Global Research

British and American state intelligence agencies are “weaponizing truth” to quash vaccine hesitancy as both nations prepare for mass inoculations, in a recently announced “cyber war” to be commanded by AI-powered arbiters of truth against information sources that challenge official narratives.

***

In just the past week, the national-security states of the United States and United Kingdom have discreetly let it be known that the cyber tools and online tactics previously designed for use in the post-9/11 “war on terror” are now being repurposed for use against information sources promoting “vaccine hesitancy” and information related to Covid-19 that runs counter to their state narratives.

A new cyber offensive was launched on Monday by the UK’s signal intelligence agency, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which seeks to target websites that publish content deemed to be “propaganda” that raises concerns regarding state-sponsored Covid-19 vaccine development and the multi-national pharmaceutical corporations involved.

Similar efforts are underway in the United States, with the US military recently funding a CIA-backed firm—stuffed with former counterterrorism officials who were behind the occupation of Iraq and the rise of the so-called Islamic State—to develop an AI algorithm aimed specifically at new websites promoting “suspected” disinformation related to the Covid-19 crisis and the US military–led Covid-19 vaccination effort known as Operation Warp Speed.

Both countries are preparing to silence independent journalists who raise legitimate concerns over pharmaceutical industry corruption or the extreme secrecy surrounding state-sponsored Covid-19 vaccination efforts, now that Pfizer’s vaccine candidate is slated to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by month’s end.

Pfizer’s history of being fined billions for illegal marketing and for bribing government officials to help them cover up an illegal drug trial that killed eleven children (among other crimes) has gone unmentioned by most mass media outlets, which instead have celebrated the apparently imminent approval of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine without questioning the company’s history or that the mRNA technology used in the vaccine has sped through normal safety trial protocols and has never been approved for human use. Also unmentioned is that the head of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Patrizia Cavazzoni, is the former Pfizer vice president for product safety who covered up the connection of one of its products to birth defects.

Essentially, the power of the state is being wielded like never before to police online speech and to deplatform news websites to protect the interests of powerful corporations like Pfizer and other scandal-ridden pharmaceutical giants as well as the interests of the US and UK national-security states, which themselves are intimately involved in the Covid-19 vaccination endeavor.

UK Intelligence’s New Cyberwar Targeting “Anti-Vaccine Propaganda”

On Monday, the UK newspaper The Times reported that the UK’s GCHQ “has begun an offensive cyber-operation to disrupt anti-vaccine propaganda being spread by hostile states” and “is using a toolkit developed to tackle disinformation and recruitment material peddled by Islamic State” to do so. In addition, the UK government has ordered the British military’s 77th Brigade, which specializes in “information warfare,” to launch an online campaign to counter “deceptive narratives” about Covid-19 vaccine candidates.

The newly announced GCHQ “cyber war” will not only take down “anti-vaccine propaganda” but will also seek to “disrupt the operations of the cyberactors responsible for it, including encrypting their data so they cannot access it and blocking their communications with each other.”  The effort will also involve GCHQ reaching out to other countries in the “Five Eyes” alliance (US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada) to alert their partner agencies in those countries to target such “propaganda” sites hosted within their borders.

The Times stated that “the government regards tackling false information about inoculation as a rising priority as the prospect of a reliable vaccine against the coronavirus draws closer,” suggesting that efforts will continue to ramp up as a vaccine candidate gets closer to approval.

It seems that, from the perspective of the UK national-security state, those who question corruption in the pharmaceutical industry and its possible impact on the leading experimental Covid-19 vaccine candidates (all of which use experimental vaccine technologies that have never before been approved for human use) should be targeted with tools originally designed to combat terrorist propaganda.

While The Times asserted that the effort would target content “that originated only from state adversaries” and would not target the sites of “ordinary citizens,” the newspaper suggested that the effort would rely on the US government for determining whether or not a site is part of a “foreign disinformation” operation.

This is highly troubling given that the US recently seized the domains of many sites, including the American Herald Tribune, which it erroneously labeled as “Iranian propaganda,” despite its editor in chief, Anthony Hall, being based in Canada. The US government made this claim about the American Herald Tribune after the cybersecurity firm FireEye, a US government contractor, stated that it had “moderate confidence” that the site had been “founded in Iran.”

In addition, the fact that GCHQ has alleged that most of the sites it plans to target are “linked to Moscow” gives further cause for concern given that the UK government was caught funding the Institute for Statecraft’s Integrity Initiative, which falsely labeled critics of the UK government’s actions as well as its narratives with respect to the Syria conflict as being related to “Russian disinformation” campaigns.

Given this precedent, it is certainly plausible that GCHQ could take the word of either an allied government, a government contractor, or perhaps even an allied media organization such as Bellingcat or the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab that a given site is “foreign propaganda” in order to launch a cyber offensive against it. Such concerns are only amplified when one of the main government sources for The Times article bluntly stated that “GCHQ has been told to take out antivaxers [sic] online and on social media. There are ways they have used to monitor and disrupt terrorist propaganda,” which suggests that the targets of GCHQ’s new cyber war will, in fact, be determined by the content itself rather than their suspected “foreign” origin. The “foreign” aspect instead appears to be a means of evading the prohibition in GCHQ’s operational mandate on targeting the speech or websites of ordinary citizens.

This larger pivot toward treating alleged “anti-vaxxers” as “national security threats” has been ongoing for much of this year, spearheaded in part by Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate, a member of the UK government’s Steering Committee on Countering Extremism Pilot Task Force, which is part of the UK government’s Commission for Countering Extremism.

Ahmed told the UK newspaper The Independent in July that “I would go beyond calling anti-vaxxers conspiracy theorists to say they are an extremist group that pose a national security risk.” He then stated that “once someone has been exposed to one type of conspiracy it’s easy to lead them down a path where they embrace more radical world views that can lead to violent extremism,” thereby implying that “anti-vaxxers” might engage in acts of violent extremism. Among the websites cited by Ahmed’s organization as promoting such “extremism” that poses a “national security risk” were Children’s Health Defense, the National Vaccine Information Center, Informed Consent Action Network, and Mercola.com, among others.

Similarly, a think tank tied to US intelligence—whose GCHQ equivalent, the National Security Agency, will take part in the newly announced “cyber war”—argued in a research paper published just months before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis that “the US ‘anti-vaxxer’ movement would pose a threat to national security in the event of a ‘pandemic with a novel organism.’”

InfraGard, “a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and members of the private sector,” warned in the paper published last June that “the US anti-vaccine movement would also be connected with ‘social media misinformation and propaganda campaigns’ orchestrated by the Russian government,” as cited by The Guardian. The InfraGard paper further claimed that prominent “anti-vaxxers” are aligned “with other conspiracy movements including the far right . . . and social media misinformation and propaganda campaigns by many foreign and domestic actors. Included among these actors is the Internet Research Agency, the Russian government–aligned organization.”

An article published just last month by the Washington Post argued that “vaccine hesitancy is mixing with coronavirus denial and merging with far-right American conspiracy theories, including Qanon,” which the FBI named a potential domestic terror threat last year. The article quoted Peter Hotez, dean of the School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, as saying “The US anti-vaccination movement is globalizing and it’s going toward more-extremist tendencies.”

Simone Warstat of Louisville, Colo., waves a placard during a rally against a legislative bill to make it more difficult for parents to opt out for non-medical reasons to immunize their children Sunday, June 7, 2020, in Denver. 

It is worth pointing out that many so-called “anti-vaxxers” are actually critics of the pharmaceutical industry and are not necessarily opposed to vaccines in and of themselves, making the labels “anti-vaxxer” and “anti-vaccine” misleading. Given that many pharmaceutical giants involved in making Covid-19 vaccines donate heavily to politiciansin both countries and have been involved in numerous safety scandals, using state intelligence agencies to wage cyber war against sites that investigate such concerns is not only troubling for the future of journalism but it suggests that the UK is taking a dangerous leap toward becoming a country that uses its state powers to treat the enemies of corporations as enemies of the state.

The CIA-Backed Firm “Weaponizing Truth” with AI

In early October, the US Air Force and US Special Operations Command announced that they had awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to the US-based “machine intelligence” company Primer. Per the press release, “Primer will develop the first-ever machine learning platform to automatically identify and assess suspected disinformation [emphasis added]. Primer will also enhance its natural language processing platform to automatically analyze tactical events to provide commanders with unprecedented insight as events unfold in near real-time.”

According to Primer, the company “builds software machines that read and write in English, Russian, and Chinese to automatically unearth trends and patterns across large volumes of data,” and their work “supports the mission of the intelligence community and broader DOD by automating reading and research tasks to enhance the speed and quality of decision-making.” In other words, Primer is developing an algorithm that would allow the national-security state to outsource many military and intelligence analyst positions to AI. In fact, the company openly admits this, stating that their current effort “will automate the work typically done by dozens of analysts in a security operations center to ingest all of the data relevant to an event as it happens and funnel it into a unified user interface.”

Primer’s ultimate goal is to use their AI to entirely automate the shaping of public perceptions and become the arbiter of “truth,” as defined by the state. Primer’s founder, Sean Gourley, who previously created AI programs for the military to track “insurgency” in post-invasion Iraq, asserted in an April blog post that “computational warfare and disinformation campaigns will, in 2020, become a more serious threat than physical war, and we will have to rethink the weapons we deploy to fight them.”

In that same post, Gourley argued for the creation of a “Manhattan Project for truth” that would create a publicly available Wikipedia-style database built off of “knowledge bases [that] already exist inside many countries’ intelligence agencies for national security purposes.” Gourley then wrote that “this effort would be ultimately about building and enhancing our collective intelligence and establishing a baseline for what’s true or not” as established by intelligence agencies. He concludes his blog post by stating that “in 2020, we will begin to weaponize truth.”

Notably, on November 9, the same day that GCHQ announced its plans to target “anti-vaccine propaganda,” the US website NextGov reported that Primer’s Pentagon-funded effort had turned its attention specifically to “Covid-19 related disinformation.” According to Primer’s director of science, John Bohannon, “Primer will be integrating bot detection, synthetic text detection and unstructured textual claims analysis capabilities into our existing artificial intelligence platform currently in use with DOD. . . . This will create the first unified mission-ready platform to effectively counter Covid-19-related disinformation in near-real time.”

Bohannon, who previously worked as a mainstream journalist embedded with NATO forces in Afghanistan, also told NextGov that Primer’s new Covid-19–focused effort “automatically classifies documents into one of 10 categories to enable the detection of the impact of COVID” on areas such as “business, science and technology, employment, the global economy, and elections.” The final product is expected to be delivered to the Pentagon in the second quarter of next year.

Though a so-called private company, Primer is deeply linked to the national-security state it is designed to protect by “weaponizing truth.” Primer proudly promotes itself as having more than 15 percent of its staff hailing from the US intelligence community or military. The director of the company’s National Security Group is Brian Raymond, a former CIA intelligence officer who served as the Director for Iraq on the US National Security Council after leaving the agency.

The company also recently added several prominent national-security officials to its board including:

• Gen. Raymond Thomas (ret.), who led the command of all US and NATO Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan and is the former commander of both US Special Operations Command and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).
• Lt. Gen. VeraLinn Jamieson (ret.), the former deputy chief of staff for Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance who led the Air Force’s intelligence and cyber forces. She also personally developed “strategic partnerships” between the Air Force and Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and IBM in order “to accelerate the Air Force’s digital transformation.”
• Brett McGurk, one of the “chief architects” of the Iraq War “surge,” alongside the notorious Kagan family, as NSC Director for Iraq, and then as special assistant to the president and senior Director for Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush administration. Under Obama and during part of the Trump administration, McGurk was the special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS at the State Department, helping to manage the “dirty war” waged by the US, the UK, and other allies against Syria.

In addition to those recent board hires, Primer brought on Sue Gordon, the former principal deputy director of National Intelligence, as a strategic adviser. Gordon previously “drove partnerships within the US Intelligence Community and provided advice to the National Security Council in her role as deputy director of national intelligence” and had a twenty-seven-year career at the CIA. The deep links are unsurprising, given that Primer is financially backed by the CIA’s venture-capital arm In-Q-Tel and the venture-capital arm of billionaire Mike Bloomberg, Bloomberg Beta.

Operation Warp Speed’s Disinformation Blitzkrieg   

The rapid increase in interest by the US and UK national-security states toward Covid-19 “disinformation,” particularly as it relates to upcoming Covid-19 vaccination campaigns, is intimately related to the media-engagement strategy of the US government’s Operation Warp Speed.

Officially a “public-private partnership,” Operation Warp Speed, which has the goal of vaccinating 300 million Americans by next January, is dominated by the US military and also involves several US intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as intelligence-linked tech giants Google, Oracle, and Palantir. Several reports published in The Last American Vagabondby this author and journalist Derrick Broze have revealed the extreme secrecy of the operation, its numerous conflicts of interest, and its deep ties to Silicon Valley and Orwellian technocratic initiatives.

Warp Speed’s official guidance discusses at length its phased plan for engaging the public and addressing issues of “vaccine hesitancy.” According to the Warp Speed document entitled “From the Factory to the Frontlines,” “strategic communications and public messaging are critical to ensure maximum acceptance of vaccines, requiring a saturation of messaging across the national media.” It also states that “working with established partners—especially those that are trusted sources for target audiences—is critical to advancing public understanding of, access to, and acceptance of eventual vaccines” and that “identifying the right messages to promote vaccine confidence, countering misinformation, and targeting outreach to vulnerable and at-risk populations will be necessary to achieve high coverage.”

The document also notes that Warp Speed will employ the CDC’s three-pronged strategic framework for its communications effort. The third pillar of that strategy is entitled “Stop Myths” and has as a main focus “establish[ing] partnerships to contain the spread of misinformation” as well as “work[ing] with local partners and trusted messengers to improve confidence in vaccines.”

Though that particular Warp Speed document is short on specifics, the CDC’s Covid-19 Vaccination Program Interim Playbook contains additional information. It states that Operation Warp Speed will “engage and use a wide range of partners, collaborations, and communication and news media channels to achieve communication goals, understanding that channel preferences and credible sources vary among audiences and people at higher risk for severe illness and critical populations, and channels vary in their capacity to achieve different communication objectives.” It states that it will focus its efforts in this regard on “traditional media channels” (print, radio, and TV) as well as “digital media” (internet, social media, and text messaging).

The CDC document further reveals that the “public messaging” campaign to “promote vaccine uptake” and address “vaccine hesitancy” is divided into four phases and adds that the overall communication strategy of Warp Speed “should be timely and applicable for the current phase of the Covid-19 Vaccination program.”

Those phases are:

• Before a vaccine is available
• The vaccine is available in limited supply for certain populations of early focus
• The vaccine is increasingly available for other critical populations and the general public
• The vaccine is widely available

Given that the Covid-19 vaccine candidate produced by Pfizer is expected to be approved by the end of November, it appears that the US national-security state, which is essentially running Operation Warp Speed, along with “trusted messengers” in mass media, is preparing to enter the second phase of its communications strategy, one in which news organizations and journalists who raise legitimate concerns about Warp Speed will be de-platformed to make way for the “required” saturation of pro-vaccine messaging across the English-speaking media landscape.

*

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

Whitney Webb has been a professional writer, researcher and journalist since 2016. She has written for several websites and, from 2017 to 2020, was a staff writer and senior investigative reporter for Mint Press News. She currently writes for The Last American Vagabond.

Featured image is from Unlimited Hangout

The purpose of this report is to offer a clear explanation of how two financial reporting exemptions has de facto created a hidden system of finance that runs parallel to the official financial system that facilitates and governs interactions between the federal government and the private sector. Below, I present a discussion of national security waivers that exempt some businesses from standard financial reporting requirements laid out by the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). I also summarize the recent adoption of Federal Accounting Standards Board (FASAB) Standard 56, which gives those with high level national security clearances the authority to modify government financial statements. I then discuss the implications of these to reporting exemptions for both the federal government and the financial system.

Private Sector Financial Reporting Exemptions

On May 23,2006, BusinessWeek published the article “Intelligence Czar Can Waive SEC Rules (Kopeki, 2006). In the article Kopeki writes that at least since the Carter era the President had the ability to waive standard business accounting and securities-disclosure obligations required by the SEC. However, an entry in the Federal Register revealed that in 2006 President Bush delegated the authority to waive financial reporting to the Director of National Intelligence. At the time the article was written, the primary concern appeared to be in concealing top-secret defense projects and investments. However, to our knowledge there is nothing in the law to restricts its use of financial reporting exemptions to the defense industry. Perhaps the most important factor in maintaining a strong military is to ensure the strength and reputation of financial system and the dollar as the primary reserve currency of the world. It is possible that this authority could be used to conceal certain financial institutions from fully reporting if such waivers were deemed to be in the interest of national security. Note also that the timing of the transfer of this authority to the Director of National Intelligence just preceded the financial crisis; reporting exemptions may well have been granted during the crisis in order to conceal sensitive actions by the Federal Reserve and other key financial entities.

Federal Government Financial Reporting Exemptions

In October 2018, the government implemented a critical recommendation by the Federal Accounting Standard Advisory Board (FASAB) (FASAB, 2018). The recommendation, which is called FASAB Standard 56, was motivated by the first ever external audit of the Department of Defense (DOD) that began in January 2018. The stated concern was that if the DOD were to fully report as per existing financial reporting regulations and laws, sensitive information could be revealed and thus pose a threat to national security. As discussed in detail in Skidmore and Fitts (2019), the new policy allowed government authorities to create a modified set of financial statements for the public, and an actual set of actual financial statements that that is accessible only to those with the required national security clearances. ² Astoundingly, the FASAB Standard 56 had no parameters or constraints limiting the degree to which financial statements could be modified:

1. The financial statements of all federal entities could potentially be modified to conceal sensitive information;
2. The financial statements of all federal entities could have modifications inserted that do not affect net results of operation or position;
3. Allows a component reporting entity to be excluded from one reporting entity and consolidated into another reporting entity in a way that changes net results of operation and/or net worth; and
4. There is no limit on the amount by which financial reporting can be modified.

Implications of Financial Reporting Exemptions

The figure below offers a simple illustration of the official financial system and the hidden (or shadow) system. At the nexus of the federal government and the private sector is the Federal Reserve Bank (FRB). The FRB serves as the fiscal agent for the federal government, and thus facilitates all transactions for the government including inflows via the purchase of government securities (by either the private sector or the FRB itself through electronically created funds recorded as liabilities on the FRB balance sheet). However, much FRB is opaque: We cannot fully observe all transactions and activities the FRB engages in and/or facilitates.³

The top portion in green of the figure illustrates the flow of officially reported financial transactions facilitated by the FRB. The arrowed blue lines represent the flow of funds in/out of government through the FRB and to/from the private sector. The private sector includes all firms such as defense contractors, financial institutions and a variety on private contracting entities that provide services to the government. The green portion of the figure represents what many believe to be the full set of government-related activities within the economy.

With the private sector reporting exemptions authorized by the Director of National Intelligence, consider the bottom righthand portion of the figure in light blue noted as “Hidden Private Sector Financial Reporting”. While we know that private entities are exempt reporting, how many firms are exempt and how much is unknown by those who do not have the needed high-level national security clearances. Prior to the adoption of FASAB Standard 56 in 2018, some of this unreported activity was reflected in government financial reporting via “unsupported journal voucher adjustments”, where unsupported transactions are documented in existing government documents. As described in Skidmore and Fitts (2017), unsupported transactions for the DOD and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) tallied to $21 trillion between 1998-2015. After the implementation of FASAB Standard 56, the government officially added the “Hidden Government Financial Reporting” component as illustrated in the bottom left portion of the figure. Those with high-level national security clearances have authority to move both revenues and expenditures from the officially reported side of the figure to the hidden ledger. This same set of government officials can also conceal financial reporting for the FRB and any private entity. The integration of the two laws has enabled an entire system of hidden finance in the sense the revenues and expenditures are not recorded in any official financial statements in either the public or private sectors.

Official and Hidden Financial Flows Schematic

What We Know and Do not Know

According to the latest official figures, the $2.2 trillion Cares Act (U.S. Treasury, 2020) pushed the official deficit to $3.2 trillion in fiscal year 2019. As of November 2020, the official total debt held internally and externally exceeds $27 trillion (United States Debt Clock, 2020). Importantly, between September 2019 and October 2020, the FRB’s balance sheet increased by $3.3 trillion (Federal Reserve, 2020); nearly all new federal government debt issuance was fully monetized by the FRB. The debt trajectory is anticipated to soar in the coming years.

However, with the opaque financial reporting rules described in this report, it is possible that the FRB’s balance sheet is much higher than official reports indicate. Unfortunately, without full transparency there is no way to know the degree to which the FRB may have funded a variety of secret activities through unreported debt monetization. Along these lines, critical financial institutions may also be exempt from reporting any covert funding activity. Normally, issuers of securities need to “make and keep books, records, and accounts, which, in reasonable detail, accurately and fairly reflect the transactions and dispositions of the assets of the issuer” and maintain internal accounting according to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) (15 USC 78m(b)). Failing to do so can result in criminal liability (15 USC 78m(b)). A waiver from the Director of National Intelligence can remove some of those requirements, allowing private entities to deviate from GAAP and even alter their books if the waiver allows.⁴

Even within the official financial records much activity can be and is hidden. For example, Webb (2020) carefully documents how through Operation Warp Speed $6 billion in vaccine contracts have been funneled through a government contractor with ties the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Advance Research Program (DARPA). While Webb’s article is critical reading for a variety of reasons, of greatest relevance here is that financial reporting is embedded in and thus hidden by the private contractor. These types of “public-private” partnerships are increasingly being used to shield activities and financial reportion from public scrutiny. Importantly, the activities of the private contractor are exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests. As another example, consider the BlackRock investment firm, which authored the bailout strategy for the next crisis in which central banks would make direct loans to trading houses on Wall Street as well as facilitate direct purchases of primary and secondary corporate bonds and bond exchange traded funds. What is called the “going direct” plan also includes making direct transfers to individuals in digital wallets. BlackRock was then given a no-bid contract to manage the FRB’s corporate bond buying programs. (Martens and Martens, 2020)

While I have shared several examples of finances/activities that are not fully transparent, reporters and researchers have been able to glean valuable information about opaque programs that are critical to the future of everyone. However, there is much we do not know:

1. How many companies are exempt from standard SEC financial reporting?
2. Which companies are exempt from standard SEC financial reporting?
3. How much in revenues, expenditures and other financial information is exempt from standard SEC financial reporting?
4. What kinds of projects are funded via the hidden system of finance?
5. How many federal government entities/agencies have modified financial statements?
6. Which federal government entities/agencies have modified financial statements?
7. How much in revenues, expenditures and funded activities are hidden from the public by FASAB Standard 56?
8. What kinds of projects are funded through the hidden system of finance?
9. Is there an unreported expansion of the FRB’s balance sheet (unreported debt monetization)?
10. Is there an unreported expansion of balance sheets at Treasury and FHA/Ginnie with bonds, debentures and mortgage securities that are issued without being recorded on official balance sheets?
11. Is there hidden market participation and leverage provided through the Exchange Stabilization Fund?⁵

While investigative reporters and researchers have compiled considerable information that offers some insight into these questions, the opacity of the financial system prevents one from knowing with certainty the scale of the hidden system of finance. Given all these considerations, one remaining question comes to mind: With the scale of non-transparency documented in this report, should the United States be called a representative democracy?

*

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

Sources

Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (2018). “Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards 56.” Accessed on 10/30/2020: https://fas.org/sgp/news/2018/07/fasab-review.pdf

Federal Reserve Bank of the United States (2020). “Credit and Liquidity Program and Balance Sheet.” Accessed on 11/3/2020: https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm

Ferri, M. and Lurie, J. (2019a). “FASAB Statement 56: Understanding New Government Financial Accounting Loopholes.” Accessed on 11/3/2020: https://constitution.solari.com/fasab-statement-56-understanding-new-government-financial-accounting-loopholes/

Ferri, M. and Lurie, J. (2019b). “The Black Budget: The Crossroads of (Un)Constitutional Appropriations and Reporting.” Accessed on 11/3/2020: https://constitution.solari.com/the-black-budget-the-crossroads-of-unconstitutional-appropriations-and-reporting/

Ferri, M. and Lurie, J. 2019c). “National Security Exemptions and SEC Rule 10b-5.” Accessed on 11/3/2020: https://constitution.solari.com/national-security-exemptions-and-sec-rule-10b-5/

Ferri, M. and Lurie, J. 2019d). “Classification for Investors 101.” Accessed on 11/3/2020: https://constitution.solari.com/classification-for-investors-101/

Kopecki, D. (2006). “Intelligence Czar Can Waive SEC Rules.” BusinessWeek. Accessed on 10/30/2020: https://archive.org/details/GeorgeHwBushExemptsSelectCorporationsFromSecFinancialReporting_45

Martens, P. and Martens, R, (2020). “The Dark Secrets in the Fed’s Last Wall Street Bailout Are Getting a Devious Makeover in Today’s Bailout.” CounterPunch. Accessed on 11/3/2020: https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/02/the-dark-secrets-in-the-feds-last-wall-street-bailout-are-getting-a-devious-makeover-in-todays-bailout/

Powell, C. (2001). “Lawsuit Survive Hearing on Dismissal Motions.” Accessed on 11/3/2010: http://gata.org/node/4211

Skidmore, M. and Fitts, C. (2017). “Summary Report on ‘Unsupported Journal Voucher Adjustments’ in the Financial Statements of the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.” Accessed on 10/30/2020: https://missingmoney.solari.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Unsupported_Adjustments_Report_Final_4.pdf

Skidmore, M. and Fitts, C. (2017). “Should We Care about Secrecy in Financial Reporting.” Accessed on 10/30/2020: https://hudmissingmoney.solari.com/should-we-care-about-secrecy-in-financial-reporting/

Taibbi, M. (2019). “Has the Government Legalized Secret Defense Spending?” Rolling Stone. Accessed 11/3/2020: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/secret-government-spending-779959/

United States Code (2020). “15 U.S. Code § 78m(b)(3)(A)”. Accessed on 11/3/2020: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/78m

United States Debt Clock. (2020). Accessed on 11/3/2020: https://usdebtclock.org/

United States Department of Treasury (2020). “The Cares Act Works for All Americans.” Accessed 11/3/2020: https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/cares

Webb, W. (2020). “Operation Warp Speed is Using a CIA-Linked Contractor to Keep Covid-19 Contracts Secret.” Accessed on 11/3/2020: https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/operation-warp-speed-is-using-a-cia-linked-contractor-to-keep-covid-19-vaccine-contracts-secret/

Notes

^{[1 Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics/Department of Economics, Michigan State University, 91 Morrill Hall of Agriculture, East Lansing, MI 48824-1039; [email protected]; 517-353-9172.]}

^{[2 See Taibbi (2019) and Ferri and Lurie (2019a) for detailed discussions of the implications of FASAB Standard 56 for transparency in federal government financial reporting.]}

^{[3 See for example the work of Felkerson (2011) who through painstaking evaluation determined that the FRB gave or loaned out $29 trillion during the 2007-09 financial crisis. He was only able to learn of these activities after it had been done, not during the crisis. See also an excellent article by Martens and Martens (2020) on the opacity of FRB bailouts to key financial institutions during the COVID-19 crisis.]}

^{[4 See Ferri and Lurie (2019b) for a detailed discussion of the laws relating to the black budget and financial reporting. See also Ferri and Lurie (2019c) for an in-depth discussion of waivers from SEC financial reporting requirements, and Ferri and Lurie (2019d) for a discussion of the implications of opaque government reporting for investors.]}

^{[5 The United States Treasury website (https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/international/exchange-stabilization-fund) explicitly states that it has the authority to intervene in financial markets, including gold, foreign exchange, and other instruments of credit and securities, to achieve its objective of maintaining an orderly system of exchange rates. In a brief prepared by the Gold Anti-Trust Committee Inc., Powell (2001) discusses a court hearing in which Plaintiff Howe argued a case against representatives from Bank of International Settlements, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan/Chase, Citigroup, the United States Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve Board, and the New York Federal Reserve Bank that there was explicit intervention in the gold market by the United States Treasury. Yet it is difficult or even impossible to ascertain from official Exchange Stabilization Fund documents the degree of such interventions. ]}

Featured image is from The Missing Money

In cahoots with forces running the US, establishment media feed Americans a daily diet of managed news misinformation and disinformation rubbish.

The only way to be informed about major issues affecting our lives, welfare, and futures is by following independent sources, free from state and corporate control, mainly online.

According to the NYT (and other establishment media), Election 2020 “was the most secure in (US) history” — citing a dubious statement by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Despite mounting evidence of brazen fraud in key swing states, below is the DHS statement in full, dated November 12:

“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history (sic).”

Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result.”

“When states have close elections, many will recount ballots.”

“All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary (sic).”

“This is an added benefit for security and resilience (sic).”

“This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors (sic).”

“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised (sic).”

“Other security measures like pre-election testing, state certification of voting equipment, and the US Election Assistance Commission’s (EAC) certification of voting equipment help to build additional confidence in the voting systems used in 2020 (sic).”

“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too (sic).”

“When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections (sic).”

The above statement is one of many examples of state-sponsored mass deception.

It shows Trump’s DHS abandoned him as well as truth-telling about Election 2020.

Almost daily, new information surfaces about election fraud in key swing states.

The only unknowns are precisely how much, in what ways, in which states, and to what extent it shifted the true vote count to Biden/Harris over Trump.

Based on what’s already known, it appears that brazen fraud decided the US presidential election.

While it’s not over until Electoral College electors vote (on Dec. 14), it’s certified by House, Senate, and National Archives representatives (on Dec. 23), and Congress declares the results (on Jan. 6 — the Supreme Court perhaps to have final say — it appears almost certain that Biden/Harris will succeed Trump on January 20.

Though the judicial process, including at the highest level, may side with Trump’s legitimate lawsuits — claiming fraud in designated swing states — it’s highly unlikely as things now stand.

Election 2020 is clear testimony to how fantasy US democracy works — ordinary Americans with no say over how the nation is run and by whom.

It’s also more evidence of dominant media mass deception, supporting election fraud over a free, fair and open process.

Since last weekend, a Great Lakes Justice Center lawsuit filed in Michigan claims that Detroit election officials allowed “tens of thousands” of fraudulent ballots to be added to Biden/Harris’ vote count, along with other Wayne County irregularities.

Based on the lawsuit, they included “eyewitness accounts and direct evidence” that “approximately 40,000” unsecured, irregular ballots arrived in vehicles with out-of-state license plates in Detroit.

The vote tally went entirely for Biden/Harris and other Dems on the ballot.

The lawsuit also alleges that after GOP challengers discovered evidence of fraud, they were locked out of the counting room — after which tens of thousands more ballots were counted.

County election officials also “allowed ballots to be duplicated by hand without allowing poll challengers to check if the duplication was accurate,” according to the lawsuit.

There’s more about dubious practices in Detroit that smacks of election fraud.

On Wednesday, GOP attorney generals in 10 states filed an amicus brief with the US Supreme Court — challenging the illegality of counting late mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, ignoring state laws banning the practice.

According to Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter “actions taken by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court (on this issue) are one of the most breathtaking abuses of judicial authority that I’ve seen in my four-plus years as attorney general.”

On Monday, US Attorney General William Barr authorized DOJ officials to investigate alleged election irregularities.

At this time, results of Election 2020 are undecided. Joe Biden is NOT president-elect until these issues are settled and the election process is officially completed.

According to Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell, significant statistical evidence of improper ballot counting hasn’t yet been revealed, adding:

Many states breached their own elections laws, including “pallets of ballots” entering through “the back door” of counting centers in the middle of the night.

“There is tons of evidence that hundreds of thousands of ballots are going to have to be discarded and they’re all for Biden.”

Dominion Voting Systems software used in various states swapped, padded, and in other ways altered vote tallies, said Powell.

“There is a substantial problem with the Dominion system,” Powell stressed. “We are reviewing all of that and connecting the dots.”

“There are stacks of evidence and testimony from any number of witnesses – I’ve lost count of how many they have (because) more pour in every day.”

According to Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, “(i)t’s important to understand first and foremost how insecure this system is,” adding:

“We have over 600,000 mail-in ballots that have been counted.”

“Those are votes that are official in our system.”

“We also know that we have unclean rolls – ballots that have been mailed to dead people, to people who have moved out of state, and people that got a dozen ballots in their homes, etc.”

At most, signature verification of mail-in ballots was 40%, he said. Most Nevada mail-in ballots are unverified.

Trump may lead Biden/Harris in the state instead of the other way around as reported by major media.

According to Project Veritas, “an anonymous (Pennsylvania) USPS whistleblower…claims that higher-ups ordered postal workers to discard pro-Trump and pro-Republican mail, and only deliver pro-Biden mail from now on,” adding:

“This is the third Pennsylvania USPS insider to blow the whistle on election malfeasance in the last week.”

“There is something going on with USPS and we must get to the bottom of it immediately,” Project Veritas head James O’Keefe said, stressing:

“It’s very concerning that every USPS whistleblower coming forward is telling stories that put our election integrity in serious doubt.”

Election fraud occurred many times throughout US history at the federal, state and local levels.

Election 2020 may one day be remembered as one of the most brazen examples.

Election 2020 the “most secure” in US history? Make your own judgment.

*

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Countercurrents.org

“As I talked to him, I could not but think of Joan of Arc. He is distinctly a mystic. Hewel was telling me that the German people, many of them, begin to feel that he was a mission from God, and some of them would seek to reverence him almost as a God. He said Hitler himself tries to avoid that kind of thing. He dislikes any of them thinking of him as anything but a humble citizen who is trying to serve his country well.”    – Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King (June 1937) [1]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, Canadians, the British, the French, Belgian and countless other people around the globe take a moment to pay tribute to and salute soldiers who died in a battlefield in the name of defending freedom and protecting democracy in this world.

As I remember the cost and the horror of war, these aspects of our pasts should be remembered. Millions of soldiers paid a terrible price.

But above the pivotal struggle for some distant and remote target on a far-away battlefield was the dream of wealthy investors making money off the development of building war machines and staging organized violence against rivals.[2]

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. Yet, this knowledge, while amply documented, is not in the awareness of most who may have visited a military grave stone honouring our soldiers.

With this edition of the Global Research News Hour, we raise more insights into the true motives of our ‘heroes.’ We continue our journey down the paths that reveal our fighting fodder and the countless individuals decimated by bombs as the necessary consequence of this form of money-making. Our guests are Richard Sanders and Dr. Jacques Pauwels.

In our first half hour, Richard Sanders shares that the anti-semitic and anti-communist views were shared not only by Adolph Hitler and the Nazis, but also by the Canadian Prime Minister! He recounts the many small Eastern European groups that fled away from the Soviets and toward Germany before heading toward other western nations including Canada.

In our second half hour, Dr. Jacques Pauwels returns to resume more information about the U.S. involvement in the war, in spite of its efforts to profit from Nazi aggression. He’ll walk us through what happened at the Conference at Yalta between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin near the end, the outcome, and how the U.S. forces changed their strategy in the years and decades to come.

Richard Sanders is the coordinator of the Coalition Opposed to the Arms Trade, and has a history of involvement in anti-war activism that spans three decades. He is also a researcher and the publisher and editor of Press For Conversion Magazine. His latest volume: ‘Cold War Canada: The WWII Collaborationist Origins and Ongoing Propaganda Efforts of EthnoNationalist, East European Émigré Groups in Canada’ will be released in a few weeks. His site is https://coat.ncf.ca

Dr. Jacques Pauwels is a Canadian historian and the authors of several books related to the histories of World War I and World War II. These include The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War (2000), The Great Class War of 1914-1918 (2016), and Big Business and Hitler (2017). His site is http://www.jacquespauwels.net.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 295)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

Notes:

1. https://www.junobeach.org/canada-in-wwii/articles/aggression-and-impunity/w-l-mackenzie-kings-diary-june-29-1937/
2. https://www.globalresearch.ca/rethinking-world-war-ii-debunking-the-myth-of-the-good-war/5383967

First published on Remembrance Day November 11, 2018

****

These stories are not unique cases from a remote war. The same methods are constantly rinsed and repeated, the mentality in our ruling elites is the same, and the risk of a major conflict is as great today as in 1914.

These examples concentrate mostly on British/American perception management and propaganda. First of all, because they are masters of the art, and secondly, as victors they still dominate the narrative.

Arthur Ponsonby and Falsehood in Wartime

After the Great War came a huge backlash of disillusion and revulsion. Calmly analysed, most of what had been told in the war turned out to be lies and half-truths. «Falsehood in War-time, Containing an Assortment of Lies Circulated Throughout the Nations During the Great War» was the title of a book published in 1928. Written by Arthur, Ponsonby, it discussed 20 instances of lies in wartime.

The contents of the book can be summed up in the Ten Commandments of War Propaganda:

1. We do not want war.
2. The opposite party alone is guilty of war.
3. The enemy is the face of the devil.
4. We defend a noble cause, not our own interest.
5. The enemy systematically commits cruelties; our mishaps are involuntary.
6. The enemy uses forbidden weapons.
7. We suffer small losses, those of the enemy are enormous.
8. Artists and intellectuals back our cause.
9. Our cause is sacred.
10. All who doubt our propaganda, are traitors.

The Enemy Is the Face of the Devil

The perception of German atrocities in World War 1 has had is up and downs during the decades.  They ‘Huns’ were indeed quite ruthless, and freely executed several thousand suspected franc-tireurs and hostages when they invaded Belgium and Northern France in 1914.

However, the theme of barbaric, nun-raping, baby-bayonetting Huns was so carried to excess by the Entente propaganda machine that there came a backlash in public opinion after the war. By the 1920s, the disillusionment with the war and its aftermath was so great that all of these stories were dismissed as atrocity propaganda, which again would backfire in 1939, when there was reluctance to believe stories of – this time real – massive German atrocities.

The same theme was used more recently, with the infamous tale of «Iraqis ripping babies from incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals», in the warm-up to the Gulf War in 1990. Before the US Congress, a young woman in tears testified how she as a nurse in Kuwait witnessed Iraqi soldiers ripping prematurely born babies out of their incubators, leaving them to die on the floor. The story was later repeated by an equally moved President George HW Bush.

