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Category: Disinformation

  • Western Lies and False Narratives About Ethiopia

    War is big, loud, significant and attracts an audience; media likes it. Foreign wars (commonly Middle Eastern or African) distract from domestic chaos and reinforce a long-held prejudice of savagery and race, and the opposite, equally false notion of western superiority.

    In all conflicts mainstream media plays a crucial role, often inflammatory, feeding the  discord through a particular narrative. Western media claims it is independent, but this is fallacious; corporate owned or State sponsored, it is conditioned by a particular world-view, ideologically/politically, nationalistically, historically.

    After war erupted in Ethiopia in November 2020 western media have played a major role in spreading mis-/disinformation and, occasionally, outright lies. Together with foreign powers led by the United States, international human rights groups and elements within United Nations Agencies, they attacked and undermined the Ethiopian government.

    Statements are issued and regurgitated in various outlets: BBC, CNN, France24, Al Jazeera, etc., seemingly without verification; the more often something is repeated, the louder the drumbeat of insistence on its truth (currently Ukraine where Putin has no intention of invading), no matter how incredible it may be. In November 2021 e.g., media carried the totally untrue story that TPLF forces were “200 km, or 400 km away from the capital Addis Ababa and could take the city in weeks”. Was this story spread in all innocence by the media; why would a responsible editor publish such information without checking it?

    Such stories sensationalize events, build tension and attract public attention. In Ethiopia they falsely portrayed the terrorist Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) as an ascendant force, the Ethiopian government as cruel and desperate, their forces deflated and inadequate.

    The war was triggered by the TPLF’s preemptive attack on Federal Army bases on 4 November 2020; uncounted soldiers were killed, arms stolen. This fact (and the terrorist nature of the TPLF), is routinely disregarded by international media, and western governments, despite various TPLF spokespeople admitting it.

    Imagine the outrage if such an assault took place against a western military base: there would be widespread fury, a sharp retaliatory response – or a protracted “war on terror” – unanimous support from allies, and wall-to-wall anger across the media. But, instead of condemning the terrorists, the US attacked the Ethiopian government, legitimized the TPLF, demanded PM Abiy Ahmed enter into negotiations with it. Again, would any western government be expected to negotiate with a terrorist gang that had carried out an act of treason? The hypocrisy, condescension and, yes, racism of the “international community” (the US and her bedmates), former or decaying imperialists, knows no limits.

    Manufacturing Consent

    An influential voice in the build-up to the conflict and a regular voice of media dis-/misinformation once fighting started, was the International Crisis Group (ICG). In a report published May 2021, Disinformation in Tigray – Manufacturing Consent for a Secessionist War, New Africa Institute (NAI) detail that, ICG “played a critical role in driving the world to believe that TPLF had the upper hand in any ensuing conflict”.

    A week before the TPLF attacked the Northern Command ICG published, Steering Ethiopia’s Tigray Crisis Away from Conflict, stating, Tigray’s “well-armed regional paramilitary force is led by former national army generals. It also boasts a large militia full of war veterans. TPLF leaders say that many officers in the units of the Northern Command…would not be likely to support any federal intervention, and some could even break and join Tigray’s forces.” Such material, it is believed, emboldened the TPLF to launch their deadly attack, plunging Ethiopia into chaos.

    NAI detail the extraordinary level of falsehoods, distortions and errors perpetrated by media; the dis-/misinformation campaign, they make clear, was an attempt “to manufacture consent for an unpopular irredentist, ethnic secessionist war that could not be justified in the eyes of the international public through honest reporting.” For Ethiopians it has been devastating, but within the halls of western power – Washington, mainly, but also London and, though less so, Brussels, it appears it was welcomed. A chance to destabilize not just Ethiopia under PM Abiy Ahmed, seen as too independent and potentially influential, but the Horn of Africa more broadly. The US and co. supported the TPLF politically, diplomatically and, many believe, militarily from the outset; mainstream news outlets obediently followed suit.

    Media may refute the assertion of a conscious campaign of support for the TPLF; however, given the breadth of material published that either attacks the government, misleads the public or supports the terrorists, it is hard to deny.

    Initially, a common excuse for the appalling coverage was the “communications blackout”. The Washington Post went as far as to blame the government for the dis-/misinformation, saying, “by blocking communications and access to Tigray, the [Ethiopian] government helped create conditions where disinformation and misinformation can thrive.” They only “thrive” if journalists/editors don’t do their jobs and check their material.

    The menu of mis-/disinformation varies from the seemingly innocuous; e.g. describing the forced retreat of the TPLF to Tigray in December 2021, as a “withdrawal” (similar to reporting of the 2021 Gaza assault by Israel, in which BBC said X number of Palestinians had died and Y number of Israelis had been killed), to false accusations of “massacres, mass rape and sexual violence, looting, extrajudicial killings, genocide, ethnic cleansing and war crimes.” Savage portrayals of Ethiopian and Eritrean forces – drawn into the conflict after the TPLF bombed the capital Asmara – that NAI make clear “draw on old colonial tropes of Africans.”

    The oft-repeated media claims of rape and gang rape by Ethiopian Federal Forces and Eritrean soldiers feed into this perverse notion of primitive Africans. Sexual and gender based violence was highlighted in the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC), joint report, 3 November 2021. Premature and partial, it is full of generalized accusations of criminality.

    Whilst admitting it is not an “exhaustive record of all relevant incidents”, its authors asserted that violations were committed by all parties to the conflict, including rape/gang rape. Assertions disputed by the Ethiopian government (which has said it will investigate) and refuted in Eritrea, where there is no culture of rape/gang rape, among society or the military. Within the TPLF, however, rape/gang rape is part of its modus operandi.

    TPLF military/para-military committed rape in the Ogaden region; e.g., over a 25 year period of suppression of the ethnic Somali population. The same abuse took place against Oromo women for decades, and long before the conflict started in Tigray rape was a serious problem throughout the region; in 2019 a leading activist, Meaza Gidey tweeted: “rape culture is ubiquitous in Tigray oftentimes stigmatizing & shaming female rape survivors into marrying their rapist.”

    While Tigray was in total chaos, on 11 February, 10 prisons in the region were emptied of all inmates. EHRC report that paperwork on the prisoners was destroyed, making, “Tracking major offenders nearly impossible and that it is one of the causes for the substantial increase of … major crimes.” The increase was so pronounced that the TPLF-mouthpiece Tigrai Media House (TMH) admitted that, “TPLF itself was responsible for the rise in crimes.” NAI report the TMH statement: “When news broke out that the Ethiopian army was making its way to Mekelle, the Tigray regional police forces and the prison forces disbanded abandoning their posts. As a result of this, the prison doors were left open and all the hardcore criminals escaped into the community.”

    None of this information was reported by western media; misrepresentation through omissions, like this, has been widespread throughout.

    Another example is the absence of coverage or condemnation of the Mai Kadra Massacre, one of many such TPLF atrocities. In November 2020 the village of Mai Kadra was the scene of a brutal attack by TPLF militia, the Samri and Tigrayan special police forces. The EHRC found that, “Samri, …local police and militia….killed hundreds of people beating them with batons/sticks, stabbing them with knives, machetes and hatchets and strangling them with ropes.” This atrocious, ethnically motivated attack, EHRC states, “May amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes.” The massacre was largely overlooked by mainstream media and ignored by foreign governments; after all, those slaughtered were savages – poor (black) Africans, murdered by other poor (black) Africans.

    Mai Kadre is included in the OHCHR/EHRC report, though estimating the deaths at 200, in contradiction to the 600+ Amnesty International say were murdered. To “balance” this appalling atrocity the report refers to a highly disputed incident by the Ethiopian Defense Force (EDF) in Axum, where it is claimed more than 100 people were killed. Despite the fact that there is no evidence of such an attack and no bodies have ever been discovered the story was all over mainstream media.

    Then there is the oft-repeated claim that the Abiy government blocked humanitarian aid to Tigray. In January 2021 The Economist announced that food was being used as a weapon by the government, and quoted that the US run Famine Early Warning Systems Network, saying that, “parts of central and eastern Tigray are probably one step from famine.” There was no famine (terrible hardship as in all war zones, yes), and according to Ethiopia’s National Disaster Risk Management Commission, by May 2021 all 4.5 million Tigrayans in need of food had received assistance, 70% of it subsidized by the government.

     The whole area of UN humanitarian work was polluted by TPLF moles, including within the World Food Programme (WFP). In October 2021 whistleblowers from UN Ethiopia revealed that the “TPLF……. have networks within UN system.” In an attempt to purge the organisation of TPLF infiltrators on 27 September the Ethiopian government expelled seven UN officials for, “Dissemination of misinformation and politicization of humanitarian assistance;” the “diversion of humanitarian assistance to the TPLF; Transferring communication equipment to be used by the TPLF;” and, unbelievably, “reticence in demanding the return of more than 400 trucks commandeered by the TPLF for military mobilization and for the transportation of its forces since July 2021.” None of this was reported by international media or commented upon by the US administration, or any other western government.

    The spirit of unity

    The examples of betrayal and western media dis-/misinformation over the course of the conflict are endless. The sources of material and the way stories evolve and become disseminated is often convoluted, facts ignored, evidence found wanting, or manufactured entirely, as with the so-called “Axum massacre”, examined in detail by NAI. Various players, including Europe External Programme with Africa (EEPA), where it apparently originated, and discredited ex-BBC Africa journalist Martin Plaut, contributed to a concocted narrative, accepted by Amnesty International and forming the basis for a human rights report.

    A positive consequence of the west’s betrayal has been the heartening community spirit engendered among Ethiopians. Divided for decades by manipulative TPLF ethno-policies, Ethiopians, at home and abroad, have united against this group of self-supporting interconnected adversaries: The terrorist TPLF, “The West”, specifically the United States and the international mainstream media.

    And now, as the fighting subsides and the country collectively draws breath the work of reconciliation and healing must begin.

    To this end, in the hope of facilitating “national reconciliation”, PM Abiy announced  the extraordinary step, which angered many Ethiopians, of granting an amnesty for some of the country’s most high-profile political prisoners and parliament has established a “Commission for National Dialogue”, “to pave the way for national consensus and keep the integrity of the country.” Despite the TPLF and their partners in crime, the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), refusing so far to participate, this is encouraging.

    Ethiopia has suffered terribly over the last year or so, and it will take time to recover. But, if the sense of national unity that has been created over the past year or so is maintained, healing will come more readily and this wonderful country will emerge stronger than ever.

    The post Western Lies and False Narratives About Ethiopia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Anti-China Canadian MPs claim Sovereignty over Argentine Mine

    The anti-China panic sweeping Canadian politics has descended from tragedy into farce.

    A month ago I mocked Globe and Mail Report on Business columnist Eric Reguly for complaining about China-based Zijin Mining purchasing Neo Lithium. The nominally Canadian firm extracts lithium in Argentina.

    Reguly succeeded in stirring a national security scare about minerals extracted 10,000 kilometres from Canada. Since he published “The West is asleep while China hoards key minerals” on December 18 the opposition parties have repeatedly criticized the Liberals for failing to conduct a “national security review” of the Neo Lithium sale. Conservative leader Erin O’Toole called it “critical” to review the purchase of Argentinian resources by a Chinese firm while NDP MP Charlie Angus tweeted, “How is it possible that Ottawa gave the thumbs up to a Chinese takeover of Neo Lithium? This is a critical metal for the renewable economy. There is a major geopolitical fight for control of these minerals and Canada is being left on the sidelines.”

    Opposition MPs forced Innovation, Science and Industry minister François-Philippe Champagne to explain the lack of review before a federal committee. At the industry and technology committee meeting a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute demanded a review of the sale. In all seriousness Jeff Kucharski claimed, “our national security interests don’t end at our borders. The mere fact that the lithium mine is in Argentina, and not in Canada is really irrelevant.” But Kucharski is calling for a Canadian, not Argentinian, government national security review.

    In an article on Neo Lithium Kucharski wrote, “Resource firms should be considered as contributors to advancing Canada’s national security interests, irrespective of where their activities and assets are located.” With Canadian-based or listed mining firms operating thousands of international projects, Kucharski’s logic would grant Ottawa remarkable leverage over the global mineral supply and (probably) threaten Canadian companies’ vast profits. Right-wing, pro-corporate, voices don’t generally argue for measures that undermine Canadian mining firms (Why would a government allow a Canadian company into their country if it meant foreign sovereignty over their resources?). But, the ‘threat’ of China’s rise elicits all manner of double standards and absurdities.

    Another China double standard is the discussion of Canada creating a foreign agents’ registry. Last week the Globe and Mail quoted a spokesperson for Canadian Friends of Hong Kong saying that “Canada needs a foreign agents registration act like those in Australia or the United States, as well as a centralized reporting centre for victims of intimidation by the Chinese government.” In the following sentence of the article Ian Bailey and Steven Chase quote “Mehmet Tohti, executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project” (URAP). But URAP ought to be listed on any foreign agent registry worth its salt. URAP’s website says it “is funded by the Washington-based National Endowment Fund for Democracy for its Advocacy work in Canada.” The NED was established in 1983 to work alongside the CIA. In 1991 Allen Weinstein, a founding member and president, told the Washington Post, “a lot of what we [NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

    In a recent expose The Canada Files noted that Tohti has “far deeper connections to the NED than those stemming only from URAP. In 2004, Tohti was a co-founder of the NED-funded World Uyghur Congress. He was a ‘Special Representative’ of the WUC to the European Parliament between 2010 to 2012, and even served as Vice-President of the World Uyghur Congress for two separate terms.”

    Tohti and URAP played an important role in pushing Parliament’s subcommittee on human rights to adopt a resolution calling China’s treatment of Uighurs a genocide. The House of Commons subsequently followed suit, which has pushed the Trudeau government towards more conflictual relations with Beijing.

    The Globe and Mail’s senior parliamentary reporter, Steven Chase, has quoted Tohti in a half dozen articles over the past two years. Chase has also written numerous articles about the need for a foreign agents’ registry. I did not find any article in which he mentions that Tohti’s group is funded by a CIA cut-out organization.

    An important force pushing for a foreign agent registry is Kucharski’s MacDonald Laurier Institute. Its fellows have published recent op-eds titled “Canada needs a foreign agent registry to help it tackle China’s influence” and “The persistent threat of foreign interference in Canada’s democracy”. As part of their supposed concern with foreign governments interfering in Canadian politics, the MacDonald Laurier Institute established DisinfoWatch.org. In December it published “Influence Operation Targeting Canadian 2021 Federal Election”. The report noted, “The Chinese government has repeatedly demonstrated its readiness to advance its interest in Canada by directly manipulating Canadian political debate and policy through the use of disinformation, threats, intimidation, and influence operations directed at Canadian diaspora groups.”

    Well, surprise, surprise, DisinfoWatch is also funded by the US government. The bottom of its initiating statement notes that “Development of the DisinfoWatch platform is funded by the United States Department of State’s Global Engagement Center and the US Embassy in Ottawa with support from Journalists for Human Rights.” And to move from hypocrisy into the realm of farce, the MacDonald Laurier Institute has received significant sums from the governments of Taiwan and Latvia.

    Those calling for a foreign agents’ registry are not principally concerned with foreign influence in Canadian politics. They are obsessed with stopping the world’s most populous country from someday transplanting the US to become its most powerful.

    • On February 4 China Canada Focus will be hosting a free webinar with Noam Chomsky on Canada’s growing conflict with China.

    The post Anti-China Canadian MPs claim Sovereignty over Argentine Mine first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Onus on Those Who Accuse Others of Mis/Disinformation

    Musician Neil Young finds himself in the 2022 limelight. It may well generate more on-air play and music sales for the Canadian. Young wrote a letter on his website (since removed) that garnered much attention. It read:

    Please immediately inform Spotify that I am actively canceling all my music availability on Spotify as soon as possible. I am doing this because Spotify is spreading false information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.

    Young had a specific target in mind: “I want you to let Spotify know immediately today that I want all of my music off their platform. They can have [podcaster Joe] Rogan or Young. Not both.”

    Sounds a lot like a Neil Young’s nemesis, George W Bush: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

    It comes on the heels of a 31 December episode from The Joe Rogan Experience in which one of Rogan’s guests was Dr. Robert Malone, whose self-bio boasts: “I am an internationally recognized scientist/physician and the original inventor of mRNA vaccination as a technology, DNA vaccination, and multiple non-viral DNA and RNA/mRNA platform delivery technologies. I hold numerous fundamental domestic and foreign patents in the fields of gene delivery, delivery formulations, and vaccines: including for fundamental DNA and RNA/mRNA vaccine technologies.” Malone is, notwithstanding, alleged to have spread COVID-19 misinformation.

    Of course Joe Rogan doesn’t get everything right. He admits “absolutely I get things wrong.” Don’t we all. Rogan’s interviews are often quite interesting, but he really blew it when he interviewed Yeonmi Park and let her off easily for transparent nonsense about North Korea. But Rogan doesn’t pretend to know all the topics deeply; he is learning, as are, hopefully, all of us.

    Does Neil Young get everything right?

    When one accuses someone else of misinformation or disinformation, he might not be claiming to know the truth, but he does claim to know what is untruthful. That may be, but this claim carries an onus. If you want to accuse someone of misinformation/disinformation, then to maintain integrity, you should specify what that mis/disinformation is, and you must demonstrate why it is mis/disinformation. If you cannot point to any instance of mis/disinformation and why it is so, then, with all due respect, just shut the f**k up. In the present Young-Rogan kerfuffle, since mis/disinformation has been alleged, if Young can’t back up his allegations, then first, an apology is in order, and second this should be followed by a retraction of the allegation.

    If one claims to know the truth from untruth, then that person must specify what she claims to be factually inaccurate. It simply does not pass muster to point out that misinformation was communicated by another person. Any lunkhead on the street can shout misinformation. (And it is salient to make clear the distinction here between misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation is when a person mistakenly communicates information that is factually inaccurate. Simply put, he was wrong. Disinformation is far more insidious because the person knows that what she is communicating is factually inaccurate. In common parlance, she lied.)

    Imagine the misinformation paradigm:

    Neil: That’s misinformation.
    Joe: What exactly is that misinformation?
    Neil: You said [and here we have to guess what was the faulty information because Neil was never challenged to specify what was faulty].
    Joe: [to which Joe could theoretically respond] Why is that information faulty?

    The onus is on the accuser to state clearly what information was wrong and prove it to be wrong.

    Imagine the disinformation paradigm:

    Neil: You lied.
    Joe: What lie did I tell?
    Neil: You lied about Covid.
    Joe: What did I say about Covid that was a lie?
    Neil: You said [and here we have to guess what was the lie because Neil was never challenged to specify what was a lie].
    Joe: [to which Joe could theoretically respond] How is that a lie?

    The onus is on the accuser to state clearly what was a lie and prove it to be a lie, and the accuser has to also prove that the accused knew that he was telling a lie.

    Young is probably well meaning, but that does not mean his motivations weren’t ill advised or even morally questionable. In 2014, Dissident Voice editor Angie Tibbs criticized Young for his:

    blatant show of support for the apartheid state, a nasty slap in the face for the occupied people of Palestine, and most specifically Gaza where the residents are now counting the bodies and burying their dead as a result of Israel’s latest bombardment.

    Who could believe that Neil Young, the long time activist, would ignore the BDS campaign, including a cultural boycott demanding that Israel recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully comply with the precepts of international law?

    Young has also been called out for his misinformation concerning the “Tiananmen Square massacre.” Decades after the violence that transpired outside Tiananmen Square, Young was still dedicating his hit song “Rockin’ in the Free World” “to the Chinese students who were killed during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989,” even though the CIA-orchestrated upheaval targeted the killing of soldiers.

    As for COVID-19 and how best to treat it, for any non-expert (and, granted, maybe Neil Young has carried out much study and has become quite expert about COVID), to claim epistemological certitude should be greeted with more than a modicum of skepticism. Who can state with absolute or near absolute certainty on all the vectors involved with COVID-19? Likeliest, the virus is spread by aerosols. But who is most at risk? Probably the elderly and the infirm. What are the dangers of infection? What is the best way to combat an infection? What is the best way to gain immunity? What are the best ways to avoid an infection? What reasonable, science-backed precautions should one take: mask wearing, hand washing, social distancing, disinfection of surfaces, etc? Should one be vaccinated? What are the side-effects from the vaccines: dangerous? life threatening? short-term? long-term? Does recovery from COVID-19 provide greater protection from re-infection? If vaccination is found to provide safe and reasonable protection (obviously it does not confer immunity), then which vaccine should be prescribed? How much is known about the safety and possible side-effects given that vaccine trials are still ongoing? Can the pharmaceutical manufacturers be trusted? Why have the pharmaceutical companies’ COVID vaccines been indemnified? How should people regard the report that Thailand’s National Health Security Office paid out about 927 million baht (about 28 million USD) to 8,470 people who suffered side effects after being vaccinated against COVID-19? Is the clinical data transparent? VAERS reports reflect what percentage of the adverse events? Is the virus petering out? There is so much to be considered and knowledge is still coming to light.

    Some of the I-know-better-than-others crowd have called for censorship. Is censorship how humans arrive at the truth? Have the people who argue for censorship learned anything from when the church proscribed the teaching of heliocentrism? Wasn’t it a heresy at one time (and even still in some backwaters) to theorize human life as having evolved from simpler lifeforms?

    We are exhorted by government officials and government spokespersons to follow the science. But when do they ever bother to present the scientific evidence? Do they point to the independent peer-review science literature? Can we trust that doctors and scientists always get it right? Didn’t doctors use to be big boosters of cigarette smoking?

    Spotify has reacted to Young’s complaints and removed his music from the platform. Spotify has also promised to be vigilant against misinformation, as we all should be. But is one not promoting misinformation when one falsely accuses another of misinformation?

    Rogan supports Spotify’s plan to put a disclaimer at the start of controversial episodes.

    For his part, Young denied pushing censorship. “I support free speech. I have never been in favor of censorship. Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information.”

    Neil, you say you support free speech, but did you not just threaten Spotify because that platform allowed Joe Rogan to exercise his free speech?

    The podcaster has taken the high road.”My pledge to you [the listener] is that I will do my best to try to balance out these more controversial viewpoints with other people’s perspectives, so we can maybe find a better point of view.”

    Rogan added, “I’m not mad at Neil Young, I’m a huge Neil Young fan.”

    Still, it would have been preferable if Rogan had respectfully put the onus on Young to point out the inaccuracies that the musician had alleged.

    Maybe Young is an expert on COVID-19, and maybe he can discern what is factually accurate and inaccurate. However, there are thousands and thousands of physicians and scientists (and plenty of Canadian truck drivers and their supporters) out there that disagree with Young.

    Top image credit: Loudwire

    The post The Onus on Those Who Accuse Others of Mis/Disinformation first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Washington Post Publishes a Commentary Full of Lies Against Putin

    On January 29, the Washington Post published an op-ed by the well-known Yale neoconservative Timothy Snyder, titled “Putin’s case for invading Ukraine rests on phony grievances and ancient myths.” Key passages in Snyder’s article are:

    Last July, Vladimir Putin supplied the mythical basis [BAD LINK FROM SNYDER: here is a functional link to see Putin’s article] for Russian war propaganda in an essay titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” The essential idea is that Russia has the right to Ukraine because of things that happened a thousand years ago in Kyiv. … It takes some fanciful thinking to see here a reason for Russia to invade Ukraine in the 21st century, as it seems prepared to do. … Putin’s idea is that Ukraine is a fraternal nation because of how he personally feels about the past. This is known as imperialism. It flies in the face of the basic legal principle of state sovereignty and the basic moral principle of democracy.

    Putin’s article did NOT assert that “Russia has the right to Ukraine because of things that happened a thousand years ago in Kyiv.” It didn’t even assert that “Russia has the right to invade Ukraine.” Furthermore, the allegation that Putin’s view that’s expressed there advocates “imperialism. It flies in the face of the basic legal principle of state sovereignty and the basic moral principle of democracy” is likewise a boldfaced lie. Moreover, Russia’s Government has consistently denied that it has any intention to invade Ukraine, but instead asserts that if Ukraine invades Donbass, then Russia will not allow that invasion to conquer the residents there. Russia’s position has consistently been that only the people who live in Donbass have the right to determine whether or not — and the terms under which — they will be ruled by the government in Kiev that was installed (against the will of over 90% of them) in February 2014 when the democratically elected President of Ukraine was forcibly overthrown by what America’s Government calls a “democratic revolution,” and by what Russia’s Government and the head of the “private-CIA” U.S. firm Stratfor, and many historians, call a coup, which was imposed by the Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning U.S. President Barack Obama’s Administration, in order to replace Russia’s naval base on Crimea by a new U.S. naval base there (which Obama wasn’t able to do, though his coup conquering Ukraine otherwise succeeded). Several of the mercenaries that the U.S. hired (some from Georgia, for example, as shown in these videos) subsequently confessed to having participated in it. (And, subsequently, the U.S. regime charged Putin with ‘aggression against Ukraine’, and with ‘seizing Crimea’, and issued sanctions against Russia for that.)

    Here are some key passages from Putin’s article (the article that Snyder lies against):

    The determination of nationality, particularly in mixed families, is the right of every individual, free to make his or her own choice. But the fact is that the situation in Ukraine today is completely different because it involves a forced change of identity. And the most despicable thing is that the Russians in Ukraine are being forced not only to deny their roots, generations of their ancestors but also to believe that Russia is their enemy. … And I will say one thing – Russia has never been and will never be ‘anti-Ukraine’. And what Ukraine will be – it is up to its citizens to decide.

    Putin, as well as Francois Hollande of France, and Angela Merkel of Germany, brought the Donbass government and the Ukraine government together in 2015 and got the Donbass and Ukraine to sign onto an agreement in Minsk, promising that those two then-warring parties would call a truce until both of them would agree to negotiate together and arrange some degree of autonomy for Donbass within the Ukrainian federation, but after it was all signed, Ukraine (with backing from the U.S.) steadily refused to negotiate at all with Donbass. Merkel, Hollande, and Putin, had worked together to get the Minsk accords agreed-to and signed by the two sides, but the Ukrainian side then stonewalled, refusing to comply with the agreement. Putin’s consistent position has been the same as Hollande’s and Merkel’s, on this, and remains so to this day: BOTH sides must comply. (Donbass has always been willing, but Ukraine never.)

    The rest of Putin’s article is a history of the relationship that has existed between Russia and Ukraine. Snyder’s article that alleges to be about Putin’s article ignores that history, just as he lies about the rest of the article. And that’s from a Professor at Yale.

    (The present article is being submitted to over 200 U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media including the Washington Post, for possible publication.)

    The post The Washington Post Publishes a Commentary Full of Lies Against Putin first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Parasite Empire Unravelled

    So before Covid, a local school where one of my kids used to attend, had prominent race issues. Namely, teachers were being accused of being blind to obvious racist incidences against black students. The normalized notion of racism was so rampant that the school was forced to embrace some sort of deprogramming sessions by a parent-led committee on the issue.  However, this committee itself was ultimately deemed rather racist in its own way by the school’s black alumni group. To me, at the end, it became rather obvious that the whole momentum was part of a corporate political campaign for the Democratic Party establishment.  The same people who raised their fists and said “Black Lives Matter” turned out to be the supporters of Joe Biden who has bragged that he was the architect of crime bills and The Patriot Act—the very root of the school to prison pipeline, the racist, colonial “war on terror,” the prison industrial complex and so on.  Is irony completely dead as “reality” continues to be stretched to fit the ruling class interests? In the end, I felt so dirty and violated to be a part of that committee’s activities.

    Fast forward to the Black-Lives-Matter-only-if-you-are-vaccinated era, and this school is voluntarily implementing a strict mandatory vaccine policy with few exemptions.  My son doesn’t like to gossip and he never really talks behind anyone’s back. But the other day, he said that the whole school is basically bullying the few kids that have not received the experimental injections.  He was particularly upset about his Black friend being given a hard time, after being subjected to the blatant racism previously.

    There are some harsh numbers regarding race-related matters and the Covid “vaccines”.  In NYC, where Covid “vaccine” mandates are effectively shutting people out from indoor activities, roughly half the Black people have chosen not to receive the experimental injections. How can anyone justify segregating half the Black people from indoor activities? What is that?  And what is wrong with businesses that, without a mandate, voluntarily exclude unvaccinated people from entering their premises when statistical risk factors for getting the illness in question range from obesity to old age to having chronic conditions.  To be clear, the efficacy of the Covid injections are being debated by scientists and doctors vigorously, along with their safety issues. Yet, there are business owners who are calling themselves “community leaders” for being medical cheerleaders for big pharma, proud of being brown-nosed social climbers at the expense of those who make their own medical choices.  And if we take the whole US,  40% of small Black-owned businesses have been wiped out.  This whole virus event is a giant urban renewal push disguised as war on virus—don’t they realize what people have gone through with war on crime, war on drugs and so on?

    The cozy Covid life for privileged, resourced people who can work from home or afford not to work is propped up in many ways at the expense of many who are suffering under the economic restructuring process for the oligarchy.  An unprecedented wealth transfer from the already exploited population to extremely rich and powerful people has been ongoing for the past two years, while the kind of neoliberal restructuring they’ve been dreaming about has been implemented in the name of saving lives.

    It’s really demoralizing to really understand that the mechanism of exploitation and subjugation is rather simple.  The power of the wealthy oligarchs is so huge that they own everything.  They own the media.  They own the politics.  They own the governments. They own the scientists. They own the military.

    And the same people who own everything tell us that we have to respect the separation of powers, we have to rely on “representative democracy,” and we have to obey the legal system which is ultimately ruled by Supreme Court judges who are appointed by, well, the same people who own everything. Needless to say, the whole thing is made to divide us and consecrate the rich and powerful as priests of capitalism, because they own everything and all powers are designed to concentrate in their hands, while  the people are effectively deprived of all power.

    In the US, the power of the people is represented by two corrupt corporate political parties.  I mean, they don’t really represent people, but they pretend that they do.  The situation is so obvious and blatant that it is tedious to even mention, but the reality is that this mechanism of two corporate entities engaging in ritualistic battles within a strictly curated capitalist framework has been so effective in staging the appearance of “democracy” that it is hard to discuss the social dynamics in the US without it.  No matter what ideological leaning one has as an American, the larger than life theater of historical myths, dramas, glories of wars, nationalistic emotions and the reverence of the American flag are likely to be a part of the internalized authority which builds its footings in the minds and the bodies of those who are born on this land.

