wonderful fables from a vague transcendent and must work for the real here and now. From the very beginning, we must impart to young people in education values that correspond to our present day and that are still valid in adulthood.

The school has the task of putting morality on an earthly basis. The pupil must be shown that there is a high level of ethics even without beliefs and that it has existed in various countries for thousands of years. It must be shown to him that the justification of ethical teachings from an inner drive and the social coexistence of people is at least as understandable and compelling as the religious justification.

We should help the young person to express his or her own being without being restricted by a denomination. This person will generally also be moral, because since he lives in harmony with himself, he also lives in harmony with his environment. And also vice versa: whoever lives in harmony with his environment is usually also balanced himself and lives according to the ethical “commandments”.

The school also has to strengthen the young people’s own strength and self-confidence and distract them from their own beloved salvation of soul to the salvation of the general public, to the necessity of helpfulness, to an ideal which no longer sees the highest moral strength in the religious but in the social idea, in the creation of a “paradise” of humanity on earth.

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Notes 

(1) Messner, J. (1984, 7th unchanged edition). Natural law. Handbook of Social Ethics, State Ethics and Business Ethics. Berlin; http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=26728; https://www.globalresearch.ca/preserve-human-dignity/5709617

(2) http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=26681; https://www.globalresearch.ca/coronavirus-new-world-order-something-rotten-state-denmark/5706464

(3) https://deutsch.rt.com/international/100535-henry-kissinger-zur-corona-krise/

(4) https://www.welt.de/newsticker/dpa_nt/infoline_nt/wissenschaft_nt/article206943381/Bill-Gates-Massenproduktion-von-Corona-Impfung-vorbereiten.html

(5) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Hare

(6) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathie; http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=26915

(7) http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=26868; 

https://www.globalresearch.ca/social-distancing-lonely-isolated-youngsters-easy-prey-global-rat-catchers/5716281

(8) https://deutsch.rt.com/gesellschaft/107528-auswirkungen-massnahen-gegen-corona-pandemie/; http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=26792; 

https://www.globalresearch.ca/diabolic-game-fear-instrument-domination/5712556

(9) http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=26737; 

https://www.globalresearch.ca/psychological-remarks-authority-obedience/5710555

(10) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Swinton_#Die_Rede_im_Twilight_Club_1883

(11) http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=26851; 

https://www.globalresearch.ca/davos-reset-2021-agenda-world-economic-forum/5715508

(12) http://www.weforum.org, under “Now is the time for a ‘great reset'”.

(13) https://vera-lengsfeld.de/2020/10/05/es-geht-nicht-um-die-pandemie-es-geht-um-die-grosse-transformation/; https://www.globalresearch.ca/imf-wef-great-lockdown-great-transformation/5721090

(14) De.wikipedia.org, keyword “Immanuel Kant”; http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=26713;

https://www.globalresearch.ca/psychological-philosophical-remarks-present-world-situation-sapere-aude-dare-wise/578603 

(15) Broszat, M. (eds.) (199414). Commander at Auschwitz. Autobiographical notes of Rudolf Höß. Munich. In the following I refer to the article published on 22.04.2015 in NRhZ Online No. 507 “Psyche of Commander Rudolf Höß” and take over essential passages from it

(16) https://de.wikipedia.org./wiki/Kadavergehorsam

(17) d’Holbach, P.-H. T. (1978). System of nature or of the laws of the physical and moral world. Frankfurt am Main, p. 2

(18) loc. cit., pp. 11ff.

(19) d’Holbach, P.-H. T. (1976). The common sense of the parish priest Meslier. Critical thoughts on religion and its impact on cultural development. Zurich

(20) I.c.f., p. 4ff.

(21) https://de.wikipedia.org./wiki/Suggestibilität

(22) De.wikipedia.org, keyword “The German ideology” 

BBC recently reported some shocking statistics regarding UK health, but which will perhaps come as no surprise to those critics who warned that far-reaching national lockdowns would cause other unseen adverse effects:

Compared with normal years, there have been more deaths at home from a number of major causes, including cancers and respiratory diseases, during the last six months.

The latest analysis published by Britain’s Office for National Statistics found that more than 26,000 “extra” deaths occurred in private homes this year, while simultaneously hospital deaths have been lower than usual.

“More men than normal are dying at home from heart disease in England and Wales, and more women are dying from dementia and Alzheimer’s, figures show,” the report says.

The figures had been issued just ahead of European officials in Germany, France, and Italy contemplating ‘severe’ extended measures that could last as long as four to five months, as Germany is now said to be mulling.

The BBC report further cited Alzheimer’s charity groups as lamenting the “heartbreaking” and devastating hidden adverse impact of both stay-at-home orders and social distancing measures, particularly on elderly men.

Deaths attributable to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease at home are on a major upward trajectory while being down in hospitals, strongly suggesting that more people with life-threatening but treatable diseases are simply avoiding professional medical services for fear of COVID-19 or possibly on fear of violating social distancing measures or travel bans.

The report found that hospital deaths that were dementia-related were down by 40% in England and 25% in Wales.

The UK Office for National Statistics further found that heart disease is wreaking havoc among men at a moment all eyes are on the coronavirus surge:

Between March and September 2020, there were 24,387 more deaths in England than expected in private homes, and 1,644 in Wales. The large majority did not involve Covid-19.

Of these, an extra 1,705 men died from heart disease at home in England – 25% more than normal.

In Wales there was a similar rise in men dying from heart disease at home, of 22.7%.

And again simultaneously deaths in hospitals from such significant conditions not related to coronavirus are noticeably down.

England’s current lockdown measures in place since the start this month through December 2nd include the following:

• Restaurants, pubs and bars will close, except for takeaways and deliveries.
• All leisure and entertainment venues and most non-essential stores will shut.
• The public will be asked to work from home if possible and domestic travel, except for essential purposes, will be frowned upon.
• Schools, universities and colleges will remain open, along with the construction and manufacturing sector.
• Different households will be banned from mixing inside homes.
• People will only be able to leave home for a few reasons including exercise.
• Courts and Parliament will remain open.
• Religious services will also be stopped.
• International travel, apart from for business purposes, must also be put on hold.
• English Premier League matches will continue to be played.

The measures were put in place despite the ONS figures having been available since mid and late October, and showed soaring non-COVID deaths going back to April and May, which was at the height of the UK epidemic.

Despite the hard data showing the rapid rise in potentially treatable diseases that led to non-COVID deaths, leaders in Europe on the whole seem committed to reimposing blanket coronavirus restrictions and lockdowns, which currently includes shuttering pubs, restaurants and night venues, but in most places has stopped short of closing down schools.

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Pakistan released a detailed dossier during a press conference on Saturday  making the case that India is a state sponsor of terrorism whose intelligence services have weaponized this phenomenon as part of the proxy war that they’re fighting with respect to the UNSC-recognized international Kashmir dispute and against the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), with it now being the responsibility of the international community to investigate these scandalous claims in order to decide whether India deserves to be sanctioned by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and other related bodies for its rogue behavior.

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Fifteen Asia-Pacific economies formed the world’s largest free trade bloc on Sunday, a China-backed deal that excludes the United States, which had left a rival Asia-Pacific grouping under President Donald Trump.

The signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) at a regional summit in Hanoi, is a further blow to the group pushed by former U.S. president Barack Obama, which his successor Trump exited in 2017.

Amid questions over Washington’s engagement in Asia, RCEP may cement China’s position more firmly as an economic partner with Southeast Asia, Japan and Korea, putting the world’s second-biggest economy in a better position to shape the region’s trade rules.

The United States is absent from both RCEP and the successor to the Obama-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), leaving the world’s biggest economy out of two trade groups that span the fastest-growing region on earth.

By contrast, RCEP could help Beijing cut its dependence on overseas markets and technology, a shift accelerated by a deepening rift with Washington, said Iris Pang, ING chief economist for Greater China.

RCEP groups the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. It aims in coming years to progressively lower tariffs across many areas.

The deal was signed on the sidelines of an online ASEAN summit held as Asian leaders address tensions in the South China Sea and tackle plans for a post-pandemic economic recovery in a region where U.S.-China rivalry has been rising.

RCEP will account for 30% of the global economy, 30% of the global population and reach 2.2 billion consumers, Vietnam said.

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The Vote Fraud is all over America, it leaps out in huge quantities and the NY Times denies the obvious. The Fraud is Overwhelming. It is so massive it is suffocating.

Here is the reported arrest of Biden campaign official Dallas Jones and two Texas Democrat officials for “orchestrating a ballot harvesting scheme.” See this, this and this.

I can’t confirm whether the Texas Democrat officials are arrested or accused.

Here is a partial description of the vote fraud in Texas, which, although extensive, was not enough to steal the state for Biden:

Even conservative states run by Republicans have not been immune to Democrat fraud. In Texas, for example, Harris County, home to left-leaning Houston, appears to be the epicenter of most of the fraud. Raymond Stewart, a poll watcher and retired police officer, submitted a sworn affidavit to the district attorney about a Houston precinct judge — identified in news reports as a Democrat — and election staff who unlawfully used a “large stack of Texas driver’s licenses” to allow people to vote illegally at a “drive-through voting window.”

“Staff would come inside from the drive-through voting booth and scan a driver’s license from someone outside and get a ticket and return outside,” Stewart said. “But sometimes a staff member would search through the stack of driver’s license on the table, then scan it, receive a ticket and also go outside to the drive-through booth. As a Police Officer, I quickly became suspicious that they were committing a crime by having the unattended D.L.’s just sitting on the table and that possible voting crimes were being committed using these forms of ID.”

The problems in Texas appear to go very deep. The state political director for Joe Biden’s campaign, Dallas Jones, has been accused in affidavits filed at the Texas Supreme Court of operating a massive, illegal ballot-harvesting scheme involving as many as 700,000 ballots. The affidavits making the accusations, filed by a former FBI agent and retired police officer, allege that Jones was also ordering those ballots to be filled out in the names of homeless, dead, and elderly people. National File broke the story.

“This scheme involves voter fraud on a massive scale,” explained retired Houston Police Department Captain Mark Aguirre in his sworn statement. Using interviews, documents, and other information, Aguirre publicly identified Jones, Texas State Senator Borris Miles, political consultant Gerald Womack, and Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis. “This entire operation is being run by the elite politicians of the Democrat Party in Houston/Harris County,” the retired lawman explained, adding that he had video evidence as well.

Project Veritas also released video footage from San Antonio suggesting electoral fraud there, with somebody “helping” an elderly citizen to change her votes from Republican to Democrat. “What’s shown in the video is shocking and should alarm all Texans who care about election integrity,” Texas Attorney General Paxton said in a statement. “We are aggressively investigating the serious allegations and potential crimes that Project Veritas’s documentary audio and video recordings shed light on today.”  See this. 

Sidney Powell in a Fox News interview says the evidence of fraud is overwhelming and is so extensive that it overturns the entire election.  She says she has signed affidavits  from a software designer who attests that the software was designed for stealing elections.  She says it was used to switch millions of votes. See this.

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Das Weltwirtschaftsforum (WEF) hat soeben (Oktober 2020) ein so genanntes Weißbuch mit dem Titel „Resetting the Future of Work Agenda – in a Post-Covid World“ veröffentlicht.

Dieses 31-seitige Dokument liest sich wie eine Blaupause über die „Ausführung“ – denn eine Ausführung (oder Implementierung) wäre „Covid-19 – The Great Reset“ (Juli 2020), von Klaus Schwab, Gründer und CEO (seit der Gründung des WEF im Jahre 1974) und seinem Mitarbeiter Thierry Malleret.

Sie nennen „Resetting the Future“ ein Weissbuch, was bedeutet, dass es nicht ganz die endgültige Version ist. Es ist eine Art Entwurf, ein Versuchsballon, um die Reaktionen der Menschen zu messen. Es liest sich in der Tat wie ein Henkersmärchen. Viele Menschen lesen es vielleicht nicht – haben kein Bewusstsein von seiner Existenz. Wenn sie es täten, würden sie zu den Waffen greifen und gegen diese neueste totalitäre Blaupause kämpfen, die der Welt vom WEF angeboten wird.

Sie verheißt rund 80% und mehr der (überlebenden) Bevölkerung eine schreckliche Zukunft. George Orwells „1984“ liest sich wie eine gutartige Fantasie, verglichen mit dem, was der WEF für die Menschheit im Sinn hat.

Der Zeitrahmen beträgt zehn Jahre – bis 2030 – die UN-Agenda 2021 – 2030 soll umgesetzt werden.