The public later found out that the woman was in fact not a nurse, but the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington, and the story was concocted as part of the propaganda effort by the PR-Agency Hill & Knowlton.

Mussolini Changes His Mind — Italy Should Join the War

Italy at first stayed neutral, then chose to join the Entente. This turned out to be a really bad decision, killing a generation of young men, and with not many gains to show for it in the peace treaties.

The decision was partially helped by subsidies from English and French intelligence to the Italian press. The Italian journalist Benito Mussolini (picture: in white coat, arrested during a scuffle with police in 1914) had a change of heart, and went from a leading socialist and war opponent to a fierce advocate of Italy joining the war.

According to a note written in November 1922 by the French secret services in Rome, Mussolini (who was described in another note from the same service as «an agent of the French Embassy in Rome») had in 1914 collected ten million francs «to support Italy’s war alongside the allied powers». In 1915, he was one of the founders the Fascist movement, which later took power in 1922.

The Difference Between Declared War Aims and Real Ones

In August 1914, when an almost unanimous German parliament voted yes to war, it was presented to the German public as a defensive Schutzkrieg against conniving enemies. With the exception of one member, Karl Liebknecht, the entire 110-member delegation from the Social Democratic Party bowed to the war euphoria and voted yes to war loans.

The perception presented to the public during the first few years of fighting, was of a Germany fighting a defensive war for survival, not a scheme for imperial aggrandizement. But in reality, already in September 1914, in the first few weeks of the war, a secret plan for an extensive redrawing of Europe’s borders was prepared for Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, the Septemberprogramm (see map).

After the Brest-Litovsk separate peace with the Bolsheviks in 1917, the eastern part of these war aims were achieved, where Germany occupied or created puppet governments in Poland, Ukraine, the Caucasus and Baltic areas, and created a dependent state in Finland.

Although a victory, this led to great disillusionment in the German liberal-left, which so far had supported a war to preserve the country. Now he myth of a defensive war was exposed as a lie, and the treaty showed it to be a war for imperial expansion.

The Sinking of the Lusitania

In May 1915 the British Government was in trouble. The European war was not going well. Instead of reacting to aggressive British blockades by begging for mercy, Germany was sinking more and more British ships with her U-boats.

The Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine on Friday May 7 1915, 12 miles off the coast of Ireland, killing 1198 people. The ship was running at two-thirds speed and in a straight line, rather than the recommended zigzag used to avoid torpedoes. The passengers were mostly US citizens (including millionaire Alfred Vanderbilt).

Her cargo consisted mostly of undeclared weapons and explosives, a fact finally confirmed in 1960, and which explained why she sank so fast. She was bound for the UK, sailing all alone, inexplicably without escort from the Royal Navy and right into a known U-boat hunting ground.

No members of the press even considered asking why Lusitania had been steaming so slowly and in a straight line, or why the British Admiralty had chosen to withhold the usual naval escort.

The numerous travel warnings posted by the German government in US newspapers, warning people they traveled on British shipping into British waters at their peril, was left out of the narrative. The German explanation, that the Lusitania was a legitimate target because she carried armaments, was dismissed out of hand.

And totally forgotten was the aggressive policy of starving Germany to its knees that had prompted the U-boat campaign in the first place. After the war began in 1914, Britain immediately began a naval blockade of Germany. Since even food was classified as “contraband,” the Germans had to ration food. By all estimates, several hundred thousand people ultimately died of starvation due to the blockade.

The sinking of the Lusitania was one of the main causes that brought the United States into the war, saving the war for the British.

An Inconvenient Peace Offer: “What Does He Want to Butt In for?”

In July 1915, Pope Benedict XV published the apostolic exhortation «To the Peoples Now at War and to Their Rulers.» Two years later, in 1917, this became The seven-point plan, a peace note presented to the warring parties. It was based on a peace linked to justice rather than military conquest, cessation of hostilities, a reduction of armaments, a guaranteed freedom of the seas, international arbitration, and Belgium restored to independence and guaranteed «against any power whatsoever.» (But it tacitly implied that Germany would gain some territory in the east).

The initiative failed: Although the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary) were positive to the mediation after three years of exhausting war, no one on the Entente side showed any interest. (The collapse of the Russian imperial government a few months later reduced the German willingness to negotiate.) Britain did not even show the Holy See the common courtesy of a proper reply. The French and Italian replies were hostile, and the rejection on behalf of the alliance was made by president Woodrow Wilson of the United States, who had initially remarked of the pope’s proposal: “What does he want to butt in for?»

The decision to reject any proposal from the Vatican was already decided in 1915. The threat was that a peace mediation from someone like the Pope might create so much pressure from a war-weary populace that it might just gather enough momentum to force the powers to accept.

The secret Treaty of London (1915), committing Italy to the Entente (Britain, France and Russia) contained a clause, article 15, where Italy is given carte blanche to do whatever is deemed necessary to silence the Church: «France, Great Britain and Russia shall support such opposition as Italy may make to any proposal in the direction of introducing a representative of the Holy See in any peace negotiations or negotiations for the settlement of questions raised by the present war» .

From Women’s Liberation to a Tool for the State

Emmeline Pankhurst addressing a pro-war rally in 1914

There is nothing new about liberal social reformers falling into lockstep when the country goes to war.

British Emmeline Pankhurst was the most prominent member in the Women’s Suffrage movement. She founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1902. After a remarkable and highly radical campaign for women’s rights, including hunger strikes, arson and window smashings, the group changed from a reformist program to a hard right reactionary nationalism as soon as the war broke out.

In 1914-15, bands of women roamed the cities of England handing out white feathers of cowardice to men wearing civilian clothes. The ‘White Feather Brigade’ was established by admiral Charles Fitzgerald, a war hawk who wished to see Britain institute mandatory military service. The campaign spread through the country with astonishing rapidity.

The highly successful White Feather campaign, shaming British men to enlist.

Not unconnected, the WSPU successfully carried out secret negotiations with the government, and on the 10th August 1914, the government announced it was releasing all suffragettes from prison. After receiving a £2,000 grant from the government, the WSPU organised a pro-war demonstration in London. Members carried banners with slogans such as «We Demand the Right to Serve» and «Let None Be Kaiser’s Cat’s Paws».

Pankhurst founded the Women’s Party in 1917. Excerpts from the program:

(1) A fight to the finish with Germany.

(2) More vigorous war measures to include drastic food rationing, more communal kitchens to reduce waste, and the closing down of nonessential industries to release labour for work on the land and in the factories.

(3) A clean sweep of all officials of enemy blood or connections from Government departments. Peace terms to include the dismemberment of the Hapsburg Empire.

(8) Irish Home Rule to be denied.

In the Suffrage Movement’s defense, many members chose a different and more honorable stance, like her daughter Sylvia Pankhurst. In 1915, Sylvia gave her enthusiastic support to the International Women’s Peace Congress, and she later became a leading international voice in the resistance to Mussolini’s attack on Ethiopia.

Edith Cavell – Nurse (And a Hundred Years Later, a Spy After All)

After the United States joined the war in 1917, president Wilson founded a government agency, The Committee on Public Information, to drum up support in public opinion for the US Crusade for Freedom©.

A young man, Edward Bernays,  started working for it, and quickly learned his trade there. He later became known as «the father of public relations», and a pioneer in the modern PR-industry, where he, among other things, arranged the media part of the CIA-regime change operation in Guatemala in 1954. The full quote from him is as follows:

«The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.»

The Invasion of 1910 — A Book Commissioned to Tell the Public Who the Next Enemy Is

Ad in The London Times for the book (1906)

Describing an imagined German invasion of England, the book The Invasion of 1910 was written by William le Queux on commission from the press magnate Lord Northcliffe and serialized in his newspaper the Daily Mail in 1906. After the detente with France and friendlier relations with Russia, British elites circles agreed on who the next likely enemy would be. But the British public still wasn’t ‘with the program’, and a large campaign was started to prepare them mentally. In the years 1906-1914, a torrent of books and articles on the terrible Hun menace poured out from a number of authors, including Arthur Conan Doyle.

Bits by Bits a War Memorial Day Gets a New Meaning

Cadets march in the 2014 ANZAC day parade (Picture: Flickr/Chris Phutully)

World War 1 was a bloody affair for the Commonwealth countries. Most Australian country towns or even small villages have a cenotaph or monument with a shockingly long list of local men lost in WW1. ANZAC-day  (on 25th of April, the anniversary of the Anglo-French campaign to conquer Gallipoli and the Dardanelles, where Australia played a part) was decided as a holiday in 1921 to commemorate these war dead, in a rather sombre spirit. The holiday and ceremony was a quiet affair for most of last century, apart from the usual right-wing forces trying to capitalize on it. It reached it’s nadir in the late 1970s, after the Vietnam war.

A marked change started in the 1990s, with a concerted and very well funded campaign from the government to militarize Australian history. Now the ceremonies are huge, military-political events, full of pathos, cant and sentimentality.  By spending huge sums to connect the public idea of Australianness to a glorification of its military glory, it seems Australian participation, like in 1914 by choice, in the next bloody world war is inevitable – nothing learned Down Under.

Neutral Countries Are the Winners

This Swiss cartoon by Karl Czerpien, is captioned «The wooing of the Neutrals», where orators from the warring countries are trying to entice neutrals to join them. The different alliances spent large efforts to tangle neutral countries into their imperialistic intrigues (see the case of Italy above). For smaller neutral countries, war between the great powers is always a dangerous time, but by trying to stay neutral, they are rather better off than by joining an alliance. A lesson for our time, when small countries in Europe seem very eager to get the honor of being the battlefield in the next war.

1924 — The Pacifist Ernst Friedrich Shows the Real Faces of War

In 1924, in the book War against War, the German anti-war activist Ernst Friedrich breaks a taboo in war reporting, by showing real war injuries. Such horrific pictures were – and still are – generally very rarely shown in war reporting, both in the corporate media and in anti-war literature.

This unwillingness contributes, intentionally or just because the pictures are too shocking to handle, to an almost idealized image of war, where our dead are always beautifully serene and the wounded well wrapped in bandages.

*

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

This article was also published on the author’s blog site: Midt i fleisen.

Terje Maloy is a Norwegian/Australian blogger and translator.

All images in this article are from Creative Commons unless otherwise stated.

As long as he’s around in public or private life, Trump is unlikely to go quietly into that good night.

While the jury is out on whether significant evidence of election fraud in key swing states will turn defeat into a second term of office, chances of the latter are slim if deep state dark forces decided otherwise.

Whatever happens ahead, over two months remain before inauguration day on January 20.

Much can happen between now and then.

From November 7 through Thursday, Trump regime envoy for regime change in Iran and Venezuela/convicted felon Elliott Abrams is visiting Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE “for consultations on Iran,” according to the State Department.

Over the weekend, Axios reported that he’s discussing “a plan to slap a long string of new sanctions on Iran” from now through January 20 inauguration day.

On Sunday, he met with Netanyahu and Israeli national security advisor Meir Ben-Shabbat on the scheme.

The following day, he discussed it Israeli war minister Benny Gantz and foreign minister Gabi Asjeknazi — both figures former IDF chiefs.

Pompeo, Abrams and other Trump regime hardliners apparently believe that “flood(ing)” more sanctions on Iran will prevent Biden/Harris from returning to the JCPOA.

Years of sanctions on Iran achieved nothing but hardships for its people.

Because of likely unacceptable Biden/Harris demands for returning to the JCPOA by the US that relate to weakening Iran militarily, chances of reversing Trump’s pullout are greatly compromised already.

Last week, Abrams reportedly said that the Trump regime intends new sanctions on Iran weekly through January 20, according to Axios, adding:

They’ll target Iran’s legitimate ballistic missile program, its nonexistent aid to “terrorist organizations,” and phony accusations of human rights violations.

Next week, Pompeo will be in Israel and likely other regional countries, following up on Abrams’ visits — to pile on further (failed) “maximum pressure” on Iran.

If Biden/Harris succeed Trump in January as expected, US policy toward Iran will remain hardline as it has for decades.

Chances of returning to the JCPOA in its current form are slim.

Illegal US sanctions will likely remain in place unchanged.

As long as the Islamic Republic remains independent of US control and Israel wants the country checked, whoever serves as US president — and in key congressional posts — will remain hostile toward Iran.

Pompeo, Abrams, and other Trump regime hardliners may succeed in making it too hard for Biden/Harris to rejoin the JCPOA.

As explained many times before, Iran abhors nuclear weapons, wants them eliminated everywhere, and has no intention of developing them.

No evidence refutes what’s well-known in Washington and throughout the West.

The issue with Iran for the US is wanting control over its vast oil and gas reserves, along with neutralizing Israel’s main regional rival.

Decades of US hostility toward Iran has nothing to do with any threats posed by its ruling authorities because none exist.

Claims otherwise are baseless propaganda — no doubt to continue if Biden/Harris succeed Trump in January.

Since its 1979 revolution, Iran withstood every hostile action committed by the US against the country and its people.

It continues being a force of resistance against US imperial lawlessness in the region that’s weakening over time, not strengthening.

Iran has been around for centuries. It’ll still be around when imperial USA enters history’s dustbin— where it rightly belongs.

A Final Comment

On Monday, the Trump regime imposed more illegal sanctions on Syria.

As on Iran and other targeted countries, they aim to inflict hardships on their people — based on Big Lies.

A statement by Trump’s Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) falsely claimed new sanctions on Damascus aim “to achieve a peaceful, political resolution of the Syrian conflict (sic).”

Endless war in the country was made in the USA by the Obama/Biden regime.

It’ll no doubt continue under Biden/Harris.

Both right wings of the US war party reject world peace in favor of smashing countries to control them by hot and other means.

That’s what the scourge of US imperial rage is all about.

*

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image: President Trump at a July briefing at Southern Command Headquarters in Miami.

Donald Trump was much troubled during his 2016 and 2020 campaigns by so-called conservatives who rallied behind the #NeverTrump banner, presumably in opposition to his stated intention to end or at least diminish America’s role in wars in the Middle East and Asia. Those individuals are generally described as neoconservatives but the label is itself somewhat misleading and they might more properly be described as liberal warmongers as they are closer to the Democrats than the Republicans on most social issues and are now warming up even more as the new Joe Biden Administration prepares to take office.

To be sure, some neocons stuck with the Republicans, to include the highly controversial Elliott Abrams, who initially opposed Trump but is now the point man for dealing with both Venezuela and Iran. Abrams’ conversion reportedly took place when he realized that the new president genuinely embraced unrelenting hostility towards Iran as exemplified by the ending of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. John Bolton was also a neocon in the White House fold, though he is now a frenemy having been fired by the president and written a book.

Even though the NeverTrumper neocons did not succeed in blocking Donald Trump in 2016, they have been maintaining relevancy by slowly drifting back towards the Democratic Party, which is where they originated back in the 1970s in the office of the Senator from Boeing Henry “Scoop” Jackson. A number of them started their political careers there, to include leading neocon Richard Perle.

It would not be overstating the case to suggest that the neoconservative movement has now been born again, though the enemy is now the unreliable Trumpean-dominated Republican Party rather than Saddam Hussein or Ayatollah Khomeini. The transition has also been aided by a more aggressive shift among the Democrats themselves, with Russiagate and other “foreign interference” being blamed for the party’s failure in 2016. Given that mutual intense hostility to Trump, the doors to previously shunned liberal media outlets have now opened wide to the stream of foreign policy “experts” who want to “restore a sense of the heroic” to U.S. national security policy. Eliot A. Cohen and David Frum are favored contributors to the Atlantic while Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss were together at the New York Times prior to Weiss’s recent resignation. Jennifer Rubin, who wrote in 2016 that “It is time for some moral straight talk: Trump is evil incarnate,” is a frequent columnist for The Washington Post while both she and William Kristol appear regularly on MSNBC.

The unifying principle that ties many of the mostly Zionist neocons together is, of course, unconditional defense of Israel and everything it does, which leads them to support a policy of American global military dominance which they presume will inter alia serve as a security umbrella for the Jewish state. In the post-9/11 world, the neocon media’s leading publication The Weekly Standard virtually invented the concept of “Islamofascism” to justify endless war in the Middle East, a development that has killed millions of Muslims, destroyed at least three nations, and cost the U.S. taxpayer more than $5 trillion. The Israel connection has also resulted in neocon support for an aggressive policy against Russia due to its involvement in Syria and has led to repeated calls for the U.S. to attack Iran and destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon. In Eastern Europe, neocon ideologues have aggressively sought “democracy promotion,” which, not coincidentally, has also been a major Democratic Party foreign policy objective.

The neocons are involved in a number of foundations, the most prominent of which is the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), that are funded by Jewish billionaires. FDD is headed by Canadian Mark Dubowitz and it is reported that the group takes direction coming from officials in the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Other major neocon incubators are the American Enterprise Institute, which currently is the home of Paul Wolfowitz, and the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at John Hopkins University. The neocon opposition has been sniping against Trump over the past four years but has been biding its time and building new alliances, waiting for what it has perceived to be an inevitable regime change in Washington.

That change has now occurred and the surge of neocons to take up senior positions in the defense, intelligence and foreign policy agencies will soon take place. In my notes on the neocon revival, I have dubbed the brave new world that the neocons hope to create in Washington as the “Kaganate of Nulandia” after two of the more prominent neocon aspirants, Robert Kagan and Victoria Nuland.

Robert was one of the first neocons to get on the NeverTrump band wagon back in 2016 when he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and spoke at a Washington fundraiser for her, complaining about the “isolationist” tendency in the Republican Party exemplified by Trump. His wife Victoria Nuland is perhaps better known. She was the driving force behind efforts to destabilize the Ukrainian government of President Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych, an admittedly corrupt autocrat, nevertheless became Prime Minister after a free election. Nuland, who was the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the State Department, provided open support to the Maidan Square demonstrators opposed to Yanukovych’s government, to include media friendly appearances passing out cookies on the square to encourage the protesters.

A Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton protégé, Nuland openly sought regime change for Ukraine by brazenly supporting government opponents in spite of the fact that Washington and Kiev had ostensibly friendly relations. Her efforts were backed by a $5 billion budget, but she is perhaps most famous for her foul language when referring to the potential European role in managing the unrest that she and the National Endowment for Democracy had helped create. The replacement of the government in Kiev was only the prelude to a sharp break and escalating conflict with Moscow over Russia’s attempts to protect its own interests in Ukraine, most particularly in Crimea.

And, to be sure, beyond regime change in places like Ukraine, President Barack Obama was no slouch when it came to starting actual shooting wars in places like Libya and Syria while also killing people, including American citizens, using drones. Biden appears poised to inherit many former Obama White House senior officials, who would consider the eager-to-please neoconservatives a comfortable fit as fellow foot soldiers in the new administration. Foreign policy hawks expected to have senior positions in the Biden Administration include Antony Blinken, Nicholas Burns, Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett, Samantha Power and, most important of all the hawkish Michele Flournoy, who has been cited as a possible secretary of defense. And don’t count Hillary Clinton out. Biden is reportedly getting his briefings on the Middle East from Dan Shapiro, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, who now lives in the Jewish state and is reportedly working for an Israeli government supported think tank, the Institute for National Security Studies.

Nowhere in Biden’s possible foreign policy circle does one find anyone who is resistant to the idea of worldwide interventionism in support of claimed humanitarian objectives, even if it would lead to a new cold war with major competitor powers like Russia and China. In fact, Biden himself appears to embrace an extremely bellicose view on a proper relationship with both Moscow and Beijing “claiming that he is defending democracy against its enemies.” His language is unrelenting, so much so that it is Donald Trump who could plausibly be described as the peace candidate in the recently completed election, having said at the Republican National Convention in August “Joe Biden spent his entire career outsourcing their dreams and the dreams of American workers, offshoring their jobs, opening their borders and sending their sons and daughters to fight in endless foreign wars, wars that never ended.”

*

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

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.

Featured image: TRUMP SPEAKS IN WINSTON-SALEM, NC, SEPT. 8, 2020. SCREENSHOT FROM NBC NEWS VIDEO.

Analysts are still grappling with the fallout from the US election. Trumpism proved a far more enduring and alluring phenomenon than most media pundits expected. Defying predictions, Trump improved his share of the overall vote compared to his 2016 win, and he surprised even his own team by increasing his share of minority voters and women.

But most significantly, he almost held his own against Democratic challenger Joe Biden at a time when the US economy – the incumbent’s “trump” card – was in dire straits after eight months of a pandemic. Had it not been for Covid-19, Trump – not Biden – would most likely be preparing for the next four years in the White House.

Of course, much of Trump’s appeal was that he is not Biden. The Democratic party decided to run pretty much the worst candidate imaginable: an old-school machine politician, one emphatically beholden to the corporate donor class and unsuited to the new, more populist political climate. His campaigning – on the rare occasions he appeared – suggested significant cognitive decline. Biden often looked more suited to a luxury retirement home than heading the most powerful nation on earth. 

But then again, if Trump could lead the world’s only superpower for four years, how hard can it really be? He showed that those tinfoil-hatted conspiracy theorists might be right after all: maybe the president is largely a figurehead, while a permanent bureaucracy runs much of the show from behind the curtain. Were Ronald Reagan and George W Bush not enough to persuade us that any halfwit who can string together a few cliches from a teleprompter will suffice?

No return to ‘normal’ 

The narrowly averted Trump second term has at least prompted liberal pundits to draw one significant lesson that is being endlessly repeated: Biden must avoid returning to the old “normal”, the one that existed before Trump, because that version of “normal” was exactly what delivered Trump in the first place. These commentators fear that, if Biden doesn’t play his cards wisely, we will end up in 2024 with a Trump 2.0, or even a rerun from Trump himself, reinvigorated after four years of tweet-sniping from the sidelines. They are right to be worried.

But their analysis does not properly explain the political drama that is unfolding, or where it heads next. There is a two-fold problem with the “no return to normal” argument.

The first is that the liberal media and political class making this argument are doing so in entirely bad-faith. For four years they have turned US politics and its coverage into a simple-minded, ratings-grabbing horror show. A vile, narcissist businessman, in collusion with an evil Russian mastermind, usurped the title of most powerful person on the planet that should have been bestowed on Hillary Clinton. As Krystal Ball has rightly mocked, even now the media are whipping up fears that the “Orange Mussolini” may stage some kind of cack-handed coup to block the handover to Biden.

These stories have been narrated to us by much of the corporate media over and over again – and precisely so that we do not think too hard about why Trump beat Clinton in 2016. The reality, far too troubling for most liberals to admit, is that Trump proved popular because a lot of the problems he identified were true, even if he raised them in bad faith himself and had no intention of doing anything meaningful to fix them.

Trump was right about the need for the US to stop interfering in the affairs of the rest of the world under the pretence of humanitarian concern and a supposed desire to spread democracy at the end of the barrel of a gun. In practice, however, lumbered with that permanent bureaucracy, delegating his authority to the usual war hawks like John Bolton, and eager to please the Christian evangelical and Israel lobbies, Trump did little to stop such destructive meddling. But at least he was correct rhetorically.

When I’m speaking to foreign leaders, I’m telling them: America is going to be back. We’re going to be back in the game.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) November 10, 2020

The Guardian declares: 'A new start', with a 'Free 16-page Joe Biden souvenir supplement inside'.

Before we get too dewy-eyed, look at how the Guardian did exactly the same job of rebranding the US in 2008. Obama went on to bomb seven Muslim countries:https://t.co/ah4NIgIbtV pic.twitter.com/Hp8olGzcpo

— Media Lens (@medialens) November 11, 2020

Equally, Trump looked all too right in berating the establishment media for promoting “fake news”, especially as coverage of his presidency was dominated by an evidence-free narrative claiming he had colluded with Russia to steal the election. Those now bleating about how dangerous his current assertions of election fraud are should remember they were the ones who smashed that particular glass house with their own volley of stones back in 2016.

Yes, Trump has been equally culpable with his Twitter barrages of fake news. And yes, he cultivated rather than spurned support from one of those major corporate outlets: the reliably rightwing Fox News. But what matters most is that swaths of the American public – unable to decide who to believe, or maybe not caring – preferred to side with a self-styled maverick, Washington outsider, the supposed “underdog”, against a class of self-satisfied, overpaid media professionals transparently prostituting themselves to the billionaire owners of the corporate media.

Once voters had decided the system was rigged – and it is rigged towards the maintenance of elite power – anyone decrying the system, whether honestly or duplicitously, was going to prove popular.

Endebted to donors 

Trump’s appeal was further bolstered by styling himself a self-made man, as his campaign riffed on the long-standing myths of the American Dream. The US public was encouraged to see Trump as a rich man prepared to gamble part of his own fortune on a run for the presidency so he could bring his business acumen to USA Ltd. That contrasted starkly with Democratic party leaders like Clinton and Biden who gave every appearance of having abjectly sold their principles – and their souls – to the highest-bidding corporate “donors”.

And again, that perception – at least in relation to Clinton and Biden – wasn’t entirely wrong.

How can Biden not end up trying to resurrect the Obama years that he was so very much part of during his two terms as vice-president and that led directly to Trump? That was why corporate donors backed his campaign. They desire the kind of neoliberal “normal” that leaves them free to continue making lots more money and ensures the wealth gap grows.

It is why they and the media worked so hard to pave Biden’s path to the presidency, even doing their best to bury political stories embarrassing to the Biden campaign. Maintaining that “normal” is the very reason the modern Democratic party exists.

Even if Biden wanted to radically overhaul the existing, corporate-bonded US political system – and he doesn’t – he would be incapable of doing so. He operates within institutional, structural constraints – donors, Congress, the media, the supreme court – all there to ensure his room for manoeuvre is tightly delimited.

Had his main rival for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, been allowed to run instead and won the presidency, it would have been much the same. The important difference is that the existence of a President Sanders would have risked exposing the fact that the “world’s most powerful leader” is not really so powerful.

Sanders would have lost his battles trying to defy these structural constraints, but in the process he would have made those constraints far more visible. They would have been all too obvious had someone like Sanders been constantly hitting his head against them. That was precisely why the corporate class and the technocratic leadership of the Democratic party worked so strenuously to make sure Sanders got nowhere near the presidential race.

Resistance posturing 

Biden will do his best to achieve what his donors want: a return to the neoliberal “normal” under Obama. He will offer a sprinkling of initiatives to ensure progressive liberals can put to rest their resistance posturing with a clear conscience. There will be some “woke” identity politics to prevent any focus on class politics and the struggle for real economic justice, as well as some weak, corporation-friendly Green New Deal projects, if Biden can sneak past them past a Republican-controlled Senate.

And if he can’t manage even that … well that’s the beauty of a system tailor-made to follow the path of least financial resistance, to uphold the corporate status quo, the “normal”.

But there is a second, bigger problem. A fly in the ointment. Whatever Biden and the Democratic party do to resurrect the neoliberal consensus, the old “normal”, it isn’t coming back. The smug, technocratic class that has dominated western politics for decades on behalf of the corporate elite is under serious threat. Biden looks more like a hiccough, a last burp provoked by the unexpected pandemic.

The neoliberal “normal” isn’t coming back because the economic circumstances that generated it – the post-war boom of seemingly endless growth – have disappeared.

Plutocracy entrenches 

A quarter of a century ago, the Cassandras of their day – those dismissed as peddlers of false conspiracy theories – warned of “peak oil”. That was the idea that the fuel on which the global economy ran either had peaked or soon would do. As the oil ran out, or became more expensive to extract, economic growth would slow, wages would fall, and inequality between rich and poor would increase.

This was likely to have dramatic political consequences too: resource wars abroad (inevitably camouflaged as “humanitarian intervention”); more polarised domestic politics; greater popular dissatisfaction; the return of charismatic, even fascist, leaders; and a resort to violence to solve political problems.

The arguments about peak oil continue. Judged by some standards, the production peak arrived in the 1970s. Others say, with the aid of fracking and other harmful technologies, the turning-point is due about now. But the kind of world predicted by peak oil theory looks to have been unfolding since at least the 1980s. The crisis in neoliberal economics was underscored by the 2008 global economic crash, whose shockwaves are still with us.

On top of all this, there are looming ecological and climate catastrophes intimately tied to the fossil-fuel economy on which the global corporations have grown fat. This Gordian knot of globe-spanning self-harm urgently needs unpicking.

Biden has neither the temperament nor the political manoeuvre room to take on these mammoth challenges and solve them. Inequality is going to increase during his term. The technocrats are again going to be exposed once again as impotent – or complicit – as plutocracy entrenches. The ecological crisis is not going to be dealt with beyond largely empty promises and posturing.

There will be lots of talk in the media about the need to give Biden more time to show what he can do and demands that we keep quiet for fear of ushering back Trumpism. This will be designed to lose us yet more valuable months and years to address urgent problems that threaten the future of our species.

The age of populism 

The ability of the technocratic class to manage growth – wealth accumulation for the rich, tempered by a little “trickle down” to stop the masses rising up – is coming to an end. Growth is over and the technocrat’s toolbox is empty.

We are now in the age of political populism – a natural response to burgeoning inequality.

On one side is the populism of the Trumpers. They are the small-minded nationalists who want to blame everyone but the real villains – the corporate elite – for the west’s declining fortunes. As ever, they will search out the easiest targets: foreigners and “immigrants”. In the US, the Republican party has been as good as taken over by the Tea party. The US right is not going to repudiate Trump for his defeat, they are going to totemise him because they understand his style of politics is the future.

There are now Trumps everywhere: Boris Johnson in the UK (and waiting in the wings, Nigel Farage); Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil; the Le Pen dynasty in France; Viktor Orban in Hungary. They are seeding the return of xenophobic, corporate fascism.

The corporate media would have us believe that this is the only kind of populism that exists. But there is a rival populism, that of the left, and one that espouses cooperation and solidarity within nations and between them.

Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and Sanders in the US are the first shoots of a global reawakening of class-conscious politics based on solidarity with the poor and oppressed; of renewed pressure for a social contract, in contrast to the worship of survival-of-the-fittest economics; of a reclaiming of the commons, communal resources that belong to us all, not just the strongmen who seized them for their own benefit; and, most importantly, of an understanding, lost sight of in our industrialised, consumption-obsessed societies, that we must find a sustainable accommodation with the rest of the living world.

My latest: The increasingly desperate task of capitalism's perception managers is to dissociate our economic system from the emerging environmental crisis – to break our understanding of the causal link between the two https://t.co/S4Aby314FX

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) October 25, 2020

This kind of leftwing populism has a long pedigree that dates back nearly 150 years. It flourished in the inter-war years in Europe; it defined the political battle-lines in Iran immediately after the Second World War; and it has been a continual feature of Latin American politics.

Warped logic

As ever, the populism of the nationalists and bigots has the upper hand. And that is no accident.

Today’s globalised wealth elite prefer neoliberal, technocratic politics that keep borders open for trade; that treat the labouring poor as human chattel, to be moved around on a global chess board as a way to force wages down; and that ensure the elite can stash its ill-gotten gains away on island sanctuaries far from the tax man.

But when technocratic politics is on its death bed, as it is now, the corporate elite will always settle for the populism of a Trump or a Farage over the populism of the left. They will do so even if rightwing populism risks constraining their financial empires, because leftwing populism does much worse: it upends the warped logic on which the corporate elite’s entire hoarded wealth depends, threatening to wipe it out.

If the corporate elite can no longer find a way to foist a neoliberal technocrat like Biden on the public, they will choose the populism of a Trump over the populism of a Sanders every time. And as they own the media, they can craft the stories we hear: about who we are, what is possible and where we are heading. If we allow it, our imaginations will be twisted and deformed in the image of the deranged totem they choose.

We can reclaim politics – a politics that cares about the future, about our species, about our planet – but to do so we must first reclaim our minds.

*

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

This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/

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

The Health Effects of Non-Ionising Radiation (NIR): RF Emissions from Mobile Phone Networks, Wi-Fi, and the Rollout of 5G

By Physicians’ Health Initiative for Radiation and Environment, November 13 2020

Medical experts and practitioners from around the world have united once again to make clear their concerns regarding the health effects of escalating non-ionising radiation (NIR) exposures.

U.S. Looks Set to Lose 9.2 Million Jobs in 2020 Due to COVID-19 and Travel Restrictions, Says WTTC

By World Travel & Tourism Council, November 13 2020

A staggering 9.2 million jobs could be lost in the U.S. Travel & Tourism sector in 2020 if barriers to global travel remain in place, the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) revealed.

Rolling Heads at the Pentagon: Trump as Sacker-in-Chief

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, November 13 2020

Leaving aside his priority of fortifying himself in the White House against any bailiff onslaught by president-elect Joe Biden, he is busy making decisions.  One of them is something that this administration will always be remembered for: sackings. 

Joe Biden’s Victory Is Still a Loss for Humanity: “Good News for Corporations, Cops, War Profiteers and Banks”

By Danny Haiphong, November 13 2020

The Biden-Harris administration is good news for corporations, cops, war profiteers and banks too big to fail, but offers nothing to save the people and planet from multiple rises.

PM Boris Johnson Meets Bill Gates to Discuss Implementing ‘Global’ Vaccine Program. Gates and Big Pharma call the Shots

By Steve Watson, November 13 2020

The British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, currently being criticised for imposing another lockdown based on questionable data, has met with Bill Gates to discuss implementing a global “health security” program using Britain’s G7 presidency to speed up the process.

Implications for the Deepening Political Crises in the United States

By Abayomi Azikiwe, November 13 2020

These remarks were delivered by Abayomi Azikiwe at the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights (MCHR) Virtual Forum held on November 12, 2020. The event was entitled: “What Now? A Post-Election Town Hall Meeting.”

Mike Pompeo: The Ramblings of a Self-confessed Liar, Cheater, and Thief

By Kim Petersen, November 13 2020

On 10 November 2020, the United States secretary-of-state Mike Pompeo, he of the ill-famed confession “We lied, we cheated, we stole,” spoke at the Ronald Reagan Institute.

With Biden, Don’t Expect this ‘Cold War’ to Thaw Anytime Soon

By Johanna Ross, November 13 2020

It’s also worth pointing out that Biden leads a neoliberal movement which is inherently Russophobic and which has spent the last few years painting Russia as enemy number one. For many in the US now, Russia has become a dirty word, after the fantasy that was ‘Russiagate’ in which it was alleged, without any real foundation, that Russia had influenced the US elections and Donald Trump was working for Putin.

The Role of Social Networks in the Cyberspace Age: The Concept of Personhood

By Prof. Ruel F. Pepa, November 13 2020

Redefined along with the concept of society and the space-time sense is the concept of personhood. The human person, in the context of cyberspace, has been essentialized while the physicality of being is set aside.

A Convergence of Calamities

By Nick Turse, November 13 2020

Earlier this year, I traveled that ochre-dirt road in Burkina Faso, a tiny landlocked nation in the African Sahel once known for having the largest film festival on the continent. Now, it’s the site of an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe.

A new era is beginning in bilateral relations between Brazil and the US. Unlike Donald Trump, who demonstrated greater neutrality in environmental and humanitarian issues and always avoided pronouncements about the Amazon, the presumptive president-elect, Joe Biden, is marked by a much stronger ideological aspect with regard to the great agendas of contemporary times, such as Human Rights and the Environment. And this can deeply shake the structures of relations with the Bolsonaro government in Brazil.

In the election campaign, Biden made several pronouncements about the Amazon. During the first electoral debate in early October, Biden promised to join with other countries and offer 20 billion dollars to help to preserve the region. Previously, the Democrat had already said during an interview that if Bolsonaro did not understand the value of the Amazon, he would bring the world together to protect it. These words were considered outrageous by several Brazilian experts, who saw there a threat of an international coalition against Brazil.

But Bolsonaro was not exasperated in his responses to Biden until the presidential elections were over. Now, with Biden’s looming victory and the possibility that the Democrat’s threats materialize, Bolsonaro responds in a tone of extreme aggressiveness. During an event in Brasilia on Tuesday (November 10), Bolsonaro said that, in the face of the threat of imposing economic barriers, diplomacy is not enough, and “gunpowder” is needed. With the word “gunpowder”, Bolsonaro clearly refers to the firepower of the armed forces, which in practice means that the Brazilian president threatened to go to war with the US.

This situation would have been utterly impossible until months ago, when ties between Brasilia and Washington were more stable due to diplomacy between Bolsonaro and Trump. However, with a Democrat president absolutely unwilling to tolerate Bolsonaro’s irresponsible environmental policies, the friendship between these countries is ruined. Biden will try to isolate Brazil more and more in its international relations, applying an economic suffocation tactic to provoke internal changes. The Bolsonaro government will be forced to adopt a new strategy in its foreign policy, as automatic alignment with Washington can no longer work.

As for his threat of war, Bolsonaro has no choice but to change the tone of his speech in the next statements. The Brazilian president’s revolt is, from a certain point of view, understandable, considering that Biden made several previous provocations against Brazil. Undoubtedly, Bolsonaro’s environmental policy is reprehensible, but this does not justify that Biden threatens to “unite the world” against Brazil. The imposition of sanctions can be fair and correct, as long as it takes place within the parameters of international law and seeks to solve a real problem for the benefit of global society – it is not a decision that can come unilaterally from the President of the US. However, Brazil does not have the material conditions to carry out a project as bold as a war against the US – this would be the end of the Brazilian National State.

Biden will not understand Bolsonaro’s words as a real threat at the military level, but he will certainly step up the measures against Brazil, further affecting bilateral relations. Still, with that Biden can recover the global campaign for the internationalization of the Amazon even more aggressively and, at some point, propose a “humanitarian intervention” in Brazil for environmental purposes. The scenario of possibilities is immense, having as common point the increase in mutual hostilities between Brazil and the US.

As we can see, in a few days, the basis of relations between Brazil and the US has been completely reversed. This is largely the result of the irresponsibility of the Bolsonaro government, which placed too much trust in its northern ally, without any strategic sense. The close relationship that Bolsonaro established with the US will be used by Biden against Bolsonaro himself. The joint strategies waged with American and Colombian officials on Amazonian soil to surround Venezuela will now be used to intimidate Brazil itself. The Bolsonaro government simply seems to have forgotten that the American elections would take place halfway through the Brazilian president’s term, and the entire alliance sealed in two years could collapse suddenly.