    Today, many of the rich and powerful are associated with the Democratic Party—for example, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, George Soros, Bill Gates, and so on. This is strange because it is the Republican Party that is supposed to represent business interests. Recent numbers also indicate the trend:  “Some recent US figures on the distribution of income by party: 65 percent of taxpayer households that earn more than $500,000 per year are now in Democratic districts; 74 percent of the households in Republican districts earn less than $100,000 per year. Add to this what we knew already, namely that the 10 richest congressional districts in the country all have Democratic representatives in Congress“.

    Anyway, it really doesn’t matter because when people play politics—meaning you cheer for one of the corrupt political parties—you are not supposed to talk about how money controls social institutions and how our values, beliefs and norms are determined by the interests of the ruling class, and how the economic caste order effectively enforces capitalist imperatives to perpetuate the reign of money and violence.

    Believe it or not, today, this sort of understanding is labeled as “conspiracy.”  Right, you are a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy nut case if you happen to call out corporate crimes, their criminal conspiracies and so on and so forth.   How obvious can it get? Rich people dominate corporate politics with the good old righteousness of exceptionalism, and a colonial attitude with the kinder, gentler face of liberal politics, and it is perfectly OK to call a simple Marxist analysis of exploitation a “conspiracy.”

    The tendency to obscure the mechanism of capitalism is mirrored exactly among many of those who oppose the overwhelming push for Covid lockdowns, Covid “vaccine” mandates and so on. For many of those who stand on the other side of the virus event, the entire mobilization is described as a “communist takeover.” That’s right.  All those diehard capitalists who have been conspiring to perpetuate their interests through World Economic Forum, IMF, World Bank and so on are communists now. How convenient?  You can’t have capitalism without opportunism.

    But the whole thing makes perfect sense. Both ends of the capitalist spectrum, fascists and social democrats, have always struggled to perpetuate capitalist hegemony together. At the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to perpetuate the capitalist caste hierarchy and their righteous positions within it.  One step with the left leg goes forward as the right leg moves forward to balance the momentum of the imperial hegemony — just as the hopelessly corrupt Hilary Clinton gives birth to a Donald Trump Presidency, which, in turn, gives the Democratic Party a reason to exist.  Left, right, left, right, the empire moves forward as it gently shifts its weight left to right.  As they march the imperial-scape together, they sing derogatory smears against any revolutionary momentum.  Both sides are free to argue and fight as long as they adhere to the imperial imperatives of capitalism.  The corporate media ensure that the narratives are told to fit this dynamic.  Those who do not belong to the dynamics are portrayed as “others”–fringe extremists to be demonized from multiple angles.

    How does the empire gain its mythical aura of authority?  Easy. They play a good old protection racket scheme against unsuspecting “good people.”  For example, they tell people that terrorists are coming, while “secretly” funding the killers in ways which are not so secret to the people. People get the idea: “Oh I see. we have to pay the protection fee. Otherwise, we get fucked up.” Or, for example, they tell people that plague is coming, and force people to get injected with special medicines.  If the people refuse, their jobs are taken away, their families are split apart, you can’t eat at a restaurant and so on. They can effectively turn everyone into a dangerous element with an infection until proven “healthy” by the designated means of the authority.  There goes the presumption of innocence along with informed consent out of the door.

    This is a big deal. There is a huge reason why an authority must prove someone guilty without a reasonable doubt.  Otherwise, people can be arbitrarily accused of committing any crime and then punished for it.  And without informed consent, people can be forced to drink Cool Aid just because they are told to do so. Moreover, as soon as the feudal overloads deal with the life and death of the people, they effectively consecrate themself as gods.  A politician would claim that Covid “vaccines” are sent by God.  Cultural figures would start accusing those who refuse the medication of “defying the law of nature,” defying “science” and so on, effectively turning Bill Gates and the rest of the snake oil salesmen into gods of our times.

    So now it seems that even this pretend “democracy” is being taken away by the acceptance of decrees under an “emergency” just like any other fascist take-over.

    Colonizing humanity and nature

    How is it even possible, though?  The capitalist assaults come in stages. First, it attacks to destabilize, infiltrate and tear communities apart.  It destroys the fabric of communities and turns vital institutions useless.  It cultivates the ground on which the invaders can turn themselves into the new providers of artificial social relations, resources and facts. Then the colonizers embark on domesticating people with their own beliefs, norms and values to exploit them and subjugate them.

    Social institutions are taken over by capital. As they lose their functions for the people, they are further bought and sold by the oligarchs to transform themselves into machines for the ruling class interests. In every step of the process, people are mobilized to destroy and reassemble their own institutions only to be domesticated by the resulting fake institution for the ruling class. Corporate NGOs, corporate think tanks, paid academics, paid scientists, corporate politicians are always ready to help in this regard.  This is how education has been taken away from the people.  This is how healthcare has been taken away.  This is how politics has been taken away.

    The people’s institutions are intentionally deprived of resources so that they must rely on the rich and powerful to function.  Then, privatizing and corporatizing transform the institutions into entities for profit, indoctrination and domestication. The more you struggle financially, the more you are likely to be trapped in a cycle of exploitation—an ironic reality imposed by the capitalist hierarchy in which those who could gain the most by overthrowing the establishment are pressured the most to obey the capitalist imperatives. Meanwhile those with privileged positions are conditioned to protect the status quo. Hierarchies of ideas, ideologies, religions, and people are formed.  The caste system built by all elements permeates the empire—what’s good for the empire naturally floats as the opposing elements sink systemically and structurally. People are forced to compete in serving the interests of the oligarchs regardless of the ultimate consequences to them.

    This is how people are indoctrinated to hate the system that gives power to the people—socialism, and are forced to crave the system that strangles them—capitalism.  Here is a brief summary of how socialism is actively demonized in our society:

    1. Point out results of imperial assaults against socialist countries and claim socialism doesn’t work.

    Examples:

    • Give them economic sanctions, then call the countries “economic disasters”.
    • Send death squads to destabilize their countries, then call the enemies of the western hegemony “strong man,” “dictator,” “butcher” and so on.
    • Attempt to overthrow the government by massive propaganda campaigns, then call them oppressive.

    2. Claim that no ideology, country or government is perfect, in order to ignore the injustice and inhumanity systematically and structurally imposed on the entire capitalist hegemony and beyond by the western ruling class.

    Examples:

    • Claim that socialism and capitalism are the same when they are not historically and in practice.  Capitalism is a system guided by forces of accumulated wealth and power. It manifests as imperialism at the global scale. Historically, socialism has emerged to counter imperial exploitation and subjugation. Socialist countries have been vehemently assaulted by organized forces of imperialism.  The equation totally dismisses these obvious historical dynamics, while also obscuring the very nature and mechanism of capitalism, itself.  This position is often expressed with the use of the word totalitarianism.  Although the term has been largely normalized in the western cultural sphere, historically, this term has been used by reactionary forces to equate fascism (which operates within the framework of capitalism) and socialist countries with the intention of demonizing socialist countries.
    • Claim that all violence must stop as the capitalist hegemony targets a socialist country, knowing that the imperial hegemony can topple the socialist country by many means if the country stops engaging in self-defense.
    • Demonize political leaders who defy the western hegemony saying that although the West is atrocious the dictators aren’t worth saving anyway.

    3. Utilize an emotional personal anecdote in demonizing “socialism” in its entirety, totally ignoring its inner workings to forward the interests of the people, imperial dynamics and so on.  Reactionary voices of those who betray their countries of origin in seeking to secure positions within the empire are often promoted by the capitalist media.

    Examples:

    • “My grand dad was killed by communists.”
    • “My family members were imprisoned by a socialist regime.”
    • “So and so is killing its own people.  I know because I’m from there and you are not.”

    4. Simply rely on propaganda lies concocted by capitalist social institutions.

    Examples:

    • Just mock, ridicule and demonize socialists.  The notion is fully normalized so there is no need to explain. The burden of proof is on those who defy the notion.
    • Engage in 1, 2 and 3 using the propaganda lies.

    Where is this giant monster swinging right to left, guided by the selfish motives of the ruling class, going?  Is it going to put us all in a digital prison as it continues to digitalize, financialize, and transhumanize, colonizing humanity and nature?  Is it going to declare a war against China?  These are very significant concerns, but it is unlikely that they will be on the table for all of us to examine anytime soon.  Our thoughts and ideas are constantly, systemically and structurally beaten into shapes by layers of capitalist institutions over and over so that they fit into the capitalist framework. Then the momentums of pros and cons are safely exchanged within the imperial framework at the expense of the people who struggle to secure their livelihood within it.

    When we are beaten by the capitalists, we are put against each other.  As we fight back, we are forced to attack our fellow community members as our institutions are further colonized as I described above. In the corporate political theater billions of dollars are spent in picking between hardened corporatist Joe Biden, and “reality TV show star” Donald Trump, but we cannot embrace the political institution which can truly function as our own—such a drastic shift is firmly demonized, again, as “socialism,” “communism,” Marxism and so on.

    Look at how doctors and nurses are forced to be complicit in the ongoing virus event. They are forced to limit treatment options.  Effective early treatments such as Ivermectin or HCQ, which have saved countless lives in other countries, are being ridiculed as snake oil, because as long as there are effective treatments for the virus, the experimental gene therapy drugs can’t have emergency use status.  All this goes on as Covid “vaccine” deaths are blatantly covered up in the US and in other Western countries. The health professionals are forced to put people on deadly ventilators, deadly remdisivir, and deadly sedatives—the real reason why there are so many deaths in the US, along with the fact that obesity is a hidden killer in patients with seasonal respiratory illness.  The more they try to protect their positions within the institution, the more they compromise the whole institution. Doctors, scientists and the rest of the healthcare professionals who wish to protect the institution by speaking the truth about the virus and experimental injections are censored, harassed and fired for doing so, while those who obey are forced to be complicit in failing their patients with profit-oriented protocols.

    This is what the system does when it’s driven by, and for, the oligarchs.

    Their exploitive schemes create crises on many fronts—environmental crisis, health crisis, housing crisis, economic crisis, psychiatric crisis, you name it. The ruling class officially designates a chosen crisis to impose prepackaged corporate “solutions” for more profits, more power grab and readjustment of the capitalist trajectory.  In the process, they destroy vital social institutions and reassemble them for domestication.  Nothing else matters other than the chosen crisis and the associated corporate schemes. Other crises deepen as the capitalist trajectory is recalibrated and the capitalist hierarchy is readjusted. They will not run out of crises as long as they exploit and subjugate.  Crises are not predicaments for those who can buy their way out of anything, they are opportunities for them.  And they have nothing to lose in the process.  We are forced to do their work of destroying our own institutions.  We are forced to do their work of turning them into our cages.  They can buy most of anything, and if they can’t, they destroy it, then they can simply buy and sell any remaining elements, repackage them as something else and sell them back to the people.

    See how it works?

    As we further lose our connections to ourselves, to each other, to our community and nature, we are freely subjected to propaganda and indoctrination through ruling class sanctioned entities. Psychology has been applied to adjust individuals to the hardships of capitalist behavioral conditioning. Sociology has been applied to shape collective behaviors within the capitalist framework. Economics has been applied to justify the capitalist domination. Politics has been applied to ritualize the normalization of the feudal hierarchy. Now, we see science being applied to shift the trajectory of exploitation and subjugation.

    Our behaviors are largely based on establishment-supplied social relations, facts, culture, and so on.  We don’t generally act because we perceive actual events in our lives.  Most of us go through our lives on auto-pilot mode within the structurally sanctioned capitalist framework.  The Covid event clearly shows this aspect of our lives.  People wear masks, social distance and follow lockdown measures when clearly stipulated; however, at the personal level, most of us do not act like there is a deadly plague out there.  The masks, very possibly contaminated with the “deadly virus” are thrown away everywhere without being treated as biohazard materials.  People wear masks only to enter a restaurant, then take them off to eat with strangers stuck in an enclosed space. As soon as we are born into our society, we learn to perceive the capitalist framework as our guiding principle over our actual perceptions.  This makes us extremely vulnerable to top-down mobilization, as we see with the virus event.  As soon as we are systemically and structurally forced into following instructions, then facts, our perceptions, and experts’ opinions become totally irrelevant before the decrees coming out of the establishment. The process of colonization of humanity and nature has been ongoing for generations, deeply affecting how we are, and it is accelerating.

    Being deprived of our actual perceptions based on material reality, and the subsequent manufacturing of our perceptions based on the imperatives of the ruling class interests contributes to acute divisions among dissidents as well.  The urgency of capitalist oppressions together with marginalization of ideological positions has often cornered those who voice their concerns into prescribing “solutions” based on their own condition, regardless of the consequences to others.  This often happens over class lines, or against those who are victims of imperial violence.  The classic example was seen during the imperial war against Syria.  Many anti-war dissidents had taken a position in support of the US military intervention of Syria to varying degrees due to the western demonization of the Syrian government, western propaganda that glorified the US backed terrorists as victims of Syrian violence and etc.  (Those who stand with enemies of the empire are strongly urged to amend their anti-imperial positions. This urging comes from across the spectrum; for instance, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges and others who are considered “dissidents” adamantly demonized leaders of targeted countries and repeated official propaganda narratives justifying the toleration of violence against those countries–By the way, both Chomsky and Hedges also hold starkly discriminatory opinions against unvaccinated people, echoing their strong condemnations of the middle eastern leaders.)

    This has resulted in acceptance of the US military attacks and the US support for violent opposition groups inside Syria. Those American people who insisted on saving the children of Syria by bombing Syria and by supporting brutal terrorists, who would behead children, failed to see the great sacrifice paid by the majority of Syrian people, who were in support of their government and their military.  Activist communities were split into pieces, while the momentum greatly exacerbated the US led war against the Syrian government.   The situation began to turn as independent journalists—Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett and others—started to report from Syria on the actual situation—in which the majority of the Syrian people have approved the determined government policy against the west backed terrorists and the US colonial policies which had strangled Syrian people on many grounds.

    The war on virus, which has directly targeted our entire society, as well as the global dynamics, has presented itself as a great divider among us.  Our alienated perceptions have effectively prevented our ability to understand the course of action taken by others.  The excruciating hardship of those who wear masks 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, or more, to keep their jobs, or the anger and bitterness of those who were forced to be vaccinated against their will to remain employed,  or the predicaments faced by those who chose to be fired for their medical choice, are not shared by those who do not share the circumstances and perspectives.  The virus event kept people away from each other, prevented freedom of speech, and prevented freedom of assembly while deeply dividing people on many grounds.  It is appalling that US media outlets actually told their audience to cut their ties to friends and family members who are not vaccinated.  Anger, frustration, fear and hatred have been boiling in our communities.

    Sadly, the situation is not any better among those who oppose the draconian virus measures. For example, some people see anyone who complies with a government mandate as an enemy, even if non compliance would have meant a total loss of livelihood.  I’ve seen a sad instance in which a bar owner, who courageously spoke against the government “vaccine” mandate for his customers, was mocked and ridiculed for complying with the strict mandate, though not doing so could have resulted in loss of his business.  This sort of atmosphere effectively prevents constructive community actions.  It prevents natural growth of genuine social relations among the people based on creativity and practical means.  The real struggle involves real observations of facts and spontaneous reactions to associated events. Ultimately, it cannot be prescribed by those who stand outside of the particular circumstance.  Without the existence of a genuine institution for the people to coordinate overall strategies and educate people about the mechanism of exploitation, this sort of arbitrary behavior of purging would emerge only to exacerbate alienation and division among those who should be united to counter the ruling class assaults. What Lenin said in last century still stands on this regard. It also cultivates a defeatist attitude to embrace martyrdom as the only plausible goal of resistance.

    The establishment understands this mechanism very well.  That is why organized efforts of socialists, communists, and Marxists have been vehemently attacked by the US empire.  As long as we stand with the establishment in demonizing any potential to build revolutionary momentum, we are bound to stay within the framework of the exploitation. Our goal is to change the exploitive system to the one that benefits our mutual well-beings.  We are not the enemies of each other.  On this point, we have a lot to learn from the Syrian government, which has been allowing reconciliation between those who took weapons against the people and those who lost their family members by the violence.

    Anti-Chinese sentiment

    I have already written briefly about China and the virus event here, and here.  This topic continues to be crucial because China continues to present itself as the biggest obstacle to the western capitalist hegemony.  Although China is fully integrated in the global market economy, it continues to resist western domination of its social fabric through western neoliberalization and financialization.  This makes total sense if we understand the very reason why China opened itself to the market economy—it has done so to put its economic activities under the guidance of the Communist Party of China.  It allows China to grow economically in providing for its people while preventing western propaganda infiltration, development of western guided black market, and western capitalist restructuring of Chinese social structure.

    That is why we are flooded with anti-Chinese rhetoric today.

    All western wars are ultimately imperial in nature.  War on virus is not an exception. Those who operate within the capitalist framework— including those who claim to resist the lockdowns and the experimental Covid injections—express their disdain toward the imperial enemy as a gesture to express their allegiance to the empire even when they must oppose their feudal overlords.

    Historically, the western capitalist mobilizations—war on poverty, war on drugs, war on terror and so on—that reshape and perpetuate its structural integrity occur in tandem with imperial dynamics. The slogans and talking points have always included anti-communist/anti-socialist elements.

    The war on drugs was about destruction of minority communities as much as about destruction of Latin American movements to defy the US hegemony. The war on terror ended up destroying the middle eastern countries which have cooperated with the US hegemony to varying degrees.  The US simply does not tolerate an alternative system that demonstrates the viability of social relations outside of the imperial framework. Millions have perished.  One out of hundred people became refugees. Countries were destroyed. The momentum of war on terror exacerbated institutionalized racism and structural violence within the US as well, ultimately depriving people of legal rights through the National Defense Authorization Act, the Patriot Act, installation of the surveillance state, militarization of police and etc.

    China has experienced capitalist onslaughts of colonialism, colonial wars, chemical/biological attacks, proxy wars, propaganda campaigns, regime change operations, trade embargoes, trade sanctions, economic war and more even before it embarked on the path of socialism with its revolution.

    China has seen it all.

    There is a reason why we keep hearing “China is complicit,” “the Chinese system is coming,” and “China is violating human rights” over and over. Because the war on virus follows the same rule.  It restructures our society to perpetuate the oligarchy, and the momentum of exploitation and subjugation parallels the imperial violence against targeted countries.  This is why hundreds of military bases are surrounding China, while multiple propaganda projects are being carried out—Hong Kong, Tibet, Uyghur, continued lies about Tiananmen Square, outright deceptions stating China has killed millions of its own people.

    As long as the movement of resistance being built in the west stays within the framework of imperial exploitation and subjugation, ultimately, it will serve the empire very effectively.  The oscillation between fascism and social democracy applies within imperial dynamics as well.  For example, within the imperial framework, Nazi Germany was cultivated by the US industries to assault USSR, its failure to do so then became a justification for the US to construct its imperial hegemony.  Famously, Nazi scientists and even some political figures were absorbed into the US empire (see Operation Paper Clip).  The current atmosphere emerging is not new or any more deadly than the imperial essence, itself.  This dynamic is crucial to understand.  Failure to do so would allow another oscillation within the empire which could perpetuate the empire.  On the surface, China seems to be a part of the momentum generally referred to as the “Great Reset.”  However, meanwhile, the western allies in the pacific are also arming themself to encircle China militarily.  China is under tremendous pressure to accept western led financialization and neoliberalization of their social structure.  The situation greatly echoes how USSR and its allies were subjected to containment and encirclement.  China seems to recognize the dynamics very well as I explain shortly.

    Or, down the road, the fascist “Great Reset” might grow into a modern day economic Nazi to give a legitimacy to its counterpart within the western hegemony just like how the US achieved its imperial status after the WW2.  The history could certainly rhyme.  Such a possibility can’t be ruled out, but who wants to become another Nazi to be destroyed by the empire?  All players understand these dynamics.  The US won’t allow its own allies to threaten its own interests, while some allies are very eager to please the empire by playing their role in enforcing imperial imperatives—see how draconian measures in pushing big pharma vaccines, along with digitalization, financialization and the rest of the 4th Industrial Revolution, are forcefully forwarded in Australia, Canada and so on.

    Perhaps the role of Israel in the imperial dynamics should be pointed out here to illustrate the dynamics.  The violence which has been inflicted by the Israeli regime against neighboring countries and beyond serves the war-based US economy while punishing those who defy the imperial hegemony. Israel plays a violent guard dog for the empire under US protection, takes on the blame for it and sustains itself in this imperial relationship. Israel has been faithfully playing its role in the war on virus by relentlessly vaccinating its people while introducing various associated measures as well.  Again, understanding the war on virus requires understanding imperial dynamics.

    Meanwhile, China clearly understands its position within the imperial dynamics.  China is not about to impose on itself a deadly neoliberal restructuring such as the USSR suffered as it was being demolished. China is not about to accept colonial war on its soil in any form including biological attacks, proxy war or economic war.  If China sees its economic sphere as a part of its socialism with Chinese characteristics, it stands to reason that China would have to confront the waves of the western socio-political-economic restructuring associated with the virus event appropriately.

    It’s none of western business if China decides to prepare itself for potential western biological attacks with any measures it deems necessary considering that the US owns the biggest pile of WMDs along with hundreds of bio weapon facilities across the globe, along with the history of actually using such weapons during the Korean War and on other occasions.

    It’s none of western business if China develops its own Covid vaccines and virus measures in order to protect its financial sovereignty against western waves of Covid-related neoliberal restructuring and financialization.

    It’s none of western business if China ends up succeeding in all of the above and turning the occasion into an opportunity to strengthen its economic viability, scientific progress and international presence with the overwhelming approval of its people.

    Parasites devouring paralyzed hosts

    Twisting around fear and putting people against each other in consecrating the unconditional authority of corporate entities over families torn apart, communities destroyed, and individuals rendered hopeless and hateful is not anything nature meant for us humans.

    We are looking at parasites devouring paralyzed hosts.  This is the very essence of an inhumane social formation called capitalism described precisely by Karl Marx. It is revealing that the formation is called “communism” even by those who claim to “resist”.

    Again, the colonized institutions ultimately act as cages for capitalism. They work together to recalibrate the caste system.

    Over and over we’ve been deceived.  We are mobilized to play ritual battles on political theaters. We are mobilized to play “activism” on social theaters. We are mobilized to play good citizens on cultural theaters. We are mobilized to fight “others” on colonial theaters of war.  As long as we run around within the framework of the oligarchs, we just shift the blame among ourselves and we keep fine tuning the very feudal hierarchy that traps us as expendable beings.

    The wealth and power hoarded by the parasitic minority never belong to them. They are blessings of nature and humanity belonging to the harmony among us. Those oligarchs have only one thing—they are astronomically richer than the rest. They monopolize what belongs to us all in order to domesticate humanity and nature. But life can’t be contained by their primitive cage.  So they have been modifying life to fit within the narrowly defined framework of their own kingdom. We became dumber, we are less brave, we are more cynical and hypocritical.  None of it is acceptable from any angle from which we look at it. The current social formation is extremely destructive to our species. If we fail to grasp the situation, gene therapy drugs, psychotropic drugs, behavioral conditioning and so on will be fully used to exacerbate the situation, commodifying our minds and bodies as our lives are more and more digitized and financialized.  If we become the products to be consumed, we are subjected to planned obsolescence, reduced quality, reduced diversity and so on just like any other items around us.  They spread their tentacles in taking over social institutions.  They freely attenuate and amplify the roles of institutions in orchestrating the material reality to suit their interests.  Again, they paralyze people with illusions, lies, deceptions, drugs, carrot and stick and eat us alive.  We do not deserve this parasitic social formation.

    We need a system which firmly ensures that the material reality reflects a harmony of man and nature.  For one thing, the ridiculous rituals of corporate politics, corporate slogans for health, and so on have no place in getting us out of this feudalism of money and violence.  How can we all step back a little and take a look at what is really going on, calling out the parasites for what they are?  How can we recognize that the same colonizers who destroyed countries across the globe have embarked on psychological asymmetrical urban warfare against us? We are told that we are all in this together only to find ourselves shooting each other. We are told to flatten the curve only to see our communities flattened to be swallowed by corporate entities. How can we build our communities with social relations based on our needs?  How can we build social institutions which can help us build a social formation that serves us all?

    The parasites devour the hosts because they do not have the ability to engage in the creative process of life. They must lie and deceive to imprison the subject population so that the captive beings are forced to construct the kingdom for the parasites. Parasites are not the all-seeing gods which they present themselves to be.  In order to survive and embrace the blessings of the universe as one of the species on our planet, we must recognize this destructive state of being and somehow move beyond it.

    We are hardly the only ones screaming.  We are a fraction of a huge momentum of humanity continuing to make a point about our species’ obvious predicaments. The following words came from George L. Jackson shortly before he was murdered in California’s San Quentin Prison (I thank John Steppling for mentioning the quote recently):

    Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.

    — George L. Jackson, Blood in my Eye, January 1, 1972

    Like Fred Hampton said:

    … you can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail the revolution. You can run a freedom fighter around the country but you can’t run freedom fighting around the country. You can murder a liberator, but you can’t murder liberation.

    — Fred Hampton,  Speech delivered on April 27, 1969 (Movement Vol. 5. No. 12, The Movement Press, January, 1970)

    The post Parasite Empire Unravelled first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Excellent Xinjiang Health Statistics vs US Alliance Lies

    The US and its allies are countering the re-emergence of China with a Sinophobic confection of new alliances (the AUKUS and the Quad), military threats, jingoism and false propaganda about a falsely claimed Uyghur Genocide in Xinjiang. The UK Uyghur Tribunal admits that there have been no mass killings in Xinjiang but absurdly asserts that application of globally-praised Chinese family planning in Xinjiang is “genocide.” However excellent health, infant mortality, maternal mortality, life expectancy, population growth, per capita GDP, education, literacy and birth rate outcomes in Xinjiang and China contradict Sinophobic US, UK, and Australian claims of a Uyghur Genocide.

    Below are some key relevant data on China and Xinjiang (42% Han Chinese, 58% ethnic minorities), and by way of comparison data for the US, UK, Australia, and Apartheid Israel (serial war criminal occupier countries), Indigenous Australians (socio-economically disadvantaged survivors of a 2-century Australian Genocide of Aboriginals), Occupied Palestine and Occupied Afghanistan (war criminally occupied countries), and India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (major impoverished but democratic neighbours of China).

    (1). Annual population growth: 0.2% (Australia) 0.3% (China), 0.4% (the US), 0.6% (UK), 1.0% (Bangladesh), 1.0% (India), 1.8% (Apartheid Israel), 1.8% (Xinjiang), 2.0% (Pakistan), 2.1% (Indigenous Australians), 2.3% (Occupied Afghanistan), and 2.5% (Occupied Palestine).

    (2). Life expectancy in years: 83.9 (Australia), 83.5 (Apartheid Israel), 81.8 (UK), 79.1 (US), 77.5 (China), 74.7 (Xinjiang), 74.6 (Occupied Palestine), 73.6 (Indigenous Australians), 73.6 (Bangladesh), 70.4 (India), 67.8 (Pakistan), and 66.0 (Occupied Afghanistan).

    (3). Under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 births: 3 (Australia), 2.5 (Apartheid Israel), 3.5 (UK), 5.5 (US), 6 (Indigenous Australians), 6.8 (Xinjiang), 9 (China), 16.5 (Occupied Palestine), 24.5 (Bangladesh), 29.5 (India), 48.5 (Occupied Afghanistan), and 58.5 (Pakistan).

    (4). Under-5 infant deaths per 1,000 births: 3 (Apartheid Israel), 3.5 (Australia), 4 (UK), 7 (US), 7 (Indigenous Australians), 10.9 (Xinjiang), 11 (China), 19 (Occupied Palestine), 29 Bangladesh, 36 (India), 62.5 (Occupied Afghanistan), and 71.5 (Pakistan).

    (5). Maternal deaths per 100,000 births: 3 (Apartheid Israel), 6 (Australia), 7 (UK), 17.9 (Xinjiang), 19 (US), 20 (Indigenous Australians), 27 (Occupied Palestine), 29 (China), 140 (Pakistan), 145 (India), 173 (Bangladesh) and 638 (Occupied Afghanistan).

    (6). GDP per capita: $65,134 (US), $54,763 (Australia; perhaps about 2 times lower  for the socio-economically disadvantaged Indigenous Australians), $46,376 (Apartheid Israel), $41,855 (UK), $10,001 (China), $8,575 (Xinjiang),  $3,424 (Occupied Palestine), $2,116 (India), $1,846 (Bangladesh), $1,187 (Pakistan), and $470 (Afghanistan).

    (7). Adult literacy:  99.0%  (US), 99.0% (Australia), 99.0%  (UK), 97.1% (Apartheid Israel), 96.7% (Occupied Palestine), 96.4% (China), 96.3% (Xinjiang), 72.2% (India), 61.5% (Bangladesh), 56.4% (Pakistan), and 38.2% (Occupied Afghanistan).

    (8). Annual births per 1000 of population: 12.4  (US), 12.0 (Australia), 12.0  (UK), 12.1 (China; as per (1) higher for Uyghurs), 17.9 (Apartheid Israel), 18.6 (Bangladesh), 18.7 (India), 21.6 (Pakistan), 28.3 (Occupied Palestine), and 37.5 (Occupied Afghanistan).

    These data show that Xinjiang is performing as well as or better than China in most of these parameters but has a much higher birth rate and population growth rate. Conversely, the shocking data on Indigenous Australians, Occupied  Palestine,  and Occupied Afghanistan show that the genocidal Occupiers (Australia, Apartheid Israel and the US Alliance, respectively)  are grossly violating  Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilians in Time of War (the Fourth Geneva Convention) that unequivocally state that the Occupiers are inescapably obliged to provide their conquered Subjects with life-sustaining food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to them”.

    A holocaust involves the deaths of a huge number of people. However genocide is precisely defined by Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide thus: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”.

    In Xinjiang there have been no mass killings or expulsions, and birth control policies are much less restrictive for Uyghurs than for Han Chinese. Deaths from violence and imposed deprivation total 2.2 million (the WW1 onwards Palestinian Genocide) and 6.7 million (the 2001 onwards Afghan Genocide; it is worsening under deadly US and US Alliance sanctions, and through the US crippling impoverished Afghanistan by freezing $9.5 billion in Afghan reserves).