Geplante Geschäftsmassnahmen als Antwort auf COVID-19:

• Eine Beschleunigung der digitalisierten Arbeitsprozesse, die zu 84% aller Arbeitsprozesse als digitalen oder virtuellen / Videokonferenzen führen soll.
• Für etwa 83% der Menschen ist geplant, aus der Ferne zu arbeiten – d.h. keine Interaktion zwischen Kollegen mehr – absolute soziale Distanzierung, Trennung der Menschheit vom menschlichen Kontakt.
• Etwa 50% aller Aufgaben sollen automatisiert werden – mit anderen Worten, der menschliche Input wird drastisch reduziert, auch bei der Fernarbeit.
• Beschleunigung der Digitalisierung der Höherqualifizierung/Umschulung (z.B. Anbieter von Bildungstechnologie) – 42% der Höherqualifizierung oder der Ausbildung für neue Fähigkeiten werden digitalisiert werden, mit anderen Worten, kein menschlicher Kontakt – alles am Computer, künstliche Intelligenz (KI), Algorithmen.
• Beschleunigung der Umsetzung von Programmen zur Höherqualifizierung/Umschulung – 35% der Fertigkeiten sollen „umgeschult“ werden – d.h. bestehende Fertigkeiten sollen aufgegeben, für nicht mehr vorhanden erklärt werden.
• Beschleunigung laufender organisatorischer Transformationen (z.B. Umstrukturierung) – 34% der derzeitigen Organisationsstrukturen sollen „umstrukturiert“ – d.h. bestehende Organisationsstrukturen werden für veraltet erklärt – werden, um Platz für neue Organisationsrahmen zu schaffen, digitale Strukturen, die eine größtmögliche Kontrolle über alle Aktivitäten bieten.
• Vorübergehende Neuzuweisung von Arbeitnehmern für verschiedene Aufgaben – dies wird voraussichtlich 30% der Belegschaft betreffen. Das bedeutet auch völlig andere Lohnskalen – höchstwahrscheinlich nicht lebensfähige Löhne, wodurch das ebenfalls geplante „universelle Grundgehalt“ oder „Grundeinkommen“ – ein Lohn, mit dem man kaum überleben kann – ein offensichtliches Bedürfnis wäre. Aber es würde Sie völlig abhängig vom System machen – einem digitalen System, bei dem Sie keinerlei Kontrolle haben.
• Vorübergehender Personalabbau – davon sind voraussichtlich 28% der Bevölkerung betroffen. Es handelt sich um eine zusätzliche Arbeitslosenzahl, die verschleiert wird, da die „vorübergehende“ Arbeitslosigkeit nie wieder zu Vollzeitbeschäftigung zurückkehren wird.
• Dauerhafter Personalabbau – 13% dauerhaft reduzierte Arbeitskräfte.
• Vorübergehende Erhöhung des Personalbestands – 5% – es gibt keinen Hinweis darauf, um welche Art von Arbeitskräften es sich handelt – wahrscheinlich ungelernte Arbeitskräfte, die früher oder später auch durch Automatisierung, durch KI und Robotisierung des Arbeitsplatzes ersetzt werden.
• Keine spezifischen Maßnahmen umgesetzt – 4% – bedeutet das, dass nur 4% unangetastet bleiben werden? Unter den durch den Algorithmus und die KI gelenkten neuen Arbeitsplätzen? – So klein und unbedeutend die Zahl auch ist, sie klingt wie „Wunschdenken“, das nie erreicht werden wird.
• Ständige Erhöhung des Personalbestands – nur 1% wird als „ständige Erhöhung des Personalbestands“ prognostiziert. Das ist natürlich nicht einmal Kosmetik. Es ist ein Witz.

Das ist es, was vorgeschlagen wird, nämlich der konkrete Prozess der Umsetzung des „Großen Reset“.

Der „Great Reset“ sieht auch ein Kreditsystem vor, bei dem alle persönlichen Schulden „erlassen“ würden – gegen Aushändigung aller persönlichen Vermögenswerte an ein Verwaltungsorgan oder eine Agentur – könnte möglicherweise der IWF sein.

Sie würden also nichts besitzen – und glücklich sein. Denn für all Ihre Bedürfnisse wird gesorgt sein.

Auch sollte es Ihnen nicht in den Sinn kommen, mit dem System nicht einverstanden zu sein, denn bis dahin soll jeder von Ihnen geimpft und mit einem Nano-Chip versehen worden sein – so dass mit 5G und bald auch mit 6G Ihre Gedanken gelesen und beeinflusst werden können.

Bitte nennen Sie das nicht eine Verschwörungstheorie. Es ist ein Weissbuch, ein „massgeblicher Bericht“ des WEF.

Die DARPA – Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ist Teil des Pentagons – und hat diese Technologie vor Jahren entwickelt. Es ist nur eine Frage der Zeit, sie zu implementieren. Und sie wird umgesetzt werden, wenn wir, das Volk, nicht protestieren – massiver ziviler Ungehorsam ist an der Tagesordnung – und das eher früher als später.

Je länger wir mit Taten warten, desto mehr schlafwandeln wir in diese absolute menschliche Katastrophe.

Soziale und menschliche Beziehungen werden ausgehöhlt.

Dies hat mehrere Vorteile für diesen neuartigen „totalitären“ WEF-Ansatz für die Menschheit – zu ihrer Kontrolle.

• Wir, das Volk, können nicht rebellieren, wir haben keinen Zusammenhalt mehr untereinander;
• „Wir, das Volk“, werden gegeneinander ausgespielt – und es gibt eine absolute digitale Kontrolle über die Menschheit – ausgeführt von einer kleinen Superelite.
• Wir haben keinen Zugang zu dieser digitalen Kontrolle – sie liegt weit außerhalb unserer Reichweite. Die Idee ist, dass wir allmählich in sie hineinwachsen werden – diejenigen von uns, die überleben können. Innerhalb einer Generation oder so wird sie voraussichtlich zur Neuen Normalität werden.

Der „Überlebenswinkel“ ist ein Aspekt, der weder in „The Great Reset“ noch im „Implementation Guide“ – d.h. im Weißbuch „Resetting the Future of Work Agenda – in a Post-Covid World“ – direkt erwähnt wird.

Bill Gates, die Rockefellers, Kissinger et al. haben nie einen Hehl aus ihrer Meinung gemacht, dass die Welt überbevölkert sei und die Zahl der Menschen buchstäblich reduziert werden muss. Wir haben es mit Eugenikern zu tun.

Eine perfekte Methode zur Reduzierung der Weltbevölkerung sind die von Bill Gates initiierten und von der WHO unterstützten Impfprogramme. Skandale solcher katastrophalen Impfprogramme, die zum Tod von Kindern führten, wurden in Indien (in den 1990er Jahren), Kenia (2014 und danach) und anderen Teilen der Welt registriert.

Siehe auch einen sehr aufschlussreichen TedTalk von Bill Gates vom Februar 2010 mit dem Titel „Innovating to Zero“, etwa zu der Zeit, als der „Rockefeller-Bericht 2010“ herausgegeben wurde – genau der Bericht, der uns bisher das „Lock Step Scenario“ geliefert hat – und in diesem leben wir jetzt. Kaum dagegen protestierend, wurde die ganze Welt – 193 UNO-Mitgliedsländer – dazu genötigt oder gekauft, diese elende Menschenrechtsverletzung im globalen Maßstab zu betreiben.

Was beide Berichte – „The Great Reset“ und die „Resetting the Future of Work Agenda“ – nicht erwähnen, ist, wer diese drakonischen neuen Regeln durchsetzen wird. Es sind angeblich dieselben Kräfte, die jetzt für die Kriegsführung in den Städten und für die Unterdrückung von Aufständen und sozialen Unruhen ausgebildet werden – es sind die Polizei und das Militär.

Ein Teil unserer „People’s Organisation of Civil Disobedience“ wird sich mit der Frage befassen, wie man sich auf die Polizei und das Militär konzentrieren und mit ihnen sprechen, sie aufklären und darüber informieren kann, wofür sie von dieser kleinen Elite eingesetzt werden, und dass sie am Ende auch nur Menschen sind, wie wir alle – deshalb sollten sie sich besser für die Verteidigung des Volkes, der Menschheit, einsetzen. Dasselbe muss auch für Lehrer und medizinisches Personal getan werden – sie müssen die nötigen Informationen bekommen, die uneingeschränkte Wahrheit.

Das ist die Herausforderung. Wenn wir Erfolg haben, ist das Spiel vorbei. Aber es ist ein langer Weg.

Medien-Desinformation ist brutal und mächtig und es ist für „uns“ schwierig, ihr zu widersprechen, ohne ein beträchtliches Budget für Gegenpropaganda zu haben sowie als eine Gruppe von Menschen, die immer mehr durch die Medien selbst gespalten wird. Das obligatorische Tragen von Masken und die soziale Distanzierung hat uns bereits zu Feinden dessen gemacht, was wir früher waren, Kollegen, Freunde, sogar innerhalb der Familien.

Genau dieses Diktat hat es geschafft, Risse, Spaltungen und Zwietracht in unseren Gesellschaften zu schaffen.

Wir sollten keine Angst haben, sondern die „Resetting the Future of Work Agenda“ und „The Great Reset“ buchstäblich in Stücke schreddern – mit einer menschlichen Alternative, die Organisationen wie das WEF und kooptierte UN-Agenturen wie die WHO, UNICEF, WTO, die Weltbank, den IWF – und vielleicht sogar das gesamte UN-System – abschaffen würde. Die politischen und wirtschaftlichen Führer, die hinter diesem Projekt stehen, müssen damit konfrontiert werden. Die grundlegenden Prinzipien des Völkerrechts, einschließlich des Nürnberger Rechts, müssen angewandt werden.

Quelle aus Englisch

Source: The Post Covid World, The WEF’s Diabolical Project: “Resetting the Future of Work Agenda” – After „The Great Reset“. A Horrifying Future, Global Research,

Peter Koenig ist Wirtschaftswissenschaftler und geopolitischer Analyst. Er ist auch ein Spezialist für Wasserressourcen und Umwelt. Er arbeitete über 30 Jahre lang mit der Weltbank und der Weltgesundheitsorganisation auf der ganzen Welt in den Bereichen Umwelt und Wasser. Er hält Vorlesungen an Universitäten in den USA, Europa und Südamerika. Er schreibt regelmäßig für Online-Zeitschriften wie Global Research, ICH, New Eastern Outlook (NEO) und andere. Er ist der Autor von „Implosion – Ein Wirtschaftsthriller über Krieg, Umweltzerstörung und Unternehmensgier“ – eine auf Fakten und 30 Jahren Weltbankerfahrung rund um den Globus basierende Fiktion. Er ist auch Mitautor von „The World Order and Revolution! – Essays aus der Résistance“. Er ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter des Zentrums für Globalisierungsforschung.

The European Union (EU) Thursday announced it is prolonging restrictive sanctions against Venezuela for one year, until November 14, 2021.

These sanctions include the weapon and equipment blockade that may be used in Venezuela and the prohibition of 36 high-ranking officials -including Diosdado Cabello, President of the National Constituent Assembly of Venezuela- from entering the EU, as well as freezing its assets.

Vice Presidents Tareck El Aissami and Delcy Rodriguez, Attorney General Tarek William Saab, and the Supreme Court President Maikel Moreno are also included in the list.

The new extended sanctions, approved and implemented for the first time in 2017, will come into effect as of Friday, November 13.

The Trump administration’s sanctions have further crippled Cuba’s economy already struggling from the coronavirus pandemic and a drop in aid from struggling leftist ally Venezuela

The move comes as Donald Trump is trying to lock in the Cuban American vote in Florida#USElection pic.twitter.com/qA5nUA1buf

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) November 2, 2020

The EU has followed the hostile policy of the U.S. against Venezuela, as it was one of the international actors that recognized Juan Guaido in his self-titled “President of Venezuela.”

Since 2017, the EU has maintained and intensified a regime of unilateral coercive measures against the constitutional government headed by President Nicolas Maduro.

The country has repeatedly denounced that these sanctions are a threat to the Venezuelan people.

#Iran is helping #Venezuela deal with #UnitedStates sanctions. pic.twitter.com/B6kVVk0jHT

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) May 7, 2019

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Featured image: European Council President Charles Michel at Paris Peace Forum, Nov. 12, 2020 | Photo: Twitter/ @EUCouncilPress

The US State Department is expected to announce plans to create a new governmental process that would officially designate some groups, including NGOs and human rights organisations, as antisemitic.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has reportedly decided to establish the mechanism and is expected to make the announcement soon, but three people familiar with the issue told Politico that he could still change his mind and hold off on making such plans public.

So far, which groups would be classified as antisemitic is unclear, but Politico reported Pompeo had been considering for months whether to label Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Oxfam under the proposed process amid their criticism of the Israeli government’s human rights violations.

If created, groups designated antisemitic would lose any US government support – financially or otherwise – with the State Department potentially urging other governments to follow suit.

So far, the yet-to-be-released proposal has drawn “fierce internal pushback” within the State Department, Politico reported, as well as condemnation from legislators.

The State Department did not reply to Middle East Eye’s request for comment by the time of this article’s publication.

‘These groups defend human rights’

If the State Department follows through on creating the mechanism it could very well be scrapped once President-elect Joe Biden takes office in January.

When first reported in October, Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin warned against the idea, calling it “dangerous”.

“These groups defend human rights, freedom & tolerance for all,” Raskin said on Twitter at the time.

Those objecting to the idea warned that such a process may have chilling effects on freedom of speech and would likely open the door to litigation.

There are also concerns that such a move could embolden dictators and other world leaders to crack down on human rights organisations, among others.

Egypt has already passed several laws that restrict human rights groups including HRW and Amnesty International and has imprisoned and deported rights advocates. The governments of Venezuala and Iran have also expelled HRW staff, among other civil society advocates.

Last year, Israel deported HRW’s Israel and Palestine Director, Omar Shakir, for his work, and in October it stopped granting any visas to employees at the United Nations’ human rights agency, effectively forcing the body’s top staff to leave.