It is important to remember that this year the Brazilian military released an intelligence report that was extremely criticized for placing France as the greatest threat to Brazil. The main reason was Macron’s campaign for the internationalization of the Amazon, which is now recovered by Biden. Once again, Brazilian strategists were wrong: The Amazon remains the focus of attention, but now the main threat to Brazilian national security comes from Washington, not Paris.

In any case, Bolsonaro must immediately reform Brazilian environmental policies.

*

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

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

I saw them for only a few seconds. One glimpse and they were gone. The young woman wore a brown headwrap, a yellow short-sleeved shirt, and a long pink, red, and blue floral-patterned skirt. She held the reins of the donkey pulling her rust-pink cart. Across her lap lay an infant. Perched beside her at the edge of the metal wagon was a young girl who couldn’t have been more than eight. Some firewood, rugs, woven mats, rolled-up clothing or sheets, a dark green plastic tub, and an oversized plastic jerry can were lashed to the bed of the cart. Three goats tied to the rear of it ambled along behind.

They found themselves, as I did, on a hot, dusty road slowly being choked by families who had hastily hitched up their donkeys and piled whatever they could — kindling, sleeping mats, cooking pots — into sun-bleached carts or bush taxis. And they were the lucky ones. Many had simply set out on foot. Young boys tended small herds of recalcitrant goats. Women toted dazed toddlers.  In the rare shade of a roadside tree, a family had stopped and a middle-aged man hung his head, holding it in one hand.

Earlier this year, I traveled that ochre-dirt road in Burkina Faso, a tiny landlocked nation in the African Sahel once known for having the largest film festival on the continent. Now, it’s the site of an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe. Those people were streaming down the main road from Barsalogho about 100 miles north of the capital, Ouagadougou, toward Kaya, a market town whose population has almost doubled this year, due to the displaced. Across the country’s northern stretches, other Burkinabe (as citizens are known) were making similar journeys toward towns offering only the most uncertain kinds of refuge. They were victims of a war without a name, a battle between Islamist militants who murder and massacre without compunction and armed forces that kill more civilians than militants.

I’ve witnessed variations of this wretched scene before — exhausted, upended families evicted by machete-wielding militiamen or Kalashnikov-carrying government troops, or the mercenaries of a warlord; dust-caked traumatized people plodding down lonesome highways, fleeing artillery strikes, smoldering villages, or towns dotted with moldering corpses. Sometimes motorbikes pull the carts. Sometimes, young girls carry the jerry cans on their heads. Sometimes, people flee with nothing more than what they’re wearing. Sometimes, they cross national borders and become refugees or, as in Burkina Faso, become internally displaced persons, or IDPs, in their own homeland. Whatever the particulars, such scenes are increasingly commonplace in our world and so, in the worst possible way, unremarkable. And though you would hardly know it in the United States, that’s what also makes them, collectively, one of the signature stories of our time.

At least 100 million people have been forced to flee their homes due to violence, persecution, or other forms of public disorder over the last decade, according to UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency. That’s about one in every 97 people on the planet, roughly one percent of humanity. If such war victims had been given their own state to homestead, it would be the 14th largest nation, population-wise, in the world.

By the end of June, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, an additional 4.8 million people had been uprooted by conflict, with the most devastating increases in Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burkina Faso. Yet, as dismal as these numbers may be, they’re set to be dwarfed by people displaced by another signature story of our time: climate change.

Already, shocking numbers have been put to flight by fires, derechos, and super storms, and so much worse is yet to come, according to experts. A recent forecast suggests that, by the year 2050, the number of people driven from their homes by ecological catastrophes could be 900% greater than the 100 million forced to flee conflicts over the last decade.

Worse Than World War II

Women, children, and men driven from their homes by conflict have been a defining feature of modern warfare. For almost a century now, combat correspondents have witnessed such scenes again and again. “Newly routed civilians, now homeless like the others with no idea of where they would next sleep or eat, with all their future lives an uncertainty, trudged back from the fighting zone,” the legendary Eric Sevareid reported, while covering Italy for CBS News during World War II. “A dust-covered girl clung desperately to a heavy, squirming burlap sack. The pig inside was squealing faintly. Tears made streaks down the girl’s face. No one moved to help her…”

The Second World War was a cataclysmic conflagration involving 70 nations and 70 million combatants. Fighting stretched across three continents in unparalleled destructive fury, including terror bombing, countlessmassacres, two atomic attacks, and the killing of 60 million people, most of them civilians, including six million Jews in a genocide known as the Holocaust. Another 60 million were displaced, more than the population of Italy (then the ninth-largest country in the world). An unprecedented global war causing unimaginable suffering, it nonetheless left far fewer people homeless than the 79.5 million displaced by conflicts and crises as 2019 ended.

How can violence-displaced people already exceed World War II’s total by almost 20 million (without even counting the nearly five million more added in the first half of 2020)?

The answer: these days, you can’t go home again.

In May 1945, the war in Europe came to an end. By the beginning of September, the war in the Pacific was over, too. A month later, most of Europe’s displaced — including more than two million refugees from the Soviet Union, 1.5 million French, 586,000 Italians, 274,000 Dutch, and hundreds of thousands of Belgians, Yugoslavs, Czechs, Poles, and others — had already returned home. A little more than a million people, mostly Eastern Europeans, still found themselves stranded in camps overseen by occupying forces and the United Nations.

Today, according to UNHCR, ever fewer war refugees and IDPs are able to rebuild their lives. In the 1990s, an average of 1.5 million refugees were able to return home annually. For the last 10 years, that number has dropped to around 385,000. Today, about 77% of the world’s refugees are trapped in long-term displacement situations thanks to forever wars like the conflict in Afghanistan that, in its multiple iterations, is now in its sixth decade.

War on (of and for) Terror

One of the most dramatic drivers of displacement over the last 20 years, according to researchers from Brown University’s Costs of War project, has been that conflict in Afghanistan and the seven other “most violent wars the U.S. military has launched or participated in since 2001.” In the wake of the killing of 2,974 people by al-Qaeda militants that September 11th and the decision of George W. Bush’s administration to launch a Global War on Terror, conflicts the United States initiated, escalated, or participated in — specifically, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen — have displaced between 37 million and 59 millionpeople.

While U.S. troops have also seen combat in Burkina Faso and Washington has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars of “security assistance” into that country, its displaced aren’t even counted in the Costs of War tally. And yet there’s a clear link between the U.S.-backed overthrow of Libya’s autocrat, Muammar Qaddafi, in 2011 and Burkina Faso’s desperate state today. “Ever since the West assassinated Qaddafi, and I’m conscious of using that particular word, Libya has been completely destabilized,” Chérif Sy, Burkina Faso’s defense minister, explained in a 2019 interview. “While at the same time it was the country with the most guns. It has become an arms cache for the region.”

Those arms helped destabilize neighboring Mali and led to a 2012 coup by a U.S.-trained officer. Two years later, another U.S.-trained officer seized power in Burkina Faso during a popular uprising. This year, yet another U.S.-trained officer overthrew yet another government in Mali. All the while, terrorist attacks have been ravaging the region. “The Sahel has seen the most dramatic escalation of violence since mid-2017,” according to a July report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research institution.

In 2005, Burkina Faso didn’t even warrant mention in the “Africa Overview” section of the State Department’s annual report on terrorism. Still, more than 15 separate American security assistance programs were brought to bear there — about $100 million in the last two years alone. Meanwhile, militant Islamist violence in the country has skyrocketed from just three attacks in 2015 to 516 in the 12 months from mid-2019 to mid-2020, according to the Pentagon’s Africa Center.

Compounding Crises to Come

The violence in Burkina Faso has led to a cascade of compounding crises. Around one million Burkinabe are now displaced, a 1,500% increase since last January, and the number only keeps rising. So do the attacks and the fatalities. And this is just the beginning, since Burkina Faso finds itself on the frontlines of yet another crisis, a global disaster that’s expected to generate levels of displacement that will dwarf today’s historic figures.

Burkina Faso has been battered by desertification and environmental degradation since at least the 1960s. In 1973, a drought led to the deaths of 100,000 people there and in five other nations of the Sahel. Severe drought and hunger struck again in the mid-1980s and aid agencies began privately warning that those living in the north of the country would need to move southward as farming became ever less feasible. By the early 2000s, despite persistent droughts, the cattle population of the country had doubled, leading to increasing ethnic conflict between Mossi farmers and Fulani cattle herders. The war now tearing the country apart largely divides along those same ethnic lines.

In 2010, Bassiaka Dao, the president of the confederation of farmers in Burkina Faso, told the United Nations news agency, IRIN, that the impacts of climate change had been noticeable for years and were getting worse. As the decade wore on, rising temperatures and new rainfall patterns — droughts followed by flash floods — increasingly drove farmers from their villages, while desertification swelled the populations of urban centers.

In a report published earlier this year, William Chemaly of the Global Protection Cluster, a network of nongovernmental organizations, international aid groups, and United Nations agencies, noted that in Burkina Faso “climate change is crippling livelihoods, exacerbating food insecurity, and intensifying armed conflict and violent extremism.”

Sitting at the edge of the Sahara Desert, the country has long faced ecological adversity that’s only worsening as the frontlines of climate change steadily spread across the planet. Forecasts now warn of increasing ecological disasters and resource wars supercharging the already surging phenomenon of global displacement. According to a recent report by the Institute for Economics and Peace, a think tank that produces annual global terrorism and peace indexes, two billion people already face uncertain access to sufficient food — a number set to jump to 3.5 billion by 2050. Another one billion “live in countries that do not have the current resilience to deal with the ecological changes they are expected to face in the future.” The report warns that the global climate crisis may displace as many as 1.2 billion people by 2050.

On the Road to Kaya

I don’t know what happened to the mother and two children I spotted on the road to Kaya. If they ended up like the scores of people I spoke with in that market town, now bulging with displaced people, they’re facing a difficult time. Rents are high, jobs scarce, government assistance all but nil. People there are living on the edge of catastrophe, dependent on relatives and the kindness of new neighbors with little to spare themselves. Some, driven by want, are even heading back into the conflict zone, risking death to gather firewood.

Kaya can’t deal with the massive influx of people forced from their homes by Islamist militants. Burkina Faso can’t deal with the one million people already displaced by conflict. And the world can’t deal with the almost 80 million people already driven from their homes by violence. So how will we cope with 1.2 billion people — nearly the population of China or India — likely to be displaced by climate driven-conflicts, water wars, increasing ecological devastation, and other unnatural disasters in the next 30 years?

In the decades ahead, ever more of us will find ourselves on roads like the one to Kaya, running from the devastation of raging wildfires or uncontrolled floodwaters, successive hurricanes or supercharged cyclones, withering droughts, spiraling conflicts, or the next life-altering pandemic. As a reporter, I’ve already been on that road. Pray you’re the one speeding by in the four-wheel-drive vehicle and not the one choking in the dust, driving the donkey cart.

*

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

Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch and a fellow at the Type Media Center. He is the author most recently of Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan and of the bestselling Kill Anything That Moves. This article was reported in partnership with Brown University’s Costs of War Project and Type Investigations.

A sense of redundancy might encourage calm.  The job is done, however well or poorly.  The legacy charted.  But in the case of President Donald Trump, there is still much to be done.  Leaving aside his priority of fortifying himself in the White House against any bailiff onslaught by president-elect Joe Biden, he is busy making decisions.  One of them is something that this administration will always be remembered for: sackings. 

The sacking of Defence Secretary Mark Esper was in keeping with a recently minted tradition.  Trump has made a habit of cycling through appointees, notably those in the Defence Department. Five acting or confirmed defence secretaries during the course of a presidential term is a spanking record and unlikely to be outdone for some years.  

It was Esper who showed alarm at the possibility that troops would be deployed against protesters and did little to hide that fact.  As he explained in the Pentagon briefing room on June 3,

“The option to use active duty troops in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort and only in the most urgent and dire situations. We are not in one of those situations now.  I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.” 

Solid stuff from someone the president had mocked for undue subservience as Yesper, a tag he expressed resentment over in an interview given to Military Times a few days before his sacking. 

“My frustration is I sit there and say, ‘Hm, 18 Cabinet members.  Who’s pushed back more than anybody? Name another Cabinet secretary that’s pushed back.”

He was hardly top of the cabinet pops, and so, the beleaguered commander-in-chief, wishing for some gratuitous blood, found Esper’s exposed head.  “Mark Esper,” came the president’s tweet, “has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service.”  His replacement: Christopher C. Miller, Director of the National Counterterrorism Centre. 

I am pleased to announce that Christopher C. Miller, the highly respected Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (unanimously confirmed by the Senate), will be Acting Secretary of Defense, effective immediately..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2020

What makes this unusual is that transitions are usually periods of dull resignation and tidying up.  Job massacres do not tend to figure.  But Trump was rarely ordinary in anything concerning White House business, often reprising his role from The Apprentice as firer-in-chief.

Talking heads have found such moves not merely poor form but disconcerting.  Former assistant Secretary of Defence during the Reagan administration, Lawrence Korb, was concerned with appearances.  “This is purely an act of retaliation by a president thinking more about his petty grievances than about the good of the country.”  It conveyed a “message… that Trump is going to continue his disruptive policies for the rest of his time in office.” 

House speaker Nancy Pelosi saw a continuing pattern of behaviour.  “The abrupt firing of Secretary Esper is disturbing evidence that President Trump is intent on using his final days in office to sow chaos in our American Democracy and around the world.”  Nothing new on that front, then.

Similarly, Rep. Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat, was concerned that others – namely the enemies of the United States – might be enthused by such cavalier sackings.  “Dismissing politically appointed national security leaders during a transition is a destabilizing move that will only embolden our adversaries and put our country at greater risk.” 

Conservative think tankers such as Kori Schake at the American Enterprise Institute agree, suggesting that Trump was not living up to the expectations of the imperial military establishment. “Firing a competent defence secretary within two months remaining in his term is exactly the kind of petty recklessness that made so much of the Republic defence establishment support Joe Biden for president.”

Given the tenure of the Trump administration, and the propensity to prevent appointees from resting on their laurels, it is doubtful whether these adversaries would care one way or the other. But the psyche of the imperium not only demands lusty enemies, but demands that they take interest, gazing across oceans and deserts at what Freedom’s Land will be up to next.  Democratic Senator from Virginia Mark Warner promotes the worn view that “our adversaries are already seeking vulnerabilities they can exploit in order to undermine American global leadership and national security during this transition period.”

In the radio chatterverse, NPR’s Greg Myre was also worried about what the sacking would do to confidence in the already nerve shattered ranks of US allies.  “[T]he world doesn’t take a timeout during a US presidential transition.”  This speculation tends to forget that such allies have generally adapted to Trump’s tongue lashings over defence expenditure or pulling their weight, and anticipate the next erratic move as a matter of course.  The rickety US alliance system has also come in for some suggested revisions, notably in the form of French President Emmanuel Macron’s notion of strategic autonomy. 

Esper’s removal is part of a transition spring clean in the dying days of the Trump presidency.  Anthony Tata, a retired brigadier-general, former superintendent of Wake County Schools and North Carolina Department of Transportation chief, has been shoehorned into the role of Pentagon’s policy chief.  Tata struggled with Senate confirmation earlier in the summer, a situation aided by past statements of some factual elasticity.  (Neither he, nor the truth, tend to trouble each other.)  In 2018, he accused President Barack Obama for being a Muslim “terrorist leader”. He has also had his sights on former CIA Director John Brennan, giving firm advice on Twitter that has since been removed: “Might be a good time to pick your poison: firing squad, public hanging, life sentence as a prison b*tch, or just suck on your pistol.”

In all this clouded mess, acting undersecretary of defence for policy, James H. Anderson, also handed in his resignation papers, along with Joseph D. Kernan, undersecretary of defence for intelligence.  To make the picture that more interesting, Tata had been, in effect, Anderson’s deputy, in circumvention of Senate confirmation protocols.  Not only has Trump proven to be the firing boss par excellence; he continues to fiddle protocol and muddy convention.  Expect more heads to roll.

*

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

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 The Grayzone

The Biden-Harris administration is good news for corporations, cops, war profiteers and banks too big to fail, but offers nothing to save the people and planet from multiple rises.

“Social movements must become the focus of politics, not the electoral process.”

Biden managed to defeat Donald Trump by a razor thin margin in yet another quadrennial contest over which section of the ruling class will exploit the people and the planet. But the results burst asunder the two most popular assumptions among Democrats about the 2020 election. Polls predicted that Biden would defeat Trump by a large margin in the electoral college. The opposite was true. Biden’s near defeat proved that no set of conditions exist where the Democratic Party can mount a resounding defeat of their duopoly counterpart.

More importantly, a Biden victory was always assumed by Democrats to be a victory for humanity. Think again. Biden and the Democrats did nothing to shake the halls of Congress in their favor. Nor did the Democratic Party offer anything to the masses to secure what should have been an easy victory over Donald Trump. With over 200,000 people dead  from COVID-19 and tens of millions more left unemployed , Biden’s lackluster performance is more of an indictment of the Democratic Party’s legitimacy than it is a victory for humanity.

“No set of conditions exist where the Democratic Party can mount a resounding defeat of their duopoly counterpart.”

Humanity will suffer many losses under a Biden administration. Black America will likely suffer the worst. While Trump and his GOP allies waged open war with Black Lives Matter activists, Biden has promised to provide more than $300 million in federal funding  for police departments to put down Black uprisings in a manner more palatable to the Black misleadership class and its white corporate masters. Black wealth plummeted rapidly under Obama and Biden’s administration . The current economic crisis, compounded with Biden’s lack of any plan to relieve the prolonged suffering of the working class, has already worsened the living standards of millions of Black American workers who never recovered from the 2007-2008 crisis.

There are many on the leftish wing of the Democratic Party that have argued Trump’s ouster will alleviate the suffering of humanity in several key areas. Some cite Biden’s willingness to enter back into the Paris Climate Accords, the JPCOA agreement with Iran, and the World Health Organization (WHO). This makes Biden more progressive than Trump. The argument has one fatal flaw. Biden is much more likely to use his institutional backing to change the form, not the scale of the suffering that the U.S. imposes worldwide.

Biden’s possible re-entrance into the Paris Climate Accords will be canceled out by his commitment to fracking . The possibility of eased sanctions with Iran, while extremely important, is not guaranteed and will be offset by Biden’s own commitment to imperialist plunder in the region. One cannot forget that Biden helped the Obama administration increase U.S. wars from two to seven.  In eight years, Biden assisted in the coup of Honduras , the overthrow of Libya, and the ongoing proxy war in Syria . Biden’s commitment to the WHO should not negate his firm opposition to any single-payer model of healthcare and the large sums of money  he receives from the very healthcare industry which has ensured the U.S. is without a public health system all together.

“Biden helped the Obama administration increase U.S. wars from two to seven.”

Biden and the Democratic Party are joint partners with the GOP in the facilitation of the ongoing Race to the Bottom for the working class. Wall Street donated heavily to Biden  with full knowledge that his administration will continue to support the right of corporations to drive down wages, increase productivity (exploitation), and concentrate capital in fewer and fewer hands. Boeing’s CEO stated clearly clear that his business prospects would be served regardless of who won the election . Prison stocks rose after Biden announced Kamala Harris as his vice president . On November 4th, Reuters announced that the lords of capital were quite pleased that no major policy changes were likely  under the new political regime elected to Congress and the Oval Office.

Biden will inevitably rule as a rightwing neoconservative in all areas of policy. His big tent of Republicans and national security state apparatchiks is at least as large as Hillary Clinton’s in 2016. Over 100 former GOP war hawks of the national security state endorsed Biden  in the closing weeks of the election. Larry Summers, a chief architect of the 2007-2008 economic crisis, advised his campaign . Susan Rice and Michele Flournoy are likely to join Biden’s foreign policy team —a key indication that trillions will continue to be spent on murderous wars abroad.

The question remains whether Biden can effectively govern like prior Democratic Party administrations. American exceptionalism is the Democratic Party’s ideological base, but this ideology is entangled in the general crisis of legitimacy afflicting the U.S. state. Biden’s ability to forward a project of “decency” that restores the “soul of the nation” is hampered by his attitude that “nothing will fundamentally change” for the rich. Biden also lacks charisma and talent. While millions were ready to vote for anyone and anything not named Donald Trump, four years of austerity and war under a president with obvious signs of cognitive decline is guaranteed to sharpen the contradictions of the rule of the rich and open the potential for further unrest on both the left and the right of the political spectrum.

“Biden’s big tent of Republicans and national security state apparatchiks is at least as large as Hillary Clinton’s in 2016.”

To maintain social peace, Biden will use the Oval Office to consolidate its corporate forces to suffocate left wing forces inside and outside of the Democratic Party. The graveyard of social movements will expand to occupy the largest plot of political territory as possible. A “moderate” revolution will be declared for the forces of progress in the ruling class. Perhaps the best that can be summoned from a Biden administration is the advancement of consciousness that the Democratic Party is just as opposed to social democracy and the interests of the working classes as Republicans. Plenty of opportunities exist to challenge the intransigence of the Democrats but just as many obstacles will be thrown in the way of any true exercise of people’s power.

The 2020 election is yet another reminder that social movements must become the focus of politics, not the electoral process. This is where an internationalist vision of politics is especially important. Social movements in Bolivia returned their socialist party to power after a year living under a U.S.-backed coup. Massive grassroots mobilizations in Cuba, Vietnam, and China contained the COVID-19 pandemic in a matter of months. Ethiopia and Eritrea have agreed to forge peace rather than wage war. The winds of progress have been blowing toward the Global South for more than a century. The most progressive changes that have ever occurred in the U.S. have been a combined product of the mass organization of the U.S.’ so-called internal colonies such as Black America and the external pressures placed on the U.S. empire by movements for self-determination abroad.

The 2020 election has come and gone. What we know is that Biden is a repudiation of revolutionary change. Humanity will suffer many losses even if more of the oppressed and working masses become aware of Biden and the DNC’s hostile class interests. Trump was rejected by a corporate-owned electoral process just as Clinton was rejected in 2016. Politics in the U.S. remain confined to the narrow ideological possibilities offered by neoliberalism and imperial decay. Oppressed people must create and embrace a politics that take aim at the forces of reaction currently pushing humanity to the brink of total destruction. The only way this can happen is if Biden and the rest of the Democratic Party become the primary target of the people’s fight for a new world.

*

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

Danny Haiphong is co-coordinator of the Black Alliance for Peace Supporter Network and organizer with No Cold War. He and Roberto Sirvent are co-authors of the book entitled American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News–From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror (Skyhorse Publishing). His articles are re-published widely as well as on Patreon at patreon.com/dannyhaiphong. He is also the co-host with BAR Editor Margaret Kimberley of the Youtube show BAR Presents: The Left Lens and can be reached on Twitter @spiritofho, and email at [email protected].

Featured image is by Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

The social network is the third-wave (1) redefinition of the concept of society via the highest stage of technological evolution achieved so far in the present era which is also known as cyberspace age. It is the actual realization of what Marshall McLuhan calls “the global village” in his The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man published in 1962 (2) and Understanding Media: The Extension of Man published in 1964 (3). It is a transcendence of space-time, not that our sense of space and time is vanished but is likewise redefined as society has passed through the same process of reconfiguration. For one individual person to connect with another, geographical location is immaterial. Someone in the US may have a live virtual conversation right now with another in Ukraine in real-time. This is virtual reality. The reality of the shrunken world figuratively spoken of some decades ago is an absolute actuality here and now.

Redefined along with the concept of society and the space-time sense is the concept of personhood. The human person, in the context of cyberspace, has been essentialized while the physicality of being is set aside. It makes some real philosophical sense in a way as it has been classically held that the core of humanness is fundamentally defined in non-material/non-physical terms and hence a distinguishing factor that separates the human being from the animals.

It is our material/physical reality that links us with the animal world. It is, however, our self-consciousness, creativity, and spirituality that put the demarcation line between our humanity and the animal world. In cyberspace, such a non-physical/non-material core is magnified and has redefined personhood as an instance of dematerialization. The human person is essentialized in a dematerialized state of affairs. While converging on a social network (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, etc.), human physicality is a secondary consideration and what matters to a large extent is virtual presence manifest in the articulation of thoughts and expression of feelings as well.

The ontological configuration of cyberspace or virtual-world reality is all in the mind. It is the “post-modern” realization of the subjective-idealist theorizing of the Irish philosopher of the early modern period, George Berkeley.

“In terms of the digital technology of our contemporary world which Alvin Toffler calls the ´third wave´ era, the Berkeleyan paradigm is closest to the notion of ´virtual reality´. . . .

“Berkeley´s conception of reality denies the existence of matter. He simply believes that matter, as this concept is used in physics, does not exist. . . . .

“Berkeley´s reality—the world we experience around us on a daily basis—is virtual reality. In this reality, the ´computer´ that processes data is God whose power is far more immense than what we limited humans could come up with directly absorbing and processing all our experiences and sensations in our minds. We, in fact, actually explore and move around in the world that God has created in the same manner and capability that we can explore and move around in the Spatio-temporal milieu of a man-made virtual reality. Yet both these worlds—in the Berkeleyan sense—are nothing but illusory. Reality, therefore, rests alone on one´s experience of them and on the power that processes information to generate them.” (4)

Virtual reality in its post-Berkeleyan rendering is no longer particularly concerned with the denial of material/physical reality but more especially concentrated on the importance of the mental, dematerialized aspect of being. In other words, cyberspace ontology capitalizes on the de-emphasis or de-signification of spatio-temporal materiality. Cyberspace is, therefore, a landscape of boundless possibilities that stretches on in self-generating dimensions whose regulating factor is the infinite flexibility of the imaginative and creative expanse of the human mind.

A social network, whose operational arena is cyberspace, is a dematerialized system of human interactive energies that forge relationships regardless of locational instant. Facebook as a case in point is a social network where people can relate with each other without having necessarily been acquainted physically, i.e., as warm bodies concretely present at a certain space-time point called paramount reality. In fact, friendships ranging from the most superficial type to the most intimate are established, nurtured, and sustained even without necessarily getting into an actual face-to-face encounter in the so-called paramount reality. Information from the most banal to the most essential in terms of personal or social importance is exchanged, disseminated, shared, discussed, and debated on in a social network. A pressing issue can get viral online through a social network and draw the attention of prospective advocates of different degrees of commitment and detractors of varying levels of dissatisfaction.

A social network is a post-personal conduit that is capable to yield the most detailed information or hide the most guarded facts about individual persons depending on the degree of their relational intimacy with or level of impersonal alienation from each other. Its functional base is in the hands of individual operators engaged within agreed-upon parameters wherein one does not only have the power to control her/his limitations but also the possibilities that could be triggered by the degree of her/his openness towards the other. At a certain point, social networking is a power game.

A social network is also utilized as an effective tactical channel of profitable business or commercial enterprises, both small-scale and big-time, to advertise/endorse/promote goods and services on a virtual person-to-person deal where travel time and transportation cost are non-issues as far as salesman-customer meet-up is concerned. This is post-modern salesmanship where even a well-furnished business office with an actual location address is a thing of the past. In this case, a social network makes a business appointment less businesslike and more personal. Online deals via social networks bridge the gap between, and hence dissolve, the traditionally held personal-formal divide in interactive engagement.

Social networking in many instances is a potent medium that raises issues and advocacies of political import on a local, national even global scale. It is an effective tool to upgrade the awareness of stakeholders in a particular setting by way of substantial and detailed information dissemination. A social network is an operative agency to rally people to decisive action based on principled platforms aimed to effect an imminent event to change a social order. As a political tool, it could be reasonably inferred that social networking is both creative and destructive. It should not, therefore, be underestimated as a basic means able to topple a government and inaugurate a new one.

*

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

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 (15) years at Trinity University of Asia , an Anglican university in the Philippines. 

Notes

(1) cf. Alvin Toffler´s Third Wave . . . http://www.gobookee.org/alvin-toffler-third-wave/

(2)  http://www.scribd.com/doc/87539506/the-Gutenberg-Galaxy-the-Making-of-Typographic-Man

(3)  http://beforebefore.net/80f/s11/media/mcluhan.pdf

(4)  From Ruel F. Pepa´s ¨The Matrix Movie Series: A Berkeleyan Affirmation of Reality¨ pp. 171-173 in Introduction to Philosophy: Readings in Academic Philosophy (with Logic) . . . http://issuu.com/ruel56/docs/intro_to_philo

Note: These remarks were delivered by Abayomi Azikiwe at the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights (MCHR) Virtual Forum held on November 12, 2020. The event was entitled: “What Now? A Post-Election Town Hall Meeting.” The program featured Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire and former Chairperson of the MCHR Board of Directors, now a board member-at-large, as moderator. In addition, there were presentations by Prof. Charles Simmons, retired educator at Eastern Michigan University (EMU) and currently the Co-Director of the Hush House in Detroit; Merissa Kovach, Political Strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan, and Kim Redigan, Vice Chairperson of the MCHR Board of Directors and a member of the Meta Peace Team of Michigan.  

***

At the time of this meeting we are nine days past one of the most confrontational and contested presidential and congressional elections in United States history.

Although the results illustrate a clear victory for the Democratic presidential ticket of former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris, the current administration of President Donald J. Trump is refusing to concede defeat and is challenging the outcome through a conspiratorial propaganda campaign and spurious legal challenges to electoral commissions and state canvassing boards in several key states including Michigan.

Trump has been saying for months that if the results of the presidential election did not favor him and the Republican Party members holding seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives, it would be due to massive voter fraud. The president has cast doubt and aspersions on the process of mail-in and early voting saying these methods would leave the electoral system open to irregularities.

In all of the lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign, there has been no concrete proof of a nationwide attempt to deny the president another term of office. There are ample reasons why Trump lost the popular vote and is poised to be defeated in the electoral college.

However, the Trump campaign is seeking a favorable federal court ruling which would be the basis for nullifying the outcome of one of the state elections in order take this issue to the U.S. Supreme Court. The campaign is still raising funds to continue the legal efforts to, in essence, disenfranchise millions of voters across the U.S.

Cities such as Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Phoenix, among others, were crucial in turning the tides against a second Trump administration. Hopefully, people within MCHR and other fraternal organizations noticed the explicit and vicious attacks on Detroit during the president’s address on November 5. He accused the electoral process in the city as “lacking integrity” and that Republican sympathizers were denied access to the areas within the TCF Center located downtown, where ballots were being tabulated.

Detroit and State of Michigan election officials have vigorously denied these allegations of deliberate fraud. It is important to mention that these municipalities which played a critical role in the presidential and congressional elections have majorities and near-majorities of Black, Brown and other communities of color. Such statements from the administration further exposes its racism and lack of respect for the democratic rights of the oppressed peoples in the U.S.

Since the defeat of the Trump-Pence ticket at the polls, demonstrations have taken place demanding the counting of all votes particularly in highly contested areas as well as after November 7, there were numerous celebratory rallies and marches which viewed the Biden-Harris victory as a repudiation of not only Trump as a political figure, these actions represented the rejection of the policies which blatantly favor the rich and further impoverish the working class. The much-championed low jobless rate in the U.S. is directly connected with the proliferation of minimum wage (and near that level) employment largely in the service and hospitality sectors. However, even within manufacturing there has been the phenomenon of production outsourcing and multiple-tiered wage structures which have systematically undermined collective bargaining.

Detroit demonstration celebrates the defeat of Trump administration on Nov. 7, 2020 (Abayomi Azikiwe photo)

One other factor which can never be overlooked, is the 71 million people in the U.S. who voted for the Trump-Pence ticket thinking that the current administration was accomplishing economic improvements for workers, the middle and upper classes. This was the narrative articulated by the Trump campaign going as far as to say that everything was going smoothly until the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in February and March. Since the administration has accepted no responsibility for the mismanagement of the medical and public health responses to the pandemic, they have laid complete culpability on the People’s Republic of China along with the Geneva-based and United Nations affiliated World Health Organization (WHO).

Implications of the Current Crises on a Domestic Level

The public health status of the U.S. at present is firmly linked to the burgeoning economic crisis. Tens of millions of people have lost jobs and income since March. The government was able to agree on a relief package which provided some assistance to the working families and retirees around the country. Nonetheless, the bulk of the multi-trillion dollars package known as the CARES Act was given to the wealthiest corporations and individuals in the U.S. Since April there has been essentially no relief to the millions of working families, people living with disabilities, children and small businesses leaving many imperiled by the lack of healthcare coverage, the threat of foreclosure and eviction and the difficulties within the educational system. For more than six months the Congress and the administration has failed to agree on additional relief. The Heroes Act and CARES II remain stalled in the Senate where right-wing Republicans dominate.

Several companies voluntarily returned the funds from Congress because they were not suffering from the impact of the pandemic. Some firms have enhanced their profitability since the advent of the virus. Consequently, the widening gap between the upper class and the workers is growing rapidly. The Trump administration has favored the capitalist class through massive tax breaks and the deregulation of corporate conduct related to environmental and social justice concerns. Police agencies formerly under consent decrees in relationship to a history of misconduct were absolved of oversight through an executive order from the administration. The demand for the defunding of police and the redirecting of resources to alleviate social problems was ridiculed by the Trump campaign. Even moderate elements within the Democratic Party chided the utilization of these demands which have grown out of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations since late May after the police execution of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The mass response to the police killing of Floyd of course was pivotal in the mobilization of the electorate which voted against Trump.

Foreign Policy Implications in the Struggle for World Peace

Many world leaders are communicating congratulatory messages to Biden and conveying their pleasure with the change of administration. These heads-of-state include presidents and prime ministers from numerous nations in Africa, Europe, Latin America and Asia. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement on November 10, saying they were committed to a second Trump administration, has created bewilderment and alarm internationally.

Trump has often spread the myth that his administration has kept the U.S. out of major conflicts around the globe. This could be no further away from the actual truth. Military budgets under the current administration are rising where the Pentagon and intelligence agencies combined are costing the U.S. taxpayers well over a trillion dollars annually. The administration has not withdrawn U.S. forces from Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan, South Korea, among other geo-political regions. Routine bombing operations are continuing in Somalia and other regions of Africa where the AFRICOM (U.S. Africa Command) units are administering drone stations, conducting military maneuvers with compliant governments as well as engaging in targeted intelligence gathering operations and assassinations.

The military budget and foreign policy orientation of the U.S. which transcends successive Republican and Democratic administrations must be changed fundamentally. Whether there is a Biden or a Trump administration, the antiwar and peace movements are compelled to continue the work of ending wars of occupation and exploitation.

Our Commitment to Halting the Attempted Coup

As MCHR and other organizations, we must work tirelessly to prevent the consolidation of the attempted coup by the Trump forces which are dedicated to overturning the outcome of the elections. There are many avenues of struggle in this regard. Nevertheless, it is clear in regard to what the stakes are in the immediate crisis.

For it is not just Trump and his administration as personalities which constitute the major threat to working people and the oppressed in the U.S. and worldwide. The consequences of the triumph of a Trump coup would undoubtedly result in even more reversals of the gains made in the fields of Civil Rights and Labor Relations. Environmental degradation would accelerate along with the attacks on healthcare workers and scientific inquiry.

Consequently, under these troubled circumstances we have no other alternative than to escalate our campaigns connected with the objectives of achieving full human rights, while concurrently, seeking solidarity with all progressive forces in U.S. We are fighting not just for ourselves. Our efforts will play an instrumental role in the genuine liberation of billions around the world who have the same interests as the majority of those living in the U.S.

*

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

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

Featured image: Detroit demonstration after the election Nov. 2020 (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

On 10 November 2020, the United States secretary-of-state Mike Pompeo, he of the ill-famed confession “We lied, we cheated, we stole,” spoke at the Ronald Reagan Institute.

The liar Pompeo can even speak candidly,

“I’ve talked about American exceptionalism. I did so in Brussels; I did it in Cairo; I did it in Jakarta, and every opportunity that I’ve had in my public life. Sometimes it was met with a resounding thud as well. I’ve walked out of quiet ward rooms.”

Imagine a US secretary-of-state admitting that people walked out on American exceptionalism.

The cheater Pompeo boasted,

“In the Middle East, American strength has replaced leading from behind. We destroyed the caliphate, the ISIS caliphate. We killed Baghdadi and Soleimani, and we have restored substantial deterrence.”

It is a bizarre form of exceptionalism to brag about assassinations carried out by one’s country. The US created Daesh and later killed their associate, the Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as well as the major destroyer of Daesh, Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani, commander of its Quds Force.

Speaking of theft, Pompeo chortled,

“And by just simply recognizing Jerusalem – candidly recognizing Jerusalem – as the capital of Israel and acknowledging that the Golan Heights are part of Israel, we’ve helped secured our ally, the Jewish state, as central to the region’s future.”

The colonial-settlers managed to wipe out many Indigenous nations in what is now called the United States, and they later aided European Jews in stealing the land of Indigenous Palestinians. But as the events in Armenia and Azerbaijan indicate, territory conquered in the past can be regained in the future. Sitting on stolen land can be like sitting on a ticking time bomb.

Finally Pompeo got to the crux of his speech where he identified the “foundation for America’s policy towards the world’s number-one threat to freedom today: the Chinese Communist Party.”

Liars, cheaters, and thieves count on their audience to accept their proclamations and not probe into the background of the speaker and the glasshouses in which they reside. Thus Pompeo could smugly assert of China, without an iota of evidence presented:

And it also means no more illegal claims in the South China Sea, no more coercion and co-optation of American businesses, no more consulates used as dens of spies, no more stealing of intellectual property, and no more ignoring fundamental human rights violations. And the party’s atrocities in Xinjiang, Tibet, and elsewhere will not be tolerated.

Is China a paragon of virtue? No. And the US is no paragon of good either. Illegal claims? Do settler-colonialists have a legitimate legal claim to the landmass of the US? To the Hawaiian islands? To Puerto Rico? To Guam? Where is the evidence that US corporations were co-opted or coerced by the Chinese? One hears such claims over and over but never with evidence. Why? Because entry to the Chinese market was conditioned on access to technology, a decision that US corporations could have refused. This is not coercion. That a former CIA head speaks of dens of spies is risible. Theft of intellectual property? And what was the forced sale of China’s social media TikTok in the US supposed to represent? US protesting human rights violations? Like the occupation and oppression of Palestinians by the Jewish state? Like the Muslim holocaust?¹ Like the police murders of Blacks in the US? How about the human right to freedom from poverty and to have a roof over one’s head?