    Here is a shocking testament to massive lying by Western mainstream journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes – if you Google the terms “Uyghur Genocide”, “Palestinian Genocide” and “Afghan Genocide” you obtain the following results (deaths in brackets): 221,000 (“Uyghur Genocide”; 0 deaths), 11,200 (“Palestinian Genocide”; 2.2 million deaths) and 6,960 (“Afghan Genocide”; 6.7 million deaths). Similarly, searches of the mendacious ABC (the Australian taxpayer-funded equivalent of the mendacious UK BBC) for these terms yield the following results: 95 (for “Uyghur Genocide”), 0 (“Palestinian Genocide”) and 0 (“Afghan Genocide”).

    The Sinophobic claims made by US and US Alliance politicians and propagandists of “genocide” in Xinjiang are patently false. China  can and indeed must be legitimately criticized for the one party state, air pollution, the death penalty, censorship, the surveillance state, harsh treatment of Uyghurs, Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, and dissidents in general, and the harshness of its de-radicalization measures and associated human rights abuses in Xinjiang. However set against those harsh treatments are avoidance of the entrenched deadly jihadi extremism found in Muslim countries from West Africa to South East Asia.  It should be noted that the China-threatening US has an appalling record of covertly supporting non-state terrorism (including jihadi non-state terrorism) from Latin America to South East Asia.

    For a detailed and documented analysis see Gideon Polya, “Excellent Xinjiang Health, Growth & Education Outcomes Contradict Sinophobic US Lies,” Countercurrents. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Please disseminate this to everyone you can.

    The post Excellent Xinjiang Health Statistics vs US Alliance Lies first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • NATO Expansion: Blinken and Stoltenberg Lie Intentionally and the Media Let Them

    NATO Expansion: Blinken and Stoltenberg lie intentionally and the media let them

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken and NATO’s chief Jens Stoltenberg

    To deceive, telling half-truths, or a complete lie is nothing new in politics, particularly security politics. But until some 20-30 years ago, I would – perhaps naively – see it as an exception. Tragically – and perhaps to many readers’ surprise – it is now the rule. At least in U.S. and NATO circles, and that is particularly regrettably since The West professes to be a democratic system with specific values and even a moral leader to The Rest.

    Lying systematically about facts – historical facts – and other countries and cultures should be incompatible with The West’s perception of itself. But, today, it isn’t.

    Lies are widespread in so-called security politics when some militarist project doesn’t make any (common) sense to intelligent people when the real motives have to be covered up and war is being prepared or when the sociological cancer called the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex, MIMAC, and the elites it consists of, try to obtain even larger military expenditures from their taxpayers.

    You lie to manufacture an enemy that can justify what you will do and enrich yourself. With 40+ years of experience in security politics in general and NATO/US policies in particular, I know too much – sorry for the arrogance – and have become too cynical to believe that what goes on goes on for the sake of self-defence, security or peace.

    Some quick examples of gross empirically revealed lying to the word – all the liars still at large:

    • In the 1990s, Yugoslav President Milosevic was Europe’s new Hitler (Bill Clinton) and planned a genocide on the Albanians in Kosovo.

    • Saddam Hussein’s soldiers threw babies out of their incubators in Kuwait City.

    • Afghanistan had to be destroyed because of 9/11.

    • Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

    • The US-led Global War On Terror – GWOT – has been about reducing terrorism.

    • The US/NATO orchestrated regime-change attempt in Syria from 2011 to 2016 was exclusively about Dictator al-Assad’s sudden sadist “killing of his own.”

    • Gaddafi was just about to murder all who lived in Benghazi.

    • The conflict around Ukraine was started by Putin’s “aggression” on Crimea, nothing preceded it.

    • Iran has always plotted and lied to acquire nuclear weapons.

    • There are only bad things to say about Russia and China and…

    You may continue on your own.

    A recent lie is particularly nasty because it is not about some limited event or pretext. It is a cynical attempt to rewrite contemporary history to justify (even further) NATO expansion and intimidate Russia.

    The lie is this:

    • The West’s leaders never promised Mikhail Gorbachev and his foreign minister Edvard Shevardnadze not to expand NATO eastward. They also did not state that they would take serious Soviet/Russian security interests around its borders. And that, therefore, each of the former Warsaw Pact countries has a right to join NATO if they decide to freely.

    It is this lie I am going to deal with below, and you can hear these lies presented by Antony Blinken and Jens Stoltenberg – in slightly different versions – with crystal clarity in the following two videos.

    Before I start, let me say that it has never been my style to focus on or attack individuals. I’ve always been more interested in structures and processes and in how they shape people. But there comes a time when leaders must be held accountable because they choose to lie repeatedly, although they do have the choice not to.

    And because lies have often been war crimes in the making.

    Antony Blinken

    First, US Secretary-of-State, Antony Blinken on January 7, 2022 – scroll the video below to 38:30 where he begins to speak and distorts the Ukraine conflict history and then, at 43:00-45:00, continues to say that Russia is driving the false narrative that the West had given assurances to Russia/Gorbachev about not expanding NATO back in 1989-90. It wouldn’t and couldn’t, he says. And all the claims Russia makes are false and shall not permit “us” to be diverted from the main thing: Russia’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine.

    Right after (45:40) comes another lie – Russia also invaded Georgia. Anyone who has studied the U.S. Congressional Research Service’s analysis of 2009, “Russia-Georgia Conflict in 2008: Context and Implications for U.S. Interests,” knows that this issue was vastly more complex and that it was Georgia – led by hotheaded U.S. friend Mikheil Saakashvili whose political life ever since has resembled a tragicomic farce – that had occupied the larger part of South Ossetia before Russia intervened massively. The responsibility for the war and violence can not seriously be placed on the Russian side alone.

    And he continues his self-righteous accusations. Blinken’s list is long, and he reads his accusation list with a submachinegun speed, sometimes so stumbling and unclear that one must wonder whether he is uncomfortable because he is subconsciously aware that he lies, deceives and omits to make his psycho-political projections of the U.S.’s own dark sides sound intelligent, logical and truthful.

    This U.S. Secretary of State can’t be bothered by facts or nuances. Neither could his predecessor, Mike Pompeo, who was proud to say that at the CIA, he directed “We Lied, We Cheated, We Stole. We had entire training courses….” Mr Blinken continues reading his obsessive, hateful listing of all the sins of Russia. As if the US/NATO did not exist and, therefore, there was no conflict which normally takes a least two parties. In his comprehensive conflict illiteracy, this conflict has only one party: Russia.

    The intellectual level is deplorable. NATO allies and mainstream media have no public opinion or critical views on any of it. One must assume that they agree and can make no better analyses themselves.

    Now, take a look – at least at the sequences, I’ve mentioned above. Then, I show you how Mr Blinken is lying deliberately under the video.

    Now, how can Mr Blinken flatly deny that assurances were given to Gorbachev?

    The only source I have been able to find is an article by Steven Pifer from 2014, which argues that Gorbachev himself denies that NATO expansion was ever discussed, “Did NATO Promise Not to Enlarge? Gorbachev Says ‘No’” which refers to an interview with Gorbachev in Russia Beyond.

    But this is a piece of citation fraud.

    Steven Pifer quotes from it but stops right before the well-known statement in the interview article by then U.S. Secretary of State, James Baker, that “NATO will not move one inch further east.” He also omits these words by Gorbachev himself:

    The decision for the U.S. and its allies to expand NATO into the east was decisively made in 1993. I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990. With regards to Germany, they were legally enshrined and are being observed.

    Interesting too? The addiction to militarism spells the end of the US as we know it.

    Can this really be interpreted to mean that Gorbachev says that no assurances were ever given?

    We get a key to why Blinken uses a fake analysis: Because it fits his posturing as a paragon of truth and because Mr Pifer is a senior fellow at Brookings but also a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine and adviser to one of the most hawkish think-tanks, Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington.

    A slight twist, omission or interpretative casuistry isn’t that important, is it? Well, if you are not yet convinced that Mr Blinken lies deliberately, I ask you to now go to the authoritative National Security Archive at George Washington University. It’s an incredible source of facts, and we should thank it for making the truth available through comprehensive documentation on so many security-related issues.

    TFF has reproduced two essential pieces from that archive of irrefutable documentation that Gorbachev indeed was given such assurances – “cascades” of them! as is stated in the article – by all the most influential Western leaders at the end of 1989 and into 1990:

    “NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev heard” – and

    “NATO Expansion: The Budapest Blow Up 1994”

    Read them, and you’ll be shocked.

    You’ll find that they have lots of notes and, in sum, no less than 48 original historical documents. For instance, here is just one of the 48 informing us about then NATO Secretary-General Manfred Woerner’s view and statement:

    Woerner had given a well-regarded speech in Brussels in May 1990 in which he argued: “The principal task of the next decade will be to build a new European security structure, to include the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations. The Soviet Union will have an important role to play in the construction of such a system. If you consider the current predicament of the Soviet Union, which has practically no allies left, then you can understand its justified wish not to be forced out of Europe.”

    Now in mid-1991, Woerner responds to the Russians by stating that he personally and the NATO Council are both against expansion – “13 out of 16 NATO members share this point of view” – and that he will speak against Poland’s and Romania’s membership in NATO to those countries’ leaders as he has already done with leaders of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Woerner emphasizes that “We should not allow […] the isolation of the USSR from the European community.”

    This is just one of the “cascades” of statements and assurances given to the Russians at the time. Over 30 years ago, 13 out of 16 members were against NATO expansion because they respected Russia’s crisis and legitimate security interests! Today – 2022 – NATO has 30 members.

    Is the U.S. Secretary of State, his advisors and speechwriters unaware of the next-door National Security Archives and what is in them concerning one of contemporary history’s most important events: the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact? Are we really to believe that they have no clue about the conditions and dialogues at the end of the first Cold War? If so, they ought to resign or be fired for their unbelievable incompetence.

    If not so – if they know the content of these historical documents – Mr Blinken, his advisors and speechwriters know that they lie.

    Their words, therefore, should never be trusted. Neither should the media that avoid highlighting these lies and thereby become complicit. The task of a supposedly free press is to reveal the power abuse of democratically elected people who deliberately fill their constituencies with lies.

    Simple as that.

    Jens Stoltenberg

    In this press conference video from January 7, 2022, NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg states some of the same rhetoric, distortions, simplifications and lies. Not to mention platitudes accompanied by an almost funny body language of bombastic gestures to compensate for his weak content, mantras and repetitions.

    Listen at around 19:00 minutes how he maintains that NATO enlargement has been “extremely important for stability and peace and freedom and democracy in Europe” where it can indeed be argued that that enlargement is the main reason that Europe is now in a situation which can reasonably be called the 2nd Cold War.

    Why else has NATO not created the desired and stipulated peace and stability since it was created in 1949? So, no, Mr Stoltenberg, you cannot continue – like your masters in Washington – to argue that the present war risks are caused by Russia and Russia alone? If that’s what they order you to say, you have the option to choose decency and resign.

    The NATO Secretary-General repeats that each state has a sovereign right to decide its own course and choose its own security arrangements. And that NATO has not dragged in anybody, and they have all just decided democratically to become a member.

    That is simply not true.

    NATO as an alliance has enormous resources to influence opinions in potential member states. Contrary to his open door talk, NATO’s Charter speaks only about inviting new members, not about holding a door open for anyone who might want to join.

    It should be well-known by now – but isn’t – that in the late 1990s, Vladimir Putin asked to join NATO – but it didn’t happen, did it, Mr Stoltenberg? And why not? Because Putin – Russia – wanted to be invited as an equal partner and not sit and wait till Montenegro had become a member, to put it bluntly. NATO decided to close the door at Putin’s request.

    This – fantastic – story is told by a former NATO Secretary-General, George Robertson; there is no reason to assume that is not credible or just a rumour. Or, for that matter, that Putin was not serious.

    And what an exciting thought: Russia in NATO! Who would Mr Stoltenberg and Mr Blinken – and all the rest of the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex, MIMAC, then have to put all the blame on? How then legitimate NATO’s permanent armament and 12% higher military expenditures than Russia’s?

    Mr Stoltenberg must know that he lies when saying NATO has an open door. It doesn’t for Russia. It doesn’t even have open ears for Russia’s security concerns (which each and every NATO member, the U.S. in particular, would consider reasonable if a Russian military alliance incrementally crept close to their borders).

    And he must know that he lies when he acts as though he does not know that Russia has been against that very NATO enlargement that he fakes has been so positive for all of Europe during no less than 30 years.

    Funnily, Stoltenberg first emphasises (around 19:30) that all new NATO members have freely decided to join. Then he boasts about all NATO does to train, help, support candidates and how important Ukraine is as a NATO partner while not a member. As he says, candidates need to carry through reforms to meet NATO standards. And NATO gives them “practical and political support” so they can – later – meet NATO standards and become members.

    Interesting too?  Money Is Not Wealth: Cryptos versus Fiats!

    What an extraordinary altruism NATO radiates! Are we really to believe that NATO certainly drags in no one, as he maintains?

    NATO set up an office in Kyiv, Ukraine, already in 1994, and here you can see how – incrementally – Ukraine has been dragged in, seduced, and promised a great Euro-Atlantic future in one document after the other.

    And here you’ll see how Olga Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, standing at NATO’s HQ with Stoltenberg, consistently talks about NATO as Ukraine’s “allies,” expect all kinds of guarantees and – in Foreign Policy of course – argues that Ukraine Needs a Clear Path to NATO Membership in the face of Russian aggression.

    And now, the integration process has probably gone so far that neither NATO nor Ukraine would be able to see any other alternative but full membership at some point. Being fiancées, why not marry through a formal membership – as has been said about Sweden?

    In its Russia-humiliating policies, NATO has not even seen it coming: That with all the promises, structures and processes accumulating and creating expectations, the alliance would, at some point, run into serious conflict with Russia. If so, the entire alliance suffers from conflict illiteracy and a tremendous lack of foresight.

    An that is why you have to construct Russia as a huge militarily aggressive state with an unsympathetic leader – one “we” can freely demonise and don’t even have to listen to.

    Now, listen then to this Stoltenberg statement about the – real – importance of NATO’s help (20:45): “…It also makes the societies of Ukraine and Georgia stronger. So resilient, well-functioning societies are also less vulnerable from interference from Russia.”

    Just a welcoming open NATO door to countries that decide freely and democratically that they want to knock on it?

    It’s time for a reality check in NATO Realpolitik’s – outdated – world. If you do not manifestly want to provoke and increase war risks, you would do it completely differently every day since 1989.

    The NATO expansion basis is obvious: Get as many as possible into NATO, demonise Russia and Putin and make it impossible for Russia to have any influence in Europe and on its future.

    How strange, indeed, that Russia perceives the Alliance’s expansion right up to its borders as a deliberate military threat and a politically motivated undermining of its status and power!

    How surprising that it thinks its security interests in its near-abroad should be respected, just because it has been invaded historically from the West and contained all along its borders since the Second World War in which, by the way, it lost some 24 million people!

    It is tragic beyond words that the West has not a single politician today like Willy Brandt, Egon Bahr, Olof Palme or any of the real statesmen who gave Gorbachev cascades of assurance because they possessed two essentially important qualities: intellectual competence and empathy, a wish and ability to try to live themselves into the situation of “the other” and thereby think in terms of common security at lower military levels.

    They were mature personalities basing their policies on analysis and consultations. They knew that you can only achieve security with and not against “the other”.

    Instead, NATO has only anti-intellectual, self-centred and -aggrandising militarists running the self-defeating “know-everything-listen-to-nobody” show foolproven by history to lead to war.

    And it is tragic beyond words that the peoples of Europe do not debate these issues and that all alternatives to militarism have been deprived of all their resources while NATO militarism costs trillions of dollars what are desperately needed in all other sectors of Western society.

    In summary, the US/NATO world threw away the most significant and precious opportunity to create peace in Europe after 1945, when it decided to take advantage of Russia’s weakness. As suggested by Gorbachev and many security and peace intellectuals at the time, the members of the old blocs could have joined forces and created an entirely new all-European security and peace architecture.

    We are now facing the tragic consequences of the arrogant winner-takes-it-all policy manifested by the US Clinton administration’s decision to ignore all the assurances and begin expanding NATO eastward in 1994, helped by submissive European allies that had neither the intellectual capacity nor political will to manifest their own interests.

    That is why they have to lie to us today.

    The post NATO Expansion: Blinken and Stoltenberg Lie Intentionally and the Media Let Them first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • 21st Century US Coups and Attempted Coups in Latin America

    During the 21st century, the US, working with corporate elites, traditional oligarchies, military, and corporate media, has continually attempted coups against Latin American governments which place the needs of their people over US corporate interests. US organized coups in Latin American countries is hardly a 20th century phenomenon.

    However, this century the US rulers have turned to a new coup strategy, relying on soft coups, a significant change from the notoriously brutal military hard coups in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and other countries in the 1970s. One central US concern in these new coups has been to maintain a legal and democratic facade as much as possible.

    The US superpower recognizes successful soft coups depend on mobilizing popular forces in anti-government marches and protests. Gene Sharp style color revolutions are heavily funded by US and European NGOs, such as USAID, NED, National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute, Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation, and others. They make use of organizations professing “human rights” (such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International), local dissident organizations, and increasingly, liberal-left media (even Democracy Now) to prepare the groundwork.

    US regime change operations have found three mechanisms this century that have been tremendously successful. First, economic warfare on a country, through sanctions and outright blockades, creates rising discontent against the targeted government. Second, increasing use of corporate media and social media to spread disinformation (often around “human rights,” “democracy,” “freedom,” or “corruption”) to foment mass movements against leaders that prioritize their nation’s development over US financial interests. This heavily relies on CIA social media operations to blanket a country with disinformation. Third, lawfare, using the appearance of democratic legality to bring down those defending their country’s national sovereignty. Related to lawfare are the electoral coups in countries such as Haiti, Honduras, and Brazil, where the US engineers or helps to engineer a coup by stealing the election.

    Many of the attempted coups failed because the people mobilized to defend their governments, and because of crucial and timely solidarity declarations in defense of these governments by the Latin American bodies of the OAS, UNASUR, and the Rio Group. Today, the Rio Group no longer exists, UNASUR is much weakened, and the OAS is now fully under US control.

    US Backed Coups and Attempted Coups

    2001 Haiti. Haitian paramilitaries based in the Dominican Republic launched an attack on the National Palace, seat of the government of President Aristide. The attack failed, but until 2004, similar to the 1980s Nicaraguan contras, these paramilitaries launched numerous raids into Haiti, and played a key role leading to the 2004 coup perpetrated directly by US troops.

    2002 Venezuela. The US government partially funded and backed the short-lived April 11-14 coup against Hugo Chavez.

    2002-3 Venezuela. Management of the state oil company PDVSA organized an “oil strike,” actually a lockout of the oil workers, to drive Hugo Chavez out of power. This again failed in early 2003.

    2003 Cuba. In the lead up to the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq, John Bolton claimed Cuba was a state sponsor of terrorism, producing biological weapons for terrorist purposes, just as Saddam’s Iraq was falsely claimed to have weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). During this period, the US increased its anti-Cuba propaganda directed at the country and increased funding to “pro-democracy” groups in Cuba, while anti-Cuban right-wing groups escalated their activities. The US paid “dissident” groups to organize protests and disruptions, including hijacking seven boats and airplanes to reach the US where they were never prosecuted. The goal was to create the appearance of disorder in Cuba, which, combined with its alleged biological WMDs, demanded an international intervention to restore order. Cuba squashed this movement in spring 2003.

    2004 Haiti. In an early 20th century style US coup, US troops invaded Haiti, kidnapped President Jean Bertrande Aristide and exiled him to the Central African Republic.

    2008 Bolivia. The Media Luna attempted coup involved right-wing leaders and some indigenous groups from Bolivia’s lowlands financed by the US. They sought to separate the richer Media Luna region from the rest of the country. In the process, they killed 20 supporters of President Evo Morales. Juan Ramon Quintana of the Bolivian government reported that between 2007-2015, the NED gave $10 million in funding to some 40 institutions including economic and social centers, foundations and NGOs. US embassy cables showed it sought to turn social and indigenous movements against the Evo Morales government.

    2009 Honduras. Honduran military forces, under orders from the US, seized President Manuel Zelaya, brought him to the US military base at Palmerola, then exiled him to Costa Rica. This began an era of brutal neoliberal narco-trafficking regimes that ended in 2021 with the landslide election of Xiomara Castro, Zelaya’s wife.

    2010 Ecuador. In September a failed coup against President Rafael Correa by military and police units backed by the indigenous organizations CONAIE and Pachakutik. The US had infiltrated the police and armed forces, while the NED and USAID funded these indigenous organizations.

    2011 Haiti. Following the Haiti earthquake in 2010 that killed 200,000, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton imposed Michel Martelly as president after threatening to cut off US aid to Haiti. Clinton flew to Haiti to demand that Martelly be named one of the two runoff candidates, although Martelly was not recognized by the Electoral Council as one of the qualifiers. Despite a voter boycott, with fewer than 20% of the electorate voting, Martelly was announced the winner of the “runoff.” One reason why most Haitians boycotted was that the most popular political party in the country, Fanmi Lavalas, the party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was excluded from the ballot. The Haiti elections were funded by USAID, Canada, the OAS, the European Union and other foreign bodies.

    2012 Paraguay. President Fernando Lugo was scapegoated for a land occupation confrontation between campesinos and the police, which led to 17 deaths. President Lugo was removed from office without a chance to defend himself in a lawfare coup.

    2013 Venezuela. After the April election that Nicolas Maduro narrowly won, Henrique Capriles, the US-supported loser, claimed the election was stolen and called his supporters out into the streets in violent protests. Due to the strength of the UNASUR countries at the time, the US could not convince other countries to also reject Maduro’s victory.

    2014 Venezuela. “La Salida”(The Exit), led by Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado, resulted in 43 deaths, and aimed to drive President Maduro from power. Again, the US could not get other Latin American governments to denounce Maduro, either in UNASUR or in the OAS.

    2015 Ecuador. Between 2012-2015, $30 million from NED went to political parties, trade unions, dissident movements, and media. In 2013 alone, USAID and NED spent $24 million in Ecuador. This paid off in 2015 when CONAIE, which thanked USAID for its funding, called for an indigenous-led uprising. They began with marches in early August and concluded in Quito for an uprising and general strike on August 10.  The attempted coup failed.

    2015 Haiti.  A new electoral coup for the presidency was funded by the US to the tune of $30 million. Both the US and the OAS refused Haitians’ demands to invalidate the election. The police attacked Supporters of opposition parties were shot with live and rubber bullets, killing many. President Michel Martelly’s chosen successor Jovenel Moise became president.

    2015 Guatemala. The US engineered a coup against right-wing President Otto Perez Molina because he was not sufficiently subservient.

    2015 Argentina. Argentine prosecutor Alber Nisman was evidently murdered days after he made bogus criminal charges against President Cristina Fernandez, claiming she was involved in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center. This was used to create a scandal, unseat her, and bring neoliberals back to power. Neoliberal forces and media used the case to disrupt the Kirchner coalition from winning another presidential election.

    2015-2019 El Salvador. El Salvador’s right-wing opposition backed by the US sought to destabilize the government of President Salvador Sánchez Cerén of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).  The conservative mass media launched a smear campaign against the administration, in concert with a surge in gang-driven homicides that the police chief said was part of a campaign to drive up body counts and remove the FMLN government. Sanchez Cerén and other former officials who were members of the FMLN later became targets of lawfare, “a strategy used in recent years by conservative groups in power to try to demobilize the organization and resistance of the peoples against neoliberalism and other forms of domination.”

    2016 Brazil. US-backed right-wing movements launched a campaign against President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party for “corruption.” Aided by the corporate media, they organized a series of protests in Brazil’s largest cities throughout 2015. In March 2016, a massive political demonstration brought together more than 500,000 people in support of impeaching President Rousseff. She was finally impeached by Congress and removed from office in a successful lawfare coup.

    2017 Venezuela. Violent protests (guarimbas), led by Leopoldo Lopez, sought to oust President Maduro, with 126 fatalities. The guarimbas ended after the elections for the National Constituent Assembly.

    2017 Honduras. The US supported an electoral coup by President Juan Orlando Hernández involving widespread electoral fraud and government killing of dozens in protests. The US quickly recognized him as president and pressured other countries to do so also, even though the OAS itself had called for a new election.

    2018 Nicaragua. US-backed violent protests, supported by anti-FSLN media and social media disinformation campaigns, sought to remove President Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas from power. After two months, public sentiment turned strongly against the violent protests and they disintegrated.

    2018 Brazil. Former President Lula de Silva was the leading candidate to win the presidential election, but was imprisoned due to a lawfare operation of the US and Brazil’s right-wing, using bogus corruption charges. Bolsonario won the election, aided by a large-scale fake news operation which sent out hundreds of millions of WhatsApp messages to Brazilian voters.

    2019 Venezuela. In January, Juan Guaido declared himself president of Venezuela after US Vice President Pence assured him of US recognition. On April 30, the Guaido-Leopoldo Lopez’ planned uprising outside an air force base flopped. Later, a mercenary attack from Colombia failed to seize President Maduro in the presidential palace.

    2019 Bolivia. The US engineered a coup against Evo Morales, in part by using a social media campaign to make the false claim he stole the election. The OAS played a key role in legitimizing the coup. The disastrous coup government of Jeanine Anez lasted for just over one year.

    2021 Cuba. The US orchestrated and funded protests against the Cuban government in July and November. The US sought to build a new generation of counter-revolutionary leadership by creating new “independent” press and social media platforms. These failed more miserably than the 2003 protests.

    2021 Bolivia. In October, the right-wing tried to organize a coup and general strike, demanding the release of former President  Anez who was now imprisoned. The attempt was only successful in Santa Cruz, the center of the Media Luna. Later, mass organizations led a rally, encompassing 1.5 million, to the capital to defend the MAS government.

    2021 Peru. The right-wing oligarchy used lawfare unsuccessfully to unseat new President Castillo, a leader who emerged from the popular indigenous movement, seeking to remove him for being “permanently morally incapable.” However, a new lawfare case has been brought against President Castillo concerning “corruption.”

    2021 Nicaragua. The US planned to repeat the 2018 Nicaragua protests, combined with a concocted campaign that the Daniel Ortega government had imprisoned US-financed opposition “pre-candidates” before the presidential election. This coup attempt failed but the US and OAS refused to recognize the election results.

    In 2022 we can expect the US to continue “regime change” operations against Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, and now Chile with the election of progressive President Boric.

    This list of 27 US-backed coups and attempted coups in the first 21 years of this century may be incomplete. For instance, not included are the lawfare frame-ups directed by Ecuador’s former President Lenin Moreno, a US puppet, against former Vice President Jorge Glas, who is now imprisoned, nor against former President Rafael Correa, now in exile.

    This listing of US coups and attempted coups is also misleading. As throughout the 20th century, the US daily, not periodically, interferes in what it considers its colonies to both impose neocolonial regimes and maintain those regimes which open their markets to the US without conditions and align themselves with US foreign policy.

    Under the facade of “democracy promotion” Washington works to advance the exact opposite goal: foment coups against democratic and popular governments. Governments and leaders that stand up for their people and their national rights are the very targets of “democracy promotion” coups.

    Present day US reliance on soft coup operations involves funding not only NGOs and right-wing groups in the targeted countries for training in Gene Sharp style “democracy promotion” programs. Many liberal and liberal-left alternative media and NGOs in the US now receive corporate funding, which pushes their political outlook in a more pro-imperialist direction. This is well-illustrated in the soft coup attempts against Evo’s Bolivia and Rafael Correa’s Ecuador. These NGOs and alternative media give a false humanitarian face to imperialist intervention.

    Moreover, these regime change operations are now openly being used at home against the US people. This is seen in the confusion and political divisions in the US population, manufactured by the 2016 Hillary Clinton Russiagate disinformation campaign against Trump and the Trump 2020 stolen election disinformation campaign against the Democrats. For those of us opposed to US interventionism, we are called upon to expose these new sophisticated methods of soft coup interference, to demand the national sovereignty of other nations be respected, and to bring together the US people against this manipulation by the corporate rulers.

    The post 21st Century US Coups and Attempted Coups in Latin America first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • How social media regulation could affect the press

    The United Kingdom moved a step closer to regulating social media in December when a parliamentary committee recommended major changes to the country’s Online Safety Bill so as to hold internet service providers responsible for material published on their platforms. “We need to call time on the Wild West online,” said committee chair Damian Collins. “What’s illegal offline should be regulated online.” The draft law, which will be submitted to the British parliament in 2022, is aimed at penalizing companies that allow content relating to crimes like child abuse and online harassment; news reports and free expression groups have flagged similar efforts in Kazakhstan, Australia, Indonesia, Chile, and Canada, among other countries

    Social media regulation is significant for journalists who use platforms for work, especially when the legislative focus is on information or speech. In 2021, U.S. nonprofit Freedom House found that at least 24 countries were seeking to govern how platforms regulate content. States like the UK, which set out to prevent platforms from censoring journalistic posts in the draft safety bill, face thorny questions about whose posts merit protection and how regulations should be enforced.

    Many journalists are themselves demanding that governments regulate social media to help solve issues that affect the press, like online abuse, disinformation, or falling advertising revenue, but there could be other unforeseen consequences. Lawmakers in the United States, the U.K., India, Pakistan, and Mauritius are among those discouraging platforms from offering encrypted messaging, which helps journalists communicate safely. Legislation mandating that platforms share data with police would be bad news in countries that jail journalists for social media posts. Some social media laws, like Turkey’s, affect news websites and search engines as well. Others have implications for news websites with comments sections.

    At worst, authoritarians can jump on the regulatory bandwagon to stifle reporting. In 2020, a report by Danish think tank Justitia found 25 countries had drawn inspiration from Germany’s 2017 Network Enforcement Act to “provide cover and legitimacy for digital censorship.” Such laws leave social media companies with a difficult decision: comply, or leave the country.

    CPJ’s Alicia Ceccanese spoke with Kian Vesteinsson, a research analyst for technology and democracy at Freedom House, and Jacob Mchangama, executive director of Justitia, about their respective research.

    Each told CPJ how social media regulations can incentivize platforms to remove more news:

    Banning broad categories of content

    Governments are “outsourcing the policing of online content that [they] don’t like to the platforms themselves,” essentially requiring technology companies “to do the dirty work for them,” according to Mchangama.   

    In 2018 David Kaye, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur for freedom of opinion and expression, noted broadly-worded and restrictive laws on topics like extremism, blasphemy, defamation, and false news being used to require companies to suppress legitimate discussions on social media.