Defining antisemitism to target BDS 

If implemented, the proposed US process of designating rights groups as antisemitic would likely rely on the controversial definition created by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), that has in the past come under fire as an overly broad definition that conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

Palestinian rights advocates in particular have long rejected IHRA’s definition, saying that it would be employed to censor speech critical of Israel’s political policies.

Some interpretations of the IHRA definition argue that groups should be declared antisemitic if they support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which urges individuals, companies and countries to hold Israel accountable for its human rights violations.

While the BDS movement has seen increasing popularity among college students and is supported by the Black Lives Matter movement, among other social justice groups, some states have already passed anti-BDS laws that use the IHRA definition to define such speech as discriminatory.

Last year, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order adopting the IHRA definition in an extension to current anti-discrimination civil rights laws at the Department of Education to cover Judaism, stating in no ambiguous terms that the executive order targeted the BDS movement.

At the time, Israeli leaders praised the move, which was largely seen as another favour to America’s ally.

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The Canadian Forces wants to establish a new organization that will use propaganda and other techniques to try to influence the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of Canadians, according to documents obtained by this newspaper.

The plan comes on the heels of the Canadian Forces spending more than $1 million to train public affairs officers on behaviour modification techniques of the same sort used by the parent firm of Cambridge Analytica, as well as a controversial and bizarre propaganda training mission in which the military forged letters from the Nova Scotia government to warn the public that wolves were wandering in the province.

The new Defence Strategic Communication group will advance “national interests by using defence activities to influence the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of audiences,” according to the document dated October 2020. Target audiences for such an initiative would be the Canadian public as well as foreign populations in countries where military forces are sent.

The document is the end result of what Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance has called the “weaponization” of the military’s public affairs branch. The document is in a draft form, but work is already underway on some aspects of the plan and some techniques have been already tested on the Canadian public.

But the office of Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said Sunday that the plan, at least for now, is not authorized to proceed. Sajjan has raised concerns about some of the activities related to such influence and propaganda operations. “No such plan has been approved, nor will it be,” Floriane Bonneville, Sajjan’s press secretary, said after being asked by this newspaper about the initiative.

But a series of town halls were already conducted last week for a number of military personnel on the strategies contained in the draft plan.

The report quotes Brig.-Gen. Jay Janzen, director general military public affairs, who stated, “The motto ‘who dares, wins’ is as applicable to strategic communication as it is to warfare.”

The initiative also proposes the creation of a new research capability established to analyze and collect information from the social media accounts of Canadians, non-governmental organizations, industry and the news media, according to the report.

Click here to read full article.

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This article was originally published in October 2019.

When it comes to villainous bureaucrats, it’s hard to assign a ranking for the most sinister aura, cumulative harm wrought on humanity, and general unpleasantness wrapped up in one. But Ronald Reagan’s CIA chief William Casey is definitely near the head of the pack.

Prior to overseeing the CIA, Casey worked in military intelligence during World War II and thereafter offered up to postwar business elites that most unholy of statutory concoctions: the tax shelter (he wrote the book on the subject). He went on to serve on Ronald Reagan’s transition team, during which time he was said to fly to Rome where, departing from a black windowless C-141 jet, he visited the Vatican to brief Pope John Paul II on the latest developments in the war on communism. At the end of his life, Casey was directly implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal, narrowly avoiding prosecution when he was hospitalized less than 24 hours before Congress called on him to testify. He died of a brain tumor soon after.

Casey’s vampiric persona bears little resemblance to presidential candidate Joe Biden, a career politician who has spent close to four decades in Congress cultivating an image of patriotism, trustworthiness, and bipartisanship. But records in the CIA CREST archive, unsealed in 2017, detail Biden’s role in supporting Casey’s rise, and ushering in one of the darkest eras of the CIA’s history.

In a classified memo sent to intelligence staff in the early ’80s, Casey praised Biden for giving the most serious threat to the CIA’s unchecked power—the Justice Department—a good thrashing. Casey highlighted “the tongue lashing [Biden] gave Justice for their passive attitude and general ineffectiveness,” as well as “his demand that if his grey mail legislation which he sponsored was not enough to enable them to go after leaks, they tell them what else needs to be done.”

The partnership between the two careerists was initiated by legislation sponsored by Biden attempting to ban graymailing, a tactic used in leaker trials in which classified documents are requested by the defense during discovery to pressure the government into dropping its case. This legislation would be Biden’s entry into a precarious balancing act between surveillance hawks like Casey and a liberal establishment wary of the intelligence community’s long history of overreach. Graymail represented for Biden the type of middle-of-the-road, bipartisan legislation that everyone could get behind.

As Casey’s comments make clear, Biden decided his graymail legislation didn’t go far enough to deter leakers and whistleblowers. At an informal speech at Stanford—given in part to bolster the CIA’s image—Biden told an undergraduate audience that an entire Central American spy network had been compromised by leaks. In the same speech he alluded to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, American citizens who were executed by electric chair for providing intelligence to the Soviet government. “If you’re going to engage in espionage against this country,” he said, “be sure it really does jeopardize American society.”

This type of public outreach is documented in Casey’s memos as a top priority for the CIA to recover its image—tarnished from decades of foreign intervention and domestic maleficence. The Biden charm offensive came just a few years after the Church Committee’s findings on domestic spying operations sunk the CIA in the public consciousness. Like all things political, Biden viewed the CIA’s “missteps” not as constituting features of the institution, but rather as an aberration to be corrected, much in the same way he today views the election of our current commander in chief: not as the logical conclusion to decades of disastrous neoliberal policies, but rather as a one-in-a-million fluke.

Biden took a harder line during Casey’s 1981 confirmation hearings, if ever so slightly. He repeatedly pressed Casey for assurances that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence would maintain oversight on the CIA, and that he would not be edged out. Biden wanted to retain access to classified CIA briefings, and warned Casey of the danger that unchecked “KGB” style surveillance posed to civil liberties and freedoms.

Biden’s fear of losing the small measure of power afforded to him by what he would later admit was an impotent and ineffective committee represented an about-face from the sentiment he had expressed to the ACLU just one year earlier, during a public hearing on the CIA’s charter. “Let me tell you something, fellas,” he said to a panel of riled-up ACLU lawyers criticizing the agency. “The folks don’t care. The average American couldn’t care less right now about any of this … you keep talking about public concern [about the CIA]. There ain’t none.”

And while Biden pressed Casey more than any of his colleagues during the director’s confirmation hearing, his questions reflect the special brand of damning leniency that only Joe Biden is capable of. After heaping lavish praise on Casey’s record, Biden asked him if his personal relationship with the president would cause a conflict of interest, whether he would disclose covert operations to the committee like “planting a bug in the room of the president of Mars,” and what report card the soon-to-be-confirmed CIA director would give the committee. On the last point, Casey replied, “Well, you know, I don’t like to disagree with you, Senator, but the truth is I thought I’d let the committee investigate me before I undertook to investigate it.”

Just months after Casey’s confirmation, in the wake of the revelation that Casey had failed to disclose to the committee “nine investments valued at more than a quarter of a million dollars, personal debts and contingent liabilities of nearly $500,000, a number of corporations or foundations on whose board Mr. Casey served, four civil lawsuits and more than 70 clients he had represented in private practice in the last five years,” Biden admonished him for displaying “a consistent pattern of omissions, misstatements and contradictions.” But as with Biden’s record on busing, drugs, incarceration, and the Anita Hill hearings, his reversal came too little, too late. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence ultimately found that Casey was “not unfit” to continue in his role, and in doing so allowed a key player in the Iran-Contra scandal to continue on in his role unchecked.

Biden’s comments to Casey during the confirmation hearing make clear that he was aware of the risks the intelligence chief posed to civil liberties and the healthy separation of the branches of government. He knew full well that Casey—who had only accepted the directorship under the promise that he would have influence over foreign policy—was to Reagan what Dick Cheney was to George W. Bush. Yet he ultimately failed to vote against Casey, in what should be recognized as the most defining and consistent feature of his political career: bipartisanship. Despite articulating the very dangers which would later come to pass—Casey covering for Reagan, lying to the committee, and failing to disclose covert operations—Biden weighed the political worth of voting against Casey, determined that it was easier to play nice, and decided to roll over in bed with his Republican colleagues rather than cause a fuss.

While Casey and Biden were first united in their hatred of leakers, their perspectives diverged as the ’80s wore on. Casey advocated for more subtle and insidious ways of targeting leakers and the journalists who covered them, while Biden endorsed a Manichean application of the Espionage Act—still used today to obliterate the lives of “bad” whistleblowers.

Casey died before he could testify to Congress about his role in Iran-Contra, but his rap sheet is seeded with some of the CIA’s most egregious acts of terror and coercion, including the distribution of the Human Resource Exploitation Manual to the Honduran government (used in the torture and murder of hundreds of left-wing dissidents), the invasion of Grenada, and the 1986 Haitian election coup.

The CIA and its assemblage of operatives, directors, and informants are easy targets for the ire of anyone with even a dim awareness of the terror and harm they have caused. But none of these crimes could have come to pass without the combination of tacit and explicit approval from politicians like Joe Biden, charged with regulating an arm of government defined by its will to crush democracy at home and abroad.

It’s unclear whether Biden’s record with Casey has been recapitulated in recent memory, but if his personal efforts to block Edward Snowden’s attempts to claim asylum are anything to go by, it would seem that his relationship with the intelligence community hasn’t changed much in the 30-plus years since Casey’s death. Biden has staunchly supported corporate whistleblowers’ rights while aligning himself with the Obama administration’s expanded policy charter of punishing (or in the case of Snowden, seeking to punish) the whistleblowers bringing to light the intelligence community’s authoritarian and illegal surveillance practices.

Biden’s stance is now out in the open for all to see as the whistleblower-led impeachment picks up steam. As long as the whistleblower can find some measure of bipartisan support, he or she is one of the good ones. As long as the whistleblower doesn’t upend the entrenched forms of power that Biden sees as essential to our democracy, they can stay. And so long as they follow the protocols which make it next to impossible to legally leak information, they can count Uncle Joe as a friend.

As Biden continues to explain his voting record, his contribution to William Casey’s tenure and his troubling stance on whistleblowers should also be included in the long list of decisions for which he must answer, and which continue to haunt our democracy.

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Daniel Boguslaw is a writer and researcher living in New York.

The US establishment, and the world, has spent the last four years trying to adapt to the disruptive policies of a childish president. Now the Democrats’ ‘adult’ leadership team will return. Watch out, folks.

If Biden/Harris succeed Trump on January 20, they’ll be president and vice president-selected, not elected.

That’s the disturbing reality of Election 2020.

Illegitimate by systemic fraud, it wasn’t the first, and surely not the last, time that losers of US elections were declared winners.

Throughout US history, it happened time and again at the federal, state, and local levels.

It shows that monied interests and other power brokers chose winners and losers, not voting-age Americans.

They have no say over how the US is run or by whom, no say as well over who benefits and who’s left out.

“Democracy” in America is pure fantasy, how it’s always been by design from inception.

Establishment media promote the fiction of a free, fair, and open process — manipulating the public mind instead of reporting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Clear evidence shows that Election 2020 was rigged for Biden/Harris over Trump.

In a November 13 report titled “WE CAUGHT THEM,” Gateway Pundit explained the following:

Election 2020 results key swing state Pennsylvania Trump won in 2016 were “fraudulent because they are nearly statistically impossible,” adding:

On election night after polls closed, Trump led Biden/Harris “by nearly 700,000 votes,” a virtually “insurmountable lead.”

The next day, DJT lead by a 56% – 43% margin.

“According to Pennsylvania’s election returns website, on election day…Trump won nearly two thirds of all votes cast in the state” — a landslide margin.

Yet Biden/Harris did the near-impossible. State election authorities claimed they won after an unreported number of mail-in ballots were counted.

For three days post-election, ballots arriving late were included in the count.

What happened defied “Pennsylvania’s constitution which states that the voting process is to be determined by the legislature.”

State law prohibits the procedure followed. Rules were changed for Election 2020.

Despite an election-day landslide for Trump, state authorities claimed he only won about 20% of mail-in votes.

It gets worse.

Gateway Pundit: Trump “won two thirds of the Election Day vote.”

Except for “Philadelphia, (he) won around 80% of the (in-person) vote in each county in the state.”

“In almost every county throughout the state, (he) was awarded a percent of votes 40% less than the percent (he) won on election day.”

The pattern was almost the same in “every county (except) Philadelphia” where he only got “30%” of the election day total.

Consistent results in the state’s 67 counties — except for Philadelphia — were “almost” statistically impossible.

It never happened before in the state, maybe never again. The pattern was unlike results in previous US presidential elections.

“It is clear that corrupt (Dems) in Pennsylvania did all they could to steal the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden,” said Gateway Pundit.

“There was no excitement for the Biden campaign and there still isn’t.”

He and Harris didn’t win Pennsylvania. State election authorities stole it from Trump.

Note: Judicial Watch head Tom Fitton reported that “(i)n PA there are more people voting than are registered to vote,” adding:

An “electoral coup” occurred on November 3.

According to Judicial Watch data, “many states report(ed) voter registration rates above 100%” of registered voter totals.