Pompeo said, “The fight is between authoritarianism, barbarism on one side and freedom on the other.”

As I wrote recently:

Among other items “proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,” the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “… human beings shall enjoy freedom … from want.”

The UDHR preamble goes on to state that “fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person … have [been] determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.”

China is the country that addresses the fundamental dignity and worth of the human person. The US falls abysmally short of addressing dignity of all citizens. Chinese have freedom from homelessness and poverty. Consequently lying and cheating is required by US politicians to hide their thievery.

China conquered COVID-19 while Americans suffer. Americans are warring in several countries while the Communist Party of China calls for peace. Who are the barbarians? If it is a choice between two countries, it seems an easy choice to make.

*

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

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

Note

1. Gideon Polya, US-Imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide (Korsgaard Publishing, 2020).

Russian President Vladimir Putin is no stranger to changes in the US administration. In the last couple of decades, as a member of Boris Yeltsin’s office, then as both President and Prime Minister he has dealt with Republican and Democrat administrations in equal measure. And every four years, around the time of the US elections, he is asked what he expects from the new American President and his government. In response, he gives pretty much the same answer every time: US administrations come and go, but the policies remain the same.

Prior to his election in 2016, there was some hope and expectation, from Russia included, that Donald Trump’s foreign policy would be different from previous administrations.  There was a view that Trump, having expressed dissatisfaction with America’s ‘nation-building’ abroad and with the ‘disaster’ of the Iraq war, would end the never-ending cycle of regime change wars embarked on by the US military-industrial complex. Given Trump’s previous positive rhetoric on Russia and Putin, and experience of doing business in the country, it was also thought that his presidency could mark the start of a new beginning in US-Russia relations. Thanks to the Democratic lobby and weight of the US neoliberal establishment however, Trump found himself powerless to control the narrative around him in which he would be punished for four years for having defeated Hillary Clinton in the election. For what real influence can a president have when even his tweets are censored by Twitter?

Being merely a pawn in the hands of hawks around him (Mike Pompeo and John Bolton to start with) Trump therefore proceeded to make certain moves which only worsened the relationship with Russia further. Arming Ukraine, maintaining a presence in Syria, piling sanctions on Russia and using every possible leverage to prevent the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, are just some of the ways the Trump administration has ‘contained’ Russia. In addition, the US withdrew from both the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and has declared no interest in renewing the START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) when it expires in 2021.

The moral of the story? The US President is actually quite limited in his ability to realize his own policies. President Putin in a recent interview cited the example of Barack Obama, who when he came to power, expressed his intention to close the controversial Guantanamo Bay military prison. Did he end up doing it? No. There are many such examples of US Presidents having to toe the party line, and Donald Trump has been no different. Therefore, when it comes to Joe Biden, it’s likely that we will see a continuation of the anti-Russian rhetoric, and to an even greater extent. For Joe Biden has been decisively critical of Russia throughout his presidential campaign, and worked in previous governments who took a harder line. He himself is a relic of the Cold War and therefore fails to shake off the mindset that goes with it.  Biden has even gone as far as to say that Russia is the ‘biggest threat’ to the liberal international order, making baseless accusations that it is attempting to destroy both the EU and NATO.

Trump was of course not a fan of NATO, which he referred to as ‘obsolete’, with the businessman in him telling him it was a waste of money, along with WHO membership, which he also gave up. Biden, on the other hand, has referred to Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which reads that an attack on one member of the transatlantic military alliance is considered an attack on all, as a “sacred obligation”. Indeed, Biden has always been a staunch supporter of the organization. In one notorious video he bragged about calling for the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia: ‘I was suggesting that we bomb Belgrade; I was suggesting we send in American pilots and blow up all the bridges on the Drina’.  Doesn’t bode well for Russia, does it?

When it comes to the personal relationship between Biden and Putin, it has been said that the two don’t like each other, which could hamper any cooperation. This could be due in part to Biden’s labelling of the Russian President as a ‘tyrant’ and ‘dictator’, rhetoric which the Kremlin has no doubt got used to from its western ‘partners’ but which nevertheless will not be forgotten. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov is amongst those who remember the role played by Biden in the Obama administration and speaks of the ‘ugly behaviour’ staged by the White House after Trump won the 2016 election. Indeed, the Russian government has yet to congratulate Biden with his victory, which although is understandable given the controversy surrounding the result and Republican allegations of voter fraud, is significant.

It’s also worth pointing out that Biden leads a neoliberal movement which is inherently Russophobic and which has spent the last few years painting Russia as enemy number one. For many in the US now, Russia has become a dirty word, after the fantasy that was ‘Russiagate’ in which it was alleged, without any real foundation, that Russia had influenced the US elections and Donald Trump was working for Putin. Russia and its president have become such useful scapegoats in the political arena that we are unlikely to see this tactic abandoned by the Democrat camp.

The road ahead for Russian-US relations is therefore likely to be rocky. The current ‘cold war’ in which we find ourselves will no doubt remain the status quo for some time, and possibly even intensify under Biden’s leadership. Unfortunately in these circumstances, the chance of it transforming into a hot war, by some unforeseen event, is therefore high. As the late Stephen F Cohen asserted in his book ‘War with Russia’, the current confrontation between the two powers is more dangerous than at any time during the previous cold war.  We can only hope that Russia’s coolheaded pragmatism will be enough to keep this cold war from hotting up.

*

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

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Worth the Price? Joe Biden and the Launch of the Iraq War is a documentary short reviewing the role of then-Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) in leading the United States into the most devastating foreign policy blunder of the last twenty years.

Produced and directed by Mark Weisbrot and narrated by Danny Glover, the film features archival footage, as well as policy experts who provide insight and testimony with regard to Joe Biden’s role as the Chair of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 2002.

Featured experts:

• Stephen Kinzer, Award-winning former New York Times Bureau Chief and foreign correspondent; Senior Fellow of the Watson Institute, Brown University
  Author: Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq

• Dr. Barbara Ransby, Professor of History, University of Illinois at Chicago; award-winning author

  Latest book:  Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the 21st Century

• Dr. Adom Getachew, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago
  Author: Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination

• Matthew Hoh, Senior Fellow at the Center For International Policy; Iraq War veteran; former US State Department official in Afghanistan

• Dr. Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco

  Author: Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism

• Lawrence Wilkerson, Former Chief of Staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell; Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William & Mary; U.S. Army Colonel, Retired

*

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

The Covid “Pandemic”: Destroying People’s Lives. Engineered Economic Depression. Global “Coup d’Etat”?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, November 12 2020

It’s the destruction of people’s  lives. It is the destabilization of civil society. And for What?  The Lies are sustained by a massive media disinformation campaign. 24/7, Incessant and repetitive “Covid alerts” for the last ten months. … It is a process of social engineering.

Who Chooses the Official, Governmentally-Approved “Health Experts”?

By Prof. Bill Willers, November 12 2020

You have to hand it to governmental health experts: All are uniformly “on message”. Meanwhile, abundant medical expertise from around the world at odds with official messaging is rendered invisible.

Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy

By Manlio Dinucci, November 12 2020

What are the programmatic foreign policy lines that Joe Biden will implement when he takes office in the White House? He announced it with a detailed article in Foreign Affairs magazine (March / April 2020), that formed the basis of the 2020 Platform approved in August by the Democratic Party.

Elections 2020: Everybody Knows the Fight Was Fixed

By Edward Curtin, November 12 2020

Ask yourself: Has the power of the oligarchic, permanent warfare state with its propaganda and spy networks, its vast intelligence apparatus, increased or decreased in the past half century? Who is winning the battle, the people or the ruling elites? The answer is obvious.

The Coming Weeks Could be the Period of Greatest Threat to Venezuela

By Franklin Frederick, November 12 2020

Trump has not yet accepted electoral defeat, and his remaining days as U.S. presidency until Biden’s inauguration may represent the period of greatest threat of armed intervention in Venezuela, especially before December 6, the date of the country’s next legislative elections.

Will Trump Push Israeli Annexation Before January 20? And Israel Might Grab ‘Once in a Lifetime’ Chance

By Philip Weiss, November 12 2020

Trump will push annexation of West Bank, and if Netanyahu sees it as in his political interest to be antagonistic to Biden, he will accede, say two prominent Israel lobbyists.

Tensions and Uncertainty Regarding US Elections Could Lead America into a State of Social Chaos

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, November 12 2020

Trump accuses Biden of defrauding the election results and calls for a new count. In this sense, Trump has judicialized the elections and hopes to remain in the presidency by the Court’s decision, which makes the scenario open to several possibilities, without a “clear victory” for Biden, as many media agencies have reported worldwide.

Chilling Times on The Greek Island of Samos. The Plight of Refugees

By Chris Jones, November 12 2020

Bad things are happening on Samos. At the end of October the earthquake hit with all its devastating consequences as hundreds lost their homes. The damage is still being assessed. And now some 12 days later the aftershocks continue. One this morning registered as 4.1 R.

US De-Lists Uyghur Terrorist Organization Aimed at China

By Brian Berletic, November 12 2020

In essence – the US State Department is simply removing a known and still very active terrorist organization from its lists to both politically attack and undermine China further – but to also likely provide more direct support to the group and those affiliated with it in Washington’s widening conflict against Beijing.

Is Silver Leading Bitcoin or Is Bitcoin Leading Silver?

By Hubert Moolman, November 12 2020

Is silver leading Bitcoin or is Bitcoin leading silver? Well, it depends on which time framing one is looking at.

If Biden steals this election, it will be Obama 2.0. If Biden’s mental health declines, Vice-President-Elect Kamala Harris, one of the most unpopular democrats in modern history will be the President at least for the short term. The question is who will be her vice-president?

Both of the US political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans are a one-party system controlled by special interests no matter who is president.

It’s fair to say that Trump’s foreign policy was heading towards a dangerous path to a world war as I have written about in the past.

Many of Trump’s foreign policies are similar to past administrations whether they were Democrats and Republican, the only difference that I can say is that he did not start any new wars, he continued ongoing wars that was launched by his predecessors.

Trump’s domestic policies are mixed at best with an economy built on debt through its Federal Reserve’s printing press that can never be repaid jeopardizing the US economy and it’s US dollar-based hegemony which are already in a steady decline. However, on a good note about the Trump presidency is that he secured America’s 2nd amendment rights (an important right to have during uncertain times), expanded school choice for families and he cut taxes for individuals’ and small businesses. Despite a handful of successes on the domestic front, his foreign policy is dangerous for world peace. However, it’s fair to say Trump is a different type of politician, one who openly expressed how he felt about certain people in politics or in Hollywood and the mainstream-media (MSM) hated all of it, they despised Trump. The Democratic party has been planning this scenario the day after Hillary Clinton lost the elections to Donald Trump in 2016 with the Russia-Gate Hoax, allegations of sexual assaults, racism and other anti-Trump shenanigans to remove the President. The Democrats were going to steal the 2020 elections no matter what with help from the MSM. If the Supreme court reverses Biden’s election win to a loss, giving Trump the victory by January 20th,violence will erupt on US streets leading to a civil war among the American people, and that is certain.

Stolen Elections and Biden’s Voter Fraud Organization

This election was rigged by the Democratic party, plain and simple. The so-called “President-Elect” Joe Biden has admitted unconsciously that they put together an extensive “voter fraud” organization in U.S. history:

One of Trump’s lawyers fighting the election fraud, Sidney Powell, said that 450,000 ballots was found in several key states with “only votes for Biden and no down-ballot selections, which she regarded as suspicious” according to a recent New York Post article who also said that Powell claimed that “two pieces of software called Hammer and Scorecard were used to flip votes from Trump to Biden in some pre-election voting ballots.”  

In Michigan, the vote had increased at one point to over 130,000 votes for Biden in the middle of the night, without a single new vote for Trump while most people were asleep:

In Pennsylvania, former New York City Mayor and Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani made a press statement on the fact that dead people were voting in Philadelphia:

There will be many more whistleblowers, pollsters that were denied the access to observe the vote count and average voters who will be exposing Biden’s election as a fraud in the coming days, weeks and months.  This is just the beginning.

Mainstream Media Censorship In Your Face

This is perhaps the most in your face evidence that media censorship has been legitimized against President Trump.  The MSM now is fact-checking Trump in real-time claiming that he is stating false-facts:

A Coming American Coup D’état?

The Biden regime had issued a warning to President Donald Trump “declaring that trespassers will be removed from the White House.”  Former sportscaster Keith Olbermann has even called for a coup against President Trump:

The 2020 election was stolen from Trump, no doubt about that,

However, Trump and his administration knew that the Democrats were going to commit fraud through mail-in ballots.

The US just became a banana republic, a dictatorship with Orwellian overtones that will ensure a Democratic and the Neocon Republican establishment that will move forward with an American-style scientific based-dictatorship.

Biden has prematurely announced a Covid-19 task force that will include planned lockdowns, vaccine mandates and mandatory facemasks due to an increase in Covid-19 cases.  The US is surely heading towards what George Orwell has warned the world about.  Make no mistake about it, there will be a resistance, a human resistance that will ultimately prevail, and that I can say with certainty.

*

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

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

Arayik Harutyunyan, President of the de-facto state of Artsakh, has called on the region’s Armenians to stop looking for traitors and return to the region.

In a video message on November 11, Harutyunyan revealed a number of moral issues that led to the collapse of Armenian forces in Karabakh.

On October 3, when the enemy reached Matagis, part of the military retreated from the Yehniker area, there were not enough resources to provide the rear.

When we were supposed to go to Yehnikner with our elite units and the Armenian special forces, our units refused to go there. I asked, begged, said that I would go ahead, but received a negative answer! They didn’t go with me, they left the President of their country alone.

Harutyunyan said Armenian forces suffered from a severe shortage in human resources since the outbreak of the battle in Karabakh. He reminded of the warnings he issued over this matter on October 3 and 18.

“Every time I was telling that we need human resources,” Harutyunyan said, “Few days ago a Russian military analyst noted that if we wanted to win we needed to mobilize 80-100 thousand people, if not, you lose. I don’t want to say how many people joined, left the troops, and left the 18 years old alone.”

The president added that 18-20-year-old conscripts were the main forces that were fighting against the Azerbaijani military and its allies in Karabakh.

“I bow before them [young conscripts], who are still protecting the borders of our country,” he said.

Harutyunyan acknowledged that Azerbaijani drones inflicted heavy losses on Armenian troops in Karabakh, which were left for days without any air defense.

The president ended his message by calling on residents of Artsakh, who are currently taking refuge in Armenia, to refrain from participating in political revolts and return home.

“Don’t give in to provocations aimed at destroying our county. We need unity, we must be consolidated to fight an external enemy, which continues to wreck our unity,” Harutyunyan said.

The president went on to promise that the infrastructure in the region will be restored in a few days. He also claimed that Artsakh state have enough resources to ensure that there will be no social problems in the region.

Harutyunyan was one of the leaders blamed by the public following the Russian-brokered peace deal that ended the Azerbaijani attack on Artsakh. Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is yet to address the loss in an honest manner.

*

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

SUPPORT SOUTHFRONT:

PayPal: [email protected], http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

As masses of people poured into the streets to celebrate the end of Donald Trump’s fascist rule, the lame duck president’s lawyers were filing frivolous lawsuits in an attempt to nullify Joe Biden’s victory. But none of these suits, even if successful, would change the results of the election.

Shortly after CNN called the election for Biden, Trump said in a statement, “Beginning Monday, our campaign will start prosecuting our case in court to ensure election laws are fully upheld and the rightful winner is seated.”

First of all, only prosecutors prosecute cases — in criminal court. Private litigants in civil cases are called plaintiffs. And second, anyone who has the money to hire a lawyer can bring a lawsuit about anything. Thousands of legal actions are filed every day, but very few are taken seriously by judges. It’s unclear whether Trump is even paying his hired guns; Rudy Giuliani once said he works for Trump without pay.

For months, Trump has mounted a concerted strategy to preemptively discredit the election results, spewing unsupported allegations of voter fraud with mail-in ballots. Republicans and the Trump campaign have filed myriad lawsuits, even before the election, all seeking to erect obstacles to voting.

Mindful that many more people than usual would vote by mail to protect themselves from the coronavirus, Trump sowed the seeds of doubt about the validity of mail-in ballots. With no evidence whatsoever, he fabricated claims of massive voter fraud. With no regard for the health risks, Trump encouraged his minions to vote in person, insisting the election results must be known on Election Day. Trump’s supporters obliged and most voted at the polls. It was therefore no surprise that the overwhelming number of mail-in ballots were cast by Democrats.

Early Wednesday morning, as his putative lead began to evaporate, Trump tweeted, “We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.” Trump had said in no uncertain terms that he wanted Amy Coney Barrett installed on the Supreme Court to decide the election in his favor. But although counting of mail-in ballots continued, no votes were cast after Tuesday.

“If you count the legal votes, I easily win. if you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us,” Trump falsely claimed Thursday night. But as retiring Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-Michigan) tweeted, “a legally cast vote does not become ‘illegal’ simply because a candidate does not like the vote.”

The same night, in a White House briefing, Trump said, again falsely, “We were winning in all the key locations by a lot, actually. And then our number started miraculously getting whittled away in secret.” The tabulations were not conducted in secret; they were witnessed by both Republican and Democratic poll watchers.

Moreover, on election night, the count appeared to favor Trump since most Democrats cast mail ballots, which take longer to count. Some states, including Pennsylvania, forbid the counting of any ballots until Election Day. A Democratic-sponsored bill in Pennsylvania would have allowed mail-in ballots to be opened and counted before Election Day in light of the anticipated surge due to the pandemic. But Republicans in the Pennsylvania legislature defeated the bill. Since Trump’s strategy was to declare victory on election night, the GOP forces likely sought to prevent mail-in ballots from diluting Trump’s apparent early lead. Furthermore, election workers didn’t even open mail ballots until November 4, since several counties required all workers to conduct the election on November 3. This explains why it took longer to report the vote counts in Pennsylvania.

On Saturday morning, Trump erroneously asserted, “I won this election, by a lot.” At the time, Biden was leading in the electoral vote — 253 to 214 — and he had received 4,250,184 more popular votes than Trump.

The Pennsylvania Case

It was Pennsylvania that put Biden over the top in electoral votes. CNN and other news outlets called Biden the winner on Saturday morning. Trump falsely tweeted about

“…Pennsylvania, which everyone thought was easily won on Election Night, only to see a massive lead disappear, without anyone being allowed to OBSERVE, for long intervals of time.”

Again falsely, Trump also tweeted,

“Tens of thousands of votes were illegally received after 8 P.M. on Tuesday, Election Day, totally and easily changing the results in Pennsylvania and certain other razor thin states.”

There was nothing illegal about counting ballots that were postmarked by, but received after, Election Day. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had ruled that ballots could be counted if received by Friday, November 6.

Trump’s challenge to mail-in ballots received in Pennsylvania between November 3 and 6 is the only case that the U.S. Supreme Court might review, and even that is unlikely, since those ballots would not alter the election results.

Twice before the election, Republican state legislators and the Republican Party of Philadelphia asked the high court to halt Pennsylvania’s three-day extension for receipt of mail-in ballots. Twice they were rebuffed. The first time, the Court deadlocked 4-to-4, leaving the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision in place. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the three remaining liberals — Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — to uphold the state court’s decision. Right-wingers Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh voted to block the ballots.

Although the Supreme Court refused to review the case for lack of time, Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas wrote a statement on October 28, suggesting the Court could still hear the case after the election. They described the plaintiffs’ request as a “last ditch attempt to prevent the election in Pennsylvania from being conducted under a cloud.” Barrett has not yet participated in this case.

On Saturday, Alito ordered Pennsylvania’s secretary of state to segregate, and separately count, mail-in ballots that arrived after Election Day. The Pennsylvania attorney general affirmed that the state had already segregated them. But the number of ballots in contention is so small it would not affect the outcome of the election. The Court is thus not likely to review this case.

Trump’s spate of frivolous lawsuits will not reverse the results of the election. In spite of Trump’s pattern of lies about massive fraud from mail-in ballots, his cases don’t allege widespread fraud. Judges have dismissed Trump’s lawsuits in Georgia and Michigan for lack of any evidence to support fraud allegations. The cases Trump has won involve primarily technicalities involving small numbers of ballots. Trump’s cases include closer access of election observers, signature verification on mail ballots, nonresident voting and the mixing of a small number of ballots. Trump’s forces are seeking a recount in Wisconsin, which is unlikely to change the results in that state.

Trump probably thinks the Supreme Court, with his three appointees, will respond to his court challenges by handing him the presidency. That won’t happen. But his flurry of lawsuits is also designed to cast doubt on the integrity of the election. As Robert Reich noted, “Trump backers are trying to push Republican-controlled state legislatures to appoint their own slates of Trump electors. That’s why the campaign has launched empty legal challenges to perfectly normal vote counts – trying to sow enough doubt to give the state legislatures political cover to appoint their own electors.”

In his desperation to maintain power, we can expect Trump to pull out all the stops in the next two-and-a-half months before Inauguration Day.

He plans large rallies to rile his gun-toting base. He has enlisted most Republican leaders, including Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, to collaborate with his attempted theft of the election.

Since the election, Attorney General William Barr told department officials that he didn’t see massive voter fraud or a systemic problem. But on Monday, under pressure from Trump, Barr authorized federal prosecutors to investigate “substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities.” He limited the investigations to what he described as “clear and apparently-credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State.” Weeks before the election, the department had removed its prohibition on voter fraud investigations prior to an election.

In response to Barr’s directive, Richard Pilger, the Justice Department official directing voter fraud investigations, immediately stepped down from his job in protest.

Barr’s authorization will give McConnell and other GOP leaders ammunition to oppose Biden’s victory.

Trump is mounting a full-court press to steal the election from Joe Biden. The refusal to accept the election results by Trump and his congressional and Justice Department accomplices, coupled with his obstruction of the transition process, do not bode well for a peaceful transfer of power.

*

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

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The controversy surrounding the American elections seems far from over. Although the international media announced Joe Biden’s victory, electoral tensions are only increasing day after day, considering that both candidates are unwilling to acknowledge the legitimacy of an adverse outcome. Trump accuses Biden of defrauding the election results and calls for a new count. In this sense, Trump has judicialized the elections and hopes to remain in the presidency by the Court’s decision, which makes the scenario open to several possibilities, without a “clear victory” for Biden, as many media agencies have reported worldwide.

While this scenario persists, the decision to recognize Biden or not as the current American president remains optional for each country. Several countries in Europe and the Middle East have already recognized Biden, including France, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. On Tuesday, Turkey, a nation that had real and important closeness to the Trump administration, also recognized Biden. However, nations like Russia, China and Mexico remain awaiting a court decision.

As tensions rise inside and outside the country, both candidates continue to articulate strategies to ensure their victory. And such strategies go far beyond mere litigation. Across the country, both parties are calling for protests and a large investment is being made in diplomacy, with the aim of attracting foreign support. Mike Pompeo, American Secretary of State, is scheduled to travel to all countries that have already recognized Biden. The objective is simple: to negotiate possible agreements with such countries in order to reverse this scenario, presenting the “advantages” in supporting Donald Trump.

Mike Pompeo is a central figure in this scenario and cannot be ignored in any way. In a recent speech at a TV conference, the secretary stated that “there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration (…)”.

It is at least interesting and curious how Pompeo guarantees that there will be such a transition. Pompeo did not give details about how this transition would be, but his professional history shows us how it can be, considering that, having served as director of the CIA and Secretary of State for the greatest world power, Pompeo has extensive experience in advanced intelligence operations, having been the pivot of several events on the international scenario in recent years. Certainly, most of his actions in such operations will never be made public, making it difficult to predict what will happen, but we know that sabotage, coups, color revolutions and other tactics have been common among American intelligence operations abroad – then, would this be the case for us to think about such actions being operated within the American territory itself and against an “internal enemy”?

However, it is important to note that, even during the election campaign, Biden and Trump had already declared that they would not recognize each other. Both candidates are willing to take the dispute to its final consequences, and there may be an exponential increase in the rates of violence and instability across the country. This, coupled with a scenario of inflamed racial tensions with armed ethnic militias fighting across the streets and a pandemic that has already killed more than 240,000 Americans, can only lead to complete social chaos, with total annihilation of the political, economic and legal order of the US.

Pompeo can, in fact, gain important allies on his travels. His focus should be on the Middle East, considering that despite the Arabs’ haste to congratulate Biden, the Democrat has a very aggressive rhetoric with that region, promising to exclude Saudi Arabia from international relations due to human rights violations, in addition to planning send more American troops to Syria. But what most worries the strategists of the Trump administration is the position of the State of Israel, which was one of the first American allies to recognize Biden. Certainly, Pompeo will try in all the possible ways to guarantee Israeli support for Trump if the dispute worsens in America – it remains to be seen, however, which side Netanyahu will prefer.

Thus, in a scenario with two stubborn candidates, unwilling to accept any result other than victory, calling for protests and accumulating international allies, we have the situation of a country with two self-proclaimed presidents, acting simultaneously and in total opposition to each other. In a scenario like this, chaos would be installed in the country, worsening racial tensions, regional separatisms, and popular rebellions, with government institutions unable to act effectively due to the uncertainty about who actually governs the country. This would represent the end not only of American liberal hegemony, but of American democracy itself.

*

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

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

The kinetic phase of the Hybrid War of Terror on Syria has mostly drawn to a close, as evidenced by the milestone event of the country hosting an international conference on the return of refugees, which resulted in several significant outcomes that speak to the masterful execution of its “balancing” strategy and raise hope that the Arab Republic will eventually transform into the Eastern Mediterranean terminal point of China’s visionary W-CPEC+ corridor across Eurasia.

The sweeping dismissal of Pentagon officials, an overhaul that began on Monday with President Donald Trump’s sudden firing of Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, has continued. The Intercept has learned that Mark Tomb, the deputy chief of staff to the undersecretary of defense for policy, was ousted from his position yesterday.

Tomb, who declined to comment when reached by phone, was forced into retirement as part of a wave of firings of top Defense Department officials that included James Anderson, the Pentagon’s acting policy chief; Joseph Kernan, the undersecretary for intelligence; and Esper’s former chief of staff Jennifer Stewart.

The Tuesday exodus represents a major shake-up that has been planned for months, according to one Trump administration official briefed on the effort, with more firings to come across the department.

That official, who shared a draft list of other Pentagon officials under consideration for removal, said that Ellen Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, would likely be dismissed next.

“The president is taking back control of DOD. It’s a rebirth of foreign policy. This is Trump foreign policy,” said the official, who spoke anonymously and without authorization.

The personnel changes, the official claimed, would help clear the way for a more loyal Pentagon apparatus to carry out Trump’s goals, including the last-minute withdrawal of troops from foreign conflicts. Trump has promised a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan by Christmas, a pledge that has reportedly rankled senior figures in the military, including several of the Pentagon leaders dismissed this week.

The official’s explanation is at odds with possible explanations discussed around Washington, D.C., that the dismissals are solely designed to punish dissent and to politicize the Pentagon, a charge made by Democratic lawmakers.

The president has replaced political appointees, a right reserved by the president, though no president in recent memory has made such sweeping changes to the Pentagon’s leadership during a presidential transition period. The unusual shake-up has unsettled observers of the military who fear further politicization of the government.

The firings also make way for controversial figures who are seen as far more dutiful in protecting Trump and carrying out his agenda. Anderson was swiftly replaced on Tuesday with Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata, a former Fox News contributor who had been previously nominated for the Pentagon’s top policy job. Tata’s nomination stalled in the Senate after old tweets were unearthed showing him criticizing former President Barack Obama as a “terrorist leader” and sharing an article that depicted Obama as a “Manchurian candidate.”

Esper maintained a rocky relationship with Trump, which degraded further last summer after he publicly opposed Trump’s call to deploy active-duty military in response to street protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd. The former Raytheon lobbyist-turned-Pentagon chief was replaced by Chris Miller, the former senior director for counterterrorism and transnational threats at the National Security Council.

Stewart, Esper’s chief of staff, was replaced by Kash Patel, a former National Security Council official who previously served as an aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif. Patel gained a following in the administration for his role in leading the push on Capitol Hill to question intelligence agencies and Democratic lawmakers over the Russian collusion probe.

Kernan was replaced by Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a young former aide to Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser. Cohen-Watnick, on an acting basis, will now oversee the Pentagon’s intelligence operations.

The Intercept reported in August that Gina Haspel, the CIA director, and Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, were also at risk of replacement, and the New York Times has now reported that they could be next in line to be removed from office.

The rapid firings have raised concern on Capitol Hill as Democratic lawmakers have denounced the personnel changes for stoking tension during an already tense transition period.

“Firing a Secretary of Defense in the last weeks of a lame duck Presidency serves no purpose and only demonstrates an instability harmful to American national defense,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., in a statement.

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., chair of the House Armed Services Committee, decried the firings as an effort by Trump to install Pentagon officials with a focus on loyalty “at the expense of competence,” noting that “during a period of presidential transition, competence in government is of the utmost importance.”

In response, the Trump official said that the moves were solely motivated by implementing foreign policy goals that have been stymied by career bureaucrats obsessed with continuing unending military conflict overseas.

“This is happening because the president feels that neoconservatism has failed the American people,” the official said.

The withdrawal of troops could also set the political conditions for the future Biden administration. Any redeployment, the thinking goes, would establish the Democratic Party as the “forever war” party, while Trump could credibly claim that he was not only the first president in 40 years to avoid launching a new war, but he also was the first to truly wind down the occupation of Afghanistan.

*

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

Featured image is from Syria News

The Mayor and City Council of Sacramento, California passed a resolution Tuesday night urging the U.S. President and Congress to lift restrictions on access to Cuban medical expertise.

***

The capital city of the most populous state in the United States—Sacramento, California—unanimously approved a resolution Tuesday evening calling for increased cooperation and exchange between the people of the United States and Cuba.

The northern Californian city of more than half a million people joins over a dozen U.S. cities—including Oakland, California; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Cleveland, Ohio and others—in urging state and national leadership to lift restrictons on access to Cuban medical expertise and imports of Cuban biotechnological products, among other demands.

The resolution recognizes not only that the United States, particularly Black and Latinx communities, is suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic, but that Cuba “has a long history of providing international medical aid with its medical personnel directly involved in the fight against COVID-19” through its Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade against Disasters and Serious Epidemics.

The City Council of Sacramento, California—the capital city of the largest U.S. state—has passed a resolution calling for biotechnological, medical and public health exchange with Cuba. | Photo: City of Sacramento

Citing Cuba’s proven track record in its fight against the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, as well as its assistance in many worldwide epidemics including dengue fever, HIV, swine flu and hepatitis, the resolution notes that Cuba’s medical system has been recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2005 as a worldwide leader in biotechnology, having made “significant contributions to the international medical field.”

Despite Cuba’s medical achievments, the resolution states that “the U.S. blockade of Cuba has severely restricted collaboration on scientific and medical research” and that the people of Sacramento “would benefit from Cuban biotechnological, medical and public health expertise in combating the COVID-19 pandemic.”

In concluding, the Mayor and City Council of Sacramento urge the United States’ legislative and executive branches to “lift restrictions on access to Cuban medical expertise to more effectively combat the COVID-19 pandemic by suspending travel sanctions against Cuba; cease ongoing measures deterring Cuba from importing medical equipment and medicines; and cease attempts to prevent other countries from accepting Cuban medical brigades and assistance.”

Sacramento Mayor and City Council urge Congress and the President to lift restrictions on access to Cuban medical expertise … by suspending travel sanctions and cease ongoing measures deterring Cuba from importing medical equipment … #covid19 #Cubasalvavidas pic.twitter.com/0H9H9jbkPo

— NNOC (@NNOCuba) November 11, 2020

With Tuesday’s resolution, Sacramento becomes the seventh U.S. city to adopt a resolution specifically calling for U.S.-Cuba medical and scientific collaboration in 2020 alone. The California cities of Richmond, Berkeley, San Francisco and Oakland—along with Cleveland, Ohio and Cambridge, Massachusetts—have all passed similar resolutions this year.

Recently, the Cuban monoclonal antibody Itolizumab, developed by the Center for Molecular Immunology (CIM) in collaboration with the Indian company Bicon, received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorization to start phase III clinical trials in patients with COVID-19 in the United States, Mexico and Brazil.

U.S. support for medical, scientific and clinical collaboration and exchange with Cuba has been growing, as over 200 university professors in the United States released a statement yesterday calling on the Nobel Prize Committee to award the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to Cuba’s Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade, which has to date sent more than 3,700 Cuban nurses and doctors organized in more than 50 medical teams to 39 countries throughout the world to treat people with COVID-19 and prevent further contagion.

*

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

Is silver leading Bitcoin or is Bitcoin leading silver? Well, it depends on which time framing one is looking at.

On this chart comparison below, silver appears to be leading the way higher compared to Bitcoin:

.

.

I have marked out points (A to C and 1 to 5) on both charts to show how patterns on both silver and Bitcoin could be similar. Point C represents the lows for both silver and Bitcoin in March of this year.

Both have exceeded the highs of the marked pattern, but it is the way, and timing of how they have done it that is of interest.

Silver was the first one to breakout of its high. Bitcoin followed suite about 108 calendar days later. If the comparison stays valid, then Bitcoin is currently moving towards a similar point 3 that silver already reached in August of this year.

Bitcoin is currently playing catch up, and this brings us to why Bitcoin is actually leading in the short-term time frame (to catch silver it has to lead in the short-term).

Below, is another comparison of silver and Bitcoin:

Again, I have marked similar patterns on both charts to show how they could be similar. Bitcoin has already exceeded its recent high (point 3) and is much favoured in the short-term.

Silver is still lagging below the recent high (point3), and just like Bitcoin did in the previous comparison, will eventually follow Bitcoin higher than point 3 in this comparison.

In my previous article, I have shown how a certain signal has already prepared the way for higher silver prices. The market is trying its best to shake some weak hands before it goes much higher.

In summary, it is fair to say that based on the above comparisons and the fact that silver and Bitcoin are considered alternatives for a failing dollar, Bitcoin’s recent breakout should give silver bulls hope that silver will soon rise much higher.

Remember the larger cycle:

*

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

Hubert Moolman writes on his blog site, Hubert Moolman on Silver and Gold, where this article was originally published. 

Bad things are happening on Samos. At the end of October the earthquake hit with all its devastating consequences as hundreds lost their homes. The damage is still being assessed. And now some 12 days later the aftershocks continue. One this morning registered as 4.1 R.

2 days after the quake a fire in the jungle left over 250 refugees homeless. And now this morning another major fire in the camp. A Somalian friend who has been burnt out this morning told us of her terror at waking up in the smoke, of grabbing a few things and then running for her life. This is the second time she has been burnt out this year. Then on November 9^th, between the 2 fires, a refugee boat carrying 27 people arrived from Turkey. This is the first such arrival on Samos for many months. But it ended in tragedy as the boat was thrown onto the rocks on a remote and dangerous part of the coast south east of Vathi. One six year old boy died. 6 people are still missing, 2 of whom are thought to be pregnant.

As is the norm here, the police arrested the young Afghani man steering the boat as being a smuggler. It is a ridiculous charge as nearly all those who steer the boats are those who cannot afford to pay the full fare. He can expect to be found guilty and a significant jail sentence.

Bad enough, but the sadness of these events takes on a new dimension of horror. Not only did the police arrest and charge the boat driver as expected, they also arrested the father of the dead boy and charged him with exposing a minor to danger (law 4619/2019). This is a new law and it is the first time we have seen it used on Samos.

We heard yesterday evening that the father had been to the court and sentenced to 7 years in prison but this has yet to be confirmed. To date the case has not attracted any media attention except the ever reliable AreYou Syrious group which immediately recognised both the cruelty of the arrest and the dangers it poses:

“While the survivors were taken to the camp on Samos to quarantine, the father of the boy was arrested along with the driver of the boat. The father was taken in for “suspicion of endangering a life” and if convicted, he could face up to 10 years in prison. CEO of Help Refugees/Choose Love, Josie Naughton said:

“These charges are a direct attack on the right to seek asylum. It is outrageous that a grieving father is being punished for seeking safety for him and his child. Criminalising people who are seeking safety and protection shows the failure of the European Union to find a solution to unsafe migration routes that forced thousands to risk their lives to seek protection.”

Arresting traumatized parents who have just lost their children is not the answer and cannot be accepted. This is a very cruel decision for the Greek authorities to make. This cannot be a new norm.”

This shocking development may not be in the media but I would put money on the fact that every refugee on the island knows and they are outraged and appalled. As Ayoub told me over the phone as I was writing this:

“Everything happening here at the moment on Samos from the earthquake to the fires and now this cruelty to the father whose son died says one thing to me. We are not seen as human. I am so tired from this.”

*

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

This article was originally published on Samos Chronicles.

Chris Jones is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Keep Talking Greece

Since even before Donald Trump won the 2016 election, it’s been clear that the American deep state has opposed his presidency. And while Trump has deferred to the Pentagon and the CIA by maintaining their forever wars, foreign military empire, foreign interventionism, coups, and assassinations, it’s also been clear that Trump hasn’t been as obsequious to the national-security establishment as presidents are expected to be. The deep state will not be disappointed with Trump’s departure and will be ecstatic with Joe Biden as president.

Now that his term in office is apparently over, Trump can send one parting shot at the national-security establishment and its acolytes as well as to the mainstream press, one that would be based on a pure sense of justice: Issue pardons for Edward Snowden and Julian Assange before Trump walks out the door, preferably now rather than later.

Pardons for Snowden and Assange would send a powerful message to the national-security establishment: Telling the truth about your evil, immoral, and nefarious dark-side activities is not a crime in our country. It’s a badge of honor.

After all, that’s the national-security “crime” that both men are being persecuted for and prosecuted for. Imagine: Being persecuted and prosecuted for telling the truth and for disclosing evil, illegal deep-state actions to the American people. It only goes to show how the conversion of the federal government from a limited-government republic to a national-security state after World War II has warped and perverted fundamental moral values within our nation.