    A troubling example:
    Journalist Dung Le Van, right, live streams on Facebook in a coffee shop in Hanoi, Vietnam on May 15, 2018. (Reuters/Kham)

    Enforcing short takedown windows

    Germany requires platforms to remove “manifestly unlawful content” within 24 hours, or up to seven days if the legality is unclear, and other countries have followed their example without adopting the same rule of law protections, according to Mchangama.  

    “Typically [it takes a court] more than a year to process a single case of hate speech,” he said. “Some of these states then demand that social media companies make roughly the same legal assessment in 24 hours.”

    Under pressure, platforms take down more content, according to Vesteinsson. “Companies overcorrect,” he said.

    Tight deadlines incentivize companies to use solutions like artificial intelligence to automatically screen posts for something that might be illegal, according to the Washington D.C.-based Center for Democracy and Technology. But recent analysis of leaked internal Facebook documents indicate such filters have been ineffective, especially in certain languages – as have poorly-trained human moderators, according to The Associated Press and international journalism non-profit Rest of World.

    A troubling example:
    • Information Technology Rules introduced in India in February require content takedowns within 36 hours of receiving a notice from a government agency or a court, according to the digital rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation. CPJ has in the past documented restrictions on social media accounts sharing news and opinion on Kashmir via an opaque process.
    Indian commuters drive past an advertisement poster of Google in Bangalore, India, on April 6, 2018. (AFP/Manjunath Kiran)

    Eroding intermediary liability protection

    Best practices protect intermediaries like social media companies from legal action over someone else’s content, which “safeguards [companies] to moderate and remove content on their platforms and shields them from legal liability for the activities of their users,” Vesteinsson told CPJ. Liability makes them less likely to push back against censorship and surveillance demands, he said.

    Mchangama agreed. Laws that erode liability protections provide an “obvious incentive for platforms to say, “Better safe than sorry” when governments make requests, he said.

    A troubling example:
    • On December 24, a Russian court fined Google nearly $100 million in the largest of several recent fines for major platforms accused of failing to remove banned content, according to the The Washington Post. Local access to Twitter has been slowed for the same reason under a law passed in July, according to Reuters. The nature of the content involved in each case wasn’t clear, but regulators separately warned journalists and other social media companies not to allow information about anti-government protests earlier in the year.
    The logo of Russia’s state communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, is reflected in a laptop screen showing the Google start page, on May 27, 2021. (Reuters/Maxim Shemetov)

    Requiring localization

    Localization laws mandate that social media companies host staff – often local nationals – and data in country under the eye of local authorities. Representatives risk being hauled into court if the company doesn’t comply with the government’s rules, according to a recent analysis by Rest of World.

    “Companies [will] think twice about whether they want to challenge these governments [and] risk the freedom and safety of their employees on the ground,” Mchangama said.

    A troubling example:
    A picture representing a mugshot of the bird in the Twitter logo is seen on a smart phone with a Turkish flag on March 26, 2014 in Istanbul. (AFP/Ozan Kose)


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Alicia Ceccanese/CPJ Global Technology Researcher.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Twitter Boots Marjorie Taylor Greene From Platform for COVID Misinformation

    Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene joins fellow anti-abortion activists in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on December 1, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    Twitter has permanently suspended one of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s accounts for “repeated violations” of its COVID-19 misinformation policy, a spokesperson for the service confirmed Sunday.

    The suspended account, @mtgreenee, was her personal and more prolific account. She will still be allowed to post from her official Congressional page, @RepMTG.

    Her final tweet falsely referenced “extremely high amounts of Covid vaccine deaths” — a phenomenon with no basis in reality that nonetheless has been often repeated across right-wing media. The social media giant called it her fifth and final “strike.”

    The controversial representative has been suspended from Twitter temporarily in the past for spreading false information about COVID-19 and conspiracies related to the 2020 election. The company warned her back in August that it would permanently take down her account if she violated its policies again, calling a post about vaccines “failing” her fourth “strike.” She was also suspended from the platform less than a month earlier for another post that claimed COVID-19 was not dangerous to anyone unless they are obese or elderly.

    “We’ve been clear that, per our strike system for this policy, we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of the policy,” Katie Rosborough, a Twitter spokeswoman, told The New York Times in a statement.

    Twitter’s decision to permanently ban a sitting congressperson comes just one year after it decided to hand down a similar ban to then-President Donald Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

    In response to the ban, Greene released a statement on alternative social platform Telegram, a favorite of the far-right for its lax moderation strategies.

    “Social media platforms can’t stop the truth from being spread far and wide. Big Tech can’t stop the truth. Communist Democrats can’t stop the truth. I stand with the truth and the people. We will overcome!”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Will the WTA Cancel Tennis Tournaments in the USA?

    Currently, the West and its monopoly media are inordinately fixated on an allegation of a crime against an individual in another country, a country that is denigrated as a threat. The alleged crime serves as a pretext to punish that individual’s country, as if the country were the perpetrator or an accomplice in the alleged crime, or involved in a cover-up of the alleged crime.

    The New York Times headlined a piece, “The Tennis Chief Taking on China Over Peng Shuai.” The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) chief Steve Simon has suspended tournaments in China over “the treatment” of Chinese player Peng Shuai. It reads as if China, the country, has mistreated Peng.

    A WTA standard has been established: an entire country may be penalized based on an allegation (even an allegation purportedly denied by the purported alligator) of sexual misconduct against a compatriot — this despite no charge having been filed, tried, or judged to have occurred.

    When allegations of a crime arise, those interested in justice being served must guard against jumping to conclusions, as due process demands investigating and weighing the facts. Given the timing (just before the Beijing Winter Olympics slated for February 2022), geo-political posturing might be a motivation behind this demonization of China.

    This is exemplified by a statement issued on behalf of president Joe Biden by White House press secretary Jen Psaki: “We join in the calls for PRC (People’s Republic of China) authorities to provide independent and verifiable proof of her whereabouts and that she is safe.”

    It starts with an allegation of sexual assault in a post attributed to Peng Shuai that appeared and was deleted from Weibo, a Chinese social media site.

    An excerpt from a purported screenshot of Peng’s post, from what China expert Wei Ling Chua calls “a notoriously anti-CCP platform,” revealed:

    那天下午我很怕，根本没想到会是这样，一个人在外帮守着，因为谁都不可能相信老婆会愿意。七年前我们发生过一次性关系，然后你升常委去北京就再没联系过我。原本埋藏了一切在心里，既然你根本不打算负责，为何还要回来找我，带我去你家逼我和你发生关系？是我没有证据，也根本不可能留下证据。

    The part in bold translates to Peng saying “she was taken to the house [of the retired Communist Party official Zhang Gaoli] and forced to have sex.” The Chinese text is included because it is a basis for a translation by others. At least one translation, without the original Chinese text, appears elsewhere claiming there was no allegation of a sexual assault.

    Since the post appeared, the situation has transmogrified from a “missing” Peng to a no longer missing Peng. Her subsequent public appearance did not satisfy the WTA. They want to hear Peng speak. Peng did speak to the International Olympic Commission and satisfied them that she was, despite the hullabaloo, more-or-less fine. The WTA was not satisfied. What does the WTA want? Peng wrote an email to the WTA:

    Regarding the recent news released on the official website of the WTA, the content has not been confirmed or verified by myself and it was released without my consent. The news in that release, including the allegation of sexual assault, is not true. I’m not missing, nor I am unsafe. I’ve just been resting at home and everything is fine.

    If the WTA publishes any more news about me please verify it with me, and release it with my consent.

    Simon was still unsatisfied. He said, “Peng’s sexual assault claim must be investigated with ‘full transparency’ and she should be allowed to speak ‘without coercion or intimidation’.” There is innuendo in what Simon purports: a “sexual assault claim” — a claim denied in the Peng email — and that Peng is being coerced and intimidated without presenting any evidence to support this insinuation.

    Peng is the person who can speak to what really happened. But must Peng leave her motherland to explain her personal affairs to the WTA? Peng asked that her privacy be respected. The WTA claims skepticism to the email and, thereby, refuses to respect the request for privacy. What should Peng do? If the social media post was an inaccurate venting by Peng, then to force her to come forward could be construed as the WTA humiliating Peng. But what about the demonization of China?

    Ultimately, if Peng comes to the US and continues to maintain that “the allegation of sexual assault, is not true,” it is egg on the face of the WTA and its chief Steve Simon. It would also be an embarrassment for the others that have piled on China: the US, the EU, and the UN. However, western governments will all too often continue to unashamedly repeat ad nauseam their discredited lies, such as the genocide in Xinjiang or the Tiananmen Square massacre.

    In the US, as in China, jurisprudence confers a presumption of innocence until one is proven guilty of a crime. What Simon and the WTA have done is to punish a third party, a party not charged with committing, colluding, or having been found guilty of any offense. Nonetheless, the WTA in its wisdom took the step of suspending WTA tournaments in China. In effect, the WTA has pronounced Chinese tennis and, by extension, the nation of China as being guilty of, presumably, laxity or indifference to the crime of sexual assault.

    The WTA has now assumed the role of judge and jury for what it identifies as a crime against one of its players.

    If a crime was committed against Peng, then she needs to file a police report. Chinese police, like police most anywhere, do not investigate cases that have not been reported or made known to them.

    Wired has used the alleged incident to accuse China of censorship. Wired writes that the initial post from Weibo was scrubbed in half an hour and Peng and Zhang’s names were unsearchable thereafter. One can be forgiven if at first blink one suspects censorship. Do we know who deleted Peng’s post? Might censorship even be justifiable? It is too easy to complain of censorship, but what also needs to be considered is libel. If an allegation is untrue, then a libel has been committed. Sometimes an allegation may be true, but it is not provable in a court of law.

    So what does Wired suggest: that someone who might turn out to be innocent of an alleged crime have had his/her name dragged through the mud — mud that tends to leave an indelible impression? Is this justice? Or should names and accusations be kept under wraps within the justice system until a determination can be reached?

    Peng’s allegation, as she herself stated in the Weibo post, is unverifiable. (See above: 是我没有证据，也根本不可能留下证据。Translated: “I have no evidence, and it is impossible to leave evidence at all.”) If Peng does an about face and says she was forced to have sex with the former vice premier Zhang, it amounts to hearsay. The WTA is responding to hearsay.

    Now to avoid hypocrisy. There is a corroborated complaint that according to the standard set by the WTA that calls for action. In the United States sits a president who is alleged to have committed a sexual assault against a former senate staffer Tara Reade. Unlike Peng, Reade came forward and filed a complaint with a congressional personnel office and much later filed a police report.

    Reade is not a professional tennis player, but many WTA tournaments are played in the US, and since the WTA claims concern for the safety of its players, does it not behoove the WTA to suspend all its tournaments in the US?

    And why stop there? It took decades for Larry Nassar, the former team doctor for the US gymnastic team, to be brought to justice. Nassar was accused and found guilty of over 260 sexual assaults on US gymnasts. Should all gymnastic events in the US be suspended henceforth by its governing body?

    *****
    The alleged allegation in the Weibo post is serious, and it must be handled in a serious manner. If the allegation can be confirmed, then the wheels of justice must proceed, and if guilt is determined for a perpetrator, then whatever punishment is merited must be meted out.

    But the inordinate global magnification of the allegation is obviously not about a concern for justice. It is not about concern for the safety of a tennis player. This is about the capitalist West and its capitalist allies reacting to a socialist country soaring past them economically, eliminating poverty, and pulling off great technological marvels. At its core, it smacks of envy.

    The post Will the WTA Cancel Tennis Tournaments in the USA? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Nobel laureate Ressa: How the information ecosystem has been poisoned

    By Bea Cupin in Manila

    Journalist and publisher Maria Ressa has called on tech and social media giants to practise “enlightened self-interest” amid a global call for platforms to step up in the fight against disinformation.

    “The world that you’ve created has already shown that we must change it. I continue to appeal for enlightened self-interest,” said Ressa, chief executive and founder of Rappler, in an online lecture for the Facebook and the Big Lie series.

    Ressa, a veteran journalist and Nobel Peace laureate who will be receiving the award this Friday, has been studying, reporting on, and sounding the alarm against the use of social media platforms as a means to spread lies and hate.

    The Rappler boss herself has been the subject of harassment online and of legal cases against her in the Philippines.

    Platforms like Facebook, said Ressa, give the same weight on posts, whether it is a lie or a fact, in a bid to increase user engagement.

    While it has meant more revenue for the platforms, it also means that posts that spark emotion — whether or not they are based on fact — gain the most traction online.

    Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen had earlier revealed that the algorithm for instances, puts weight on “angry” reactions more than regular likes.

    ‘Moderate the greed’
    “In the Philippines, we say ‘moderate the greed.’ [These platforms] are part of our future, that’s why we’re partners,” she explained.

    The stakes are even higher in countries like the Philippines, which will be electing a new president in May 2022.

    “Why we must fight disinformation. It weakens, and ultimately subverts, democracy, by undermining the factual basis of reality, by denying the standards of truth.”

    — #FightDisinfo

    “We cannot not do anything because we in the Philippines have elections on May 9. If we do not have integrity of facts, we won’t have integrity of elections,” warned Ressa.

    Platforms, after all, are anything but clueless and helpless.

    Facebook, for instance, put more weight on “news ecosystem quality” or NEQ after employees found that election-related information were spreading on the platform in the days following the US elections in 2021.

    The NEQ, according to The New York Times, is a “secret internal ranking it assigns to news publishers based on signals about the quality of their journalism.”

    The lies asserted that the elections were rigged and that Donald Trump, then US president, was the true winner.

    The ‘big lie’ persists
    he “big lie,” as it has since been called, persists to this day.

    Ressa said she woud be asking Facebook “behind the scenes and in front,” via Rappler’s partnerships, to turn up the NEQ locally.

    Increasing the weight of the NEQ, at least in the US, meant that for a while, mainstream media accounts — The New York Times, CNN, and NPR — were more prominent on the Facebook feed than hyperpartisan pages.

    “The foundational problem is that facts and lies are treated equally, which is what has poisoned the information ecosystem,” added Ressa.

    Duterte, who won the 2016 elections by a wide margin in a plurality, is among the first national candidates to effectively use social media in a Philippine election.

    Social media hasn’t just changed how regular citizens act and candidates campaign, it has also changed sitting leaders’ tactics.

    “Leaders in the past that would take over, their first challenge is always how to unite people. Now, with social media because of the incentive schemes, we’re seeing leaders awarded if they divide,” said Ressa.

    More manipulation tools
    “Illiberal governments have gotten more tools to manipulate people,” she added. Rappler investigations later found that pro-Duterte networks used fake accounts to spread lies and disinformation well into his term as president.

    Rappler started out as a Facebook page in mid-2011 and has since grown to be among the leading news sites in the Philippines. The news organisation faces at least seven active pending cases before different courts in the Philippines.

    These are on top of online attacks over its reporting on the Duterte administration, including its bloody “war on drugs” and allegations of corruption among the President’s allies.

    Ressa and a former researcher were convicted in June 2020 for a cyber libel law that hadn’t even been legislated when the article first came out.

    Ressa is the first Filipino individual awardee of the Nobel Peace Prize and is the only woman in this year’s roster of laureates.

    Ressa won the Peace Prize alongside Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov.

    They won the prize “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”

    Republished from Rappler with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Media advocates tell of struggle for ‘survival and truth’ at Asia-Pacific forum

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Journalists and journalism are waging a global struggle for survival and for “truth” against fake news and alternative facts, say two Asia-Pacific media commentators.

    “Without journalists who will tell it like it is no matter the consequences, the future will continue to be one of alternate facts and manipulated opinions,” Rappler executive editor Glenda Gloria told about 135 media scholars, journalists and researchers at the opening of the Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) in Auckland today.

    “As we’ve experienced at Rappler, the battle to save journalism cannot be fought by journalists alone, and cannot be fought from our laptops alone. The battle for truth is a battle we must share — and fight — with other groups and citizens.

    “Each time our freedoms are threatened, we should have no qualms engaging other democracy frontliners and participating in collective efforts to resist authoritarianism.”

    However, she told the virtual conference hosted at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) she believed that journalists had the motivation and enough understanding now to “stop the tide of disinformation” that fuelled the spread of authoritarianism.

    “In this environment, make no doubt: Journalism is activism,” added the award-winning investigative journalist and author who heads the digital website that has repeatedly angered Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte with its exposés.

    Another keynote speaker, Dr David Robie, founding director of the Pacific Media Centre and retired professor of Pacific journalism at AUT, condemned a “surge of global information pollution”.

    Disinformation damaging democracy
    He outlined how disinformation was damaging democracy and encouraging authoritarianism across the Pacific, singling out Fiji and Papua New Guinea for particular criticism.

    Dr Robie cited how authorities in PNG had been forced to abandon mobile health clinics and teams of health workers carrying out covid-19 vaccination and awareness programmes because of the increasingly risky attacks against them.

    Professor Felix Tan
    Professor Felix Tan … a welcome from AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies. Image: AUT

    He said much of the content used by anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists which framed the covid-19 response as a fight between the individual and the allegedly “treacherous” state had been repackaged from US and Australia vested interests.

    Dr Robie said universities could do far more in the fight against disinformation and praised initiatives such as the RMIT fact-checking collaboration with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), The Conversation news and academia project, The Juncture journalism school website, and the new Monash University backed 360info wire news service.

    “The challenge confronting many communication programmes and journalism schools located in universities or tertiary institutions is what to do about authoritarianism, how to tackle the strain of an ever-changing health and science agenda, the deluge of disinformation and the more rapid than predicted escalation of climate catastrophe,” he said.

    “One of the answers is greater specialisation and advanced programmes rather than just relying on generalist strategies and expecting graduates to fit neatly into already configured newsroom boxes.

    “The more that universities can do to equip graduates with advanced problem-solving skills, the more adept they will be at developing advanced ways of reporting on the pandemic – and other likely pandemics of the future – contesting the merchants of disinformation and reporting on the climate crisis.”

    Dr Robie, who was awarded the 2015 AMIC Asian Communications prize, pioneered several student journalist projects in the region such as intensive coverage of the 2000 Fiji coup and the 2011 Pacific Islands Forum, and more recently the 2016-2018 Bearing Witness and 2020 Climate and Covid project in partnership with Internews.

    Journalism Nobel Peace Prize
    Glenda Gloria said her entire editorial team had been delighted when their chief executive Maria Ressa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize – along with Russian editor Dmitry Muratov. Ressa was the first Filipino Nobel laureate and “some of us started calling our office the Nobel newsroom”.

    “This immense pride that we feel isn’t just because Maria is our CEO, it is that the prize went to two journalists who have faced the toughest challenges imposed by authoritarian states,” Gloria said.

    “More than that, the Nobel prize puts a global spotlight on the extraordinary dangers that we journalists face today.

    “To many of us in the Global South, journalism has always been considered a dangerous profession long before media watchdogs started ranking countries around the world according to the freedoms enjoyed by their press.

    “And yet, despite all that we have seen and experienced, it’s no exaggeration to say that this is the most challenging period for journalism.

    “At stake today is our very existence, our relevance, and our ability to speak truth to power.”

    The conference was opened following a traditional mihi by AUT’s acting dean of the Faculty of Design and Communication Technologies, Professor Felix Tan, and ACMC president Professor Azman Azwan Azamati of Malaysia.

    Master of ceremonies duties are being shared by AUT’s Khairiah A. Rahman, the chief conference organiser, and Dino Cantal of Trinity University of Asia.

    More than 40 media and communication research papers are being presented over three days with the conference ending on Saturday afternoon.

    ACMC conference
    Some of the 135 participants at the opening day of the Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) conference in Auckland today. Image: AUT

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • No thanks, Thanksgiving . . . National Day of Sorrow . . . Mourning

    Yep, a broken record, or to update that, another one of a million cries in the dark digital dungeon to relearn history, and unlearn the rotten past. I have been looking at the Reclaiming the Sacred since I met Winona LaDuke decades ago. That’s a whole other story.

    But it doesn’t matter, especially in a time of Branch Covidians and the Trump-Biden-Obama-Clinton-Bush-Carter-Nixon-Ford-LBJ Days of Wine and Roses. Full of military industrial complex disease, and forget about American Indian Movement or Joan Baez or Leonard Peltier or even that guy, Marlon Brando.

    Forget about the PhDs and MDs and leaders and elders alive today from the many diverse tribes of Turtle Island.

    Retail, and weepy, “Oh, cherish the time, the Thanksgiving, with family, oh cherish these holiday days with family gathered around the consumer kitchen and the fine eye for a deal tables. A day of pulling out all the paper and digital flyers to see where old Saint Nick will be going FRIDAY.”

    Even lowly Time Magazine, tries to grapple with something tied to the 1863 start of Thanksgiving: “What Thanksgiving Means Today to the Native American Tribe That Fed the Pilgrims.”

    I personally think that it’s just another reminder of all the horrible things that this nation has done to not only us, but all native people,” the Chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, 29 year-old Brian Weeden tells TIME of that “first” Thanksgiving, adding that he and his tribe feel largely forgotten. Courtesy of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.

    That is 2021, November, in Time Magazine, the lede, as they say. We’ll see what the Matt Taibbi sorts, or Carlson types, or Trump lovers, or even all those on the Blue side of racism have to say, do, and how to act on Thanksgiving. Because, alas, as the Catholic Church is begrudgingly paying out for abuse in places like France, the rest of the white organized criminal-religious enterprises will be wringing their hands, but not righting the wrongs. Disappeared Indigenous here, everywhere. That Church, in Canada, and those graves. What a tip to the genocide iceberg.

    Note what Brian Weeden says in the next citation:

    For this nation to right a lot of their wrongs, they’re gonna have to own up to their racism, which they don’t want to do.

    Oh, the theater is set — presidential pardon for a Tom Turkey, and the homilies by Biden and Jill, the perennial kindergarten teacher who is a college faculty member (so many of them, democrats, and white women like Jill Biden are in the end, wannabe Special Ed teachers, but in the classrooms of college students!). Yeah, Kyle Rittenhouse is with Donald LLC Trump, not putting on the Black Face this time, but in the skin of their old favorite team, The Washington Redskins. White psychopath kid is being wined and dined by white psychopath geriatric. The irony, well, there is none. Kyle will get a cherished Washington pro team war bonnet. Manufactured and assembled in, well, of course, China.

    See the source image

    The optics are amazing, and right on line for 2024, for sure. This kid (above) has a job in the Trump LLC Republican Party juggernaut. To-Be-Sure!! And, they are having a great good white ugly boy-man time. Imagine the potential for an SUV, with Trump 2024 stickers on the bumpers and Stars and Bars noose flags on the double antennae, going for a group of protestors like these:

    See the source image

    Yet, we still have those Nazi types, pulling from their book of sayings — this in response to my op-ed in the local conservative rag acknowledging National Native American Heritage Month — at DV, “Another Genocide Month: Plying the Ignorance of K12, USA Lower/Higher Ed.” I’ll quote this Lincoln County fellow, here:

    “By all means, let’s teach history in its fullness of truth, as we ourselves learn and free ourselves from bias. The basic fact is, Stone Age tribes were crushed by more advanced and more powerful tribes, and we’re all still dealing with the outcome of the shattering of those societies.

    The fact is, genocide was sporadic and not generally practiced or effective. Displacement and an often cruel paternalism was the rule. The pre-Columbus Americas were not a rustic paradise.

    These were societies with their own particular pluses and minuses. When we teach the revised histories now, may it be said that among Northwest tribes, at potlatch gatherings, a rich chief might kill one or two slaves, just to demonstrate his immense wealth? (Something like the modern cliché of a rich businessman lighting his cigar with a $50 bill.) May we say that in the Four Corners area of the Southwest, villages raided other villages, killing and sometimes cannibalizing their victims? That the Aztec gods demanded bloody sacrifice of thousands of captives each year, and that the victims were cannibalized? That scalping existed in southwest and eastern North America before the entry of white settlers?”

    That is the old canard, the old Mel Gibson fun in his Maya-land Holly-Dirt lies. Oh, just teach the youth ALL of each and every detail, no? Thank goodness we have this response to my article in the Newport News Times:

    I appreciated Paul Haeder’s commentary (“Native American Heritage Month”) in the News-Times’ Nov. 12 “Viewpoint” on the Opinion page. I agree, our education system has not provided a very accurate view of Native American history in this country. In the early ’70s, I read Vine Deloria’s Custer Died For Your Sins. This book gave me a new historical perspective of Native American history, written by a Native American.

    The Oregon public school system would benefit from exposing its teachers to the history of the Siletz Tribe of Western Oregon. It is available in the book The People Are Dancing Again, by Charles Wilkinson. I suggest that reading parts of this history should be required reading for Oregon high school students. As Oregonians, we should have at least a basic understanding of the history of what the Native Americans experienced when westward expansion crossed the Cascade Mountains.

    As a resident of Lincoln County, I often read of how the Siletz Tribe gives back to this community, donating hundreds of thousand of dollars to coastal social programs. The Siletz and other tribes are writing their own history. They are alive and well, going forward, and we should celebrate that.

    The writer is referencing the staid short piece I did for the News Times — “Native American Heritage Month.” This is the caliber of the responses on both sides of the historical line. Talking about the sacred sites is important, and recovering the sacred, is the only way to bring these sites into the mindset of youth after youth. Vine:

    Standing on Sacred Ground: The four-part film.

    A Lakota Sioux, Vine Deloria, Jr. is one of the most outspoken figures in Native American affairs. His works promote Native American cultural nationalism and a greater understanding of Native American history and philosophy. In his work, Deloria fights prejudice against American Indians while addressing current issues, such as political and treaty rights. He is also concerned with the struggle between a religious view of life and the secularization that science and industry promote. He warns that people need to re-evaluate their stance to planet earth or humans may be one of the few species that has permanently ruined their habitat.

    “In a time of global turmoil, our planet needs the wisdom of people who remain one with their land. The Sacred Land Film Project gives voice to guardians of sacred sites around the world, offering hope for a new path forward.”

        —Peter Matthiessen

    He talks about how the Indian names are tied to bears — bears all over the plains, mountains, valleys. Bears are part of healing and prophecy. So are buffalo. Listen to him in the latter part of the talk above.

    So, this Biden, yaks about “I stand with Mashpee” during his failed campaign for his failed presidency in 2020. It’s all political theater, which is a nice term for bold faced lies, and there are plenty of lies tied to Native Americans, at contact, and during those crazy fictional writings called Thanksgiving.

    This May 16, Weeden became the youngest person elected chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag, a tribe of 2,600 enrolled citizens. This tribal center is in Mashpee, Massachusetts. He and his tribe believe the biggest issue any tribe faces today— is land, holding onto it, getting it back.

    I think that a lot of politicians say whatever they want to say to get elected. When they get there, it’s a whole different story. I was [part of the] White House Tribal Nations summit, and there really weren’t a lot of opportunities for leadership to address the administration. To add insult to injury, he’s going to be in Wampanoag territory on [Thanksgiving]—the supposed holiday that we don’t celebrate.

    Oh Biden, part of that Inquisition:

    President Joe Biden said Pope Francis told him he should 'keep receiving communion' - masslive.com

    Or, some days, he’s Jewish:

    Biden condemns Israel over homes plan | Israel | The Guardian

    Or, is he that Redskin guy?

    On Monday night, CNN aired Fight for the White House: Joe Biden’s Long Journey, a special program on the Democratic nominee’s career that included a popular photograph of Biden and one of his sons at what looks like a sports stadium (it’s not clear whether the son pictured is Hunter or Beau, who died in 2015). In the original photograph, which Biden himself posted on social media earlier this year, the kid pictured is wearing a maroon hat with the logo of the Washington football team which, until recently, used the Native American slur “Redskins” for its name. In the image that CNN includes in its documentary, the team logo has been entirely removed.

    Photograph via Joe Biden on Facebook.
    Screenshot via CNN.

    That is it in a nutshell, no? America whitewashing everything, even their own white washing.

    Here, ending with the Time Magazine article:

    Time: What’s the biggest issue the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe is currently facing?

    29 year-old Brian Weeden: The biggest issues facing the Mashpee tribe right now are with our land, the health and general welfare of our tribal citizens, and climate change and environmental impacts. We were fine living off the land; we were smart people to the point where we knew how to navigate this world. Had people listened to us, I don’t think we’d be in the situation that we are in with global warming and everything else. But I think the biggest [singular] struggle right now for our tribe is our struggle with the federal government, which has been a battle for over 400 years.

    The post No thanks, Thanksgiving . . . National Day of Sorrow . . . Mourning first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Rappler chief editor and Asia-Pacific media keynotes at ‘pandemic’ forum

    By Sri Krishnamurthi for Asia Pacific Report

    A Filipina journalist who cut her teeth as a young reporter in the Marcos dictatorship years and now heads an investigative digital media outlet and a New Zealand journalist who was on board the bombed Rainbow Warrior environmental campaign ship are keynote speakers at an Asia-Pacific conference opening in Auckland today.

    The Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) is hosting the three-day 2021 virtual conference in partnership with Auckland University of Technology with the theme “Change, Adaptation and Culture: Media and Communication in Pandemic Times”.

    Glenda Gloria, an award-winning investigative journalist and author of Under The Crescent Moon: Rebellion in Mindanao, is co-founder and executive editor of Rappler, which is at the forefront of media freedom struggles in the Philippines.

    Glenda Gloria AUT
    Glenda Gloria … co-founder and executive editor of Rappler. Image: Rappler

    Her colleague, Maria Ressa, recently jointly won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, for championing a free press and she has been the target of multiple lawsuits in an attempt by the Duterte administration to silence the media.

    Gloria will talk about current challenges facing the media in the Philippines and across the Asia Pacific region.

    David Robie, founding director of the Pacific Media Centre and recently retired professor of Pacific journalism, is speaking about the media and covid-19 “disinformation and hate speech”.

    Dr Robie sailed on board the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior that was bombed by French secret agents in Auckland in 1985 and he has reported on environmental issues, climate issues and independence struggles.

    He has been the head of three Pacific university journalism programmes and the author of several media and politics books, including Eyes of Fire and Blood on their Banner.

    ‘International sharing’
    Senior communications lecturer at AUT Khairiah A Rahman, principal organiser of the event, said there was much to be achieved from the conference.

    Dr David Robie AUT
    Dr David Robie … retired professor of Pacific journalism and now editor of Asia Pacific Report. Image: AUT

    “We will be looking at international sharing, networking, future collaborative projects, and research publications in journals and books,” Rahman said.

    The ACMC received more than 60 paper submissions and approved 44 peer-reviewed abstracts for the biannual conference which was established in the Philippines and began in 2008.