“(A)cross America…voter (rolls) are filthy in terms of having more people on the(m) than are eligible to vote.”

As of September 2020, “335 US counties had 1.8 million more registered voters than eligible voting-age citizens.”

For Election 2020, “vote totals are changing because of unprecedented, extraordinary, illicitly secretive, and inherently suspect counting AFTER” polls closed.

In a follow-up report, Gateway Pundit said “WE CAUGHT THEM” in Michigan.

Dems “stole the battleground states,” including Michigan. Fraud occurred there similar to what happened in Pennsylvania.

In “three major (Michigan) counties, Trump’s margin was reduced by a minimum of 138,000 votes.”

“The transfer was done by a computer algorithm that linearly transferred the votes from Trump to Biden.”

The “vote transfer was greater in Republican precincts than” Dem ones.

“Tens of thousands of votes were transferred” this way — from Trump to Biden/Harris.

Similar evidence is likely to surface in other swing states if independent analysis is conducted.

According to an AmericanThinker.com report, Georgia’s recount is “being conducted with as little respect for transparency as the original vote count.”

In Georgia and other states, millions of ballots were mailed “to anyone on the voter registers” — including former state residents and deceased ones, maybe non-registered voters as well.

In Dem-run states, “voting became as easy and as vulnerable to fraud as going to a shopping mall, filling out names on slips of paper” for almost anything, including for someone else.

The Georgia recount is doing “nothing” to correct this fraud.

Most likely, the same is true in unknown numbers of other states.

The bottom line is that US elections lack legitimacy.

Ballots can be counted, discarded, or shifted to someone else — including by electronic ease for in-person voting.

Swing states for Biden that Trump won in 2016 likely turned out this way.

When election procedures are suspect, legitimacy of results is absent.

In election 2020, Trump got more votes than any other GOP presidential candidate in US history, more than his own 2016 total — including in unlikely places like New York city.

He drew huge crowds for campaign rallies compared to sparse ones for Biden.

Despite evidence of significant election fraud in key swing states as discussed above and in previous articles, establishment media across the board and DHS pretended that none occurred.

Do your own fact-checking. Judge for yourself.

Independent historians one day will likely explain that Biden/Harris were declared winners of Election 2020 they lost to Trump.

As things now stand, that’s likely how the race for the White House will turn out.

Popular sentiment in most states, including key swing ones, and Trump both lost.

So did the notion of a free, fair, and open process.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

At TFF, we are blessed by having a number of peace and future scholars, world-leading in their professions, who have followed world events over many decades and continue to be committed to world order change and public education.

I say “blessed” because I assume that the reader share my reverence for high age and the sharing of long life experience as well as the wisdom that may accompany it in the midst of the youth-worshipping which characterises the ageing and increasingly grumpy West itself – also sometimes called age discrimination.

Last month we celebrated Johan Galtung at 90. And today, Richard Falk at 90 – both world-renowned mega-productive scholars restlessly seeking ways to make the world a more peaceful place. And both TFF Associates, mentors and friends of the founders even before we set up TFF in 1985.

As a student of sociology, peace and world affairs in the 1970s, I had been drawn to Falk’s pioneering writings and textbooks – and the “relevantly utopian” World Order Models Project, WOMP, that he participated in. I then met him in Lisbon for that project’s meeting in 1980 and have benefited ever since from his academic/law perspectives, peace thinking as well as from his sophisticated, elegantly complex style of writing.

To write this heart- and brain-felt homage, I went back first to TFF Associate’s “Treasures” section 1998-2005 and found 43 articles by Richard. Then on to TFF’s homepage – 2006-2012 and found 46 articles by him. Continuing to TFF Associates’ blog 2012-2017, I find that we published no less than 243 articles by Richard during those five years. And finally to our present site, The Transnational from 2018 where there are some 50.

In sum, more than 380 pieces of theory, visions, commentaries, analyses and debate articles. Although this is only a fraction of his total production, I allow myself to interpret this publication result as a modest token of my deep gratitude and my joy of paying back a little of what he has so generously given TFF and me personally during all these years – not the least, I may add, by reading and editing all these articles before I posted them!

It isn’t easy, perhaps actually impossible, to pin down who Richard Falk is, incessantly writing and speaking around the world, over so many years. But it suffices here to just celebrate the incredible diversity. Richard’s lifelong engagement with the Palestinian people stands out – as do critical analyses of USand NATO militarism and interventionism; Middle Eastern developments and wars, of course; international law and the UN in particular – we share a big heart for its basic idea and role in the world – as well as nonviolence and peace and analysis of topical issues such as this from just a couple of days ago. . .

Richard Falk is Jewish and explains what this identity means to him and, in passing, why he cannot in spite of his critical attitude to Zionism be categorized as he has been, as a self-hating Jew. He speaks rather from an ecumenical perspective – of great significance for world peace thinking:

“In a more fundamental respect my own evolution has always been suspicious of those who give priority to tribalist or sectarian identities. In other words, it is fine to affirm being Jewish, but it should not take precedence over being human or being open and receptive to the insight and wisdom of other traditions. We have reached a point in the political and cultural evolution that our future flourishing as a species vitally depends upon the spread of a more ecumenical ethos. We have expressed this embrace of otherness in relation to food, with the rise of ‘fusion’ cuisines, and with regard to popular culture, particularly music, where all kinds of borrowing and synthesis are perceived as exciting, authentic, valuable.”

And…

“In my experience what is most appropriate in our historical circumstances is an ecumenical and inclusive spiritual identity, and associated ethical and political commitments. In effect, what would awaken the collective sensibilities of the peoples of the earth to the challenges confronting humanity is a movement of spiritual and ethical globalization that approaches the universal through an immersion in a variety of particularities.

In this sense, I want to say, yes I am Jewish, and proud of it, but I am equally indigenous, Sufi, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and Christian to the extent that I allow myself to participate in their rituals, partake of their sacred texts, and seek and avail myself of the opportunity to sit at the feet of their masters. Many persons living deprived lives do not have or desire such ecumenical opportunities, and can best approach this universal ideal, by seeking out the inclusive potentialities of their own religious and cultural reality.”

Of course, like many other experts critical of Israel’s policies in general and policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians, he has been accused of anti-Semitism. In this short video from autumn 2019, you’ll see how he – careful with formulations around the complexity of the issue – explains how Zionism’s rejection/diversion of all criticism as anti-Semitism has more dimensions and purposes than we may have thought of. Indeed, this short sequence a pearl of pedagogics.

Richard’s style of writing has literary qualities way beyond the normal academic text – and without losing its precision and attempted rational reasoning. That may very well have to do with his reading of fiction and his own writing of poetry.

You’ll see in Memoir sketch – Championing lost causes how literary-philosophical classics such as Albert Camus influences his thinking, not only about external academic issues and the world but what it means to be an intellectual acting responsibly into that world and – even in dark times – avoid the traps of losing hope and being overtaken by fear.

In this article he pays tribute to one of his dearest friends, literature professor Edward Said (1935-2003) taking as his point of departure Said’s 1997 essay “On lost causes”, something which he elaborates further on in this 2014 article in The Nation about the future of Palestine.

Not to be missed, throughout this blog, he explores directly and indirectly what it means to be what he calls a citizens pilgrim. He defines that as an identity shaped through an appreciative reference to ‘the citizen pilgrim,’ that is, to the citizen whose conscience is directed at others without heeding boundaries of space or time, or such contingent features of identity as nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, class. The citizen pilgrim has embarked upon what is essentially a spiritual journey or pilgrimage, seeking an inspirational future that seems neither feasible nor impossible. Such an inspirational dedication also minimizes the imaginative foreclosures of mortality, making the certainty of death a part of life, and accepting this destiny without seeking the comfort of metaphysical fictions, and thus not deeply disconcerted by ‘the dying of the light.’

As I’ve hinted above, parallel with his academic and political production, Richard has consistently grappled with what it means to be a responsible intellectual – over the moral aspects of his lifelong project and its meandering path. “Responsible scholarship in dark times” from 2007 is but one of many such thoughtful pieces – rare in the academic world – with the greatest relevance for today’s – no less dark – world in which true knowledge, not to mention wisdom, seems to have lost out to the fast market’s banality-driven timespan-contracting and impulsive clicking fad that gives priority to fast, smart opinions rather than the slower knowledge-building – in short, a new illiteracy.

The world as a whole and as we experience it today in a macro-historical perspective has not progressed to the better, towards what he has struggled and hoped for. But is he frustrated?

Richard Falk in Lund, Sweden, March 2018 – from an interview with the author, click here to watch the video

Anti-war and pro-peace

This little tribute to one of the most prolific and elegantly-reasoning social scientists of our time cannot be anything but kaleidoscopic. The reader is advised to explore the Falk universe and its enlightenment on their own, perhaps through some of the links provided in this article.

Of particular importance for our relations with him is, naturally, his deep belief in and advocacy of using all the civilian means at humanity’s disposal and only use violence as the last resort, completely in unison with the UN Charter’s Article 1 – the promotion of which is TFF’s mission.

An example. Already in September 2002 – about half a year before the U.S. invasion and destruction of Iraq with its allies under Goerge W. Bush, Falk pulled the entire project apart, intellectually, legally, politically and morally in this short article on TFF – “A roadmap to war: A flawed debate.”

Falk stated his factual and intuitive pre-war criticism succinctly as did other TFF Associates such as Hans von Sponeck, Johan Galtung, Brian Martin, David Krieger, Burns Weston, Birgitte Rahbek, Else Hammerich and myself to mention some of the more vocal anti-intervention voices at the time.

It’s noteworthy that all TFF Associates who advised strongly against that war before it started also predicted its catastrophic consequences it would have in Iraq as well as for the possibility of a new and more benign world order that had been made possible by the demise of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. But few politicians and media in the US and NATO countries had any wish or capacity to listen. Today the consequences of that insensitive and self-destructive militarism causes the decline of the US and NATO itself.

Falk’s devotion to Gandhi, to eclecticist nonviolent thinking and policies, can be enjoyed in this article on TFF’s homepage “Mahatma Gandhi and the revival of nonviolent politics at the end of the 20th century” – as early as 1998.

If a Nobel Peace Prize should, for the first time, be awarded to a peace and conflict scholar, Richard Falk would be on top of the shortlist. Fortunately, he is on the list of the Nobel Peace Prize Watch. Here you may read the motivation for his nomination, every year over the last 12.

However, like Johan Galtung and the other qualified people on that list, Falk is probably too central to the essential peace concerns as Alfred Nobel expressed them in his will to ever even be considered – not that I think it bothers him the slightest.

My wife and co-founder Christina – and many other TFF Associates – join you today to say thank you, dear Richard, for your friendship, mentorship and TFF Associateship over more than 40 years.

As we look forward, we wish you and you wife Hilal Elver everything good in years to come, good health in particular so you can continue happily your citizen’s pilgrimage which will, beyond a doubt, continue to inspire way beyond your own time and space. And do continue your daily ping-pong matches too…

You may congratulate Richard Falk by writing to him at either [email protected] or [email protected].

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All images in this article are from the TT

The head of the Joe Biden transition team for the US Agency for Global Media, Richard Stengel, has branded himself the “chief propagandist,” urged the government to use propaganda against its “own population,” and called to “rethink” the First Amendment.

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Richard Stengel, the top state media appointee for US President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team, has enthusiastically defended the use of propaganda against Americans.

“My old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the chief propagandist,” Stengel said in 2018. “I’m not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population. And I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.”

One is Richard Stengel, self described former “Chief Propagandist” and supporter of domestic US propaganda pic.twitter.com/pNv1opsKBK https://t.co/LyZCxZaADi

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) November 11, 2020

Richard “Rick” Stengel was the longest serving under-secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs in US history.

At the State Department under President Barack Obama, Stengel boasted that he “started the only entity in government, non-classified entity, that combated Russian disinformation.” That institution was known as the Global Engagement Center, and it amounted to a massive vehicle for advancing US government propaganda around the world.

A committed crusader in what he openly describes as a global “information war,” Stengel has proudly proclaimed his dedication to the carefully management of the public’s access to information.

Stengel outlined his worldview in a book he published this June, entitled “Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It.”

Stengel has proposed “rethinking” the First Amendment that guarantees the freedom of speech and press. In 2018, he stated, “Having once been almost a First Amendment absolutist, I have really moved my position on it, because I just think for practical reasons in society, we have to kind of rethink some of those things.”

The head of the Joe Biden transition team for state media @USAGMgov, Richard @Stengel, called himself the “chief propagandist” and advocated using propaganda against your “own population.”

In this 2018 video he also calls to "rethink" the First Amendment.https://t.co/Yhbyd2UsME pic.twitter.com/7PNllutRYM

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 12, 2020

The Biden transition team’s selection of a censorial infowarrior for its top state media position comes as a concerted suppression campaign takes hold on social media. The wave of online censorship has been overseen by US intelligence agencies, the State Department, and Silicon Valley corporations that maintain multibillion-dollar contracts with the US government.

As the state-backed censorship dragnet expands, independent media outlets increasingly find themselves in the crosshairs. In the past year, social media platforms have purged hundreds of accounts of foreign news publications, journalists, activists, and government officials from countries targeted by the United States for regime change.