Consider, for example, the CIA’s repeated assassination attempts in the early 1960s against Cuban president Fidel Castro. How many Americans questioned the morality and legality of those assassination attempts? How many Americans questioned the assassination partnership between the CIA and the Mafia to murder Castro, notwithstanding the fact that the Mafia is one of the most crooked, murderous, drug-dealing organizations in the world?

Unfortunately, I would say not very many Americans objected. That’s because of the indoctrination that people receive, primarily in school, that the CIA is a force for good in the world and that action it takes protects “national security.”

Yet, where in the Constitution does it authorize the federal government to murder someone? Indeed, my reading of the Bill of Rights is that it expressly prohibits the feds from murdering people without due process of law and trial by jury.

Where was the moral justification for murdering Castro? That he was a communist? Since when does a person’s beliefs justify his extermination? That Cuba invaded the United States? Don’t make me laugh — it has always been the U.S. government that has been the aggressor against Cuba, not only through assassination but also through an invasion, terrorism, and one of the most brutal economic embargoes in history.

Now, just imagine that someone within the deep state had warned Castro of a certain CIA assassination plot. The deep state would have considered him to be a bad person — a traitor to America — for daring to disclose its evil, immoral, and illegal plot to murder an innocent person. He would be treated the same as Snowden and Assange are being treated. That’s what passes for “patriotism” in a national-security state: Don’t dare disclose our dark-side secrets to the world, no matter how evil, immoral, or illegal they are, or we will destroy you or kill you.

The worst mistake the American people have ever made was permitting the federal government to be converted to a national-security state and then falling for its Cold War racket.  The best thing the American people could ever do is restore our founding governmental system of a limited-government republic. A good first step in the right direction would be to pardon Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. What a great way for Trump to stick it to the deep state and its supporters in the mainstream press before he departs the presidency.

*

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

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation

AFP in an article titled, “US removes group targeted by China from terror list,” would report:

The United States said Friday it had removed from its list of terror groups a shadowy faction regularly blamed by China to justify its harsh crackdown in the Muslim-majority Xinjiang region.

In a notice in the Federal Register, which publishes new US laws and rules, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he was revoking the designation of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (Etim) as a “terrorist organization”.

The AFP article also claims:

“Etim was removed from the list because, for more than a decade, there has been no credible evidence that Etim continues to exist,” a State Department spokesperson said. 

Yet this – according to US State Department-funded sources themselves – is entirely untrue. This includes articles as recent as 2018 from the Department’s own Voice of America admitting the ongoing threat the group still poses not only to China but to the world.

VOA’s 2018 article titled, “Uighur Jihadis in Syria Could Pose Threat,” admits that:

Analysts are warning that the jihadi group Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) in northwestern Syria could pose a danger to Syria’s volatile Idlib province, where efforts continue to keep a fragile Turkey-Russia-brokered cease-fire between Syrian regime forces and the various rebel groups.

In essence – the US State Department is simply removing a known and still very active terrorist organization from its lists to both politically attack and undermine China further – but to also likely provide more direct support to the group and those affiliated with it in Washington’s widening conflict against Beijing.

ETIM has carried out bus bombings, shootings, suicide bombings, mass knife attacks, and other forms of terrorism stretching across a period of more than 20 years. It has been listed by the UN Security Council as a terrorist organization for nearly as long and is still designated as such to this day.

A post on the UN Security Council’s official website titled, “Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement” notes that:

The Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement was listed on 11 September 2002 pursuant to paragraphs 1 and 2 of resolution 1390 (2002) as being associated with Al-Qaida, Usama bin Laden or the Taliban for “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing or perpetrating of acts or activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf or in support of” or “otherwise supporting acts or activities of” Al-Qaida.

Similar patterns by the US were seen in relation to proxy warfare waged by Washington against the nations of Libya and Syria. Terrorist organizations like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) were likewise removed from US terror lists despite at the time the group still openly carrying out armed violence.

The US State Department – according to its own statements – de-listed LIFG in 2015. The UK also de-listed the terrorist organization.

Yet as recently as 2017, terrorists linked to LIFG continue to carry out terrorism internationally.

The Guardian in its article, “Reading terror suspect came to UK as refugee from Libyan civil war,” would note:

The backwash from the 2011 intervention led indirectly to the Manchester bombing. Abedi, 22,, whose parents fled Libya in 1994, returned to the country after Gaddafi’s fall in 2011 only to come back to the UK as the fighting continued in Libya. Abedi and his family developed links to the Libyan Islamic Fighting group, an Islamist group that helped oust Gaddafi.

While the US and its partners remove terrorist organizations from terror lists, claiming it is because the threats from these groups are subsiding – in truth – it is because the US and its partners simply seek to aid and abet their violence further and much more directly.

Just as the US and UK used LIFG to overthrow the Libyan government in 2011 and create social division and fear within their own societies from 2011 onward – the US is removing the East Turkistan Islamic Movement for the very same reasons.

The ETIM serves US interests in many ways – from providing foot soldiers for Washington’s proxy war against Syria to carrying out terrorist attacks against disobedient nations like Thailand (the 2015 Erawan Shrine bombing in downtown Bangkok), to creating violence, unrest, and even fuelling separatism inside China itself. The US is not taking ETIM off its lists because it no longer poses a threat – it is taking it off its lists to sharpen this weapon for further use.

*

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

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published.

Featured image is from NEO

US imperialism operates domestically and abroad.

Regime change is official policy by both wings of one-party rule.

Things began in the mid-19th century by stealing half of Mexico.

Throughout the post-WW II period, US ruling authorities  toppled dozens of sovereign governments.

They assassinated legitimate leaders, removed others by color revolutions and old-fashioned coups, besides reigning terror worldwide for control of other nations, their resources and populations.

Things are more ruthless today than ever, both wings of the US war party on the same page in pursuing the nation’s imperial aims.

They also one-sidedly support privileged interests exclusively over governance serving all its people equitably.

The US system is hugely undemocratic by design.

Wealth, power and privilege control things — governance of by and for everyone equitably never a consideration.

The Supreme Law of the Land Constitution was designed to serve the nation’s privileged class that owns the country.

Duopoly rule excludes third (or independent) party surprises.

A single Senate member — or in cahoots with others — can subvert the majority will by filibustering with no time limit on how long.

House and Senate committees are controlled by powerbroker authority — most often a single individual chosen by seniority.

US fantasy democracy is money-controlled — amounting to a one-dollar = one vote system.

According to one analyst, voters are “reduced to the condition of one of Pavlov’s experimental dogs – apathetic, inert, disinterested,” and powerless.

The judiciary is what Michael Parenti called the politicized “aristocratic” branch of government.

Nothing in the Constitution mentions judicial review. The concept derives from two of its articles:

Article VI, Section 2 states that the Constitution, laws, and treaties are the “supreme Law of the Land” — judges bound by them.

Article III, Section 1 states that judicial power applies to cases where courts intervene.

Under this interpretation of the law, judges in theory can override actions by the executive and congressional branches of government.

The notion derived from Marbury v. Madison (1803). Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the (Supreme) Court is the final arbiter of what is or is not the law — a precedent-setting decision.

Yet time and again, presidents by executive power and congressional actions have final say on policymaking — politicized courts to the highest level bowing to their will.

In a nation where foxes guard the henhouse, election theft happens with disturbing regularity — at the federal, state, and local levels.

Today it’s with electronic ease through corporate owned and controlled voting machines.

Voting by mail-in or absentee ballots is vulnerable for fraud on a massive scale.

US Election 2020 is Exhibit A. According to the US Elections Project:

• Total early votes totaled 101,423, 318.
• Mail-in votes totaled 65,487,735.
• Another 35,935,583 Americans voted early in person.

The above are record numbers, far exceeding earlier totals. They’re subject to slight revisions.

They leave unexplained how many ballots were cast by ineligible voters — non-state residents, the deceased, or for other reasons.

When analysis of Election 2020 is completed at a later time by independent individuals and/or organizations — based on what’s already known — it’s highly likely to confirm enough fraud in key swing states for Biden/Harris over Trump.

The notion of a free, fair, and open process was never the American way.

Run by powerful interests, the process is secretive and unreliable.

Americans get the best “democracy” money and influence can buy — popular sentiment never a consideration.

So-called checks and balances are more fiction than fact.

Power brokers running the country assure that individuals chosen for high office and the courts serve their interests — how it’s been from inception.

Corporate-controlled establishment media give “legitimacy” to an illegitimate system.

The notion of free, fair and open elections — what democracy is supposed to be — is pure illusion.

Time and again before voting begins, winners are selected over losers.

Based on how the race for the White House turned out this year — recounts and legal challenges aside — Biden/Harris appear to have been chosen by the nation’s power elites over Trump.

While results aren’t final because of his challenges, they’re very likely to hold — though nothing is certain until nine Supreme Court justices rule by majority vote.

Because Republicans most likely will retain Senate control while Dems control the House, the High Court’s ruling on Trump v. Biden should stand — if its justices get to decide, where things appear to be heading.

What deep state dark forces want, they’re almost certain to rubber-stamp.

An earlier article discussed regime change at home.

Until the plot against Trump, removing Richard Nixon from office on trumped up charges was the leading example.

The shameful chapter in US history was all about his social, environmental and geopolitical agenda – world’s apart from how Republicans and undemocratic Dems operate today.

He opened China, recognized Taiwan as part of its territory, and wanted war in Vietnam ended that he earlier escalated before the US April 30, 1975 Saigon embassy rooftop exit, ending America’s longest war in modern times until Afghanistan.

SALT I talks with Soviet Russia (1969) led to the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty Bush/Cheney rescinded (2002).

Nixon threatened entrenched military/industrial/security and other interests, why he was marked for removal.

After leaving office, he traveled the world, wrote several books, and was respected as an elder statesman and foreign policy expert.

Following his death in April 1994, world figures paid their respects, including co-presidents Bill and Hillary Clinton, along with living former US presidents.

During 1973-74 impeachment proceedings, hostile to Nixon Hillary was a House Judiciary Committee lawyer.

There’s plenty about Trump to criticize.

Because of his unorthodox style, opinionating by tweets, media opposition, and demonizing by Dems, it appears that he was marked for removal by at least most deep state dark forces.

Whatever they want, they get. They have final say — not presidents, key congressional members or High Court justices.

As things now stand, Biden/Harris will succeed Trump in January — though nothing is certain until things play out in full.

They’ll likely conclude before inauguration day on January 20.

In 2016, Trump defied most pundits by defeating media darling Hillary.

A repeat performance this year appears to be the longest of long shots.

His multiple court challenges are unlikely to succeed.

Yet make no mistake. Biden/Harris didn’t win. They were chosen to deny Trump a second term.

That’s how US fantasy democracy works.

The will of dominant interests prevails over public sentiment most always.

At this time, Election 2020 appears no exception.

*

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is by Adam Schultz/Flickr

“My budget [is] highly earmarked, so it is driven by what I call donor interests.” –Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization, 2014

“For the world at large, normalcy only returns when we’ve largely vaccinated the entire global population.” –Bill Gates, April, 2020

You have to hand it to governmental health experts: All are uniformly “on message”. Meanwhile, abundant medical expertise from around the world at odds with official messaging is rendered invisible. The Great Barrington Declaration, so critical of governmentally-imposed lockdown strategy (and associated policies, e.g., public masking, quarantine, etc.), has, since October 5, 2020, been signed (as I write) by more than 45,000 medical scientists and practitioners worldwide. But mainstream media figures, savvy to the perks of power, know better than to report this. It’s worthy of note that the founders of the Declaration go to pains to declare their detachment from financial gain, perhaps to stand out against prominent governmental experts with ties to the pharmaceutical industry (e.g. here, here, here).

There are also America’s Frontline Doctors, the many dissenting scientists being discovered by journalists (here, here, here, and just the other day still more here and here), and plenty of others too, trying to be recognized above the din of officialdom, only to be forced to the outer margins of the Internet, where only a small fraction of the public bothers to seek them out. Relatively speaking, it’s lonely out there. Only a select set of officially approved voices conforming to a tightly-controlled narrative are allowed space in mainstream media, and therefore in the larger public mind. By what process, one wants to know, do specific individuals become the “health experts” for government and media?

The World Health Organization (WHO) is the global authority to which the medical institutions of nations look for leadership. WHO opinion and policy informs the NIH, CDC, schools of public health and medical societies in the US and their counterparts in countries all over the world. Visualized as a pyramid, WHO is the apex. Information from there descends through national organizations, schools and institutions to regional and local authorities. Gates and the pharmaceutical industry weave strategy at the apex, with industrial and political players making their impacts all the way down to the base of the pyramid where one finds hordes of frightened, masked citizens.

In this light, consider Margaret Chan’s introductory quote (above) regarding donor impact on WHO policy. Now, scroll down this 2017 list of contributors to the WHO that shows the United States as top contributor at ~$401Million.

But forget that sum, because President Trump thereafter stopped US contributions. That so, further scrolling down reveals that the major contributor is not a nation but the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at ~$325Million, seconded by GAVI, the vaccine alliance (itself heavily funded by Gates), at ~$133Million.

The top donors to the WHO are not countries, as is widely believed, but private interests. In fact, in recent decades, private donations to the WHO have continued to grow relative to national contributions, so that by 2017, their total had passed the 50% mark. And the pharmaceutical industry, the vaccine aspect in particular, is primary.

As one peruses the backgrounds of the the government’s (and media’s) chosen health experts, as opposed to the wealth of medical expertise resisting the lockdown and its isolating mandates, there seems within the former a high frequency not only of governmental bureaucrats but also of ties to schools of public health, and therefore to the many connected interests of those schools. Put another way, the commercial involvements of public health schools move quickly and unavoidably into a political realm that a critical eye might conclude is inappropriate for a medical school per se. Considering the inevitable conflicts of interest characteristic of corporate involvement, shouldn’t there be a solid wall of separation between medical schools and schools of public health?

A way to understand what is encompassed within “public health” is to read the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, rated tops in the nation and named for its billionaire donor: “We implement large-scale solutions”, which includes development of “programs” and “interventions” in disaster response, refugee health, evaluation of health insurance programs, human rights and sustainable practice. The site links to Bloomberg’s “Centers and Institutes” which include the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health and four others that are specific to vaccine development, production, education and access. Bloomberg School’s joining with the World Economic Forum and the Gates Foundation to host Event201, that foretold Covid19 Pandemic five months before the real thing hit, shows the School to be a global power player, and other schools of public health are certainly similarly oriented.

In 2005, in my home state, the School of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin in Madison underwent a change to become the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. The expanded mission to include public health was, as stated, to emphasize community health needs. A strict focus on medicine, on the one hand, and the vastly expanded array of considerations innate to “public health”, on the other hand, thereby became integrated into a single unit. In Wisconsin, two voices from within that school have been dominant in messaging with regard to the Covid19 Pandemic and how it should be handled, with the result that the Governor instigated a severe lockdown strategy that included a statewide masking mandate.

While it would be natural for a political leader to rely on medical advice, what is problematic is the unanimity of designated experts nation-wide in their conformity to a specific Covid19 policy that is, on many levels, dubious or downright false. For example, the two accepted experts in Wisconsin, cited above, have insisted that scientific evidence has established that public masking is a powerful means of preventing viral transmission, this mirroring the position of the Director of the CDC who told a Senate Committee that masks are more protective than vaccines. This claim is absolutely and demonstrably false. No scientific evidence has shown anything of the sort. A “smoking gun” in the masking issue is the fact that perhaps the finest meta-analysis of public masking, published in 2016 and titled “Why Face Masks Don’t Work: A Revealing Review”, was suddenly taken down as “no longer relevant in the current climate”. (Fortunately, it was saved at the Wayback site). What stands out is that the “current climate” referred to has nothing to do with weather. Rather, it mirrors a global project the details of which are hidden to the extent possible.

There is growing awareness that pre-Covid19 life will never return, and that masking, social distancing, and the like, will become normal aspects of daily life, for we —  particularly the youngest among us — have been persuaded by officially-designated health experts to see our fellow humans as toxic and threatening. Indeed, Klaus Schwab, guiding light of the Big Reset, confirms the loss forever of life before Covid19, as he and his colleagues of the World Economic Forum put components of their new world order into place.

Putting the pieces together, one recognizes a global medical bureaucracy from the WHO on down, in concert with schools of public health and the pharmaceutical industry, combined into a politically powerful triumvirate dedicated to goals most certainly linked to those of the World Economic Forum, with which Bloomberg School collaborates. The selection process within this triumvirate designates its experts for governmental and academic advancement, and for public display by mainstream media, this to the exclusion of dissenters. The apparatus for social control now being put into place is to involve an unimaginably profitable vaccine-based medical authority touted by certified “health experts” and governmental enforcers, all of whom will assure the public that they “have the science”. There will be discovery of new pathogens threatening epidemic and pandemic waves, complete with spikes and hotspots. One foresees populations nurtured in fear, herded into groupthink and longing for salvation through vaccination.

Bill Willers is an emeritus professor of biology, University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. He is founder of the Superior Wilderness Action Network and editor of Learning to Listen to the Land, and Unmanaged Landscapes, both from Island Press. He can be contacted at [email protected]. Read other articles by Bill.

*

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

“Yeah, like [in] a church. Church of the Good Hustler.” – Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) in The Hustler

At the end of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play, A Doll’s House, Nora, the aggrieved wife, leaves her husband’s house and all the illusions that sustained its marriage of lies. She chooses freedom over fantasy.  She will no longer be played with like a doll but will try to become a free woman – a singular one.  “There is another task I must undertake first. I must try and educate myself,” she tells her husband Torvald, a man completely incapable of understanding the social programming that has made him society’s slave.

When Nora closes the doll’s house door behind her, the sound is like a hammer blow of freedom. For anyone who has seen the play, even when knowing the outcome in advance, that sound is profound. It keeps echoing. It interrogates one’s conscience.

The echo asks: Do you live inside America’s doll house where a vast tapestry of lies, bad faith, and cheap grace keep you caged in comfort, as you repeat the habits that have been drilled into you?

In this doll’s house of propaganda into which America has been converted, a great many of our basic assumptions are totally illusory.

Americans who voted for either Trump or Biden in the 2020 election are like Torvald clones.  They refuse to open that door so they might close it behind them.  They live in the doll’s house – all 146+ million of them. Like Torvald, they are comforted. They are programmed and propagandized, embracing the illusion that the electoral system is not structured and controlled to make sure no significant change can occur, no matter who is president. It is a sad reality promoted as democracy.

They will prattle on and give all sorts of reasons why they voted, and for whom, and how if you don’t vote you have no right to bitch, and how it’s this sacred right to vote that makes democracy great, blah blah blah. It’s all sheer nonsense. For the U.S.A. is not a democracy; it is an oligarchy run by the wealthy for the wealthy.

This is not a big secret.  Everybody knows this is true; knows the electoral system is sheer show business with the presidential extravaganza drawing the big money from corporate lobbyists, investment bankers, credit card companies, lawyers, business and hedge fund executives, Silicon Valley honchos, think tanks, Wall Street gamblers, millionaires, billionaires, et. al.  Biden and Trump spent over 3 billion dollars on the election. They are owned by the money people.

Both are old men with long, shameful  histories. A quick inquiry will show how the rich have profited immensely from their tenures in office.  There is not one hint that they could change and have a miraculous conversion while in future office, like JFK.  Neither has the guts or the intelligence.  They are nowhere men who fear the fate that John Kennedy faced squarely when he turned against the CIA and the war machine.  They join the craven company of Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama.  They all got the message that was sent from the streets of Dallas in 1963: You don’t want to die, do you?

Ask yourself: Has the power of the oligarchic, permanent warfare state with its propaganda and spy networks, its vast intelligence apparatus, increased or decreased in the past half century? Who is winning the battle, the people or the ruling elites? The answer is obvious.

It matters not at all whether the president has been Trump or Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, Barack Obama or George H. W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, or Jimmy Carter. The power of the national security state has grown under them all and everyone is left to moan and groan and wonder why.

All the while, the doll’s house has become more and more sophisticated and powerful. It is now essentially an electronic prison that is being “Built Back Better.” The new Cold War now being waged against Russia and China is a bi-partisan affair, as is the confidence game played by the secret government intended to create a fractured consciousness in the population through their corporate mass-media stenographers. Trump and his followers on one side of the coin; liberal Democrats on the other.

Only those backed by the wealthy power brokers get elected in the U.S.A. Then when elected, it’s payback time.  Palms are greased.  Everybody knows this is true. It’s called corruption.  So why would anyone, who opposes a corrupt political oligarchy, vote, unless they were casting a vote of conscience for a doomed third-party candidate?

Leonard Cohen told it true with “Everybody Knows”:

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

And yet everybody who voted for the two men backed by the super-rich owners of the country knew what they were doing, unless they live under a rock and come out every four years to vote.  Perhaps they were out buying stuffing for the Thanksgiving turkey, so they can give thanks for the farce (stuffing: Latin: farcire ).

They have their reasons.  Now the Biden people celebrate, just as Trump’s supporters did in 2016.  I can hear fireworks going off as I write here in a town where 90% + voted for Biden and hate Trump with a passion more intense than what they ever could work up for a spurned lover or spouse.  This is mass psychosis. It’s almost funny.

At least we have gotten rid of Trump, they say.  No one can be worse. They think this is logic.  Like Torvald, they cannot begin to understand why anyone would want to leave the doll’s house, how anyone could refuse to play a game in which the dice are loaded.  They will deny they are in the doll’s house while knowing the dice are loaded and still roll the die, not caring that their choice – whether it’s Tweedledee or Tweedledum – will result in the death and impoverishment of so many, that being the end result of oligarchic rule at home and imperialism abroad.

Orwell called this Doublethink:

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them…. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary.

And while in Nineteen Eighty-Four Doublethink is learned by all the Party members “and certainly by all who are intelligent as well as orthodox,” today in the U.S.A., it has been mastered even by the so-called unintelligent.

To live in the U.S.A. is to live in the Church of the Good Hustler.

People often ask: What can we do to make the country better?  What is your alternative?

A child could answer that one: Don’t vote if you know that both contenders are backed by the super-rich elites, what some call the Deep State.  Which of course they are.  Everybody knows.

The so-called left and right argue constantly about whom to support.  It’s a pseudo-debate constructed to allow people to think their vote counts; that the game isn’t rigged. It’s hammered into kids’ heads from an early age. Be grateful, give thanks that you live in a democracy where voting is allowed and your choice is as important as a billionaire’s such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, or Charles Koch. In the voting booth we are all equal.

Myths die hard.  This one never does:

“Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams, will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.” —  Donald Trump, January 20, 2017.

“With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation. It’s time for America to unite. And to heal.” —  Joe Biden, November 7, 2020.

“Above all else, the time has come for us to renew our faith in ourselves and in America.  In recent years, that faith has been challenged.” — Richard Nixon, January 20, 1973.

Your voice – our faith – it’s time to unite and heal.

Ask the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, the Syrians, the Afghanis, the Libyans, the Palestinians, et al.  They sing a different tune, one not heard In the Church of the Good Hustler.

After campaigning hard for the losing presidential candidate in 1972, I nearly  choked when I heard Richard Nixon’s inaugural address in January 1973. Clinging to the American myth the previous year, I had campaigned for a genuine anti-war Democrat, Senator George McGovern. The war against Vietnam was still raging and Nixon, who had been first elected in 1968 as a “peace candidate,” succeeding the previous “peace candidate” Lyndon Baines Johnson, was nevertheless overwhelmingly elected, despite Watergate allegations appearing in the months preceding the election.  Nixon won forty-nine states to McGovern’s one – Massachusetts, where I lived.  It was a landslide. I felt sick, woke up, got up, and left the doll’s house.

“Propaganda is the true remedy for loneliness,” wrote the French sociologist Jacques Ellul in 1965 in Propaganda:

It corresponds to the need to share, to be a member of a community, to lose oneself in a group, to embrace a collective ideology that will end loneliness…. It also corresponds to deep and constant needs, more developed today, perhaps, than ever before: the need to believe and obey, to create and hear fables, to communicate in the language of myths.

In a country where loneliness is widespread, the will to believe and the power of positive thinking are far more powerful than the will to truth.  Unlike Nora, who knew that when she left the doll’s house she was choosing the loneliness of the solitary soul, Americans prefer myths that induce them to act out of habit so they can lose themselves in the group.

This is so despite the fact that In the Church of the Good Hustler, when you play the game, you lose.  We are all Americans and your vote counts and George Washington never told a lie.

*

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

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/

Featured image is from Sky News

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.

.

Trump has not yet accepted electoral defeat, and his remaining days as U.S. presidency until Biden’s inauguration may represent the period of greatest threat of armed intervention in Venezuela, especially before December 6, the date of the country’s next legislative elections.

In addition to trying to judicially question the outcome of the elections – an increasingly remote possibility – Trump may decide, before Biden takes office, to try an armed invasion to oust the Venezuelan government of President Maduro in an attempt to bolster his standing within the U.S., including among Democratic Party members.

Hostility to the Venezuelan government is a bipartisan consensus in the U.S. It was former President Barack Obama who declared Venezuela a “threat” to the U.S. The rising star of the Democratic Party Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez characterized the Venezuelan government as “authoritarian” and “anti-democratic” – which led one of its supporters to send an open letter denouncing her position. This letter – which is worth reading – is here.

And both Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders supported the attempted coup in Venezuela in February 2019 under the guise of ‘humanitarian aid’. On that occasion, Bernie Sanders declared

“The people of Venezuela are enduring a serious humanitarian crisis. The Maduro government must put the needs of its people first, allow humanitarian aid into the country, and refrain from violence against protesters.”

To this, Roger Waters – from Pink Floyd – replied through twitter:

Bernie, are you f-ing kidding me! if you buy the Trump, Bolton, Abrams, Rubio line, “humanitarian intervention” and collude in the destruction of Venezuela, you cannot be credible candidate for President of the USA. Or, maybe you can, maybe you’re the perfect stooge for the 1 %.

Bernie, are you f-ing kidding me! if you buy the Trump, Bolton, Abrams, Rubio line, “humanitarian intervention” and collude in the destruction of Venezuela, you cannot be credible candidate for President of the USA. Or, maybe you can, maybe you’re the perfect stooge for the 1 %.

— Roger Waters (@rogerwaters) February 23, 2019

More on Sanders’ statement, the position of Ocasio-Cortez and Roger Waters’ reaction can be found in this other article.

It is also important to remember that the United States corporate media, virtually in unison, have always been hostile to Venezuela and have supported not only the economic sanctions against the country but also the successive coup attempts that have so far failed.

The upcoming legislative elections in Venezuela are a threat to the empire’s fake narrative about Maduro’s ‘dictatorship’.  That a considerable part of the Venezuelan opposition has agreed to participate in the elections, repudiating the self-appointed ‘president’ Juan Guaidó, spreads a shovel of lime over any trace – if there still is one – of legitimacy in the opposition represented by Guaidó and his cronies.

A U.S. military attack before the December 6 Venezuelan elections would be yet another attempt to prevent these elections. Recent joint manoeuvres by the Brazilian and the U.S. navies in the Caribbean region indicate that preparations for an attack are already underway.

If Trump decides on such an intervention, virtually no criticism – much less real opposition – can be expected from the United States corporate media, or from the Democratic Party, or from the United States military cadres. Trump would then be free to move to front and centre stage and once again dominate the news cycle, projecting and affirming to a much wider public than that of his current supporters the image of the ‘strong man’, the ‘presidential’ leader who can recover America’s lost ‘greatness’. And this could bring him the necessary support for a new coup attempt before Biden’s inauguration. He has few options left to remain in power, and for Trump, this may be the only plausible one. Trump’s last days as president may be the most dangerous period ever faced by the Maduro’s Government.

*

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

Featured image: Thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets on the last day of the #NoMoreTrump campaign to reject the unilateral measures against the country. | Photo: Venezuelan Ministry of Communication

What are the programmatic foreign policy lines that Joe Biden will implement when he takes office in the White House? He announced it with a detailed article in Foreign Affairs magazine (March / April 2020), that formed the basis of the 2020 Platform approved in August by the Democratic Party.

The title already speaks volumes: “Why America Must Lead Again / Rescuing U.S. Foreign Policy After Trump.” Biden summarized his foreign policy program as follows: while

“President Trump has belittled, undermined and abandoned U.S. allies and partners, and abdicated American leadership, as president, I will take immediate steps to renew the alliances of the United States, and ensure that  America, once more, leads the world.”

The first step will be to strengthen NATO, which is “the very heart of the national security of the United States.” To this end, Biden will make the “necessary investments” for the United States to maintain “the most powerful military force in the world,” and, at the same time, will ensure that “our NATO allies increase their defense spending” according to their commitments already undertaken with the Obama-Biden administration.

The second step will be to convene a “Global Summit for Democracy” in the first year of his presidency: it will be attended by “the nations of the free world and civil society organizations from all over the world at the forefront of defending democracy.” The Summit will decide on “collective action against global threats.” First of all, to “counter Russian aggression, keeping the military capabilities of the Alliance sharp and imposing real costs on Russia for its violations of international norms;” at the same time, to “build a united front to confront  abusive behaviors and human rights violations by China, which is extending its global reach.”

Since “the world does not organize itself,” Biden points out, the United States must return to “playing the leading role in writing the rules, as it did for 70 years under both Democratic and Republican presidents, until Trump arrived.”

These are the main lines of the foreign policy program that the Biden administration is committed to implementing. This program – drawn up with the participation of over 2,000 foreign policy and national security advisers, organized into 20 working groups – is not just the program of Biden and the Democratic Party. It is actually the expression of a transversal party, the existence of which is demonstrated by the fact that the fundamental foreign policy decisions, above all those relating to wars, are taken by the United States on a bipartisan basis.

This is confirmed by the fact that over 130 senior Republican officials (some retired and some in-office) published an explanation of the vote against Republican Trump and in favor of the Democratic Biden on August 20.

Among these officials there is John Negroponte, appointed by President George W. Bush in 2004-2007, ambassador to Iraq (his task was to suppress the resistance), then director of the US Secret Service.

This is confirmed by the fact that Democratic Biden, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, supported Republican President Bush’s decision in 2001 to attack and invade Afghanistan, and in 2002 promoted a bipartisan resolution of 77 senators authorizing President Bush to attack and invade Iraq with the accusation (later proven false) that it possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Also, during the Bush administration, when US forces failed to control occupied Iraq, in the Senate Joe Biden passed in 2007 a plan on “decentralizing Iraq into three autonomous regions – Kurdish, Sunni and Shia”: in other words, the dismemberment of the country functional to  US strategy.

Likewise, when Joe Biden was vice president of the Obama administration for two terms, the Republicans supported the democratic decisions on the war in Libya, the operation in Syria, and the new confrontation with Russia.

The transversal party, which does not appear at the polls, continues to work so that “America, once more, leads the world.”

*

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

This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto. 

Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is CC BY 2.0

How COVID-19 Vaccine Trials Are Designed

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, November 11 2020

While vaccine makers insist that any vaccine reaching the market will have undergone rigorous testing, the way trial protocols are designed suggests these vaccines may leave a lot to be desired.

The Post Covid World, The WEF’s Diabolical Project: “Resetting the Future of Work Agenda” – After “The Great Reset”. A Horrifying Future

By Peter Koenig, November 11 2020

It is a draft of sorts, a trial balloon, to measure people’s reactions. It reads indeed like an executioner’s tale. Many people may not read it – have no awareness of its existence. If they did, they would go up in arms and fight this latest totalitarian blueprint, offered to the world by the WEF.

A Plea to MPs from Mike Yeadon: “Don’t Vote for Lockdown”. “The Pandemic Is Over”

By Dr. Mike Yeadon, November 11 2020

In short, they are not dying from respiratory illness, but from heart failure and from cerebrovascular accidents such as stroke and diabetes. An awful realisation I have is that these excess deaths are just the sort you would expect if you take a mixed population, deprive them of easy access to the healthcare system for seven months and keep them stressed.

Robert Fisk: Death of a ‘Controversial’ Journalist. His Legacy Will Live

By Media Lens, November 11 2020

The trend is clear. When The Times subjected Fisk to one of its full-on hit pieces in April 2018, it wrote: ‘Fisk is no stranger to controversy.’ So why do ‘mainstream’ commentators feel obliged to red-flag Fisk’s journalism with ‘controversial’ in this way, and why is it a ‘weasel word’?

The Best Way to Honor Dead Soldiers Is Not to Create More

By Natalie Dowzicky, November 11 2020

The United States can no longer use the “sunk cost” excuse to perpetuate an unclear mission described in the Washington Post’s Afghanistan Papers by Douglas Lute, a three-star Army General, when he said, “we didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.”

Systemic Racial Inequity: Discrimination, Dehumanization and Destruction

By Prof. Ruel F. Pepa, November 11 2020

This matter taken seriously could be construed as an undying extension of the ancient master-slave mentality though with all the modifications necessary to toe the superficial line of “decency” that defines what a modern society is supposed to look like.

Agreed on Armistice in Nagorno Karabakh? Brokered by Moscow

By Stephen Lendman, November 11 2020

Since Azerbaijan forces attacked Armenian ones in Nagorno Karabakh (NK below) on September 27, both sides breached agreed on ceasefires three times. Is this time different?

Video: Worth the Price? Joe Biden and the Launch of the Iraq War

By Worth the Price, November 11 2020

Worth the Price? Joe Biden and the Launch of the Iraq War is a documentary short reviewing the role of then-Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) in leading the United States into the most devastating foreign policy blunder of the last twenty years.

Dr. Fauci Told the Truth About COVID-19 Tests in July and Has Been Misleading the Public Ever Since

By Stacey Lennox, November 11 2020

The New York Times and several experts admitted in late August that up to 90% of positive PCR tests were not indicative of the active illness that could be transmitted to others. As it turns out, Fauci expressed a similar opinion in July.

Petition to Congress to initiate a Congressional Investigation into the 2001 Anthrax Attacks

By The Lawyers’ Committee for 9-11 Inquiry, Inc., November 10 2020

The Exhibits include documents from scientists and military officers who worked at the United States Army Medical Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Some of these important documents have never before been publicly seen.

Special Price: $29.00 for two books!

Click here to order! 

The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity by Michel Chossudovsky

America’s hegemonic project in the post 9/11 era is the “Globalization of War” whereby the U.S.-NATO military machine —coupled with covert intelligence operations, economic sanctions and the thrust of “regime change”— is deployed in all major regions of the world. The threat of pre-emptive nuclear war is also used to black-mail countries into submission.

This “Long War against Humanity” is carried out at the height of the most serious economic crisis in modern history. Read more…

The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order by Michel Chossudovsky

This book is a skillful combination of lucid explanation and cogently argued critique of the fundamental directions in which our world is moving financially and economically.

In this new enlarged edition – which includes ten new chapters and a new introduction — the author reviews the causes and consequences of famine in Sub-Saharan Africa, the dramatic meltdown of financial markets, the demise of State social programs and the devastation resulting from corporate downsizing and trade liberalisation. Read more…

Save money! Purchase both of these titles for one low price:

List Price: $49.90

Special Price: $29.00

Click here to order! 

To order The Globalization of War: CLICK HERE

To order The Globalization of Poverty: CLICK HERE

The Globalization of War in PDF format: CLICK HERE

The Globalization of Poverty in PDF format: CLICK HERE

Ordering from within North America? Save big on large quantities:

The Globalization of War: Save 65% on a complete box, 54 copies ($472.50 instead of $1347.30), or save 56% on 10 copies ($110 instead of $249.50)

The Globalization of Poverty: Save 62% on a complete box, 30 copies ($319.50 instead of $838.50), save 55% on 10 copies ($125 instead of $279.50), or save 46% on 3 copies ($45 instead of $83.85)

Browse the rest of our titles and special offers on our online bookstore:

Since Azerbaijan forces attacked Armenian ones in Nagorno Karabakh (NK below) on September 27, both sides breached agreed on ceasefires three times.

Is this time different?

According to Russia’s Izvestia on November 10, “Moscow has brokered an armistice in” the enclave “to end the hostilities.”

Russian, Armenian and Azeri leaders “signed a statement declaring a complete ceasefire in the unrecognized republic starting at midnight Moscow time on November 10.”

They agreed to hold their current positions. Armenia will return Azeri territory to Baku.

Yerevan will maintain control over the Lachin corridor that connects Armenia to NK.

Russian peacekeepers on their way to the enclave will be guarantors of the armistice agreement — to be headquartered at a “peacekeeping center.”

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees will be involved to help displaced enclave residents return home.

According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, 1,960 peacekeepers and 470 pieces of equipment were sent to NK.

Military historian Dmitry Boltenkov said the following:

“From the military standpoint, the conflict has ended with a resounding victory for Azerbaijan,” adding:

“The country has regained the areas it lost 25 years ago, including those it did not have the time to retake during military activities.”

“It has also received transport corridors, including the most important one, the route leading to the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.”

“Azerbaijani troops will remain in the Nagorno-Karabkh region, particularly in the city of Shushi located a dozen kilometers from the capital Stepanakert.”

“Now only Russian peacekeepers will guarantee the existence of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.”

“It will be Russian border guards who will ensure the safety of transport corridors. As a result, our country’s influence in the region will grow.”

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said he “signed a statement with the presidents of Russia and Azerbaijan on ending the Karabakh war…”

“The text of the published statement is inexpressibly sensitive for me personally and for our people.”

“I made the decision after a deep analysis of the military situation and the assessment by people who know it better than anyone, what he called “a very and very hard decision.”

“This step is based on a conviction that this is the best possible solution in the current situation.”

He’ll have more to say on the agreement in the coming days, adding:

“This is not victory, but there won’t be a defeat unless you recognize yourself as a loser.”

“We will never recognize ourselves as losers and this should usher in our era of national unification and revival.”

Both warring sides agreed that Russian peacekeepers will remain in the enclave for five years, another five-year period to follow unless Yerevan or Baku objects six months prior to the expiration of the current deployment.

Yerevan and Baku agreed to exchange prisoners and return bodies of dead soldiers and civilians.

After weeks of heavy fighting, both sides likely sustaining significant loss of lives and equipment, along with destruction in areas of conflict, perhaps their leadership wants resolution at this time even if issues between both sides remain unresolved.