    Six international ACMC conferences have been hosted by universities in Penang, Malaysia; Bangkok, Thailand; Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Hong Kong; Philippines; Taiwan; and now at AUT in Auckland.

    “We had several pre-conference talks which yielded as many as 94 participants. In real — not virtual — ACMC conferences, we welcome 130 to 160 attendees from 22 countries,” Rahman said.

    ACMC2021
    The ACMC2021 conference at AUT.

    The opening addresses will be made by Professor Felix Tan, associate dean research and acting dean of AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies, and professor Azman Azwan Azmawa of Malaysia, president of the ACMC.

    Among papers to be presented are topics such Media, Gender, and Intersectionality in the Pandemic Times; Lockdown Love: Computer-mediated Romantic Intimacies among Select Gay Filipino Couples; The Articulation of Papuan Women Ethnic Identity on Facebook; AUT’s Cindy Wang on Anyone can be a Vlogger: Sri Lankan Moviegoers in Covid-19 Pandemic Era.

    Critical thinking
    AUT’s Rahman and associate professor Petra Theuissen will jointly present a paper titled Concept Maps as Foundations for Critical Thinking in Public Relations Study.

    Other papers to be presented include The Weibo Discussion about Taiwanese Legislation of Same-Sex Marriage presented by Massey University’s Fei Xiao.

    Also, Rahman will present a timely paper after the New Zealand’s 2019 mosque massacre titled Shifting Dynamics in Popular Culture on Islamophobia Media Narratives.

    Among the conference moderators is Jim Marbrook, a filmmaker and an AUT senior lecturer in screen production who in 2020 was co-producer of the documentary Loimata, The Sweetest Tears that won the 2021 FIFO grand jury prize in Tahiti. He will moderate a “media in quarantine” session.

    Other moderators include associate professor Camille Nakhid, chair of the Pacific Media Centre which has been in hiatus for a year, Dr Theuissen and Deepti Bhargava, who will moderate a “crisis in communication challenges” session.

    The conference begins this afternoon and ends on Saturday.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Are New Zealand’s universities doing enough to define the limits of academic freedom?

    ANALYSIS: By Matheson Russell, University of Auckland

    The news last week that University of Auckland public health researcher Dr Simon Thornley was retracting a co-authored paper about supposed vaccination risks during pregnancy raised deeper questions about the limits of academic freedom.

    Dr Thornley’s own head of department had called for the paper to be retracted due to “the anxiety it is creating for expectant parents and those planning to have a child”. Other experts in the field had strongly criticised the paper’s methodology and conclusions.

    The university itself responded publicly by asserting, “As an academic staff member […] Dr Thornley has the right to exercise his academic freedom.”

    The vice-chancellor later said, “While the university supports academic freedom, we do require research to be conducted with a high degree of integrity.”

    The controversy follows an earlier one in July, when a group of academics published an open letter questioning the scientific status of mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge). The Royal Society Te Apārangi issued a statement rejecting their views and affirming the value of mātauranga Māori as a knowledge system.

    The society is now reported to be investigating two of its fellows who were co-authors of the letter.

    In response, a group calling itself the Free Speech Union has called the Royal Society’s response an attack on free speech, saying it sends “a chilling message” to other academics.

    Freedom and integrity
    These are just two of several conflicts currently playing out in Aotearoa New Zealand over the limits of academic freedom.

    Tricky trade-offs surround particular cases like these, and they are not easily resolved. But debates over difficult cases are too often hampered by shallow conceptions of the role of universities within society and flimsy understandings of academic freedom.

    Public universities have a public mission: they serve society through generating new knowledge and teaching students. They also, in the language of the Education and Training Act 2020, serve as a “repository of knowledge and expertise” and play a role as “critic and conscience of society”.

    University staff and students are granted certain freedoms under the act to fulfil these socially valuable functions.

    Two fundamental ideas provide the rationale for academic freedom. The first is that freedom of inquiry is essential for the advancement of knowledge.

    Without the freedom to explore new ideas and to test received wisdom, the quest for knowledge cannot progress.

    The second is the idea that universities should be free from interference that would corrupt the integrity of research and the dissemination of research findings. It is in the public’s interests that neither the state nor private individuals and corporations are allowed to muzzle researchers from publicising what they know when the public would benefit from knowing.

    High ethical standards
    Institutional autonomy and the right to critically question are essential if universities are to be reliable sources of knowledge and expertise for society at large. But neither implies academics should be free to do what they like or to say what they like with impunity.

    The Education and Training Act couples the freedoms granted to universities with expectations of public accountability. It says tertiary institutions should have

    as much independence and freedom to make academic, operational, and management decisions as is consistent with the nature of the services they provide, the efficient use of national resources, the national interest, and the demands of accountability.

    In turn, the legislation places on tertiary institutions the responsibility to ensure the “highest ethical standards” are maintained.

    That’s as it should be. Just as we expect medical associations to hold doctors accountable to high standards of competent practice and ethical conduct, so should we expect tertiary institutions to hold academics to the same high standards.

    Critic and conscience
    Controversial or unpopular opinions are sometimes just what society needs to hear. That’s why the law recognises a “critic and conscience of society” role for academics — the role of speaking truth to power, as we like to say.

    But the usefulness of dissenting views to society cannot be defended if these opinions rest on faulty evidence or demonstrable falsehoods. Misinformation is incompatible with performing a role as critic and conscience of society.

    From the public’s point of view, a university is malfunctioning if it harbours and protects misinformation. It ceases to be a reliable source of knowledge and expertise.

    Likewise, academic freedom does not provide an exemption from ethical standards. Like all public institutions, we should expect universities to be places that foster healthy and respectful relationships, and serve wider societal goals of improving well-being, overcoming injustices and combating environmental destruction.

    Universities that tolerate bullying and harassment of staff and students, or marginalise already disadvantaged social groups, fail to live up to their public mission.

    Leadership needed
    New Zealand universities need to look hard at these issues. In today’s political and media environment, the challenge of mis- and disinformation is only going to intensify. Institutional culture, practices and policies need to account for this.

    And universities have barely begun to address the reality that campuses are often experienced as hostile spaces by minority groups, not least Māori and Pacific staff and students.

    A genuine democratisation of university life — including tackling institutional racism — is also vital to ensure all communities in Aotearoa New Zealand can see themselves as participants in and beneficiaries of what universities do. Principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi should not only be acknowledged but given meaningful expression.

    Hard work will be required for our universities to become highly trusted institutions by all communities. This is especially true of tangata whenua and Pacific people.

    In fact, our tertiary institutions have a lot to learn from tangata whenua about handling disagreements and responding to unethical behaviour in a way that upholds the mana of all involved.

    We would do well to take a lead from legal scholar Moana Jackson who has envisioned universities as “a marae ātea where robust debate and criticism should flourish”, but also as “a whare where relationships should be nurtured and enhanced, and where all students and staff should feel safe and free”.

    To realise such a vision will require clear-headed and courageous leadership at all levels within our universities.The Conversation

    Dr Matheson Russell is associate professor of philosophy, University of Auckland. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Anti-vax disinformation and UK government hesitancy could see many more coronavirus deaths

    Coronavirus (Covid-19) cases are soaring across parts of Europe, with Austria now in lockdown and a warning Germany could follow.

    In contrast, the UK government has held back on imposing more restrictions, despite coronavirus cases still remaining high. Its de facto approach appears to be that of ‘herd immunity’, relying on further uptake of the first, second and booster vaccine doses.

    Meanwhile continuing coronavirus misinformation or disinformation is likely contributing to vaccine hesitancy.

    The dirty dozen

    Earlier this year the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) identified that “up to 65%” of false coronavirus information, published via social media, is attributable to individuals described as the “Disinformation Dozen”.

    CCDH says:

    The Disinformation Dozen are twelve anti-vaxxers who play leading roles in spreading digital misinformation about Covid vaccines. They were selected because they have large numbers of followers, produce high volumes of anti-vaccine content or have seen rapid growth of their social media accounts in the last two months.

    Huffington Post described these “disinformation peddlers” as

    anti-vaccine advocates, alternative health entrepreneurs and physicians, some of whom run multiple accounts across the platforms and profit by selling supplements and books.

    Case study 1: Joseph Mercola

    One of the “Disinformation Dozen” identified by the CCDH is Joseph Mercola, who sells diet supplements via his wife’s website. Mercola also runs the so-called National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) together with Barbara Loe Fisher.

    CCDH describes Mercola as: “a successful anti-vaccine entrepreneur, peddling dietary supplements and false cures as alternatives to vaccines”. His social media accounts have “around 3.6 million followers”.

    Mercola claimed that hydrogen peroxide can treat “most viral respiratory illnesses, including coronavirus”.

    According to an article in the blog Science Based Medicine, Mercola is:

    a physician whose nearly quarter-century of promoting quackery and antivaccine misinformation has garnered him a net worth north of $100 million. It is therefore not surprising that in the age of the pandemic, he has pivoted to fatten his bottom line promoting misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and the COVID vaccines.

    The article adds that Mercola: “promoted the false idea that these [coronavirus] vaccines can “permanently alter your DNA“ and that they… were “experimental gene therapy”. In July, the Guardian reported that Mercola remains on Facebook.

    Case study 2: Ivermectin

    Covid Legal USA (CLU), which describes itself as a “a paralegal, legal writing and technology firm”, promotes Ivermectin as a cure-all for coronavirus, saying there are currently:

    at least 126 studies, with 82 being peer-reviewed (as of October 28, 2021), showing that Ivermectin is highly effective in treating COVID-19 in early stages, late stages, and as prophylaxis (preventative measure).

    In support of its claim, CLU provides an extensive list of clinical studies, as well as a meta-analysis of 66 of those studies which references 203 papers. However, the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) did not recommend its use; nor did the World Health Organization (WHO), apart from in clinical trials.

    Despite FDA and WHO criticisms, the meta-analysis concludes that Ivermectin is an effective treatment for Covid-19. It adds:

    While many treatments have some level of efficacy, they do not replace vaccines and other measures to avoid infection

    Nevertheless, CLU makes it clear that it supports vaccine hesitancy and skepticism.

    And one meta-analysis said something very different, concluding that Ivermectin “is not a viable option to treat patients with COVID-19”. It said:

    Compared with the standard of care or placebo, IVM [Ivermectin] did not reduce all-cause mortality, LOS [length of hospital stay], or viral clearance in RCT [randomised controlled trials] in patients with mostly mild COVID-19.

    And a September systematic review and meta-analysis stated that Ivermectin was “not efficacious at managing COVID-19”, but advised further clinical trials.

    Coronavirus cases soaring

    Coronavirus cases across Europe are soaring, with lockdown imposed in Austria and possibly Germany too. As for the UK, cases have risen to 9,766,153 and there have been 143,716 deaths.

    The UK now has the fourth highest number of cases in the world. University of Warwick virologist and professor of molecular oncology Lawrence Young commented:

    Less mask wearing, more mixing indoors due to colder weather and waning immunity are also contributing to the high case levels across Europe.

    Gains and losses

    As previously reported by The Canary, Independent SAGE issued a 9-point plan in September to deal with the pandemic over the winter. Doctors also called for a Plan B to be implemented in England, which would at least see mandatory face masks in certain settings, vaccine passports, and more working from home.

    Meanwhile, further mass vaccination will help reduce the number of cases and hospitalisation.

    However, hesitancy appears to be a hallmark of Boris Johnson’s government, as October’s damning report on its handling of the pandemic showed. That, together with ongoing disinformation, especially by anti-vaxxers, will likely negate any gains in beating the pandemic.

    Featured image via Wikimedia/U.S. Secretary of Defense

    By Tom Coburg

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Collusion: The End of Nature, Brought to us by Zoom

    The only way to break through a totalitarian (lite) thinking is to continue using blunt force, or airy force, to expose this massive experiment in turning Americans into screen dwellers. The new ghetto is the screen.

    The lockdown might be lifted, physically, for the Covdians, but in the minds of these people, the world is now shifting to the high tech, fiber optic, 5G/6G satellite-directed world.

    Imagine this event, on the ecosystems of my area, now, a virtual event. It is embarrassing that science-minded people want public and community participation over zoom. No depth to why it has to be “virtual,” and no apologies for being so dense.

    Or, are they dense? Are they loving this hybrid, virtual, remote work mentality? You know, I was just interviewed by the State of Oregon for a state job. The thing was on Zoom, and there were three there and me here. One question was around “how would you make virtual meetings and intakes more engaging . . . . ?” This is the new normal, alas, and this huge shift of bricks and mortar life, into the AI void, and with these huge (massive) transfers of trillions to a very few felons of the elite class, these scientists who have grants and faculty positions and tenure, they will not lead the way anywhere.

    And their world is all fancy web-based crap, like cool photos, imaginary graphics, all compressed and collected to make people say, “Oh, isn’t it wonderful how wonderful the scientists working in the wonderful natural world are!!’

     

    In this Greta-and-Company-Can-Fly-to-GLasgow-to-Protest-Their-Governments’-Fossil-Fuel-Lunacy, many people I know are so happy now that Zoom is a fixture in their lives, and that they do not have to brave the Highway 101, or the weather, or the climate warnings. These people who might be interested in ecology and marine preserves and environmental policy are usually on the left trough of the manure pile of politics called Democrats. They are, of course, the new Brown Shirts, but call them Green Shirts, or Zoom Shirts. Their world, and the one they are ushering in since youth, have no say in how things SHOULD be run. It is not a real world, but one that is full of maps and podcasts and TED Talks and faux interactive chats and Zooms:

    We are talking about 14 square miles designated as a marine reserve. Then some overflow for seabird protection area. This is, again, embarrassing. There is an interpretive center at Cape Perpetua, one that I have been at for in-person events. There are parking spaces. There are so many ways these great thinkers and planners could have organized an in-person event, even with their defective masks and asinine social distancing. That, my friends, will not happen. More and more youth are getting more and more skills with the mouse, the CAD programs, with Publisher and Photoshop. Their world is a world where billionaires own everything, and living in a van with full bed, TV, running water, hell, that is what youth are going to be having to accept as more and more dictatorial thinkers run the world, run events, run programs and educational frameworks.

    Between Florence and Yachats lies the Cape Perpetua area, a biodiverse recreation mecca home to lush coastal rainforests and deep cultural history. But past the coastline also lies the largest Oregon marine reserve. The Cape Perpetua Marine Reserve is dedicated to the research and conservation of ocean ecosystem, where take of wildlife and human development is restricted. Cape Perpetua area also contains two Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and a seabird protection area. Unlike the reserve, these protected areas allow limited take in their boundaries.

    Within the reserve, creatures large and small live in various habitats from sand, gravel, to some of the most biologically diverse rocky intertidal habitats anywhere on the Pacific Northwest. These creatures live in a unique ecosystem shaped by the ever-changing weather and tides. Some days, strong winds will pull cold, oxygen-rich water and plankton up to the surface in a process called upwelling, while on other, more stagnant days, the water loses its oxygen and becomes hypoxic.

    Because of its dynamic environment, the Cape Perpetua Marine Reserve is home to a plethora of wildlife such as whales, sea lions, seals, pelicans, cormorants, rockfish, and intertidal invertebrates that fuel a complex food web between the land and sea. (source)

    It’s a fear pogrom that is both sophisticated beyond Big Brother, and yet, right to the primary brain center of reptilian stupidity and violence.

    Here, Edward Curtain over at Dissident Voice, covers this fear, this divide, etc. Source.

    Edward Curtin returns to discuss deep politics and what links the assassination of JFK, 9/11, and Covid-19. No president since Kennedy has dared to buck the Military-Industrial-Complex, including Trump, who is part of the same system that produced both Obama and Biden. He discusses the 1967 CIA memo which told mainstream media to use the disparaging term “conspiracy theory” to quell all deviation from the official narrative, and how this propaganda technique has continued to function from JFK to 9/11 to Covid-19. Many of the same actors involved in the MIC and 9/11 continue to be involved with the drug companies, CDC, WEF, WHO, Gates Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. It’s very obvious, but the story is so frightening people don’t want to do any homework. Too many people think there is this war going on between the right and the left, in the larger frame of reference there is no difference, it’s the warfare state against the regular people, the rich versus the poor. The 4IR is an effort for total political and economic control of peoples all over the world. He believes the purpose of the vaccine mandate is for political control. Ultimately, we are in a spiritual war. The Geopolitics & Empire Podcast conducts interviews with high-profile guests on geopolitics and international affairs seeking to gain insight from experts on both the left and the right as to the true nature of current events. Read other articles by Geopolitics & Empire, or visit Geopolitics & Empire’s website.

    The tricksters are at it and have been for decades. The worker — that is teachers and faculty, too, especially — is the enemy. The students are the enemy. So many billions pumped into studying the brain, psychology, neurosciences, behavioral psychiatry, etc. I saw this in 1983 when I was a graduate student, teaching college English. Some of these long in the tooth folk, who want their Vermont or Hawaii lives, but still be the teacher of record for our campus, UT-El Paso. That’s Texas, and already in the 1980s these folk wanted hybrid classes, on-line. Imagine that, critical thinking and debating writing classes, on line! Before ZOOM.

    Oh, big companies would “give” laptops to workers — Ford, IBM, HP — not as gifts, but to extract MORE work out of the 40 hour week, and that is now 50 or 60 hours. That is, well, the beginning of technology destroying every aspect of our real selves.

    Now, community colleges are up shit creek, pre-planned-demic, but now, too. Imagine, more and more pieces of the state budget pie reduced for Podunk community colleges — vital places of not just learning, but community events, incubators of thinking, and connections to much more than just academia. So, more and more raised tuitions, more and more part-time faculty hired, more and more hybrid classes, and now, the Zoom Doom. Imagine, one teacher on Zoom running a class of 80, 90? This is the new normal — kill the person.

    The online option seems to work for all kinds of students. When the financial-aid team returned to campus in August, Bohanon opened up her schedule for in-person appointments. For the first week, no one registered to see her. She told her supervisor she wanted to add online appointments again, and reserved 8 a.m. to noon for online and the rest of the day for in-person walk-ins. “In the morning when I come in — full,” she says. Afternoon? Nothing.” Now her schedule is full every day, but all her appointments are virtual.

    The push-and-pull between in-person and online courses continues for students at Southwest, but it may be starting to shift toward the latter. One of the pieces of conventional wisdom about community colleges during the pandemic is that students often dislike or fear online learning — a refrain repeated often at Southwest. But more than a year and a half after colleges transitioned to large-scale distance learning, many of the students at Southwest who persisted have begun to favor online sections over the nearly 40 percent of courses being taught in person.

    Rebuild? Time for a revolution inside K12 and higher education. Regroup? Revolt neoliberalism and illiberalism and the constant attack on education. Or, attack on schooling. Constant attack on learning! These so-called leaders have collapsed, and they have crawled under their retirement accounts, and they are seeing-hearing-speaking no evil. This is the Chronicle of Higher Education, a very retrograde, conservative, cover-their-asses-rag!

    The new normal is being accepted by the masses, but the mealy mouthed academics and those on the peripheral of academia are coming out like flies on shit:

    Southwest and other community colleges may just have to wait out Covid. Even if the virus doesn’t completely go away, the risks may get lower and people may become more accustomed to living with it. “I really think that’s going to be the biggest thing, is time,” Brown says, “and people feeling it’s safe to completely return to, we won’t call it normal, but like the new normal.”

    If there’s one thing community colleges should not do, says Eddy, of William & Mary, it’s go back to normal. “It would be a mistake to think, I just need to wait this out to come to a time where we’re going to have more openness,” she says. After a decade of gradually declining enrollments, the pandemic has brought community colleges to an inflection point where they have a chance to — may even be impelled to — make some changes, many perhaps overdue.

    Read the article, and look between the lines. These people are stating that the planned pandemic made virtual learning more onerous because students didn’t have laptops and Wi-Fi, and didn’t know what a JPEG or PDF were. Oh, you get it, don’t you? Get those students free (US taxpayer paid for) computers and free (US taxpayer paid for) Wi-Fi. Bootcamps for Microsoft Office 10.0 Adobe workshops. Get those students to be on-line warriors. Take it, and you can’t leave it or you will be cancelled from society.

    And this all goes back to the Zoom event, about Cape Perpetua, about 12 miles from where I live, via Highway 101. You think there will be regard for people who want trails for hiking, trails for biking, rivers for kayaking? You think that the overlords want to have us out in nature, out along highways and by-ways? These overlords want to own the world, the land, the forests, the farms, all of it, and they want security, and they want no trespassing, and they want no by-standers and witnesses.

    The scientists just take it, because that’s what mechanistic folk do — strip away the A from STEAM — Science Technology Engineering Arts and Math.

    This is the motherfucker, the mentality, the demented thought process, and the messed up media, all the brainwashed fuckers of the world, in a nutshell:

    “I Don’t Think We Should Ever Shake Hands Again.” Dr. Fauci Says Coronavirus Should Change Some Behaviors for Good

    These are madmen:

    Madman and madwoman —

    Joe Biden CDC Director Rochelle Walensky Takes Over Institution in Crisis - Bloomberg

    Terrorists and war criminals —

    World Economic Forum: a history and analysis | Transnational Institute

    Billionaires ‘R Us —

    Davos 2020: What is the World Economic Forum and is it elitist? - BBC News

    This is it, man, the last frontier — education! Covid car, online programs, internet-access solutions. If you read this site, The Chronicle of Higher Education, there is not pushback, no discussion of the 4IR, the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

    Oh, the senseless stupidity of it all, the Covid Van.

    MahoneyCar-1109.jpg
    The post Collusion: The End of Nature, Brought to us by Zoom first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Northland principal faces ‘vindictive’ abuse for backing vaccine mandate

    By Ella Stewart, RNZ News reporter

    A Northland high school principal says she has been accused of being “complicit in mass genocide” by people opposed to getting vaccinated.

    After today, anyone who works or volunteers in an education setting in New Zealand and who has not received at least one dose of the covid-19 vaccine will be barred from school grounds.

    Last week, thousands of people marched up the streets of Wellington to Parliament to protest for various covid-19-related reasons.

    Some were angry at the covid-19 vaccination mandates, the lockdowns or the vaccine itself.

    The protesters screamed abuse at police and media, demanding an end to covid-19 restrictions.

    This level of anger is all too familiar for Whangārei Boys High School principal Karen Gilbert-Smith.

    “I appreciate that what’s happening for a lot of people is really challenging, but the kind of things that have been happening from my end, and I know speaking to other colleagues, they’re experiencing similar things, is relentlessness that we’re doing something to others,” Gilbert-Smith said.

    ‘Worst message’
    “I think the worst message that I got was that I was complicit in mass genocide by supporting the vaccination mandate,” she said.

    “We get a lot of emails from parents: the vast majority of those are positive, but the ones that kind of take the wind out of your sails and that require the most thoughtful response are the ones that are really awful and vindictive.”

    The abuse was coming from all angles and although it was a minority, their voices were loud, Gilbert-Smith said.

    “I think it’s the ill-informed or misinformed anti-vaxxers that are really whipping up that hatred. That just feels really abhorrent to me that misinformation just gets so widely spread and is leading to that sense of lack of safety for people in their communities.”

    But today the no jab, no job policy for education staff officially kicks in.

    Teachers need to have received at least one dose of the covid-19 vaccine if they want to continue to work with students in a face-to-face learning environment.

    ‘Where are we going to find those replacements?’
    Gilbert-Smith preferred not to comment on their own staffing situation at Whangārei Boys High School, but did say she was nervous.

    “As principals, many of us have had conversations about the impact in our own schools and certainly in Te Tai Tokerau, it’s likely to have a significant impact on staffing across our schools, so we’re not just talking about teachers,” she said.

    “We’re talking about groundsmen, canteen staff, support staff, everyone. We can ill afford to have staffing shortages and in Tai Tokerau it’s difficult enough.”

    She is concerned that it will impact on students.

    “It’s hard enough to put well qualified, passionate, knowledgeable, smart teachers in front of students, which is what they deserve. And now we’re in a situation of being a little bit further behind than that.

    “Where are we going to find those replacements? Particularly teachers. That is very worrying to me.”

    She said the constant hate and abuse was wearing her down and was making it harder for her to do her job.

    ‘Creating reassurance’
    “Principals are creating reassurance for everyone in their community, but also fielding all the negativity that comes. Anyone with aspirations of being a principal right now, they might be reconsidering at this point,” she said.

    “We are obliged to uphold the law, and that’s what we’re doing as principals, and we’re doing the best that we can. We’re managing people’s expectations and we’re dealing with their upset and distress.

    “And keeping the school running as we’re supposed to do on any other day of the week, or any other time of the year. It is a lot of work.”

    Gilbert-Smith said she loved her job, but the current conversations had moved too far away from being about creating better outcomes for young people in Aotearoa.

    “That’s a real shame because they are the ones that will suffer, those young people in our schools.”

    The impact of the vaccine mandate on teacher supply will not be known until the vaccination deadline has passed and numbers are clear, according to the Ministry of Health.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Inside Nicaragua’s 2021 Elections

    The US, EU, and OAS are launching a new coup attempt against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, refusing to recognize its 2021 elections. The Grayzone‘s Ben Norton observed the vote on the ground, and filed this report.

    The post Inside Nicaragua’s 2021 Elections first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Auckland mayor Phil Goff calls NZ anti-lockdown protesters ‘stupid’

    RNZ News

    Auckland mayor Phil Goff has hit out at anti-lockdown protesters who held up traffic on roads throughout the country today, describing their actions as “crass and stupid”.

    Police are promising to follow up on any offences or breaches of the laws after the Freedoms and Rights Coalition protest group took to the roads, trying to create a gridlock in New Zealand’s largest city by driving slowly.

    On Facebook today, Goff said he came across them as he was returning from a Pasifika vaccination event at Mt Smart Stadium where he saw “volunteers and medical staff working in the pouring rain to ensure people are protected”.

    He said their vehicles spread across three lanes of the motorway, doing 50 km an hour and deliberately blocking people from going about their business.

    Goff said they were spreading disinformation and lies about covid-19 and vaccinations.

    “Crass and stupid but what else would you expect?” he asked.

    Cases and vaccination rates
    The Ministry of Health reported 175 new community cases of covid-19 – 26 fewer than yesterday’s total.

    Of those 159 are in Auckland, two in Northland, eight in Waikato, one in Taupō and the five previously announced cases in Taranaki.

    The two new Northland cases have clear links to known cases.

    However, the ministry late today confirmed three more positive results for Taupō in addition to the case announced earlier.

    Two are household contacts.

    The third is a close contact. This person, who is now isolating in Taupō, travelled to Masterton last weekend, before becoming ill on Monday.

    Two other household contacts of the case have tested negative.

    Ninety three people are in hospital – all in Auckland and eight more than yesterday.

    Nine patients are in intensive care or a high dependency unit.

    The latest wastewater result for the Taranaki town of Stratford has not detected covid-19.

    Close to 90 percent target
    Just over 2000 first doses of the covid-19 vaccine are needed for the whole country to officially reach the 90 percent milestone.

    The latest figures from the Ministry of Health show Auckland DHB is the first to surpass more than 95 percent of the eligible population to have their first dose.

    Nationally, about 80 percent have had a second dose.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • PNG police block illegal anti-vaxxer rally in Port Moresby amid fake info

    By Marysilla Kellerton in Port Moresby

    Demonstrators gathered in Port Moresby yesterday for a march to Parliament in protest over the covid-19 vaccines, which they claimed wrongly to be mandatory, a day after Papua New Guinean police warned such gatherings were illegal.

    The protest was a result of a post circulating on social media about a “peaceful protest march” planned for the day against mandatory vaccination.

    Despite assurances from Controller of the Pandemic Response and Police Commissioner David Manning that the notice circulated was false and misleading because vaccination was not mandatory and still remained a personal choice, the protesters gathered for the rally.

    The anti-vaccine crowd disobeyed advice from the police to disperse. Instead, they took to the Gordon bus stop, gained momentum from others who joined them and attempted to march through a residential street towards the Wardstrip Primary School and on to Parliament.

    However, police thwarted their their attempts by blocked the route and spoke to the crowd who disregarded social distancing and masks.

    The NCD/Central Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), Anthony Wagambie Jnr, addressed the crowd. He said their concerns had already been heard.

    It was not clear who the organisers of the march were.

    Endangering public safety
    ACP Wagambie explained that the march had to be stopped by police to prevent disorder stemmed that would endanger the safety of others in Port Moresby.

    The anti-vaxxers carried a banner with messages condemning “666” and “artificial intelligence”.

    Misinformation about the covid-19 vaccines is currently swamping genuine information available to Papua New Guineans and is allowing fear and confusion to gain momentum.

    Asia Pacific Report reports only 1.2 percent of the nine million Papua New Guineans are vaccinated against covid-19.

    According to the John Hopkins University covid dashboard, 29,715 cases of covid and 370 deaths have been reported on Papua New Guinea but health officials fear the real toll is far higher because of limited testing and records.

    John Hopkins has reported that the total death toll from covid-19 has now passed five million globally.

    Marysilla Kellerton is a Loop PNG reporter.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Indigenous Leaders in Nicaragua Speak Out Against Western Media and NGOs

    Nicaragua has an election to choose their president and national assembly on November 7. According to polls, the Sandinista Front (FSLN) currently in government is expected to win the presidency and a majority of seats in the assembly.

    At the same time, the Sandinista government is intensely disliked by Washington and there has been a steady stream of negative news and accusations.

    One theme of accusations concerns the indigenous peoples. In October 2020, PBS Newshour broadcast an episode claiming the US is importing “conflict beef” from the indigenous regions of Nicaragua. This story relied on an Oakland Institute report which alleges rampant violence against indigenous communities and a complicit Nicaraguan government.

    The PBS story and Oakland Institute accusations were criticized at the time, but there was no retraction or serious response.

    One month later, in November 2020,  Stephen Sefton travelled to eastern Nicaragua to interview indigenous community leaders and determine the facts. He asked the elected indigenous leaders about the situation, the challenges and whether the PBS story and Oakland Institute reports were accurate.

    Sefton,  a community worker who has lived in Nicaragua for 25 years, has published the interviews in a 79-page PDF booklet titled “Nicaragua’s Indigenous Peoples: the Reality and the Neocolonial Lies”.

    Sefton interviewed an impressive set of indigenous leaders. With photos below they are:

    Arisio Genaro Selso (President  Mayangan Indigenous Territorial Government);

    Eloy Frank Gomez (Secretary Mayangna Indigenous Territorial Government);

    Fresly Janes Zamora (President of the Miskito Indigenous Territorial Government Twi Yabra);

    Ronald Whittingham Dennis (President of the Indigenous and Afro Descendant Territorial Government Karata);

    Rose Cunningham Kain (Mayor of Waspam and President of the Indigenous Territorial Government of Wanghi Awala Kupia);

    Dr. Loyda del Carmen Martinez Rodriguez (District Judge of Waspam, Rio Coco);

    Lejan Mora (President of Indigenous Territorial Government of Wangki Twi / Tasba Raya).