Stengel’s appointment appears to be the clearest signal of a coming escalation by the Biden administration of the censorship and suppression of online media that is seen to threaten US imperatives abroad.

From Obama admin’s “chief propagandist” to Russiagate-peddling MSNBC pundit

Before being appointed as the US State Department’s “chief propagandist” in 2013, Richard Stengel was a managing editor of TIME Magazine.

In the Obama administration, Stengel not only created the Global Engagement Center propaganda vehicle; he also boasted that he “led the creation of English for All, a government-wide effort to promote the teaching of English around the world.”

After leaving the State Department in 2016, Stengel became a strategic advisor to Snap Inc., the company that runs the social media apps Snapchat and Bitmoji.

Stengel also found time for a fellowship at the Atlantic Council, a think tankclosely linked to NATO and the Biden camp which has received funding from the US government, Britain, the European Union, and NATO itself, along with a host of Western weapons manufacturers, fossil fuel corporations, Gulf monarchies, and Big Tech juggernauts.

Stengel worked closely with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, a dubious organization that has fueled efforts to censor independent media outlets in the name of fighting “disinformation.”

But Stengel is perhaps most well known as a regular political analyst on MSNBC in the Donald Trump era. On the network, he fueled Russiagate conspiracy theories, portraying the Republican president as a useful idiot of Russia and claiming Trump had a “one-sided bromance” with Vladimir Putin.

Stengel left MSNBC this November to join Biden’s presidential transition. The campaign announced that he was tapped to lead the Biden-Harris agency review team for the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM).

Agency review teams are an integral part of the transition process, responsible for evaluating the operations of federal agencies.

Our teams are composed of diverse experts with deep policy expertise, ready to ensure we're prepared to lead on Day One.https://t.co/2gY1E0Ey5k

— Biden-Harris Presidential Transition (@Transition46) November 10, 2020

USAGM is a state media propaganda organization that has its origins in a Cold War vehicle created by the CIA to spread disinformation against the Soviet Union and communist China. (The agency was previously called the Broadcasting Board of Governors, or BBG, until it rebranded in 2018.)

USAGM states on its website that its most important mission is to “Be consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the United States.”

An agency shakeup this year produced revelations that USAGM provided clandestine assistance to separatist activists during the protests that consumed Hong Kong in 2019. The program earmarked secure communications assistance for protesters and $2 million in “rapid response” payouts for anti-China activists.

Ironic allegations given the US Agency for Global Media – the parent of @VOANews – was just exposed for earmarking $2 million to fuel Hong Kong protests & provide protesters with “secure communications apps.”

Just imagine the reaction if @CGTNOfficial did this inside the US. https://t.co/W5BERm2yhD

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) July 23, 2020

Richard Stengel’s “obsessive” crusade against Russian “disinformation”

When Richard Stengel referred to himself as the State Department’s “chief propagandist,” advocated the use of propaganda against the American people, and proposed to “rethink” the First Amendment, he was participating in a May 3, 2018 panel discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

During the CFR event, titled “Political Disruptions: Combating Disinformation and Fake News,” Stengel hyped up the threat of supposed “Russian disinformation,” a vague term that is increasingly used as an empty signifier for any narrative that offends the sensibilities of Washington’s foreign policy establishment.

Stengel stated that he was “obsessed with” fighting “disinformation,” and made it clear he has a particular obsession with Moscow, accusing “the Russians” of engaging in “full spectrum” disinformation.

Joining him on stage was political scientist Kelly M. Greenhill, who mourned that alternative media platforms publish “things that seem like they could be true… that’s the sphere where it’s particularly difficult to debunk them… it’s this gray region, this gray zone, where it’s not traditional disinformation, but a combination of misinformation and play on rumors, conspiracy theories, sort of gray propaganda, that’s where I think the nub or the crux of the problem lies.”

Stengel approved, adding, “By the way those terms, the gray zone, are all from Russian active measures, that they’ve been doing for a million years.”

The panelists made no effort to hide their disdain for independent and foreign media outlets. Stengel stated clearly that a “news cartel” of mainstream corporate media outlets had long dominated US society, but he bemoaned that those “cartels don’t have hegemony like they used to.”

Stengel made it clear that his mission is to counter the alternative perspectives given a voice by foreign media platforms that challenge the US-dominated media landscape.

“The bad actors use journalistic objectivity against us. And the Russians in particular are smart about this,” Stengel grumbled.

He singled out Russia’s state-funded media network, RT, lamenting that “Vladimir Putin, when they launched Russia Today, said it was an antidote to the American English hegemony over the world media system. That’s how people saw it.”

Ben Decker, a research fellow at the Misinformation Project at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, lamented that “RT is invading every weekly finance media space.”

But Decker was cheered by the proliferation of US oligarchs committed to retaking control of the narrative. “In America and across the world,” he stated, “the donor community is very eager to address this problem, and very eager to work with communities of researchers, academics, journalists, etc. to target this problem.”

“I think that there is an appetite to solve this from the top down,” he continued, urging the many academics in the audience “to apply for grant money” in order to fight this Russian “disinformation.”

The CFR panel culminated with an African audience member rising from the crowd and confronting Stengel: “Because what is happening in America is what the United States flipped on the Global South and in the Third World, which we lived with, for many, many years, in terms of a master narrative that was and still is propaganda,” the man declared.

Rather than respond, Stengel rudely ignored the question and made his way hurriedly for the exit: “You know what, I hate last questions. Don’t you? I never, I usually just want to end something before the last question.”

The video of the revealing confrontation caused such a furor that CFR’s YouTube account disabled comments and made the video unlisted. It cannot be found in a search on Google or YouTube; it can only be found with the direct link.

The video of the full discussion is embedded below:

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Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.

All images in this article are from The Grayzone unless otherwise stated

On Tuesday, Joe Biden released a list of transition teams for the various departments in his future White House. The Pentagon transition team for Biden consists of 23 people, many of whom hail from hawkish think tanks.

The team is led by Kathleen Hicks, who worked in the Pentagon under the Obama administration. Hicks most recent employer is the Cen­ter for Strate­gic and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies (CSIS), a think tank that receives contributions from arms makers like Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon, to name a few.

CSIS also receives contributions from governments. The think tank’s top government donors are the US, the UAE, Taiwan, and Japan. Two other CSIS employees are on the transition team; Andrew Hunter and Melissa Dalton, who both worked in the Pentagon under the Obama administration.

CSIS employees author policy papers and Op-Eds that generally call for more US involvement around the world. In August, Hicks co-authored an Op-Ed in The Hill titled, “Pentagon Action to Withdraw from Germany Benefits Our Adversaries,” a piece that slammed Trump’s plan to draw down troops from Germany, which Biden could to call off.

Two members of the transition team come from the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), Susanna Blume, a former Pentagon employee, and Ely Ratner, who served as deputy national security advisor to then-vice president Joe Biden from 2015 to 2017.

CNAS is another think tank that enjoys hefty donations from weapons makers, major corporations, and governments. From 2019 to 2020, CNAS received at least $500,000 from the US State Department and at least $500,000 from Northrop Grumman. Other donors include Google, Facebook, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin.

Three more team members list their latest employer as the RAND Corporation, Stacie Pettyjohn, a wargaming expert, Christine Wormuth, who held a few roles in the Obama administration, and Terri Tanielian, a behavioral scientist.

RAND is another hawkish think tank that receives the bulk of its funding from the US government, including the US Army, Air Force, and Department of Homeland Security. RAND is also funded by the UAE, Qatar, and NATO.

A report from In These Times found at least eight out of the 23 team members come from organizations that receive funding from US weapons makers (not including RAND). Besides the CSIS and CNAS employees listed above, In These Times includes Sharon Burke, who works for New America, Shawn Skel­ly, from CACI International, and Vic­tor Gar­cia, from Rebellion Defense.

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Dave DeCamp is the assistant news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

Politicians and governments are suppressing science. They do so in the public interest, they say, to accelerate availability of diagnostics and treatments. They do so to support innovation, to bring products to market at unprecedented speed. Both of these reasons are partly plausible; the greatest deceptions are founded in a grain of truth. But the underlying behaviour is troubling.

Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain. Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health.[1] Politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement. So too are scientists and health experts. The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency—a time when it is even more important to safeguard science.

The UK’s pandemic response provides at least four examples of suppression of science or scientists. First, the membership, research, and deliberations of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) were initially secret until a press leak forced transparency.[2] The leak revealed inappropriate involvement of government advisers in SAGE, while exposing under-representation from public health, clinical care, women, and ethnic minorities. Indeed, the government was also recently ordered to release a 2016 report on deficiencies in pandemic preparedness, Operation Cygnus, following a verdict from the Information Commissioner’s Office.[3,4]

Next, a Public Health England report on covid-19 and inequalities. The report’s publication was delayed by England’s Department of Health; a section on ethnic minorities was initially withheld and then, following a public outcry, was published as part of a follow-up report.[5,6] Authors from Public Health England were instructed not to talk to the media. Third, on 15 October, the editor of the Lancet complained that an author of a research paper, a UK government scientist, was blocked by the government from speaking to media because of a “difficult political landscape.”[7]

Now, a new example concerns the controversy over point-of-care antibody testing for covid-19.[8] The prime minister’s Operation Moonshot depends on immediate and wide availability of accurate rapid diagnostic tests.[9] It also depends on the questionable logic of mass screening—currently being trialled in Liverpool with a suboptimal PCR test.[10,11]

The incident relates to research published this week by The BMJ, which finds that the government procured an antibody test that in real world tests falls well short of performance claims made by its manufacturers.[12,13] Researchers from Public Health England and collaborating institutions sensibly pushed to publish their study findings before the government committed to buying a million of these tests but were blocked by the health department and the prime minister’s office.[14] Why was it important to procure this product without due scrutiny? Prior publication of research on a preprint server or a government website is compatible with The BMJ’s publication policy. As if to prove a point, Public Health England then unsuccessfully attempted to block The BMJ’s press release about the research paper.

Politicians often claim to follow the science, but that is a misleading oversimplification. Science is rarely absolute. It rarely applies to every setting or every population. It doesn’t make sense to slavishly follow science or evidence. A better approach is for politicians, the publicly appointed decision makers, to be informed and guided by science when they decide policy for their public. But even that approach retains public and professional trust only if science is available for scrutiny and free of political interference, and if the system is transparent and not compromised by conflicts of interest.

Suppression of science and scientists is not new or a peculiarly British phenomenon. In the US, President Trump’s government manipulated the Food and Drug Administration to hastily approve unproved drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir.[15] Globally, people, policies, and procurement are being corrupted by political and commercial agendas.[16]

The UK’s pandemic response relies too heavily on scientists and other government appointees with worrying competing interests, including shareholdings in companies that manufacture covid-19 diagnostic tests, treatments, and vaccines.[17] Government appointees are able to ignore or cherry pick science—another form of misuse—and indulge in anti-competitive practices that favour their own products and those of friends and associates.[18]

How might science be safeguarded in these exceptional times? The first step is full disclosure of competing interests from government, politicians, scientific advisers, and appointees, such as the heads of test and trace, diagnostic test procurement, and vaccine delivery. The next step is full transparency about decision making systems, processes, and knowing who is accountable for what.

Once transparency and accountability are established as norms, individuals employed by government should ideally only work in areas unrelated to their competing interests. Expertise is possible without competing interests. If such a strict rule becomes impractical, minimum good practice is that people with competing interests must not be involved in decisions on products and policies in which they have a financial interest.

Governments and industry must also stop announcing critical science policy by press release. Such ill judged moves leave science, the media, and stock markets vulnerable to manipulation. Clear, open, and advance publication of the scientific basis for policy, procurements, and wonder drugs is a fundamental requirement.[19]

The stakes are high for politicians, scientific advisers, and government appointees. Their careers and bank balances may hinge on the decisions that they make. But they have a higher responsibility and duty to the public. Science is a public good. It doesn’t need to be followed blindly, but it does need to be fairly considered. Importantly, suppressing science, whether by delaying publication, cherry picking favourable research, or gagging scientists, is a danger to public health, causing deaths by exposing people to unsafe or ineffective interventions and preventing them from benefiting from better ones. When entangled with commercial decisions it is also maladministration of taxpayers’ money.

Politicisation of science was enthusiastically deployed by some of history’s worst autocrats and dictators, and it is now regrettably commonplace in democracies.[20] The medical-political complex tends towards suppression of science to aggrandise and enrich those in power. And, as the powerful become more successful, richer, and further intoxicated with power, the inconvenient truths of science are suppressed. When good science is suppressed, people die.