Before conflict erupted, Turkey provided arms to Azerbaijan and trained its forces.

President Erdogan also sent jihadists to aid Azeri forces on the ground.

He’ll likely want a say on what happens going forward — perhaps an arrangement similar to what he and Putin agreed to in Syria that was far less than ideal.

According to Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the armistice agreement includes nothing about involving Turkish peacekeepers.

His remark followed Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, saying that his government “continue to be one nation, one spirit with our Azeri brothers,” adding:

Ankara continues to monitor what’s ongoing in NK.

“We are now discussing how (the armistice) will be observed and controlled. But the whole process will be overseen jointly” with Azerbaijan.

On Monday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said its country’s peacekeepers alone will be deployed to NK.

While Azeris gained over Armenia from weeks of fighting, it came at a high cost to both sides.

Russia has gone all-out end conflict since it began.

Perhaps after three failed ceasefires, the current agreement will hold — even if uneasily.

*

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Whenever US presidential and congressional elections are held, continuity always triumphs.

Names and faces alone change, the fundamental direction of the country doesn’t miss a bit.

Presidents are figurehead fronts for imperial governance of, by, and for privileged interests at the expense of world peace, stability, equity, justice and rule of law.

Empires demand everything, yield nothing, ordinary people exploited, not served — at home and abroad, notably in occupied countries.

Elections when held are farcical, not legitimate, popular sentiment ignored by powerful interests in charge.

In the US, it’s by one-party rule with two right wings, each taking turns running things.

On issues relating to war and peace, corporate empowerment, plutocracy and kleptocracy over democracy, police state harshness, and erosion of fundamental freedoms en route to eliminating them altogether — both wings of the one-party state are on the same page.

So are establishment media, most think tanks, academia, and the clergy.

Trump largely differed from other US presidents in style.

Throughout his tenure, he delivered hugely for wealth and power interests, ordinary Americans getting neoliberal harshness.

If Election 2020 vote-counting was accurate, not dishonest in key swing states, he won. Biden/Harris lost.

Instead it appears the other way around — proving once again that hypocrisy, not democracy, defines the American way.

It’s not the first time US elections at the federal, state, and local levels were stolen and won’t be the last.

Throughout US history, it happened repeatedly since the early days of the republic.

In 2020, deep state interests — or at least a US ruling class majority — favored Biden/Harris over the incumbent president, based on how things turned out with fourth estate support.

Despite hard evidence of significant election fraud in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania favoring Biden/Harris over Trump — likely in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada as well — his legal challenges are likely to fail.

In 2016, US dark forces chose him over Hillary, perhaps by a split decision in his favor.

This year it’s the other way around.

With help from establishment media propaganda for Biden/Harris, deep state elements turned on the hands that fed them — choosing a Dem executive branch over the current one.

Most often, winning US presidents gain House and Senate seats, the so-called coattails effect.

While control of the upper body this time remains undecided (pending 2 runoff races), Republicans will likely to hold a slim majority when the dust settles.

Dems maintain control of the House but lost at least a net five seats, possibly more.

Pre-election, the Cook Political Report predicted a “10 to 15” gain in House seats by Dems.

Post-election, it admitted that Republicans are “on track to pick up between five and ten seats in the House.”

Looking ahead, Dems will likely control the executive branch and House by a lesser majority, Republicans controlling the Senate.

Because of large-scale pre-dawn vote dumps last Wednesday in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — 100% for Biden, zero percent for Trump — Dems stole victories won by DJT.

Grand theft decided the election outcome — along with establishment media support — not popular sentiment.

As one analyst observed about a reported 89.3% Wisconsin voter turnout (30% higher than ever in state history), it was “a virtual statistical impossibility,” adding:

“The odds of this occurring are 0.00000189% or 1 in 52,910,052.”

James Fetzer reported the above information on his website, adding:

“Election officials in Michigan and Wisconsin could not explain (Dem) presidential nominee Joe Biden’s sudden and dramatic vote tally increase that occurred in both states (pre-dawn) Wednesday morning.”

In Dem strongholds New York and Chicago, Biden got less support than Hillary in 2016, while carrying NY state and Illinois.

Yet in key swing states, “he gained massively,” according to AP News.

On the stump campaigning pre-election, Trump drew huge crowds of supporters.

Turnout at Biden rallies was far less.

As reported on Fetzer’s website, “Trump let by almost 800,000 votes on election night” in Pennsylvania.

By Friday, it was less than 95,000. Last weekend, Biden was “project(ed) (to) carry the state by about 175,000 votes.”

In one Michigan county (Antrim) Trump won by 30 points in 2016, he lost to Biden by 29 points — possible only by election fraud.

Post-election, former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was quoted, saying the following:

“In big cities where they control the political apparatus and they control the apparatus that counts the votes, and they control the polling places, and the ones who count the votes.”

“It’s widespread and it’s deep” — including votes cast by former state residents and deceased ones added to the count.

According to Judicial Watch, 352 US counties in 29 states have around 1.8 million more registered voters than residents of voting age.

Seven Milwaukee, Wisconsin wards had more votes cast than registered voters.

As Fetzer noted on his website, reliable evidence shows that Election 2020 was stolen for Biden/Harris over Trump.

US dark forces engineer regime change at home as abroad.

What they want, US courts, including the High Court, are highly unlikely to overturn.

As things now stand, Biden will be inaugurated US president on January 20, 2021 — even though if vote-counting was accurate, he lost. Trump won.

Looking ahead, the nation is sharply divided.

Geopolitically, Biden/Harris are likely to be more belligerent than Trump.

Obama bragged about bombing seven countries in eight years.

Something similar may follow over the next four years.

All nations independent of US control will continue being treated as adversaries.

Biden/Harris reportedly will demand unacceptable concessions from Iran for the US to rejoin the landmark JCPOA nuclear deal.

They’ll likely include curbs on Iran’s legitimate missile development, perhaps other military-related concessions as well, wanting the Islamic Republic weakened — what its ruling authorities surely won’t accept.

US relations with China and Russia will likely remain strained — the same likely true toward Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and North Korea.

Perhaps more US forces will be sent to Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq instead of withdrawing them altogether.

With likely protracted economic collapse affecting the US economy and majority of its people — along with a divided Congress — Biden/Harris may focus more on geopolitical issues where bipartisan consensus is likely.

Never one to be silent publicly, Trump may leave the political scene in January, but Trumpism will remain active — by him and his millions of supporters.

Looking ahead for ordinary Americans, things will likely worsen over the next four years, not improve under conditions of protracted economic collapse and hardline rule.

The nation I grew up in long ago no longer exists.

*

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about whether or not the fast-tracked COVID-19 vaccine will in fact be safe and effective. While vaccine makers insist that any vaccine reaching the market will have undergone rigorous testing, the way trial protocols are designed suggests these vaccines may leave a lot to be desired.

As reported¹ by Forbes contributor William Haseltine, a former professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, while Moderna, Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson have all published their vaccine trial protocols in a rare display of transparency, “close inspection of the protocols raises surprising concerns.”

In a nutshell, the trial designs are such that the vaccines will get a passing grade even if their efficacy is minimal. Of course, we must also consider vaccine side effects and I’ve also written several articles about mounting safety concerns.

COVID-19 Vaccine Trials Designed to Pass Efficacy Test

As noted by Haseltine, prevention of infection would typically be a critical endpoint of any vaccine trial. In other words, you want to ensure that when you take the vaccine, your risk of infection is significantly reduced.

However, when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine, shockingly, preventing infection is not a criterion for success in any of these trials. The only criterion for a successful COVID-19 vaccine is a reduction of COVID-19 symptoms, and even then, the reduction required is minimal.

“We all expect an effective vaccine to prevent serious illness if infected. Three of the vaccine protocols—Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca—do not require that their vaccine prevent serious disease only that they prevent moderate symptoms which may be as mild as cough, or headache,” Haseltine writes,² adding:

The pharmaceutical companies intend to do trials ranging from 30,000 to 60,000 participants. This scale of study would be sufficient for testing vaccine efficacy.

The first surprise found upon a closer reading of the protocols reveals that each study intends to complete interim and primary analyses that at most include 164 participants. These companies likely intend to apply for an emergency use authorization (EUA) from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with just their limited preliminary results.

To get a “passing” grade in the limited interim analysis, a vaccine must show a 70 percent efficacy. However, again, this does not mean it will prevent infection in seven of 10 people. As explained by Haseltine:³

For Moderna, the initial interim analysis will be based on the results of infection of only 53 people. The judgment reached in interim analysis is dependent upon the difference in the number of people with symptoms … in the vaccinated group versus the unvaccinated group. Moderna’s success margin is for 13 or less of those 53 to develop symptoms compared to 40 or more in their control group.

The other vaccine makers are basing results on a similar protocol, where only a limited number of vaccinated participants are exposed to the virus to evaluate the extent of their symptoms.

Johnson & Johnson’s interim analysis will include results from 77 vaccine recipients who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, and if fewer than 18 of them develop symptoms of COVID-19, compared to 59 in the control group, the vaccine will be considered successful.

In AstraZeneca’s case, the interim analysis includes 50 vaccine recipients. The vaccine will be a success if 12 or fewer develop symptoms after exposure to SARS-CoV-2, compared to 19 in the 25-person control group.

Pfizer’s interim analysis is the smallest of the bunch, with just 32 vaccine recipients. Their success margin is seven or fewer vaccine recipients developing symptoms, compared to 25 in the control group. In the primary analysis, efficacy is set to about 60 percent, and at most, 164 volunteers will be included in that analysis.

Especially concerning are that those receiving the vaccine in these trials are young and healthy individuals who are not really at high risk of dying from COVID-19. This makes the results of these trials highly questionable in the far more vulnerable population of the elderly.

Trials Are Merely Testing Reduction of Common Cold Symptoms

As if that’s not eyebrow-raising enough, the minimum qualification for a “case of COVID-19” amounts to just one positive PCR test and one or two mild symptoms, such as headache, fever, cough or mild nausea. As noted by Haseltine, “This is far from adequate.”

All they’re doing is testing to see if this COVID-19 vaccine will minimize common cold symptoms. They are not actually ensuring the vaccine will prevent serious COVID-19 complications. Johnson & Johnson’s trial is the only one that requires at least five severe COVID-19 cases to be included in the interim analysis.

“One of the more immediate questions a trial needs to answer is whether a vaccine prevents infection. If someone takes this vaccine, are they far less likely to become infected with the virus? These trials all clearly focus on eliminating symptoms of COVID-19, and not infections themselves. Asymptomatic infection is listed as a secondary objective in these trials when they should be of critical importance. It appears that all the pharmaceutical companies assume that the vaccine will never prevent infection. Their criteria for approval is the difference in symptoms between an infected control group and an infected vaccine group. They do not measure the difference between infection and noninfection as a primary motivation,” Haseltine writes.⁴

Severe illness and death are also secondary objectives in these trials, and none of them include failure to prevent hospitalization or death as an important barrier to success. The increasingly disappearing common sense tells us that if the vaccine cannot reduce infection, hospitalization or death, then it cannot end the pandemic, which means everyone who takes the vaccine will be doing so in vain.

Some COVID-19 Vaccine Trials Are Not Using Inert Placebos

In addition to all of that, some COVID-19 vaccine trials are using other vaccines as “placebo” rather than truly biologically inert substances such as saline, which effectively makes if far easier to hide any vaccine side effects. While Moderna is using a saline solution placebo,⁵ AstraZeneca is using injected meningococcal vaccine rather than a true placebo.⁶

Another way AstraZeneca is masking potential side effects is by administering the vaccine along with certain drugs. In one of its study arms, subjects are given acetaminophen every six hours for the first 24 hours after inoculation. The pain and fever reducer could potentially mask and downplay side effects such as pain, fever, headache or general malaise.

In addition to masking side effects, it is widely recognized among literate natural medicine physicians that using acetaminophen during acute viral infections is not a wise strategy as it impairs the immune response to fight the infection.

As reported by Wired:⁷

The press release for … results from the Oxford vaccine trials described an increased frequency of ‘minor side effects’ among participants. A look at the actual paper, though, reveals this to be a marketing spin …

Yes, mild reactions were far more common than worse ones. But moderate or severe harms—defined as being bad enough to interfere with daily life or needing medical care—were common too.

Around one-third of people vaccinated with the COVID-19 vaccine without acetaminophen experienced moderate or severe chills, fatigue, headache, malaise, and/or feverishness.

Close to 10 percent had a fever of at least 100.4 degrees, and just over one-fourth developed moderate or severe muscle aches. That’s a lot, in a young and healthy group of people—and the acetaminophen didn’t help much for most of those problems.

Two Trials Paused Due to Safety Concerns

On Sept. 6, 2020, AstraZeneca paused its Phase 3 vaccine trial due to a “suspected serious and unexpected adverse reaction” in a British participant.^{8 9} The company did not initially divulge the nature of the adverse reaction, but it has since been revealed the volunteer developed severe inflammation of the spinal cord, known as transverse myelitis.^{10 11}

On Sept. 12, 2020, the British Medicines Health Regulatory Authority gave AstraZeneca the go-ahead to resume its Phase 3 trial in the U.K., after an independent review found it “safe to do so.”¹²¹³ According to an AstraZeneca spokesperson, the incident was a case of undiagnosed multiple sclerosis.¹⁴>

Days later, on Sept. 19, 2020, The New York Times reported¹⁵ a second case of transverse myelitis had occurred in the AstraZeneca trial. According to one expert consulted by the NYT, the occurrence represented a “dangerous pattern,” and that a third incidence might shut down the vaccine trial indefinitely.

AstraZeneca, however, claims the two cases are “unlikely to be associated with the vaccine,” and that there’s “insufficient evidence to say for certain that the illnesses were or were not related to the vaccine.”¹⁶ On Oct. 21, 2020, it was reported¹⁷ that one of the volunteers in AstraZeneca’s Brazilian trial had died from COVID-19 complications, but that the trial would continue anyway.

On Oct. 12, 2020, Johnson & Johnson halted its trial due to “unexplained illness” in one of its participants.^{18 19} Like AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson has kept mum about the details of the illness, saying “it’s important to have all the facts before we share additional information.”

Side Effects Are Commonplace

The fact that more trials have not been halted is surprising considering the rate of side effects²⁰ occurring in perfectly healthy volunteers. As reported in “Gates Tries to Justify Side Effects of Fast-Tracked Vaccine,” after the first of two doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, 80 percent of Phase 1 participants receiving the 100 microgram (mcg) dose developed systemic side effects.²¹

After the second dose, 100% reported side effects ranging from fatigue (80 percent), chills (80 percent), headache (60 percent) and myalgia or muscle pain (53 percent).

Despite that, the 100-mcg dose was ultimately chosen to move on to Phase 3 trials.²² In the highest dosage group, which received 250 mcg, 100 percent of participants suffered side effects after both the first and second doses.²³ Three of the 14 participants (21 percent) in the 250-mcg group suffered “one or more severe events.”

An Oct. 1, 2020, report²⁴ by CNBC reviews the experiences of five participants in Moderna’s and Pfizer’s SARS-CoV-2 vaccine trials. One of the participants in Pfizer’s vaccine trial “woke up with chills, shaking so hard he cracked a tooth after taking the second dose.”

A Moderna trial participant told CNBC he had a low-grade fever and felt “under the weather” for several days after his first shot. Eight hours after his second shot he was “bed-bound with a fever of over 101, shakes, chills, a pounding headache and shortness of breath. He said the pain in his arm, where he received the shot, felt like a ‘goose egg on my shoulder.’ He hardly slept that night, recording that his temperature was higher than 100 degrees for five hours.”²⁵

Two others reported similar side effects, and a third warned you would need to take a day off after the second shot. CNBC also noted that “as companies progressed through clinical trials, several vaccine makers abandoned their highest doses following reports of more severe reactions.”

*

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

Notes

¹ Forbes September 23, 2020.
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Henryford.com Moderna COVE Vaccine Study.
⁶ Wired July 21, 2020.
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ AstraZeneca September 12, 2020.
⁹ STAT News September 8, 2020.
¹⁰ KHN September 14, 2020.
¹¹ New York Times September 8, 2020 (Archived).
¹² See Footnote 8.
¹³ STAT News September 12, 2020.
¹⁴ En.as.com September 21, 2020.
¹⁵ The New York Times September 19, 2020 (Archived).
¹⁶ Covid19vaccinetrial.co.uk Participant Information Sheet (PDF).
¹⁷ Reuters October 21, 2020.
¹⁸ JnJ.com.
¹⁹ Channel3000 October 19, 2020.
²⁰ Observer October 20, 2020.
²¹ NEJM July 14, 2020 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2022483.
²² Neurology Live July 16, 2020.
²³ Reporter.am July 14, 2020.
²⁴ CNBC October 4, 2020.
²⁵ Ibid.

From the Aegean to Central Asia, people were celebrating on the streets after Azerbaijan captured large swathes of Armenian-held territory in Artsakh, or more commonly known as Nagorno-Karabakh. After a month and a half of brutal warfare with no end in sight, it took the downing of a Russian helicopter and two resulting deaths to bring a swift end to the fighting.

Of course, we are not expected to believe that a trilateral agreement between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Russian President Vladimir Putin was drafted and agreed upon within a matter of hours of the helicopter being downed. It is likely that the agreement for Armenian forces to surrender most of Artsakh and allow Azerbaijan to gain access to its Nakhchivan exclave, which borders Turkey and Iran, has been in the works for some time. By signing this agreement, a five-year mandated 2000-strong Russian peacekeeping force will protect the Lachin Corridor that connects the Republic of Armenia with Armenian-held areas of Artsakh. The Turkish military will also maintain observation points across the line of contact like it does in Syria. But many Armenians see this deal as a betrayal. This could galvanize pro-Western forces in the country to move Armenia out of Russia’s sphere of influence.

Thus far, every Turkish military intervention over the past five years has led to a division of influence between Ankara and Moscow. This is observed in northern Syria, Libya and now in Artsakh. However, what makes this different to Syria and Libya is that the division of influence is in a region that is traditionally in Russia’s sphere. Effectively, Turkey has once again instigated an issue and muscled in.

Source: InfoBrics

Tsarist Russia fought continuous battles to keep the Ottomans out of the Caucasus. Today however, Russia’s Muslim-dominated North Caucasus autonomous regions, many of which have elements of Islamist ambitions, are now within touching distance of Turkey’s growing influence in Azerbaijan and Artsakh.

Over the course of the war Baku made it clear that it is fully integrated into the pan-Turkic project of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and often accused Russia of backing the Armenians.

Ankara continues its project to create a contiguous “Turkestan” sphere of influence that stretches from the Aegean Sea to Western China via the Caucasus and Caspian. The “Turkic Homeland,” encompassing much of Central Asian, could in future seriously challenge Russia’s traditional sphere of influence. In fact, government-controlled Turkish media outlets over the course of the war in Artsakh have been promoting the idea of a “Turan Army” or a “Turkic NATO.”

The Turkestan project includes Turkey’s territorial expansion into Arab-Kurdish dominated areas of northern Syria and into Armenian-majority Artsakh.

Iran must also be concerned by Turkey’s growing pan-Turkic ideology. Iranian Azeris, forming the largest minority group in the Persian-majority country, may not only see Baku as the soul of the greater Azeri nation, but look up to Turkey as the guardian and protector of Turkism. This will feed into the mindset of young Azeris in Iran and might influence ideological and separatist developments. It would also constitute a reaction to the Mullahs rule as it can be seen as an attractive alternative path for young Iranian Azeris who are increasingly becoming nationalistic.

None-the-less, Russian forces will remain in Artsakh for at least five years, with an option to extend for another five years. Baku now has a corridor across Armenia’s Syunik province to reach its Nakhchevan enclave that is detached from Azerbaijan proper. Nakhchevan is also the only part of Turkey that borders Azerbaijan. Effectively, Turkey now has access to Azerbaijan proper, thus already stretching its ideologically-driven Turkestan contiguously from the Aegean to the Caspian.

However, not all of Artsakh will go under Azerbaijani administration and the current trilateral agreement has not resolved the final status of areas still controlled by the Armenians. Both Azerbaijan and Turkey have said since the signing of the trilateral deal that all of Artsakh will eventually come under Baku’s administration.

The war in Artsakh has shown that Ankara’s presence in the region is rather firm. Now Syrian mercenaries provided by Turkey are at the doorstep of Russia’s Dagestan, and the Turkestan project has achieved a major result by creating a contiguous Turkic Nation stretching from the Aegean to the Caspian at Armenia’s expense.

*

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

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

“It is race, is it not, that puts the hundred millions of India under the dominion of a remote island in the north of Europe. Race avails much, if that be true, which is alleged, that all Celts are Catholics, and all Saxons are Protestants; that Celts love unity of power, and Saxons the representative principle. Race is a controlling influence in the Jew, who, for two millenniums, under every climate, has preserved the same character and employments. Race in the negro is of appalling importance. The French in Canada, cut off from all intercourse with the parent people, have held their national traits. I chanced to read Tacitus ‘On the Manners of the Germans,’ not long since, in Missouri, and the heart of Illinois, and I found abundant points of resemblance between the Germans of the Hercynian forest, and our Hoosiers, Suckers, and Badgers of the American woods.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Race must be viewed as a social construction. Human interaction rather than natural differentiation must be seen as the source and the continued basis for racial categorization.” — Prof. Ian F. Haney Lopez, “The Social Construction of Race”

Race is basically a physico-biological concept and this is obviously attested by the fact that people differ in terms of certain physical features courtesy of the genetic factor. By and large, we automatically distinguish the geographical origins of people though it is true that times are a-changing, so to speak, and many of them were born and are now residents in locations not originally of their ancestors’. Pakistanis and Indians in UK, black Africans in the US . . . Arabs in Spain . . . Chinese in Germany . . . Italians in Argentina . . . Southeast Asians in Italy . . . Filipinos in Arab countries . . . . The list could go on and on as the issue of migration has become commonplace in the modern world. With this development is the emergence of the issue of race that goes beyond the physico-biological. At this point, the concept of race becomes more of a social matter.

In a social context where multiple racial presence is a reality, problems in the area of cultural differences heighten the fundamental discrepancies created by skin-color distinction. However, it is always the dominant racial stock in such a society that assumes the standard-setting prerogative. In this condition, the dominant segment spontaneously claims cultural ascendancy over and above the rest. In the process, a hierarchical ladder–a racial caste system, if you will–is set up on the basis of how far removed the others are from the ascendant standard-setting race. This matter taken seriously could be construed as an undying extension of the ancient master-slave mentality though with all the modifications necessary to toe the superficial line of “decency” that defines what a modern society is supposed to look like.

If a dominant racial group in a society enjoys more benefits, privileges, rights and opportunities than the others, the issue of race as a concept becomes social. The general situation presents the superiority of the former over the latter. At this point, thinking people get curious and wonder why the former becomes more superior than the latter. We want to know what inherent genetic qualities does the dominant group possess that make it superior. Is it in terms of physical strength? Is it in the exquisite physical endowments their men and women have? Or perhaps in their unequalled intelligence? While contemplating on these, we could go on  and on thinking of other factors generally held by members of a race who consider themselves dominant and superior over the others.

In a lot of multi-racial societies that used to be colonies of white-skinned Europeans, racial superiority is reckoned in terms of physical appearance especially the facial features and the skin complexion. This concern is one important area of consideration to better understand what basically colonial mentality is. The closer one’s facial features and skin complexion are to those of the colonizers’ descendants, the more they are treated with special attention, appreciation and affection. An African American (or an African European for that matter) woman is considered pretty if she possesses certain caucasian qualities that make her far different from the typical African. In this context, aesthetic judgment–which is precisely social or socio-cultural, if you will–is thus heavily influenced by the caucasian standard. This matter is much more pronounced in beauty pageants, both local and international so that a southeast Asian contestant should have some caucasian features to qualify. And this is true across the board wherever we find societies that used to be colonies of white empires in bygone eras.

However, in another categorical consideration like when it comes to physical prowess as in sports, those of African descent have proven in various events their excellent talents. In US professional basketball alone as a case in point, African Americans have shown their superiority for several succeeding generations. But this could be mistakenly construed as a unilateral assessment if we are not aware of the fact that white European hoopsters are of equal talents, skills and capablities and all these have been witnessed in international campaigns like the world cups. Once realized on a balanced scale, the final analysis yields to us the conclusion that after all, race is a non-factor in matters of physical strength.

The same is true in terms of intelligence as it is an established fact that high-level intelligence is normally  possessed by people in all racial groupings everywhere. So long as we don’t make the Nobel Prize in various categories (except the peace prize)–where the majority of the awardees are caucasian–as the standard to judge the superior intelligence of one race over the other, we are on the right track to argue that intelligence transcends the racial divide. In the same vein, we likewise find stupid people everywhere so that nobody can ever lay reasonable claim to the notion that stupidity is one specific characteristic of some particular racial units.

Economic backwardness is therefore not a proof that a nation is inhabited by people whose stupidity is inherent to their racial roots . In practically all instances, these societies have long been victims of a series of politically generated setbacks that could be traced from the early days of colonization to the most recent mismanagement of governments run by incompetent and corrupt leaders while the more critically thinking intelligentsia are threatened and gagged by all possible means as well as hunted, imprisoned and even assassinated.

The worst case of racial issue as a social problematization that has hugged world news in the present dispensation is Israeli Zionism. It is based on a religious ideology which is purely mythical, even a blatant lie, that doesn’t  have any historical justification. It has laid claim over a geographical portion of the Middle Eastern region which is now called Israel by virtue of the 1948 implementation of the Balfour Declaration. The whole scenario that has developed through time since Israel was first inaugurated is the bitter displacement of the land’s original inhabitants: the Palestinians. The ensuing violence that has resulted to carnage and catastrophic massacres perpetrated by the Zionist Israelis is absolutely aimed to totally annihilate the Palestinians on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

*

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

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.

Removing U.S. troops from Afghanistan by early 2021, or by Christmas as President Trump has exclaimed, does not mean that the United States lost the war in Afghanistan. This wouldn’t be an admission of defeat, rather an acknowledgement that we have exhausted all possible tactical avenues with forces on the ground.

Furthermore, the United States can no longer use the “sunk cost” excuse to perpetuate an unclear mission described in the Washington Post’s Afghanistan Papers by Douglas Lute, a three-star Army General, when he said, “we didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.”

For years, proponents of staying in Afghanistan have been justifying their position in part by saying our men and women would have “died in vain” if we leave, that it would “dishonor” or “cheapen” their sacrifice if Washington pulled up stakes and called it quits militarily after 19 years. Just recently, former Army general and national security adviser H.R. McMaster reiterated that very sentiment on “60 Minutes,” referring to American peace talks with the Taliban and the president’s directives to leave.

When wars drag on, it is not uncommon for leaders and military personnel to cite lives lost and resources spent to argue against withdrawal. Some 50 years ago, this rationale pervaded arguments for staying the course in the Vietnam War, which lasted a decade.

In 2015, Gen. David Petraeus and Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said “the United States must stay in Afghanistan to ensure that past sacrifices were not in vain and to ‘protect our [prior] investment.’” By investment they mean lives lost andover $1 trillion already spent at the time.

In 2017, President Trump argued, “Our nation must seek an honorable and enduring outcome worthy of the tremendous sacrifices that have been made, especially the sacrifices of lives.” Shortly after this statement, he increased troop numbers in the region by 10,000 as part of his “mini-surge.”

Just this year, war hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham issued the following statement: “We have fought too hard and sacrificed too much to allow our security gains to slip away.” And on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, former national security adviser Susan Rice said that Trump is cheapening “the sacrifice of the 3,500 American and NATO service members who perished in Afghanistan” by potentially leaving Afghanistan to its own devices.

Using the 2,352 American soldiers who died during this conflict as a reason to send even more soldiers into harms’ way is not the best way to honor the ones who have fallen.

“I believe the ‘sunk cost’ view actually dishonors their sacrifice, because it converts them into a kind of political-emotional ‘currency’ that is used to gain argumentative advantage,” argued journalist and author Thomas E. Ricks in response to O’Hanlon and Petraeus in 2015.

John Glaser of the Cato Institute, in a policy analysis titled, “Overcoming Inertia: Why It’s Time to End the War in Afghanistan,” wrote that “a decision about where and whether to devote resources should be based on whether the investment will add future value, not on sunk costs.” Glaser goes on to argue that policymakers instead must be agile when it comes to ditching costly operations that no longer promise feasible conclusions.

This is not meant to be a discussion of whether or not soldiers have died in vain, which has been argued and addressed in myriad forums.

Rather, this is an opportunity to argue for not extending our losses and to reckon with the fact that there are better ways to honor service members than continuing to send them into doomed missions across the globe.

Especially since our very own officials have already acknowledged, according to the Afghanistan Papers, that we “clearly failed in Afghanistan.”

Honoring those who have fallen is not tied to strategic outcomes, and if the United States really cares about the soldiers lost during the war in Afghanistan, there is plenty to be done on the home front to pay homage to their sacrifices.

The military is reporting a 30 percent jump in active duty service member suicides since the beginning of the year (veteran suicides are pegged at 17 a day, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs). While no specific reasons were cited, officials would not rule out COVID-related conditions, or the strain of multiple deployments. In fact, senior officials told the Associated Press that they are considering shortening the combat rotations — something they probably should have done earlier in this 19-year war.

Meanwhile, veterans have been hit particularly hard by COVID-19. As the pandemic continues to spread, this puts a strain on the already tenuous availability of mental health programs and the VA’s ominous backlog for appointments and disability claims.

But even without COVID, after nearly 20 years of war, the VA is still overrun and plagued with inefficiencies, and in the worst cases, fraud and corruption. Some 9 million veterans are enrolled in VA healthcare programs today, with more than 1.2 million veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan accessing the system since 2001. Efforts to modernize and improve both care and efficiency for veterans have struggled as more strain has been put on the system in the last two decades.

There is not a one-size fits all approach and lawmakers and advocates have clashed over how to fix it. On one side, there are demands not only for more funding for programs, but a more comprehensive and targeted plan for where those funds are going. Many veterans live outside big cities, so there is a push to build more accessible facilities and clinics in rural areas. There are needs for caregivers, mental health, and specialized care for women veterans. Others say that despite budget increases every year, the bureaucracy has failed to adjust in order to accommodate current veterans’ needs and is riddled with red tape and inefficiencies. They have promoted extending veterans’ access to private healthcare, but that too, has been problematic.

Both sides have complained about politicization, vacancies at the top, and not being able to fire top officials who fail. These issues are long standing and seemingly never resolved before each new administration, with their own crop of appointees, takes over. Congress, too, has revolving priorities, and despite real champions for veterans in their ranks, always seems willing to kick the can down the road.

As a country, we must come to grips with the fact that strategic efforts in Afghanistan stopped being worthwhile long ago, and turn to the immediate healthcare needs of our recent veteran population, which has now reached 2.7 million men and women.

If the United States doesn’t see this as a noble cause to tackle, it’s time for a reassessment of our own priorities. On the battlefield we preach “leave no man behind,” but it seems that at home we don’t hold ourselves to the same standard. Instead of talking about “sunk costs,” continuing meaningless store discounts and special nights at the ballpark, the best way America can honor its veterans and fallen soldiers is to create fewer of them, and when they come home, do our best to take care of them.

*

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

Featured image: A soldier presenting an American flag to the relative of a deceased veteran at the Tahoma National Cemetery, Washington, May 28, 2011. (The Old Major/ Shutterstock)

Robert Fisk, the Independent’s Middle East correspondent, died on 30 October aged 74. In reviewing his life and career, the newspaper for which he worked for more than two decades wrote of their star reporter:

‘Much of what Fisk wrote was controversial…’

As John Pilger noted, in describing Fisk’s journalism as ‘controversial’ the Independent was using a ‘weasel word’.

The Washington Post published a piece titled:

‘Robert Fisk, daring but controversial British war correspondent and author, dies at 74’

Al Jazeera’s piece was subtitled:

‘The Independent newspaper confirms its acclaimed and controversial journalist died following a short illness.’

A piece in Le Monde was titled:

‘La mort de Robert Fisk, grand reporter au Moyen-Orient et personnage controversé’ (Christophe Ayad, Le Monde, 4 November 2020)

The trend is clear. When The Times subjected Fisk to one of its full-on hit pieces in April 2018, it wrote: ‘Fisk is no stranger to controversy.’

So why do ‘mainstream’ commentators feel obliged to red-flag Fisk’s journalism with ‘controversial’ in this way, and why is it a ‘weasel word’?

Consider that the likes of the BBC’s Andrew Marr, the Guardian’s Martin Chulov and The Times’ David Aaronovitch, and numerous others, will never be described as ‘controversial’, despite their highly controversial, in fact outrageous, warmongering bias.

Marr is not labelled ‘controversial’ for supporting a ground invasion of Serbia in 1999:

‘I want to put the Macbeth option: which is that we’re so steeped in blood we should go further. If we really believe Milosevic is this bad, dangerous and destabilising figure we must ratchet this up much further. We should now be saying that we intend to put in ground troops.’ (Marr, ‘Do we give war a chance?’, The Observer, 18 April 1999)

Was that ‘controversial’? How about this?

Was it ‘controversial’ for the Guardian to write this of the country that has relentlessly waged war and supported tyranny around the world since 1945:

‘Joe Biden looks to have done enough to win the White House… He will have to reassert America’s role as the global problem-solver.’ (Our emphasis)?

Was it ‘controversial’ for the supposedly impartial global news agency, Associated Press, to write this of the United States:

‘For decades, the U.S. has been an advocate for democracy abroad, using diplomatic pressure and even direct military intervention in the name of spreading the principles of a pluralistic system with a free and fair vote for political leaders’?

An awesome level of gullibility is required to believe that the direct military ‘interventions’ (wars) in oil-rich Iraq and Libya were about spreading pluralistic principles. Whether or not Iraqis have had ‘a free and fair vote’ since 2003 is a matter of complete indifference to Western politics and journalism.

It turns out that the term ‘controversial’ is only applied in corporate media to political writers and leaders deemed ‘controversial’ by elite interests.

This was unwittingly made clear by the big brains at the BBC who noted that Fisk ‘drew controversy for his sharp criticism of the US and Israel, and of Western foreign policy’. If Fisk had drawn ‘controversy’ from China, Iran or North Korea, the ‘weasel word’ would not have appeared in the Beeb’s analysis.

A second piece in the Independent also allowed us to read between the letters that make up ‘controversial’:

‘Often writing and speaking of his pity for the people he saw being killed at the same time as becoming a forthright critic of the US and Israel. His writing could be controversial – such as his later reporting on Syria…’ (Our emphasis)

Fisk is not alone, of course. The BBC controversially echoed numerous other media in describing Hugo Chavez as ‘Venezuela’s… controversial president’.

If Chavez was ‘controversial’, which national leader is not? Should they all be described as ‘controversial’? By the way, Biden very controversially described Chavez’ successor Nicolas Maduro as a ‘tyrant’, adding:

‘I was among the first Democratic foreign policy voices to recognize Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate leader and to call for Maduro to resign.’ (See here for more on Biden’s grim record.)

As we have discussed, these were deeply embarrassing propaganda claims in pursuit of regime change. Even the BBC was eventually forced to give up the pretence that Guaidó was ‘interim leader’, reverting to the title ‘opposition leader’.

Although Obama bombed seven Muslim countries from 2009 to 2017, all but destroying Libya, the BBC would, of course, never refer to ‘America’s controversial president, Barack Obama’, or even to ‘America’s controversial president, George W. Bush’. Specific Bush policies might be described as ‘controversial’, but the term would never be applied as a broad brush description of who he is.

In corporate media newspeak, ‘controversial’ can actually be translated as ‘offensive to power’. The term is intended as a scare word to warn readers that the labelled person is ‘dodgy’, ‘suspect’: ‘Handle with care!’ The journalist is also signalling to his or her editors and other colleagues: ‘I’m not one of “them”!’

The same effect can be achieved by praising establishment figures. Peter Oborne did not cover himself in glory by tweeting:

‘Tony Blair has emerged as probably the most authoritative and persuasive voice during the Covid crisis.’

As we noted:

‘If it was some other leader of some other country who had waged an illegal war of aggression killing one million people, Oborne might not have sent this.’

Journalists and leaders who serve power, including ‘Teflon Tony’, somehow retain fundamental ‘respectability’, are welcomed by elite media and the powers that be. (For completists interested in this subliminal misuse of language, the same use is made of the term ‘narcissist’: Julian Assange, Russell Brand, George Galloway, Glenn Greenwald, Seumas Milne, John Pilger, Edward Snowden, Hugo Chavez, and – alas! – us at Media Lens, have all been repeatedly accused of ‘narcissism’. Recently, Andrew Rawnsley wrote of the almost comically humble and selfless Jeremy Corbyn:

‘Many things have been said about his character over the years, but one thing has not been said enough: he is a narcissist.’

An unwitting, backhanded compliment from the Observer’s great warmonger. (See our book ‘Propaganda Blitz’ for more discussion on ‘narcissism’, Pluto Press, 2018, pp.54-55)

‘How Do They Get Away With These Lies?

In 2004, at a time when all of US-UK journalism was celebrating the ‘transfer of sovereignty’ from the forces still occupying Iraq and stealing its oil, Fisk was a rare voice mocking the charade:

‘Alice in Wonderland could not have improved on this. The looking-glass reflects all the way from Baghdad to Washington… Those of us who put quotation marks around “liberation” in 2003 should now put quotation marks around “sovereignty”.’ (Fisk, ‘The handover: Restoration of Iraqi sovereignty – or Alice in Wonderland?’ The Independent, 29 June 2004)

In 2014, after Tony Blair made one of his frequent attempts to exonerate himself in relation to Iraq while calling for more violence to bomb Syria better, the Guardian editors performed painful contortions in declaring Blair’s analysis ‘thoughtful’ if ‘wrong-headed’. Fisk’s response to Blair was different:

‘How do they get away with these lies?’