    Nicaragua’s Autonomous Zones

    In 1987, the Sandinista government passed Law 28 which gave legal support to indigenous land claims. After the Sandinistas lost a hotly contested election in 1990,  neoliberal policies took over and progress on indigenous claims was stopped and reversed.  In 2005, the FSLN was still in opposition but secured passage of Law 445.

    As a result of these laws, approximately 31% of Nicaragua’s territory is considered communal property owned by the indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples of the country.

    *****

    Key Questions and Answers

    Are cattle being raised for export in the autonomous zones?

    Rose Cunningham Kain:

    Cattle here have been like pets in other countries. And little by little we have been making a shift to having more cattle. But here there has been no certification process to permit meat exports.

    The people here supply the local market and, as often as not with some difficulty, we manage to find someone who wants to butcher their cattle for the local market. Of course, in the last few years we have been encouraging people to improve their cattle stock, so that IPSA (Institute of Agricultural Protection and Health) can do its work teaching us how to improve our cattle rearing.

    But we keep animals on a very small scale. So, this report saying that settlers are killing us for land to raise cattle on is not true either. That is not true. Not one cattle rancher has died here, not one Miskito involved in any kind of cattle related killing. It’s a Disney World story, maybe, a Mickey Mouse story, who knows. But it is not a real story of this municipality Waspam or any of these municipalities where there are indigenous peoples.

    What about media claims that a little girl was shot in the face by a land invader? 

    Lejan Mora:

    In that case, a 13-year-old boy was handling his father’s handgun inside the house. The gun went off and the bullet pierced through here and came out here on a nearby girl.  What did they do when that accident happened? The creators of fake news took charge of spreading the word through the media, through Facebook, claiming that a lot of men appeared, 200 men and attacked the community. And we showed that was false. We went to the house and to the community.

    We interviewed people. We even visited the site where it happened. Everything was false. But that information spread internationally as if it was something real, which is untrue. Today even we could go… if we go to the community, we can go and talk also to the mother of the girl about what happened, and she can tell us the truth.

    Some mestizo farmers purchased land in the indigenous regions.  How did this happen?

    Eloy Frank Gomez:

    Yatama (indigenous opposition political party) mayors and deputies of Yatama were involved in the sale of indigenous lands. The community members didn’t know. The mestizos came in big numbers, families after families entering indigenous territories, for example, in the area of the Rio Coco.

    In certain areas of our communities in the Bosawas Reserve, which borders with Miskito land, many mestizo settlers came to enter our Mayangna lands. But how? Through these sales authorized by politicians from Yatama.

    It’s no secret that Liberal mayors and municipalities with mayors opposed to the government also promoted land trafficking, even financed organized groups, armed groups to invade indigenous lands and to dispossess the indigenous people of their lands. There is evidence of that.

    Lejan Mora:

    YATAMA leaders were the ones who started selling land. We have documents showing they were the vendors. Who were the buyers? People from the Pacific, who don’t have land. So, they began selling, they began doing business, and that is where the problem of land invasion arose.

    How are relations between indigenous and mestizo settlers?

    Fresly Janes Zamora:

    From the 1980s to date, if that person lives in that area, in that community, they already know the language, the culture, they already live with the same culture. The children, for example, are already over 30 years old. So, all these things give them that right.

    But what happened? The problem of the invasions started after the year 2000. It was difficult for the communities… they didn’t even have the authority to make decisions. So, what happens then? From 2013 onwards, we do have that dominion.

    We have that dominion, and we do still have that conflict, not with the government, not with the State of Nicaragua, but the people, the mestizos themselves are invading properties. Because as I told you, we conserve areas. Our ancestors, that is our culture. We are few but we have large tracts of land, because they are the areas where we go out to hunt animals, to sow our crops, to fish. So, these are areas where we as indigenous peoples abide. That is our culture.

    So, we now have the title. We have … dominion, we do have now, and the government, the State recognizes it. The only problem we have is that sometimes outsiders want to invade us or are invading our property. So, something that we must teach them is to recognize that they are our lands, and that this land is not empty and unclaimed.

    It has an owner. And the owner is the indigenous peoples. Therefore, although they do need land, they must coordinate, to reach an arrangement, to engage in dialogue, a negotiation with the owners

    Sometimes we have a conflict. With two or three of the ten mestizos that are within our lands, not all of them agree to recognize us. Always, in everything, there are two or three families that do not agree, that do not want to recognize us. So, what do we do?

    When this is the case, we visit the place, because it is our land, and we go in a commission to explain to them the internal regulations of our communities, or the internal regulations of the territory. If they agree, we can reach an understanding.

    We can sit down and start a dialogue, negotiate. Because the lands cannot be sold, even if I want to sell, I cannot, even if I want to give them away, I cannot. Because that’s a crime. But yes, the land can be leased.

    So, what we are doing is, as Twi Yabra, we are leasing land. We are leasing land, after several lawsuits, there was even bloodshed.  But what good is that?

    Rose Cunningham Kain:

    Here in Waspam we are practicing coexistence with those who have come to settle in Waspam. So, in this municipality we have different models of relations with non-indigenous peoples, with non-indigenous settlers. At this moment in the context of the hurricane, we have also had news of agricultural losses these non-indigenous people have suffered too. And as the mayor’s office we have to listen to them because they are Nicaraguan citizens. They have human rights. They are human too.

    What is true is that we always call on them to reach agreement with the indigenous peoples. Either they leave or they come to an agreement with the owners of the land. The last violent activity must have been in about 2013/14. We have not had violent activities in this part of our territory. Here we have seen meetings where people speak their minds. We have documented meetings that have taken place in the mountains between non-indigenous settlers and indigenous settlers where 17 communities, leaders of 17 communities, come together and walk to meet at a certain point.

    The last stage of the transition in the autonomous zones is remediation (‘saneamiento’). What is the status of this?

    Lejan Mora:

    We’re in the last phase of the remediation, which is clearing the boundaries, the inter-territorial limits and so on. So, we are at that stage right now. I remember very well indeed that in 2015 there were clashes between Miskitos and those who were invading the land.

    The political opposition are insisting on self-remediation. So, the people in the communities rise up, get involved in confrontations, and then they persist, and that’s how it happened that, I think there have been four or three deaths, something like that.

    We invited the settlers and we sat there under a tree. We started to make a presentation of the real situation there because they know very well they are on land that does not belong to them, we presented this to them. And we have shown them what and how might be the most appropriate way forward. It is a negotiated way, not through confrontations or anything like that.

    We talked and reached an agreement that… because there are people who have been on that land for several years. And that land where they are located, they got it because another territory sold it. One territory agreed the sale, but it is a piece of land that belongs to a different territory.

    So, it is a bit of a complicated situation. So, we talked with them, and precisely this coming Wednesday we have planned to go and prepare the ground for to another type of approach, namely leasing. We as the territory of Wangki Twi have not yet taken that approach but seeing the situation and to alleviate it a little, we must take that step. To what end? To a point we regard as feasible for creating a calmer and more durable situation, so that there are no conflicts.

    What about “self-remediation”?

    Fresly Janes Zamora:

    The opposition is promoting violence between indigenous and mestizos… Self-remediation means promoting violence between indigenous against mestizos.

    So, when they throw a stone, someone else will throw stones.

    Why do they send NGOs and programs for this? … On paper it says one thing, but on the ground it’s something else. That’s it. So that’s what they are promoting. When there is no fire, there is no money. As I told you, things are calm, things are resolved, but that’s what they do.

    So, we as Twi Yabra territory are against those people. That is why we are not involved with any organization. Because at the beginning we thought they entered in good faith to support us. But during the execution of these projects, of these visits, which they did in my absence, they were already doing other things. We immediately prohibited their visits to our communities because they were trying to destabilize the structure of the territorial government, the structure of the communal authorities and at the same time to bring violence between the Miskito peoples and outsiders, so we are against it.

    When do you negotiate with non-indigenous people?

    Ronald Whittingham Dennis:

    There are people who say remediation is to clear out, to get everyone out …. But some people say no, remediation is to seek an understanding, to remediate is to reach an understanding. And part of that understanding is the well-known term of reordering. That is the concept.

    So, what does it mean to reorder? It is not that the mestizos or the outsiders that are within your territory, within your area, that they are going to decide where they are going to be. You will tell them where they are going to be. That is reordering. And how much you can give in the portion of land. That is the zoning.

    It is a component for solving problems. Now in that reordering you also have to see who will go and who can stay. That is reordering.

    The State provides that through the Army and the Army’s Ecological Battalion, and no territory can say that’s not the case. They have indeed provided accompaniment. They have provided accompaniment.

    If a member of the community sold a certain portion of land for whatever reason, you are forced to sit down and negotiate. To see what can be done. And to negotiate you have to do so in a spirit of wanting to solve the problem. But if there is no will to resolve the problem rather than to create more problem, then you will never solve the problem.

    So, you have to look for strategies on how you are going to resolve it. Because these people who have already, imagine, who have already come to live here for fourteen years, fifteen years, they came to plant their crops, they have their own livestock, they have their animals, they are already well established.

    And that is what we in the territories have to understand. The damage is already done. What we have to look for is how to resolve the problem.

    What happens to settlers who are violent or refuse to leave the indigenous areas?

    Dr. Loyda del Carmen Martinez Rodriguez:

    The State has vindicated the indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples’ right to the land, and the State is also a guarantor in the efforts to secure social peace in our country and in our region. It is a process in which the State has guaranteed and has given those peoples this right, but the political opposition always does not see this. They also say that the cases we have prosecuted are of little importance. But no. The indigenous peoples are being protected and the rights the indigenous peoples are being vindicated. And the State has contributed a great deal to this because no other government had ever recognized the indigenous peoples, giving them a title to what before was only private property, where only the oligarchy and the bourgeoisie had the right to own land.

    Also, I have participated in dialogue between mestizos and Miskitos in which there are territories that want to resolve the remediation process by means of a leasing agreement with the territory. They make the proposal, then the territory, its president will decide if they are going to lease or not. So, we have carried out these procedures as a judicial authority… by way of accompaniment, then. So, you see, we have participated listening to both parties, the mayor of the municipality has invited me to participate and listen to proposals made by the non-indigenous party.

    Likewise, we have made progress in this aspect of property remediation, and we are not trying to drag it out, although the opposition always sees it like that. But there has been a lot of progress, because there is a dialogue between mestizos and Miskitos in which the State guarantees as established in Law 445 that those communities, that now have their legal title, can lease their land and that is allowed by law. But this is something that as regards the State and the territories, each territory president is able say whether they want to lease or not.

    Lejan Mora:

    We’ve stopped the invasion that was taking place.  By applying that law, we are able to get people imprisoned via a judicial process. We get them imprisoned and they end up with three-year prison terms.

    And that is how we are trying to calm the situation. And later, we seek to reach a peaceful solution, without confrontations or anything else. The issue of territorial rights here in Nicaragua is something new for us. What the current government has done for us is a very good thing.

    What is the role of foreign funded NGOs?

    Arisio Genaro Selso:

    There are organizations, NGOs that use the name of the indigenous peoples and indigenous organizations to make accusations against the government, to denigrate the government, to try to destroy the government’s image and that of the work it does within the protected areas, for example, in the case of the Río San Juan, for example, or in the case of the Indio Maíz Reserve, and here in the case of the Bosawas Reserve.

    Rose Cunningham Kain:

    I think that, like this person, there are many who take advantage of the poverty and conflict of others. That is not and never has been the spirit of the creation of non-governmental organizations. For me, non-governmental organizations should not want to profit from poverty or people’s conflicts. And when I say poverty, it’s not that we are poor.

    We have been impoverished by the same people who have funded the people who say that we live in conflict.

    It is a big lie. We have not had that kind of conflict for many years. We are building peace. Peace is not just words. Peace is a process. And the social reinsertion after the eighties, when the counterrevolution was also financed from the north, that peace process that led us to Autonomy, we continue to weave it, we continue to build it, and we continue to strengthen it. And today, after 33 years of Autonomy, we feel, and I feel proud to see how our community leaders are able to give you an interview and tell you the reality. And they know where the bad is and where the good is.

    What is the role of the Center for Justice and Human Rights in the Atlantic District of Nicaragua (CEJUDHCAN) and its leader Lottie Cunningham?

    Arisio Genaro Selso:

    CEJUDHCAN is not the institution she claims or projects at the international level, as an organization or institution defending indigenous rights.

    Why doesn’t she ever consult us? Why doesn’t she come to the communities to consult us? Why not our national leadership, which is who we are, leading the national government of the Mayangna Nation, or else to the presidents in our territorial governments…? She is not present. She speaks from afar. She uses the indigenous name. She uses it without having been there when the events are taking place. For example, when the Alal case occurred, up there in the Reserve, she said that the government was not defending the indigenous people.

    In practice, Lottie works with opposition activists. They are people who live as we Nicaraguans say, making accusations against the government, talking badly about the government. So, she takes that and exploits it to say that the government does such and such, but really if it were the organization, she says it is, she should be open to consultation. But she is not. She just turns up for a short while. And sometimes she exaggerates things. And she makes use of the indigenous peoples.

    Fresly Janes Zamora:

    CEJUDHCAN does training on the rights of indigenous peoples. But at the same time, they have another interest. Two programs came to my territory, that they are going to help me, that are going to help me with remediation, this, and that… We said, look, these are our conditions and priorities. So, help me on such and such a matter.

    For example, when in my second year as president, they saw things were going to improve, change, become more formalized, they did not like that. Why? Well, as long as there are incidents, then there are conflicts, so for them that means there is always funding. So, what did I do? I told them, I sent two letters, saying that we want nothing to do with them. We no longer want to have a relationship with them.

    Lejan Mora:

    I have seen the video that Lottie released. She says every pound of meat that sold to the United States is a drop of blood of the Miskito. Which is totally false. I don’t know what her objective is in spreading so many lies. Because it has nothing to do with anything real, nothing at all. These are not right. I mean, a lie of such magnitude.

    How are relations between the indigenous leaders and the Nicaragua government?

    Arisio Genaro Selso:

    Before there was this great project for Bosawas it was worse. There was no consultation, the decisions weren’t taken by the indigenous communities.

    Now things are different. This is an opportunity for the indigenous peoples, this recognition, this respect of the government towards indigenous institutions, towards indigenous peoples.  This also allows indigenous peoples to participate directly and broadly in the decisions that are being taken.

    Progress has been made. Why? Because the government authorized the creation of a body within the courts, namely the figure of Defenders of Indigenous Peoples was created, wherever there is the presence of indigenous population. What is the function of these Defenders? It is the direct accompaniment these Defenders provide to the indigenous organizations for the judicial process of settlers, those who are destroying the environment, all these types of cases. So, there is greater accompaniment.

    And the other important element is that we have also achieved within the judiciary, our indigenous officials also hold positions in the courts. So now the recent appointments of the Defenders of Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples are also indigenous people who speak the indigenous languages. That is the other element, which for us is vital.

    The government has guaranteed that in all the municipalities where indigenous peoples are present, there will also be functionaries who speak indigenous languages.

    Summary

    Readers who are interested to learn more facts and perspectives on the situation in Nicaragua’s autonomous regions are encouraged to read Sefton’s entire book.  While there is much in common, the indigenous leaders have different experiences and perspectives on certain issues. There are many rich insights and subtleties in the full text. What comes through very clearly is that the news and analysis of the situation in Nicaragua is being hugely distorted.

    In the last month (October 2021) a violent attack took place in the Bosawas indigenous territory.  Again, Stephen Sefton travelled to the remote area by car and horse to ascertain the facts about what really happened. It turns out that the conflict was over a mining operation and both the victims and perpetrators were indigenous. This is documented in Sefton’s article “The Truth about Recent Violence in Bosawas”. From the misinformation about “conflict beef” and other accusations last year, to the recent events in Bosawas, the common thread is that information about Nicaragua is being manipulated for geopolitical ends. That is why these first person interviews and statements from indigenous leaders are so crucial to hear.

    USAID Photo

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  • China’s Useful Foreign Diplomatic Idiots

    This post was originally published on TIBET, ACTIVISM AND INFORMATION.

  • Unholy Trinity: Medicine, Science, and Corporate Power

    This one goes out to all of you who still “trust the science.” 

    Edward Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. He was a public relations pioneer, one of America’s most innovative social engineers, and the author of a 1928 book brazenly entitled Propaganda. In 1929, Bernays was hired by the American Tobacco Company to persuade women to take up cigarette smoking. His slogan, “Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet,” exploited women’s fear of gaining weight (a concern purposefully manufactured through previous advertising and/or public relations work by Bernays and others).

    While Lucky Strike sales increased by 300 percent in the first year of Bernays’ campaign, there was still one more barrier he needed to break down: smoking remained mostly taboo for “respectable” women. This is where some watered-down Freud came in handy. As Bernays biographer Larry Tye said, he basically wanted to take his uncle’s works and “popularize them into little ditties that housewives and others could relate to.” With input from psychoanalyst A.A. Brill, Bernays conjured up the now legendary scheme to re-frame cigarettes as a symbol of freedom.

    “During the 1929 Easter Parade,” explains New York Times reporter Ron Chernow, “he had a troupe of fashionable ladies flounce down Fifth Avenue, conspicuously puffing their ‘Torches of Freedom,’ as he had called cigarettes.” As Chernow reports, Bernays augmented this successful stunt by lining up “neutral experts” to “applaud the benefits of smoking, all the while concealing the tobacco company’s sponsorship of his activity.” (I strongly suggest you re-read that last sentence and comprehend its relevance within today’s Big Pharma context.)

    Bernays was also concealing his knowledge of tobacco’s deleterious effects. “As he hypocritically seduced American women into smoking, he was trying to wean his own wife from the nasty habit,” Chernow continues. “His daughter Anne Bernays, the novelist, recalls that whenever he discovered a pack of his wife’s Parliaments, ‘he’d pull them all out and just snap them like bones, just snap them in half and throw them in the toilet. He hated her smoking.’” (I strongly suggest you also re-read that last sentence and comprehend its relevance within today’s Big Pharma context.)

    It’s no wonder so many of today’s Americans — all across the ideological spectrum — are so easily and willingly duped by fake news, deep fakes, and clickbait. In the era of social media and a 24-hour news cycle, we are now exposed to more propaganda than ever before. Bernays’ PR progeny continues refining and honing their skills. They keep us passive, distracted, and divided — but still inherently trusting those in power. Most Americans are thusly trapped inside news feed algorithms that serve as echo chambers to create and reinforce flawed opinions.

    We are the intended result of a century-long social experiment — but now they have artificial intelligence to more efficiently program and condition us. We’ve willingly surrendered our ability to discern fact from fiction. Even worse, we’ve surrendered our desire to discern fact from fiction. Pro tip: Nothing will change until we truly open our minds and recognize that we are being lied to.

    •  (Thanks to Joe from Maine for many of the images that appear in this article)

    The post Unholy Trinity: Medicine, Science, and Corporate Power first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Branch Covidians are Waging War on Humanity

    All embarked, the party launched out on the sea’s foaming lanes while the son of Atreus told his troops to wash, to purify themselves from the filth of the plague. They scoured it off, threw scourings in the surf and sacrificed to Apollo full-grown bulls and goats along the beaten shore of the fallow barren sea and savory smoke went swirling up the skies.

    — Homer, The Iliad (1.365-370)

    The Biden administration’s announcement that Americans employed in companies with over 100 employees would be compelled to take an experimental gene therapy in explicit violation of the Nuremberg Code has opened a new front in the biofascist assault on democracy. Businesses and government agencies that fail to enforce this mandate will potentially face draconian fines. Should the oligarchy succeed in completely weaponizing health care, vaccine passports would undoubtedly become both pervasive and mandatory, but as Tucker Carlson pointed out during one of his recent monologues, it is also likely that dissidents would be handed over to the Cult of Psychiatry. This is not an uncommon practice in police states, and the pathologization of dissent has been ongoing in the West for quite some time now. Only through knowledge, compassion, and camaraderie can the forces of neo-Nazi medicine be outflanked. The days of medical Armageddon are upon us.

    As the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and its European counterpart unequivocally demonstrate, the Covid vaccine program is causing tremendous harm and should have been terminated many months ago. Even the efficacy of the vaccines is very much in doubt, as evidenced by soaring Covid case numbers in some of the most vaccinated places on earth, such as the Seychelles (see here and here), Israel (see here, here, here and here), Gibraltar and Iceland. As physician assistant Deborah Conrad pointed out in her interview with The HighWire, VAERS is so dysfunctional that many doctors and nurses are only vaguely aware of its existence.

    Addressing the “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Joseph Mercola, MD, writes on Mercola.com:

    In a June 29, 2021, interview, Fauci called the Delta variant ‘a game-changer’ for unvaccinated people, warning it will devastate the unvaccinated population while vaccinated individuals are protected against it. Alas, in the real world, the converse is turning out to be true, as the Delta variant is running wild primarily among those who got the Covid jab.

    As Dr. James Lyons-Weiler and other experts without ties to industry have noted, coronavirus vaccines have long had a poor safety record. Indeed, when scientists attempted to create a vaccine for SARS-CoV-1 the laboratory animals all died due to pathogenic priming.

    The vaccine mandates are causing middle class professionals to quit their jobs in droves, from highly trained fighter pilots, to large numbers of nurses leading to maternity wards being shuttered. In what is reminiscent of the anthrax vaccine (administered to the military despite the lack of both informed consent and FDA approval), army doctors are now observing serious adverse events in formerly healthy soldiers. The Covid vaccine drive has surpassed even the psychopathy of the Nazi doctors, as it would have been inconceivable to senior physicians in the Third Reich to give all of German society an experimental vaccine.

    In an incident that underscores how delusional the mass media has become, WXYZ-TV in Detroit, an ABC affiliate, reached out to people on Facebook for stories of Americans who died of Covid because they delayed getting vaccinated, but were instead inundated with thousands of stories of people who were killed or seriously injured by the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) gene therapies.

    Not only has a two-tier society emerged where the unvaccinated are being denied the right to work, attend university, eat out, go to sporting events, and enjoy the performing and visual arts; but another two-tier society has also emerged, one which has been evolving for quite some time now: the mega rich – for whom none of these draconian rules will apply – and everyone else. Video from a Democratic Party fundraiser hosted by Nancy Pelosi in Napa Valley has emerged showing affluent liberals rubbing shoulders unmasked while their brown servants wear masks. Masks and social distancing were apparently not required at the recent Met Gala in New York, where celebrities get to hobnob, have shallow conversations, and show off their outlandish costumes while millions of their countrymen wallow in unemployment, hopelessness, and despair.

    And it would seem that New York City mayor Bill de Blasio (whose real name incidentally is Warren Wilhelm Jr.) is not the only one who delights in imposing punitive measures on those who opt for the control group, with museums and concert halls enthusiastically embracing the heinous practice. The Guggenheim has even written on their website in conjunction with their vaccine requirement that “We focus on safety so you can immerse yourself in art.” (Thankfully, I have a lot of art books).

    What will transpire if the mandates remain in place? Will our leaders order their minions to shut off the water of the unvaccinated? Will workers and students be compelled to take an experimental AIDS vaccine or submit to weekly testing? These injunctions are unethical, discriminatory, and unconstitutional, as they transform inalienable rights into privileges which must be earned by participating in a dangerous medical experiment. Restaurants in Manhattan, which have some of the highest commercial rents in the world, are naturally reluctant to enforce these regulations, yet run the risk of being snitched on by Branch Covidian undercover operatives.

    Such an incestuous relationship has formed between the FDA, CDC, NIH, NIAID and the pharmaceutical industry, that going to the websites for these agencies invariably yields information that mirrors what is posted on the drug company websites. There is robust science indicating that natural immunity is stronger than vaccine-induced immunity. There is likewise compelling evidence that face masks do more harm than good, yet these facts continue to be ignored by the presstitutes – a gaggle of clowns also on industry payroll.

    When reporter Emerald Robinson asked White House principal deputy secretary Karine Jean-Pierre how doctors were testing for the Delta variant, Jean-Pierre became defensive, demanding that we stop asking questions and follow “the experts.” They know best after all, who when not registering vaccinated deaths as unvaccinated and artificially inflating the Covid death toll, are busy turning the country into a nation of opioid, heroin (the two are inextricably linked), fentanyl, barbiturate, benzodiazepine, and psychotropic drug addicts. (American doctors even once prescribed cocaine and heroin). Speaking at the Washington National Cathedral, our imaginary president, Dr. Fauci, said that he was sympathetic to Brits and Americans who are accustomed to certain post-Medieval rights and freedoms, “but now is the time to do what you’re told.”

    The FDA “approval” for the Pfizer Covid vaccine attempts to conflate EUA investigational agents with FDA-approved drugs, as FDA has not approved the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, which is still in use, but the Pfizer Comirnaty Covid vaccine, which isn’t even available. The FDA has argued that the two vaccines are indistinguishable from one another and that they can be used interchangeably, which is absurd. Any drug under the auspices of an EUA is by law experimental and cannot be mandated. Senator Ron Johnson wrote a letter to FDA Acting Commissioner Woodcock requesting clarification on this preposterous state of affairs.

    It is curious that Hydroxychloroquine is somehow safe as a maintenance drug for lupus, yet suddenly becomes dangerous when used to treat SARS-CoV-2, even if only taken for a very short period of time. Here is the website lupus.org:

    Given the drug’s many and varied beneficial effects and its excellent long-standing safety profile, most rheumatologists believe that Hydroxychloroquine should be taken by people with lupus throughout their lifetime. [Italics added]

    The FDA temporarily authorized the use of Hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 in March of 2020, but only with hospitalized patients. The FDA notice read as follows:

    Hydroxychloroquine sulfate may only be used to treat adult and adolescent patients who weigh 50 kg or more and are hospitalized with COVID-19, for whom a clinical trial is not available, or participation is not feasible.

    As Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, Dr. Peter McCullough, and others have noted, Covid protocols using Hydroxychloroquine and other zinc ionophores are most efficacious early in the disease process. In other words, the FDA denied permission for doctors to use a medication for outpatient care where it has been shown to significantly reduce hospitalization and death, but allowed the drug to be used for hospitalized patients where the disease has often spiraled out of control, thereby setting the drug up to fail. Dr. Simone Gold has argued that the prevalence of Hydroxychloroquine in Africa, where it is frequently obtainable as an over-the-counter drug for malaria treatment and prophylaxis, has played a significant role in protecting the continent from Covid.

    So eager were the Branch Covidians to torpedo Hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for SARS-CoV-2 that they conducted dangerous and unethical trials where patients were deliberately overdosed and given toxic quantities of the drug, likely causing some of the trial participants to die, and causing even far more deaths when public health agencies around the world advised (or in some instances, ordered) doctors to stop using a life-saving medication as a treatment for COVID-19.

    Writing for The Defender, the newsletter for Children’s Health Defense, Jeremy Loffredo points out that in addition to threatening the profits of the mRNA vaccines, Hydroxychloroquine posed a threat to the profits of Gilead, the manufacturer of Remdesivir:

    Since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, dozens of new studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of Hydroxychloroquine and its first cousin, Chloroquine, against Covid. These studies occurred in China, France, Saudi Arabia, Italy, India, New York and Michigan. However, such proof of Hydroxychloroquine’s benefit to patients with Covid has posed an existential threat to Gilead sales throughout the Covid outbreak.

    Remdesivir costs over $3,000 per treatment and has been linked to serious and potentially life-threatening side effects. Nevertheless, if a drug is profitable safety, necessity, and efficacy are disregarded. It becomes “the standard of care.”

    Having had their fill of demonizing Hydroxychloroquine, the presstitutes and pharmaceutical sock puppets turned their vitriol on another unpatentable drug, Ivermectin. Described as “a multifaceted drug of Nobel prize-honoured distinction” by the journal New Microbes and New Infections, Ivermectin has played a critical role in combating onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness. Writing for The Lancet, Michel Boussinesq, MD, PhD, points out that “Ivermectin has been widely used for 30 years to combat onchocerciasis and is rightly considered a wonder drug.” In African countries where Ivermectin is regularly taken as an anti-parasitic Covid deaths have been negligible. Elaborating on this point, Kenyan doctors Stephen Karanga and Wahome Ngare pointed out in a Klartext podcast that due to Ivermectin’s effectiveness in treating Covid they weren’t worried about SARS-CoV-2; their real concerns lay with car accidents, HIV, and malaria.

    Meanwhile, the FDA refuses to even acknowledge that Ivermectin can be used in humans, tweeting “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” (Yes, those are some of the smartest people in the world). This villainy is not without precedent, as millions of Americans were prescribed highly addictive opioids as opposed to safer and more inexpensive over-the-counter pain medications. The sacking of Canadian emergency physician Dr. Daniel Nagase, who was found guilty of saving the lives of his Covid patients with Ivermectin, underscores the fact that the elites will stop at nothing to prolong the pandemic.

    In addition to fomenting the cult-like notion that a vaccine is a magical elixir for which no risk-benefit analysis is needed, the media has played a critical role in deceiving hundreds of millions of people around the world into believing that Covid is equally dangerous to all patients irregardless of age and preexisting conditions. This, in turn, has led to Black Death levels of hysteria, as evidenced by unvaccinated locals in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh being forced to wear placards displaying the skull and crossbones.

    Physicians who attempt to treat Covid early using Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) and Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) protocols are being vilified as quacks and snake oil salesmen, while doctors who are killing staggering numbers of people through a combination of nontreatment and dangerous experimental drugs are hailed as heroes. In many ways, this is the essence of biofascism: care patients desperately need is denied them, while dangerous care is imposed through coercion – both monstrous violations of the oath to do no harm.

    It is not uncommon for physicians to prescribe FDA-approved drugs to treat conditions that are different from what the drug was initially intended for. This is referred to as “off-label use” or “off-label prescribing.” How will a high-risk patient who contracts Covid benefit from masks, social distancing, lockdowns and vaccines (even if they were safe and effective)? They need something that will ward off the inflammatory phase of the disease and keep the ventilator at bay. This suppression of early treatment options has failed to escape the attention of the Indian Bar Association, which has sought criminal charges against WHO Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan for making fallacious claims about Ivermectin to protect the Church of Vaccinology.

    A passage from the Rome Declaration, established at the Rome Covid Summit, and signed by over 10,000 doctors and scientists, states the following:

    WHEREAS, thousands of physicians are being prevented from providing treatment to their patients, as a result of barriers put up by pharmacies, hospitals, and public health agencies, rendering the vast majority of healthcare providers helpless to protect their patients in the face of disease. Physicians are now advising their patients to simply go home (allowing the virus to replicate) and return when their disease worsens, resulting in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary patient deaths, due to failure-to-treat;

    WHEREAS, this is not medicine. This is not care. These policies may actually constitute crimes against humanity.

    In the Age of Faucism, everyone who arrives at an American emergency room is being given a PCR test, and if it indicates that they have the virus (not unlikely considering the prevalence of false positives), their loved ones are summarily kicked out of the hospital, they are put into isolation, given drugs of dubious safety and efficacy, and even intubated. Dr. Jane Ruby has referred to these Covid obsessed hospitals as “the new ovens.” Furthermore, physicians are being threatened with revocation of their licenses should they be found guilty of “spreading misinformation” – a practice also commonly referred to as informed consent.

    Hitler’s physicians were fond of euthanizing the mentally ill, and it would appear that their heirs are equally enamored with the practice, as the mentally handicapped have been vaccinated by force and with armed police present in Los Angeles. Children in Toronto have been given the experimental jab, without parental permission, and in exchange for free ice cream, while irate parents were prevented from entering the grounds. Not to be outdone, whistleblowers from Aegis Living, an assisted living facility for the aged, have reported that residents have been “chemically restrained” and injected with the investigational mRNA biologicals without their knowledge. As Dr. Lee Merritt said in a talk with Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, “We have a whole society doing what we tried the Nazi doctors for.”

    As evidenced by the CDC vaccine schedule (a growing list of mandates coupled with liability protection for the manufacturer), and the fact that parents can be charged with “medical neglect” should they object to their children being placed on psychotropic drugs, the American public school system has long been in the grip of late-stage biofascism. To add insult to injury, toddlers are now being forced to wear masks and the mRNA biologicals are being injected into minors. Children’s Health Defense has reported that “Pfizer’s Covid vaccine could be rolled out to babies as young as 6 months in the U.S. this winter — under plans being drawn up by the pharmaceutical giant.”

    Australia offers another window into our future should we fail to save humanity from the hordes of Faucism. Indeed, this has become a country where farmers’ markets are shut down by riot police, senior health officials tell their countrymen not to talk to one another so as to prevent transmission of a virus, pregnant women are arrested in their pajamas for attempting to organize anti-lockdown rallies on the Internet, women are violently choked by sadistic goons for leaving their homes unmasked, young children are pepper sprayed and brutalized for committing the aforementioned sin, citizens are committed (or “sectioned” as they say in Britain) for questioning the official Covid narrative, rubber bullets are fired into crowds of informed consenters, and extreme forms of violence are unleashed against elderly protesters – acts of barbarity that have enraged the citizenry. Melbourne in particular has lost all semblance of checks and balances, with storm troopers being unleashed on the population, in harrowing scenes reminiscent of the Wehrmacht’s storming of Prague. (Granted, without the live rounds).

    Convinced that anyone who questions the veracity of the liberal media and the public health agencies is a “conspiracy theorist” (really a euphemism for “mentally ill”), neoliberals have already crossed the Rubicon and taken up the truncheon of authoritarianism. Undoubtedly, the official Covid narrative is deranged. Yet is it any more inane than “Trump’s white supremacist insurrection,” “Russia invaded Ukraine,” “the Russians hacked the election,” “Trump is Putin’s puppet,” and NATO was compelled to bomb Libya to smithereens “to save Benghazi?”

    Trapped in a vortex of amnesia and unreason, the neoliberal has been hoodwinked into believing that whatever the medical mullahs say is “the science;” and whatever the liberal media says is incontrovertible, irrefutable, and infallible; i.e., “reality.” Fauci’s contradictory statements, particularly with regard to the virulence of COVID-19 and his stance on masks, fail to diminish their fervor as they cannot even remember what they had for breakfast, let alone the tens of thousands of Americans killed by Vioxx or the over 400,000 Americans that lost their lives to the opioid epidemic.

    The liberals of the 1960s, who genuinely believed in the Nuremberg Code, would have regarded the Branch Covidians with contempt. What a pity that the ranks of these medical brownshirts are dominated largely by those who once idolized the likes of Bobby Kennedy and John F. Kennedy, yet now wallow in a pitiable state of moral and intellectual bankruptcy. It is true that conservative publications, such as The Washington Post, The Economist, and The Wall Street Journal are parroting similar propaganda with regard to Covid. However, as evidenced by Tucker Carlson’s show, the conservative media no longer speaks with one voice. Moreover, millions of conservatives no longer believe in the infallibility of the conservative media as liberals continue to believe in the infallibility of the liberal media.

    Ultimately, the Branch Covidians are the offspring of a union between a corporatized health care system that has grown increasingly hostile to informed consent, and a liberal class that stopped thinking when Bill Clinton was inaugurated and has come to regard senior officials in the liberal media and the public health agencies as gods. The mass psychosis of the Branch Covidians is inextricably linked with the mass psychosis of neoliberalism. Without the latter the former would have about as much societal impact as the Hare Krishnas.

    The Nazis divided humanity into the subhumans (Jews, Roma, political prisoners, and Slavs); the humans (allied European fascists and the Japanese); and the supermen (the Germans, or Aryans). For quite some time now, the American health care system has been mired in a multi-tier system which divides patients up into similar categories. In light of this boorishness, teaching hospitals have long been instructing trainees that care is to be doled out depending on what kind of insurance plan patients have. Privileged patients are granted the right to choose their own doctor while the less fortunate are confined to narrow networks. Humans are permitted to meet with an attending physician while the Untermenschen are sent to resident clinics. Unbeknownst to Nazi doctors, both past and present, there is no bioethics on-off switch. In what was foundational to the Blitzkrieg but could also explain their increasingly deranged decision making, much of the German military during World War II was regularly taking Pervitin, the predecessor to crystal meth, and doing so with the support of their own doctors.

    As the forces of darkness become increasingly desperate, liberals drown in an ocean of madness and sociopathy. Hypnotized by an oligarchy they have deified, while believing that they are still marching with Martin Luther King singing “Kumbaya My Lord” and “We Shall Overcome,” this faux-left movement bears a closer resemblance to the Democratic Party of the 1860s than the Democratic Party of the 1960s. Indeed, if the Branch Covidians succeed in destroying the citadel of informed consent, only one form of government will reign in the United States: slavery.

    The post The Branch Covidians are Waging War on Humanity first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Leak Shows Facebook Knew Its Algorithms Harmed Children and Spread Hate

    Leak Shows Facebook Knew Its Algorithms Harmed Children and Spread Hate

    An unprecedented leak at Facebook reveals top executives at the company knew about major issues with the platform from their own research but kept the damning information hidden from the public. The leak shows Facebook deliberately ignored rampant disinformation, hate speech and political unrest in order to boost ad sales and is also implicated in child safety and human trafficking violations. Former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen leaked thousands of documents and revealed her identity as the whistleblower during an interview with “60 Minutes.” She is set to testify today before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection. “​​​​Their value system, which is about efficiency and speed and growth and profit and power, is in conflict with democracy,” says Roger McNamee, who was an early mentor to Mark Zuckerberg and author of Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe. He says Facebook executives are prioritizing profits over safety. We also speak with Jessica González, co-CEO of the media advocacy organization Free Press and co-founder of Change the Terms, a coalition that works to disrupt online hate, who says this demonstrates Facebook is “unfit” to regulate itself. “We need Congress to step in.”

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show looking at a massive leak of tens of thousands of internal Facebook documents that show the social media’s own research indicates its algorithm helps boost disinformation, hate speech and political unrest around the world and that Facebook executives knew about it but kept the damning information hidden from the public. The leak also implicates Facebook in issues of child safety and human trafficking, while it prioritized profits over people’s welfare.

    The documents were behind a sweeping investigation by The Wall Street Journal and were unveiled by whistleblower and former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen. She secretly copied the pages before leaving her job at the company’s Civic Integrity unit in May. Haugen spoke publicly for the first time Sunday on CBS’s 60 Minutes with reporter Scott Pelley.

    SCOTT PELLEY: To quote from another one of the documents you brought out, “We have evidence from a variety of sources that hate speech, divisive political speech, and misinformation on Facebook and the family of apps are affecting societies around the world.”

    FRANCES HAUGEN: When we live in an information environment that is full of angry, hateful, polarizing content, it erodes our civic trust. It erodes our faith in each other. It erodes our ability to want to care for each other. The version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world.

    AMY GOODMAN: Haugen has filed a federal complaint against Facebook and is testifying today before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection. According to her prepared remarks, she’ll call on lawmakers to take action against Facebook for the harm it poses to its users and the world. She is expected to say, quote, “When we realized tobacco companies were hiding the harms it caused, the government took action. When we figured out cars were safer with seat belts, the government took action. And today, the government is taking action against companies that hid evidence on opioids. I implore you to do the same here,” she said.

    Today’s panel is also looking into how Facebook downplayed its knowledge that its photo- and video-sharing app Instagram is harmful for teen girls and tweens. This is Haugen again, speaking on CBS’s 60 Minutes to reporter Scott Pelley.

    SCOTT PELLEY: One study says 13-and-a-half percent of teen girls say Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse; 17% of teen girls say Instagram makes eating disorders worse.

    FRANCES HAUGEN: And what’s super tragic is Facebook’s own research says, as these young women begin to consume this eating disorder content, they get more and more depressed, and it actually makes them use the app more. And so they end up in this feedback cycle where they hate their bodies more and more. Facebook’s own research says it is not just that Instagram is dangerous for teenagers, that it harms teenagers; it’s that it is distinctly worse than other forms of social media.

    AMY GOODMAN: Lawmakers are also pursuing Facebook as part of a federal antitrust case and over its role in the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Documents leaked by Frances Haugen detail Facebook’s decision to dissolve its Civic Integrity unit after the 2020 election and before the assault on the Capitol. Her testimony comes a day after Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — also owned by Facebook — suffered a six-hour outage disrupting online communication worldwide. It’s the first time this has happened for so long.

    For more, we’re joined in San Francisco by Roger McNamee. He was an early investor in Facebook. He was a Mark Zuckerberg mentor, then went on to write the book Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe. And in Los Angeles, we’re joined by Jessica González. She is co-CEO of the media advocacy group Free Press and co-founder of Change the Terms, a coalition that works to disrupt online hate. She’s also a member of the Real Facebook Oversight Board.

    We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Jessica, let’s begin with you. As you listen to this testimony of Frances Haugen and all of these documents that have been released, I mean, it was really amazing to see these congressional hearings in the last few weeks, where you have Facebook being confronted by senators, and the senators are saying, “These studies, that you did not reveal, like the damage you do to tweens and teen girls, are astounding.” And she said, “Oh, actually, they’re really bad studies.” They said, “No, they’re really good studies.” But, overall, your response to what’s taking place right now?

    JESSICA GONZÁLEZ: Listen, Amy, good morning. I’m not surprised that Facebook knew that it was causing concrete harm to women, to people of color, to society as the whole. I’m not surprised it knew that it was spreading disinformation about the vaccine, the pandemic and other things. What I’m surprised about is just how blatantly they lied to the American public, including members of Congress, over and over again, about the extent to which they were causing harm here in the United States and around the world. That’s the shocking part here, is just the number of bald-faced lies repeated over and over again. It indicates clearly that Facebook is unfit to self-govern and that we need the U.S. Congress and the administration to step in and provide transparency and accountability.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jessica, I wanted to ask you — in terms of Facebook’s record and its ability to monitor hate speech, you’ve also raised questions about the fact that it’s not just in the English language, given the enormous international reach of Facebook, in other languages, as well. Have you been noticing a difference between how it even monitors English-language material versus those in other languages across the country, given, for instance, the enormous impact that right-wing groups from Latin America had through WhatsApp and other Facebook posts during the election to reach Spanish-speaking people here in the U.S.?

    JESSICA GONZÁLEZ: Yes, Juan, as bad as this situation is in English, it’s far worse in Spanish and other non-English languages. That’s why we worked together with partners from the Center for American Progress and National Hispanic Media Coalition to launch the Ya Basta Facebook campaign — “Enough Already, Facebook.” We were calling for concrete steps, investment in content moderation and AI systems, in the personnel needed to accurately and adequately monitor non-English content on Facebook. And we really got a complete blowoff from Facebook. In fact, Facebook wouldn’t even tell us who’s in charge of Spanish-language content moderation, how many moderators do they have, where are those people located, what are the systems and trainings in place. They won’t even provide baseline transparency.

    Well, come to find out, part of what Frances Haugen helped reveal this week is that Facebook is not adequately invested in any language, besides perhaps English and French. They’ve made some investments in those areas, but they’ve utterly failed to make the investments necessary to make Facebook safe in other languages.

    And I have to tell you, Juan, you know, if it were me and I was running Facebook and I hear from the United Nations that I played a contributing role in the genocide in Myanmar, I would have looked right away at this issue, at whether our moderation systems were keeping people safe, particularly around the globe. And so, the fact that that didn’t happen is appalling and unacceptable.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to bring in Roger McNamee to the conversation. Welcome to Democracy Now! And could you talk to us about your reaction to the latest revelations from Frances Haugen, and how you initially began to believe that Facebook was on a negative and dangerous course?

    ROGER McNAMEE: Well, it’s a great honor to be back on the show with you all today. And I want to tip my hat to my friend Jessica, because I think she framed many of the problems exactly correctly. I also want to throw out a huge, you know, thanks to Frances Haugen. She is so courageous, so authoritative and so utterly convincing. I mean, this is a person who was in a position of enormous responsibility at Facebook, who is very technically competent, who saw these problems and had the courage to bring documents out to make sure the whole world knows. That level of courage is just — I mean, we should be all applauding it.

    You know, my own experience, I was an adviser to Mark in the early days of Facebook. I mean, he was 22 when we met, and I advised him when the company — starting before it even had a newsfeed. My concerns became an issue for me in early 2016, and I reached out to Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg just before the election in 2016 to warn them, because I was afraid. I had seen these things going on that really bothered me, and it made me fear that the culture of Facebook, the business model and the algorithms were allowing bad people to harm innocent people in the context of civil rights, which is what Jess was just talking about, but also democracy. And, you know, I pleaded with him, because I said, you know, “You’re in a business that depends on trust. You have to get this right.” And I spent months trying to convince Facebook to do the right thing, starting before the election in 2016 and then continuing for several months after. That didn’t work, so I became an activist.

    The key thing about Frances Haugen, and the reason that she has changed the game more in three weeks than I could in five years, is because she brought out documents that established definitively that the executives at Facebook were aware of the problems, and that in spite of warnings on things like COVID disinformation, on things like the insurrection, on things like the damage to teenage girls, they persisted.

    And they persisted because of a business model that’s not just at Facebook. We can’t just let this be about Facebook, because the business model of surveillance capitalism, which is a concept that was coined by the professor Shoshana Zuboff at Harvard, this is a business model of using surveillance to gather data, in every possible context, and using that to both predict our behavior and to manipulate our choices and our behavior. And that is so fundamentally un-American, so fundamentally unethical, that we have to ban it. It’s as unethical as child labor. And it’s something being adopted by companies throughout the economy. Google invented it. Facebook adopted it. Amazon uses it. Microsoft, many other tech companies have become the leaders in it. But you see it in cars now and in smart devices. You see it all over the economy. And it’s incredibly dangerous.

    AMY GOODMAN: You talked about the bravery of Frances Haugen. In fact, she is afraid, and that makes her even more brave. She’s taking on a trillion-dollar company.

    ROGER McNAMEE: Yes.

    AMY GOODMAN: Physically afraid what kind of retaliation Facebook could wage against her. Do you have thoughts on that, Roger?

    ROGER McNAMEE: I think her strategy of maximum public attention is exactly right. I mean, let’s face it: The people who organized this communications strategy have done a brilliant job. And I really tip my hat to them, and I tip my hat to her. And I think her best defense is to be so visible that Facebook wouldn’t dare. You know, their past strategy has been to use ad hominem and to, essentially, invent stories. You remember the famous one about George Soros after he gave a speech at the Davos conference criticizing Facebook. You know, they hired a negative research company to invent an antisemitic story about George Soros and spread it through the press. That has been their past behavior.

    I mean, listen, I don’t think these people are criminals, at least not in the way they think about the world. But I do believe they have a very different value system and that their value system, which is about efficiency and speed and growth and profit and power, is in conflict with democracy, and it’s in conflict with our right to make our own choices. And the country has to make a decision: Are we going to allow corporations to essentially replace the government as the people who control our lives, or are we going to recognize that the government is us and that it can, in fact, represent us, as long as we insist that it do so? And that’s what we have to do with Congress today. Frances is going in there to testify. And Congress will string this out, if we let them. And what we need to do is to say to them, “I’m sorry. It’s time to have safety laws, it’s time to have privacy laws, and it’s time to have new antitrust laws.”

    AMY GOODMAN: I want to play a few clips, for one sec, Juan, just to give people a sense of where Congress is going. In this Senate hearing, Antigone Davis, the global head of safety of Facebook, faced questions on its internal research on young children and their use of the app. She was questioned by Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, chair of the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection.

    SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: I don’t understand, Ms. Davis, how you can deny that Instagram isn’t exploiting young users for its own profits.

    ANTIGONE DAVIS: As someone who was a teenage girl herself and as someone who’s taught middle school and teenage girls, I’ve seen firsthand the troubling intersection between the pressure to — to be perfect, between body image and finding your identity at that age. And I think what’s been lost in this report is that, in fact, with this research, we found that more teen girls actually find Instagram helpful — teen girls who are suffering from these issues find Instagram helpful than not. Now, that doesn’t mean that the ones that aren’t aren’t important to us. In fact, that’s why we do this research. It’s leading to —

    SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: Well, if I may interrupt you, Ms. Davis?

    ANTIGONE DAVIS: — product changes and the ability — mm-hmm?

    SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: These are your own reports. These findings are from your own studies and your own experts. You can speak from your own experience, but will you disclose all of the reports, all of the findings? Will you commit to full disclosure?

    ANTIGONE DAVIS: I know that we have released a number of the reports. And we are looking to find ways to release more of this research. I want to be clear that this research is not a bombshell. It’s not causal research. It’s, in fact, just directional research that we use for product changes.

    SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: Well, I beg to differ with you, Ms. Davis. This research is a bombshell. It is powerful, gripping, riveting evidence that Facebook knows of the harmful effects of its site on children and that it has concealed those facts and findings.

    AMY GOODMAN: Facebook recently postponed the launch of its new Instagram app for kids under 18, once Haugen released these documents. During the Senate hearing last week, Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey questioned the global head of safety of Facebook, Antigone Davis, on the platform’s potential harm to children.

    SEN. ED MARKEY: Will you stop launching — will you promise not to launch a site that includes features such as like buttons and follower counts that allow children to quantify popularity? That’s a yes or a no.

    ANTIGONE DAVIS: Those are the kinds of features that we will be talking about with our experts, trying to understand, in fact, what is most age appropriate and what isn’t age appropriate. And we will discuss those features with them, of course.

    SEN. ED MARKEY: Well, let me just say this. We’re talking about 12-year-olds. We’re talking about 9-year-olds. If you need to do more research on this, you should fire all the people who you’ve paid to do your research up until now, because this is pretty obvious. And it’s pretty obvious to every mother and father in our country, because all recent scientific studies by child development experts found that not getting enough likes on social media significantly reduces adolescents’ feelings of self-worth.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s it from the Senate hearing, but I want to end in these series of clips with Frances Haugen herself, the interview on 60 Minutes, when the former Facebook product manager explains how the social media’s algorithm works, and describes how the documents she leaked lay out Facebook’s decision to dissolve its Civic Integrity unit after the 2020 election and before the January 6th Capitol insurrection. She’s speaking with CBS’s Scott Pelley.

    FRANCES HAUGEN: And one of the consequences of how Facebook is picking out that content today is that it is optimizing for content that gets engagement or reaction. But its own research is showing that content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarizing — it’s easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions.

    SCOTT PELLEY: Misinformation, angry content —

    FRANCES HAUGEN: Yeah.

    SCOTT PELLEY: — is enticing to people and —

    FRANCES HAUGEN: It’s very enticing.

    SCOTT PELLEY: — keeps them on the platform.

    FRANCES HAUGEN: Yes. Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site. They’ll click on less ads. They’ll make less money.

    SCOTT PELLEY: Haugen says Facebook understood the danger to the 2020 election, so it turned on safety systems to reduce misinformation.

    FRANCES HAUGEN: Too dangerous.

    SCOTT PELLEY: But many of those changes, she says, were temporary.

    FRANCES HAUGEN: And as soon as the election was over, they turned them back off, or they changed the settings back to what they were before, to prioritize growth over safety. And that really feels like a betrayal of democracy to me.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Frances Haugen, who’s testifying today on Capitol Hill, on CBS’s 60 Minutes. Jessica González, you are the CEO of Free Press, and you’re co-founder of the Change the Terms coalition, which works to disrupt online hate. This key point, whether we’re talking about out tween and teen girls or whether we’re talking about the insurrection, right before the insurrection, they knew the level of hate that was mounting and being amplified, and they turned off the monitors and the disruptors of that.

    JESSICA GONZÁLEZ: That’s right. That’s right, Amy. You know, and not only did they know, the fix is so easy. They have a setting. They decided to turn it off before the election results were certified, despite spotting trends of fake information about a supposed steal of the election, despite seeing the activity budding on their site, despite seeing that there were militia groups organizing calls to arms on different parts of their networks. So this was a choice to put profits over public safety, over democracy, over the health and well-being of not just Facebook users but all of us. And this is why I don’t believe that Facebook is fit to govern itself. We need to step in.

    And, you know, here’s what’s really insidious about how Facebook’s business model operates, which isn’t true of — like, maybe young girls receive negative messaging in magazines or on TV or on radio. But here’s what’s insidious, in particular, about how not just Facebook but other social media platforms earn their revenues. They are collecting and extracting our personal demographic data, the way we’re behaving on the sites, and they’re identifying what we might be vulnerable to — right? — our vulnerabilities, our predispositions, our behaviors. And they’re actually targeting us with things that they think we’ll engage more with. So this is targeted disinformation, targeted hate, targeted imagery that might have caused teen girls to feel worse about themselves, based on the extraction of our data, with — really, without informed consent. I don’t know that most people understand that we’re the product on Facebook. They’re selling us to their advertisers. And so, without even truly understanding how this works, we’re being used, and without any public interest good — in fact, a whole lot of harm. So we have to completely rethink the structures that underpin social media platforms. And we need to pass legislation, we need FTC investigations, to completely disrupt the hate- and lie-for-profit business model that is doing so much damage.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Roger McNamee, I wanted to ask you: What is the difference between what Facebook is doing now and what the old legacy media companies had done in the past? After all, those of us who came up in the old legacy media understood that the — the maxim, “If it bleeds, it leads,” that conflict and fear and division are what sell in media. To what degree is Facebook only magnifying the trends that have always existed in commercial media in the United States? Although, of course, at different times there were efforts to curb those media — the breakup of the Associated Press monopoly back in 1945 by the Supreme Court. There have been efforts — the breakup of the original NBC network because it had too much control over radio in America. Do you think it’s time to break up Facebook?

    ROGER McNAMEE: So, Juan, really important question. So, Jessica talked about how this works at the individual level. Let’s think about how traditional media worked. It was a broadcast model, so one message for everyone. What internet platforms have done, and what surveillance capitalism does, broadly, so throughout the economy, is that it targets us individually.

    There is a giant marketplace in the United States for data. So, we call this third-party data. So, companies gather data in one place and then sell it to other people in other places for other kinds of uses, and they make additional money from doing that. So, everything that you do that touches something digital — so, if you travel, if you do a financial transaction, use a credit card, your home loan, whatever — anything you do on your phone, including your real-time location, anything you do in an app, anything that you do online, all of this is captured, and it’s all available in a marketplace.

    So, these companies can create a digital model of you. And they do this for everybody, whether you’re on internet platforms or not. They have everybody in the system. They create the digital model, and they use that model to make predictions. Now, you can sell the predictions to an advertiser, or you can use them in other ways. For example, they’re used in the banking industry in order to give out mortgages. Police departments use it for predictive policing. And what have we learned? Those two things are based on artificial intelligence. They train artificial intelligence with historical data. The historical data is filled with biases. So you wind up moving to a world of digital redlining for mortgages, so that Black people can only live in certain communities; they can’t live wherever they want; they have different mortgage rates, different housing prices, because of this unfair stuff from the past. And you get things like predictive policing, which overpolice Brown and Black communities because, again, of historical biases that are built into these systems.

    So, if you think about this, the manifest unfairness of it is magnified by a corporate culture that says the only people that matter are shareholders. And if you think about it, optimizing for shareholder value is like — it’s the equivalent of saying, “I’m just following orders.” It forgives all manner of sins. And when Frances Haugen was talking about the moral crisis of CEOs who maximize profits instead of the public good, one of the challenges here is that, as a country, we have accepted this notion that corporations should only worry about shareholder value.

    That has to change. That is one of the things that Congress needs to do right now. They’ve done enough studies. We have done enough hearings. We now need to have something that looks like the Food and Drug Administration which requires that every technology product demonstrate that it is safe before it is allowed to go into the market. And that should apply to products that are in the market today. We need to have rules that say, “I’m sorry, but there should be no third-party marketplace for location data, health data, anything related to your usage of apps or the internet, maybe even financial data — things that are so intimate that they allow people to manipulate your choices.” And then we need to have new laws on antitrust, so that we can fight against entrenched corporate power.

    AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both so much. How well does Facebook know you? After 10 likes, better than colleagues. After 70 likes, better than friends. After 150 likes, better than family. And after 300 likes, better than your partner or spouse. Roger McNamee, author of Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe, and Jessica González, co-CEO of Free Press, member of the Real Facebook Oversight Board and co-founder of Change the Terms, which works to disrupt online hate.

    Next up, we look at the revelations in the Pandora Papers about the offshore financial dealings of the world’s richest and most powerful people, and the connections between offshore banking and colonialism. Back in 30 seconds.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • It’s What the Babies Eat: Inflammatory Capitalism in Mush

    Again, you can’t shuttle through the headlines, the so-called news, without having spasms and fits. You will not get journalists doing shit to really go after the capitalists, uh? Baby food. And these transnational Wall Street thieves, these stockholding companies, not even a slap on the wrist. So, if I as an unjabbed person goes into a public place, and then the rabid fascists find out, they then can call the cops, do a citizen’s arrest, and take my ass down, zip ties and all. But, do these billionaires and multimillionaires get hog-tied or frog-marched into court, and have their ill-gotten profits used for a reparations fund for all those babies? Dream on:

    Baby Food Makers Kept Selling Products with Arsenic Levels Exceeding FDA-Approved Limits

    HEADLINESEP 30, 2021

     

    Baby food manufacturers allowed products contaminated with heavy metals to remain on store shelves — even after dangerous levels of the toxic chemicals were detected in their products. That’s according to a new congressional report released Wednesday, which found baby food makers Gerber and Beech-Nut failed to recall infant rice cereals tested to have arsenic levels above FDA limits.

    This is how these felons roll, these dirty rotten propagandists, the smoke and mirrors crowd, the polluters, all those elites and money grubbers:

    This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-14.png

    Going from baby food to land, forests, indigenous rights, we can see more putridity of the White Savior Civilizations (sic) facilitating the land rapists and the water polluters. This is not outrageous in Can/Klan/Ada?

    In Canada, a judge has ended an injunction granted to logging company Teal-Jones, which the court says was used to crack down on activists at the Fairy Creek watershed blockade in a way that violated their civil liberties and infringed on press freedom. Police have arrested over 1,000 land defenders, often violently, as they fight to protect the remaining trees in Vancouver Island’s ancient forests. The First Nations-led protest is Canada’s largest act of civil disobedience. Click here to see our coverage of this issue

    It’s a simple formula, a simple illustration of how syphilitics the ruling class is, and here, “David Graeber’s bestselling book Debt: The First 5000 Years revolutionised our understanding of the origins of money and the role of debt in human societies. But intellectual revolutions take time, and David’s sudden and untimely death left this revolution unfinished. David’s widow Nika Dubrovsky has established ‘The Fight Club’ to keep David’s unique way of challenging conventional wisdoms alive. Each ‘Fight’ will pit leading advocates of different visions of how society functions against each other. The inaugural fight, to mark the first anniversary of David’s death, is a debate between the renowned economists Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and Michael Hudson, author of And Forgive Them Their Debts. Thomas Piketty wrote the preface to the tenth anniversary edition of Debt: the First 5000 Years. Michael Hudson’s anthropological research into the origins of money and debt in ancient Sumeria was the basis of much of David’s analysis in that book. Join us for an unmissable encounter between two celebrated and highly influential economic thinkers as they debate: what is money and what is debt? What are the most serious problems of today’s finance-capital economies? And what are the best remedies?”

    Finally, the new brisk and slick predators, those capitalists, those impact bond folk, the algorithms, the mining of our minds, bodies, dreams, aspirations. Wrench in the Gears, a long one, with lots of sources to click on to enhance Alison’s work:

    This past week someone sent me a paper on augmented cognition. As I read it, a number of pieces clicked for me about earlier research I’d done into executive function. I wanted to preserve the thread, so I captured it in the screen shots below. Follow along to see how grit and resiliency intersect with Metaverse navigation and soul theft.

    Also, this week Philadelphia School Superintendent William Hite briefed the Federal Reserve. Listen carefully to hear him setting up human capital bond markets in ed-tech, social emotional learning (SEL), nutrition, and tele-health via public-private partnerships with “philanthropic” predators.

    This is accepted behavior, accepted “follow the science” bullshit; accepted state paid for university research; accepted elite school work and disgust? This is what Americans cannot handle:

    Wrench in the Gears! 

    So, how can lead in Flint’s water be a big deal? Arsenic in baby food? Arresting protestors in Canada? Think about how polluted media are, how broken universities are, and how confused and full of Collective Stockholm Syndrome the public is. This last comment is pretty telling:

    The post It’s What the Babies Eat: Inflammatory Capitalism in Mush first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Banning Books is just One Form of Closed Mindedness, Close Democracy

    Note: I try and keep the plates spinning in Newport-Lincoln County, where I live, write and work. So, this piece came out in the rag, The Newport News Times, a Wednesday and Friday newspaper sucking wind for sure, but still, a newspaper. This is what the community standards can take, so after this piece, I’ll comment, take out the machetes, and blaze through what it really means, Banning Books (ideas/curricula/discussion/debate/protest/public displays/thinking) . 

    Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us. American Library Association. ala.org/bbooks

    Banning Books – An American Tradition that Should be Stopped

    site-logo I cut my teeth in El Paso as a graduate TA teaching English – writing, composition, remedial reading, literature – in the early 1980s. That’s when librarians were robust, gutsy and on the front lines of free speech. They helped develop library materials and organize talks around Banned Books Week (September 26 – October 2).

    I also peddled stories and books as a fiction writer, and I was the Sunday book reviewer for the El Paso Times. My raison d’être was to make sure my writing and everyone else’s was made available to me, my students and my colleagues.

    Throughout the next forty years, I’ve headed up talks and readings celebrating diverse voices and works from people outside the Eurocentric dominant force in our traditional K12 and higher education arenas. Books by Caribbean, Mexican, South American, Central American, Native American, Iranian or Ethiopian writers were not just curiosities. For many of my students, reading Sandra Cisneros, Edwidge Danticat, Sherman Alexie or Zora Neal Hurston created a deep and long-lasting interest in their own cultures, in education, in lifelong reading and in bringing into focus the power of their own identifies reflected in others’ writing.

    This year’s banned book week is tantamount to motivating as many people as possible to understand active and passive censorship.

    There are entire lists of books removed from high school libraries. There are all kinds of books that are targets of school boards, parents groups, religious groups and political advocacy committees. As a writer, I know my published words are not always appreciated by a variety of readers. I write with many hats on, and in that capacity, I am able to cross the Rubicon many times: from poetry, to fiction, to essays, to polemics, to blogs, to traditional journalism, and more.

    I’ve faced down bigotry and hate for books I have put on my syllabi. I have had people walk out of my readings and those of more important people like Winona LaDuke or Tim O’Brien. Walking out is one’s right, and so are bigoted diatribes.

    However, stopping the publication of books and demanding books be  removed is not a right. I was teaching at a state community college in Washington when I faced a student who demanded I give her an alternative text for – The Fight Club. Ironically, we looked at various themes in that book, and the writer, Chuck Palahniuk, was coming to town and opening himself up to talking with my students.

    That English class included other books that got under the skin of other students and/or their parents (mind you, this was a college class, not a religious school). Bringing writers to campus and having students read their books is part and parcel what educators must do to open minds and create critical thinking.

    College deans, department heads, provosts and even presidents must protect that right of freedom to read.

    Yes, students in high school have a right to have a history teacher assign Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. Or a film teacher has a right to assign her under-18-year-old students, I Am Not Your Negro and Exterminate All the Brutes to delve into filmmaker Raoul Peck’s work.

    Reading Fahrenheit 451 and then comparing Raymond Bradbury’s work to François Truffaut’s 1966 version or the 2018 adaptation directed by Ramin Bahrani is vital to learning. Today, cancel culture rests in identarian politics.

    Misinformation campaigns around the 1619 Project or what “critical race theory” are ongoing.  This muddies the water of opening up critical thinking skills for both educators and students.

    In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman posits the future would look similar to the one depicted in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, Brave New World. Postman explains that the only way to avoid this fate is to see and question what we’re seeing rather than blindly trusting the media.

    Others predict a world unfolding closer to 1984, the George Orwell’s classic. Others might choose to riff with and analyze Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. All those books have been put on some school district’s banned book list: driven by a fervor seated in xenophobia, lack of understanding of what literature is, and deeply held conservative beliefs.

    Cancelling out books is akin to burning them. We all know where that led the world. This year’s theme — “Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us.”

    +–+

    All right, then, end of the Op-Ed for the newspaper that is in a pretty typically odd community, though Newport does have that “dichotomy”: lots of professors and researchers at the Oregon State University Hatfield Marine Sciences center, and the NOAA team posted here, and, those people from Oregon who have a few college degrees who ended up with summer homes here, now turned into full-time homes AND then the service economy, the logging industry, the fishing industry. You have to look at that, too, which is the divide in America, partially self-directed, and certainly directed by the elites, the billionaire class, the military-media-propaganda overlords.

    When you see red vs blue, when you see cultural wars and the religious zealotry of the Christians, and when you have K12 so flagged and flogged, so vapid of real learning, real community- based learning, real critical thinking, then we get these divides. And, while the beautiful people, the managerial class, those in the upper income brackets far away from us, in the 80 Percent, well, they may have some Buddhist retreat or outward bound or special science camp to send their young ones, the reality is they especially, and those of us in the 80 percent, have adults and then youth and then each new brood epigenetically forced into sheeplehood and ignorance of who the enemy is, as Ralph Nader put down here:

     

    If you think elementary, middle, and high school students know too little history, geography, and government, try asking them about the corporations that command so many hours of their day, their attention, what they consume, and their personal horizons.

     

    Howard Zinn published A Young People’s History of the United States (2009), to go with his best-selling pioneering work, A People’s History of the United States (1980), but he didn’t do justice to all the modern corporate controls of just about every facet of American life, including educational institutions.

     

    Today, school children are engulfed by corporate apps and software, textbooks biased toward the corporate definitions of an economy, and myths about “free markets.” For years free school materials and videos produced or sponsored by business groups, including the coal and nuclear industries, have flooded elementary classes. Our report: Hucksters in the Classroom: A Review of Industry Propaganda in Schools by Sheila Harty (1979), documented this mercantile assault on education. Students even take tests designed by corporate institutions. (DV– “Teach Youngsters about Corporatism’s Harms”)

     

    Yes, this lack of disclosure and exposure around how curricula and school junk and colleges and university endowments are predicated on what the rich, the powerful, the gigantic, the corporations, the MIC want included and not included in teaching, books, materials, etc., it might even been worse than that.

    To the left of this piece is a list of DV-recommended books. I’ve read many, and I’ve written two of them. Few people I know, however, read books, and those they do, are insipidly bad, soap opera porn, feel good and how to do/be/see/eat/cook/make money books.

    Fiction, and hardcore deeply researched and lived books on China, on Mexico, on all those countries that are shit-holes in the eyes of Biden/Trump/Lesser Evils, they aren’t read by the so-called managers of democracy, the administration, the honchos-as appointed to all those governmental positions. The books aren’t read by the generals or the CEOs.

    The books on really the core of the problems globally and locally are not read by the people who need to be taken to the woodshed for a real tutelage of the mind by the people who live in, say, North Korea, and know the language and have books with 80 pages works cited and endnotes.

    The Zuckerberg, the USA Today, the ticker-tape of Fox-UnNews and CNN (Clinton/CIA UnNews Network) and then all the followers in media looking for less gray, fewer second and third page jumps, they are part of the problem of killing knowledge, curiosity, deep thinking and robust public arena smart dialogue.

    Echo chambers, sure, the have always been there, especially if you end up in groups like the Chamber of Commerce or any group that pushes a group-think and allegiance to a narrow (usually pro Capitalist/pro Business/pro USA/ pro Empire mentality.

    It only gets worse, this banned books concept. The reality is that the Newport News Times would NEVER run a piece, a long one, on people (let’s give them degrees and long titles and decent worldviews) who might be looking into lockdowns, the legality of lockdwons/lockups, the origin of DARPA jabs, the history of USA bio-poison-toxin weaponry research). NEVER.

    Putting my byline on that too, as a journalist, would subject me to threats, death threats, deplatforming, and probably termination. I’d not get gigs teaching (there are not many) at the local community college. Even if I wrote the piece as traditional long-form journalism, pulling in too-man-to-count experts on virology, on vaccines, on medical procedures, on the history and politics of medicine and bioweaponry research and the illegal doings of the Big Pharma. Nope.

    So, that is a form of banned books, vis-a-vis the gatekeepers, those community standards, all those aspects of Edward Bernays and Josef Goebbels concocted 9 Forms of propaganda, the one that marketers really utilize, BandWagon. This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-11.png

    I’ll list more of those techniques below. But, again, it is what isn’t taught, what isn’t allowed, what isn’t debated, what isn’t filmed/acted/written about that is what signifies as a ban. Think of all the books that were written, and alas, those are now gone, gone, gone.

    The person who controls the spigot, the information channels, the medium for the messages, controls the narrative. Having Americans unlearn all the bad things, all the insipidly racist, retrograde, misogynistic, xenophobic, anti-people of color shit that comes across the desks of teachers, educational planners, curriculum designers and then into the folders and Google Chromebooks, that is a huge task.

    Bad habits die hard, or long.

    We need a 12-step program for re-centering this generation so they can breed the next and they the next of real thinkers. And I am not just come fly on the wall, or Pollyanna. I have fought hard in the colleges and universities and newsrooms and social work domains for a real sense of social justice, but also deep knowledge based thinking, and what I have come across is the dumb-downing of everything.

    Sure, we can listen to Henry Giroux and Chris Hedges, but again, they’re two elites in their fields (millionaires with a small “m”). They never interview or have on their shows lesser known or unknown people on who might set the record straight.

    While Hedges goes after/attacks the celebrity culture, he is still colonized by it in some form, always going to the person with laurels and with titles and books.

    Yes, this a good interview, but I guarantee few like me will watch is, and the elites will never watch it:

    Then, sure, Giroux and Hedges get to some facts, but again, they go for the Republican Party and the Conservatives and Rightwing Racists as their whipping posts.

    They are far from knowledgeable around how poorly placed those Democrats are, those mandate fuckers, all those incredibly bad nightmarish Democratic Governors are.

     

    CH: Welcome to On Contact.  Today, we discuss the age of manufactured ignorance with the scholar, Henry Giroux.

    HG: Power, when it’s invisible, becomes all the more powerful, to use that term.  But I think there are two issues here for me about neoliberalism in relation to your question, that are really central.  One is it operates off the assumption that there’s no such thing as social problems, that there are only individual problems.  And this notion that we’re ultimately and individually responsible for everything that happens to us literally depoliticizes people because it makes incapable of translating private issues into larger, systemic considerations.  So there’s this question of this really putrid notion of market-based individuals, and this inability to translate and bring together, and connect issues that would give people a full understanding of the world in which they live in, what they may be able to do about it.  Particularly as it affects their everyday lives.

     

    Show:

    Yes, so much more could be written about what isn’t in the curriculum, how British Petroleum (BP, the new marketing tool after the blowout of millions of gallons of crude in the Gulf of Mexico — Deep Horizon, anyone?) designed the geology and other sciences curriculum in California. Monsanto gives money to Washington State University, so you think those departments are going to have an easy time of challenge Round-up and GMOs?

    Come on — I was in Spokane, wrote about this stupidity, and alas, this is a form of censorship that takes place and never makes the news like Michael Pollan did:

    A book chosen by a Washington State University committee as appropriate food for thought for all incoming freshmen will not be distributed at summer orientation after a member of the board of regents raised concerns about the work’s focus on problems associated with agribusiness.

    WSU’s president said the decision to halt the “common reading” program was related to the university’s financial crisis.

    In “Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals,” author Michael Pollan discusses the social, political, moral and environmental implications of the food people eat.

    A selection committee picked the book for this year’s WSU common reading program, which provides freshmen with a work that crosses academic disciplines and can be incorporated into study throughout the year. (source) 

    UPDATE: Washington State University reinstates freshman reading of ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’

    Imagine, all those books taken off the shelves of public libraries. This is not just a ban To Kill a Mockingbird moment. 

    This is not silly, either, and Banned Books week does what it does, for sure, but, again, would Ward Churchill be invited to campus to read from one of his books, or the essay that got him un-tenured? 

    …what I think we’re witnessing fifty years on is consolidation of precisely the kind of entity extolled by then-U/Cal Berkeley president Clark Kerr in his 1963 book, The Uses of the University. For those unfamiliar with the tract, Kerr likened what he preferred to call “multiversities” to governmentally/corporately-owned factories—albeit, “knowledge factories”—wherein managers such as himself employed to oversee a worker force—the faculty—whose job it was to convert raw material—that is, students—into the finished product or products desired by the owners, all with maximal efficiency. Sound familiar?  (Churchill) 

    Conservative professor: Ward Churchill firing a travesty – Colorado Daily

    Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2019
    View the Censorship by the Numbers infographic for 2019

    The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 377 challenges to library, school, and university materials and services in 2019. Of the 566 books that were targeted, here are the most challenged, along with the reasons cited for censoring the books:

    George by Alex Gino

    Reasons: challenged, banned, restricted, and hidden to avoid controversy; for LGBTQIA+ content and a transgender character; because schools and libraries should not “put books in a child’s hand that require discussion”; for sexual references; and for conflicting with a religious viewpoint and “traditional family structure”


    Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin

    Reasons: challenged for LGBTQIA+ content, for “its effect on any young people who would read it,” and for concerns that it was sexually explicit and biased


    A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss, illustrated by EG Keller

    Reasons: challenged and vandalized for LGBTQIA+ content and political viewpoints, for concerns that it is “designed to pollute the morals of its readers,” and for not including a content warning

    Sex is a Funny Word by Cory Silverberg, illustrated by Fiona Smyth

    Reasons: challenged, banned, and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content; for discussing gender identity and sex education; and for concerns that the title and illustrations were “inappropriate”

    Prince & Knight by Daniel Haack, illustrated by Stevie Lewis

    Reasons: challenged and restricted for featuring a gay marriage and LGBTQIA+ content; for being “a deliberate attempt to indoctrinate young children” with the potential to cause confusion, curiosity, and gender dysphoria; and for conflicting with a religious viewpoint

    I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, illustrated by Shelagh McNicholas

    Reasons: challenged and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content, for a transgender character, and for confronting a topic that is “sensitive, controversial, and politically charged”

    The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

    Reasons: banned and challenged for profanity and for “vulgarity and sexual overtones”

    Drama written and illustrated by Raina Telgemeier

    Reasons: challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and for concerns that it goes against “family values/morals”

    Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling

    Reasons: banned and forbidden from discussion for referring to magic and witchcraft, for containing actual curses and spells, and for characters that use “nefarious means” to attain goals

    And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson illustrated by Henry Cole

    Reason: challenged and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content

    And so it goes. Imagine all the ideas stopped and flailed and all the books never written but should have been written. Imagine all the ignorance peddled by marketers, publishers, media, government, corporations. Imagine all the harm done with these lies. Wars and genocide, started and perpetrated because of knowledge and thinking bans. You think Turkey wants the Armenian Genocide in their k12 history books. Israel and the Nakba in their books? The Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing in those Japanese books? Right!

    Planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence used to be taught by yours truly around the consumer/retail war, the Story of Stuff. Planned and perceived obsolescence is now really agnotology, and the erasing of people, the caste systems being set loose and the Fourth Industrial Digital Gulag Revolution. No little newspaper like the one in my county will deal with these topics. Why should it when the reality is giant schools like WSU try a ban, or the papers of record, the big ones, throughout the land, to include the NYT and WaPo are in so many ways rotten to the core, in the service of the Military Congressional Industrial Complex and the billionaires and giant corporations. 

    Onward, to the propaganda, those Mad Men/Mad Women and the USA and EU and Capitalists Murder Incorporated!

     

     

    Thumbnail of frame 6

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    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Banning Books is just One Form of Closed Mindedness, Close Democracy

    Note: I try and keep the plates spinning in Newport-Lincoln County, where I live, write and work. So, this piece came out in the rag, The Newport News Times, a Wednesday and Friday newspaper sucking wind for sure, but still, a newspaper. This is what the community standards can take, so after this piece, I’ll comment, take out the machetes, and blaze through what it really means, Banning Books (ideas/curricula/discussion/debate/protest/public displays/thinking) . 

    Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us. American Library Association. ala.org/bbooks

    Banning Books – An American Tradition that Should be Stopped

    site-logo I cut my teeth in El Paso as a graduate TA teaching English – writing, composition, remedial reading, literature – in the early 1980s. That’s when librarians were robust, gutsy and on the front lines of free speech. They helped develop library materials and organize talks around Banned Books Week (September 26 – October 2).

    I also peddled stories and books as a fiction writer, and I was the Sunday book reviewer for the El Paso Times. My raison d’être was to make sure my writing and everyone else’s was made available to me, my students and my colleagues.

    Throughout the next forty years, I’ve headed up talks and readings celebrating diverse voices and works from people outside the Eurocentric dominant force in our traditional K12 and higher education arenas. Books by Caribbean, Mexican, South American, Central American, Native American, Iranian or Ethiopian writers were not just curiosities. For many of my students, reading Sandra Cisneros, Edwidge Danticat, Sherman Alexie or Zora Neal Hurston created a deep and long-lasting interest in their own cultures, in education, in lifelong reading and in bringing into focus the power of their own identifies reflected in others’ writing.

    This year’s banned book week is tantamount to motivating as many people as possible to understand active and passive censorship.

    There are entire lists of books removed from high school libraries. There are all kinds of books that are targets of school boards, parents groups, religious groups and political advocacy committees. As a writer, I know my published words are not always appreciated by a variety of readers. I write with many hats on, and in that capacity, I am able to cross the Rubicon many times: from poetry, to fiction, to essays, to polemics, to blogs, to traditional journalism, and more.

    I’ve faced down bigotry and hate for books I have put on my syllabi. I have had people walk out of my readings and those of more important people like Winona LaDuke or Tim O’Brien. Walking out is one’s right, and so are bigoted diatribes.

    However, stopping the publication of books and demanding books be  removed is not a right. I was teaching at a state community college in Washington when I faced a student who demanded I give her an alternative text for – The Fight Club. Ironically, we looked at various themes in that book, and the writer, Chuck Palahniuk, was coming to town and opening himself up to talking with my students.

    That English class included other books that got under the skin of other students and/or their parents (mind you, this was a college class, not a religious school). Bringing writers to campus and having students read their books is part and parcel what educators must do to open minds and create critical thinking.

    College deans, department heads, provosts and even presidents must protect that right of freedom to read.

    Yes, students in high school have a right to have a history teacher assign Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. Or a film teacher has a right to assign her under-18-year-old students, I Am Not Your Negro and Exterminate All the Brutes to delve into filmmaker Raoul Peck’s work.

    Reading Fahrenheit 451 and then comparing Raymond Bradbury’s work to François Truffaut’s 1966 version or the 2018 adaptation directed by Ramin Bahrani is vital to learning. Today, cancel culture rests in identarian politics.

    Misinformation campaigns around the 1619 Project or what “critical race theory” are ongoing.  This muddies the water of opening up critical thinking skills for both educators and students.

    In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman posits the future would look similar to the one depicted in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, Brave New World. Postman explains that the only way to avoid this fate is to see and question what we’re seeing rather than blindly trusting the media.

    Others predict a world unfolding closer to 1984, the George Orwell’s classic. Others might choose to riff with and analyze Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. All those books have been put on some school district’s banned book list: driven by a fervor seated in xenophobia, lack of understanding of what literature is, and deeply held conservative beliefs.

    Cancelling out books is akin to burning them. We all know where that led the world. This year’s theme — “Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us.”

    +–+

    All right, then, end of the Op-Ed for the newspaper that is in a pretty typically odd community, though Newport does have that “dichotomy”: lots of professors and researchers at the Oregon State University Hatfield Marine Sciences center, and the NOAA team posted here, and, those people from Oregon who have a few college degrees who ended up with summer homes here, now turned into full-time homes AND then the service economy, the logging industry, the fishing industry. You have to look at that, too, which is the divide in America, partially self-directed, and certainly directed by the elites, the billionaire class, the military-media-propaganda overlords.

    When you see red vs blue, when you see cultural wars and the religious zealotry of the Christians, and when you have K12 so flagged and flogged, so vapid of real learning, real community- based learning, real critical thinking, then we get these divides. And, while the beautiful people, the managerial class, those in the upper income brackets far away from us, in the 80 Percent, well, they may have some Buddhist retreat or outward bound or special science camp to send their young ones, the reality is they especially, and those of us in the 80 percent, have adults and then youth and then each new brood epigenetically forced into sheeplehood and ignorance of who the enemy is, as Ralph Nader put down here:

     

    If you think elementary, middle, and high school students know too little history, geography, and government, try asking them about the corporations that command so many hours of their day, their attention, what they consume, and their personal horizons.

     

    Howard Zinn published A Young People’s History of the United States (2009), to go with his best-selling pioneering work, A People’s History of the United States (1980), but he didn’t do justice to all the modern corporate controls of just about every facet of American life, including educational institutions.

     

    Today, school children are engulfed by corporate apps and software, textbooks biased toward the corporate definitions of an economy, and myths about “free markets.” For years free school materials and videos produced or sponsored by business groups, including the coal and nuclear industries, have flooded elementary classes. Our report: Hucksters in the Classroom: A Review of Industry Propaganda in Schools by Sheila Harty (1979), documented this mercantile assault on education. Students even take tests designed by corporate institutions. (DV– “Teach Youngsters about Corporatism’s Harms”)

     

    Yes, this lack of disclosure and exposure around how curricula and school junk and colleges and university endowments are predicated on what the rich, the powerful, the gigantic, the corporations, the MIC want included and not included in teaching, books, materials, etc., it might even been worse than that.

    To the left of this piece is a list of DV-recommended books. I’ve read many, and I’ve written two of them. Few people I know, however, read books, and those they do, are insipidly bad, soap opera porn, feel good and how to do/be/see/eat/cook/make money books.

    Fiction, and hardcore deeply researched and lived books on China, on Mexico, on all those countries that are shit-holes in the eyes of Biden/Trump/Lesser Evils, they aren’t read by the so-called managers of democracy, the administration, the honchos-as appointed to all those governmental positions. The books aren’t read by the generals or the CEOs.

    The books on really the core of the problems globally and locally are not read by the people who need to be taken to the woodshed for a real tutelage of the mind by the people who live in, say, North Korea, and know the language and have books with 80 pages works cited and endnotes.

    The Zuckerberg, the USA Today, the ticker-tape of Fox-UnNews and CNN (Clinton/CIA UnNews Network) and then all the followers in media looking for less gray, fewer second and third page jumps, they are part of the problem of killing knowledge, curiosity, deep thinking and robust public arena smart dialogue.

    Echo chambers, sure, the have always been there, especially if you end up in groups like the Chamber of Commerce or any group that pushes a group-think and allegiance to a narrow (usually pro Capitalist/pro Business/pro USA/ pro Empire mentality.

    It only gets worse, this banned books concept. The reality is that the Newport News Times would NEVER run a piece, a long one, on people (let’s give them degrees and long titles and decent worldviews) who might be looking into lockdowns, the legality of lockdwons/lockups, the origin of DARPA jabs, the history of USA bio-poison-toxin weaponry research). NEVER.

    Putting my byline on that too, as a journalist, would subject me to threats, death threats, deplatforming, and probably termination. I’d not get gigs teaching (there are not many) at the local community college. Even if I wrote the piece as traditional long-form journalism, pulling in too-man-to-count experts on virology, on vaccines, on medical procedures, on the history and politics of medicine and bioweaponry research and the illegal doings of the Big Pharma. Nope.

    So, that is a form of banned books, vis-a-vis the gatekeepers, those community standards, all those aspects of Edward Bernays and Josef Goebbels concocted 9 Forms of propaganda, the one that marketers really utilize, BandWagon. This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-11.png

    I’ll list more of those techniques below. But, again, it is what isn’t taught, what isn’t allowed, what isn’t debated, what isn’t filmed/acted/written about that is what signifies as a ban. Think of all the books that were written, and alas, those are now gone, gone, gone.

    The person who controls the spigot, the information channels, the medium for the messages, controls the narrative. Having Americans unlearn all the bad things, all the insipidly racist, retrograde, misogynistic, xenophobic, anti-people of color shit that comes across the desks of teachers, educational planners, curriculum designers and then into the folders and Google Chromebooks, that is a huge task.

    Bad habits die hard, or long.

    We need a 12-step program for re-centering this generation so they can breed the next and they the next of real thinkers. And I am not just come fly on the wall, or Pollyanna. I have fought hard in the colleges and universities and newsrooms and social work domains for a real sense of social justice, but also deep knowledge based thinking, and what I have come across is the dumb-downing of everything.

    Sure, we can listen to Henry Giroux and Chris Hedges, but again, they’re two elites in their fields (millionaires with a small “m”). They never interview or have on their shows lesser known or unknown people on who might set the record straight.

    While Hedges goes after/attacks the celebrity culture, he is still colonized by it in some form, always going to the person with laurels and with titles and books.

    Yes, this a good interview, but I guarantee few like me will watch is, and the elites will never watch it:

    Then, sure, Giroux and Hedges get to some facts, but again, they go for the Republican Party and the Conservatives and Rightwing Racists as their whipping posts.

    They are far from knowledgeable around how poorly placed those Democrats are, those mandate fuckers, all those incredibly bad nightmarish Democratic Governors are.

     

    CH: Welcome to On Contact.  Today, we discuss the age of manufactured ignorance with the scholar, Henry Giroux.

    HG: Power, when it’s invisible, becomes all the more powerful, to use that term.  But I think there are two issues here for me about neoliberalism in relation to your question, that are really central.  One is it operates off the assumption that there’s no such thing as social problems, that there are only individual problems.  And this notion that we’re ultimately and individually responsible for everything that happens to us literally depoliticizes people because it makes incapable of translating private issues into larger, systemic considerations.  So there’s this question of this really putrid notion of market-based individuals, and this inability to translate and bring together, and connect issues that would give people a full understanding of the world in which they live in, what they may be able to do about it.  Particularly as it affects their everyday lives.

     

    Show:

    Yes, so much more could be written about what isn’t in the curriculum, how British Petroleum (BP, the new marketing tool after the blowout of millions of gallons of crude in the Gulf of Mexico — Deep Horizon, anyone?) designed the geology and other sciences curriculum in California. Monsanto gives money to Washington State University, so you think those departments are going to have an easy time of challenge Round-up and GMOs?

    Come on — I was in Spokane, wrote about this stupidity, and alas, this is a form of censorship that takes place and never makes the news like Michael Pollan did:

    A book chosen by a Washington State University committee as appropriate food for thought for all incoming freshmen will not be distributed at summer orientation after a member of the board of regents raised concerns about the work’s focus on problems associated with agribusiness.

    WSU’s president said the decision to halt the “common reading” program was related to the university’s financial crisis.

    In “Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals,” author Michael Pollan discusses the social, political, moral and environmental implications of the food people eat.

    A selection committee picked the book for this year’s WSU common reading program, which provides freshmen with a work that crosses academic disciplines and can be incorporated into study throughout the year. (source) 

    UPDATE: Washington State University reinstates freshman reading of ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’

    Imagine, all those books taken off the shelves of public libraries. This is not just a ban To Kill a Mockingbird moment. 

    This is not silly, either, and Banned Books week does what it does, for sure, but, again, would Ward Churchill be invited to campus to read from one of his books, or the essay that got him un-tenured? 

    …what I think we’re witnessing fifty years on is consolidation of precisely the kind of entity extolled by then-U/Cal Berkeley president Clark Kerr in his 1963 book, The Uses of the University. For those unfamiliar with the tract, Kerr likened what he preferred to call “multiversities” to governmentally/corporately-owned factories—albeit, “knowledge factories”—wherein managers such as himself employed to oversee a worker force—the faculty—whose job it was to convert raw material—that is, students—into the finished product or products desired by the owners, all with maximal efficiency. Sound familiar?  (Churchill) 

    Conservative professor: Ward Churchill firing a travesty – Colorado Daily

    Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2019
    View the Censorship by the Numbers infographic for 2019

    The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 377 challenges to library, school, and university materials and services in 2019. Of the 566 books that were targeted, here are the most challenged, along with the reasons cited for censoring the books:

    George by Alex Gino

    Reasons: challenged, banned, restricted, and hidden to avoid controversy; for LGBTQIA+ content and a transgender character; because schools and libraries should not “put books in a child’s hand that require discussion”; for sexual references; and for conflicting with a religious viewpoint and “traditional family structure”


    Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin

    Reasons: challenged for LGBTQIA+ content, for “its effect on any young people who would read it,” and for concerns that it was sexually explicit and biased


    A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss, illustrated by EG Keller

    Reasons: challenged and vandalized for LGBTQIA+ content and political viewpoints, for concerns that it is “designed to pollute the morals of its readers,” and for not including a content warning

    Sex is a Funny Word by Cory Silverberg, illustrated by Fiona Smyth

    Reasons: challenged, banned, and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content; for discussing gender identity and sex education; and for concerns that the title and illustrations were “inappropriate”

    Prince & Knight by Daniel Haack, illustrated by Stevie Lewis

    Reasons: challenged and restricted for featuring a gay marriage and LGBTQIA+ content; for being “a deliberate attempt to indoctrinate young children” with the potential to cause confusion, curiosity, and gender dysphoria; and for conflicting with a religious viewpoint

    I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, illustrated by Shelagh McNicholas

    Reasons: challenged and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content, for a transgender character, and for confronting a topic that is “sensitive, controversial, and politically charged”

    The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

    Reasons: banned and challenged for profanity and for “vulgarity and sexual overtones”

    Drama written and illustrated by Raina Telgemeier

    Reasons: challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and for concerns that it goes against “family values/morals”

    Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling

    Reasons: banned and forbidden from discussion for referring to magic and witchcraft, for containing actual curses and spells, and for characters that use “nefarious means” to attain goals

    And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson illustrated by Henry Cole

    Reason: challenged and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content

    And so it goes. Imagine all the ideas stopped and flailed and all the books never written but should have been written. Imagine all the ignorance peddled by marketers, publishers, media, government, corporations. Imagine all the harm done with these lies. Wars and genocide, started and perpetrated because of knowledge and thinking bans. You think Turkey wants the Armenian Genocide in their k12 history books. Israel and the Nakba in their books? The Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing in those Japanese books? Right!

    Planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence used to be taught by yours truly around the consumer/retail war, the Story of Stuff. Planned and perceived obsolescence is now really agnotology, and the erasing of people, the caste systems being set loose and the Fourth Industrial Digital Gulag Revolution. No little newspaper like the one in my county will deal with these topics. Why should it when the reality is giant schools like WSU try a ban, or the papers of record, the big ones, throughout the land, to include the NYT and WaPo are in so many ways rotten to the core, in the service of the Military Congressional Industrial Complex and the billionaires and giant corporations. 

    Onward, to the propaganda, those Mad Men/Mad Women and the USA and EU and Capitalists Murder Incorporated!

     

     

    Thumbnail of frame 6

    The post Banning Books is just One Form of Closed Mindedness, Close Democracy first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.