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Notes

1. Geoghegan P. Cronyism and clientelism. London Review of Books 2020 Nov 5. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n21/peter-geoghegan/cronyism-and-clientelism
2. Scally G, Jacobson B, Abbasi K. The UK’s public health response to covid-19. BMJ2020;369:m1932.doi:10.1136/bmj.m1932 pmid:32414712
3. Iacobucci G. Pandemic preparedness: Government must release 2016 report, says information commissioner. BMJ2020;371:m3953. doi:10.1136/bmj.m3953 pmid:33046458
4. Department of Health and Social Care. Policy paper. Annex B: Exercise Cygnus report. 5 Nov 2020. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-pandemic-preparedness/exercise-cygnus-report-accessible-report
5. Public Health England. Disparities in the risk and outcomes of COVID-19. 2020. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/908434/Disparities_in_the_risk_and_outcomes_of_COVID_August_2020_update.pdf
6. Khunti K, Platt L, Routen A, Abbasi K. Covid-19 and ethnic minorities: an urgent agenda for overdue action. BMJ2020;369:m2503. doi:10.1136/bmj.m2503 pmid:32576558
7. Horton R. Tweet, 15 Oct 2020. https://twitter.com/richardhorton1/status/1316711967554506753
8. Boseley S. Antibody tests bought by UK government “less accurate than maker claims.” Guardian 2020 Nov 12. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/12/covid-antibody-test-bought-uk-government-less-accurate-than-makers-claim
9. Iacobucci G, Coombes R. Covid-19: Government plans to spend £100bn on expanding testing to 10 million a day. BMJ2020;370:m3520. doi:10.1136/bmj.m3520 pmid:32907851
10. Iacobucci G. Covid-19: mass population testing is rolled out in Liverpool. BMJ2020;371:m4268.doi:10.1136/bmj.m4268 pmid:33144291
11. Iacobucci G. Covid-19: rapid test missed over 50% of positive cases in Manchester pilot. BMJ2020;371:m4323.doi:10.1136/bmj.m4323 pmid:33158908
12. Ranya M, Jones HE, Sian T-P, et al. Accuracy of UK rapid test consortium (UK-RTC) “AbC-19 rapid test” for detection of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection in key workers: test accuracy study. BMJ2020;371:m4262.
13. Dipender G, Ponsford MJ. Testing for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. BMJ2020;371:m4288.
14. Armstrong S. Covid-19: Government buried negative data on its favoured antibody test. BMJ2020;371:m4353.doi:10.1136/bmj.m4353
15. Cohen K, Kupferschmidt K. The “very, very bad look” of remdesivir, the first FDA-approved COVID-19 drug. Science 2020 Oct 28. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/very-very-bad-look-remdesivir-first-fda-approved-covid-19-drug
16. Transparency International. Corruption and covid-19—the story so far. 8 Jul 2020. https://www.transparency.org.uk/corruption-coronavirus-covid-19-latest
17. Ennals E. Government test tsar has £770,000 shares in drugs firm that sold us £13million of “pointless” antibody screening kits—after it emerged that Sir Patrick Vallance has a financial interest in company racing to find vaccine. Daily Mail 2020 Sep 26. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8776339/Test-tsar-770-000-shares-firm-sold-13million-pointless-antibody-screening-kits.html
18. Armstrong S. Covid-19: Government faces legal action over £75m contract for antibody tests. BMJ2020;371:m4427.doi:10.1136/bmj.m4427
19. Mahase E. Covid-19: Vaccine candidate may be more than 90% effective, interim results indicate. BMJ2020;371:m4347.doi:10.1136/bmj.m4347 pmid:33168562
20. Bollyky TJ, Kickbusch I. Preparing democracies for pandemics. BMJ2020;371:m4088.doi:10.1136/bmj.m4088 pmid:33097482

Featured image is from dreamstime

Amid a global public-health crisis and with oil prices at extreme lows, the lame duck Trump administration is expected to issue a “request for nominations” as early as Monday, asking oil companies to identify their preferences on areas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain to lease for oil drilling. This is the latest move by the Trump administration in its rushed process to open one of the nation’s most iconic and sacred landscapes to oil drilling. 

The case for protecting this sacred land is so clear that five of the six major U.S. banks — Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo — are among the two dozen banks around the world that have announced they will not fund any new oil and gas development in the Arctic Refuge. And President-elect Biden has made permanent protection for the Arctic Refuge and other areas impacted by President Trump’s attack on federal lands and waters a Day One priority.

Indigenous leaders issued the following statements:

“The oil and gas lease sales on the Arctic Refuge demonstrate the Trump administration’s complete disregard for the human rights of the Gwich’in & Inupiat people and our ways of life that depend on the health of the Refuge’s coastal plain,” said Jody Potts (Han Gwich’in), Native Movement regional director. “In the Arctic, our peoples are being heavily impacted by a climate crisis due to fossil fuel extraction, which we cannot afford to continue. The adverse impacts of oil development in these sacred and critical caribou calving grounds will be heavily felt by Gwich’in and Inupiat villages. As a Gwich’in person, I know my family’s food security, culture, spirituality and ways of life are at stake. Gwich’in people will not compromise and we will defend our way of life for future generations until this sacred land is permanently protected.”

“The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is sacred land that sustains not just the Gwich’in and Iñupiat Peoples but is one of the last untouched ecosystems in the world,” said the director of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic (SILA), Siqiñiq Maupin. “The global consciousness is shifting into an equitable and just transition to a sustainable economy, yet the United States continues to ignore science and human rights. Indigenous Peoples have passed down stories for generations of the climate crisis we are currently facing. Without Indigenous leadership and values going forward we are left with empty promises, boom and bust economy, and endangering the health and safety for all. Iñupiat People value all life and the narrative of our Iñupiaq Nation supporting this type of project goes against all our principles, ways of life, and who we are. SILA stands in solidarity with the Gwich’in for protection of the Porcupine caribou birthing grounds.”

“This administration has consistently ignored our voices and dismissed our concerns. Our food security, our land and our way of life is on the verge of being destroyed. Handing up this very sacred area to oil companies is a violation of our human rights,” said Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee. “Any company thinking about participating in this corrupt process should know that they will have to answer to the Gwich’in people and the millions of Americans who stand with us. We will continue to protect this place forever. This fight is far from over, and we will do whatever it takes to defend our sacred homelands.”

“The Trump administration opening up oil lease sales is devastating to our way of life and to our future,” said members of the Gwich’in Youth Council. “The Gwich’in people’s identity is connected to the land, water and animals. We have lost so much we can’t afford to lose more. Please stand with the Gwich’in Nation and help us prevent oil extraction in the calving grounds of the porcupine caribou herd, the sacred place where life begins.”

Earthjustice Deputy Managing Attorney Erik Grafe, in the Alaska regional office, issued the following statement:

“This is the Trump administration’s midnight effort to sell off irreplaceable lands in the refuge before a new day dawns. We are already in court challenging the administration’s decision to open the whole coastal plain to leasing, and we’ll hold the line against this rushed attempt to implement the unlawful program. As the majority of Americans know, the Arctic Refuge is no place to drill.”

A coalition of indigenous, human rights and environmental organizations responded as follows:

“The Trump administration is barreling forward with a last-minute lease sale in America’s most iconic wilderness after sidestepping the environmental review process mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act. The Interior Department’s own documents show it has altered or disregarded scientific data on drilling’s impacts on imperiled wildlife, including threatened polar bears who den on the coastal plain; drastically overestimated potential leasing revenue; and failed to adequately consult with the Indigenous Peoples of the Gwichʼin Nation of Alaska and Canada who make their home along the migratory route of the Porcupine caribou herd and rely on the herd for their survival.

“The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) should not move forward with this rushed lease sale. This agency acknowledged that drilling would release massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, but asserted that, ‘there is not a climate crisis.’ BLM has compromised the integrity of its analysis and the hard-working career scientists and professionals who have dedicated themselves to protecting the coastal plain’s exceptional values. BLM should scrap this flawed review and start over. The agency needs to truly, thoroughly assess all the impacts from oil and gas activities before holding a lease sale.

“Political appointees in the Trump administration have flouted the law at the expense of a wondrous expanse of land that has sustained Indigenous Peoples for thousands of years and that the vast majority of Americans want to protect. Any company that is foolish enough to participate in this sham process must now know that we are fully committed to challenging these legally flawed actions in court. The will of the American people and the rule of law will prevail.”

Members of the public are encouraged to stand with these communities in opposition to oil drilling in the Arctic Refuge. Learn more here.

Contacts

Corey Himrod, Alaska Wilderness League

Nicole Schmitt, Alaska Wildlife Alliance

Pam Miller, Arctic Audubon Society

Rebecca Sentner, Audubon Alaska

Chris Rider, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Yukon Chapter

Gwen Dobbs, Defenders of Wildlife

Rebecca Bowe, Earthjustice

Rose Mohammadi, Environment America

David Raskin, Friends of Alaska National Wildlife Refuges

Patrick Davis, Friends of the Earth US

Emily Samsel, League of Conservation Voters

Matt Smelser, National Audubon Society

Anne Hawke, Natural Resources Defense Council

Erica Watson, Northern Alaska Environmental Center

Gabby Brown, Sierra Club

Tim Woody, The Wilderness Society

Dawnell Smith, Trustees for Alaska

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Pakistan’s prime minister said he has been under “pressure” to recognize Israel. However, Islamabad will never recognize the “Zionist” state until a just settlement is reached for the decadeslong Palestinian issue.

In an interview with a local broadcaster aired on Thursday night, Imran Khan, nonetheless, refused to name the countries that have been pressuring him to recognize Israel.

“Are they non-Muslim or Muslim countries that have been putting pressure on you?” the anchorperson asked in an attempt to get a clear answer.

“Leave this (question). There are things we cannot say. We have good relations with them (countries),” Khan said.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain have recently established diplomatic and economic relations with Tel Aviv. Some other Gulf countries are also weighing options to normalize relations with Israel.

“Let us stand on our own feet in terms of economy, then you may ask these questions,” Khan said, referring to Islamabad’s longtime economic dependence on the oil-rich Gulf states, largely Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

He, however, made it clear that he has no “second thought” about recognizing Israel.

“I have no second thought to recognize Israel unless there is a just settlement, which satisfies Palestinians,” he went on to say.

Referring to the country’s founding father, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who time and again had refused to recognize Israel, the premier said Islamabad would continue to follow in Jinnah’s footsteps vis-a-vis Palestine.

Israel, he observed, has had a deep influence in the United States, which is another country pressurizing him to recognize Israel.

“The pressure is because of Israel’s deep impact (influence) in the US. This (influence) was in fact extraordinary during Trump’s stint,” he maintained.

Replying to a series of questions about Islamabad’s future relations with U.S. President-elect Joe Biden‘s administration with special reference to Afghanistan, Khan said there will be no “change” in Washington’s ongoing Afghan policy, which aims to bring an end to the 19-year bloody conflict through a political settlement in the war-torn country.

“Afghanistan is not the real issue. The real issue is Israel. It is to be seen how he (Biden) deals with that. Whether he changes Trump’s policies (about Israel) or continue with them.”

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One dogma that is likely to persist in US foreign policy during a Biden presidency will be the sanctions regime adopted towards Iran.  Every messianic state craves clearly scripted enemies, and the demonology about the Islamic Republic is not going to go begging.  Elliot Abrams, the current US special representative for Iran, told Associated Press on November 12 that,

“Even if you went back to the (nuclear deal) and even if the Iranians were willing to return … this newly enriched uranium, you would not have solved these fundamental questions of whether Iran is going to be permitted to violate long-term commitments it has made to the world community.” 

It is worth pointing out that it was President Donald Trump who proved so itchy to renege on the nuclear deal to begin with.  In May 2018, his administration formally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the long negotiated harvest of the Obama administration in July 2015.  Over the course of 120 days, it re-imposed all previously lifted economic sanctions, including “secondary sanctions” on non-US entities conducting financial or commercial transactions with Iran. A unilateral shredding of Washington’s own undertakings was made while still expecting the mullahs to continue in sweet compliance. 

The less than compliant response from Tehran has not made this one of Trump’s finer moments: an abandonment of nuclear limits marked out by the agreement; a resumption of the nuclear program; an increasingly emboldened stance in the Middle East.  According to UN inspectors, Iran’s enriched stockpile currently lies at 2,440 kilograms.  Under the deal, it would have been under 300 kilograms.  All of this took place despite the precipitous fall in oil exports, a decline in currency value and a steep rise in inflation.

Even before the pandemic, human rights organisations were already warning about the broader health implications of a brutal sanctions regime.  As Human Rights Watch explained in an October 2019 report, the consequences of such sanctions “pose a serious threat to Iranians’ right to health and access to essential medicines – and has almost certainly contributed to documented shortages – ranging from a lack of critical drugs for epilepsy patients to limited chemotherapy medications for Iranians with cancer.”

The US State Department and the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control continue to maintain that humanitarian goods, which also covers medicine and medical supplies, are exempt in the sanctions policy.  A rosily inaccurate picture, given the imposition of sanctions on 18 Iranian banks including those entities engaged in financing foods and medicines.  To this comes the added complication of what the US considers “dual use” items: hazmat suits, face shields, oxygen generators, air filters.  Decisions to grant exemptions, the purview of bureaucrats, are tardily made.

The advent of the novel coronavirus pandemic inspired a ghoulish train of thought in the Trump administration.  Easing sanctions to better enable Iran to cope with COVID-19 was never entertained.  Instead, as Djavad Salehi-Isfahani of the Brookings Institute observed, “the US piled on more sanctions, and chose to ignore calls from world leaders, former US diplomats, and the United Nations to ease sanctions.”  Such a bloodthirsty sentiment was captured by the Wall Street Journal in March 2020, whose editors decided that sanctions should continue, despite Iran becoming a pandemic hotspot.  “If American sanctions were the culprit, it might be reasonable to consider lifting them.  But the regime’s incompetence and self-interest are to blame.” 

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif thought differently of it, accusing the US of “medical terrorism” in blunting Tehran’s efforts to access financial resources during the COVID-19 crisis.  Hadi Yazdani, a physician and a member of the reformist Union of Islamic People Party, sports a more nuanced view: US sanctions have well hobbled the government’s pandemic policy, but so has inefficiency and habitual bureaucratic mismanagement.

The dedicatedly nasty sanctions regime encouraged and enforced by the United States is now frustrating efforts in the country to make advance payment to the COVAX facility, created to assist in providing future COVID-19 vaccines to more indigent states.  This will become more pressing, given rising death tolls.  (On November 13, 461 were reported in the state media.)

The rate of COVID-19 infections is also scorching: 11,737 cases over 24 hours from Friday, according to Sima Sadat Lari, a health ministry spokeswoman who has become the regular herald of doom.  She also admitted that various questions on the vaccines remained unanswered, notably in terms of “how effective the vaccine is and for what groups it is more effective.” 

During the transition period in US politics, we can expect the Trump administration to be particularly testy about modifying its position on sanctions.  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continues to busy himself with blacklisting Iranian entities.  The Treasury Department, for instance, recently placed a supply chain network on the list, claiming it “facilitated the procurement of sensitive goods, including US-origin electronic components” for an Iranian entity linked to the production of “military communication systems, avionics, information technology, electronic warfare, and missile launchers.” 

Pompeo – and in this, he has a few devotees- argues that a return to the nuclear deal would be dotty and dangerous.  “It’s a crazy idea to think that you’re going to get back into a deal that permitted a clean pathway for the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon by which they could terrorize the entire world.”  President-elect Joe Biden, for his part, insists that Iran “must return to strict compliance with the deal.  If it does so, I would rejoin the agreement and use our renewed commitment to diplomacy to work with our allies to strengthen and extend it, while more effectively pushing back against Iran’s other destabilizing activities.” 

The statements of the president-elect suggest nothing comforting to health specialists and policy makers bearing witness to the suffering caused by sanctions.  Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy might be abandoned in name, but will continue exerting a haunting influence.  The hawks in the Republican Party will be sharpening their talons, ever watchful of any softening towards Tehran.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Criticised by orthodox Marxists for being a “pseudo-left” agitator, Herbert Marcuse was nonetheless committed to a scientific study of the material conditions of industrial capitalism.

Herbert Marcuse’s theoretical development was rooted in his analysis of the relationship between civilisation and domination. His critique of the rule of the consumer society reflects a synthesis of such earlier theorists as Freud and Marx, and adds to a wealth of critical social theory by the Frankfurt school.

Marcuse argues that a process of alienation consists in consumer society that results in one’s being alienated from nature and eros. He contends that capitalist and state communist societies dominate individuals and the whole citizenry through a one-dimensional productive apparatus, dominated from within by instrumental rationalities that suppress values that can’t be validated by the status quo, thus integrating individuals into regulated modes of thought and behaviour. Marcuse worried that the hegemony of instrumental rationalities in all spheres of life denied oxygen to the alternative, critical rationalities necessary to stimulate visionary social change. All these elements coalesced to create an original and vibrant politics of liberation that ran deep through the culture of the sixties.

Capitalism and alienation

Like in Marx, Marcuse’s philosophy of liberation argues that the central problem of modernity is that class society and capitalism alienates the essence of our humanity. As a critic of industrialisation, Marcuse was attentive to the fact that the consolidation of industrial society had created a mass of unhappy humans robbed of their full creative potential, whilst concurrently turning us into systematic abusers of nature. It is a development of Marx’s argument that under the capitalist economic system the interests and wellbeing of the individual and wider society are lost in alienated labour.

According to Marx, wage labour demands subjection to specialised, menial tasks which may not be socially useful, which may even be socially harmful, and which tend to lack the meaningful, creative and self-expressive aspects of fulfilling labour. He argued alongside Engels that workers are alienated from their product because their product is appropriated in the agenda to extract profit from it, and that they are alienated from their own productive activity insofar as they have no control over it and it doesn’t express their goals. On this view there is an antagonism between human instinct and the demands of capitalist society. The economic system permanently subjugates the instincts, the instincts we ought to nurture in order to fully live.

Marx calls this process the alienation of “species being,” the frustration of our intrinsically human capacity to engage in conscious and creative work. It is precisely because capitalism frustrates the need for satisfying, gratifying work that it is an alienating system. Moreover, capitalism creates alienation because it is an economic model in which the masses do not own the means of production, and thus have to survive by working within the capitalist system, selling their labour power at a rate that extorts them. In addition, under capitalism we find our lives dominated by faceless powers. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels describe alienation as “the positing of social activity, the consolidation of our product as a real power over us, growing out of our control.” Marcuse could see from the perspective of the twentieth century that Marx had been right, and if anything alienation had become more entrenched and extreme with time, with workers losing even more control over the direction of their lives and society.

In 1964, reflecting on the alienation of man in the planned waste and irrational affluence of the consumer society, Marcuse asked how man can end “his servitude on an exploitative apparatus, which in satisfying his needs, perpetuates his servitude.” Developing Marx’s line of thought on the alienation of the individual in commodity fetishism – the erotic identification of consumers with the objects they purchase – Marcuse added that their interests are lost in the alienated labour needed to create the products and services which constitute false, manufactured needs. At the basis of the consumer society is a means of production which superficially satisfies people by meeting their basic needs whilst avalanching them simultaneously with false, socially created needs.

Because false needs – those that are external to our basic, vital needs – are “superimposed upon the individual by particular social interests in his repression” the prospect of meeting everybody’s needs and eliminating the cruel prevalence of toil and injustice to deal with scarcity is limited. Thus the social controls of wasteful production and consumption prevail whilst workers are too stultified by the avalanche of products and diversions to think critically, outside of the whole. To maintain the system we are needed as its consumers and we internalise the ethics (or lack thereof) of the system. We work in order to consume because we must keep buying. Our motivations and aspirations are created and shaped entirely within the system. The consumer society has perfected the manipulation of our innermost needs as it creates an unprecedented and extensive regime of control over our personal and social behaviour.

In Eros and Civilisation Marcuse declared that civilisation “is, generally speaking, founded on the suppression of instincts.” Since alienated labour is hoisted to the demands of productivity and the performance principle, it eviscerates energies that might, in a non-repressive society, be applied to non-alienated libidinal work. Contrary to Freud, Marcuse argues that the need to repress instinct to deal with scarcity is now minimised by technological accomplishments. Freud had argued that the repression of eros by degrees of sublimation allowed for human energy to be applied fruitfully in labour to defeat resource scarcity, and he believed the pleasure principle ought to be denied in the interest of the performance principle.

Marcuse on the other hand reasoned that because technological advancements promised to provide for our basic needs, even to excess, scarcity was a void justification for repression, and he saw in society an avalanche of false needs and organised, managed scarcity to defend the reign of the performance principle. Instead of repressing eros in the interest of control, growth and the status quo, he argued we ought to create a new society based on non-repressive relations, incorporating automation to provide for necessities whilst we use our free time to cultivate our human potentialities and liberate our consciousness.

An inextricable aspect of Marcuse’s theory is the role that alienation of external nature also plays in a repressive civilisation.  He detested the wasteful production and consumption of the industrialised world, lamenting the fact that human energies couldn’t be harnessed for more socially and ecologically useful enterprises. According to Marcuse’s ecological vision, the instrumental rationalities at the heart of advanced industrial civilisation rationalise domination over nature, resulting in the subsequent objectification of people and environments in extractivist economic systems. Marcuse sees the liberation of people and environments, their protection and preservation from organised exploitation, as a struggle with equal stakes. His work drew a decisive link between technological development and domination, reasoning that teleologies of modernity which conflate capitalism with progress were fundamentally flawed. Marcuse saw many problems with the ideology of the advanced industrial societies. According to his view oppression consists in industrialisation, which assimilates individuals and external nature into the totalising authority of the mode of production.

Marcuse argued that alienation occurs for all groups in society, not just the proletariat, with the advancement of scientism and technology pushing all towards a closed consciousness. Most Marxist consciousness of and reflection on the revolutionary subject had stayed within the parameters delimited by Marx’s theory of the proletariat as a revolutionary agent, as able to overcome their alienation in a worker’s revolution, but Marcuse’s and the New Left’s remediation of Marx was an attempt to temporise left theory with the realities of the twentieth century. Because, as Marcuse argued, negation of capitalist and state communist exploitation could only develop beyond the monolithic one-dimensional society and tightly regulated administration of needs and satisfactions, the assimilated proletariat could not necessarily be depended upon to foment revolution anymore. Marcuse argued the theory had become historically obsolescent because the working classes had been defused and deradicalised by their assimilation into the system of false, manipulated needs. Instead, Marcuse’s theory of one-dimensionality and the Great Refusal argued, we ought to identify where negation of the whole might develop, namely amongst students, minorities and intellectuals. In his view, the Great Refusal was to be a conscious, active transformation of oneself and society, a drive for one’s own liberation and the transformation of the world beyond, to transcend the limitations of the closed off universe, the stultifying conditions of one-dimensional life. It is to this visionary aspect of Marcuse’s theory – the idea of one-dimensional society – that I will now turn.

One-dimensionality

Marcuse’s star rose with the explosion of his study of advanced industrial society into the forefront of critical social theory and practice. First published in 1964, his best known work One-dimensional Man spoke to the anti-authoritarian zeitgeist of the sixties and ameliorated several strands of his thought on society and freedom, arguing that we find ourselves and all other living things to be parts of a vast being in which its entirety has the power to maintain our world as a ripe habitat for its project of domination. Marcuse’s findings and conclusions were very much out of the step with the conventional political wisdom of the West when he published them. Cold War demonology had unequivocally cast communism as the oppressor against liberal democracy, but to Marcuse the truth was more nuanced and complex.

The implication democracies could be oppressive in ways like communism was unwelcome news to those with a vested interest in the status quo, and ideas like that were discouraged to the point Marcuse received death threats. In sum, One-dimensional Man critiques the consumerist, technocratic society and the instrumental rationalities that dominate it from within, suppressing opposition to the irrational status quo and ultimately threatening the realisation of human and individual freedom. According to the theory, the technological administration of society under advanced capitalism (as well as state communism) had assimilated people into a one-dimensional universe, in which potentials for radical social change were curtailed by a subtle network of repression.

Referring to the “society without opposition” and its centralised yet diffused strategies of control and domination, Marcuse wrote that “the distinguishing feature of advanced industrial society is its effective suffocation of those needs which demand liberation,” because the centralised production of needs and aspirations by the experts and administrators of society integrated individuals into the values of the establishment and its restrictive rules of thought and behaviour. Marcuse argued that  one-dimensional infrastructure produces one-dimensional people and a cognitive dissonance which stultifies the transformative, restorative power of negative, dialectical thought and critical rationality. In the closed-off universe there is no space for such a thing as a revolutionary agent. Visionary utopian thinking is reduced to Marxist history, irrelevant, forgotten. It is against the repression of these values that Marcuse wrote, in the spirit of a genuinely radical critique.

Marcuse’s flash of enlightenment was the thought that to keep society in stasis, there must be a dominating force regulating it, and that somehow the constellations of new economic, technical and military forces must be involved. One-dimensional Man presented an extensive analysis of the universal system he identified as the mainframe of technological societies, placing special emphasis on the role of the consumer economy in totalising the power of commodities over the collective, the individual psyche and the biological organism. Marcuse’s writings reasoned that there had been a decline of the proletariat as an agent of radical social change, because the destructive engine of one-dimensional thought had successfully subjugated them to false consciousness. In light of these new methods of social control coalescing to contain social change, the relation between democracy and totalitarianism thus becomes much closer and more essential than is usually thought.

As well as reflecting Marcuse’s independent research as a student of the new false consciousness, the theory of one-dimensionality also contributed to the Frankfurt school project which aspired to a critical theory of society and sought to explain the cooptation and subversion of politics, art and culture by the industrial society. The Frankfurt theorists recognised that changes in production and consumption in the twentieth century had had concurrent effects on society which had jeopardized utopian change. They argued that the extension of productivity, the growth of technological efficiency, and the distribution of goods to the masses had given the industrial society a new and disturbingly effective set of introjected social controls. The consumer economy, the “affluent monster”, had created a society which integrated individuals into a system in which  their needs and satisfaction were administered from a small island of experts. The purpose of Marcuse’s philosophy was to ask how man can end “his dependence on an exploitative apparatus which, in satisfying his needs, perpetuates his servitude?”

Because it only validates thought and behaviour within its rationale, the one-dimensional society represses the emergence of a critical perspective on the problems created by the economic status quo. An avalanche of products, advertising and diversions distract people’s focus from irrational spending on defence and the neglection of public policy to address systemic issues like racism and poverty. This notion of the closed-off universe is the crux of the theory of one-dimensionality and it is deserving of more consideration in order to understand Marcuse’s analysis of the prospects for liberation. Although within the one-dimensional apparatus there is no tension between what is and what could be, his account of it provides grounds for both pessimism and optimism that alternatives may be formulated. In the introduction to One-dimensional Man Marcuse declares that the book will “vacillate throughout between two contradictory hypotheses: (1) that advanced industrial society is capable of containing qualitative change for the foreseeable future; (2) that forces and tendencies exist which may break this containment and explode the society.”

According to the theory, society does contain within it the means for collapse of the internal system of domination. Marcuse reserves a privileged role for critical reason and its potential for criticising irrational forms of social life. Instead of using one-dimensionality as a metaphor for unending totalitarianism, Marcuse meant for it to have a more subtle meaning, as a way of describing the standardised, naturalised mode of thought and behaviour in the advanced industrial state, to which, crucially,  there were real – but hidden – alternatives. One-dimensional Man uses comparisons against deficient conditions in society to throw light on alternative states that might be. The gap between the status quo and utopia opens in consciousness of and reflection on what is missing. From Marcuse’s point of view the activity of genuine thinking about social transformation is a fight against democratic totalitarianism and fascism itself.

At the centre of the one-dimensional development was the slow and steady encroachment of instrumental rationalities in all spheres of life in the advanced industrial state. Marcuse wrote extensively on the complexly correlated relationship between technics and society. In an article in French he described his thesis that “technology has replaced ontology ” as the primary means of defining subject-object relations, the basis of our understanding of the world. In other words, instrumental rationalities – rather than dialectical thought- replaced hitherto prevailing ontology, which posited a conscious, active subject confronting a world of controllable objects. The processes, protocols and algorithms of the dominant mode of production subordinated both subject and object to the means and ends of a pre-ordained industrial universe. It was a universe in which the people had next to no control or autonomy over their experience of the world.

On this view, imaginative capabilities become crucial to liberation.

The hegemony of instrumental reason gave rise to a version of social reality which describes itself as objective, neutral, unloaded by bias or value judgements. In truth, it reinforces the instrumental logic which justifies domination of the natural world and human bodies, affirming the value judgement that our worth consists in how much of ourselves we can sacrifice in service of economic growth and exchange value. Marcuse detested this objectivity as a false construct and one more irrefutable verity to do away with. He argued that potential for social transformation consisted in the ability of conscientious citizens to reclaim spaces for radical thought, to claim territories where ‘negative’ thought at odds with the prevailing positivism could flourish. The one-dimensional apparatus was a vicarious, unstable deception that had to militate to ensure it’s own survival, as explosive forces of opposition and dissent began to shatter its foundations in the germination of the Great Refusal, which sought to prefigure an alternative society based on non-repressive relations.

To be continued…

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Nach den Erkenntnissen der Humanwissenschaften Anthropologie, Soziologie und Psychologie besitzt der Mensch von Natur aus einen gesunden Verstand beziehungsweise ein natürliches Urteilsvermögen. Dieser gesunde Menschenverstand arbeitet empirisch, das heißt, er fällt konkrete Urteile auf der Basis alltäglicher Lebenserfahrung und Beobachtung. Mündige Bürger teilen diese Urteile. Zudem ist er mehr auf praktische Anwendung ausgerichtet als auf abstrakte Theorie. Auch nimmt der gesunde Menschenverstand auf die Urteile aller anderen Menschen Rücksicht und ist damit gemeinschaftsfördernd. Der Aufklärer Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) stufte den gesunden Menschenverstand im Alltag als nützlicher ein als wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse.

Für den erfolgreichen Gebrauch des gesunden Menschenverstands stellt er drei Maximen auf:

1. “Selbstdenken“

2. “An der Stelle jedes andern denken“

3. “Jederzeit mit sich selbst einstimmig denken“ (1)

Ähnlich sieht es der französische Schriftsteller und Literatur-Nobelpreisträger Romain Rolland (1866-1944). In der Einleitung seines Antikriegs-Romans von 1920 „Clerambault. Geschichte eines freien Gewissens im Krieg“ schreibt er:

„Jeder Mensch muss, so er ein wahrer Mensch ist, lernen, allein innerhalb aller zu stehen, allein für alle zu denken – wenn es not tut, sogar auch gegen alle! Aufrichtig denken heißt für alle denken, selbst wenn man gegen alle denkt. Die Menschheit bedarf derer, die ihr aus Liebe Schach bieten und sich gegen sie auflehnen, wenn es not tut!“ (2)

Der Mensch besitzt nicht nur einen gesunden Verstand, er ist auch autonom. Autonomie ist der Zustand und das Lebensgefühl der Selbstbestimmung, Unabhängigkeit und Selbstverwaltung. Philosophisch gesehen ist sie die Fähigkeit, sich als Wesen der Freiheit zu sehen und aus dieser Freiheit heraus zu handeln. Damit ist sie auch die Kraft zum Nicht-Mitmachen (Adorno). Ausgestattet mit diesen besonderen Fähigkeiten übergibt der Mensch jedoch ohne Not immer wieder einem anderen die Macht, über sein Leben und seine Zukunft zu entscheiden.

Zum Beispiel werden in den „Demokratien“ der westlichen Welt alle vier bis fünf Jahre korrupte Politiker in hohe Regierungsämter gewählt und als respektable Autoritäten angesehen. Die Politiker verbinden mit dieser Zuschreibung umgehend Herrschaftsansprüche, schaffen ein Verhältnis der Über- und Unterordnung und setzen gegenüber den Bürgern ihren Willen durch; präziser gesagt, den Willen oder die Anweisungen ihrer Auftraggeber, der globalen „Macht-Elite“. Damit betreiben sie auf Kosten der arbeitenden Bevölkerung eine Politik, die es der „Milliardärs-Elite“ im Hintergrund ermöglicht, so viele Dollar-Milliarden zusammenzustehlen, dass sie sich nahezu alles beziehungsweise jeden kaufen können: angefangen von korrupten Politikern bis hin zur korrupten Weltgesundheitsorganisation WHO. Wir alle sind seit der Ausrufung des „Corona-Skandals“ (Reiner Füllmich) Anfang Jahr 2020 Augenzeugen und Leidtragende dieses skrupellosen weltgeschichtlichen „Ausflusses“.

Diesen Regierenden kann man weder heute noch in Zukunft vertrauen. Der russische Schriftsteller Lew Nikolajewitsch Graf Tolstoi (1828-1910) schrieb in seinen politischen Flugschriften zu Beginn des letzten Jahrhunderts, dass das kein Zufall sei:

„Man könnte die Unterordnung eines ganzen Volkes unter wenige Leute noch rechtfertigen, wenn die Regierenden die besten Menschen wären; aber das ist nicht der Fall, war niemals der Fall und kann es nie sein. Es herrschen häufig die schlechtesten, unbedeutendsten, grausamsten, sittenlosesten und besonders die verlogensten Menschen. Und dass dem so ist, ist kein Zufall.“ (3)

Viele Erwachsene reagieren auf diese Politiker jedoch wie Kinder oder wie die primitiven Urmenschen reagierten: in Form eines „magischen Autoritätsglaubens“: kritiklos und umnebelt von Stimmungen, Gefühlen und Glücksverheißungen. Und das hat Folgen: Die Autoritätsgläubigkeit führt unweigerlich zur Autoritätshörigkeit, die in der Regel den Reflex eines absoluten geistigen Gehorsams und eine Verstandeslähmung auslöst. Vollsinnige Erwachsene können dann nicht mehr selbständig denken und vernünftig urteilen und übergeben die Entscheidungsgewalt sittenlosen Politikern. Wohin das führt, erleben wir gerade. Deshalb die Aufforderung: Keinem anderen Menschen die Macht übergeben!

Keinem anderen Menschen, aber auch keinem übernatürlichen Wesen, das uns als „Gottheit“ von frühester Kindheit bis ans Ende der Tage führen und beschützen soll. Sind wir doch eingebettet in die Gemeinschaft von Artgenossen, auf deren Unterstützung und Solidarität wir bauen könnten. Der überwiegende Teil der erwachsenen Menschen klammert sich jedoch an eine eingebildete überirdische Macht und versucht, sie günstig zu beeinflussen. Ist das ein Ausdruck menschlicher Hilflosigkeit und mangelnden Selbstvertrauens? Oder können sich diese Mitbürger ein Leben ohne eine solche „himmlische Macht“ nicht mehr vorstellen?

Es ist das Anliegen des Autors, nachvollziehbar und nachprüfbar darzulegen, warum erwachsene Personen und auch Persönlichkeiten diese unverständlichen Reaktionen zeigen. Da die Bürger seit Frühjahr 2020 Leittragende staatlich verordneter Zwangsmaßnahmen wie Freiheitsberaubung, Test-, Impf- und Maulkorbzwang sind, wären doch ziviler Ungehorsam, lautstarker öffentlicher Protest und echte Solidarität mit Gleichgesinnten das Gebot der Stunde. Weil die Regierenden zudem die Existenzgrundlage von Millionen Bürgern zerstören, was zu wirtschaftlicher Verarmung, Vereinsamung, Verzweiflung und oft zum vorzeitigen Ableben führt, ist dies ein Verbrechen an der Menschheit und die erste schaurige Bilanz des neuen Faschismus.

Nicht nur die Intelligenz vollsinniger Erwachsener ist eingeschüchtert und herabgesetzt, sondern auch ihr Wille und ihr Selbstbewusstsein. Das führt in vielen Fällen zu Fatalismus, Schuldgefühlen, Depressionen und der Unfähigkeit, sich mit den Mitbürgern zusammenzuschließen. Daher ist es zwecklos, sich mit flehentlichen Appellen an sie zu wenden:

• „Wagt es, weise zu sein! („Sapere aude!“)
• „Bringt den Mut auf, euch des eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen!“ (Kant)
• „Tretet selber vor die Haustüre, um nachzusehen, was es gibt!“ (Gottfried Keller)

Die meisten können einfach „nicht aus ihrer Haut“, das heißt, sie getrauen sich nicht, ihren gewohnten Weg des Denkens und Handelns eine Handbreit weit zu verlassen. Auch ist es kontraproduktiv und verletzend, ängstliche und gehorsame Mitbürger als „Vollidioten“ oder „ewige Duckmäuser“ zu diskriminieren. Eine solche Bewertung zeugt davon, dass man ihre tieferen Beweggründe nicht kennt. Der sprichwörtliche „Kadavergehorsam“ ist nur eine von mehreren Ursachen für die Verstandeslähmung und greift deshalb zu kurz. Aus diesem Grund müssen alle denkbaren Beweggründe der beklagten menschlichen Reaktionsweisen erforscht werden – insbesondere die autoritäre und religiöse Erziehung in Elternhaus und Schule sowie der Einfluss der Gesellschaft.

Das Land und die Welt brauchen hellwache, selbst denkende und mutige Bürger, die durchschauen, welche Funktion die von diabolischen Mächten initiierte „Angst-Pandemie“ wirklich hat. Nur so lässt sich das Überleben der Spezies sichern. Wenn es gelingt, die Autoritätsgläubigkeit und die Angst vor den Mitmenschen aufzugeben und sich mit ihnen zusammenzuschließen, können die drohenden sozialen, ökonomischen und gesellschaftspolitischen Hausforderungen bewältigt und die diabolischen Mächte in Schach gehalten werden. Diktatur und Faschismus haben dann keine Chance und unsere Kinder wieder eine Zukunft.

Natürlich weiß der Autor aufgrund jahrzehntelanger Erfahrung als Pädagoge, Psychologe und Psychotherapeut, dass sich Erwachsene – wenn überhaupt – nur ungern und zögerlich mit unangenehmen Kindheitserlebnissen und religiösen Gefühlen auseinandersetzen und sie in Frage stellen wollen beziehungsweise können. Dabei wäre die aktuelle Lebenssituation ein gegebener Anlass, sich selbst zu erkennen. Das heißt, sich zu besinnen und zu entdecken, welche speziellen Stärken und Kräfte in einem schlummern und wie diese für das Gemeinwohl eingesetzt werden können. Auch über Einstellungen, die das Leben stark einschränken, könnte man nachdenken und überlegen, ob man sie mithilfe von Freunden oder psychologischen Experten nicht besser in Zweifel ziehen und durch förderliche ersetzen sollte. (4)

Da die meisten Erwachsenen also kaum mehr willens oder fähig sind, ihre Gefühle, ihre Einstellungen und ihr Verhalten zu verändern, plädiert der Autor abschließend für prophylaktische und psychohygienische Konsequenzen aus dem Gesagten: Alle an der Erziehung von Kindern und Jugendlichen Beteiligten sollten es tunlichst unterlassen, die heranwachsende Generation auf ihrem Weg ins Erwachsenenleben mit autoritären Erziehungsmethoden „gehorsam“ und „gefügig“ zu machen. Auch sollten sie ihnen nicht den verstandeslähmenden „Ballast“ der Religion aufbürden. Nur so können die Jungen als frei denkende, mutige und mitfühlende Bürger die Welt eines Tages in eine andere Bahn lenken.

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Dieser Artikel wurde ursprünglich auf NRhZ-ONLINE veröffentlicht.

Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Diplom-Psychologe und Erziehungswissenschaftler.

Fußnoten

(1) De.wikipedia.org, Stichwort „Gesunder Menschenverstand“

(2) Rolland, R. (1988). Clerambault. Geschichte eines freien Gewissens im Krieg. Reinbek bei Hamburg, S. 12

(3) Tolstoj, L. N. (1983). Rede gegen den Krieg. Politische Flugschriften. Eines ist not, 1905, S. 5

(4) http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=26697