Fisk was also a virtual lone ‘mainstream’ voice contesting the US-UK’s audacious, well-funded attempts to re-run their Iraq ‘weapons of mass destruction’ scam in Syria:

‘Washington’s excuse for its new Middle East adventure – that it must arm Assad’s enemies because the Damascus regime has used sarin gas against them – convinces no-one in the Middle East. Final proof of the use of gas by either side in Syria remains almost as nebulous as President George W. Bush’s claim that Saddam’s Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.’

For this, as the obituaries make unsubtly clear, Fisk was never forgiven.

An obituary in The Times commented on Fisk:

‘While he was an outstandingly poetic writer, he developed an emotional obsession with the plight of the Palestinian people and a visceral dislike of the Israeli government and its allies, especially America. In the jargon of news reporting he “went native”, unable to provide a dispassionate account of events and their context.’ (‘Robert Fisk: Obituaries – Trenchant yet lyrical foreign correspondent who interviewed Osama bin Laden three times and was often accused of “going native”‘, The Times, 3 Nov 2020)

Given the appalling racism and ethnic cleansing faced by the Palestinian people, the reference to Fisk ‘going native’ was a grotesque observation.

The Times noted, of course, that Fisk ‘remained no stranger to controversy’. It asked us to believe that ‘critics poured cold water on Fisk’s writing’, although ‘awards committees did not’. In translation: Fisk was subjected to exactly the kind of ugly propaganda smears from ‘critics’ contained in The Times’ obituary.

The comments are no great surprise, given the honesty with which Fisk described his departure from The Times to join the Independent in 1989:

‘The end came for me when I flew to Dubai in 1988 after the USS Vincennes [a US Navy guided missile cruiser] had shot down an Iranian passenger airliner over the Gulf. Within 24 hours, I had spoken to the British air traffic controllers at Dubai, discovered that US ships had routinely been threatening British Airways airliners, and that the crew of the Vincennes appeared to have panicked. The foreign desk told me the report was up for the page-one splash. I warned them that American “leaks” that the IranAir pilot was trying to suicide-crash his aircraft on to the Vincennes were rubbish. They agreed.

‘Next day, my report appeared with all criticism of the Americans deleted, with all my sources ignored. The Times even carried an editorial suggesting the pilot was indeed a suicider. A subsequent US official report and accounts by US naval officers subsequently proved my dispatch correct. Except that Times readers were not allowed to see it.’

Fisk said that he believed Murdoch did not personally intervene. However:

‘He didn’t need to. He had turned The Times into a tame, pro-Tory, pro-Israeli paper shorn of all editorial independence.’

Echoing virtually every other obituary, the Guardian commented that Fisk ‘tended to absolve the Assad regime of some of the worst crimes credited to it’, which had ‘provoked a backlash, even among his anti-imperialist acolytes’.

It is ironic that the Guardian should highlight Fisk’s supposed tendency to ‘absolve’ Syria of ‘the worst crimes credited to it’. Whistleblowing revelations relating to OPCW and the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria, while almost completely ignored by the ‘mainstream’, have overwhelmingly vindicated Fisk and made a nonsense of official claims. See recent comments here from Noam Chomsky, and excellent in-depth analysis here.

The Guardian naturally deployed the ‘weasel word’ in noting ‘all the controversy generated by his later commentary on the evils of western, and specifically US, involvement in the Middle East’. This was followed by a distorted version of ‘balance’:

‘Some of Fisk’s most ardent admirers have suggested that to describe his journalism as controversial is a vulgar slight.’

Some people might think so, but only ‘ardent admirers’, ‘acolytes’ – themselves controversial narcissists.

Who knows where this unsubtle red-flagging of Fisk’s journalism as ‘controversial’ would have ended? The intent behind ‘mainstream’ propaganda, particularly on Fisk’s Syria reporting, has increasingly been to suggest that Fisk was morally tainted; that he got it badly, shamefully wrong. Flitting like barely-glimpsed bats at the back of the readers mind are supposed to be terms like ‘Assad apologist’, ‘genocide denial’. Not Holocaust denial exactly, but a shameful mutation of the same moral blindness.

Another rare, excellent ‘mainstream’ journalist, Patrick Cockburn, dispensed with the herdthink, copycat smears, and captured the truth of a journalist who was ‘a meticulous and highly-informed reporter, one who responded sceptically – and rigorously investigated – the partisan claims of all parties, be they gunmen, army officers or government officials’. Cockburn added:

‘He took nothing for granted and was often openly contemptuous of those who did. He did not invent the old journalist saying “never believe anything until it is officially denied” but he was inclined to agree with its sceptical message. He was suspicious of journalists who cultivated diplomats and “official sources” that could not be named and whose veracity we are invited to take on trust.’

This explains exactly why Fisk was and is viewed as ‘controversial’; a word that did not appear in Cockburn’s summing up.

The Invisible Tweets

A storm had been made to brew around Fisk’s reputation in recent years. But it had not yet reached the Category 5 propaganda hurricane that engulfed Jeremy Corbyn who, like Fisk, ‘drew controversy for his sharp criticism of the US and Israel, and of Western foreign policy’.

Corbyn was not just accused of anti-semitism and Holocaust denial; he was accused of being a de facto Nazi who ‘wants to reopen Auschwitz’. These claims were baseless and insane, but not ‘controversial’.

By contrast, we discovered what is deemed ‘controversial’ on Twitter on November 3. That day, we tried three times to tweet a link to a Red Pepper article by Lynne Segal as she ‘looks back on her experience of 40 years as a party member in [Corbyn’s] constituency’. We tweeted a screenshot of this important passage from Segal’s excellent piece:

‘Right now, along with the many other Jewish activists I know in Islington North, I am simply devastated that this process has climaxed in the suspension of our cherished MP, and former leader. It’s so hard to accept that I must repeat again what every Jewish member I know in Islington North has frequently confirmed and it is we who actually know and regularly meet with Jeremy Corbyn – unlike most of critics. What we can confirm is that as Jews in North Islington we have always felt more than safe, more than welcome, unfailingly supported, in everything we do in the borough, and the Party. As it happens, we often feel this all the more strongly as Jews, knowing that ­– unlike Corbyn – so many who choose to speak in our name completely disrespect our commitment to antisemitism and racism of all kinds in struggles for a better world, including the vital struggle for Palestinian rights.’

We also tweeted a screenshot of this passage:

‘So, let me provide a few pertinent facts. Over the years, Corbyn has had mutually supportive relations with the practising Jewish community in Islington, attending Shabbat dinners with the orthodox Chabad Rabbi, Mendy Korer, and attending numerous other official Jewish events in North London. Against some local resistance, Corbyn promoted the installation of a plaque on a demolished synagogue site in 2015 to celebrate Jewish life in the borough. Unlike most of his critics in Westminster, Corbyn unfailingly turned up to vote for motions addressing anti-Semitism in Parliament, just as he worked tirelessly against racism on every front.’

This is extremely powerful, credible evidence exposing the claims against Corbyn, not just as a sham, but as a monstrous reversal of the truth.

We know what our readers like and we know how they will likely react to our tweets, so we were surprised that the two tweeted screenshots did not immediately pick up a few likes and retweets. In fact, after four hours, they had not been liked or retweeted by anyone. We tried tweeting the screenshots again, and again they received no likes or retweets. We checked with friends and it became clear that while these tweets were visible to us, they had been secretly rendered invisible to everyone else by Twitter without us knowing. Unlike the smears unleashed on Corbyn for five years, our words had been banished because they were deemed ‘controversial’ by a giant, profit-maximising tech corporation. And we are not alone; we discovered that independent journalist Glenn Greenwald had earlier tweeted:

‘I posted this tweet 3 times and all 3 times it just won’t appear in my time-line, allowing nobody to see it. Genuinely confused. Is anyone else experiencing this problem?’

No surprise, Greenwald is also ‘controversial’, having, like Fisk, Corbyn and us, attracted ‘controversy’ ‘for his sharp criticism of the US and Israel, and of Western foreign policy’.

On Twitter, in response to corporate media censoring Donald Trump, science writer Marcus Chown commented:

‘This is what we DESPERATELY need in the UK. We need our media to interrupt speeches by Johnson and others and point out to viewers their lies. Retweet if you would like to seee [sic] this happen.’

If giant, profit-maximising, advertiser-dependent corporate media decide it is their job and right to censor political leaders like Trump and Johnson, they will have no qualms at all about censoring you, us, and everyone else. Is that what we want? What on earth qualifies Big Business as an arbiter of Truth?

*

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

Featured image is from Media Lens

One of the most frustrating aspects of COVID-19 coverage has been the emphasis on “cases,” reinforced by Dr. Anthony Fauci. In fact, he was wringing his hands about rising “case” numbers on CNN in early October. These numbers are actually positive tests. The New York Times and several experts admitted in late August that up to 90% of positive PCR tests were not indicative of the active illness that could be transmitted to others.

As it turns out, Fauci expressed a similar opinion in July. As I have reported several times before, the cycle threshold (Ct), or the number of times the test sample is amplified, is too high. According to Just the News, Dr. Fauci acknowledged this in an interview with “This Week in Virology”:

Joining the hosts of This Week in Virology in July, Fauci directly responded to a question about COVID-19 testing, specifically how patients with positive tests might determine whether or not they are actually infectious and need to quarantine.

“What is now sort of evolving into a bit of a standard,” Fauci said, is that “if you get a cycle threshold of 35 or more … the chances of it being replication-[competent] are minuscule.”

“It’s very frustrating for the patients as well as for the physicians,” he continued, when “somebody comes in, and they repeat their PCR, and it’s like [a] 37 cycle threshold, but you almost never can culture virus from a 37 threshold cycle.”

So, I think if somebody does come in with 37, 38, even 36, you got to say, you know, it’s just dead nucleotides, period.”

He also noted that the Ct count is not provided to patients and physicians automatically. The tests are simply returned as positive or negative. The entire idea of “asymptomatic” cases dissolves once you understand this. Especially when you understand there is a level of immunity in the population because of T-cell reactivity. This is long-term immunity related to exposure to other coronaviruses. People who have this reaction would have the same presentation as a recovered patient.

Obviously, the CDC knew there was an issue with picking up inert viral RNA. In July, the agency discouraged retesting recovered patients who suffered mild-to-moderate illness. Here was the rationale:

Recovered persons can continue to shed detectable SARS-CoV-2 RNA in upper respiratory specimens for up to 3 months after illness onset, albeit at concentrations considerably lower than during illness, in ranges where replication-competent virus has not been reliably recovered and infectiousness is unlikely.

It looks like the FDA was aware of this glitch in the PCR test as well. In the Emergency Use Authorization for Panther Fusion’s COVID-19 PCR test, it is noted under “Limitations”:

A positive result indicates the detection of nucleic acid from the relevant virus. Nucleic acid may persist even after the virus is no longer viable.

Also:

The Panther Fusion SARS-CoV-2 assay may be used to test asymptomatic individuals, although performance has not been demonstrated in an asymptomatic population. This assay has been shown to exhibit high sensitivity when tested with the FDA reference panel.

Granted, Panther is one of many PCR tests. However, The New York Times‘ reporting, the CDC guidelines, and Dr. Fauci’s comments confirm these principles can be applied to PCR testing generally. Experts interviewed by The New York Times suggested a cutoff of 30 Ct would be appropriate. If Dr. Fauci arrived at this conclusion in July, why are labs in the United States still using up to 40 Ct. as the standard when it appears the right Ct is somewhere between 30 and 35?

Dr. Fauci and other “experts” like former FDA Director Dr. Scott Gottlieb are constantly pushing positive tests and lamenting a rise in their numbers. They erroneously refer to these numbers as cases, which they are not under any previous definition. It is also clear there is likely some significant number of false positives. So what gives?

COVID-19 was obviously used as a rhetorical weapon to club President Trump. It became clear late in the election that Dr. Fauci was more political than he portrayed when he essentially endorsed Joe Biden.

Further, some segment of the public health establishment wants widespread vaccination and other policies like mask mandates and rolling lockdowns. High “case” numbers allow them to push these policies. High positive test numbers also create a higher R-naught, which is the measure of contagiousness. These policies are easier to push if the public believes COVID-19 is horribly contagious, making it seem a danger to at-risk loved ones.

Perhaps most deceptive, the Ct is a simple lever to pull to keep you in line and make Joe Biden look like a hero. His new COVID panel will develop and implement a plan. Then positive cases will magically drop, not because these policies were effective but simply because they will dial down the Ct with clear guidelines.

However, this will cement the supremacy of “experts” in the minds of many Americans who have not seen the dishonest little man behind the curtain. Don’t be one of those people.

*

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

Featured image is an Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead

US Election 2020: The Shame of the Nation. Duopoly and Electoral Fraud. “Democracy in America is Pure Fiction”

By Stephen Lendman, November 10 2020

Of all US presidential elections in my memory since Franklin Roosevelt’s 1944 last hurrah and Harry Truman’s 1948 surprise triumph over Tom Dewey — our neighbor telling my dad “I told you so” — Election 2020 stands out as the most brazen of manipulated outcomes.

Life Starts from Here. Counteract the “Great Reset” by “Puppet Master Big Banker”

By Julian Rose, November 10 2020

In order to finally pull the rug out from under the feet of our oppressors we have to recognize ourselves as the real actors – as people taking charge. Psychologically we must overcome victim-hood and develop faith in our creative abilities.

U.S. Arms Manufacturers Are Profiting from Atrocities

By Fernando C. Saldivar, November 10 2020

The U.S. arms industry—uncurtailed and inadequately regulated—does a brisk business in every corner of the world, but especially in the Middle East. The effects of this are especially gruesome in Yemen, where since 2015 Saudi Arabia has been engaged in an unremitting air war, supplied and supported chiefly by U.S. arms manufacturers.

Trump Planning ‘Flood of New Sanctions’ on Iran before Leaving Office: Report

By The New Arab, November 10 2020

President Donald Trump’s administration is set to announce “new sanctions every week” against Iran until the end of the president’s term in January, a US media report has claimed.

America 2020: First Comes a Rolling Civil War…

By Pepe Escobar, November 10 2020

The massive psyops is ongoing. Everyone familiar with the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) knew how this would imperatively play out. This is a live exercise. Yet no one knows exactly how it will end.

Video: Armenian Defense Collapsed in Central Nagorno-Karabakh. Shusha Is in the Hands of Azerbaijan

By South Front, November 10 2020

The Armenian defense in the central part of the Nagorno-Karabakh region is in a deep crisis. Intense clashes in the areas of Martuni and Shusha were ongoing for the entire last week.

Will the Biden Team be Warmongers or Peacemakers?

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, November 10 2020

Joe Biden has certainly paid his dues to and reaped rewards from the same corrupt political and economic system as Trump, as the latter delightedly trumpeted in every stump speech. But Biden must understand that the young voters who turned out in unprecedented numbers to put him in the White House have lived their whole lives under this neoliberal system, and did not vote for “more of the same.”

Biden and Harris Call for Unity. But Does Their Discourse Unify?

By Prof. Charles McKelvey, November 10 2020

A truly democratic discourse from the progressive side, capable of galvanizing enough popular support to forge a governing consensus, would take on the political establishment and its betrayal of the nation and the people during the last four decades.

Days of the Future Passed – Point of No Return. Covid-19 and The 2020 Presidential Elections

By Jim Miles, November 10 2020

One of the more pivotal years in modern history was 1979 and its geopolitical events.  Until recently I had considered them to be the most important alignment of events influencing future actions.  It is still of paramount importance in the hindsight of history, but events of our most recent year, 2020, will probably highlight another set of significant changes.

The Election of Joseph Biden and the Continuity of Plutocratic Rule

By Donald Monaco, November 10 2020

Across the great divide are 74 million voters who supported Biden in anticipation of securing a humane and sustainable future.  They are elated by the election of Biden and Kamala Harris, a woman of color, greeting the news with an enthusiasm not seen since the election of Barack Obama.  Their hopes will be disappointed.

Viral Optimism: The Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, November 10 2020

The announcement that Pfizer Inc., along with its collaborative partner BioNTech SE, had come up with a successful vaccine candidate to combat the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 sent the markets soaring. 

Did President Trump Just Launch A “Sting Operation” against the “Corrupt Swamp” of the Democratic Party?

By Peter Koenig, November 10 2020

As it looks now, the Democrats may have committed massive election fraud. It is not in the interest of the US and the World that the next US President emerges from a swamp of corruption and fraud.

Is Normalization with Israel without a Resolution for Palestine Justifiable?

By Askiah Adam, November 10 2020

To believe that the Palestinian problem can be resolved once the Arab-Israel relations are normalised is delusional for the very simple reason that Palestine is not central to the agreement arrived at under the circumstances.

Let’s do a reality check: many of us wake-up in the morning with our default memory sleepily reverted back to a pre-covid state of seeming ‘normality’. But after splashing our face with cold water, taking the dog for a walk and having some breakfast, it dawns on us that we are being strung-along by the hands of a puppet master, whose tweaking of the strings of power is making us dance to a tune which is 100% alien to our natural evolutionary inclinations.

That puppet master is actually not one person, but a number of people; although calling them ‘people’ might already be an error, since they operate in the shadows of a life less than human and impose their will based on a narcissistic ambition to ‘own’ everything – and of course, to control it too.

So you turn on your radio/television, open a newspaper/computer and you get something called ‘The News’. And what is it you are actually getting? Is it really The News?

Your slow mind, which prefers to remain in a convenience/comfort mode, leads you to believe you are actually receiving The News – well doesn’t it?

But once you get that mind sharpened-up a little, straighten your back, and let some sense of the true reality start to manifest, you recognize that it is not the news at all – but simply ‘the spin of the day’. The Daily Spin.

It’s a formula designed and constructed by the puppet master and his less than human cabal, to ensure they remain on course to ‘own’ everything on this planet – which includes you, me our children, aunt Mary, uncle Tom, granny and grandad, our/their houses, furniture, gardens, money, cars, and even – thoughts.

With something of a jolt you realize (once again) that The News is a grand indoctrination exercise, duplicitously contrived by those who own and run ‘the media’; and that these ‘less than human’ entities work hand in hand with the grand puppet master, as part of a mafia-esque stitch-up in which the ‘news owner’s’ get a handsome reward for printing and broadcasting ‘The Daily Spin’.

But, you may well ask, from where does the cabal get its billions? How can it pay-off the great majority of the media chiefs so as to keep The Spin going from day to day?  Pay-off not just the media chiefs but all the other operators who work from the shadows to keep this virtual agenda pumping its fake news into our overloaded psyches?

Where does their blood money come from? These fake kings and queens of imposed virtual reality whose psychopathic ambition is to rule the world.

Wait a minute – don’t we know this? I mean, we take out a loan or get an overdraught agreement from our bank – and suddenly we owe that enterprise/corporation some repayment for its supposed ‘generosity’.

Puppet master Big Banker really is a true master of deception – a magician! He applies a simple but brilliant formula which has been around a good few centuries now, but still works a dream. Yes, he simply ‘lends’ you that which he does not have – and commands you to pay him back with something you do actually have – your earnings garnered from your work, your job. A truly treacherous slight-of-hand, wouldn’t you agree?

But you see, in this way the great cabal – which is actually a very small fiefdom (probably less than 0.2% of the population) can acquire an infinite amount of dosh and thereby ‘run the world’ according to its desired despotic blueprint. That is – just so long as you and I keep taking out loans or overdraughts with Big Banking plc.

They press a button and hey presto! We have 50,000 pounds/dollars in our bank account – wow! But if you go to the cashier and ask for that 50,000 in bank notes, you will be refused. Why? Because the bank doesn’t actually have it. It’s just on paper, created from thin air. Once you get into your repayments you may be allowed to withdraw around 10% in notes, but only in separate tranches and at separated time gaps. And only so long as bank notes are kept in circulation, in this digital age of illicit surveillance.

They control how you can use your money. It is this amazingly deft act of in-your-face theft which keeps the cabal, media, fake democracies and corporations in the high chairs of control. It is this supreme act of deception which underpins the destructive capacity and longevity of the deep state; the huge debts now faced by ‘forever borrowing’ governments of nation states. Governments that then circulate the fraud by borrowing at interest from the Goldman Sachs’s of this corporate world, who in turn are supplied with endless liquidity by the Bank of International Settlements, the biggest launderer of all launderers.

Give your dirty laundry to the BIS and it will redistribute it around all the banking fiefdoms of the planet. And thus wars are financed, Big Money ‘colour revolution’ putsch’s underwritten, false flag events fueled; propaganda, social engineering and behavioral psychology agencies kept at work. All engaged in mind controlling the masses into submission.

“Keep the Great Reset on course!” demands the puppet master. The Reset, with its dystopian fake green techno-fascistic agenda brazenly heralded by The Daily Spin. The ‘green new deal’ ‘zero carbon’, ‘smart grid internet-of-things’ promised land we have all been dreaming about?

Yes, dear friends, many among us – and maybe you – shout “Crime!” briefly grasping the truth during that high moment of the day, or night, when the cabal’s road map suddenly comes into focus and the truth is out. But the next morning, once again bamboozled by the digitalised torrent of words; the tinkling announcement of incoming calls on your pocket sized microwave handset; the beckoning big brother flat screen TV on your living room wall; the long list of sterile supermarket fake-foods you need to purchase – not to mention Covid, the social agenda, the demands of the job – if one still has one – all this and so much more – cloud that moment of truth once again – and leave one as slavishly dependent as ever on the puppet master’s darkly disguised template for global control.

“Take the vaccine and submit to my will.”

How in God’s name to get out of this manic cul-de-sac?

Answer: you must want to get out.

That’s the precondition of all freedom. One must want it. One must love what it offers, uncertainties and all, more than one loves one’s slavery. But the puppet master quite obviously doesn’t want you to want to get out. He wants you to continue to buy-into his little game of domestic and digital distractions. He wants his empire and its occupants, to be largely robotic; 5G driven and mindless.

Now, draw back. Listen. Just around the corner is the ‘cashless society’, according to the cabal’s blueprint. If and when that little objective is put in place we will have to admit to having capitulated to becoming an instrument of a 100% surveillance coup which leaves no recourse to daily survival other than a piece of digitally primed traceable plastic or RFID chip under the skin.

Let’s not let it get that far shall we? Let’s take the steps today that will keep freedom alive tomorrow. One by one you can wean yourself off all the convenience items you adopted to make surviving in the rat-race that little bit more..err..’comfortable’.

On one level it’s quite simple: you don’t want 5G scrambling your DNA? Give up the cell phone. You don’t want sterile, denatured, genetically modified and irradiated food busting your immune system? Give up the stupor-market. You don’t want big banks stealing your money? Give-up big banking.. You don’t want Covid? Give up being afraid of life and give-up your mask. You don’t want to be permanently under the cosh of arrogant technocrats? So say “No” to those bully-boy fake authority figures. “I do not consent.”

Give it all up. Give your support instead to down to earth decentralized life affirmative alternatives. They exist, in embryonic forms and will flourish once a critical mass joins-up. Once you have started down this road you have shifted from being an “it’s them!” accusative in-activist, into an  “it’s us” self assertive activist. Now that’s real. Once tens of thousands – in each country – get on the same trajectory, the Big Brother blueprint starts to wobble. Once tens of millions take up the challenge, the globalist agenda starts to pale. Once that wave becomes a surfer’s dream, the Great Reset becomes the Great Reject.

We the people have made the only move that really matters: taking control of our destinies and choosing to support people friendly enterprises that are already demonstrating that a whole other range of  ‘life positive’ initiatives exist and are just waiting to be built upon.

In order to finally pull the rug out from under the feet of our oppressors we have to recognize ourselves as the real actors – as people taking charge. Psychologically we must overcome victim-hood and develop faith in our creative abilities.

The great majority of national and international political assemblies that orchestrate the ways of the world, have been exposed as immeasurably corrupted. Giant institutions like the UN, WHO, WEF (World Economic Forum)  are hornets nests of corrupted self interest and speculative financial wheeler-dealing. Vast global financial institutions like the WTO, IMF and World Bank are just geopolitical hegemonic levers and money laundering exercises.  Add it all together and where else is there left to go other than right back home, to reactivate and fiercely defend your indigenous local resource base. The place which is your immediate point of reference and hub around which your daily life revolves. That is where the revolution starts.

The gardens, parkland, orchards, bees, allotments, renewable energy schemes, artisan skills, all micro elements that when joined together give a community some form of genuine sovereignty, self sufficiency and excitement.

As much as we might not wish to recognize it, the world of the Great Reset is best counteracted by the revivification of our immediate neighbourhoods. Those still non-digitalized, human scale places of shared endeavour where one can rebuild the true connections without which life becomes intolerable. Vital connections that form the most fundamental antidote to the collapse of community  and natural intimacy; irreplaceable qualities deliberately crushed by the anti-life ambitions of the master puppeteer and his less than human cabal.

You want to break the puppet master’s grip on your life?

Yes? Then heal this severance. Make life whole again. Be life affirmative. The new humanity affirms life over death. And that affirmation starts here, right in our back yards.

*

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

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

Featured image is from OneWorld

The Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry has recently petitioned Congress to reopen the 2001 anthrax investigations.. All 435 House of Representatives and 100 United States Senators received the Executive Summary and links to the Petition and Exhibits you are receiving.

The Exhibits include documents from scientists and military officers who worked at the United States Army Medical Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Some of these important documents have never before been publicly seen.

Executive Summary: Lawyers’ Committee For 911 Inquiry. Inc

Petition To Congress To initiate A Congressional Investigation Into The 2001 Anthrax Attacks

To read executive click screenshot

This Petition is a formal request to Congress for redress of grievances regarding the federal government’s misconduct detailed in the referenced Petition related to the post-9/11 anthrax attacks of 2001. These attacks against Congress and the media involved use of a lethal biological warfare agent. This lethal agent killed 5 individuals, injured at least 17 others, and was used to attempt the assassination of two United States Senators.

This Petition centers on multiple lines of evidence relating to the FBI’s investigation of the anthrax attacks beginning in 2001 and concluding in 2010 which was intentionally obstructed and was not conducted in good faith.

The FBI’s analyses and reports were knowingly deceptive.

The Petition is 75 pages with 69 Exhibits supporting the urgent need for a Congressional investigation.

The Major Conclusions of the Lawyers’ Committee in this Petition are:

1. The FBI’s sole identified anthrax killer, Dr. Bruce Ivins, a distinguished scientist with a 28-year career at U.S. Army’s Medical Research Institute, was innocent and an unfortunate scapegoat of FBI contrivance.

2. The FBI intentionally, by concealing and avoiding key evidence, steered its investigation away from the most likely suspects, those personnel associated with Dugway Proving Grounds, Battelle Memorial Institute and their contractual CIA partner, and institutions and individuals associated with them, and concentrated instead on the least likely suspects, scientists from United States Army Medical Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), and prematurely concluded its investigation upon the death of Dr. Ivins.

3. Congressional involvement is necessary as the Department of Justice has a conflict of interest in investigating its own alleged misconduct.

4. Those responsible for the anthrax attacks are still at large and the Nation remains in peril.

5. The anthrax attacks appear to have been intended to rush the passage of the United States Patriot Act, thus undermining civil liberties, facilitating a War on Iraq predicated on nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and inaugurating the War on Terror which continues to this day

Read the full executive summary here or click screenshot above 

*

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

Featured image: Anthrax assassination letter addressed to United States Senator Tom Daschle in 2001 shortly before the Congressional passage of the United States Patriot Act. (Source: Lawyers’ Committee for 9-11 Inquiry)

A century ago, as Europe was emerging from World War I, there was a consensus that arms proliferation had been one of the chief causes of the conflict. This is why Article Eight of the Covenant of the League of Nations affirmed that “the manufacture by private enterprise of munitions and implements of war is open to grave objections.” The League was therefore committed to the regulation and curtailment of the private arms industry.

Today, that old consensus has largely been forgotten, and the U.S. arms industry—uncurtailed and inadequately regulated—does a brisk business in every corner of the world, but especially in the Middle East. The effects of this are especially gruesome in Yemen, where since 2015 Saudi Arabia has been engaged in an unremitting air war, supplied and supported chiefly by U.S. arms manufacturers.

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) estimates that in the past five years at least 112,000 people have been killed as a direct result of the conflict, including 12,600 civilians killed in targeted attacks. ACLED estimates there were more than 25,000 fatalities in 2019 alone. According to UNICEF, “Yemen is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, with more than 24 million people—some 80 per cent of the population—in need of humanitarian assistance, including more than 12 million children.” Since the Saudi air campaign began, UNICEF reports that Yemen has become “a living hell” for the country’s children. And the scale of the humanitarian crisis has only been magnified by COVID-19.

Saudi Arabia cannot wage war on this scale without Washington’s seal of approval. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Saudi Arabia was the world’s largest importer of arms between 2015 and 2019—the first four years of its war in Yemen—with a whopping 73 percent of those imports coming from the United States. Although U.S. support for the Saudi campaign began under the Obama administration, President Donald Trump has bent over backward to accommodate the Saudis and replenish their arsenal. Three of Trump’s eight vetoes have involved Saudi Arabia’s campaign in Yemen: he blocked two congressional prohibitions of arms sales and a joint resolution directing the removal of U.S. armed forces from hostilities in Yemen.

The Trump administration has been able to fill the Saudi shopping list by manipulating the federal regulatory scheme designed to ensure congressional oversight of foreign-arms transfers. Two federal laws, the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (FAA), govern foreign military sales and direct commercial sales to foreign consumers. (Foreign military sales are government to government, while direct commercial sales are between U.S. firms and foreign governments or international organizations.)

Generally, under the AECA and the FAA, the executive branch is free to proceed with an arms sale unless Congress passes legislation that prohibits or modifies the proposed sale at any time prior to the actual transfer of arms. Even then, the president may veto this legislation, and then, unless Congress can muster enough votes to override the veto, the sale proceeds. In short, without overwhelming bipartisan opposition to an arms sale Congress’s ability to stop it is relatively modest. In 2019, under the provisions of AECA, Congress passed two resolutions challenging the Trump administration’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Trump vetoed them both in July of that year, and that was the end of that.

Even worse, the AECA’s relatively weak congressional-oversight provisions can easily be circumvented altogether. Section Thirty-Six of the AECA allows the president to bypass Congress if, within the statutory notice period, the White House informs Congress that there is an “emergency ” that requires an arms sale to proceed without delay “in the national security interests of the United States.”

In May 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo certified just such an emergency, forcing through twenty-two separate arms transfers to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan. Together, these deals were worth $8.1 billion. The sales to Saudi Arabia included the Paveway and Enhanced Paveway bomb systems, manufactured by Raytheon. Members of Congress objected to this particular deal partly because it would allow the Saudis themselves to begin joint production of the Paveway system once they secured a U.S. manufacturing license. Sen. Robert Menendez, the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, led a bipartisan effort to quash that sale. Menendez also questioned other arms sales to Saudi Arabia, raising concerns about civilian casualties in Yemen and about the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, which many believe to have been ordered by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman. In the end, though, none of these objections had any effect: Pompeo’s emergency certification made it possible for the Trump administration to simply sidestep Congress.

Among the many federal watchdogs President Trump has sacked is Steve Linick, the State Department inspector general who was fired in May 2020. At the time of his removal, Linick was investigating Pompeo’s emergency certification. In August, the inspector general’s report was finally issued. It found that, while Pompeo had used proper procedures to expedite the arms sale to Saudi Arabia, he had failed to properly assess the deal’s humanitarian impact on Yemen.

For countries like Saudi Arabia, one of the advantages of working with the U.S. arms industry is precisely America’s lack of any legal requirement to consider the humanitarian impact of an arms transfer to a foreign state. Unlike its European competitors, who are legally obligated to perform such an analysis prior to any arms sale, the U.S. arms industry can sell abroad with relative impunity, especially when it enjoys the enthusiastic support of a sitting U.S. president. This is one of the major obstacles to international efforts to regulate the private-arms industry. The United States is not a party to the 2014 Arms Trade Treaty (ATT)—the heir to Article Eight of the Covenant of the League of Nations and the best hope for increasing transparency in the global arms trade. President Obama submitted the ATT to the Senate for ratification before leaving office in 2016, but President Trump withdrew it from consideration in April 2019. All the European Union’s member states—including major arms producers like France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy—have signed the treaty. Even China, which had been a holdout, signed this past July.

What makes the ATT so important—and the absence of the United States so glaring—is that, unlike other international arms agreements that deal primarily with the illicit arms trade, the ATT restricts authorized arms transfers by state parties. A key provision of the treaty requires that states refrain from exporting arms if there is evidence they will be used to commit atrocities. In other words, the treaty requires the very kind of analysis that the U.S. State Department failed to undertake before it signed off on the arm transfers to Saudi Arabia.

The ATT is not a panacea, but it does introduce a new level of transparency and accountability to the global arms trade. And it is already having real results. In June 2019, the U.K. Court of Appeal determined that the government had failed to assess whether British arms exports to Saudi Arabia might be used in a manner inconsistent with international law. The U.K. government had to suspend all sales while it reviewed its processes.

The war in Yemen is the first proxy war of the ATT era, with one side supplied principally by Iran and the other backed by the Saudis and the United States. The war continues with the tacit approval of three of the four permanent members of the UN Security Council—the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, the three countries that happen to be Saudi Arabia’s major arms suppliers. But France and the United Kingdom, as parties to the ATT, are prohibited from selling arms that will be used to commit human rights abuses, while the U.S. arms industry, working hand in hand with the State Department, operates with no such impediment. Our weapons manufacturers enjoy a highly lucrative freedom to look the other way while the Saudis target noncombatants.

So long as the United States continues to re-arm Saudi Arabia, no questions asked, it is complicit in the atrocities committed in Yemen. That such complicity remains legal in the United States is no excuse—and no accident. Signing the ATT would entail moral obligations that the Trump administration and its friends in the arms industry would prefer to avoid. If President Trump is reelected, there is every reason to believe the State Department will use every tool at its disposal to help the Saudis win their war against the Houthis, whatever the human consequences. Just this August it threatened to invoke its emergency authority yet again to rearm Saudi Arabia without congressional oversight. If Joe Biden wins the election, he must immediately end this indefensible arrangement, and make sure the United States finally ratifies the Arms Trade Treaty. We can no longer pretend not to know—or appear not to care—what is being done with bombs and missiles made in America.

*

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

Fernando C. Saldivar, SJ, is a Jesuit Scholastic of the USA West province currently working as the Global Policy and Advocacy Officer for the Jesuit Justice and Ecology Network Africa (JENA) in Nairobi, Kenya.

The US has been a fantasy democracy from inception, never the real thing, designed this way by the founders.

Of all US presidential elections in my memory since Franklin Roosevelt’s 1944 last hurrah and Harry Truman’s 1948 surprise triumph over Tom Dewey — our neighbor telling my dad “I told you so” — Election 2020 stands out as the most brazen of manipulated outcomes.

When losers are declared winners and legitimate winners mocked for crying foul, cracks in the system are beyond repair.

When establishment media across the board cheerlead the ruse — suppressing the truth — US hypocrisy, a fantasy democracy, tops the list of banana republics for its outlandish pretense.

When self-styled American exceptionalism, the indispensable state, a bastion of fundamental freedoms and moral superiority is exposed to be rotten to the core, banana republic designation isn’t strong enough to describe its total/irreversible fall from grace.

America never was beautiful. It’s always been a government of duplicitous/self-serving politicians, not laws.

They  lie, connive, misinterpret and pretty much operate ad libitum in discharging their duties as they see fit for themselves and cronies.

The same goes for duplicitous media. Serving powerful interests and themselves over truth and full-disclosure, they long ago lost credibility.

From inception to now, “we the people” exclusively means its ruling class — ordinary people exploited, not served.

America’s 1776 revolution left things intact under new management.

Throughout US history, names and faces alone changed, dirty business as usual remaining as always before.

Today’s America is pockmarked by endless wars on humanity at home and abroad, criminality in the halls of Congress and corporate suites, rampant injustice for ordinary people, festering social problems left unaddressed, and fantasy democracy — duopoly rule and electoral fraud two of its defining features.

The nation’s supreme law of the land, its Constitution, is however deceitful politicians and judicial authorities define it — the rights and interests of ordinary Americans ignored.

Government of, by, and for everyone was never the law of the land.

US governance from inception was always about privileged interests exclusively, most others exploited to serve them.

Falsely called the father of the Constitution, James Madison later said the following:

“I am not of the number if there be any such, who think the Constitution…was a faultless work.”

It’s “the best that could be obtained from the jarring interests of the states.”

“Something, anything, was better than nothing.”

Other so-called founding fathers shared his view. Serving as envoy to France at the time, Jefferson didn’t think the nation’s supreme law of the land would stand the test of time.

He called for a new constitutional convention every 20 years to update it and correct flaws.

The nation’s framers were members of its privileged class, including bankers, merchants, slave-owners, and various other profiteers — what today we’d call a self-serving Wall Street/corporate predator crowd.

They created a system, similar to what existed under the British crown, monarchal wrappings removed.

Everything changed but stayed the same, colonial era lawyer Daniel Leonard saying:

“Never in history had there been so much rebellion with so little real cause.”

America was and continues to be run by self-serving monied interests that own it.

The nation’s first president, George Washington, had no party affiliation, ran unopposed twice, and was unanimously selected, not elected — a process resembling coronations.

From then to now, ordinary Americans have had no say over who’s chosen to serve in high places, no say over how the nation is run.

Outcomes of farcical elections when held pretend to reflect the popular will.

Reality is worlds apart from a process amounting to mass deception.

Biden/Harris were anointed Dem standard bearers — selected to prevent a second Trump term the old-fashioned way, by well-planned in advance election fraud.

It’s not the first time a US election was stolen. It’s perhaps the most brazen, establishment media supporting the anointment of losers Biden/Harris over winner Trump.

Even if he’s got hard evidence for multiple lawsuits that began in earnest on Monday, if deep state dark forces want Biden/Harris installed as president, Trump will leave office in January after one term.

While nothing is certain until things play out in the coming days or weeks, that outcome seems most likely.

What’s gone on already proves beyond a reasonable doubt that democracy in America is pure fiction, not fact.

*

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Infowars

Capitalist realism is the official ideology of the neoliberal state, and is an insidious form of propaganda that seeks to eliminate resistance to regressive corporate tyranny. “Capitalist Realism,” the seminal text by Mark Fisher, forensically dissects the dynamics by which late capitalism ensures world domination, enforcing its mantra of “there is no alternative,” which discourages and represses radical public critique of the late capitalist social system, making democracy only notional. Today, capitalist realism maintains a monopoly on interpretation of culture and politics, raising questions about the dictatorship of the market, which spreads its ideology like an aggressive virus in to all parts of society. Neoliberalism rejoices in the desecration of the public. This essay argues that the best defence against the seemingly total power of predatory capitalist realism is a strong public sphere, where healthy debate about alternatives to the prevailing social reality is permitted, allowing civic society the space to conceive and construct programmes for revolution conceived in the public good.

Capitalist realism isn’t an objective schema but rather is an exercise in PR, advertising and branding for the forces that want to maintain aggressive marketisation as the dominant social and political reality. As such, capitalist realism is a convenient, cynical fiction, nonetheless elevated to the status of science by complicit neoliberals in academia, who are the advocate of “late capitalism”. Within Mark Fisher‘s analysis is a necessary commentary on the way the dictatorship of the market corrupts public institutions like academia, instituting a managerial bureaucracy indoctrinated to defend neoliberalism.

This way, capitalism reforms the institutions and actors of the social democratic state to become evangelists for the total rule of the global market, leading to the normalization of post-democratic governance and transferring power upwards to a transnational elite. This way, society becomes sterile, immunised from the emergence of ideals that compete with neoliberalism, the hegemony of the markets protected from public scrutiny.

Realism is a school of thought that professes to know the objective truth of social reality, but in all truth, science is coopted by politics and realisms are detached from the truth.

Realisms are often tainted by subjective ideological bias, hidden beneath a false pretence of positivism. Ideologically motivated interpretations of science often prevail as academic orthodoxy, immunising the propagandist schools of thought from the authority of facts that contradict them. The authority of capitalist realism is diametrically opposed to the rule of logic, because it demands uncritical obedience to fallacies about the social responsibility of capitalism. The dialectical process of reason is subordinated to the predetermined processes of thought dictated by market ideology. In neoliberal institutions, official claims are no longer contested, and difference is eliminated. Science, by definition, must be falsifiable, whereas capitalist realism militantly protects itself from the power of discourses that may falsify it.

Mark Fisher’s text is indispensable as the first attempt to describe capitalism as a totalitarian system. Marketisation erodes autonomy of the individual and replaces the role of agonistic citizenship with the authoritarian command of a transnational monolith. Neoliberalism is a parasite on the body politic, draining democracy of its life force by replacing the central role of conscientious citizenship with corporate public management. The erasure of competing political ideals reduces the possibility of change to a dangerous illusion and the cultural unconscious is the territory of domination by corporations. The orthodox narratives about the inherent liberalism of western government are wrong because western government fiercely polices resistance to the regime of capital and gives an unfair advantage to the markets.

Capitalist realism is the censorship of reason, and it betrays science because it is overly reductive and deterministic. It is reductive because in its schema, which defines humans as rational utility maximisers, the richness of human cognition is reduced to nothing more than the expression of cynical self-interest. It relies on a narrow calculus of what drives social behaviour, which testifies less to its scientific objectivity and more to its desire to model citizens as captive consumers. It is deterministic because it rationalises human behaviour as an outcome of the economic system and emasculates the role of free will.

Romanticism is the enemy of capitalist realism. It is the defence of great humanitarian causes, whereas the market suppresses the logic of solidarity. The romantic movement sought to privilege the labour of creativity, whereas capitalist realism represses the imagination by subodinating it to the teachings of officialdom. Romantic poetry often sought to condemn the social ills beget by capitalism and constituted a critical counter-narrative, whereas capitalist realism militantly polices coexisting perspectives. Romanticism is based on the virtues of the critical public intellectual, whereas capitalist realism eliminates their liberty to think. Romanticism was deeply invested in the American and French revolutions, which constituted a popular, international resistance to tyrannical absolutism. Capitalist realism can be seen as a contemporary form of absolutism.

In a vein of thought similar to Walt Whitman, the defence of democracy consists in the defence of multitudes. Capitalist realism subordinates social reality to a uniform prefabricated model. Non-conformism and heterogeneity in values are essential to breaking the dominance of market ideology. Walt Whitman defended what it meant to live as an authentic individual in an age when the citizenship were becoming homogenized by the project of imperialist mercantilism. Individual conscience, critical thinking, creativity and reason are an antidote to the tyranny of capitalism. Where capitalism coopts public discourse and has a stultifying effect on debate, true democracy disrupts this regime of conformity with a lively exchange of ideas buoyed by diversity. Russell Brand said that tyranny is the removal of nuance, and his statement could pertain to the tendency of neoliberalism to homogenise public debate by eliminating dissent from the mainstream narrative.

The exercise of critical reason stands in contrast to the commands of unthinking consumerism, and stands in solidarity with the principles of the enlightenment, which defended the life of the mind against the encroachments of absolute power. We must defend the innately progressive drive of dialectical thought from the stale logic of the market, which censors critical reason. Capitalist realism insinuates itself in the thought processes of citizens, which works to make the possibility of utopian society seem obscure. Progressive change requires sleepless vigilance against the encroachments of capitalist realism upon thought and behaviour.

Time, which itself became subordinated to the imperative of profit, may yet see the resurgence of a thinking resistance to corporate rule that sets the foundations for a utopian society enshrining the socialist precepts of democratic civilisation. In the presence of such great thinkers as Marx, we as students of history and politics are compelled to bring to fruition an internationale of independent workers republics, liberated from capitalist repression. Socialism is the last refuge of the power of thinking against the absolutism of market ideology.

*

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

The mainstream media has declared former Vice President Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election. However, this does not mean the 2020 Presidential campaign has come to an end. President Donald Trump is continuing his legal challenges to the vote counts in some key states.

The emotional investment of many Americans into the race between Trump and Biden would have shocked the drafters of the Constitution. The Constitution’s authors intended the presidency to be an office of strictly limited powers that would not impact most Americans. The Constitution authorizes the president to administer laws passed by Congress, not create laws via executive orders. The president serves as Commander-in-Chief of the military following a Congressional declaration of war, with no authority to unilaterally send troops into foreign conflict.

The Founders did not intend for the president to set the “national agenda, “ and they would be horrified to see modern presidents assume the authority to order American citizens indefinitely detained and even killed without due process.

The idea that the president should exercise almost unlimited powers is a legacy of the progressive movement. Progressives, who are responsible for the rise of the American welfare-warfare state, have an affinity for a strong Presidency that is not surprising. A government that aspires to run our lives, run the economy, and run the world requires a strong executive branch unfettered by the Constitution’s chains. The Cold War also provided a boost to presidential power, as it justified presidents assuming more unchecked authority in the name of “national security.”

The concentration of power in the executive branch does not mean presidents are all-powerful. For example, even though presidents are judged by the state of the economy, the unelected, unaccountable Federal Reserve Board typically has greater influence over the economy then the president. Presidents often must tailor their economic policies to deal with the consequences of the Fed’s actions. This is why presidents spend so much time and energy trying to influence the “non-political” Fed. Fed Chairs usually, but not always, reciprocate by attempting to tailor polices to be “useful” to the incumbent president.

It has become cliché to say that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” This means no one—not even Members of Congress, should ever oppose or second-guess a president’s foreign policy decisions. However, this rule does not apply to those comprising what has become popularly known as the “deep state”: the military-industrial complex, the national security bureaucracy—including the CIA— congressional staffers, and members of the media. This deep state serves a permanent government and has an agenda it pursues regardless of the wishes of the president or the American people.

The deep state has derailed President Trump’s (modest) efforts to fulfill his campaign promise to pursue a less interventionist foreign policy and end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Members of the deep state were instrumental in the Russiagate hoax and the impeachment of President Trump. Many supported impeachment because President Trump’s actions contradicted the DC “consensus” on US -Ukraine relations and the need for a new Cold War with Russia. President Trump is not the first president to be undermined by the deep state and he will certainly not be the last.

The 2020 election has awoken many Americans to the corruption of the modern welfare-warfare state. These Americans are ripe for the message of liberty. They can help with the vital task of demystifying the US Presidency, destroying the deep state, restoring our constitutional republic, and regaining our lost liberties.

*

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

Featured image is from countercurrents.org

President Donald Trump’s administration is set to announce “new sanctions every week” against Iran until the end of the president’s term in January, a US media report has claimed.

Citing Israeli sources, Axios reported that new sanctions on Iran are currently being planned by Trump – in coordination with key Arab allies – and will be imposed before President-elect Joe Biden resumes office on 20 January.

The report said that US Special Representative on Iran, Elliott Abrams, was in Israel on Sunday and held a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the new sanctions.

According to the report, Abrams will brief top Israeli officials on the plan this Monday.

The report comes a day after the US State Department released a statement saying Abrams will travel to Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE for “consultations on Iran”, between 7 and 12 November.

During his term, Trump has applied a “maximum pressure” policy on Iran with crippling sanctions after unilaterally withdrawing from the nuclear deal with Tehran in 2018.

A week before losing the US elections, Trump slapped fresh sanctions on Iran’s oil sector due to sales to Syria and Venezuela, among other issues.

The new “flood” of sanctions are aimed at increasing pressure on Tehran and make it harder for the Biden administration to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, Israeli sources told Axios.

Biden has indicated he wishes to return the US to the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

*

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

The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

Quali sono le linee programmatiche di politica estera che Joe Biden attuerà quando si sarà insediato alla Casa Bianca? Lo ha preannunciato con un dettagliato articolo sulla rivista Foreign Affairs (marzo/aprile 2020), che ha costituito la base della Piattaforma 2020 approvata in agosto dal Partito Democratico.

Il titolo è già eloquente: «Perché l’America deve guidare di nuovo / Salvataggio della politica estera degli Stati uniti dopo Trump». Biden sintetizza così il suo programma di politica estera: mentre «il presidente Trump ha sminuito, indebolito e abbandonato alleati e partner, e abdicato alla leadership americana, come presidente farò immediatamente passi per rinnovare le alleanze degli Stati uniti, e far sì che l’America, ancora una volta, guidi il mondo».

Il primo passo sarà quello di rafforzare la Nato, che è «il cuore stesso della sicurezza nazionale degli Stati uniti». A tal fine Biden farà gli «investimenti necessari» perché gli Stati uniti mantengano «la più potente forza militare del mondo» e, allo stesso tempo, farà in modo che «i nostri alleati Nato accrescano la loro spesa per la Difesa» secondo gli impegni già assunti con l’amministrazione Obama-Biden.

Il secondo passo sarà quello di convocare, nel primo anno di presidenza, un «Summit globale per la democrazia»: vi parteciperanno «le nazioni del mondo libero e le organizzazioni della società civile di tutto il mondo in prima linea nella difesa della democrazia».

Il Summit deciderà una «azione collettiva contro le minacce globali». Anzitutto per «contrastare l’aggressione russa, mantenendo affilate le capacità militari dell’Alleanza e imponendo alla Russia reali costi per le sue violazioni delle norme internazionali»; allo stesso tempo, per «costruire un fronte unito contro le azioni offensive e le violazioni dei diritti umani da parte della Cina, che sta estendendo la sua portata globale».

Poiché «il mondo non si organizza da sé», sottolinea Biden, gli Stati uniti devono ritornare a «svolgere il ruolo di guida nello scrivere le regole, come hanno fatto per 70 anni sotto i presidenti sia democratici che repubblicani, finché non è arrivato Trump».

Queste sono le linee portanti del programma di politica estera che l’amministrazione Biden si impegna ad attuare. Tale programma – elaborato con la partecipazione di oltre 2.000 consiglieri di politica estera e sicurezza nazionale, organizzati in 20 gruppi di lavoro – non è solo il programma di Biden e del Partito Democratico. Esso è in realtà espressione di un partito trasversale, la cui esistenza è dimostrata dal fatto che le decisioni fondamentali di politica estera, anzitutto quelle relative alle guerre, vengono prese negli Stati uniti su base bipartisan.

Lo conferma il fatto che oltre 130 alti funzionari repubblicani (sia a riposo che in carica) hanno pubblicato il 20 agosto una dichiarazione di voto contro il repubblicano Trump e a favore del democratico Biden. Tra questi c’è John Negroponte, nominato dal presidente George W. Bush, nel 2004-2007, prima ambasciatore in Iraq (con il compito di reprimere la resistenza), poi direttore dei servizi segreti Usa.

Lo conferma il fatto che il democratico Biden, allora presidente della Commissione Esteri del Senato, sostenne nel 2001 la decisione del presidente repubblicano Bush di attaccare e invadere l’Afghanistan e, nel 2002, promosse una risoluzione bipartisan di 77 senatori che autorizzava il presidente Bush ad attaccare e invadere l’Iraq con l’accusa (poi dimostratasi falsa) che esso possedeva armi di distruzione di massa.

Sempre durante l’amministrazione Bush, quando le forze Usa non riuscivano a controllare l’Iraq occupato, Joe Biden faceva passare al Senato, nel 2007, un piano sul «decentramento dell’Iraq in tre regioni autonome – curda, sunnita e sciita»: in altre parole lo smembramento del paese funzionale alla strategia Usa.

Parimenti, quando Joe Biden è stato per due mandati vicepresidente dell’amministrazione Obama, i repubblicani hanno appoggiato le decisioni democratiche sulla guerra alla Libia, l’operazione in Siria e il nuovo confronto con la Russia.

Il partito trasversale, che non appare alle urne, continua a lavorare perché «l’America, ancora una volta, guidi il mondo».

*

(il manifesto, 10 novembre 2020)

In a further attempt to circumvent the intelligence of the voter, the American media machine has, this past Saturday, Nov 7, 2020, arbitrarily declared Joe Biden president. There are many problems with this report being accurate. The largest problem is that of the media itself.

In declaring Biden the winner, this media ignores very credible accusations of Biden campaign election fraud, substantiated problems with the mail-in ballots, successful legal challenges and, more importantly, that at least three of the states in question will be available to Trump, by state law, to perform a recount. When these recounts do occur, they will likely be under court order and also allow all Republican vote watchers to view the millions of mail-in ballots of which thousands are already in question.

To begin this presentation of the first 72 hours since election night Nov 3, it would serve the voter well to remember: This is same media which first spent more than two years championing, like Biden himself, the utterly debunked Russia Gate allegations and next the Democrat’s very flawed and deliberately tepid Impeachment attempt against incumbent Trump.

More to the point, as of Election Day of this past Tuesday, that media had worked a blanket media censorship of the very credible allegations of a Biden family influence-peddling operation while their candidate was, then, Vice President.

It must be now also be recalled that Biden, during a campaign stop Q&A presser on Oct 25, stated very clearly, that…

“[W]e have put together and you guys did it for President Obama’s administration before this, we have put together I think the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”

While his statement may also prove the upcoming need for the 25^th Amendment, if it is not an admission of complicity, it is certainly an indictment of the media.

These past seventy-two business hours are already the stuff of American history and a good reason for a journalist to stay up all night to follow and report this ongoing daily history. Unless Trump concedes, this election has many more days to go. This reporter, thus sleep-deprived and objectively irritable, will in the days to come update the proceedings within the body of this series.

To the student of history and American backed Color Revolutions, when MSM divisively anointed Biden far too early as US president- after a two-and-a-half-year quest to do so- their candidate, Joe Biden, became, instead, America’s own Juan Guaido.

It has become apparent that the Trump campaign’s concern about the Dems use of mail-in ballots was justified since all allegations begin here. Trump strategists were expecting this. What was not expected was that the DNC would be so brazenly obvious in using the mail-in ballots to Biden’s advantage.

The chronology of questionable vote counting began in the wee hours of election night morning.

Still barely awake and by then cross-eyed, news hit the screen at approx. 2:30 AM EST that despite the national back and forth of the vote count, suddenly that vote count had been suspended for the night in NV, AZ, MI, Wi, PA, GA and NC. These were the last of the swing states that were still key to any victory. All but two (GA and AZ) are under a democratic governor’s control. This stoppage seemed very strange. Brief research did not reveal a precedent to this, at which time the vote favored Trump in all but AZ and NV.

Interestingly, on that night several hours before every network had already called AZ for Biden with only 75% counted. This early declaration came despite the Trump campaign’s protests and AZ governor, Doug Ducey saying,

“I encourage media outlets, cable news and national pundits to… avoid the temptation to declare a winner until our Arizona election officials have finished their jobs.”

A look at the converse is also enlightening.

As of this Sunday morning, despite NC reporting, a 99% tally and a recount proof 1.3 % lead all weekend for Trump, not one media source has, as they did so quickly for Biden in AZ, NV, WI, PA, GA, declared that state and NC’s fifteen delegates for Trump’s total.

Deliberately, this action continues to deceive the uneducated voter that there is a much larger, and presumably insurmountable electoral lead for Biden. The intent is to sow disinterest and make the allegations irrelevant to the win.

Before pursuing some much-needed strong tea and a walk, I wrote down the existing vote counts in all these states as a reference for the restart of the media’s count beginning the next day.

Revitalized, I took a quick look at tabulations on my screen merely out of habit. What I saw sent me scrambling for my notes. Suddenly Biden was up in MI. This had happened while the count was reportedly suspended!

A quick search provided a graph comparing the Biden to Trump vote count, minute-by-minute per state. Looking back in time, the graph had spiked straight up, not diagonally, for Biden during my few minutes of absence. This sudden upward tick was so large that it had put Biden in the lead. The same graph showed no uptick for Trump at the same moment at all. All Biden votes. No Trump votes?

As dawn broke, Michigan’s “Decision Desk HQ” attempted to explain away too easily this discrepancy:

“The data showing Biden receiving 100% of the newly counted votes was released at 5:04 a.m. by Decision Desk HQ which showed Biden with 2,130,695 votes at Trump with 2,200,902 votes. But that data was not correct…Once we identified the error, we cleared the erroneous data and updated it with the correct data as provided by officials. We stand by our data as reflected… “

Sure.

Since that morning’s reawakening, many more questions have been buried by the media. N ot in these pages.

This day, news surfaced of Trump’s observers being barred from their duties by the vote counters in many locations in many states. This, at the least, called into question the workers neutrality.

Hindsight would recall that before the election there were successful efforts by Democrats to loosen electoral administration standards. This did legalize ballot harvesting, where, such as in Texas, partisan “volunteers” went out and collected ballots, sometimes after helping voters fill them out. The same laws facilitated same-day voter registration and mass mail-in voting.

At the same time, the DNC decried efforts by the RNC to require ID or proof of citizenship to vote.

After the early morning irregularities of November 4, there continued the mysterious discoveries of huge tranches of ballots that were overwhelmingly, if not exclusively for Biden. This turned out not to be surprising.

It was reported that US District Judge Emmet Sullivan was outraged at Postmaster General Louis DeJoy for not following his specific court order to “sweep” all USPS facilities for any possible stashes of ballots before 3 PM on Election Day. Prudently, Sullivan’s order was crafted to prevent ballots surfacing for counting after the close of the polls at 8 PM. Of course, this, in part, was exactly what happened. Said Sullivan , “At some point, the postmaster is either going to have to be deposed or appear before me and testify under oath,” adding, “The court has been very clear that it expects full compliance,” while excoriating the US Postal Service’s legal team for failing to promptly notify him after the agency supposedly realized it couldn’t meet his deadline.

Naturally, it was then confirmed by the vote counters in many districts that “glitches”with the digital voting machines had flipped Republican votes into the Democrats’ column as was documented.

As Wednesday continued, next were reports from people who showed up to vote in person but were told by poll workers that they had already voted as absentees, despite not having requested an absentee ballot. This was confirmed by a voter, Eugene R. who contacted the author through his website, stating that this happened to both he and his wife in Allentown, PA.

In many of the Democrat-controlled precincts in PA reports coming in regarding vote counters limiting access to Republican observers, in defiance of court orders, were frequent.

Combined, these individually insignificant reports began to quickly add up to suspicion. However, next came a very large statistical anomaly, in both Georgia and Michigan.

In Michigan for example, by using the old screenshots provided, there showed a minimal mathematical difference of just 7,131 votes between Trump and GOP Senate candidate John James. This was as expected since, as PEW research agreed, the vote for senator almost always closely follows that of the presidential vote and adheres to party preference.

However, the difference between Joe Biden and Democrat candidate Gary Peters was, very strangely, 69,093.

In Georgia, as of 6:05 AM EST Wed the difference between Trump and GOP offering Senator David Purdue was also in line with party preference. However , in checking the difference between Biden and the Democrat candidate for Senator, Jon Ossoff, it was 98,501. (Biden: 2,414,651 Jon Ossoff : 2,318,850)

This math is worthy of further scrutiny and explanation, but on the first examination can only be explained by either a lot of dyed in the wool republicans not voting the party line for Trump and Biden instead. Or….?

Certainly, this report from the first full day of post-election 2020 should pique the interest of any concerned voter, democrat and republican and demand their further personal scrutiny of the ongoing events. However, in anointing Biden as the winner already, the goal of America’s media is to suggest via its cover-up, that these current allegations, just like those of influence peddling, are now over and done with.

A review of the states that remain in play show, that unless Trump concedes, both sets of allegations will remain very much in play in each of these contested states and then, likely, in the Electoral College’s “Certification of Attainment” on Dec 14.

There is much penny ante finger-pointing by the GOP and combined these smaller allegations, such as restrictions of Republican observers, may turn into a playable hand. However, it is the legislative law and violations thereof that are the serious political chess moves that will, this week, be revealed by Trump.

Before looking at the main legal challenge, the easier subject is per state recounts.

Recounts can be required or commissioned by state law in WI, GA, MI and PA. While it is true that recounts rarely change a previous outcome, one might well remember the Florida recount of 2000 and…the strength of the allegations that seem to favor Trump. Should there be a recount, it will certainly be done under direct scrutiny, no matter what, by the GOP state operatives and the supervision of the courts.

At this time the margin for Biden-reportedly– is GA: 10,195; MI: 46,113; PA: 19,423 and WI: 20,510. This is a total of 96,241. Considering the cumulative total of allegedly illegal votes, this number, subject to a recount and the courts, would seem to be plausible.

Of, Recounts.

Already the Trump campaign has informally requested a recount in WI, but cannot as yet do so per WI statute.

Under Wisconsin election law, there is no automatic recount, even if the unofficial results are extremely close; a candidate must request one. According to the state’s manual outlining the process, candidates can request a recount if they are within the 1% margin of victory. Biden currently has a lead of just 0.7 percentage points with 99% of votes tallied. The request cannot be filed before the initial counting is complete, so that news is pending.

During a WI recount, it must be open to the public, and the Board of Canvassers has the option of a hand-count or to use voting equipment to re-tabulate the ballots, unless a court orders otherwise.

In Pennsylvania, where the margin is less than or equal to 0.5% of the total vote, an automatic recount may be required in the event of certain discrepancies as described here. At this time, Joe Biden has 49.608 percent of the vote, and Donald Trump has 49.098 percent of the vote, a margin of 0.51 percent.

Regardless of percentage difference, the recount can be requested, if filed, and subsequently paid for by the complainant, within five days of the election or five days after the computational canvass and must be requested through the Court of Common Pleas. If error or fraud is found, an additional five days is provided to make additional requests elsewhere, like the courts.

Georgia does not automatically initiate a recount. However, if a candidate falls with a 0.5% margin or less, a recount can be requested. Georgia law also states that a recount must be requested within two business days following the certification of results. State law does not specify who pays for the recount, but like PA percentage difference is not a requirement.

Michigan sets five criteria for requesting a recount: 1) The candidate ran for president. 2) The request “alleges that the candidate is aggrieved on account of fraud or mistake in the canvass of the votes.” 3) the request “shall contain specific allegations of wrongdoing only if evidence of that wrongdoing is available to the petitioner.” 4) The request “sets forth…the nature and character of the fraud or mistakes…” 5) The request “specifies the counties, cities, townships, and precincts in which the recount is requested.”

Presumably, Trump’s legal army have checked-off all five boxes.

It is true that in all four states Trump is losing, and in states like MI, PA, WI, is at the moment slightly over the threshold for an automatic recount. But it is the allegations of fraud that may put Trump within those limits for a recount, or possibly swing the state in his favor afterwards. With all these states still a day or more from final results, the term, “Re-count,” will soon hit the news on four separate fronts.

Pennsylvania, SCOTUS… and the Re-Count.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito late Friday ordered Pennsylvania election officials to segregate and separately count ballots that arrived after Election Day.

Alito ordered (pdf) that those segregated ballots must be kept “in a secure, safe and sealed container separate from other voted ballots.”

The justice, however, did not order the counties to stop counting but instead ordered those ballots to be counted separately pending review of their legitimacy. Here, Trump won a significant, although partial victory as to the segregation of these challengeable ballots and possible reduction of the Biden total.

This ruling and Alito’s words may be a forewarning of SCOTUS decisions to come.

In 2019, the PA legislature passed a law called Act 77 that permitted all voters to cast their ballots by mail but, in Justice Alito’s words, “unambiguously required that all mailed ballots be received by 8 p.m. on election day.”

Indeed, the exact text from 2019 Pa. Leg. Serv. Act 2019-77, reads, “No absentee ballot under this subsection shall be counted which is received in the office of the county board of elections later than eight o’clock P.M. on the day of the primary or election.”

Even more prohibitively, Act 77 also provided that if this portion of the law was ever invalidated, that the rest of Act 77, including its liberalization of mail-in voting, would also be void.

Pretty clear so far, except if you’re on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

After a four to three party-line vote, this court very strangely ruled that, first, mailed ballots don’t need to be received by election day and that ballots can be accepted if they are postmarked on election day or received within three days thereafter. Next, the court got creative allowing that, a mailed ballot with no postmark, or an illegible postmark, must be regarded as timely if it is received by that same date.

Of course, to most who read English this court’s rulings were not in keeping with Act 77.

Before Friday’s order, Alito had already assessed that,

“The provisions of the Federal Constitution conferring on state legislatures , not state courts, the authority to make rules governing federal elections would be meaningless if a state court could override the rules adopted by the legislature simply by claiming that a state constitutional provision gave the courts the authority to make whatever rules it thought appropriate for the conduct of a fair election.” [Emph.added]

When bringing suit the Republicans also raised concerns that PA Secretary of the Commonwealth, Kathy Boockvar, had issued new guidance on Nov. 1 (pdf) directing county election boards to count late-arriving ballots.

Bottom of Form

Alito said in his order that he had not been informed that his guidance issued on Oct. 28, “which had an important bearing on the question whether to order special treatment of the ballots in question,” had been modified. Alito suggested that segregating the ballots would be necessary because, “if the State Supreme Court’s decision is ultimately overturned, a targeted remedy will be available.”

This means Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch (who joined Alito’s apparent skepticism on the Pennsylvania ruling) are open to legal challenges brought by Trump regarding post- Election Day fraud. That one decision will, after a full hearing, very likely invalidate thousands of votes cast illegally in Pennsylvania. However, with new allegations surfacing, more illegal ballots could add up. Or at the very least legitimize a recount.

This willingness by SCOTUS to already provide certiorari to actions brought to it regarding 2020 election fraud may foreshadow consequences in other states soon.

Case in point may be the news of the last hour that the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) told poll workers to ‘add a missing witness address’ to any deficient ballot and that some poll workers allegedly took it one step further by signing for non-existent witnesses. If true, in doing so, the workers may have invalidated thousands of more ballots, committed a felony offense and necessitated further SCOTUS intervention.

Wisconsin Statute 6.86 provides that

“an absentee ballot must be signed by a witness, who is also required to list his or her address. If a witness address is not listed, then the ballot is considered invalid and must be returned to the voter to have the witness correct.”

“The statute is very, very clear,” said retired Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, a Milwaukee poll watcher on Election Day. “If an absentee ballot does not have a witness address on it, it’s not valid.”

With Alito’s words and Thomas’ and Gorsuch’s concurrence in mind, WI may have just come back into play; re-count pending.

The former ambassador to Russia under the Obama Administration, Michael McFaul, presumably knows a lot about Color Revolutions, since his boss used him in Ukraine in 2014. McFaul, who was also instrumental in the Russia-Gate disinformation campaign against Trump, also authored, “7 Pillars of Color Revolution,”

As this historic election continues, reporting and further analysis will highlight daily events and their parallels that already warn that these seven pillars are seemingly right in place here in America, as they were in the examples Ukraine, Bolivia and Venezuela, at least.

The initial step in each example has been to use a national election as the reason for a razor-thin and disputed vote result, one that the media stirs into a frenzy on both sides: A frenzy so viscous that the result becomes massive civil unrest followed next by violence.

And then military intervention.

In this, the first seventy-two hours of news from the election battleground of America 2020, this first step of a media fabricated victor, of which the other side detests and alleges criminal behavior, would seem in play.

Unless Trump concedes.

As this report continues to delve into the hard allegations of equally outrageous American election fraud, like its funded Color Revolutions past, America’s color may turn out to be, here in the homeland, “Pale Blue.”

Good night…

*

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

Brett Redmayne-Titley has authored and published over 180 in-depth articles over the past twelve years. Many have been translated and republished worldwide. He can be reached at: live-on-scene ((at)) gmx.com. Prior articles can be viewed at his archive: www.watchingromeburn.uk

Featured image is CC BY 2.0/Wikimedia Commons

This article was originally published on Asia Times.

The massive psyops is ongoing. Everyone familiar with the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) knew how this would imperatively play out. I chose to frame it as a think tank gaming exercise in my Banana Follies column. This is a live exercise. Yet no one knows exactly how it will end.

US intel is very much aware of well-documented instances of election fraud. Among them: NSA software that infiltrates any network, as previously detailed by Edward Snowden, and capable of altering vote counts; the Hammer supercomputer and its Scorecard app that hacks computers at the transfer points of state election computer systems and outside third party election data vaults; the Dominion software system, known to have serious security issues since 2000, but still used in 30 states, including every swing state; those by now famous vertical jumps to Biden in both Michigan and Wisconsin at 4am on November 4 (AFP unconvincingly tried to debunk Wisconsin and didn’t even try with Michigan); multiple instances of Dead Men Do Vote.

The key actor is the Deep State, which decides what happens next. They have weighed the pros and cons of placing as candidate a senile, stage 2 dementia, neocon warmonger and possible extorsionist (along with son) as “leader of the free world”, campaigning from a basement, incapable of filling a parking lot in his rallies, and seconded by someone with so little support in the Dem primaries that she was the first to drop out.

The optics, especially seen from vast swathes of the imperial-interfered Global South, may be somewhat terrible. Dodgy elections are a prerogative of Bolivia and Belarus. Yet only the Empire is able to legitimize a dodgy election – especially in its own backyard.

Welcome to the New Resistance

The GOP is in a very comfortable position. They hold the Senate and may end up picking up as may as 12 seats in the House. They also know that any attempt by Biden-Harris to legislate via Executive Orders will have…consequences.

The Fox News/ New York Post angle is particularly enticing. Why are they suddenly supporting Biden? Way beyond internal family squabbles worthy of the Succession saga, Rupert Murdoch made it very clear, via the laptop from hell caper, that he has all sorts of kompromat on the Biden family. So they will do whatever he wants. Murdoch does not need Trump anymore.

Nor, in theory, does the GOP. Former CIA insiders assure of serious backroom shenanigans going on between GOP honchos and the Biden-Harris gang. Trade-offs bypassing Trump – which most of the GOP hates with a vengeance. The most important man in Washington will be in fact GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.

Still, to clear any lingering doubts, a vote recount would be absolutely necessary in all 6 contested states – WI, MI, PA, GA, NV and AZ. Through hand counting. One by one. The DoJ would need to act on it, immediately. Not gonna happen. Recounts cost a ton of money. There’s no evidence Team Trump – on top of it short of funds and manpower – will be able to convince Daddy Bush asset William Barr to go for it.

While relentlessly demonizing Trump for spreading “a torrent of misinformation” and “trying to undermine the legitimacy of the US election”, mainstream media and Big Tech have declared a winner – a classic case of pre-programming the sheep multitudes.

Yet what really matters is the letter of the law. State legislatures decide whose electors go to the Electoral College to appoint the President.

Here it is – Article II, Section 1, Clause 2: Each state shall appoint electors “in such Manner as the Legislature Thereof May Direct.”

So this has nothing to do with governors, not to mention the media.  It’s up to GOP state legislatures to act accordingly. The drama may roll out for weeks. The first step of the Electoral College procedure takes place on December 14. The final determination will only happen in early January.

Meanwhile, talk of a New Resistance is spreading like wildfire.

Trumpism, with 71 million + votes, is firmly established as a mass movement. No one in the GOP commands this kind of popular appeal. By sidelining Trumpism, the GOP may be committing seppuku.

So what will Deplorables do?

The always indispensable Alastair Crooke hits the nail on the head in a powerful essay: Trump is the President of Red America. And depending on how the scripted (s)election tragicomedy develops next, the Deplorables are bound to become The Ungovernables.

Crooke references a crucial parallel evoked by historian Mike Vlahos, who shows how the current American saga mirrors Ancient Rome in the last century of the Republic, pitting the Roman elite against the Populares – which today are represented by Red (Trumpist) America:

“This was a new world, in which the great landowners, with their latifundia [the slave-land source of wealth], who had been the ‘Big Men’ leading the various factions in the civil wars, became the senatorial archons that dominated Roman life for the next five centuries — while the People, the Populares, were ground into a passive — not helpless — but generally dependent and non-participating element of Roman governance: This sapped away at the creative life of Rome, and eventually led to its coming apart.”

So as much as the Dem machine had wanted it, Trump is not yet Imperator Caesar Augustus, whom the Greeks called Autokrator (autocrat), but was a de facto monarch. The American Augustus, Tiberius and most of all Caligula is still further on down the road. He will definitely be a benign, humanitarian imperialist.    

In the meantime, what will imperial Big Capital do?

The West, and especially the American Rome, is on the edge of a double precipice: the worst economic depression ever, coupled with imminent, myriad, uncontrollable explosions of social rage.

So the Deep State is reasoning that with Biden – or, sooner rather than later, Supreme shakti and Commander-in-Chief Maa Durga Kamala – the path gets smoother towards the Davos Great Reset. After all, to reset the chess pieces, first the chessboard must be knocked over. This will be one step beyond Dark Winter – which not accidentally was evoked  by teleprompter-reading Biden himself on the final presidential debate. The script gets ominously closer to the Rockefeller Foundation’s 2010 Lock Step.

Meanwhile, Plan B is kept in ready, steady, go mode: the lineaments of a global rampage, focused on “malign” Russia’s sphere of influence to satisfy a “revived” NATO and the military-industrial complex, which selected the now media-appointed President-Elect in the first place because he’s no more than a pliant cardboard figure.

*

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

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The Armenian defense in the central part of the Nagorno-Karabakh region is in a deep crisis.

Intense clashes in the areas of Martuni and Shusha were ongoing for the entire last week. Nonetheless, on the evening of November 7, Azerbaijani units were able to achieve notable progress in the battle for this key Armenian stronghold by reaching its northeastern countryside and disrupting the road link between Shusha and Stepanakert. Some Azerbaijani units even entered the town itself.

On the morning of November 8, clashes there continued and, in the afternoon, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced that Azerbaijani forces had captured the town. Pro-Azerbaijani sources immediately declared that at least 800 Armenian soldiers were killed during the clashes there. These developments came amid the evacuation of civilians from the capital of the Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Stepanakert, which is located just north of Shusha. Nonetheless, local authorities were able to contain the panic. On top of this, the Armenian military declared that the Azerbaijani statement about the capturing of Shusha is untrue and that clashes were still ongoing in the town and its surroundings. According to Armenian sources, a large number of Azerbaijani troops were already killed there.

As of the morning of November 9, the Azerbaijani military has not been able to fully secure Shusha. This allows the Armenian side to declare that the claims of Aliyev and the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry are false. The fact that clashes erupted inside Shusha itself already demonstrate the scale of the troubles faced by the Armenians.

On the afternoon of November 9, the Azerbaijani military released a video confirming its control over the town of Shusha. Therefore, the Armenian resistance is now likely concentrated in its northern countryside. The town is outflanked from at least three sides: from the south, west and east. The only road outside Shusha not under control of the Turkish-Azerbaijani bloc leads to the north, towards Stepanakert. It is under a de-facto fire control of the advancing forces and clashes are ongoing near it.

If Ankara and Baku cut off the road towards Stepanakert, the Armenian forces remaining there will have almost no chance to challenge Azerbaijani control over the town. They will have two main options: The first is to die trying to buy time for the evacuation of civilians from Stepanakert and a possible counter-attack from the north. The second is to retreat from the town via the mountains and try to conduct sabotage and reconnaissance raids against the Turkish-Azerbaijani forces from the gray zone.

The inability of the Armenian side to defend its key stronghold in the center of Nagorno-Karabakh demonstrates that they don’t have not enough means and measures to regain the initiative in the ongoing war and their current main hopes are now concentrated on the nearing winter that should complicate the military activities in the mountains and the intervention of some third party.

The current Armenian leadership has been actively working in an attempt to gain support of the United States and the European Union to pressure Azerbaijan and Turkey to agree on some kind of ceasefire that would allow the Armenian forces to avoid a total defeat. Nonetheless, so far, these efforts have led to no results as the Western world is more concerned regarding the negative tendencies in the US amid the controversial elections that led to the alleged victory of Joe Biden. As to Russia, with which Yerevan had been destroying relations over the previous years, it is not likely to directly intervene in the war on the side of Armenia if there is no direct threat to sovereign Armenian borders or the undeniable evidence of ethnic cleansing of Armenians on the territories captured by the Azerbaijani-Turkish bloc.

Another factor is Iran. Tehran has already concentrated a large group of forces on the border with Karabakh. This group is much larger than that needed to contain some incidents that may appear on the border in the current conditions. Iran as well as Russia are not interested in the further destabilization of the region. Therefore, while the current government in Yerevan cannot be described as being allied to them, they will likely contribute additional diplomatic efforts and pressure to the sides to de-escalate the conflict. The Turks and Azerbaijanis fully understand this situation and thus their current goal is to make as many military achievements as possible in order to set conditions for securing of these gains on the diplomatic scene.

*

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

SUPPORT SOUTHFRONT:

PayPal: [email protected], http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront