Category: Disinformation

  • The BBC has admitted that a documentary on an alleged chemical attack in Syria in 2018 contained serious inaccuracies, suggesting that an informant known as ‘Alex’, who claimed the 2018 chemical weapons attack on Douma was staged, may have been motivated by financial reward.

    The post BBC Admits Its Douma Chemical Attack Report Did Not Meet Own Accuracy Standards first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • If people want to know what the circumstances of life are like somewhere, likeliest the best way is to actually go there and see for oneself. Otherwise one relies on other sources of information.

    On Foreign Agents, Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton expose the biggest frauds recruited as defectors and dissidents to lie about Official Enemies by the US regime.

    The post North Korean Defectors and Other Frauds Recruited by the US Regime first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • As soon as I heard Biden say, “We will hunt you down,” about the Afghan airport bombers, I knew that the US would immediately kill some Afghan women and children. The US will slaughter women and children at the drop of a smallpox blanket, an H-bomb, Agent Orange or a reaper drone. When the rampaging trillion-dollar-a-year military and surveillance empire feels it has been wronged there is no limit to its blood lust.

    So today we have the report that the US drone-striked an Afghan family, killing six children, ages two to ten, and three adults. The empire’s mockingbird media will spin this as unfortunate but necessary and, no matter how much evidence the empire offers to the contrary, US serfs will believe that they have rights and freedoms and are a “model” for the world. So another story today won’t faze them any more than dead Afghan children:

    Today former New York Times science writer Alex Berenson was permanently banned from the intelligence agency tentacle known as Twitter. Berenson tweeted that the covid vaccines do not prevent infection and transmission — which is exactly what the vaccine pushers themselves have said previously — the vaccines only lessen symptoms — but the little people aren’t allowed to tell truths about lockdowns or vaccines — vaccines developed and marketed at “warp speed” and so obviously harmless, useful and necessary that tens of millions of people have to be bribed, brainwashed, threatened, vilified, censored, entered in million dollar lotteries, thrown out of work and smashed back to feudalism in order for people to take them.

    “Covid” is no more going to end than the war on terror ended. It’s too profitable, it’s a gold mine. Covid even has a bigger market — a potential 7 billion customers shot up with yearly boosters. Whenever the government declares a war something — Communism, drugs, cancer, terrorism — the war will be endless, highly profitable for a few, and send the working class majority running in fear farther and farther away from truth, health and answers.

    The vaccine is your God. The vaccine is your government. The vaccine will decide how much 1st Amendment you get. The vaccine will decide how much freedom of movement you’re allowed. The vaccine is the be-all and end-all and you will have this piped into your brains 24/7 from every direction. If you want your Social Security checks and Medicare, take the shot. If you want to see a movie or eat at a restaurant, take the shot. If you want to travel, take the shot. If you want out of your house, take the shot. If you want us to let you live at all, take the shot. “Two weeks to flatten the curve” was one of the funniest jokes we ever told you. So long and so many freedoms ago…

    Fighting a civil war about this suits us just fine. We have many more things we’d like to do to you as we get ready for the homeland calamity (not security) of the US dollar losing its reserve currency status. Unlike you beggars, we plan ahead. Many of you don’t even know where your next meal or tent encampment is coming from. We want this vaccine as bad as we wanted the Iraq War and if you don’t like it, you’re a traitor to health, freedom, old people and children — you are a pestilence that’s destroying our way of life. It feels really great to concentrate all of our problems on powerless little vermin like you. If you were gone, everything would be all right.

    Probably sacrificing a bunch of you will make this plague go away. Follow the science. It’s not like we’re superstitious witch doctors. Wear your mask in the restaurant when you walk to your table because the virus floats up there whether you’re seven feet tall or five feet tall — when you sit down at your table, take your mask off because the virus isn’t there. Basically, the virus likes you sitting down, lying down, shutting up, staying home, shooting up, obeying and making Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos richer. What’s good for them is good for you and what’s good for you is doing everything we say when we say it even if it contradicts something we said five minutes ago — beating you down and getting you mindless is where we want you.

    But the one true God is the vaccine. Take the poison, goddamn you. The Rev. Tony Fauci don’t know nothin’ about no gain of function research. Jesus, even people at Jonestown were more cooperative than you are. But we love you, we’re concerned about you. That’s why we prohibited millions of you from working and then watched you go broke, losing your jobs, homes and savings. That’s why we gave you Medicare for All. Oh, wait…

    Just take the shot, we’ve got all kinds of things in store for you if you don’t. We’ve only just begun to fight, doctors and nurses will be our armies, they will vanquish you, hospitals will be our castles and the drawbridges will be pulled up on you unvaccinated polluted rabble. And stop being paranoid and libelous about good people like us, we’re the best people, we are so superior to you, it’s infuriating that we even have to explain ourselves — you’d think that we’ve maimed and killed people with DES, Oraflex, Vioxx or the Swine Flu vaccine — or killed innocent women and children with reaper drones. Alarmist know-nothings!

    “Two weeks to flatten the curve…” If you were gone, everything would be all right. Hurry up and take the poison, goddam you. We have to make more progress. Tomorrow belongs to us!

    The post US: the Sickness Unto Death first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The serial war criminality and immense cruelty of the US Alliance has been enabled by the extraordinary mendacity, genocidal racism and  resolute exceptionalism of US Alliance governments and Western Mainstream media (MSM). Summarized  below are the horrendous realities of the US Alliance-imposed Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide that are ignored by deeply racist, genocide-complicit and genocide-ignoring Western leaders and MSM.

    (1). Massive US lying enabled the 9/11 false flag excuse for the invasion  and devastation of Afghanistan, Iraq and other Muslim countries. I.F. Stone: “Governments lie” and Gore Vidal: “Unlike most Americans who lie all the time, I hate lying”. Numerous science, engineering, architecture, aviation, military and intelligence experts conclude that the US Government was responsible for the 9-11 atrocity (3,000 people killed) with some asserting Israeli and Saudi involvement, but US-beholden Western Mainstream media are united in  blind belief in the “official version” of  mendacious George W. Bush whose administration told 935 lies about Iraq between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. Detailed scientific reports from the University of Copenhagen and the University of Alaska Fairbanks reject the lying Bush “official version of 9/11” and evidence the explosive demolition of the 3 WTC skyscrapers on 9/11 (that necessarily implies US Government  involvement in that atrocity). Asserted “terrorism” is to the Zionist-subverted US Alliance state terrorists as asserted “antisemitism” is to the genocidally racist, Islamophobic,  anti-Arab anti-semitic, anti-Jewish anti-semitic, holocaust-complicit and holocaust-ignoring  Zionists and Apartheid Israel. Re state terrorism, the British have invaded 193 countries, Australia 85, France 82, the US 72 (52 after WW2), Germany 39 and Canada 25, as compared to Japan 30, Russia 25, Apartheid Israel 12, China 2, Afghanistan zero since 1760,  Iran zero since the 7th century CE, and India and nearly all of the Developing World zero (0).

    (2). The Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide has been associated with 3.6 million under-5 infant deaths, 5.2 million  avoidable deaths from deprivation ,  an estimated 1.6 million violent deaths, and 6.8 million deaths from violence and deprivation  in US-, Australia- and NATO-occupied Afghanistan in 2001-2021. US-backed removal of a secular Afghan government in 1978 precipitated the USSR invasion and war involving US-backed Islamists (avoidable deaths from deprivation 2.9 million, 1979-1989) followed by civil war won by the Taliban  (avoidable deaths from deprivation 3.3 million, 1989-1999).  The variously US-implicated and US-imposed 1979-2021 Afghan Holocaust has been associated with 13.0 million untimely Afghan deaths.

    (3). Global Opiate Holocaust. The  US rapidly restored the Taliban-destroyed Afghan  opium industry from 6% of world market share in 2001 back to 90%  by 2007,  and caused 5.8 million opiate-related deaths world-wide since 9/11. The US Government has been successively involved in the opiate scourge in Turkey, South East Asia, Afghanistan and Latin America. US-threatened and US-sanctioned Iran leads the world in interdiction of  US-protected Afghan opiates that presently kill about 0.3 million people annually. For religious reasons  the Taliban banned alcohol, prohibited smoking for government  employees, and banned opium production. Each year smoking, alcohol and illicit drugs kill about 8 million, 2.8 million and 0.8 million people each year  for  total of about 11.8 million people worldwide. In contrast, 7.4 million people presently die annually from deprivation on Spaceship Earth with the First World, notably the US, in charge of the flight deck.

    (4). The US-imposed Iranian Holocaust has been associated  with 4 million Iranian deaths in the 4-decade US-imposed Iranian Holocaust, comprising 1 million Iranian deaths in the 1980-1988 US-backed Iran-Iraq War, and 3 million avoidable deaths from US sanctions from 1979 onwards. Iran suffered huge famines associated with British and Russian occupation in WW1  (up to 8-10 million dying in the  1917-1919 famine) and  in WW2 (up to 3-4 million dying in the 1942-1943 famine). Following US withdrawal from devastated Afghanistan, a nervous  world asks: which impoverished country  is next? Iran heads the list followed by Venezuela and Cuba (all subject already to unsuccessful armed US invasions). Iran has zero (0) nuclear weapons as compared to the US (5,800-6,185), Russia (6,372-6,490), China (300-320), France (290), UK (200-215), Pakistan (160), India (150), Apartheid Israel (90), and North Korea (30-40).

    (5). The post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust and American Holocaust. The 2001-2021 Afghan Genocide and Afghan Holocaust (6.8 million deaths from violence and imposed deprivation) is part of a US-imposed, post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide (32 million Muslim deaths from violence, 5 million, and imposed deprivation, 27 million, in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9/11 false flag atrocity that killed 3,000 people). 1.7 million Americans die preventably each year from “lifestyle choice reasons” and from “political choice reasons”. Thus 1.7 million per year x 20 years = 34 million Americans have died thus since 9/11. Since 9/11 Zionist-beholden US Administrations have spent $6 trillion on killing over 30 million Muslims abroad rather than trying to keep over 30 million Americans alive at home. 30% of Biden’s Cabinet are Jewish Zionists and the remainder are “moderate” Christian Zionists as opposed to the fervently Trumpist  Evangelical Zionists.

    (6). There have been 7,000 post-9/11 US combat deaths versus 146,000  US veteran deaths from suicide. About 7,018 American soldiers died in the post-9/11 US War on Terror in Occupied Iraq (4,566) and Occupied Afghanistan (3,452), but vastly more US veterans have died from suicide. The US Veterans Administration has found that an average of about 20 US veterans have suicided daily in the past few decades, and thus post-9/11 US veteran suicides have totalled (20 suicides per day) x (365.25 days per year) x 20 years = 146,100.

    (7). China observes but the US Alliance grossly violates the  Fourth Geneva Convention and the UN Genocide Convention. Killing in war occurs not just through violence (active killing) but also through avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation (passive killing). Mass mortality in a Subject population occurs in gross Occupier violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (the Fourth Geneva Convention) that unequivocally demands that the Occupier must supply its conquered Subjects with life-sustaining food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”. Infant mortality (under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births) is 12 (China), 16 ([Chinese province] Tibet), 6 (USA) and 111 (US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan). The Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) (maternal deaths per 100,000 live births) is 20-27 (China), 100 ([Chinese province] Tibet), 14 (USA) and 400-1,200 (US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan). Contrary to US Alliance claims of  a “Uighur Genocide,” in Xinjiang (50% Uighur and 50% Han Chinese) the maternal mortality rate was 27 per 100,000 in 2018, the infant mortality rate was 14 under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, the average life expectancy was 74.8 years in 2015, and there has been no mass sterilization in the region. That said, China is legitimately criticized for harsh treatment of Uighurs (mass imprisonment of 1 million for re-education) [Harsh treatment? Evidence? Is deradicalization against Uyghur terrorists not legitimate? — DV Ed], dissidents and Hong Kong democracy protestors. Genocide is defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” In relation to “the fullest extent of the means available to it” the GDP (nominal) per capita (US dollars, 2021) is as follows (in brackets) for Afghanistan ($592), China ($11,819), US ($68,309), UK ($46,344), Germany ($51,860), France ($44,995) and serial war criminal US lackey Australia ($62,723).

    (8). Nazi and US Alliance  Occupied/Occupier death ratios of 10 and 1,970, respectively. In 1944 the Nazi Germany dictator Adolph Hitler ordered reprisals involving 10 Italian men and boys executed for every German soldier killed by Partisans (effected in the subsequent Ardeatine Caves Massacre). The Occupied/Occupier death ratio for the 2001-2021 Afghan War is accordingly 6,800,000/ 3,452 = 1,970 or about 200 times greater than the 10 advocated by Nazi mass murderer Adolph. Hitler. Ignoring violent Afghan deaths,  the Occupied/Occupier death ratio for the 2001-2021 Afghan War is 5,200,000/3,452 = 1,506 or about 1,500 and thus 150 times greater than the 10 advocated by Hitler. The post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust deaths/ 9/11 death toll = 32 million/3,000 = 10,667, 1,067 times greater than  the Them/Us reprisals ratio of 10 ordered by Hitler.

    (9). Vital post-war aid provision for tens of millions of Afghans versus extraction of tens of thousands of  US Alliance personnel, collaborators and other anti-Taliban people fearing reprisals. Occupied Afghanistan was heavily dependent on international aid and Biden has threatened  to hamper such aid and hence post-liberation recovery if the new regime  doesn’t play ball. Biden has already frozen the assets of impoverished Afghanistan, a move that will entrench Afghan mass mortality from dire deprivation. The Taliban  have declared Amnesty for its opponents and proper treatment of  women “under Islamic law” but many remain fearful based on harsh Taliban rule 20 years ago. For Occupied Afghanistan in 2020, under-5 infant deaths totalled 76,000 and avoidable deaths from deprivation totalled 106,000. In 2020 the “under-5 infant mortality as a percentage of total population” for Afghanistan (0.1950%) was a shocking 118.5 times greater than for Japan (0.00145%), evidence of gross violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention by the occupying US Alliance countries. To this carnage we must add the infant mortality and avoidable deaths from deprivation among  the circa 3.3 million internally displaced Afghans and the 2.5 million registered refugees in Iran and Pakistan from Afghanistan (present population 39 million, half requiring aid). Those rightly supporting all human rights for all as set out in the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) should also spare a thought for the  undoubted right of millions of ordinary Afghan women to see the survival of their children.

    (10). Exposure of the perpetrators of the Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide. This is an immense crime that demands war crimes trials of the  perpetrators before the International Criminal Court (ICC). That is not going to happen because the US does not recognize the authority of the ICC whereas the ICC cravenly accepts the authority of the US. However international and intra-national war crimes trials by  eminent humanitarians are feasible and urgently required. Establishment of the truth is more important than punishment of the guilty (the more so since the latter is unlikely to ever happen). Inspired by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in post-Apartheid South Africa, war crimes trials should be legislatively constituted on the basis that there should be no punishment for truth telling accompanied by sincere apology (see Gideon Polya , “Afghan Holocaust – The Awful Truth Versus US Alliance Lies,” Countercurrents, 22 August 2021).

    The post US Alliance-imposed Afghan Holocaust first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Gideon Polya.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • FIRST PERSON: By Ben Strang, RNZ News reporter

    RNZ reporter Ben Strang was on the streets before the latest lockdown when he was attacked, and writes that it feels like there is more animosity towards the government and media this time around.


    Despite living largely free of restrictions in New Zealand compared to almost every other nation for the best part of this covid pandemic, it is apparent that some people have no intention of living under level four restrictions.

    Hours into the first day of lockdown, Billy Te Kahika, Vinny Eastwood, and their loyal legion of conspiracy theorists launched a number of protests against the measures set out by the government.

    Te Kahika and Eastwood pitched up with about 80 others outside Television New Zealand’s headquarters in Auckland.

    Some of their views may seem idiotic, but neither of them is an idiot.

    The decision to protest outside TVNZ served many purposes: It’s a central Auckland location; it was guaranteed to get them a level of media attention; and they could try to make a point to the media who, apparently, ignore their salient points about the truth of covid-19, vaccines, Bill Gates, the moon landings, and whatever else.

    Te Kahika and Eastwood were arrested and are now going through the court process.

    It feels like part of a rising level of resentment over government action on combating the pandemic. Patience can wear thin, it might be hard to see an end point and we are left wondering when we will return to “normal”.

    Trusty black face mask
    “On Tuesday night, five hours before the restrictions were about to snap into place, I was tasked with talking to people on the streets of Wellington about the impending lockdown.

    Wearing an RNZ jacket and my trusty black face mask – and armed with an RNZ flagged microphone – I greeted people as I always do, by telling them I was an RNZ reporter.

    That’s when I was attacked.

    A tall blonde man tried to rip my face mask off, grabbed my ear and around my head.

    He yelled that covid-19 was a myth, aggressively asked why I needed the mask, and said none of the pandemic was real.

    Fortunately, I know how to handle myself and got out of the situation quick smart, but these situations are not isolated.

    Other reporters have talked about overly aggressive anti-lockdown, covid-19 conspiracy theorists confronting them while they’ve been working.

    Usually, we only see it online through social media, or in our email inbox from the brave few using creative pseudonyms.

    Tide is changing
    But if Tuesday night is any indication, the tide is changing. And it is not just the media who are noticing the swell of covid-19 discontent or disbelief.

    Police arrested three people involved in an anti-lockdown protest in Christchurch on Thursday, after a group of 10 people gathered on the Bridge of Remembrance on Cashel Street.

    Last time out, the police took an “educational approach”, telling people to pull their heads in and head home.

    This time, they are acting far quicker in locking them up.

    That is because they see the rise in this behaviour too, want to send a clear message to those who believe in “alternative facts”, and want to knock it on the head.

    It has also been noticed by supermarket workers, bus drivers, airline staff, and any number of frontline workers across the country.

    There are reports of people being kept off flights because they refuse to wear a mask.

    Arrested in Northland
    Police arrested two people in Northland on Wednesday for that very offence, and because they acted in a threatening manner towards supermarket staff at a Pak N Save.

    The protests, the arrests, the number of people requiring “education” from the police are small compared to the vast numbers who are complying with restrictions.

    But they are the tip of a digital iceberg, with a large online community which is consistently growing, feeding on the idea that covid-19 is either a hoax or perhaps a plandemic.

    We all have an uncle, or a sister-in-law, or a neighbour, who tries to tell us the truth as they see it.

    But how many people do they convince? How many people are now second guessing getting a vaccine because of misleading scientific “evidence” one of these people has been talking about?

    It’s a dangerous situation we find ourselves in.

    With anger and misinformation swelling like a tumour, there is added pressure on the government in these coming days and weeks to make the right decisions in steering the country through this current outbreak.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • In 1989, researchers from the Salk Institute in California published a paper detailing how they developed an RNA transfection system that could “directly introduce RNA into whole tissues and embryos”. The concept of using RNA as a drug is first described in this paper, making it the seminal work that formed the foundation for decades of further research in this area. The “Discussion” section of the paper states that:

    The RNA/lipofectin method can be used to directly introduce RNA into whole tissues and embryos (R.W.M., C. Holt, and I.M.V., unpublished results), raising the possibility that liposome-mediated mRNA transfection might offer yet another option in the growing technology of eukaryotic gene delivery, one based on the concept of using RNA as a drug.

    One of the Salk Institute researchers listed on the paper is Dr. Robert W. Malone, a scientist who has recently been censored on social media for warning about the possible dangers of the covid-19 vaccines. It could be argued that there’s no expert more qualified to warn us about the dangers of mRNA injections than the man who helped pioneer the technology, nevertheless, Big Tech decided he was expounding “misinformation”, because, well, they know better apparently.

    Malone’s research, which resulted in a procedure that could be used to “efficiently transfect RNA into human cells” using a “synthetic cationic lipid” was supported by grants from the American Cancer Society and the National Institute of Health (who currently have a stake in the Moderna mRNA vaccine, showing their allegiance to the technology. More on this later).

    While Malone’s contributions to the development of mRNA technology are well-known and well-documented, Wikipedia decided to remove all mention of him from their “RNA Vaccine” entry shortly after the scientist began speaking out about the dangers of the rushed-through covid vaccines. The June 14th version of the article mentioned Malone by name 3 times and cited his work 6 times. The current version of the article mentions him 0 times and cites his work only 3 times.

    However, this is unsurprising considering Wikipedia’s documented bias towards the pharmaceutical industry. Far more interesting is the institution that produced the research in the first place — the Salk Institute. The Salk Institute, named after Jonas Salk, the creator of the Salk polio vaccine, was constructed in 1962 thanks to funding from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, today known as the March of the Dimes.

    The March of the Dimes (MOD) was established in 1937 with the mission of eradicating polio and during a time when the Eugenics Establishment was already a prominent, but not yet popular, feature of the American health scene. The theory of Eugenics is based on the idea that selective procreation can lead to the gradual “improvement” of the human race and that certain families are fit to lead society by virtue of their “superior” genes.

    At the time, the nation’s key eugenics organizations included the American Eugenics Society (AES) and the American Society of human Eugenics (ASHE), funded by the Rockefeller, Carnegie and Harriman families, as well as the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. It should be noted that the Rockefellers were instrumental in funding and promoting eugenics around the world. The Eugenics movement promoted selective mating, artificial insemination and compulsory sterilization and euthanasia as important means of weeding out so-called “inferior” human beings.

    The first sterilization law in the US was passed in 1907, in the state of Indiana, and by 1931, many more states had followed suit by enacting similar laws. According to the Indiana Historical Bureau:

    In 1907, Governor J. Frank Hanly approved first state eugenics law making sterilization mandatory for certain individuals in state custody.

    Those sterilized under eugenics law were deemed “undesirable” on account of mental or physical impairments such as epilepsy, blindness and physical disabilities, as well as “social inadequacies” such as drug addiction or criminality. According to estimates, around 60,000 individuals were sterilized under such laws, deprived of their right to have children and forever branded as “feebleminded”.

    In fact, the prominence of the American eugenics movement resulted in its adoption by the National Socialist Party of Germany, which sterilized more than 350,000 persons by the end of the second world war. After WW2, eugenics notions were dropped from public conversation, but the movement never dissipated, no, instead it was “re-branded” using more acceptable terminology such as “population control” and “reproductive health”, as we shall see later on.

    The emergence of the MOD as a major player in the American Eugenics movement can be traced back to the organization’s early association with the Rockefeller Institute from where it procured many of its key members and advisers, including professor Anton Julius Carlson, a member of the American Eugenics Society, recruited to serve on the MOD’s Medical and Research Committees and Professor Clair E. Turner, another AES member who served as assistant to then President, Basil O’Connor.

    Just before the establishment of the Salk Institute, the MOD announced it would be phasing out its polio programs and focusing its resources on “birth defects”. In 1959, the MOD funded courses in “medical genetics” at the Jackson Laboratory in Maine, a genetics institute founded in 1929 by Clarence Cook Little, who, “at one time or another” served as the president of the American Eugenics Society, the American Birth Control League and the American Euthanasia Society.

    Jackson Laboratory’s claimed mission is “to discover precise genomic solutions for disease and empower the global biomedical community in its shared quest to improve human health.” Noteworthy is that the lab received increased funding in 2020, largely from the National Institute of Health (NIH), including a grant of $10.6 million to find treatments for rare genetic diseases by using gene-editing technologies. And at the start of the coronavirus “pandemic”, the lab worked to develop genetically modified mice for use in vaccine studies and other research related to Sars-Cov-2.

    Beginning in the 1960s, the MOD financed several “Birth Defects Prevention Centers” located at medical institutions across the US. These new centers offered prenatal testing via amniocentesis to determine whether a baby would be born with “defects” and then gave the couple the opportunity to abort the affected child.

    The MOD has also made direct donations to Planned Parenthood, a clear contradiction of their claimed mission, which is to “fight for the health of all moms and babies.” Planned Parenthood is a non-profit organization that provides “reproductive health care” in the US and abroad. From 2019-2020 the organization committed over 350,000 abortions and has been criticized as “steering resources away from women’s health and toward abortion.” Unsurprisingly, a look into the organization’s history reveals that Planned Parenthood has its roots in Eugenics ideals.

    Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger, who, far from a “birth control activist”, as the mainstream would have you believe, was a racist eugenicist who sought to rid the world of “unfit” human stock. In her essay, “A Plan for Peace”, she describes the main objects of her proposed “Population Congress” which includes “a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.” She also mentions the need to “control the intake and output of morons, mental defectives, epileptics.”

    As mentioned earlier, these Eugenics ideals inspired the Nazis who took many of Sanger’s ideas and ran with them, so to speak. In his book, The War Against the Weak, Edwin Black details how the Nazi sterilization law of 1933 as well as subsequent euthanasia laws were based on blueprints drawn up by Sanger and other American “activists.” In fact, associates of Sanger knew about these Nazi euthanasia programs and praised them.

    Coming back to the Salk Institute, it should be noted that the mainstream account of the 20th-century polio outbreak, namely the notion that the disease is caused by a virus and that Dr. Salk’s miracle vaccine was single-handedly responsible for ending the epidemic, is dubious and likely altogether false.

    Paralytic polio appeared suddenly in the US in the early 1900s with continual, dramatic fluctuations in cases — a pattern that continued until the end of the 1950s. The introduction of the Salk vaccine in 1954 seemed to coincide with the almost instantaneous decline in cases, which continued for more than two decades.

    But prior to being called “polio,” conditions involving infirmity of the limbs were known by various other names including apoplexy, palsy and paralysis. Many historical writings refer to paralysis resulting from exposure to toxic substances and many of these accounts were documented by Dr. Ralph Scobey in his 1952 statement to the Select Committee to Investigate the Use of Chemicals in Food Products titled The Poison Cause of Poliomyelitis and Obstructions to its Investigation.

    Scobey’s paper includes references to several investigations that seemed to indicate a link between polio outbreaks in the 20th century and the consumption of fresh fruit, providing a link between Polio and toxic pesticide exposure. One crop pesticide in widespread use at the time was DDT, a highly toxic organochlorine that was widely publicized as being “good for you”, but eventually banned in 1972. In 1953, Dr. Morton Biskind published a paper in the American Journal of Digestive Diseases pointing out that “McCormick (78), Scobey (100-101), and Goddard (57), in detailed studies, have all pointed out that factors other than infective agents are certainly involved in the etiology of polio, varying from nutritional defects to a variety of poisons which affect the nervous system.”

    The danger of toxic pesticides, including DDT, and their disastrous effects on the environment were illustrated by Rachel Carson in her 1962 book, Silent Spring.

    In more recent times, researchers, Dan Olmstead, co-founder of the Age of Autism, and Mark Blaxil conducted two brilliant investigations into the polio epidemics of the 20th century, reaching a similar conclusion to Scobey and Biskind, namely that the disease was caused by the widespread use of neurotoxic pesticides such as arsenite of soda and DDT.

    Although Salk’s vaccine was hailed as a success, the vaccine itself caused many cases of injury and paralysis. And though there does appear to be a convincing correlation between the timing of the vaccine and the reduction in polio cases, as all good scientists know, correlation doesn’t equal causation, especially considering the fact that DDT was phased out, at least in the US, over the same period.

    Interestingly, Dr Salk’s polio research was funded by the mother of Cordelia Scaife May, an heiress to the Mellon family banking fortune who idealized Margaret Sanger and later joined the board of the International Planned Parenthood Foundation. May’s views on immigration were radical, to say the least, and according to some, she favoured compulsory sterilization as a means to limit birth rates in developing countries. May later joined the board of the Population Council, an organization founded by John D. Rockefeller III focused on population reduction. In 1995, the Population Council collaborated with the WHO to create fertility regulating vaccines.

    It would be a mistake to think that the polio epidemic was not related to the current ‘age of vaccination’ we find ourselves in. On the contrary, claiming that polio was “eradicated in the United States” due to vaccination alone is a lie that garnered public favour for childhood vaccinations and helped to set the groundwork for the widespread belief in the safety and efficacy of all vaccines. Events such as Polio and Smallpox (another lie that is beyond the scope of this article), and the subsequent pro-vaccine propaganda, “primed” much of the population to accept, without question, an experimental jab based on poorly understood technology.

    Twisting the Science

    In 1997, 8 years after the Salk Institute paper, the FDA approved the first ever trial of transfected RNA to develop immunity in cancer patients. The Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee of the National Institute of Health then voted to continue approval some months later, leading to the first-ever mRNA based vaccine administered to humans.

    Though mRNA is propagandized in the media as the next revolution in health, those with keen perception may be alarmed when reading excerpts such as this one, taken from an article on the history of mRNA, written by Damian Garde, a Biotech reporter for STATS:

    The concept: By making precise tweaks to synthetic mRNA and injecting people with it, any cell in the body could be transformed into an on-demand drug factory.”

    Talk of cells being turned into “on-demand drug factories” is exactly the sort of meaningless techno-rhetoric meant to impress and entice an uninformed public. mRNA vaccines are based on the following concept: a piece of synthetic mRNA is shuttled into your cells, where it is used as a template to create the viral “spike protein.” Once this protein leaves the cell, the body produces antibodies and “learns” how to fight future Sars-Cov-2 infections.

    mRNA-based vaccines are often touted as a safer alternative to DNA-based vaccines, which, according to researcher Steve Pascolo “may trigger permanent and dangerous changes in the genetic information of treated people”. However, do we know for sure that mRNA vaccines don’t permanently change the genetic makeup of our cells? A 2001 paper titled “RNA as a tumor vaccine: a review of the literature<" states that (emphasis added): “unlike DNA-based vaccines, there is little danger of incorporation of RNA sequences into the host genome.” The use of the word “little” would seem to indicate that there may be at least some danger of genome integration or more likely, researchers simply don’t know.

    In the 2004 “expert opinion” paper by Pascolo cited above, he outlines the link between mRNA vaccines and gene therapies, something which is continually denied and dismissed by the mainstream:
    A

    lthough located in the cytosol and not in the nucleus, mature mRNAs belong to the biochemical family of nucleic acids. mRNA, similarly to DNA, may be considered a gene and, consequently, it’s use as a vaccine may be viewed as ‘gene therapy’.

    Interestingly, it is purely due to a technicality of regulatory law that covid-19 gene therapies are allowed to be called “vaccines”. This is explained in a paper titled “The European Regulatory Environment of RNA-Based Vaccines,” which states that:

    The definition of a gene therapy medicinal product as outlined in Annex 1 to Directive 2001/83/EC is as follows:

    Gene therapy medicinal product means a biological medicinal product which has the following characteristics:

    (a) it contains an active substance which contains or consists of a recombinant nucleic acid used in or administered to human beings with a view to regulating, repairing, replacing, adding or deleting a genetic sequence;

    (b) its therapeutic, prophylactic or diagnostic effect relates directly to the recombinant nucleic acid sequence it contains, or to the product of genetic expression of this sequence.

    Gene therapy medicinal products shall not include vaccines against infectious diseases.

    As is evident, the mere act of calling a gene therapy a “vaccine against infectious disease” negates its classification as a gene therapy, the approval process for which, at least in Europe, involves going through the CAT which is the EMA’s (European Medicines Agency) “Committee for Advanced Therapies”. Evidently, this play on language would seem to constitute a “loophole” of sorts, allowing easier approval for mRNA based gene therapies planned for human use.

    Approval is certainly a contentious topic when talked about in the context of the current covid-19 vaccines, none of which have been fully FDA approved, only authorized under emergency use (EUA) and labeled as “investigational” products, a fact that many people are unaware of. However, early in the year vaccine manufacturers already set their sights on full regulatory approval, after only 6 months of trial data. On the 7th of May, Pfizer formally initiated their application to the FDA, with the aim of having the first-ever fully approved covid-19 vaccine. But with millions of vaccines already administered under EUA, what’s the rush?

    Furthermore, for the six “first in disease” vaccines approved by the FDA over the last 15 years, the median trial duration was just shy of two years. A vaccine approved after 6 months of data would constitute one of the fastest ever. The phase three clinical trials for Pfizer, Moderna and Janssen are two years in duration, but the FDA has not clearly stated their position with regards to minimum follow-up prior to consideration for approval.

    Longer, placebo-controlled trials are paramount to assessing vaccine safety. It is extremely alarming then that vaccine manufacturers, within weeks of receiving EUA, began to unblind trials by offering those in the placebo group the chance to get vaccinated. Moderna announced that “as of April 13, all placebo participants have been offered the Moderna covid-19 vaccine and 98% of those have received the vaccine,” meaning that their placebo group no longer exists and as such, they have no way to accurately measure long-term safety.

    In an article for the British Medical Journal, Peter Doshi quotes the FDA, on several occasions, saying that the maintenance of a placebo group would be critical to assessing both the safety and efficacy of covid-19 vaccines, which is obvious to anyone who understands the consequences of failing to adhere to scientific rigor when testing a new medical therapy.

    In reality, there could be many reasons for manufacturers wanting FDA approval for their vaccines, but likely top of the list is the “stamp of approval” that comes with full licensure and the ability to use this as a way to convince those who remain skeptical regarding the safety and efficacy of the vaccines. Moreover, full FDA approval would pave the way for easier vaccine mandates, putting immense pressure on those of the “awakened class” who represent a thorn in the side of the Great Reset/Great Convergence agenda pushers.

    More disturbing inconsistencies can be found in the FDA’s process for assessing and approving these experimental vaccines. For example, the FDA recently cautioned against the use of antibody tests for evaluating immunity or protection from covid-19, “especially” after a person has received a vaccination, despite their EUA being originally granted, in part, due to antibody responses. The implication for this reversal is that the EUA given for covid-19 vaccines should also be reversed, but what’s the likelihood of that happening, after millions have already been jabbed?

    Moreover, the idea that “antibodies” provide protection from so-called viral infections represents a poor understanding of the body and the immune system. The fact that antibodies play little role in viral infections has been known by medical scientists since the 1950s based on research that shows persons with the genetic inability to produce antibodies, called “agammaglobulinemia,” have normal reactions to typical viral infections and even appear to resist recurrences.

    Bill Gates, Moderna, and Eugenics 2.0

    One of the covid-19 vaccine manufactures most talked about in the media is Moderna, a biotech company co-founded by Robert Langer, a researcher and inventor at MIT. In 2013, the biotech startup received $25m in funding from DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), a research arm of the United States Department of Defense, and an organization well-known for ruthlessly pursuing dystopian, transhumanist technologies, such as implantable nanoparticles and bio-brain interfaces (more on this later).

    Noteworthy is that the US government, through the National Institute of Health, appears to have a financial stake in the Moderna vaccine thanks to a contract signed by both parties, giving the NIH joint ownership over Moderna’s mRNA vaccine candidates. According to Axios:

    The NIH mostly funds outside research, but it also often invents basic scientific technologies that are later licensed out and incorporated into drugs that are sold at massive profits.

    This is more than alarming considering the NIH is responsible for prioritizing promising treatments for covid-19 as well as improving clinical trial effectiveness, which, for Moderna, is impossible considering their trial no longer contains a control group. NIH’s vested interest in Moderna’s success may also provide a plausible explanation for why the biotech startup received EUA for their vaccine despite failing, for over 10 years, to bring a single product to market.

    In an interview for Economic Club, NIH director Francis Collins denied that covid-19 vaccines would be money-makers, saying that “Nobody sees this as a way to make billions of dollars”. However, evidence points to the contrary as Moderna’s covid-19 vaccine sales reached $1.7 billion in the first quarter of 2021, making their CEO, Stephane Bancel, one of the many new pharma billionaires.

    “Operation Warp Speed,” the name given to a partnership between several US Federal agencies aimed at accelerating the development of a covid-19 vaccine, was also wrought with conflicts of interest. The Operation Warp Speed administration hired several “consultants” with ties to Big Pharma, including two former Pfizer executives. And in May 2020, it was reported that their chief adviser, Dr. Monsef Slaoui, a former pharmaceutical executive himself, held $10m in GlaxoSmithKline stock, the same company that was later awarded a $2 billion contract to supply the US government with 100 million vials of covid-19 vaccine. Dr. Slaoui also held significant stock in Moderna, to whom the federal government has awarded over $2.5b in funding.

    Moderna co-founder, Robert Langer, whose net worth has also skyrocketed into the billions, is one of the world’s most cited researchers. A scientist at MIT, Langer holds over 1,400 patents and specializes in biotechnology, nanotechnology, tissue engineering and drug delivery. Furthermore, Langer holds an administrative role at the MIT Media Lab, the same institute that was the focus of a scandal after it was revealed that the lab accepted funding from convicted sex-offender, Jefferey Epstein. Epstein also happened to have a disturbing fascination with “transhumanism”, a modern-day version of eugenics (transhumanism is discussed later in this article).

    Then director of the MIT Media Lab, Joi Ito, approved two donations from Epstein of $1.75m and allowed the prolific paedophile to “direct” funds to the lab from other wealthy benefactors, including a $2m donation from Bill Gates, who also has unsettling ties to Epstein, having flown on his private jet and met with him on several occasions. When the news broke out and Joi Ito resigned from his post at the lab, Langer was one of the first people to sign a letter calling for him to stay, and as an administrator for the lab’s Director’s Office, it’s hard to believe he didn’t know about the Epstein donations in advance.

    Described as the “common denominator” in several coronavirus efforts, Robert Langer is certainly an interesting player in the transhumanist movement. In 2015, his company, Microchips Biotech, partnered with Israeli pharmaceutical giant, Teva Pharmaceutical, to commercialize its “implantable drug delivery device”. Noteworthy is that Teva Pharmaceutical has received significant investment from Warren Buffett, who, in 2006, pledged to gradually donate his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, an organization whom he served as a trustee up until very recently.

    Langer also has ties to Charles Lieber, a Harvard nanotech scientist who was arrested in January on account of making false statements to federal authorities regarding his collaboration with Chinese researchers at the Wuhan University of Technology. In 2012, Langer and Lieber worked together to create a “material that merges nanoscale electronics with biological tissues”. The material was described as “a first step toward prosthetics that communicate directly with the nervous system”.

    Much of Langer’s research is backed by Bill Gates, who began funding mRNA technology in 2010 and has also invested millions into Moderna. In 2017, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored a project at Langer’s lab to create a microparticle vaccine delivery system that could generate a “novel type of drug carrying particle”, allowing multiple doses of a vaccine to be administered over an extended period of time with just one injection. Then in 2019, Gates and Langer teamed up again to create an invisible ink tattoo that “embeds immunization records into a child’s skin”. Disturbingly, the eventual goal of the project is to inject sensors that can be used to track “other aspects” of health.

    Gates claims he needs the data for “disease prevention”, referring to his efforts to wipe out polio, measles and other “infectious” diseases from around the world. However, Gates’ various “health-related” initiatives in developing countries are not the work of a loving philanthropist like the media would have us all believe. Instead, evidence would suggest that Gates’ involvement in public health represents the continuation of a long-standing eugenics agenda, hiding in plain sight. Gates’ links to the eugenics movement start with his father, who praised the Rockefellers for their work in “public health” and even met with them in 2000 to discuss matters relating to infectious disease, vaccines and the environment. During the meeting, Gates senior was quoted as saying:

    Taking our lead and our inspiration from work already done by The Rockefeller Foundation, our foundation actually started GAVI by pledging $750 million to something called the Global Fund for Children’s Vaccines, an instrument of GAVI.

    Interestingly, almost ten years after that meeting, Gates junior co-hosted a meeting with David Rockefeller to discuss population reduction.

    Perhaps even more telling is the fact that in 2012 Bill and Melinda Gates hosted their London Summit on Family Planning, where they announced their commitment to population control in the third world, on the 100th anniversary of the First International Eugenics Congress, also held in London.

    Gates is well-known for his obsession with vaccines, a curious pursuit considering that the 9,000,000 people who die every year from hunger would be better served by having clean water, food supplies and sanitary living environments. In 2009, Gates’ Foundation funded observational studies in India for a controversial cervical cancer vaccine that was given to thousands of young girls called “Gardasil”. Within months, many girls began to get sick and within a year, five of them had died. During a similar study for a different brand of HPV vaccine, many girls were hospitalized and a further two died. The Economic Times of India reported on this in 2014, with the shocking revelation that:

    Consent for conducting these studies, in many cases, was taken from the hostel wardens, which was a flagrant violation of norms. In many other cases, thumbprint impressions of their poor and illiterate parents were duly affixed onto the consent form. The children also had no idea about the nature of the disease or the vaccine. The authorities concerned could not furnish requisite consent forms for the vaccinated children in a huge number of cases.

    Gates has also heavily promoted the oral polio vaccine in India, after endeavouring to eradicate the disease. However, as discussed earlier in this article, toxic chemicals are involved in the etiology of polio and thus the disease cannot be eradicated by the use of vaccines. In fact, global health numbers indicate that more cases of polio are now being caused by the vaccines themselves than anything else. In 2018, a group of brave Indian researchers published a paper in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health showing a correlation between the oral polio vaccine drives and increased cases of “acute flaccid paralysis”, a condition described as “clinically indistinguishable” from polio.

    Ironically, Gates has a $23m investment in Monsanto, the company that markets “roundup” a glyphosate-containing pesticide that is known to cause adverse health effects, including neurological disorders and paralysis.

    While many believe Gates to be selflessly giving away his money in order to fund these vaccination campaigns, it should be noted that Gates’ investment in vaccines has netted him a massive return. By 2019, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had donated just over $10b to various vaccine-related initiatives including GAVI (the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization). Gates called it the “best investment he’s ever made”, estimating a 20-1 return, or around $200b over 20 years. Indeed, Gates’ net worth has more than doubled over the last 10 years.

    And lest we forget that more than half of all deaths in low to middle income countries are caused by non-communicable diseases, which the Bill and Melinda Foundation seems to have little interest in, directing less than 3% of their budget towards such conditions.

    Furthermore, Gates’ activities in public health are wrought with conflicts of interest that that would seem to undermine the notion that Gates cares about the health of the population. Many of these conflicts of interest are outlined in a study published by Harvard researcher, David Stuckler, titled “Global Health Philanthropy and Institutional Relationships: How Should Conflicts of Interest Be Addressed?,” in which he states that:

    As one example, we found that Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has substantial holdings in the Coca-Cola Corporation, and also participates in grants that encourage communities in developing countries to become business affiliates of Coca-Cola. It has been noted by some commentators that sugary drinks such as those produced by Coca-Cola are correlated with the rapid increase in obesity and diabetes in developing countries.

    Stuckler also notes that:

    Many of the Foundation’s pharmaceutical development grants may benefit leading pharmaceutical companies such as Merck and GlaxoSmithKline.” And that “Several grants are linked to companies that are represented on the Foundation’s board among its investments.

    The media rarely reports on these disturbing conflicts of interest, which isn’t surprising considering Gates funds all the major news outlets.

    To call the negligent, wide-spread administration of covid-19 experimental vaccines an initiative steeped in eugenicist thinking would not be amiss considering how many figures and institutions involved in the vaccine race have ties to the eugenics movement. In fact, the developers of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine are also linked to the now renamed British Eugenics Society, founded by the father of Eugenics, Francis Galton. These connections are detailed by investigative journalist, Whitney Webb, in her article titled “Developers of Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaccine Tied to UK Eugenics Movement.”

    When it comes to protecting public health, the recklessness displayed by politicians, scientists and pharmaceutical companies is unforgivable considering the widespread impact that these experimental vaccines will have. We have already begun to see the results of unleashing a dangerous gene therapy technology on a naive and trusting public, with VAERS, (the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System) showing more deaths linked with covid-19 vaccines than all other vaccines combined over the last 30 years.

    None of this is surprising though, considering the haste with which clinical trials were conducted and the question marks surrounding the reliability of the data reported. For example, vaccine manufactures reported their vaccines were “95% effective”, a number they arrived at by using a relative risk reduction as opposed to an absolute risk reduction, which was around 1% in most cases, a fact never highlighted by the mainstream media.

    Furthermore, vaccine trials were not designed to assess the vaccines’ effect on infection, transmission, hospitalizations or deaths, which is puzzling considering that, if there really was a viral pandemic, these would be the most important endpoints to test for. Though perhaps this was a calculated move by vaccine manufacturers, who knew they’d have a better chance at rigging the results using the endpoint of ‘covid-19 of any severity’. After all, the dramatic increase in the use of influenza vaccines has not been associated with a decrease in mortality.

    Peter Doshi, an editor for the British Medical Journal, has called into question numerous aspects of the controversial vaccine trials, including the potential for pain medication to mask covid-19 symptoms in trial groups and the objectivity of “primary event adjudication committees” in charge of counting covid-19 cases. In the case of Pfizer, this committee consisted of Pfizer employees.

    Recently, Doctors for Covid Ethics, a group consisting of Dr. Michael palmer MD, Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi MD and Dr. Stefan Hockertz PhD, published an expert statement relating to the danger and efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine that was submitted as part of a lawsuit challenging the EU’s authorization of the use of the vaccine for children 12 years and older. The paper states that the reported efficacy of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine was “most likely altogether fraudulent” and that “Pfizer, the EMA, and the FDA have systematically neglected evidence from preclinical animal trials that clearly pointed to grave dangers of adverse events.”

    But of course, none of this is ever surfaced in the mainstream. Instead, we are fed the same party lines over and over; “vaccines are safe and effective,” “follow the science,” “listen to the experts.” And by “experts” they of course mean the pharmaceutical reps like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases whose been lying about so-called viral infections ever since AIDS broke out in 1984. The fact that a character like Fauci has held his post for more than 30 years is rather telling of how the system works. The late Nobel prize winner and inventor of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), Karry Mullis, castigated Fauci in an interview, saying that:

    He doesn’t know anything really about anything, and I’d say that to his face. Nothing.

    The man thinks you can take a blood sample and stick it in an electron microscope and if it’s got a virus in there, you will know it. He doesn’t understand electron microscopy and he doesn’t understand medicine. He should not be in a position like he’s in […] Tony Fauci does not mind going on television in front of the people who pay his salary and lie directly into the camera.

    A Transhumanist Future

    Besides being gene therapies, a technology associated with eugenics and transhumanism, according to scientists, mRNA technology “allows rapid development of novel vaccines within a very short time span of weeks rather than months.” Hence, we may be faced with the possibility of a future filled with on-demand vaccines created to “protect” the public against new, invisible threats.

    Indeed, with vaccinologists already talking about “variants”, booster shots and periodic covid-19 top-up vaccines, it certainly looks like things are headed that way. And of course, thanks to intelligence-linked Big Tech conglomerates, this data will all be recorded on a “vaccine passport” linked to your smartphone, which will no-doubt form the basis for a new type of digital identity pass tied to your bank account and, eventually, your social credit.

    Indeed, in 2019, Bill Gates’ Microsoft filed a patent, aptly named Patent WO2020060606, for a “Cryptocurrency system using body-activation data,” another clue as to the true intentions of the technocratic elite who are funding and promoting the transhumanist agenda. The patent’s title alone conjures up images of a slave society in which humans are fitted with biosensors and awarded digital coins for completing tasks issued to them by the ruling elite.

    But perhaps even more alarming is the rush to get gene therapies licensed for use in young children. Pfizer are currently in the midst of a global clinical trial, where they are testing their mRNA jabs in babies as young as 6 months, despite the fact that “Covid-19”, if we suppose there is such a disease, barely affects children. In fact, according to CDC numbers, the IFR in children is 20 per 1,000,000, or 0.002%, which is likely lower than the risk of permanent injury or death from the MMR vaccine. It’s also lower than the covid-19 vaccine death rate as calculated using VAERS data at the time of writing (5,612 deaths over 165,000,000 fully vaccinated in the US = 0.003%). Furthermore, research has linked Pfizer’s vaccine to symptomatic myocarditis, with an estimated incidence rate of 1 in 3000 or 1 in 6000 in young men.

    The rush to bring mRNA vaccines into the mainstream as part of the regular childhood vaccination schedule is not about health or protection, but rather a step towards a much more sinister goal, which is to attain control over the human body itself.

    As mentioned previously in this article, DARPA, the research arm of the US Department of Defense, has been working to create nanotechnology that can interface with biological cells. In 2014, DARPA launched its “In Vivo Nanoplatforms (IVN)” program, with the aim of developing implantable nanoplatforms to collect biological data and provide “continuous physiologic monitoring”. The program has since helped to create injectable hydrogels that monitor physiologic responses and can sync to a smartphone.

    Furthermore, DARPA, together with the NIH, heavily funds Profusa, a Google-backed biotech company developing and marketing this very same injectable hydrogel technology, only now it is being punted as a way to detect future “pandemics”. Allegedly, Profusa’s sensors can “detect flu-like infections even before their symptoms begin to show”. While incredibly disturbing, this is only a step towards DARPA’s ultimate goal, which is to establish dominion over the mind. This goal is reflected in DARPA’s research to create “mutant-powered soldiers” using “genetic weaponry” that can “undermine people’s minds and bodies using a range of chemical, neurological, genetic and behavioral techniques”.

    DARPA is also looking at ways to genetically engineer the brain in order to read peoples thoughts and induce images and sounds in people’s minds. The research involves the use of “magnetic nanoparticles”, the same technology that some have speculated may be included in current or future covid-19 vaccines.

    Equally distressing is the “Wellcome Leap”, a new initiative created by the eugenics-linked Wellcome Trust, the world’s richest medical research Foundation, in partnership with two former DARPA frontmen. The program’s official aim is to “Deliver breakthroughs in human health over 5 – 10 years and demonstrate seemingly impossible results on seemingly impossible timelines.” Currently, the initiative has 5 main projects, the first of which is “RNA Readiness + Response”, which seeks to (emphasis added) “create a self-sustaining network of manufacturing facilities providing globally distributed, state-of-the-art surge capacity to meet future pandemic needs”, referring to the manufacturing of RNA-based products (mRNA gene therapies). Note the seeming surety of a future pandemic.

    However, the top contender for most disturbing Wellcome Leap project is, without a doubt, “The First 1000 days” (1kD), a program which seeks to use infants as test subjects in order to monitor their brain development and create AI models that can be used to “accurately predict and improve EF [executive function] outcomes.” The project also notes the use of “mobile-sensors, wearables and home-based systems.” In a detailed article on the matter, researcher Whitney Webb writes that:

    True to the eugenicist ties of the Wellcome Trust (to be explored more in-depth in Part 2), Wellcome Leap’s 1DK notes that “of interest are improvements from underdeveloped EF to normative or from normative to well-developed EF across the population to deliver the broadest impact.” One of the goals of 1DK is thus not treating disease or addressing a “global health public challenge” but instead experimenting on the cognitive augmentation of children using means developed by AI algorithms and invasive surveillance-based technology.

    The Wellcome Leap’s timeline of 5-10 years happens to line up with elite frontman, Elon Musk’s Neuralink project, which seeks to establish “the future of brain interfaces” in order to “expand our abilities”. In an interview Musk said, “I think we are about 8 to 10 years away from this being usable by people with no disability”. Musk, whose wealth increased by more than 500% during the covid-19 “pandemic”, founded Neuralink in 2016. The company recently raised $205m in funding from 7 venture capital firms (including Google’s GV) and 5 Silicon Valley executives. However, Neuralink isn’t the only biotech company pursuing this technology. Recently, Synchron, a small biotech firm and Neuralink competitor, received the go-ahead from the FDA to begin testing its brain chip implants in humans.

    10 years from now would take us to 2030, a year that comes up again and again as a year in which transhumanist technologies will be commonplace in mainstream society. According to predictions made by the US National Intelligence Council, “human augmentation” (the merging of man and machine) will be a major theme in 2030. Their Global Trends 2030 report, published in 2012, states that:

    Successful prosthetics probably will be directly integrated with the user’s body. Brain-machine interfaces could provide “superhuman” abilities, enhancing strength and speed, as well as providing functions not previously available.

    Interestingly, the report also predicts “an easily transmissible novel respiratory pathogen” that could cause a great disruptive impact. The report goes on to state that “Unlike other disruptive global events, such an outbreak would result in a global pandemic that directly causes suffering and death in every corner of the world, probably in less than six months.”

    Enslavement: A Free Will Choice

    The rollout of mRNA gene therapies and the push towards a transhumanist society represents the continuation of the eugenics movement, which was based on the pseudoscientific concept that some humans, by virtue of their genetic composition, were more “fit” to lead society than others.

    The “hero” of the Polio epidemic, Jonas Salk, had his own ties to eugenics and so does the institute named in his favour, the Salk Institute. Their mRNA research, funded by the NIH, set the foundation for the development and mass rollout of gene therapies, controversially being called “vaccines”. The danger of this experimental technology is evident, having already caused thousands of injuries and deaths worldwide.

    The role of intelligence organizations, billionaire technocrats and pharmaceutical initiatives in funding, researching and promoting mRNA vaccines, “bio-brain” interfaces, gene editing and other technologies steeped in eugenicist ideals paints the picture of a global agenda set to hit its stride fully by 2030. The current covid-19 “pandemic” has served as a means to accelerate this agenda by centralizing wealth and power, bringing transhumanist technology into the mainstream and normalizing authoritarian rule. Pfizer’s infant trials and the Wellcome Leap’s alarming “1kD” project indicate that key to this agenda is the conditioning and control of children from a young age, something that Aldous Huxley detailed extensively in his disturbingly prophetic, eugenicist novel, Brave New World.

    This agenda, though backed by some of the world’s most powerful individuals and institutions, has an obvious weakness — its success is reliant on our compliance. It will only advance if we allow it to advance. Therefore, it is up to each one of us, through compassionate, non-violent resistance, to sow the seeds of awakening in the collective consciousness of mankind.

    The post mRNA “Vaccines,” Eugenics, and the Push for Transhumanism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed.

    — Thomas Paine, Letter to Mr. Erskine, Paine’s Complete Works, Vol. 3, p. 179.

    Those men, whom Jewish and Christian idolaters have abusively called heathens, had much better and clearer ideas of justice and morality than are to be found in the Old Testament, so far as it is Jewish; or in the New.

    — Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, Footnote 28

    All that man has accomplished for the benefit of man since the close of the dark ages – has been done in spite of the Old Testament

    — Robert Green Ingersoll, About the Holy Bible, (May 19, 2017)  Part III. The Ten Commandments

    Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it for religious conviction.

    — Blaise Pascal

    Orientation

    According to Andrew Seidel, 32% of Americans think it is very important to be Christian to be truly American. But what does it mean to be an “American”? Well, if being an American has anything to do with the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, many Americans are in serious trouble. For example, Seidel writes:

    On the first 4th of July of Trump’s presidency, National Public Radio tweeted the Declaration and Trump supporters lost their minds. They were sure NPR was calling for a rebellion against Trump. (80)

    But the problem is even deeper because Americans really don’t know the bible very well either:

    The bible has been edited rewritten, supplemented, translated, retranslated and mistranslated so many times that claims of immutability are laughable. Yet about 30 percent of Americans, many of them Christian nationalists, believe in the bible literally …word of their god. (115)

    In fact, according to Seidel:

    research shows that atheists know the Bible better than Christians. (115)

    In 1951, 53% of Americans could not name even one of the gospel. In 2010, 49% couldn’t.

    Claim

    My article is a review of a very powerful book written by Andrew Seidel called The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American. As Seidel says, the purpose of the book is to utterly destroy the myth that the founders of the Constitution were committed to founding a Judeo-Christian nation. The contrast between the Bible on the one hand and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution on the other is so great that, as Seidel says, one is almost forced to choose: are you a Christian or an American?

    Part of the book is dedicated to exposing the notion that the founders themselves had any sympathy for Christianity. Secondly, it is to show how both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution directly contradict both the Old and the New Testaments. Thirdly, within the Bible the Ten Commandments are shown to be anti-Constitutional. Lastly, the book shows how it was only through a propaganda campaign during times of national fear such as The Civil War and the anti-communist scare that right-wing preachers smuggled in Christian propaganda onto coins and paper money (In God We trust); and into the Pledge of Allegiance (One nation Under God).

    Qualifications

    This book does not argue that religion should be absent from our culture. It only says that religion should be absent from  our constitutional identity. In fact, research shows that in societies that have a separation of church and state, people are more religious than when there is no separation. Seidel argues that when there is no separation, people take religion for granted.

    Secondly, there is no simple relationship between separation of church and state and whether someone is religious or not. Someone can be religious and endorse the separation of church and state. Thirdly, while some founders were deists and others were theists, even though some were theists does not prove they used their religion to found the nation. People can make a distinction between their private and public political commitments. Fourthly, founders who were Christian were only supportive of the teachings of Jesus. There was no implication of support for any Catholic or Protestant institutions or teaching.

    Qualifications about my being an American and supporting the Constitution.

    It would be natural to think that in attacking Christian nationalism as being un-American, I identify with being an American. I don’t. My purpose in using the term “un-American” is to offer an immanent criticism of Christian nationalism. Immanent criticism means criticism from within the principles of my adversary. What I am saying is you don’t even live up to your own principles of being an American by failing to abide by the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. An externalist criticism would be to criticize Christian nationalism from a Buddhist, Muslim or socialist perspective.

    Also, in defending the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence against the Bible, it doesn’t mean I am uncritical of the of either of these American documents. As a result of reading Seidel’s book, I do have a newfound respect for the importance of separating Church from the State. There are clear limits set on religion’s invasion of science or politics. While secular laws could be much tighter, the justification for insisting on the separation is very well thought-out and it is still very important over 200 years later. 

    Were the Founders Christian?

    Seidel uses many sources to show that the painting of Washington praying in the snow was a piece of artistic Christian propaganda. Washington was not a good Christian. He attended religious services irregularly, he didn’t kneel during prayer and often skipped out of Church early. He refused to have a priest at his deathbed.  Jefferson took a more militant stand against Christianity. He attempted to rewrite the Bible cutting out the references to supernaturalism, miracles and slaughter in the hopes of salvaging something. Jefferson said later that his efforts were like “pick out diamonds from a dunghill.” Jefferson and Madison were very critical and suspicious of organized religion and the “priestcraft” that accompany them. Some founders treated the Trinity with contempt, calling it Abracadabra.

    When the founders mention “The Creator” the Christian nationalists break out in celebration, declaring victory. Hold your horses and bugles! Nowhere is Jesus or Yahweh specifically mentioned. Virtually all cultures have a creator god who are more or less involved in his creation. The same is true with the Golden Rule. Christian nationalists act is if this rule was unique to Christianity.  Most cultures in the world have their own version of the Golden Rule often dating to thousands of years before Christianity. Furthermore, when god was named it was “nature’s” god. Seidel rightly points this is more likely to resemble the god of the wind or the trees than the description of a biblical god. Nature’s god is a pagan god, not the Judeo-Christian monotheistic god.

    The founders engaged in what Seidel calls “strategic piety”:

    Writers were wise to choose language that would take advantage of the majority religiosity but still remain wholly nonsectarian. It was designed to be acceptable to deists and orthodox alike. (88)

    In psychological terms the founders were playing to people’s confirmation bias- our innate selection and interaction of evidence to support our existing beliefs. (90)

    Do You Need God to be Good?

    For themselves, the founders thought their morality was sufficient to guide them and religion was unnecessary. However, some of the founder thought religion was necessary to keep the masses moral. For many founders, religion was not the source of morality, but a substitute for it. Without religion, the masses could not be moral. But the founders were not fussy about which religion filled the bill. Washington and Adams suggested that any religion, not only Christianity, can replace morality.

    So the Founding Fathers were elitists. But were they were right about the capacity of large populations to prosper and live morally without religion?

    Do Secularists Produce Worse Societies than the Religious?

    The short answer is – no. Seidel points out:

    Social science now unequivocally shows that the less religious a society, is the better off it is. We now know that religion is not necessary for society to succeed. (49)

    Within America the states with the highest murder rates tend to be highly religious – Louisiana and Alabama. States with the lowest rates are the least religious the country, like Vermont and Oregon.

    Of the top 50 safest cities in the world, nearly all are in relatively non-religious countries. During the Holocaust, the more secular the people were, the more likely they were to rescue and help persecuted Jews.

    The least religious countries:

    Have lowest rates of violent crime and homicide

    Are the best places to raise children

    Have lowest levels of intolerance vs race

    Have the highest in women’s rights

    Are the most prosperous

    Within the US, those states that are the most religious have societal ills:

    Highest rates of poverty

    Highest rates of obesity

    Highest rates of infant mortality

    Highest rates of teen pregnancy

    Lowest level of educated adults

    Highest rates of murder and violent crime (49-50)

    There were Christian Colonies but no Christian Nation    

    Christian nationalists are right to point out that during the colonial period most of the colonies were religious, whether they were Puritans, Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, or Quakers. However, when the founders wrote the Constitution, they kept these religious beliefs outside the politics of founding a nation. The religions of the colonists did not help them to overthrow the British. Every colony was part of the British Empire, which was subjected to a Christian king. Colonial history also precedes the separation of Church and state which was part of the Constitution. The colonies were a British outpost, subject to a divine king. This is exactly the political theology the founders were fighting against. Table A is a contrast between the structure of life during colonial history vs after the declaration of independence. Please take a look at Table A.

    The Bible as a Piece of Literature

    The Bible is unlike other literature. Seidel points out that unlike like Shakespeare’s plays and poetry, Aesop’s fables and the legends of Greek and Roman mythology, which stood on their own merits, the Bible’s reputation was imposed and propagated over thousands of years with fire and brimstone. It was then reinforced regularly through weekly ceremonies. It is an authoritarian document which doesn’t have rhetorical appeal based on reason. Instead, the Bible is a document people must live by and bow down to, no matter what.

    The un-American, Authoritarian Nature of the bible

    Exclusivity and obedience

    Right out of the gate the bible is exclusionary, rather than inclusive. Yahweh picks the Jews as his “chosen” people, whereas in the Constitution, at least theoretically, all are welcome. Whereas in one of Paul’s letters Christians are told to obey the authorities, in fact, they are servants of God. For example, Abraham is commanded by God to murder his son Isaac as an offering. God turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt for looking back to see the destruction. God demands the killing of first-born children unless there is lamb’s blood on the family door frame. This contrasts with the Declaration’s note to rebel against the authorities when they are tyrannical. Why? Because “we the people” rule.

    Monarchies and divine dictatorships

    In the Bible God does not rule by consent of the governed. Neither is there a separation of powers for governing, God rules by decree. God loves monarchies. Seidel points out that the first two books of the bible are titled “Kings”. Many of the heroes in the bible are kings, specifically, Saul, David and Solomon. Whatever rights people have been given by God. Likewise, God can take away those rights. Following the Enlightenment people have human rights which no political or religious authority can take away. In terms of following rules, the Judeo-Christian God of Christian propaganda says that God lays down the laws once and for all. In fact, with different versions of the Bible the laws change.  Under the American Constitution laws can be changed by amendments. Objectively, the origin of the laws was from an Early Iron Ages society 1200 BCE years ago. The Constitution is close to 250 years old, while drawing from Greek and pre-Christian Roman law.

    Faith and reason: how do we know?

    If faith is defined as believing in something in spite of evidence, the Founding Fathers had no room for faith and that is how they came to understand the Constitution. They went through an evolving process of dialectical reasoning internally and debating, compromising and tinkering over months. Most of the founders tinkered with inventions, kept up with the sciences and saw politics, itself, as a science.

    For those who followed the Bible, the Bible was given to them completed. God did not encourage any input from humanity. You simply had faith. You believed in the Bible in spite of evidence. Belief in miracles is just one instance. So too, when it comes to Christian nationalists in politics, there is no room for compromise or tinkering. Since they believe they are acting in the name of God, compromising with non-believers is not being true to God. On the whole, Seidel says:

    what a Christian government looks like: exclusive, exclusionary, divisive, hateful, severe and lethal. (106)

    Crime and punishment

    When it comes to punishment the Bible paints with broad brush strokes. The punishments are inflexible and extremely violent. God destroys Canaan as well destroying all those believing in other gods. Disobedient children are stoned; so are wizards and women having premarital sex. Heretics and witches are tortured and followers are told that disobedience will be dealt with fire for eternity. The Constitution, on the other hand, simply strives to make punishment be proportionate to the crime, and punishments are limited to this lifetime.

    Guilt and innocence are handled in opposite ways. In the Bible, whole groups are condemned as guilty and the guilt is inherited across generations. In the Constitution, there is no collective guilt. Individuals are found guilty and that guilt is not inherited by their sons and daughters. Finally, in the Bible it is not very important that innocents suffer and are killed, provided the guilty party does not get away with anything. In the Constitution the situation is the reverse. It is better that the guilty get away than for the innocent to be punished unjustifiably.

    Origin and destiny

    For the Bible, life on earth is a reform school. Why do people need to be reformed? Because in the mythological Garden of Eden, Eve ate the fruit the devil offered her even though God forbade it. Humanity was condemned from that time forward. While self-improvement is possible, ultimate redemption can only come from the sacrifice of Christ for humanity. In terms of future generations of humans, that is not the concern of Christian nationalists. The idea is you earn a ticket to the Promised Land and the Devil take the hindmost.

    I’m afraid that the Constitution is far less dramatic. Individuals, according to Locke, are blank slates. Locke said parental socialization does matter, but in the end, it is the individual’s responsibility for what they make of themselves. There is no need for redemption either in this life or the next. However, the Constitution, unlike the Bible, was written for future generations of humanity on Earth.  Please see Table B for a summary.The Authoritarian Nature of the Ten Commandments

    Strange gods and idolatrous images

    The Ten Commandments is only a small part of the Bible, but they allow us to contrast in a very concentrated form extreme differences between this sacred document and the Constitution. The first commandment is a direct attack on religious freedom. “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” The Constitution guarantees the freedom to worship any God, not just the Judeo-Christian one. The second commandment forbids making images. This iconoclastic mania on the part of the Protestants resulted in the destruction of centuries of magnificent artwork. The Constitution, on the other hand, allows for making pubic images to honor its heroes. Any trip to the Lincoln memorial or a trip to Mount Rushmore will reveal that the non-superstitious use of images is possible and can bring great inspiration.

    Blasphemy and coercive church attendance

    The third commandment, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy god in vain”, is really about controlling language. There is a double standard about blasphemy. Jews can blaspheme heathen deities, but it is a capital crime to blaspheme Yahweh. In contrast, the Constitution makes a distinction between words and deeds. It says in effect “sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me”. The Constitution says criticism of all religion is legal. The fourth commandment to “Keep holy the Lord’s Day” is more sinister than it seems. Seidel says this is not about rest for the weary. It is really about shepherding the population to churches on days when most people are not working. Priests complain about poor attendance at church. What better way to herd people into church then by first saying even the Lord needs to rest, and so do you. But no sooner do people discover they are entitled to a day off than they find themselves in church listening to sermons. While there is nothing in the Constitution which tells people not to work, there is also nothing in the Constitution that forbids workers from taking matters into their own hands. They can legally join unions, and strike in order to have some time off. As the saying goes, it was labor that gave Yankees the weekend.

    Honor your parents no matter how authoritarian or abusive they are

    The fifth commandment says honor thy father and mother. Sounds pretty good except that the foundation of it is to honor your biological parents, no matter what they do. No matter what the parents do they should be honored. Though this has happened all too late in Yankee history, there are now child-protective services to allow children to get away from abusive and violent parents. Not all parents are worthy of respect. Furthermore, the Bible is talking out of both sides of its mouth when they talk about this because Jesus also makes a big deal about leaving your parents to come follow him.

    Clannish, parochial rules towards murder, stealing and lying

    Seidel chunks together the sixth, eight and ninth commandments and attacks them for their clannish, exclusive nature. Whether it is killing, stealing or perjury, the Bible only forbids these things when it is done to fellow Jews and Christians. With non-Jews or Christians, all bets are off. You can kill, steal or lie in dealing with people from other religions. In the case of the Constitution, killing, stealing or lying is punishable no matter what religion one is as well including people who have no religion at all.

    Patriarchal repression of sexuality

    The seventh commandment about committing adultery has an even narrower interpretation than the previous three commandments. In this, even within the Judeo-Christian tradition, the laws of adultery do not apply to married men, but only to married women. Seidel says fathers can sell their daughter into sexual slavery but only to another Israelite. Men can get away with rape, if they pay the victim’s family 50 shekels and then marry the victim.

    The Christian Bible tries to halt and repress their flock’s interest in sex by promoting celibacy. We only have to look at the record of the Catholic Church and its priests to reel in disgust over such a monstrous policy. Seidel points out Judeo-Christianity tries to kill the sex instinct, distort it and vilify it to ensure loyalty to the leader, not to one another. This is a common tactic that male cult leaders use with their followers. It builds up spiritual debt. Lusty, guilty sinners are bound more tightly to the person who can expiate their sin, Jesus, and later, priests. In the Constitution there are laws against adultery, but they apply to men as well as women and there are laws that apply to rape and sexual slavery that are punishable.

    The tenth commandment is not about actually fooling around with your neighbor’s wife. Rather, it’s about lusting after your neighbor’s wife even if you do nothing. This is where the 10 Commandments crosses the line into Orwell’s thought crime. Evil thoughts are the same thing as evil actions. Being angry is the same as being violent. As Jefferson said, the powers of government apply to action not opinion. You cannot be thrown in jail for having an opinion. Please see Table C for a summary.Smuggling in Christianity via Theological Propaganda

    In God We Trust on coins during the Civil War

    “In God We Trust” was smuggled onto coins in 1863 in the middle of the Civil War and was pushed through between 1861 and 1864.

    “Evangelical Christianity” invaded and polarized the political debate in the cases leading up to the Civil War. It turned the democratic process which relies on compromise into a battle over sacrosanct issues of faith.” (262).

    “One nation indivisible” became “one nation, under God, indivisible”. As Seidel says this change places religion, one of the most divisive and murderous forces in history, right in the middle of a badly needed unifying sentiment.

    To choose something so divisive to replace a unifying sentiment in the middle of a war that actually hindered the nation shows hubris typical of religious privilege. (272)

    Christianity promotes slavery

    Appeals to the Bible justified revivals in the slave trade and slave prisons. The pulpit and the auctioneers’ block stand in the same neighborhood. (267)

    Christian resistance to slavery was nowhere to be found when the colonies instituted slavery in the 1600s. (268)

    It was used at a time of national peril and danger when people were too busy dying for the Constitution to protect it from a rear-guard assault, to promote their personal religion. (272)

    Bible thumping anti-Communists

    In 1954 the Pledge of Allegiance was changed. “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all” became “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Since the communists were atheists, it was hoped that the communists would get the message that they were not welcome.

    A year later “In God We Trust” was added to paper currency in 1955.

    What better way to spread the missionary spirit within Yankeedom than by putting it on currency everyone has to use? US currency would effectively become a Christian missionary. (271)

    In his book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America  Kevin Kruse exposes the following coordinated Christian attacks on the secular world:

    • 1953 National Day of Prayer – Congress agrees
    • 1953 National prayer breakfast
    • 1953 Congressmen propose 18 separate resolutions to add “under God” to the pledge
    • 1954 “In God We Trust is placed on a US postage stamp
    • 1954 Prayer room in US capital is added. It added a stained-glass window depicting the lie that Washington prayed in the snow at Valley Forge
    • Congress added “Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance
    • 1955 Eisenhower signs a bill placing “In God We Trust” on US paper currency
    • 1956 Cecil B. Demille’s movie The Ten Commandments is released
    • 10 commandments monuments made of granite are gradually erected on government property around the country

    Soon the words “American and Christian” became synonymous.

    Billy Graham wedded evangelism and anticommunism in the Christian anti-communist  crusade. Religious stars such as Fulton Sheen, Oral Roberts, Billy James Hargis and Norman Vincent Peale all achieved new prominence in the early and mid 1950s. They bombarded TV, making people sick with fear. ‘To be an American is to be Christian. All atheists are communists’. (284)

    Circulating coins, paper money and flag-waving pledges weren’t enough for nervous anti-communists. Soon time off from a secular education was granted for religious instruction.

    In 1952 the court decided that releasing children from public schools classes to receive religious education did not violate  the Constitution. Religious release time allows churches to piggyback the machinery of the state and mandatory attendance to inculcate religion. It was meant to help religious sects get attendants presumably too unenthusiastic to go to religious class unless moved to do so by the pressure of this state machinery. (286-287)

    Conclusion

    Seidel’s work challenges Christian nationalists to face the fact that the founding documents of the United States as a nation directly contradict the Ten Commandments and, more generally, the Bible. These Christians would have to trade their fundamentalism for a far more liberal theory of religion to square with the Constitution. On the other hand, secularists can be somewhat assured that while they are under attack by the right-wing religious forces, the Constitution with all its class biases, lack of limits on capitalism, its racism and sexism, is still an important support document, mostly for its clear separation between Church and State.

    • First published at Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism

    The post The Bible vs the Eagle: Why Christian Nationalism is un-American first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • On 11 April 2019 Julian Assange was carried by UK police from the sovereign territory of Ecuador’s London embassy. He was then conveyed to Westminster magistrates court, which convicted him of absconding within fifteen minutes.

    The event was captured in iconic images displaying his untrimmed beard, which is significant for two overlooked reasons. One is that visual documentation would be lacking if not for the presence of vigilant supporters. The other is that Ecuador progressively deprived their asylee of everything he needed, including shaving equipment cancelled months before the last vestige of asylum.

    Disinformation and Machination

    A Newsweek headline from 2018 still reads ‘Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Tells Russia-Aligned Media the FBI Is Spying on Him’. But he only addressed a court in Ecuador. Telesur was among those covering his testimony, yet simply mentioned “a video conference” without making the legal context explicit. As this outlet is known for resisting US narrative, it may be unsurprising that Newsweek conjured an exclusive release from Assange to enemy propagandists.

    He said Ecuador was engaging in espionage against him, relaying data to the US and precipitating a health crisis to remove him from the embassy by way of death or a medical excuse for handing him over to the UK. Following suit with Newsweek, most coverage of this was dismissive and misleading.

    The Guardian also persists with a slanderous report that Assange met with Paul Manafort, Trump’s later campaign chairman. The article alleges three meetings on different days and mentions clothing details like “sandy-coloured chinos” as if to notify police. Yet none of the 24/7 security footage emerged to reveal Manafort’s person or pants, meticulous records are devoid of him and the consul in the embassy at the time, Fidel Navarez, specifically debunks the story. Originally on the byline was a reporter previously convicted by Ecuador of a false and defamatory claim, Fernando Villavicencio, whom it also accused — with metadata evidence — of fabricating a document regarding their oil drilling.

    Since its initial, perception-conditioning splash, the media has backpedalled from the article. The Guardian itself was no exception to this, despite leaving it online after an edit with some hedging terms. Perhaps that was an effort to save face, though it only seemed to increase ignominy.

    Manafort nonetheless had business with Ecuador and not in London. He went to the equatorial nation to meet its newly elected President, Lenin Moreno and it was widely reported that they discussed debt relief, in exchange for US possession of Assange, like trading oil or bananas.

    Changes brought by Moreno include removing Assange from their London embassy, beginning with harsh measures like cutting his internet, restricting visitors and issuing a list of tripwire demands. The latter were part of a document which threatened the end of his asylum, in terms replete with defamatory insinuations. Such were predictably seized upon by the media as warranting claims that happened to be false, about medical bills and his cat among other things.

    Assange responded to Ecuador with a lawsuit occasioning the testimony noted above. This was referred to its Constitutional Court, which had all judges replaced under Moreno after being shut down for the relevant months.

    Lawyers accordingly drew Ecuador’s neglect of his asylum to the attention of the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, which emphasised that it must not be terminated. The IACH stopped short of issuing a formal precautionary measure on this point, to its embarrassment, as within a month Ecuador invited British police to carry Assange away.

    The reason they violated due process in terminating asylum is simply that there was no way to do it legally. Yet as always, the press was ready to ignore such technicalities and portray the eviction in terms of smears. Moreno even obliged them with lurid claims about faeces on walls. The evidence which inspired this appears to be one image capturing a discoloration on the bathroom light switch. Perhaps something was then imagined in relation to having deprived Assange of toiletries.

    Eve of the Deed

    Assange’s kidnapping correlated with publication of the fact that he had been spied on in the embassy. Wikileaks actually held a press conference which broke that news one day prior to him being hauled away.

    They mentioned at the time that sensitive communication with his legal counsel was among data suspected of having been routed to the US. Testimony given by former security contractors working at the embassy subsequently confirmed that arrangement.

    Privileged legal defence — against reprisals for publishing leaked evidence of war crimes — had been exfiltrated for US prosecutors.

    Yet questions from the press at this meeting were loaded to imply an equivalence of these two very different instances of exposure, as if Wikileaks must concede some pivotal irony which serves it right.

    Given the specific relevance of this attitude to state lawlessness, civil and military, it is seems hard to conceive of a more sinister fallacy propagated on behalf of either one.

    Yet it was seriously invoked by the press, which thereby turned its critical spotlight away from abusers of power — to abet them and betray all else — by directing it against a publisher for informing the public of such abuses.

    To be sure, they were relentless in this line of “questioning” and would not yield an inch to being disabused of their errors by thoroughly cogent answers.

    Instead of giving the story its due at the time, they worked to trivialise it. Nor did they do anything else to stop bragging conspirators abducting him on the next day, as might have been the case if they had made serious enquiries and prompted a defensive position.

    It accordingly takes ignorance to imagine the press as innocent in this grisly bit of history. Indeed, if it had not fostered the conditions for Assange’s vilification and kidnapping, none of his decade of documented torture would have transpired as it did.

    The Role of the Media

    What should all this mean to journalists who reflect on a publisher being extradited?

    It seems the high calling of the press has been answered with ultimate self-sacrifice, as they zealously worked for this very precedent to be set.

    Assange was characterised as bringing all troubles on himself. Writers apparently wondered why he refused to open his eyes to their liberating truths, when he could have just walked out the embassy door to be burnt at the stake, as the initial offering to flames they prepared for themselves.

    Whether this fire be lit for revelations of DNC abuses or US war crimes appears of no concern to many of them. It seems everything is to be torched in their view, including the essence of Western freedom, justice and accuracy, so long as the primary object is to punish or topple somebody cast as an enemy of such values.

    Assange was “an accused rapist,” as opposed to presumed innocent of rape accusations made by certain prosecutors, lawyers and other defamers in contradiction of statements from the listed complainant. He also published authentic information that reflected poorly on a presidential candidate whom many considered the lesser evil.

    So never mind the spirit of international law, its plainly written covenants or their legally binding ratification by countries such as the US, UK, Ecuador and Australia, because Assange looked ripe for decomposition under the pile of refuse dumped on him.

    Thanks to moral blinkers and conflicts of interest, establishment media and the intellectual milieu it draws upon can err grotesquely. This toxic culture is the crux of the everything to do with the struggle of Wikileaks. The necessity to overcome it is what gave birth the project. Then, when it came of age, an alliance was made, which ended in treachery on par with murder.

    Along with profound psychological impacts listed by an eminent psychiatrist in court, Assange’s health has been decimated to the extent of losing 10 lean kilos. In his shoes a less exceptionally resilient person would probably dead by now, yet nothing is done to stop a ratcheting up of his hardship. Repeated calls from organised doctors and lawyers to get him to an adequate hospital have been increasingly ignored by the media, despite the fact that he is only in prison on remand and for publishing what another country is rightly embarrassed by.

    This is plainly how the world dysfunctions and why little else can presently improve. Like most of what it professes to hold to account, journalism is increasingly a racket.

    The post How Monopoly Media Abets the Persecutors of Assange first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole.

    — Mike Pompeo, former US secretary of state on how the United States conducts its business

    One of the filters in the Propaganda Model propounded by professors Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky is stoking a fear of communism.1 The establishment’s anti-communism has never abated in the United States. The elitists require a populace fearful of communism to protect their own misbegotten wealth accumulation. Thus,the bugaboo of communism must be opposed wherever it arises. At its worst, the US would wage war against communist countries such as North Korea, Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Yugoslavia. When not militarily attacked, communist governments will be demonized by a relentless campaign of disinformation designed to bring about the fall of the government and its replacement by a government amenable to the US establishment, as happened in the Soviet Union. That is the nature of imperialism and predatory capitalism.

    The establishment’s anti-communism is alive and kicking in The Diplomat, a current-affairs magazine for the Asia-Pacific region. This one can readily glean from its article titled “How China Helps the Cuban Regime Stay Afloat and Shut Down Protests.”2

    The in-one’s-face bias of the article’s heading and the subheading (“Chinese companies have played a key part in building Cuba’s telecommunications infrastructure, a system the regime uses to control its people, just as the CCP does within its own borders.”) immediately gives pause to the discerning reader. First, regime is a tendentious term meant to delegitimize a government. Second, the subheading asserts Chinese governmental control. While it points at the means, it does not provide any evidence that the assertion holds true.

    The leaning of the writers is apparent from their bios: Leland Lazarus is a speechwriter to US Southern Command’s admiral Craig Faller, and Dr Evan Ellis is a research professor of Latin American Studies at the US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute. They write, “July 11, thousands of people across Cuba took to the streets, fed up with the lack of food, basic products, medicine, and vaccines to combat COVID-19.”

    This flash-in-the-pan, minor protest was allegedly orchestrated by the NED and US AID. Furthermore, the monopoly media narrative has been undermined by its use of fake and doctored images.3

    The writers complain, “Protesters used social media to broadcast to the world what was happening, but the communist regime shut off the internet and telephone services, pulling the plug on their connection outside the island.”

    A question: If your government is targeted by a barrage of disinformation from outside actors, would you allow for the disinformation to continue? Disinformation is hailed by many to be a crime against humanity and a crime against peace. And the disinformation campaigns of the US are myriad. Among them are the phantom missile attack in the Gulf of Tonkin, the non-existent WMDs in Iraq, the Viagra-fueled rapes in Libya, the Syrian government chemical-weapon attacks, and the current allegation of a genocide in Xinjiang, China. Millions of people died as a result of such disinformation.

    It is clear that Lazarus and Ellis would like to knock down two communist governments that US capitalism finds antithetical, with one article. What is the crime of Cuba? The State Department Policy Planning Staff pointed to the “primary danger” the US faces, “The simple fact is that [former Cuban leader Fidel] Castro represents a successful defiance of the US…,”4 a slap in the face to the imperialist Monroe doctrine.

    The writers turned to the old-school Cuba policy advocacy of US senator Marco Rubio who tweeted: “Expect the regime in #Cuba to block internet & cell phone service soon to prevent videos about what is happening to get out to the world… By the way, they use a system made, sold & installed by #China to control and block access to the internet in #Cuba.’”

    Again, monopoly media undermines itself and senator Rubio: “… Fox News, however, included a small detail that went largely unnoticed. As he [Rubio] was speaking about ‘brutal oppression’ by the Cuban government and hailing the protesters, the footage shown by the cable station depicted a rally by Cuban government supporters. Fox News apparently knew exactly what it was airing, since it was careful to blur the slogans that some of the activists were carrying.”

    Lazarus and Ellis see a sinister hand: “China’s role in helping the regime cut off communications during the protests has exposed one of the many ways Beijing helps keep the Cuban communist regime afloat.”

    Meanwhile the capitalist5 government in the US is trying its damnedest to sink the communist government in Cuba. The US has long had an adversarial relationship with Cuba, starting with launching the Spanish-American War based on a lie concocted by US media. After the successful Cuban Revolution, the US has kept in place an economic blockade of the island. And seldom discussed is the fact that the US continues to occupy Guantánamo Bay, which Cuba has often demanded be returned to its sovereignty.

    Since the article never mentions otherwise, it is assumed to be predicated upon the US and its Occidental allies not engaging in monitoring telecommunications and digital surveillance, which Edward Snowden has revealed to be patently false. This is not whataboutism because there is no evidence of a Chinese backdoor to Huawei and the company has pledged to not insert spying devices in its products; to do otherwise would be a bad business decision.

    China’s Interests in Cuba

    Lazarus and Ellis envision nefarious Chinese stratagems underlying their trade with Cuba:

    China recognizes Cuba’s geostrategic importance. Due to its position in the Caribbean, Cuba can exert influence over the southeastern maritime approach to the United States, which contains vital sea lanes leading to ports in Miami, New Orleans, and Houston. Author George Friedman has argued that, with an increased presence in Cuba, China could potentially “block American ports without actually blocking them,” just like U.S. naval bases and installations pose a similar challenge to China around the first island chain and Straits of Malacca. Cuba’s influence in the Caribbean also makes it a useful proxy through which Beijing can pressure the four countries in the region (out of the 15 total globally) that recognize Taiwan to switch recognition.

    The entire article is speculative. It is littered with words like “possible,” “can,” and “could.” The writers do not elaborate on how China might pressure the Caribbean countries. Usually countries switch allegiance to China from Taiwan based on financial inducements and not from hegemonic pressure.

    Economic Support versus Economic Sanctions

    The Diplomat writers argue that “China helps sustain the [Cuban] regime through economic engagement.”

    What exactly do the writers intend to imply by economic engagement sustaining a regime? The logical corollary is that economic sanctions are aimed at “regime change.” Stemming from this logic, the US uses economic measures to sustain the theocratic criminality and corruption in Saudi Arabia and economic sanctions to try and change socialistic governments in, among others, Venezuela, Cuba, and China. Nonetheless, trade is what countries do to build their economies.

    Regarding the US favored method of applying pressure, American academics John Mueller and Karl Mueller wrote: “economic sanctions … may have contributed to more deaths during the post-Cold War era than all weapons of mass destruction throughout history.”

    The academics further noted,

    It is interesting that this loss of human life has failed to make a great impression in the United States….

    Some of the inattention may derive from a lack of concern about foreign lives. Although Americans are extremely sensitive to American casualties, they – like others – often seem quite insensitive to casualties suffered by those on the opposing side, whether military or civilian.

    The world views economic sanctions in a different light from the US. This was illuminated by the UN General Assembly vote demanding an end to the US economic blockade on Cuba for the 29th year in a row. Aside from two negative votes cast by the US and its Israeli ally, 184 countries voted in favor of the resolution.

    Perplexingly, the writers pointed out that “China has not, however, sold Cuba any significant weapons systems, as it has done with other states in the region such as Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia.”

    To the extent that selling armaments is a legitimate business, then why shouldn’t China sell armaments? Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia are not warring with other countries. Regarding the morality of selling weapons, consider that the US sells weapons to Saudi Arabia, a country committing genocide against Yemen and to Israel, a country that serially aggresses and economically strangulates Palestine. Are the writers not aware that the US pokes China in the eye by selling armaments to its renegade province, Taiwan, in contravention of the One-China policy to which the US shook hands?

    “Digital Authoritarianism”

    The writers complain about “China exporting ‘digital authoritarianism’ to illiberal regimes across the region. In Venezuela, Chinese telecommunication firm ZTE helped the Maduro regime establish the ‘fatherland ID card’ system, which it used to control not only voting, but the distribution of scarce food packages.”

    As for the ID cards, the link provided by the writers notes that the “system could lead to abuses of privacy by Venezuela’s government.” Besides, which country does not require ID in order to cast a vote?

    Why are the food packages scarce? What would one expect when the US has sanctions against Venezuela? It is quite disingenuous to criticize a government for food packages being scarce when that scarcity is caused by the writers’ own government. Moreover, the writers continue to use the word control pejoratively. Are the voting systems and economic distribution networks not a function of government implementation everywhere? If the writers want to insist that voting and the results are manipulated, then provide the evidence. Contrariwise, US observers endorsed the legitimacy of Venezuela’s May 2020 election; also, international observers were “unanimous in concluding that the elections were conducted fairly.” The link supplied by the writers is now dead, but the title reads: “For poor Venezuelans, a box of food may sway vote for Maduro.” While in Venezuela, a group of us visited the mercals — where food was being made affordable for the masses — where we were informed: “The Chavez administration does not want Venezuela’s food needs to be dependent on outside sources, so a concerted effort has been made to produce all foods locally.” Obviously that food independence is still a work in progress. Such progress is not made easier by being targeted by economic sanctions.

    The writers make clear their anti-leftist and their anti-democracy views:

    Leftist authoritarian regimes are consolidating control in Venezuela and Nicaragua. The populist left has returned to power in Bolivia in the form of the MAS party, in Argentina with the Peronists, and in Mexico with Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and the Morena movement. In Peru, the recent election of Pedro Castillo, a teacher from Cajamarca with a radical left agenda, similarly raises alarm bells. Upcoming elections in the region raise the prospects for an even broader spread of the populist left, including the prospect of victory by Xiomara Castro in November 2021 elections in Honduras, a President Petro emerging from Colombia’s 2022 elections, or the return of Lula da Silva and his Workers’ Party in Brazil’s October 2022 elections.

    Yikes! Democracy can be such a pain in the butt. As the anarchist professor Noam Chomsky wrote, “In the real world, elite dislike of democracy is the norm.”6 For American elitists, “the United States supports democracy if, and only if, the outcomes accord with its strategic and economic objectives.”7 That the US did and would seek “regime change” in Latin America is borne out by its Operation Condor.

    Lazarus and Ellis attempt to justify the US’ machinations against Cuba and China:

    China’s continued efforts to prop up the Cuban regime matters to U.S. national security. For both good and bad, Cuba is connected to the United States through geographic proximity, historical connections, and family ties. The U.S. government has long focused on violations of the freedoms and human rights of the Cuban people.

    The language of Lazarus and Ellis is oleaginous. Having a focus on human rights violations is qualitatively different from opposing human rights violations and quantitatively different from supporting human rights violations, as the US did when it supported the Fulgencio Batista “regime” (to use the parlance of Lazarus and Ellis) in Cuba, which served American corporate and military interests while massacring his own people. How does the occupation of Guantánamo Bay, where prisoners of war languish in what Amnesty International called the “gulag of our time”; the Bay of Pigs fiasco; Operation Northwoods; and economic sanctions speak for American fidelity to human rights?

    The writers with ties to the US military accuse China of a “malign intent against the U.S. in cyberspace.” They reason that “Cuba could also be an area from which China could gather intelligence and conduct cyberattacks against the United States.”

    The writers speculate about a malign Chinese intent. Malign intent is evidenced by the Stuxnet virus that the USA and Israel inserted into the Iranian nuclear program. The authors write as if the US is not guilty of the malignity they assert that China is guilty of.

    How the United States Can Respond

    Lazarus and Ellis argue that the US “should concentrate on helping partners in the region to engage with China in the most healthy, productive ways. For example, an emphasis on transparency inhibits the ability to engage in corrupt backroom deals with the Chinese that benefit the elites signing the deals rather than the country as a whole.”

    Helping partners and advocating for transparency is great. Is this what the US does? It would be foolish to deny that the US does not engage with corrupt rulers, rulers who siphon off the loans meant for the people of the country who are then held responsible for the odious debt to the financial lenders?8

    Lazarus and Ellis write, “With respect to cybersecurity, the United States should similarly look to increase support to partners in protecting their citizens’ privacy and security from malign actors like China.”

    Let’s leave aside the unsupported allegation that China might be a malign actor. Instead, let’s ask what kind of actor is the US? Is it a benevolent actor? This is the actor that just recently ended a two-decade war in impoverished Afghanistan — a country where the US engaged in a cycle of war crimes. Ask yourself: is it a benevolent actor who engages in disinformation campaigns against countries like China that have eradicated absolute poverty (while in the US a 2019 measure of poverty showed a rate of 10.5%) and accuse it of the scurrilous and easily debunked allegation of committing genocide in Xinjiang? Is it an upstanding country that pursues the locking away of Julian Assange for exposing US war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere?

    The writers suggest part of the solution for escaping Chinese spying is cybersecurity training by the US.

    Is that a good idea — trusting Uncle Sam? If you get trained by the US and use US technology, then you might end up being surveilled by the US. Ask German chancellor Angela Merkel and dozens of other world leaders.

    Lazarus and Ellis persist:

    While recent events in Cuba show China’s growing influence in the region, the CCP’s emphatic support of the Cuban regime’s repressive acts also highlights that it is on the wrong side of history. The U.S. must deepen partnerships with Latin American countries and Caribbean friends.

    Was the US on the right side of history in Korea, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, historical Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Haiti, Chile, Grenada, etc? How should countries like Guatemala, Honduras, Chile, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia and the other Latin American countries targeted by Operation Condor feel about a deepened partnership? And how would the peoples of Caribbean countries — e.g., Haiti, Grenada, Puerto Rico, etc — feel about a deepened partnership with the US?

    Lazarus and Ellis proffer the haggard imperialist platitudes of partnership based on shared values, security, prosperity, and freedom. Which populations would they like to tempt with such an offer? To the people who experienced US-supported coups in Nicaragua, Honduras, Haiti, Bolivia, Brazil, or the masses in Venezuela subjected to unceasing American-government intrigues against their country? There is a reason why Latin Americans and Caribbean countries are leftists or turning leftward.

    1. See Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Pantheon Books, 2002 edition).
    2. Throughout the article all emphases within quotations have been added by this writer.
    3. See here, here, and here.
    4. Cited in Noam Chomsky, Who Rules the World? Metropolitan Books, 2014: 100.
    5. Since the writers deem it important to identify the governments in China and Cuba as communist, it would seem appropriate and balanced to identify other governments by their ideology.
    6. Chomsky, 45.
    7. Chomsky, 74.
    8. See Noam Chomsky, Profit over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order (Seven Stories Press, 1999). Chomsky describes how neoliberalism and financial institutions like the IMF and its structural adjustments have plunged the masses in developing countries into despair.
    The post Targeting Cuba and China: Disinformation against Communism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • “Post-Pandemic” for many countries, especially western countries, is a dream. The west will have to wake up fast, if it doesn’t want to fall prey to a destructive plan of chaos, unemployment, bankruptcies, and, yes, famine – shifting of capital from the bottom and the middle to the top – and leaving misery at the bottom.

    Not so for China.  For China, the post-pandemic era is well under way.

    When SARS-CoV-2, later renamed by WHO to Covid-19, hit Wuhan in January 2020, China was prepared. Chinese authorities proceeded with warp-speed to prevent the spread of this new corona disease, by a radical lockdown of Wuhan and extending it to Hubei Province. Later, other areas of risk were locked down, including about 80% of China’s production and manufacturing apparatus. The result was astounding. Within a few months, by about mid-2020, China was in control of Covid, and gradually started opening up crucial areas, including the production process, all the while maintaining strict protection measures.

    By the end of 2020 China’s economy was practically working at full speed and achieving, according to IMF’s very conservative account, a 2.6% growth for the year. China’s own, and perhaps more realistic projections, were closer to 3.5%. IMF growth projections for China in 2021 stand at 8.4%. China’s economic expansion in 2022 is projected at 5.6%. This is way above any other country in the world.

    Compare this with 2020 economic declines way into the red for the US and Europe, of 25% to 35%, and 10% to 15%, respectively. These are real figures. Not necessarily the published ones.

    Future expansion in China takes into account that much of the projected growth over the coming years will be internal “horizontal” growth,  helping China’s interior and western provinces catching up with infrastructure, research and development, as well as education facilities – increasing the overall level of well-being to reduce the gap with the highly-developed eastern areas.

    China’s economic recovery and her industrial apparatus working at full speed is good for China and good for the world, because China had become in the past four decades or so the western principal supply chain, mainly the US and Europe. We are talking crucial supplies, such as medical equipment, medication and ingredients for medication.  About 80% – 90% used in the west comes from China.

    China’s rapid economic growth may be mostly attributed to two main factors: large-scale investments – financed by predominantly domestic savings and foreign capital and rapid productivity growth. These two features appear to have gone hand in hand.

    China remains attractive for investors. In addition to medical equipment, China supplies the west and the world with electronic equipment and is meant to become one of the key developers and exporter of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accelerate and facilitate research and manufacturing processes, while minimizing negative environmental impacts.

    China’s outlook for the future is bright. However, a number of anormal factors have to be considered, for instance:

    (i) The unresolved covid issues in the west, which may be reducing demand naturally or by force – possibly import restrictions for goods from China as a way of constant pressure on China;

    (ii) Continuation of a direct and indirect trade and currency war on China. To the detriment of the US-dollar, China’s currency, the yuan  and soon the digital yuan as international payment currency, independent from western controlled monetary transfer modes, is gaining rapidly in status as an international reserve money. According to some estimates, in five years the yuan may account for up to 30% of all world reserves. As a parenthesis, the US-dollar in the early 1990s amounted to more than 90% of worldwide reserve denominations; today that proportion has shrunk to less than 60%; and,

    (iii) The west, led by Washington, is intent to harm China in whatever way they can. It will not succeed. Washington knows it. But it is a typical characteristic of a dying beast to lash around itself to destroy as much as possible in its surroundings before it collapses.

    Just as an example which the world at large is probably unaware of, China is presently surrounded by about 1,400 US military bases, or bases of other countries which host US military equipment and personnel. About 60% of the US navy fleet is currently stationed in the South China Sea.

    Just imagine what would happen, if China or any other super-power, would be surrounding the US with military basis and an aggressive Navy fleet!

    China is constantly harassed, sanctioned and slandered with outright lies. One of the prevalent examples of defamations, is her alleged inhuman treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang province. Total population of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwestern China is about 26 million, of which some 12 million are Uyghurs, mostly of Muslim belief.

    Uyghur Muslims are regularly recruited by US secret services from across the border with Afghanistan, sent to fight the Jihad in the Middle East, and when some of them return, China makes an effort to re-school and re-integrate them into society.

    Could the real reason for this western aggression be that Xinjiang province, the largest and western-most province of China, is also a principal hub for the two or more main routes of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – trans-Asia Routes, by rail through Pakistan to the Gwadar Port in the Persian Gulf, and possibly by road through the newly to become autonomous Afghanistan, connecting China with Iran?

    China is perceived as a threat to western hegemonic thinking – to western-style globalization, which is the concept of a One World Order over a borderless western corporate and banking-controlled world – and because China is well positioned to become the world’s number one economy in absolute terms within a few years.

    These are challenges to be kept in mind in planning China’s future economic development.

    In fact, already today China is number one in PPP-terms (purchasing power parity), which is the only indicator that counts, namely how much of goods and services may be acquired with a unit of currency.

    Taking these challenges into account, and following her non-aggressive and non-expansive moving-forward style, China may be embarking on a three-pronged development approach. Overarching this tactic may include China’s 2025 Plan and 2035/2050 vision: A strong emphasis on economic and defense autonomy.

    (i) Outreach and connecting with the rest of the world through President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, also called One Belt One Road (OBOR) which is patterned according to the ancient Silk Road more than 2,100 years ago, a peaceful trade route connecting Eastern China through Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

    On a global scale, OBOR embraces currently more than 130 countries and over 30 international organizations, including 18 countries of the European Union. OBOR offers their partners participation – no coercion. The attraction and philosophy behind OBOR is shared benefits – the concept of win-win. OBOR may be the road to socioeconomic recovery from covid consequences and cross-border cooperation for participating countries.

    OBOR is also aiming at a multi-polar world where partner countries would equally benefit through infrastructure, industrial joint ventures, cultural exchange, exploration of new renewable sources of energy, research and education projects working towards a joint future with prosperity for all.

    Here is the distinction between the western and Chinese meaning of “globalization”. In the west, it means a unipolar world controlled by one hegemon, the US of A, with one army called NATO which forcibly holds the west, mainly Europe, together. NATO, with its 2.5 billion-dollars official budget – unofficially a multiple of this amount reaching into the trillions – spreads already with its tentacles into South America, Colombia.

    Together the west, or Global North, is a conglomerate of NATO-vassal-countries with little autonomy as compared to Chinese globalization – meaning a multi-polar connection of countries, all the while OBOR-linked countries maintain their sovereignty. This is “globalization” with Chinese characteristics.

    (ii) In a precautionary detachment from western dependence, China is focusing trade development and cooperation with her ASEAN partners. In November 2020, after 8 years of negotiations, China signed a free trade agreement with the ten ASEAN nations, plus Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, altogether 15 countries, including China.

    The so-called Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, covers some 2.2 billion people, commanding about 30% of the world’s GDP. This is a never before reached agreement in size, value and tenor.

    China and Russia have a longstanding strategic partnership, containing bilateral agreements that also enter into this new trade fold. The countries of the Central Asia Economic Union (CAEU), consisting mostly of former Soviet Republics, as well as members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), are likewise integrated into the eastern trade block.

    The RCEP’s trade deals will be carried out in local currencies and in yuan – no US dollars. The RCEP is, therefore, also an instrument for dedollarizing, primarily in the Asia-Pacific Region, and gradually moving across the globe; and,

    (iii) China will focus much of her future development on her internal and western regions – increase the standard of well-being of populations, infrastructure, research and development – industrial development, joint ventures, including with foreign capital. To achieve a better equilibrium between eastern and western China is crucial for socioeconomic sustainability.

    This dual development approach, on the one hand, external trade with close ASEAN associates, as well as with OBOR partners; and on the other, achieving internal equilibrium and well-being, is a circular development, feeding on each other, minimizing risks and impacts of western adversary aggressions.

    China’s achievements in her 71 years of revolution speak for themselves. They are unmatched by any nation in recent history. From a country largely ruined by western-influenced colonization and conflicts, China rose from the ashes, by not only lifting 800 million people out of poverty, but also by becoming food, health and education self-sufficient.

    Coinciding with the 4 March 2021, opening of the Chinese People’s political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., late President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, asked the pertinent question, “Can We Forge a New Era of Humanity Before It’s Too Late?” – His answer is simple but lucid: “Unless we move from a civilization based on wealth accumulation to a life-affirming, ecological civilization, we will continue accelerating towards global catastrophe.”

    This understanding is also at the forefront of China’s vision for the next 15 to 20 years – and beyond. A China-internal objective is an equitable development to well-being for all; and on a world-scale, a community with shared benefits for all.

    The post China’s Post-Pandemic Growth:  Reaching Out and Developing Internal Markets and Well-being first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • SPECIAL REPORT: By David Robie

    It is open season again for Indonesian trolls targeting Asia Pacific Report and other media with fake news and disinformation dispatches in a crude attempt to gloss over human rights violations.

    Just three months ago I wrote about this issue in my “Dear editor” article exposing the disinformation campaign. There was silence for a while but now the fake letters to the editor – and other media outlets — have started again in earnest.

    The latest four lengthy letters emailed to APR canvas the following topics — Jakarta’s controversial special autonomy status revised law for Papua, a brutal assault by Indonesian Air Force military policemen on a deaf Papuan man, and a shooting incident allegedly committed by pro-independence rebels – and they appear to have been written from a stock template.

    And they all purport to have been written by “Papuan students” or “Papuans”. Are they their real names, and do they even exist?

    The latest letter to Asia Pacific Report, dated July 30, was written by a “Paulus Ndiken” who claims:

    “I’m a native Papuan currently living in Merauke, Papua, Indonesia. I would like to address your cover story about Indonesia apologises for ‘excessive force’ against deaf Papuan man.

    “One day after the incident, the Indonesian Air Force had detained and punished severely 2 members … that had roughly apprehending [sic] Esebius Bapaimu in Merauke, Papua province.”

    Dubious reputation
    The letter linked to Yumi Toktok Stret, a website with a dubious reputation with accuracy. The report was sketchy and the correct name of the assaulted man, according to reputable news media and Papuan sources, is actually Steven Yadohamang.

    “We regret that this kind of rough-housing [sic] happened on the street,” wrote correspondent “Ndiken”, “but we, as Papuans, [are] also glad to know that these perpetrators have received sound punishment …

    “Responding to the unfortunate events, the Indonesian netizens had asked for the Indonesian military to immediately take action against the guilty party and were glad that the institution had addressed the people’s concern in a very fast manner.”

    A more nuanced and accurate article was written for Asia Pacific Report by Brisbane-based West Papuan academic Yamin Kogoya who compared the “inhumane” assault to the tragic killing of George Floyd in the United States after a white Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes as he lay face down in the street on 25 May 2020.

    Indonesian disinformation letter about Papua
    Excerpt from one of the spate of questionable letters received by Asia Pacific Report about Papua. Image: Screenshot
    Tabloid Jubi report of 'knee' assault
    How Tabloid Jubi reported the assault on 29 July 2021.

    Another letter writer, “Michel Wamebu” … “a native West Papuan living in Merauke”, said on June 29 he would like to bring our attention to West Papua, “which has been painted as if the whole island is in conflict, when actually [there are] only a few small areas [that] were invaded by the Free Papua terrorists that had been exposed to enormous violence.

    “I would like to assure the world that there [is] nothing like a full-blown war.”

    In the lengthy letter about an incident on June 4 when four civilians were killed in a shooting and two were wounded, “Wamebu” provided alleged details that are likely to have been provided by military sources and at variance with actual news reports at the time.

    ‘Spike’ over special autonomy
    “Yamkon Doleon”, a “student from West Papua and currently studying in Yogyakarta, Indonesia” wrote on July 19 that there had been “a spike in the topic of Papuan special autonomy in social media and also [in] a few international media”.

    Launching into a defence of the new Special Autonomy for Papua law for the governance of the two Melanesian provinces of Papua and West Papua for the next two decades – adopted by the House of Representatives in Jakarta last month without consultation with the Papuans, “Doleon” wrote:

    “The Special Autonomy itself is a law that guarantees every Papuan to be the leader of their region, to have free education, free health service, and a boost I [the] economy … So which article is not in favour of the people?”

    The writer makes no mention of the heavy militarisation of Papua in recent months, the repeated allegations of human rights violations, or the rejection of the Special Autonomy law by the Papuan people.

    In a comment about the spate of Indonesian troll messages to some media outlets, West Papua Media Alerts said:

    “Indonesian intelligence bots, go away. You are being banned and reported and deleted everytime you post, so go away.”

    The engaged media advocacy and news service continued: “It is clear we are telling the truth, otherwise you wouldn’t have to spend so much money trying to counter it with a transparent influence exercise. Go home, invaders.

    “Friends, there are literally over a hundred sock accounts using random Anglo names, and the same script response. These accounts all come from the BIN-run FirstMedia in Jakarta, and were all created after March 2.

    Indonesian bots
    West Papua Media Alerts message to “Indonesian bots”. Image: Screenshot

    Report fake accounts
    “If you see a comment, please click through on the account name, click the 3 dots and report them as a fake account and going against community standards. We will obviously delete and ban these fake accounts.”

    Meanwhile, the London-based Indonesian human rights watchdog Tapol has strongly condemned the two Air Force military policemen who severely beat the disabled man, Steven Yadohamang, in Merauke, Papua, on 27 July 2021.

    Video footage which has been widely shared on social media, shows the two personnel beating up a man and crushing his body into the ground and stamping on his head.


    The footage of the assault on Steven Yadohamang. Video: Benar News

    Tapol said in a statement: “It is clear from the footage that Yadohamang does not possess the capacity to defend himself against two individuals who appear to be unconcerned with possible consequences.”

    A similar incident in Nabire took place the following day, said the statement. A West Papuan man, Nicolas Mote, was suddenly smacked on the head repeatedly during his arrest despite not resisting.

    “The incident follows a spate of previous violent incidents committed by the security forces against civilians in West Papua province and is likely to raise further questions about what purpose increasing numbers of military personnel are serving in West Papua,” Tapol said.

    Although the Air Force had apologised, it had suggested that the two military policemen, Second Sergeant Dimas Harjanto and Second Private Rian Febrianto, alone should bear responsibility for the incident, said the watchdog.

    ‘Pattern of violence’
    “They, and the Indonesian media, have described the soldiers as ‘rogues’. This assessment is not consistent with a pattern of violence committed against civilians that has been allowed to go unpunished in recent months and years,” Tapol said.

    “Indeed, had there not been such indisputable visual evidence of security force violence, it is entirely possible that the incident would not now be subject to further investigation by the authorities.

    “But despite facing punishment, the perpetrators are likely to only to receive light sentences because they will be tried in military courts.”

    Following the end of the New Order period, civilian politicians were not pushing for military personnel to be tried in civilian courts.

    Since 2019, there had been a steady build-up of military and police personnel in the two provinces of Papua and West Papua, said Tapol.

    “Deployments and security force operations have increased further since April 2021, when the Coordinating Minister for Politics and Security, Mahfud MD, designated the armed resistance movement, TPNPB, as a ‘terrorist’ group.

    “West Papuans and Indonesians have raised concerns that the designation would further stigmatise ordinary West Papuans.

    “We would also highlight that in West Papua there are significant underlying problems with institutionalised racism by the authorities.”

    Tapol called on President Joko Widodo and the House of Representatives of Indonesia to finish the post-Suharto agenda of reforming the military to combat a culture of impunity over human rights violations in West Papua.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • — Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary

    This is what real education looks like — Evo Organizes Anti-Imperialist Day School For Youth

    Iris Varela spoke about the history of the Bolivarian Revolution and explained in detail how the economic blockade in her country works. The PSUV lawmaker concluded with an invitation for participants to visit Venezuela for the inauguration of a similar project in Caracas; “we’re opening a university to teach people reporting and social media skills, we’re cordially inviting the youth of the union federations in Chapare to come and coordinate an exchange with the Juventud PSUV, maybe in August a group can come here, and a group from here can go there. Our Bolivian brothers will always be welcome to the country of father liberator, Simon Bolivar. We need to strengthen education and build cadres who can defend revolutionary processes.”

    Nieves Colque, one of the young members at the school today said of the classes, “This school of ideology and anti-imperialism helps us to grow, it’s nourishing. The economics session was especially important, learning and analyzing the principles of Bolivia’s social communitarian economic model so we can work in this new term to recover the country’s GDP”.

    Go to any of the corporate Un-News outlets, like Bing, and this is what fascism looks like —

    Chief of staff Helge Braun told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag that he doesn’t expect another coronavirus-related lockdown in Germany. But Braun said that unvaccinated people may be barred from entering venues like restaurants, movie theaters or sports stadiums “because the residual risk is too high.”

    Braun said getting vaccinated is important to protect against severe disease and because “vaccinated people will definitely have more freedoms than unvaccinated people.” He said such policies would be legal because “the state has the responsibility to protect the health of its citizens.”

    More of the same dirty White Western Culture (sic), AKA, White Civilization (Sic) —Report: UK military failing to protect women from abuse

    British soldiers evaluate coordinates at the Tapa Training Grounds, Estonia.

    Around two-thirds of female veterans in the British armed forces have experienced bullying, harassment or discrimination in their careers, a parliamentary report said Sunday.

    The report also said that women who reported serious sexual offences are “denied justice” by an inadequate military court system and complaints process.

    And, the pigs trained and outfitted in “Israel,” for the most part, treating citizens like Palestinians — 9 arrested in violent clashes between Paris police, anti-vaccine protesters

    a group of people wearing military uniforms: 9 arrested in violent clashes between Paris police, anti-vaccine protesters

    Ah, the Aussies too, having their pig moments — Anti-lockdown protest: two men charged with allegedly striking police horse in Sydney

    A police strike force has been established after an anti-lockdown rally on Saturday.

    Ahh, islands on fire, Sardinia — Fires ravage Italian island of Sardinia, forcing evacuations

    Cars are parked by the road as fires have been raging through the countryside in Cuglieri, near Oristano, Sardinia, Italy, early Sunday, July 25, 2021. Hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes in many small towns in the province of Oristano

    Then, of course, water, fire, flood, death by a million safety net cuts, and then the Olympians are the networks, getting — how many billions does NBCV get for these absurdities, the Olympics, by 2023? $7.7 BILLION!

    What we’re witnessing right now play out in Tokyo is unparalleled in the political history of the Olympics. And you’re pointing the finger in the right direction, when we think about the International Olympic Committee. The saga in Tokyo has exposed an International Olympic Committee that openly disrespects the will of locals, that brushes off inconvenient facts from experts, like medical experts, who have long been saying these games are a terrible idea. And the IOC tends to prioritize its profits over all else.

    Meanwhile, the Olympics tend to kneecap democracy, undercut democracy, in ways that you describe, with the very prime minister essentially reduced to a contractual supplicant to the International Olympic Committee, with no power to decide whether to cancel or not. And you’re seeing also that everything is very vulnerable to things like COVID-19 and also, I think, climate change. So, when the International Olympic Committee arrives in the host city, it’s this parastate-type organization. But what we’ve seen time and time again, and now in Technicolor in Tokyo, is that it’s also a parasite on the host city.

    There is a lot of money sloshing through the Olympic system. It just tends to slosh upwards into pockets that are already filled. NBC gives about 40% of the International Olympic Committee’s revenues. And overall, in terms of the Olympics, 73% of the revenues for the International Olympic Committee come from broadcaster fees. And I think that helps explain why they’re perfectly content to have a made-for-TV event without all those people in the stands. Of course, they’d prefer to have them in the stands, but even if they don’t, the money continues to flow into their coffers. NBC has announced that even though these games are hit with the pandemic and people won’t be in the seats, this could well be the most profitable Olympics ever for NBC because of ad sales and other measures.

    The corporate sponsors provide another 18% of the revenues for the International Olympic Committee. And I think we’re seeing a really interesting divide between the corporate sponsors right now. On one hand, the sort of long-term, worldwide partners that fork over these nine-figure fees to be associated with the five rings, they’re basically playing the long game, with the exception of Toyota, which of course has strong base in Japan. The local sponsors, domestic sponsors — by which, by the way, they raised more than $3 billion from local corporate sponsors in Japan, more than ever before — they’re in a much trickier position. And I think that’s why you’re seeing Toyota basically say out loud that the Olympics have become a toxic property inside of Japan.

    So, there’s plenty of money to be had. It just tends to shuffle to the International Olympic Committee, to broadcasters, to the corporate partners, as well as to real estate interests in the Olympic city. — Jules Boykoff

     

    PHOTO: Water levels at Great Salt Lake are shown at its record in 1986, average in 2000 and new record low this weekend. (Utah Department of Natural Resources)

    Oh, the great dysfunctional USA, Capitalism, etc. Think: Nazi Merkel and others in her cabinet blame the deaths of hundreds in Germany as a result of recent flooding on, oh well, “climate change and climate unpredictability . . . .”

    Imagine that, the mayor of the town said:

    We have had floods in this area for centuries. We have asked for help to mitigate the floods. We have had governments not responsive to the needs of people. Blaming climate change on incompetent and heartless neoliberal governments, on the excessive hording of money, the waste and corruption of trillions, stolen, given to billionaires, to the military complex, and other Corporate and Financial Complexes, then stating these German lives could not be saved because ‘climate change is so unpredictable, and just get used to it” serves the people the words from which to raise pitchforks, juice up the Molotov cocktails, grease the shotguns, tie the ropes and sharpen the guillotines for hanging and beheading deservedly so against the elite and their bed-fellows, the Eichmann Mentality, and the fascist leanings of Capitalism. This is the response of these people who go to climate change talks, who shuttling around the world in jets for Davos and World Economic Forums, for the bootlicking foisted upon us all to the murderers, the BlackRocks’s and Blackstone’s and World Bank and Goldman Sachs. You dictate those who did not get the chemical jab of Corona Capitalism will have lesser value in society, and then those smug ones who have succumbed to the pressure for yearly or twice-yearly boosters, they too will allow the rich and fascistic governments to make excuse after excuse as governments and towns go bankrupt, and all life saving services and community rights, vanish.

    Well, he didn’t say that, of course, because I made it up and politicians do not speak about capitalism as the ultimate evil. However, one German mayor was in tears about the loss of life, and said it could have been prevented with a government and localities working together to mitigate floods. Whether once in a hundred years, or otherwise.

    a person that is on fire

    Dixie Fire rips through Sierra communities, with ‘extreme’ conditions likely to worsen

    Hochwasser Dresden

    Then, more of the 80-year-olds drilling down on destroying the young, the unborn, the middle aged — Some Americans could need COVID-19 vaccine booster – Fauci

    a group of people walking down the street: People wear masks around Times Square, as cases of the infectious coronavirus Delta variant continue to rise in New York City, New York

    So, we follow the way of “Israel” — We have given up as people, this unending multi-billions in profits, mercenary, war profiteering profits these companies are stealing from the taxpayers. Like the Military industrial complex, the Big Pharma and Private Medicine industrial complexes are eating our souls. And the rot-gut corporate media and those that echo the prevailing narratives, well, they too eat our souls.

    “It’s a dynamic situation. It’s a work in progress, it evolves like in so many other areas of the pandemic,” said Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “You’ve got to look at the data.”

    Last week, Israel’s health ministry reported a decrease in the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine in preventing infections and symptomatic illness. But it added that the two-dose COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer with partner BioNTech still remained highly effective in preventing severe illness.

    The decline in efficacy coincided with the spread of the Delta variant, now the dominant strain in Israel.

    Israel is administering third doses of the vaccine to immunocompromised people, including those who have had heart, lung, kidney or liver transplants and cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.

    Pfizer and BioNTech said on Friday that the United States had purchased 200 million more doses of their vaccine to help with pediatric vaccination as well as possible booster shots.

    No deep stories on that, uh? How and why so much money is being thrown at companies with histories of felonies? Here, this headline, censored everywhere — CDC “Panel Signals Support for Booster Shots, as Reports of Injuries, Deaths After COVID Vaccines Near 500,000

    Oh, they salute the money makers, and we are a society going down down down because of the rich, the millionaires, the billionaires, and these fascists, saluting what?

    FILE PHOTO: Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on federal government coronavirus disease (COVID-19) response in Washington

    Here a local older woman, trying to make sense of the lock-step pro-lockdown, pro-mask, pro-anticivil liberties mentality of Oregonians, and their editorial boards:

    Copy of my Letter to the Editor of the Eugene Register-Guard; it has been received but not published — I usually get pleasure from wordsmith Don Kahle’s clever articles. However, in his July 16 column he encouraged incentives to get more citizens injected with an unlicensed, unapproved experimental gene procedure to lessen symptoms from a viral disease with a better than 99% recovery rate for most age groups.

    A review of history is needed. In 1986, Congress passed a law that allowed pharmaceutical companies ZERO liability from damages from their vaccine products. The PREP act is the latest iteration which gives drug companies immunity from damages caused by their vaccines.

    The Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System was established in 1990 by the CDC and FDA to monitor damages and deaths caused by vaccines. Although the system is voluntary and underreported, as of this writing, VAERS data showed a total of 463,457 adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 10,991 deaths and 48,385 serious injuries since Dec. 14, 2020. Serious injuries include myocarditis, pericarditis, paralysis, neurological disorders, blood clots, irregular menstrual bleeding, and more.

    Drug companies are poised to earn billions of dollars from vaccine sales, mostly paid for by our taxes. “Safe and effective” is a marketing slogan and is inaccurate. Mr. Kahle, I urge you to do investigative journalism regarding germ theory vs. terrain theory. Rather than promoting pills and injections, it makes sense that public health funds should be spent on improved sanitation, hygiene, nutrition and exercise guidance for individuals and communities and to promote decentralized, regenerative, organic agriculture on a global scale.

    It’s easy to say to this person that this opinion letter to the editor will not be published since the newspaper (sic) will deem the information as faux, false, and dangerous. This is the way of the present, and no matter how “alternative” or “left” the rag, those old hippies are indeed fascists, one and all, in many cases, in this case, with the Corona Capitalism. Sick stuff, capitalism crunched all up in Big Media, Big Lies, Big Propaganda:

    Fireworks explode during the opening ceremony in the Olympic Stadium at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Friday, July 23, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
    [The opening ceremony is being held in Tokyo’s National Stadium, but the 80,000-seat arena, built for this purpose, is largely empty. Fewer than 1,000 VIP guests have been invited to attend. Spectators have also been barred from sporting events throughout the games. The 2020 Olympic Games were originally scheduled to take place a year ago but were postponed due to the pandemic.]

    Ahh, we can go on and on about how we got here, 2021, but a great thing is we saw it in the history books.

    [The blacklisted mathematics instructor Chandler Davis, after serving six months in the Danbury federal penitentiary for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), warned the universities that ousted him and thousands of other professors that the purges would decimate the country’s intellectual life.]

    Chandler Davis — 1995 talk!

    “Shooting Rats in a Barrel”: Did the Red-hunt Win?

    These years, 1947-1950, established the ground rules that remained in force for the decade that followed. Most institutions, from the government through the unions and universities to the American Civil Liberties Union (yes, I said the American Civil Liberties Union), declared Communists unwelcome. Among the means used to exclude them were loyalty oaths, often including the phrase “I am not a member of the Communist Party or any other organization which…” It became glaringly obvious, that employers, in particular universities, would shy away from hiring anyone who might be attacked as a Communist; a reputation as a student radical was thus enough to make one a bad bet for an academic job; so student radicals became (in a few short years) very scarce. University administrators would occasionally say, if asked, that there were no Communists on the staff; but they hoped they wouldn’t be asked. The FBI and the Red Squads of state and some local police forces kept files on thousands. They had a reputation for exceeding legal restraints in interrogation and for keeping very dubious material in their files; later research bears this out. They cooperated (when it suited their own agenda) with employers who were cleansing their staffs. This put them in an ambivalent relation to the federal government in particular. The FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover, while nominally responsible to the Attorney General, sometimes cooperated covertly with Congressional exposés of government agencies.

    Most universities wouldn’t even let left-wingers speak on campus under auspices of a student group! Paul Robeson, Howard Fast, and Dirk J. Struik are among those banned by administrations in the early 50s. By the late 50s, the invitations had dried up.

    It was further established that one could be imprisoned for Communist Party activity itself, at least if one were a leader: the Supreme Court upheld in 1951 the conspiracy convictions against the CP officers under the Smith Act. The government maintained concentration camps in which it could incarcerate thousands of dangerous people if it declared a national emergency to exist, and everyone knew whom they considered dangerous. (These camps were invented by the “liberal” senators in 1952 in an attempt to show voters that they were just as security-conscious as the Right. But though they originated as a mere tactic, they were not merely on paper, they existed physically. I was told this in casual conversation in 1955 by an acquaintance who was employed at a federal prison — a prison, it happens, where I became an inmate five years later. The story would be better if the guard had looked me up and said hello to me then, but — sorry — we were no longer in touch.)

    These words from Davis to Chris Hedges are just the same today, for MANY of us, who have been marginalized, Google Searched into the Poor House:

    Though you see the remnants of the former academic left still, though some of us were never fired, though I return to the United States from my exile frequently, we are gone,” he said. “We did not survive as we were. Some of us saved our skins without betraying others or ourselves. But almost all of the targets either did crumble or were fired and blacklisted. David Bohm and Moses Finley and Jules Dassin and many less celebrated people were forced into exile. Most of the rest had to leave the academic world. A few suffered suicide or other premature death. There weren’t the sort of wholesale casualties you saw in Argentina or El Salvador, but the Red-hunt did succeed in axing a lot of those it went after, and cowing most of the rest. We were out, and we were kept out. — “The Origin of America’s Intellectual Vacuum”

    See the source image
    See the source image

    Finally, read David Rovics’ blog, and he is now in Denmark playing live crowds. I feel badly for him, he being accused of antisemitism, and he is being doxxed, and his Wikipedia has been changed but “crowd-souring” folk.

    Blog —

    Confessions of an Ecumenical Leftist

    It seems a ridiculous thing to have to say, but I think intellectual discourse is generally a very good thing, rather than something to be stopped at all costs.

    I’m realizing that most people who come across something I wrote don’t seem to have read anything else I’ve ever written, and haven’t listened to my music.  This post is going to be especially personal, so it’s important that you have some idea who I am first.

    I’m 54 years old, and I’ve been some kind of an activist since I was 12.  I learn a little more with each passing year on Earth, but lately the pace has accelerated, along with everything else.  I was raised by musicians, and I became one myself early on.  When I started writing songs about different social movement activities and notable moments in history from around the US and the world, I started meeting more and more people from everywhere, and touring everywhere, too.  As a songwriter and performer I’ve been able to participate in social movements on an ongoing basis in a dozen or so countries, spending most of my adult life on the road, doing that.

    Although the campaigners may be few, I have seen these campaigns work again and again.  You spread enough rumors, they dominate the narrative.  There are already people updating my Wikipedia entry to inform people that accusations of my alleged antisemitism are “in the news.”  Of course, they’re “in the news” because there have been news stories written about the campaign against me — not because any serious person has ever accused me of antisemitism, with any basis for their claim, aside from failing to find the anti-Semitic bits in a book, and wanting to talk to people with disparate viewpoints who may have deep insight into how we might prevent a fascist future in America, regardless of anything else.

    Of course, Wikipedia and Google and the rest are propaganda and government run and ZIonist outfits, for sure:

    Indeed, already in 2007, researchers found that CIA and FBI employees were editing Wikipedia articles on controversial topics including the Iraq war and the Guantanamo military prison.

    Also in 2007, researchers found that one of the most active and influential English Wikipedia administrators, called “Slim Virgin”, was in fact a former British intelligence informer.

    More recently, another highly prolific Wikipedia editor going by the false name of “Philip Cross” turned out to be linked to UK intelligence as well as several mainstream media journalists.

    In Germany, one of the most aggressive Wikipedia editors was exposed, after a two-year legal battle, as a political operative formerly serving in the Israeli army as a foreign volunteer.

    Even in Switzerland, unidentified government employees were caught whitewashing Wikipedia entries about the Swiss secret service just prior to a public referendum about the agency.

    Many of these Wikipedia personae are editing articles almost all day and every day, indicating that they are either highly dedicated individuals, or in fact, operated by a group of people.

    In addition, articles edited by these personae cannot easily be revised, since the above-mentioned administrators can always revert changes or simply block disagreeing users altogether. (Source)

    There you have it, on a Sunday, just cruising through the shit-storm news of the shit-hole Mass Murdering Media!

    See the source image
    The post Out to Lunch: The Atrophying of Western Minds first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • “When it comes to misinformation, not sharing is caring,” Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said during a White House press briefing last week. His advisory offers a detailed account of the ways that the spread of health mis- and disinformation has flooded communities with lies.

    Health misinformation was deadly prior to the rise of internet platforms, but the problem is proliferating in new ways because of the technology these companies use to extract and exploit our demographic and behavioral data.

    The post Misinformation’s Deadly Profit Motive appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • It’s not unusual for politically minded people on Facebook to claim that they’re being targeted and censored. They all think they’re “too radical” in one way or another and thus, must be silenced by the authorities. Hey, in my activist days, I’d even get insulted if I wasn’t pulled off the line to board a plane. Don’t they know who I am? These delusions of grandeur, however, are based on real, longstanding policies. The Land of the Free™ has always spied on, manipulated, and controlled its population. They usually don’t talk openly about it but, last week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki let loose with this truth bomb:

    We are in regular touch with the social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 Team. Given as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue of misinformation specifically on the pandemic. In terms of actions that we have taken or we’re working to take, I should say, from the Federal Government, we’ve increased disinformation research and tracking. Within the Surgeon General’s Office, we are flagging posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.

    Here’s about 45 seconds of her public admission:

    The “Dr. Murthy” she mentions is US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy — and here’s a recent tweet of his:

    When faced with criticism for this unconstitutional stance, Psaki doubled down the next day with a call for bannings to cross all platforms. She mocked comparisons to “Big Brother” and again called for Facebook to step up its efforts. Interesting timing as the government is also threatening Facebook over possibly illegal monopolization. Could it be that the puppet masters behind Biden are offering Zuckerberg a deal in advance? Consider this, also from Psaki’s press conference:

    It’s important to take faster action against harmful posts. As you all know, information travels quite quickly on social media platforms. Sometimes it’s not accurate, and Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful violative posts. Posts that would be within their policies for removal often remain up for days. That’s too long. The information spreads too quickly.

    What would The Home of the Brave™ prefer Facebook do? Psaki said The White House is already pressuring the company to use the government’s preferred sources of “quality information” via the newsfeed and its algorithms. Let that one sink in for a while, comrades. 

    Occupy Wall Street, Zuccotti Park (Photo Credit: Mickey Z., September 30, 2011)

    Will this totalitarian salvo stand? I don’t know but I feel certain that it’ll have plenty of help. The majority of Facebook users will be more than happy to “turn in” anyone who dares to challenges their beloved brand of groupthink. With these unpaid spies doing their work for them, the government (and the corporations that own it) can just sit back and watch all the democracy (sic) in action. Question: What role will YOU play in this scenario?

    The post The White House and Facebook vs. Freedom of Speech first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Listen to a reading of this article:

    The weirdest thing about the Biden administration tasking itself with the censorship of “disinformation” on social media is that the United States is the hub of a globe-spanning empire that is built upon a foundation of disinformation, maintained by disinformation, and facilitated by disinformation.

    If the propaganda engine of the US-centralized empire ceased actively deceiving the public about the world, it would collapse immediately. There would be mass unrest at home and abroad, status quo politics would be abandoned, alliances and coalitions would crumble, leaders official and unofficial would be ousted, and US unipolar hegemony would end.

    The only thing keeping this from happening is the vast amounts of wealth and energy which are poured into continuously deceiving the people of America and its allies about what’s really going on in their nations and political systems, and in the world as a whole.

    Getting people believing they live in separate, sovereign nations which function independently from one another, instead of member states within a single undeclared empire which moves as one unit on the international stage.

    Getting people believing they control the fate of their nation via the democratic process, when in reality all large-scale politics are scripted puppet shows controlled by a plutocratic class who owns both the politicians and the media outlets which report on them.

    Getting people believing they are part of a virtuous rules-based international order which opposes totalitarian regimes to spread freedom and democracy, instead of a tyrannical empire that works to destroy any nation which disobeys its dictates.

    And above all, manufacturing the illusion that the oppressive, exploitative imperialist status quo is normal.

    It’s not the big, famous lies like those which preceded the invasion of Iraq that make up the bulk of the adhesive holding the empire together, it’s the small, mundane lies we’re fed every single day by the plutocratic media. The ones which distort our worldview by half-truths, spins and omissions designed to normalize a status quo of murder, theft and ecocide.

    This normalization happens in the way pundits and politicians treat any attempt to end wars or redress income inequality as freakish extremism and unrealistic fantasy, when in reality it’s the most sane and normal thing in the world and the only thing unrealistic about it is the fact that attempts to advance those agendas are always sabotaged by those same pundits and politicians.

    The normalization also happens in the way endless wars, starvation deaths by US sanctions, the looming threat of total extinction via climate collapse or nuclear war, rapidly exacerbating income inequality and increasing tyranny at home and abroad are not treated as newsworthy stories, while celebrity gossip and partisan bickering between AOC and Marjorie Taylor Greene makes headline news. Every day the news media fail to report on the greatest horrors that the empire has unleashed on our world while focusing on vapid trivialities, they help normalize the horrors.

    If the mass media actually existed to share important information about the world, the US-backed genocide in Yemen would be front-page news every day instead of something which gets a marginal mention once every few weeks. Every day it isn’t, this outrageous abuse is normalized.

    If the mass media actually existed to share important information about the world, the fact that Americans are getting poorer and poorer while billionaires multiply their wealth during the pandemic would be brought front and center to everyone’s attention. Every day it isn’t, this outrageous abuse is normalized.

    If the mass media actually existed to share important information about the world, the fact that the US military just spent trillions of dollars on a decades-long occupation of Afghanistan that accomplished nothing besides making horrible people rich would have been a national scandal. Every day it isn’t, this outrageous abuse is normalized.

    But the mass media do not exist to share important information about the world. They exist to share important disinformation about the world. If they did not do this, the same US empire which is decrying the spread of disinformation today would collapse into its own footprint.

    The US empire is without exception the single most corrupt and destructive force on this planet, and it’s not even close. It is the very last institution on earth that should be in charge of deciding what online content is true and what is “disinformation”. Absolute dead last, without exaggeration.

    Depraved institutions which lie constantly and have killed millions and displaced tens of millions just since the turn of this century should not be the Ministry of Truth for the world’s online communication systems. This should be extremely obvious to everyone.

    _______________________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi or . If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at  or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded,  to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, 

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Facebook News

    Facebook has today launched a public education campaign to help people in five Pacific Island countries and territories learn how to identify and combat health-related misinformation.

    The locations and languages are Wallis & Futuna (French), New Caledonia (French), Tonga (English and Tongan), Solomon Islands (English and Solomon Islands Pijin), and Cook Islands (English).

    The campaign, which follows an earlier launch in Samoa, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, will run for five weeks and includes graphics and videos.

    The content is designed to encourage three key behaviours by Facebook users:

    • Awareness – Be informed that misinformation exists
    • Investigation – Find out more to confirm if the information is indeed false
    • Action – Visit the local health authority to get accurate information

    Mia Garlick, director of public policy for Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Islands, says: “One of our commitments is to connect people to reliable information, and give people the tools to make informed decisions about the information they see on Facebook.

    “We are extending our efforts to reach more people across the Pacific, ensuring they can easily compare what they see with official public health resources.

    “We will continue to work with health experts including the World Health Organisation (WHO), and local partners, to make sure that we have the right policies in place to reduce the spread of harmful covid-19 and covid-19 vaccine misinformation on our platform.”

    Throughout the pandemic, Facebook has worked closely with WHO to direct people to authoritative covid-19 information, and to do more to identify and take action to remove incorrect claims about the virus.

    The campaigns can be found at:
    Wallis & Futuna (French)
    New Caledonia (French)
    Tonga (English)
    Tonga (Tongan)
    Solomon Islands (English)
    Solomon Islands (Solomon Islands Pijin)
    Cook Islands (English)

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The ultimate goal of every totalitarian system is to establish complete control over society and every individual within it in order to achieve ideological uniformity and eliminate any and all deviation from it. This goal can never be achieved, of course, but it is the raison d’être of all totalitarian systems, regardless of what forms they take and ideologies they espouse. You can dress totalitarianism up in Hugo Boss-designed Nazi uniforms, Mao suits, or medical-looking face masks, its core desire remains the same: to remake the world in its paranoid image … to replace reality with its own “reality.”

    We are right in the middle of this process currently, which is why everything feels so batshit crazy. The global capitalist ruling classes are implementing a new official ideology, in other words, a new “reality.” That’s what an official ideology is. It’s more than just a set of beliefs. Anyone can have any beliefs they want. Your personal beliefs do not constitute “reality.” In order to make your beliefs “reality,” you need to have the power to impose them on society. You need the power of the police, the military, the media, scientific “experts,” academia, the culture industry, the entire ideology-manufacturing machine.

    There is nothing subtle about this process. Decommissioning one “reality” and replacing it with another is a brutal business. Societies grow accustomed to their “realities.” We do not surrender them willingly or easily. Normally, what’s required to get us to do so is a crisis, a war, a state of emergency, or … you know, a deadly global pandemic.

    During the changeover from the old “reality” to the new “reality,” the society is torn apart. The old “reality” is being disassembled and the new one has not yet taken its place. It feels like madness, and, in a way, it is. For a time, the society is split in two, as the two “realities” battle it out for dominance. “Reality” being what it is (i.e., monolithic), this is a fight to the death. In the end, only one “reality” can prevail.

    This is the crucial period for the totalitarian movement. It needs to negate the old “reality” in order to implement the new one, and it cannot do that with reason and facts, so it has to do it with fear and brute force. It needs to terrorize the majority of society into a state of mindless mass hysteria that can be turned against those resisting the new “reality.” It is not a matter of persuading or convincing people to accept the new “reality.” It’s more like how you drive a herd of cattle. You scare them enough to get them moving, then you steer them wherever you want them to go. The cattle do not know or understand where they are going. They are simply reacting to a physical stimulus. Facts and reason have nothing to do with it.

    And this is what has been so incredibly frustrating for those of us opposing the roll-out of the “New Normal,” whether debunking the official Covid-19 narrative, or “Russiagate,” or the “Storming of the US Capitol,” or any other element of the new official ideology. (And, yes, it is all one ideology, not “communism,” or “fascism,” or any other nostalgia, but the ideology of the system that actually rules us, supranational global capitalism. We’re living in the first truly global-hegemonic ideological system in human history. We have been for the last 30 years. If you are touchy about the term “global capitalism,” go ahead and call it “globalism,” or “crony capitalism,” or “corporatism,” or whatever other name you need to. Whatever you call it, it became the unrivaled globally-hegemonic ideological system when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s. Yes, there are pockets of internal resistance, but it has no external adversaries, so its progression toward a more openly totalitarian structure is logical and entirely predictable.)

    Anyway, what has been so incredibly frustrating is that many of us have been operating under the illusion that we are engaged in a rational argument over facts (e.g., the facts of Russiagate, Literal-Hitlergate, 9/11, Saddam’s WMDs, Douma, the January 6 “insurrection,” the official Covid narrative, etc.) This is not at all what is happening. Facts mean absolutely nothing to the adherents of totalitarian systems.

    You can show the New Normals the facts all you like. You can show them the fake photos of people dead in the streets in China in March of 2020. You can show them the fake projected death rates. You can explain how the fake PCR tests work, how healthy people were deemed medical “cases.” You can show them all the studies on the ineffectiveness of masks. You can explain the fake “hospitalization” and “death” figures, send them articles about the unused “emergency hospitals,” the unremarkable age-and-population-adjusted death rates, cite the survival rates for people under 70, the dangers and pointlessness of “vaccinating” children. None of this will make the slightest difference.

    Or, if you’ve bought the Covid-19 narrative, but haven’t completely abandoned your critical faculties, you can do what Glenn Greenwald has been doing recently. You can demonstrate how the corporate media have intentionally lied, again and again, to whip up mass hysteria over “domestic terrorism.” You can show people videos of the “violent domestic terrorists” calmly walking into the Capitol Building in single file, like a high-school tour group, having been let in by members of Capitol Security. You can debunk the infamous “fire-extinguisher murder” of Brian Sicknik that never really happened. You can point out that the belief that a few hundred unarmed people running around in the Capitol qualifies as an “insurrection,” or an “attempted coup,” or “domestic terrorism,” is delusional to the point of being literally insane. This will also not make the slightest difference.

    I could go on, and I’m sure I will as the “New Normal” ideology becomes our new “reality” over the course of the next several years. My point, at the moment, is … this isn’t an argument. The global-capitalist ruling classes, government leaders, the corporate media, and the New Normal masses they have instrumentalized are not debating with us. They know the facts. They know the facts contradict their narratives. They do not care. They do not have to. Because this isn’t about facts. It’s about power.

    I’m not saying that facts don’t matter. Of course, they matter. They matter to us. I’m saying, let’s recognize what this is. It isn’t a debate or a search for the truth. The New Normals are disassembling one “reality” and replacing it with a new “reality.” (Yes, I know that reality exists in some fundamental ontological sense, but that isn’t the “reality” I’m talking about here, so please do not send me angry emails railing against Foucault and postmodernism.)

    The pressure to conform to the new “reality” is already intense and it’s going to get worse as vaccination passes, public mask-wearing, periodic lockdowns, etc., become normalized. Those who don’t conform will be systematically demonized, socially and/or professionally ostracized, segregated, and otherwise punished. Our opinions will be censored. We will be “canceled,” deplatformed, demonitized, and otherwise silenced. Our views will be labeled “potentially harmful.” We will be accused of spreading “misinformation,” of being “far-right extremists,” “racists,” “anti-Semites,” “conspiracy theorists,” “anti-vaxxers,” “anti-global-capitalist violent domestic terrorists,” or just garden variety “sexual harassers,” or whatever they believe will damage us the most.

    This will happen in both the public and personal spheres. Not just governments, the media, and corporations, but your colleagues, friends, and family will do this. Strangers in shops and restaurants will do this. Most of them will not do it consciously. They will do it because your non-conformity represents an existential threat to them … a negation of their new “reality” and a reminder of the reality they surrendered in order to remain a “normal” person and avoid the punishments described above.

    This is nothing new, of course. It is how “reality” is manufactured, not only in totalitarian systems, but in every organized social system. Those in power instrumentalize the masses to enforce conformity with their official ideology. Totalitarianism is just its most extreme and most dangerously paranoid and fanatical form.

    So, sure, keep posting and sharing the facts, assuming you can get them past the censors, but let’s not kid ourselves about what we’re up against. We’re not going to wake the New Normals up with facts. If we could, we would have done so already. This is not a civilized debate about facts. This is a fight. Act accordingly.

    The post Manufacturing (New Normal) “Reality” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Image from Imgur @i.imgur.com

    Orientation

    As I was looking at images to place at the beginning of this article, I was struck by how many images and quotes there were of Le Bon. It is pretty amazing for someone whose first work was published in 1895 and whose last works are still around 100 years old. It is especially strange given how unscientific his methods were and how recent empirical studies of crowds like David Miller’s Introduction to Collective Behavior and Collective Action contradicts virtually everything Le Bon claimed. Why is Le Bon’s work still circulating despite lack of scientific rigor? Why have the last fifty years of research on crowds that have a solid scientific basis been ignored?

    Purpose of this article

    The purpose of this article is to:

    • Expose the propagandist roots and branches of our biases against crowds while showing some of the scientific evidence that supports the actual behavior of crowds.
    • To outline what historical events occurred that supported the prejudice against crowds.
    • Propose that it is ruling-class fears of crowds that fuels the perpetuation of unscientific theories about crowds.
    • Propose that ruling class fears that working-class people mobilized into crowds will seize their resources, destroy their property and enslave them.

    Crowds vs Masses

    Crowds are large collections of people who meet at the same place at the same time and are large enough that it is difficult to have a central conversation. A loudspeaker, microphone or some external device is necessary to have a single central discussion.  There are different kinds of crowds. There are casual crowds like those that meet by chance at the scene of an accident or a fire. They may congregate to watch a building go up or be torn down. A second kind of crowd are long lines that form to buy tickets to ball games or musical concerts.

    An audience is a more formal crowd with a more deliberate focus. Examples are attending a musical concert or a sporting event. Lasty, there are unconventional crowds which can lead to riots, lynchings, protests and demonstrations. Mass behavior involves large numbers of people who are spatially dispersed but participate in common activities like fads or fashions.  Mass behavior involves the use of radio (Orson Wells, War of the Worlds) television, movies which often lead to rumors or urban legends.

    Questionnaire on Crowds

    In order to understand the purposes of this article, I ask that you spend about 25 to 30 minutes answering the following true-false questions. For the answer to be true, it simply means most of the time, not all the time.  For the answer to be false, it just means it rarely happens, not never happens. Follow your answer with a one sentence justification. Feel free to draw from your experience as well as what you’ve read. It is important to answer quickly and spontaneously and not dwell on the answers. One purpose of the questionnaire is to see if you think there are any significant differences between how people in crowds behave (collective behavior) as opposed to how small groups or individuals behave.

    Here are the True – False questions:

    • Most crowds consist of strangers, rather than family, friends or acquaintances.
    • The percentage of violent behavior is higher in crowds than in small groups such as a musical band or a baseball team.
    • The behavior of crowds is more likely to be unanimous than the behavior of small groups.
    • Crowds of people are more likely to engage in unusual or extraordinary behaviors than either groups or individuals.
    • The behavior of individuals and small groups is more likely to be rational than the behavior of a crowd, which is more likely to be irrational.
    • There are certain kinds of personalities that are drawn to crowds that you could predict would join a crowd if you knew enough about their personalities.
    • There is a disproportionately higher number of working-class people in crowds compared to other social classes.
    • Compared to people without legal convictions, there is a higher percentage of criminals in crowds.
    • Individuals and small groups that are more likely to deliberate and plan their actions are less likely to be spontaneous.
    • You could predict that most individuals are more likely to lose their personal identity in a crowd rather than alone or in small groups.
    • Emotions are more likely to spread by contagions in a crowd rather than in a small group.
    • Groups are easier to disperse than crowds because people in crowds want to linger longer.
    • There has been more research done on crowds than on groups because the behavior in crowds has greater social impact.
    • People conform less to norms in crowds than they do in groups or as individuals.
    • Most violence in crowds is caused by the participants in the crowd rather than the police.
    • There is a higher degree of unpredictability of behavior in crowds than there is in small groups or within an individual.
    • The goals of a crowd are more extreme and unconventional than the goals of groups or individuals.
    • Riots are equally likely to happen regardless of the season of the year.
    • The most typical reaction to a natural disaster or emotional shock is panic – that is, uncontrolled individualistic flight as opposed to a rational, deliberate response.
    • There is a correlation between which people will engage in a protest and their political beliefs before the protests.
    • The most likely group to join a movement is the group who has absolute deprivation of resources as opposed to relative deprivation or no deprivation.

     The last three questions are about mass behavior, not crowd behavior:

    • Fads are less predictable than fashions.
    • Rumors begin mostly because people lose their ability to investigate before coming to a conclusion.
    • Fashions exist in all societies, tribal as well as industrial.

    Myths vs Facts About Crowds

    In their book, Social Psychology, Delamater Myers and Collett, citing the research of Carl Couch, Clark McPhail, David Schweingruber and Ronald Wohlstein argued that there are seven basic myths about crowds. They are:

    • Irrationality
    • Emotionality
    • Suggestibility – mindless behavior
    • Destructiveness
    • Spontaneity
    • Anonymity
    • Unanimity of purpose

    Through these seven myths we are likely to see why all the answers in relation to crowds to the True-False questions are false. The only true answers are the first two questions about masses. Rather than explaining why every single question on crowds is false, I will speak generally and then answer a few questions specifically.

    Are crowds wholes that are less than the sum of their parts?

    One of the great underlying beliefs about crowds is that terrible things happen in a crowd that somehow would not happen in a small group and especially at an individual level.  Individuals are seen as rational, non-violent and prudent, but once the individual is surrounded by enough other individuals, things turn sour. The belief is that while individuals and groups may have differences with each other, those differences melt away in a crowd as individual members turn into a group hive. In fact, differences between individuals and small groups are maintained in crowds. To cite one example, in riots, crowds rarely act in unison. Some throw rocks and break windows. Others climb telephone poles and smash statues. Others disapprove and try to talk the others out of armed conflict. Still others are altruistic and help protesters who have been injured by cops.

    Who is orderly and disorderly in crowds?

    Speaking of cops, research on mass psychology has shown that most of the time, contrary to Le Bon, riots are started by the police, not the crowd. Furthermore, crowds assemble and disassemble at ballgames and concerts without any police necessary. Once gathered crowds do not stick together like honey. They easily disperse and really do not need the police to do so. I have been to many a Yankee and Knicks game in which the crowd, anywhere from 15 thousand to 30 thousand people leave the game, peacefully get on the train and talk about the ballgame. There is no need for police because nothing controversial happens. For conservatives like Le Bon, they cannot imagine that crowds regulate themselves. For them crowds are filled with animalistic, hedonistic barbarians who need the police to whip them into order.

    Are working-class people more likely to be disorderly?

    There is some truth to the fact that a higher percentage of working-class people will be in crowds. This has more to do with the reality that middle-class or upper-middle class people can afford to take a taxi to a ball game or a concert instead of taking the train. But this has little to do with the behavior of working-class crowds. Furthermore, plenty of protests are filled with upper-middle class anarchists who torch police cars and topple monuments. There is no clear relationship between social class and crowd violence.

    How unpredictable are crowds?

    Another one of Le Bon’s mistaken generalizations about crowds is that people in crowds act without rhyme or reason. This demonstrates, as an upper middle-class doctor, Le Bon has no understanding of all the deliberation and planning that goes into protests on the part of the organizers. This planning goes on weeks before the event. It is true that unpredictable things happen in protects, but they are exceptions to the rule. Furthermore, individuals act in unpredictable ways, as in the case of mass shootings. Individuals get caught up in cults and act in unpredictable and astonishing ways. Cults are large groups, not crowds.

    Are emotions in crowds contagious?

    People are every bit as emotional in small groups as they are in crowds. There is nothing contagious about emotions in crowds. People maintain emotional judgement while in the crowd. In fact, the leaders of protests harangue people to sing and chant as a way to unify the group. Just being in a crowd does not automatically unify the individuals. It takes work to do so. When faced with members of a crowd who become hysterical, rather than mindlessly joining in, other members of the crowd will distance themselves and exercise the same prudence that individuals or people in small groups will.

    Is the crowd to social life what Freud’s id is to individual life?

    Le Bon, Freud, Bion and the rest of the crowd psychologists we will soon meet think that at the social level the crowd is like the id, lurking on the margins of society waiting for a chance to jump out and wreak havoc. This is exemplified in the movie Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. In natural disasters these crowd psychologists imagine that the socialized ego is swarmed by the individualistic dictum, “every person for himself”. They imagine the results are pillaging and raping. The trouble is that research on behavior in natural disasters shows that people are consistently heroic and cooperative.

    One hundred years of neglect of scientific research on crowds

    Lastly, unlike individual psychology and group psychology the scientific study of crowds and masses lags way behind. It wasn’t until the late 1960s that the first research was done. Why is this? On the one hand, studying crowds is far more difficult because crowds are so large and their life-times short. But something else was going on. Why were Le Bon’s, Tarde’s and Sighele’s, speculations allowed to stand unchallenged and repeated mindlessly in social psychology textbooks for almost 100 years? In large part it was because their theories served the interests of the ruling class.

    Historical Reasons for the Biases Against Crowds

    Growth of cities

    One of major changes in European history and geography was the gradual reversal of numbers of people living in cities compared to those of people living on farms.  People move to cities in part because there is more work, but also, as the saying goes, “city air makes you free”.  Some people felt trapped by the nosiness and stifling customs of rural life. Non-conformists to religious traditions, artists and hustlers with big dreams were drawn to cities for a chance to start fresh. Living on a farm, the general expectations was that you would engage in the same occupation as your parents. Moving to the city broke that tradition and it raised expectations. Especially those living in coastal cities who were exposed not only to people coming from different cities within Yankeedom, but people from other countries were also looking for work. Different languages, different religions, and different political traditions converged.

    There are rarely, if ever, crowds in rural areas. While farmers may get together on holidays, everyone knows everyone else and rarely are strangers invited.  Even when farmers would go to town to get supplies, the overwhelming number of people knew each other and greeted each other. There were no stadiums or concert halls in which large numbers of people could congregate to watch professional sports or music. Long before the Industrial Revolution, crowds in cities would gather to hear political speeches. So, what we have in pre-industrial cities are relatively rootless people with raised expectations, surrounded by strangers from different cultures for whom being in a crowd is becoming normal.

    The Great French revolutions

    As most of you know, the French Revolution of 1789 overthrew both the king and the aristocrats as the merchants rose to power on the backs of artisans and peasants. The revolution was also anti-clerical. Churches and chateaux were burned to the ground. The aristocrats never forgot this. As if your memory needed any jogging, there were more revolutions in Paris in 1830 and 1848. In all these revolutions, crowds are violent and know where the upper classes live. Doesn’t it start to make sense that the study of crowds would never be objective so long as the upper classes were threatened by them and therefore controlled the research on crowds? In this case they made sure no research was done.

    Industrialization

    At the end of the 18th century and throughout the 19th century, cities became industrialized.  People were forced off the middle of streets to make way for wheeled vehicles accompanied by horses and later, trolley cars. Grid systems of streets were built which sped up transportation and the circulation of goods. Industrial capitalists built factories in cities as opposed to artisan shops in the countryside (the putting out system). The emergence of factories had enormous revolutionary potential because it brought large numbers of people working under horrible conditions together. For 12-15 hours a day, at least six days a week, people have a common experience while all in the same place and the same time.

    Formation of unions

    It is no accident that unions first formed in factories. When common experience is concentrated at the same place and same time, people are likely to compare experiences and accumulate grievances. Some workers begin to recognize that they have collective power if they can organize themselves. They can strike for better working conditions and better wages. Unions made crowds more dangerous because crowds can, in an extremely chilling way, stop and start the work process itself. This is like cutting off the blood supply for vampiric capitalists.

    Emergence of socialism

    The first socialists were theoretical. William Godwin was the first theoretical anarchist, writing Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. In the early 19th century, there were utopian communities set up by Robert Owen, Charles Fourier and others but none of these communities were connected to unions or workers movements. It wasn’t until the writings of Marx and Engels that socialism was really connected to worker’s struggles. The socialism of Marx and Engels or the anarchism of Bakunin both said to workers, “it is not enough to have tiny little pieces of pie. You create all the wealth; you deserve the whole pie.”

    In order to gain the whole pie, workers in crowds had to move in a mass, take over factories and run them for themselves, while confiscating the private property of the upper classes. For the upper classes, socialism and the prospects of crowds burning down their houses, and peasants taking over their land was their worst nightmare. The Paris Commune of 1871 was the first revolutionary situation that was inspired by socialism as a movement.

    Stock Market instabilities

    Crowd instabilities also came from the capitalist side, between 1873 to 1896 when the stock market was very unstable creating panics and depressions. This meant stock market traders were wheeling and dealing on the floor of the stock market at the same time that people who had money in banks were worried about their savings and, in some cases, making runs on the bank.

    Crowd Psychologists

    Origins of Crowd Theory

    Crowd theorists were social Darwinists whose ideas of a liberal society were of individuals who took care of only themselves. Beginning about 1870, crowd psychologists claimed that Darwinian evolution demonstrated that progress was a slow process, and any sudden changes based on violence were throwbacks to premodern times. Crowds were looked upon as akin to Herbert Spencer’s undifferentiated matter.

    According to H. Stuart Hughes, (Consciousness and Society), beginning in the 1890s intellectuals became obsessed with the prospect that unconscious, primitive, and emotional forces were driving things. Crowd psychologists were united in rejecting sociological theorists such as Durkheim and Marx because they ignored emotions and unconscious motivation. What was really driving crowds, they thought, was below the level of consciousness. For crowd psychologists, individuals were both more than and less than the sum of their parts. The four major crowd theorists were Hippolyte Taine, Scipio Sighele, Gabriel Tarde, and Gustave Le Bon.

    Crowd Theorists

    Taine

    Taine’s Origins of Contemporary France (written between 1876 and 1894) was a conservative attack on the Enlightenment. Taine blamed the Enlightenment ideas, including Rousseau’s, for what he considered the bloodbath of the French Revolution. Taine believed that the line between normal cognition and hallucinations, dreams and delusions, was closer than we might suspect. He cited evidence from research on organic lesions of the brain, hypnotism, and split personalities. He determined that the dramatic transformation of humans into savages is caused by what he called “the laws of mental contagion.” With the exception of the hypnosis model, Taine’s book embodies all the rudiments of French crowd psychology. For Taine, all leaders were the crazed dregs of society.

    According to Taine, the Enlightenment failed to factor in the amount of time it took for humans to develop from barbarity to civility. Enlighteners weren’t interested in how people really were, but only as they could be measured by an abstract, ideal humanity. Taine thought the French Revolution was a relapse into primitive barbarism. Like Hume, Taine thought that reason was the passive servant of the passions. Bodily needs, animal instinct, prejudices which Taine thought were hereditary, were really driving people.

    Criminalization of crowds (Sighele) 

    Theories of hypnosis were split in two directions. Followers of Charcot claimed that being suggestible was a sign of psychopathology and only certain types of people could be hypnotized. The Nancy school of Bergheim argued that anyone could be hypnotized. The criminal school of Sighele sided with Charcot, arguing that crowds were composed of criminal individuals who were naturally suggestible. He followed the work of Lombroso who was a medical scholar of deviants in the military. Lombroso measured the skulls and anatomical characteristics of 3,000 soldiers.

    According to Serge Moscovici (The Age of the Crowd), mass psychology was treated simply as part of criminal anthropology. Crowds were seen as mobs, scum, and made up of men who were out of control and would destroy anything in their path. Sighele claimed that hypnotism can explain the process by which individual minds become susceptible to outside forces, leading to actions that are carried out automatically, unconsciously, and then spread to others by contagion. The conservative hand Sighele played was transparent in his labeling of social revolutionaries such as socialists, anarchists, or even striking workers as part of the criminal crowd. The hysteria of stock market traders was never seen as criminal.

    Tarde

    More than Taine or Sighele, Gabriel Tarde placed the crowd on a broader social spectrum. All social life, according to Tarde, is based on imitation, and the process of crowd formation and reproduction simply comes from the laws of imitation sped up. He described the crowd as the first stage of association—rudimentary, fleeting, and undifferentiated. From this foundation, more stable and ongoing groups form, including corporations, political parties, and religious bodies such as churches or monasteries. Unlike other crowd psychologists, Tarde thought that literacy, newspapers, and mass communication would replace the crowd with what he called “the public.”

    Tarde also thought that the extremes of behavior demonstrated in crowds are unique to cities. Unlike his right-wing crowd theorists, Tarde thought the madness of crowds is a product of civilization. He argued that crowd madness was uncommon in rural areas and among pre-state societies. Both Tarde and Le Bon supported the Nancy school, which suggested that there were social-psychological processes that any individual could fall prey to, if exposed to them. They believed that the solitary individual was superior to the group in all ways.

    Le Bon

    Le Bon concocted a mix of anthropological, social Darwinist, and psychological theories, which were in the same family as Taine and the racist Joseph Gobineau. He thought that cranial size could be used as an accurate measure of intelligence and he believed that people in primitive societies had small skulls. Le Bon thought the European race was superior, and only Caucasian males could transcend the constraints of biology.

    Like Sighele and Tarde, Le Bon thought that what happens to an individual when in a crowd was analogous to what happens in hypnosis. All crowd theorists up to Le Bon agreed that the crowd was no more than what was already inside the psychology of individuals. They also believed that whatever destructive behavior transpired in a crowd was due to the lower-class origins of its members. Le Bon was the first to say that all personalities, regardless of class and intelligence, are susceptible to the pull of the crowd.

    According to Serge Moscovici, Le Bon directly challenged Locke’s theory of the mind. As was par for the course in the Enlightenment, Locke believed that as the mind of humanity was gradually ridding itself of religious terrors, there would be fewer and fewer secrets. Le Bon, in contrast, said that revolutions shake the mind from its perch, sending it tumbling and howling into the abyss of the primitive world, which is driven by heredity, instinct, custom, and race. For Locke, visions and dreams were overridden by simple and complex reasoning. For Le Bon, crowds could not follow reason but instead learned by association, just as individuals do in dreams.

    Furthermore, crowd theorists claimed that people in crowds do not deliberate, but are mesmerized by leaders through the power of hypnotic suggestion. When Locke argued that the truth can be seen with open eyes, he neglected to note that crowds are driven by unconscious primitive animalism, which takes over and spreads by what Le Bon called “contagion.” This contagion does not lead to prudent, rational judgment but instead can lead to cruelty or heroism. These extreme reactions are amplified by the feeling of anonymity that grips individuals, allowing a sense of individual responsibility to evaporate.

    Le Bon belonged to a liberal middle-class tradition that argued against both revolution and the weakness of liberal parliamentary systems. Despite his argument’s mediocre quality, rhetorically flattering the reader and lacking depth, Le Bon must have struck a nerve. According to Moscovici, no French thinker other than Georges Sorel and Alexander de Tocqueville has had an influence as great as Le Bon. Le Bon published The Crowd in 1890 and it was a best seller. Why was this? He mixed the disciplines of politics and psychology in an age of growing disciplinary specialization. Le Bon probably tapped into the fears that the middle and upper class and upper classes had about what would happen eventually if the new “democracy” was to expand.

    Distorting the work of Alfred Espinas

    It is worth noting that crowd psychologists distorted the work of Alfred Espinas on wasps and hornets to create an analogy between human crowds and insect societies. Espinas argued that societies were more than an aggregate of individuals and pointed out that alarm and danger were transmitted by visual contagion. Far from viewing this intensely social life of insects as a liability, he saw it as a strength in building bonds through cooperation.

    Crowd psychologists seized on his discussion of the invisible communication of wasps and hornets when confronted with an enemy to draw an analogy to crowds. Just as insects communicate collectively when faced with danger, so crowd behavior becomes contagious among spectators in a theater or when aroused by a great orator. Unlike Espinas, they saw very little, if anything, constructive in this. Crowd psychologists thought the communicability of emotions beyond the individual was proof of the primitive mentality of the crowd.

    Crowd Psychologist Distortions

    Here are Susanna Barrows’ (Distorting Mirrors) damning conclusions about crowd-psychologist theories:

    • Taine, Sighele and Le Bon did not do any empirical research (Tarde was a possible exception).
    • Taine’s work contains grave errors in the scientific method. The idea of empirical investigation was wholly alien to him.
    • What evidence they collected was extremely selective to support their case (again, with the possible exception of Tarde).
    • Statistics indicate that women committed many fewer crimes than men, yet women were blamed for a disproportionate amount of the violence that occurred.
    • Le Bon indiscriminately lumped together socialists and anarchists with common criminals.
    • Crowd psychologists distorted the work of Espinas on wasps and hornets to make an analogy between human crowds and insect societies.

    The Legacy of the 20th Century

    The events of the 20th century hardly provided a break for poor conservatives hoping for a return to religion, God, kings and aristocrats. The Russian revolution, the stock market crash in 1929, Fascism in Germany and Italy and Spain, the Spanish revolution, the Chinese Revolution and the Cuban Revolution vanquished those hopes. This does not even count the Zoot Suit race riots in 1943, Watts in 1967 or the Rodney King riots in 1992.

    Mass Media Propaganda Towards Crowds and Riots Carries Forward Obsolete Crowd Psychology

    Check any newspaper or TV news program in Yankeedom and watch how the crowd and the rioters are treated when they describe a protest or a natural disaster. If it is a riot, does the paper ever show the variety of responses that go on during the riot? No, they focus only on the rioters and assume everyone in the crowd was complicit. When they describe the origin of the riot, do they consider the research which says the police are usually the perpetuators of the riot? Not on your life! The police are depicted as restoring order rather than as being the perpetuators of disorder. Lastly, in a natural disaster do the newscasters show the overwhelming instances of cooperation, compared to natural disaster participants helping themselves in supermarkets and sporting goods stores? No, they don’t. Rather the echo chamber of capitalist media blares out “looting, looting, looting” just like they declared “weapons of mass destruction” in the lead-up to the attack on Iraq twenty years ago.

    Conclusion

    I began this article with a questionnaire designed to expose your prejudices against crowds. I contrasted these biases against what research on mass psychology actually shows about crowd behavior. The heart of my article is to show why these biases continue in spite of scientific research to the contrary. I identified the growth of cities, the revolutions in France in the 19th century, the process of industrialization, the formation of unions, the rise of socialism and stock market instabilities in the 19th century. What do these events have to do with biases against crowds?

    The answer can be found in the theories of mostly right-wing crowd theorists who wrote in the 2nd half of the 19th century. These theorists and their ruling class masters were terrified that crowds of working-class people would take their land, confiscate their resources and burn their chateaux to the ground. There was a great deal at stake for them. To call the people in crowds enraged, childish, criminal, beastly, stampeding, savage, irrational, impulsive, uncivilized, primitive, bloodthirsty, cruel and fickle is to dismiss, embarrass and mock anyone who participates. It is also a warning to future workers to stay away from crowds.

    We socialists have been the victims of a 150-year propaganda campaign that was started by crowd psychologists in the 1860s and has been perpetuated by all sources of media throughout the 20th century. Amazingly, social psychologists who pride themselves on filling their textbooks with empirical evidence, have given this discredited crowd theory a pass. There is so much money for research on what sells products and little or no money is available to study what moves crowds and masses. It is vitally important for the ruling classes to forestall the great day of reckoning by scaring people away from joining crowds that will be one of many vehicles for overthrowing them.

    • First published at Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism

    The post Ruling Class Fears of The Day of Reckoning: Historical Causes for the Biases Against Crowds first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Photo credit: BPM Media – Protest at G7 summit in Cornwall UK

    The world has been treated to successive spectacles of national leaders gathering at a G7 Summit in Cornwall and a NATO Summit in Brussels.

    The U.S. corporate media have portrayed these summits as chances for President Biden to rally the leaders of the world’s democratic nations in a coordinated response to the most serious problems facing the world, from the COVID pandemic, climate change and global inequality to ill-defined “threats to democracy” from Russia and China.

    But there’s something seriously wrong with this picture. Democracy means “rule by the people.” While that can take different forms in different countries and cultures, there is a growing consensus in the United States that the exceptional power of wealthy Americans and corporations to influence election results and government policies has led to a de facto system of government that fails to reflect the will of the American people on many critical issues.

    So when President Biden meets with the leaders of democratic countries, he represents a country that is, in many ways, an undemocratic outlier rather than a leader among democratic nations. This is evident in:

    – the “legalized bribery” of 2020’s $14.4 billion federal election, compared with recent elections in Canada and the U.K. that cost less than 1% of that, under strict rules that ensure more democratic results;

    – a defeated President proclaiming baseless accusations of fraud and inciting a mob to invade the U.S. Congress on January 6 2021;

    – news media that have been commercialized, consolidated, gutted and dumbed down by their corporate owners, making Americans easy prey for misinformation by unscrupulous interest groups, and leaving the U.S. in 44th place on Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index;

    – the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, with over two million people behind bars, and systemic police violence on a scale never seen in other wealthy nations;

    – the injustice of extreme inequality, poverty and cradle-to-grave debt for millions in an otherwise wealthy nation;

    – an exceptional lack of economic and social mobility compared to other wealthy countries that is the antithesis of the mythical “American Dream”;

    – privatized, undemocratic and failing education and healthcare systems;

    – a recent history of illegal invasions, massacres of civilians, torture, drone assassinations, extraordinary renditions and indefinite detention at Guantanamo—with no accountabllity;

    – and, last but not least, a gargantuan war machine capable of destroying the world, in the hands of this dysfunctional political system.

    Fortunately, though, Americans are not the only ones asking what is wrong with American democracy. The Alliance of Democracies Foundation (ADF), founded by former Danish Prime Minister and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, conducted a poll of 50,000 people in 53 countries between February and April 2021, and found that people around the world share our concerns about America’s dystopian political system and imperial outrages.

    Probably the most startling result of the poll to Americans would be its finding that more people around the world (44%) see the United States as a threat to democracy in their countries than China (38%) or Russia (28%), which makes nonsense of U.S. efforts to justify its revived Cold War on Russia and China in the name of democracy.

    In a larger poll of 124,000 people that ADF conducted in 2020, countries where large majorities saw the United States as a danger to democracy included China, but also Germany, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, France, Greece, Belgium, Sweden and Canada.

    After tea with the Queen at Windsor Castle, Biden swooped into Brussels on Air Force One for a NATO summit to advance its new “Strategic Concept,” which is nothing more than a war plan for World War III against both Russia and China.

    But we take solace from evidence that the people of Europe, whom the NATO war plan counts on as front-line troops and mass casualty victims, are not ready to follow President Biden to war. A January 2021 survey by the European Council on Foreign Affairs found that large majorities of Europeans want to remain neutral in any U.S. war on Russia or China. Only 22% would want their country to take the U.S. side in a war on China, and 23% in a war on Russia.

    Few Americans realize that Biden already came close to war with Russia in March and April, when the United States and NATO supported a new Ukrainian offensive in its civil war against Russian-allied separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. Russia moved tens of thousands of heavily-armed troops to its borders with Ukraine, to make it clear that it was ready to defend its Ukrainian allies and was quite capable of doing so. On April 13th, Biden blinked, turned round two U.S. destroyers that were steaming into the Black Sea and called Putin to request the summit that is now taking place.

    The antipathy of ordinary people everywhere toward the U.S. determination to provoke military confrontation with Russia and China begs serious questions about the complicity of their leaders in these incredibly dangerous, possibly suicidal, U.S. policies. When ordinary people all over the world can see the dangers and pitfalls of following the United States as a model and a leader, why do their neoliberal leaders keep showing up to lend credibility to the posturing of U.S. leaders at summits like the G7 and NATO?

    Maybe it is precisely because the United States has succeeded in what the corporate ruling classes of other nations also aspire to, namely, greater concentrations of wealth and power and less public interference in their “freedom” to accumulate and control them.

    Maybe the leaders of other wealthy countries and military powers are genuinely awed by the dystopian American Dream as the example par excellence of how to sell inequality, injustice and war to the public in the name of freedom and democracy.

    In that case, the fact that people in other wealthy countries are not so easily led to war or lured into political passivity and impotence would only increase the awe of their leaders for their American counterparts, who literally laugh all the way to the bank as they pay lip service to the sanctity of the American Dream and the American People.

    Ordinary people in other countries are right to be wary of the Pied Piper of American “leadership,” but their rulers should be too. The fracturing and disintegration of American society should stand as a warning to neoliberal governments and ruling classes everywhere to be more careful what they wish for.

    Instead of a world in which other countries emulate or fall victim to America’s failed experiment in extreme neoliberalism, the key to a peaceful, sustainable and prosperous future for all the world’s people, including Americans, lies in working together, learning from each other and adopting policies that serve the public good and improve the lives of all, especially those most in need. There’s a name for that. It’s called democracy.

    The post Why Democracies in G7 and NATO Should Reject U.S. Leadership first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • In April, GOP lawmakers in Connecticut launched a “Stop the Gas and Food Tax” campaign, which characterizes an effort by 13 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a plan to “punish” the middle class. The effort their ire was directed at, the Transportation and Climate Initiative Program (TCI-P), contains provisions to cap and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.

    The post Disinformation Campaigns Target State Climate Initiatives appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    New Zealand’s leading daily newspaper has warned the country against complacency over the covid-19 pandemic and to look to Fiji for an example of how things can easily go wrong.

    In an editorial today, The New Zealand Herald has also criticised the government over its communication strategy and failure to counter a disinformation campaign threatening the national vaccination rollout.

    “Complacency is our greatest enemy, particularly while the director-general of health continues to report no community transmissions in his regular briefings and with just 5 percent of the population having received a second vaccine shot,” said the Herald.

    “Fiji has discovered geographical isolation is not enough to avoid the increased transmissible variants of covid. Vigilance and adherence to official advice remains crucial as the best mechanism we have to the defeating this damned thing.

    “Raising our prevention and contact tracing game after it has arrived is too late.”

    From early on in the covid-19 pandemic, it was obvious that consistent communication was essential for New Zealanders to maintain compliance with key measures to limit transmission of the virus, said the newspaper.

    “Now we know ‘influencers’ were deployed in Auckland’s March [2020] lockdown to push messages into social media as the government fretted about online posts undermining the pandemic response,” the Herald said.

    Jeopardising NZ’s response
    “It appears it was thought overly harsh critics condemning infected people for not self-isolating could truly jeopardise the country’s response. A newly released Cabinet paper said ‘social licence’ was crucial to a strong covid-19 response.

    “Such hostility could undermine the overall pandemic response, wrote covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins. ‘Public reaction to particular individuals who have not used the covid-19 Tracer app or otherwise failed to follow good practices suggests a possible erosion of this.’

    “So, the Government sought help from social media figures who were deemed to have sway in Māori, Pacific, Indian and youth communities. Hosts from radio stations Tarana, Flava, The Edge and Hauraki subsequently posted reassuring photos and messages, using the campaign’s hashtag #stayinforit.

    “Contrast this social media influencing tactic with the lack of action around countering misinformation on the vaccine.

    “Most will have by now seen or heard of the leaflets put in mailboxes in a concerted campaign to raise unfounded fears about the vaccine and undermine the protection offered by mass immunity.

    “The flyer was produced and distributed by a group called Voices for Freedom. Co-founder Claire Deeks ran as a candidate for Advance New Zealand at the last election, and was third on the party list.

    “The group claimed to be putting out two million flyers to coincide with the government’s vaccine campaign.”

    Information investigation
    The Herald noted how investigative journalist David Fisher had sought any communications about what government agencies might do to address the false claims being disseminated about the vaccine and was told “the information does not exist”.

    “For all its efforts and expense, Voices for Freedom failed to register as a threat.”

    The government itself had not always been clear in all its communications, with some “casual contacts” of positive cases being upgraded to “casual plus” without announcement or explanation in March this year, the newspaper said.

    “The Prime Minister was also accused of neglecting her own advice to ‘be kind’ when she publicly criticised a covid-infected person who continued to work at a KFC store.

    “Ultimately, the government is well aware the greatest risk is the public passively drifting off the necessary precautions rather than active resistance.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Recent media coverage of Israel and Palestine, not least by BBC News, has been full of the usual deceptive propaganda tropes: Israel is ‘responding’ or ‘reacting’ to Palestinian ‘provocation’ and ‘escalation’; Palestinian rockets ‘killed’ Israelis, but Palestinians ‘have died’ from unnamed causes; Israel has ‘armed forces’ and ‘security forces’, but Hamas has ‘militants’. And, as ever, Palestinians were killed in far greater numbers than Israelis. At least 248 Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombardment in Gaza, including 66 children. Palestinian rocket fire killed 12 in Israel, including one child.

    Imagine if the BBC reported:

    Palestinian security forces responded after Israeli militants enforcing the apartheid occupation attacked and injured Palestinian worshippers.

    BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen referred night after night on BBC News at Ten to ‘a war between Israel and Hamas’, a version of events pushed hard by Israel. As John Pilger said in a recent interview, ‘Bowen knows that’s wrong’. This is no war. In fact, the world has witnessed a massive attack by one of the world’s most powerful, lethal militaries, armed and supported to the hilt by the US (which sends $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel each year) and western allies, imposing a brutal occupation and deliberately subjecting the Palestinian civilian population to death, violence, terror and appalling hardship.

    Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned early on that heavy Israeli bombing was pushing Gaza to the edge of catastrophe:

    ‘The Israeli bombing is incredibly heavy and stronger than previous bombing campaigns. Relentless bombing has destroyed many homes and buildings all around us. It’s not safe to go outside, and no one is safe inside, people are trapped. Emergency health workers are taking incredible but necessary risks to move around.’

    On 19 May, the 10th day of intense Israeli bombardment of Gaza, the BBC News website carried headlines:

    ‘Israel targets Hamas chiefs’

    And:

    ‘Israel targets Gaza militants’

    So, why was Israel killing so many noncombatants, including children? Why were residences being flattened? The United Nations estimated that Israel had demolished 94 buildings in Gaza, comprising 461 housing and commercial units. Why were hospitals and clinics suffering so much damage? And buildings where media organisations were based?

    Why were there Israeli airstrikes in the area of the MSF clinic in Gaza City, killing at least 42 people including 10 children? An orphanage was also destroyed.

    The massacre was ‘one of the most horrific crimes’ Israel has committed during its ongoing war against the people of Gaza, according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor who added that:

    ‘the attack was not an isolated incident, but another example of Israel’s systematic policy that we have witnessed over the past six days.’

    As Tamara Nasser observed in a piece on the Electronic Intifada website, Israel was unable to substantiate its claim that ‘Hamas military intelligence were using the building’ when pressed to do so by US public radio network NPR.

    Nasser added:

    ‘Even if that Israeli claim were true, under the laws of war, Israel’s destruction of entire buildings would be wholly disproportionate.

    ‘Rather, Israel’s mass destruction of buildings and infrastructure appears to fit the pattern of the Dahiya Doctrine – named after its 2006 destruction of the southern suburb of Beirut.

    ‘The goal is to deliberately inflict such pain and suffering on the civilian population and society at large as to deter anyone from resisting against Israel’s occupation. This can be prosecuted as a war crime.’

    It also serves as a useful definition of terrorism.

    Christophe Deloire, Secretary General of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said via Twitter:

    ‘What the Israeli army asserts, namely that the alleged presence of Hamas in the buildings would make them legitimate military objectives is absolutely false from a legal point of view, since they also house civilians, such as the media.’

    He added:

    ‘Even assuming that the Israeli fire was necessary (which is absolutely not proven), the total destruction of the buildings demonstrates that the principles of distinction and proportionality have been flagrantly violated.’

    Indeed, RSF sent a letter to Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, urging an investigation of Israel’s targeting of the offices of 23 media organizations in Gaza during Israel’s bombardment.

    ‘False Equivalence Between Occupier And Occupied’

    Gregory Shupak wrote in a piece for Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, the US-based media watchdog, that corporate media coverage presented a ‘false equivalence between occupier and occupied’. He continued:

    ‘The fatal flaw in the “both sides” narrative is that only the Israeli side has ethnically cleansed and turned millions on the Palestinians’ side into refugees by preventing them from exercising their right to return to their homes. Israel is the only side subjecting anyone to apartheid and military occupation. It is only the Palestinian side—including those living inside of what is presently called Israel—that has been made to live as second-class citizens in their own land. That’s to say nothing of the lopsided scale of the death, injury and damage to infrastructure that Palestinians have experienced as compared to Israelis, both during the present offensive and in the longer term.’

    When last week’s truce ‘between Israel and Hamas’ was imminent, Jeremy Bowen told BBC viewers:

    ‘Now, the essentials of that conflict are not going to change. Until they do, there will be more trouble in the future.’

    But Israeli settler-colonialism, ethnic cleansing, lethal sanctions maintained by a brutal military occupation, apartheid, the killing and imprisonment of Palestinian children, Israel’s constant trampling of international law, and the daily humiliation of Palestinians constitute ‘trouble’ right now regardless of what happens ‘in the future’. These essential truths are regularly unmentioned or glossed over by Bowen, the BBC and the rest of a ‘mainstream’ media trying to ‘normalise the unthinkable’, by presenting violent occupation as a ‘clash’ between two sides competing for legitimacy.

    As Abby Martin noted in a video powerfully rebutting the Israeli claim that Hamas uses ‘human shields’ in Gaza:

    ‘Israel has intentionally made Gaza unliveable. The only way Gaza is able to exert pressure on Israel is by firing rockets. If they peacefully protest their conditions, they’re massacred just the same. If they do nothing, Israel continues to blockade them, erode their living conditions while ethnically cleansing the rest of their land.’

    This perspective – the Palestinian perspective – is almost entirely absent from news coverage. Moreover, WikiLeaks has revealed that when Israel’s forces invaded Gaza in 2009’s ‘Operation Cast Lead’, they  – Israel – did actually use Gazans as human shields. A classified US cable reported that Israeli soldiers:

    ‘testified to instances where Gazans were used as human shields, incendiary phosphorous shells were fired over civilian population areas, and other examples of excessive firepower that caused unnecessary fatalities and destruction of property.’

    During the latest phase of Israeli aggression, Israel’s Minister of Defence Benny Gantz warned:

    ‘No person, neighbourhood or area in Gaza is immune [from airstrikes]’

    This is a grotesque justification for war crimes. Where was the headlined outrage in response from ‘mainstream’ media that regularly cite defence of human rights as justification for war on countries like Iraq, Syria and Libya?

    Hamas: A ‘Convenient Monster’

    Hamas is regularly presented by corporate media as some kind of monster, a terrorist organisation with a declared intention of destroying Israel. This is a ‘convenient’ misrepresentation, as explained cogently in a recent interview with Frank Barat by Imad Alsoos, a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute, who is an expert on Hamas.

    Likewise, in an interview with Afshin Rattansi on RT’s ‘Going Underground’, John Pilger commented:

    ‘There’s been a whole attempt to make Hamas the centre of the reporting. And that’s nonsense. As if Hamas is a peculiar demon. In fact, Hamas and its military wing are part of a resistance; a resistance that was provoked by the Israelis. The real demon in this is Israel. But it’s not simply Israel. I mean, this is as much a British and American war against Palestine, as it is an Israeli one.’

    Pilger added that this is a war:

    ‘against the people of Palestine who are doing one thing – and that is exercising their moral and legal right to resist a brutal occupation.’

    It is rarely mentioned in the ‘mainstream’ media that Hamas is, as Pilger pointed out, the legitimately elected government of Gaza. Moreover, Hamas has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders. But Israel has always rejected the offer, just as it rejected the Arab League peace plan of 2002; and just as it has always rejected the international consensus for a peaceful solution in the Middle East. Why? Because the threat of such ‘peace offensives’ would involve unacceptable concessions and compromises. Israeli writer Amos Elon has written of the ‘panic and unease among our political leadership’ caused by Arab peace proposals.1

    The Palestinians are seen as an obstacle by Israel’s leaders; an irritant to be subjugated. Noam Chomsky commented:

    ‘Traditionally over the years, Israel has sought to crush any resistance to its programs of takeover of the parts of Palestine it regards as valuable, while eliminating any hope for the indigenous population to have a decent existence enjoying national rights.’

    And, as Chomsky noted:

    ‘The key feature of the occupation has always been humiliation: they [the Palestinians] must not be allowed to raise their heads. The basic principle, often openly expressed, is that the “Araboushim” – a term that belongs with “nigger” or “kike” – must understand who rules this land and who walks in it with head lowered and eyes averted.”2

    In 2018, when Palestinians were being shot dead by Israeli soldiers in peaceful weekly ‘Great March of Return’ protests near Gaza’s border, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy observed that:

    ‘the killing of Palestinians is accepted in Israel more lightly than the killing of mosquitoes’.

    Given all of the above context, it is criminal that, day after day, BBC News presented a false balance between a powerful Israeli state-occupier and a brutalised, ethnically cleansed, apartheid-suffering Palestinian people. This systematic misrepresentation of reality amounts to complicity in Israel’s vast PR campaign to ‘justify’ its war crimes, brutality and repression of Palestinian people.

    As well as Bowen’s wilfully distorted reporting for BBC News, and the biased coverage by corporate media generally, Pilger pointed to the lack of dissent in the UK Parliament in the face of atrocities being committed once again by Israel. He focused particular attention on:

    ‘Starmer’s Labour party which allowed pro-Israel groups to direct the policies of the Labour party, that, in effect, support this attack. When you have the Shadow Foreign Secretary saying that to criticise Israeli atrocities is antisemitic, then we’re in Lewis Carroll world, really.’

    Concluding Remarks

    Chomsky once wrote of an elderly Palestinian man demonstrating in Gaza with a placard that read:

    ‘You take my water, burn my olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, imprison my father, kill my mother, bombard my country, starve us all, humiliate us all but I am to blame: I shot a rocket back.’

    This simple but devastating message, said Chomsky, is ‘the proper context’ for ‘the savage punishment of Gaza.’

    It is a context that is almost entirely missing from corporate media coverage of Israel and Palestine, not least by BBC News.

    1. Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, Pluto Press, London, 1999, p. 75.
    2. Chomsky, op. cit., p. 489.
    The post “The Savage Punishment Of Gaza”: Israel’s Latest Assault On Palestine’s Open Prison first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Facebook removed 110,000 pieces of COVID-19 misinformation posted by Australian pages or accounts in the first year of the pandemic, with 14 billion posts removed around the world from March to December last year.

    The data was provided by the tech giant as part of its obligations under the voluntary Australian Code of Practice for Disinformation and Misinformation, developed by social media firms after being directed to do so by the federal government in late 2019.

    As part of the code, signatories have to produce annual transparency reports on actions they have undertaken to combat disinformation and misinformation on their platforms.

    The reports from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Google, TikTok and Australian firm Redbubble show a significant increase in misinformation relating to COVID-19 and vaccines, with efforts to block this including removing the content entirely or labelling it with fact checks.

    Facebook
    Facebook removed a ton of COVID misinformation posted by Australians last year. Credit: Twin Design / Shutterstock.com

    Facebook’s transparency report revealed that from March to the end of December 2020 the company removed 14 billion pieces of content constituting misinformation relating ot COVID-19 around the world, including fake preventative measures and exaggerated cures.

    Of this, 110,000 posts were removed in Australia for these reasons, while 6.2 million Australian users have visited Facebook’s COVID-19 Information Centre. Globally, 2 billion people have visited this info centre on Facebook.

    Much of the focus on misinformation surrounding COVID-19 has now shifted to anti-vaccination disinformation, with Facebook moving in December to remove posts including false claims about COVID-19 vaccines and vaccinations in general.

    Facebook signed onto the voluntary code at the same time it had briefly moved to ban all news content for Australian users in response to the news media bargaining code legislation.

    Twitter’s own transparency report revealed that 1 million accounts were suspended in the first year of the pandemic, with 4.5 million posts removed for violating the company’s rules.

    From July to December 2020, more than 7000 Australian-based accounts were suspended, with 47,000 tweets removed in total.

    Less than 10 Australian accounts were suspended due to violations of the social media platform’s COVID-19 rules, with “more than 50” posts by Australians taken down by Twitter.

    In the last three months alone, Twitter has labelled tweets from 25,000 accounts around the world for misinformation.

    Google’s report under the code focused on the advertising side of its business. Last year, the search engine giant blocked and removed 3.1 billion “bad ads”, equating to nearly 6000 advertisements per minute.

    In March this year, Google blocked more than 100,000 ads from Australian companies and individuals for violating its “misrepresentation” ads policy.

    Online marketplace Redbubble – the only Australian company to have signed onto the misinformation code so far – revealed an “increased upward trend” in content uploaded to its platform relating to anti-vaccination sentiments recently.

    This spiked significantly midway through last, with sales on the platform for this content surpassing $15,000 monthly.

    In its report, Redbubble said the vast majority of this content has been removed, with 81 works in total taken down due to misinformation. About 65 of these posts were relating to anti-vaccination trends.

    Redbubble is currently working on improving its analytics around misinformation on its platform, and is using third party fraud detection software “Slift Science” to automatically block “risky” users.

    From October 2020 to March this year, social media giant TikTok removed 651 videos posted by Australian users due to COVID-19 misinformation, including 149 videos in January.

    There have been significantly more reported videos including medical misinformation on TikTok recently, with 61 reported in February and 60 in March.

    The misinformation code has previously been criticised by the Centre for Responsible Technology for being “inadequate” self-regulation that risks becoming a “digital fig leaf”, with the organisation saying it gives too much discretion to the big tech firms.

    The post Facebook removed 110,000 Covid posts by Aussies appeared first on InnovationAus.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.

  • Charter school promoters have always relied on disinformation and irrationalism to justify the existence of charter schools, but in recent weeks and months it appears that a new, more pernicious, form of self-serving disinformation and irrationalism has reared its head.

    This new disinformation and irrationalism seeks to further debase social consciousness and takes the form of casually and repeatedly declaring the exact and complete opposite of what research and experience confirm. The hope is that just by asserting and declaring something repeatedly, people will spontaneously believe it and abandon any conscious act of investigation.

    Charter school promoters are increasingly desperate to make their pay-the-rich schemes look and sound like they are harmless and exist for the good of humanity. They have to do this because consciousness of the retrogressive character of privately-operated charter schools keeps steadily growing.

    Several forms of this newly concerted strategy of disinformation and irrationalism have emerged.

    The main one, however, has to do with school funding. Common sense, experience, and years of systematic research have shown that non-profit and for-profit charter schools have many deleterious effects on public school finances. When a student leaves a public school and enrolls in a segregated charter school, the public school loses money and often has to cut valuable programs and services. And this usually takes place without a commensurate cut in other expenses due to economies of scale issues. Charter school promoters are now publicly and fraudulently claiming that charter schools actually improve the finances of public schools and that public schools are financially better off when charter schools pop up in their neighborhood.1

    Such twisted logic serves to divert attention away from the obvious fact that public schools always lose money when privately-operated charter schools pop up in their neighborhood. It also conceals the fact that charter schools actually receive billions of public dollars from all levels of government, as well as large donations from private sources, including venture philanthropists. In addition, it obscures the fact that non-profit and for-profit charter schools engage in endless forms of unethical and illegal profiteering while lowering the overall level of education in society. Embezzlement, racketeering, and arrests are commonplace in the crisis-prone charter school sector. Charter school promoters have continually innovated ways to engage in more parasitic private expropriation of social wealth while distorting consciousness about their self-serving actions.

    It is not possible for two education “systems” to compete for the same students and same public funds without winners and losers. This is not a win-win game. There is no non-adversarial scenario here. Competition makes everyone a loser and blocks consciousness of the fact that many programs and needs are basic social responsibilities and human rights that can’t be reduced to an outdated survival-of-the-fittest outlook.

    The “free market” ideology espoused by charter school promoters values individualism, consumerism, and competition, not human rights, stability, and security. Charter school promoters do not believe that public money belongs to the public. Through legislation, they have restructured parts of the state to ensure that public wealth produced by workers leaves public schools and accumulates rapidly in the hands of narrow private interests that run deregulated charter schools that close regularly. The widespread poor academic and financial track record of charter schools, especially virtual charter schools, seems to be an afterthought in this antisocial setup.

    The aim of saying something is the opposite of something is to assault cognition, consciousness, and dignity and, in doing so, undermine opposition to school privatization. Such desperate irrationalism and disinformation seeks to sabotage the social consciousness that is emerging about privately-operated charter schools in particular and the harms of privatization in general.

    Criticism of charter schools is now out in the open and mainstream. People are less fearful about speaking out against charter schools.

    A precious new consciousness is emerging to combat the anticonsciousness promoted by charter school advocates. And in the current context there is reason to believe that this valuable social consciousness will keep growing. The immediate need is to stop charter school expansion and the flow of public funds and resources to privately-operated charter schools.

    1. A quick GoogleNews search produces several recent articles on this theme.
    The post Charter School Promoters’ War on Consciousness first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.

    – William Casey, CIA Director, February. 1981

    It is well known that the endless U.S. war on terror was overtly launched following the mass murders of September 11, 2001 and the linked anthrax attacks.   The invasion of Afghanistan and the Patriot Act were immediately justified by those insider murders, and subsequently the wars against Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc.  So too the terrorizing of the American people with constant fear-mongering about imminent Islamic terrorist attacks from abroad that never came.

    It is less well known that the executive director of the U.S. cover story – the fictional 9/11 Commission Report – was Philip Zelikow, who controlled and shaped the report from start to finish.

    It is even less well known that Zelikow, a professor at the University of Virginia, was closely associated with Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Dickey Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Brent Scowcroft, et al. and had served in various key intelligence positions in both the George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations. In 2011 President Obama named him to his President’s Intelligence Advisory Board as befits bi-partisan elite rule and coverup compensation across political parties.

    Perhaps it’s unknown or just forgotten that The Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 Commission repeatedly called for Zelikow’s removal, claiming that his appointment made a farce of the claim that the Commission was independent.

    Zelikow said that for the Commission to consider alternative theories to the government’s claims about Osama bin Laden was akin to whacking moles.  This is the man, who at the request of his colleague Condoleezza Rice, became the primary author of (NSS 2002) The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, that declared that the U.S. would no longer abide by international law but was adopting a policy of preemptive war, as declared by George W. Bush at West Point in June 2002.  This was used as justification for the attack on Iraq in 2003 and was a rejection of the charter of the United Nations.

    So, based on Zelikow’s work creating a magic mountain of deception while disregarding so-called molehills, we have had twenty years of American terror wars around the world in which U.S. forces have murdered millions of innocent people.  Wars that will be continuing for years to come despite rhetoric to the contrary.  The rhetoric is simply propaganda to cover up the increasingly technological and space-based nature of these wars and the use of mercenaries and special forces.

    Simultaneously, in a quasi-volte-face, the Biden administration has directed its resources inward toward domestic “terrorists”: that is, anyone who disagrees with its policies.  This is especially aimed at those who question the COVID-19 story.

    Now Zelikow has been named to head a COVID Commission Planning Group based at the University of Virginia that is said to prepare the way for a National COVID Commission.  The group is funded by the Schmidt Futures, the Skoll Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and Stand Together, with more expected to join in.  Zelikow, a member of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Development Program Advisory Panel, will lead the group that will work in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.  Stand together indeed: Charles Koch, Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, the Rockefellers, et al. funders of disinterested truth.

    So once again the fox is in the hen house.

    If you wistfully think the corona crisis will soon come to an end, I suggest you alter your perspective.  Zelikow’s involvement, among other things, suggests we are in the second phase of a long war of terror waged with two weapons – military and medical – whose propaganda messaging is carried out by the corporate mainstream media in the pursuit of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset. Part one has so far lasted twenty years; part two may last longer. You can be certain it won’t end soon and that the new terrorists are domestic dissidents.

    Did anyone think the freedoms lost with The Patriot Act were coming back some day?  Does anyone think the freedoms lost with the corona virus propaganda are coming back?  Many people probably have no idea what freedoms they lost with the Patriot Act, and many don’t even care.

    And today?  Lockdowns, mandatory mask wearing, travel restrictions, requirements to be guinea pigs for vaccines that are not vaccines, etc.?

    Who remembers the Nuremberg Codes?

    And they thought they were free, as Milton Mayer wrote about the Germans under Hitler.  Like frogs in a pot of cold water, we need to feel the temperature rising before it’s too late.  The dial is turned to high heat now.

    But that was so long ago and far away, right?  Don’t exaggerate, you say.  Hitler and all that crap.

    Are you thankful now that government spokespeople are blatantly saying that they will so kindly give us back some freedoms if we only do what they’re told and get “vaccinated” with an experimental biological agent, wear our masks, etc.? Hoi polloi are supposed to be grateful to their masters, who will grant some summer fun until they slam the door shut again.

    Pfizer raked in $3.5 billion from vaccine sales in the first quarter of 2021, the first three months of the vaccine rollouts, and the company projects $26 billion for the year.  That’s one vaccine manufacturer.  Chump change?  Only a chump would not realize that Pfizer is the company that paid $2.3 billion in Federal criminal fines in 2009 – the largest ever paid by a drug company – for being a repeat offender in the marketing of 13 different drugs.

    Meanwhile, the commission justifying the government’s claims about COVID-19 and injections (aka “vaccines”) will be hard at work writing their fictive report that will justify ex post facto the terrible damage that has occurred and that will continue to occur for many years.  Censorship and threats against dissidents will increase.  The disinformation that dominates the corporate mainstream media will of course continue, but this will be supplemented by alternative media that are already buckling under the pressure to conform.

    The fact that there has been massive censorship of dissenting voices by Google/ YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, etc., and equally massive disinformation by commission and omission across media platforms, should make everyone ask why.  Why repress dissent?  The answer should be obvious but is not.

    The fact that so many refuse to see the significance of this censorship clearly shows the hypnotic effects of a massive mind control operation.

    Name calling and censorship are sufficient.  Perfectly healthy people have now become a danger to others.  So mask up, get your experimental shot, and shut up!

    Your body is no longer inviolable.  You must submit to medical procedures on your body whether you want them or not.  Do not object or question. If you do, you will be punished and will become a pariah.  The authorities will call you crazy, deviant, selfish. They will take away your rights to travel and engage in normal activities, such as attend college, etc.

    Please do not recall The Nuremberg Code.  Especially number 7: “Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability or death.” (my emphasis)

    “Now is the time to just do what you are told,” as Anthony Fauci so benevolently declared.

    I am not making a prediction.  The authorities have told us what’s coming. Pay attention.  Don’t be fooled.  It’s a game they have devised.  Keep people guessing.  On edge.  Relieved.  Tense.  Relaxed.  Shocked.  Confused.  That’s the game.  One day this, the next that.  You’re on, you’re off.  You’re in, you’re out.  We are allowing you this freedom, but be good children or we will have to retract it.  If you misbehave, you will get a time out.  Time to contemplate your sins.

    If you once thought that COVID-19 would be a thing of the past by now, or ever, think again.  On May 3, 2021 The New York Times reported that the virus is here to stay.  This was again reported on May 10.  Hopes Fade for Global Herd Immunity.  You may recall that we were told such immunity would be achieved once enough people got the “vaccine” or enough people contracted the virus and developed antibodies.

    On May 9, on ABC News, Dr. Fauci, when asked about indoor mask requirements being relaxed, said, “I think so, and I think you’re going to probably be seeing that as we go along, and as more people get vaccinated.”  Then he added: “We do need to start being more liberal, as we get more people vaccinated.”

    But then, in what CNN reported as a Mother’s Day prediction, he pushed the date for “normality” out another year, saying, “I hope that [by] next Mother’s Day, we’re going to see a dramatic difference than what we’re seeing right now. I believe that we will be about as close to back to normal as we can.  We’ve got to make sure that we get the overwhelming proportion of the population vaccinated. When that happens, the virus doesn’t really have any place to go. You’re not going to see a surge. You’re not going to see the kinds of numbers we see now.”

    He said this with a straight face even though the experimental “vaccines,” by their makers own admissions, do not prevent the vaccinated from getting the virus or passing it on.  They allege it only mitigates the severity of the virus if you contract it.

    Notice the language and the vaccination meme repeated three times: “We get more people vaccinated.” (my emphasis) Not that more people choose to get vaccinated, but “we get” them vaccinated.  Thank you, Big Daddy. And now we have another year to go until “we will be about as close to back to normal as we can.”  Interesting phrase: as we can.  It other words: we will never return to normality but will have to settle for the new normal that will involve fewer freedoms.  Life will be reset, a great reset.  Great for the few and terrible for the many.

    Once two vaccines were enough; then, no, maybe one is sufficient; no, you will need annual or semi-annual booster shots to counteract the new strains that they say are coming.  It’s a never-ending story with never-ending new strains in a massive never-ending medical experiment.  The virus is changing so quickly and herd immunity is now a mystical idea, we are told, that it will never be achieved.  We will have to be eternally vigilant.

    But wait.  Don’t despair.  It looks like restrictions are easing up for the coming summer in the northern hemisphere. Lockdowns will be loosened.  If you felt like a prisoner for the past year plus, now you will be paroled for a while. But don’t dispose of those masks just yet.  Fauci says that wearing masks could become seasonal following the pandemic because people have become accustomed to wearing them and that’s why the flu has disappeared. The masks didn’t prevent COVID-19 but eliminated the flu.  Are you laughing yet?

    Censorship and lockdowns and masks and mandatory injections are like padded cells in a madhouse and hospital world where free-association doesn’t lead to repressed truths because free association isn’t allowed, neither in word nor deed.  Speaking freely and associating with others are too democratic. Yes, we thought we were free.  False consciousness is pandemic.  Exploitation is seen as benevolence. Silence reigns.  And the veiled glances signify the ongoing terror that has spread like a virus.

    We are now in a long war with two faces.  As with the one justified by the mass murders of September 11, 2001, this viral one isn’t going away.

    The question is: Do we have to wait twenty years to grasp the obvious and fight for our freedoms?

    We can be assured that Zelikow and his many associates at Covid Collaborative, including General Stanley McChrystal, Robert Gates, Arnie Duncan, Deval Patrick, Tom Ridge, et al. – a whole host of Republicans and Democrats backed by great wealth and institutional support, will not be “whacking moles” in their search for truth.  Their agenda is quite different.

    But then again, you may recall where they stood on the mass murders of September 11, 2001 and the endless wars that have followed.

    The post Second Stage Terror Wars first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A new round of disinformation and threats against Russia is being staged by the NATO military powers and their state and corporate media outlets.

    The backdrop is the continued military occupation and aggression by Ukraine in sections of the Donbas region in the east of the country, combined with the Ukrainian government’s ongoing refusal to implement the ceasefire and peace measures of the 2015 ‘Minsk 2’ agreement, Minsk 2 was signed by Ukraine and the pro-autonomy forces of Donbas, with the governments of Russia, France and Germany agreeing to act as guarantors. It was ratified unanimously by no less than the UN Security Council, on February 17, 2014. But this proved of little value in bringing peace because for NATO and its propaganda services, nothing less than heightened military tensions would do. Instead, the world gets a new round of stories of imminent ‘Russian aggression’ or ‘Russian invasion’ against Ukraine.

    NATO head Jens Stoltenberg wrote on Twitter on April 6, “I called President @ZelenskyyUa to express serious concern about Russia’s military activities in and around Ukraine & ongoing ceasefire violations.”

    White House press secretary Jen Psaki chimed in on April 8 (CNBC) with: “The United States is increasingly concerned by recent escalating Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine, including Russian troop movements on Ukraine’s border.”

    The same CNBC report offered in its own words: “In recent weeks, Russia has increased its military presence along the Ukrainian border, sparking concerns in the West of a budding military conflict between the two neighboring countries.”

    The seasoned, anti-Russia Globe and Mail daily in Canada baldly asserted on April 10 that there are “too many parallels with 2014”. That’s when, according to the newspaper’s crack anti-Russia writer, “a Russian invasion” of Ukraine saw an “annexation’ of Crimea” and the rise of a “Kremlin fueled conflict” in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine [the former Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk and Lugansk].

    Another tack in the Western media and government propaganda drive is to express bewilderment at why Russia would choose to supposedly act aggressively in recent weeks. “It’s not completely clear what the Russians are doing there, we’d like to understand that more, and that uncertainty is obviously not contributing to a more stable, more secure situation,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters on April 7.

    The Washington Post printed a front page story on April 9 saying, “Russia’s motivations for the buildup are still unclear and do not necessarily signal a looming offensive, Ukrainian and Western officials said.”

    The New York Times‘ key anti-Russia reporter, Andrew Kramer, keyed in, also on April 9, with, “Videos of military movements have flooded Russian social media for the past month, shared by users and documented by researchers. Western governments are trying to find out why…”

    No peace in Ukraine because Kyiv and NATO reject Minsk 2 agreement

    Western media carefully avoids reporting the background to the tensions it is stoking, namely that the Minsk 2 ceasefire and agreement remains stalled and unimplemented due to Ukrainian government intransigence, with the blessing of NATO.

    As the anti-Russia Politico.eu reported in October 2020, “The Minsk II peace agreement, brokered and guaranteed by France and Germany, has barely inched forward since Zelenskiy and Putin met in December in Paris [2019] with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel — largely because of the standoff over holding local elections and changes to the Ukrainian constitution that would grant ‘special status’ to the embattled regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.” The text of the Minsk 2 agreement (as distinct from the ‘Minsk Protocol’ of September 2014) is here.

    Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova laid out the situation in her weekly media briefing on April 9. She blamed “Kyiv’s belligerent attitude” for the rise in tensions, saying this is “still based on the illusion that there can be a military solution to the conflict in [Ukraine’s] southeast. Troops and military equipment are being deployed there. Reservist mobilisation plans are being updated. Ukrainian media are fanning hysteria about a mythical Russian threat and Moscow’s plans to attack Ukraine very soon. All this is happening at the prompting of Kyiv’s Western sponsors, with overt public support… We are calling on the Kyiv authorities yet again to act responsibly and start implementing their obligations under the Minsk Package of Measures.”

    She explained further, “I would like to remind you that throughout this year alone, NATO is planning seven military exercises in Ukraine. The active phase of the Defender Europe 2021 exercise, the most extensive exercise for many years, is to commence near Ukraine soon. This event is to involve 25 states. NATO warships are entering the Black Sea ever more frequently; the number of such visits increased by one-third last year. U.S., British, Canadian and Lithuanian training missions are deployed in the country. It should be noted that Ukrainian service personnel that have been trained by NATO instructors are often sent to the zone of the so-called ‘anti-terrorist operation’ directed against certain districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.”

    In her briefing of April 16, Zakharova reported: “According to the latest report by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM), the number of ceasefire violations [in Donbas] in the previous two weeks has doubled compared to two weeks earlier, reaching 4,300. The shelling of towns in the Lugansk and Donetsk regions by the Ukrainian armed forces has become heavier. Casualties among civilians in Donetsk and Lugansk are growing. Kyiv continues to deploy more military vehicles and troops in the region. According to SMM reports, Grad multiple rocket launchers, the use of which is banned under the Minsk agreements, have been seen in the settlement of Druzhkovka to the north of Donetsk.”

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with Argumenty i Fakty newspaper published on April 8 and reported by TASS, “Things are bad regarding the Normandy format [meetings of the governments of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France]. We can say that under President Zelensky, things haven’t budged either in fulfilling the Minsk Package of Measures or in further agreements achieved in Paris,” he said.

    TASS continued, “Peskov also noted that tensions have been mounting on the contact line. ‘Over the past six months we have heard many times that Kyiv considered the Minsk agreements as dead, that this deal cannot be fulfilled and new documents were needed and so on. This is probably the most dangerous thing,’ Peskov stressed, noting that apart from the Minsk agreements there was no other basis for building international efforts for settlement in Donbas.”

    On April 9, Zakharova also blamed Ukraine’s volatile quest to join the NATO military alliance. “We have taken note of a statement by Ukrainian President Zelensky, who visited Donbas yesterday [April 8] and said that the country’s accession to NATO would supposedly help end the conflict in the region. However, contrary to Kyiv’s expectations, potential NATO accession will not only fail to bring peace to Ukraine but will, by contrast, lead to a large-scale rise in tensions in the southeast, possibly causing irreversible consequences for Ukraine’s statehood.”

    The unresolved conflicts arising from the 2014 coup in Ukraine

    Western media and governments are having a relatively easy time with bamboozling their consumers and subjects, respectively, over events in Ukraine because of widespread ignorance of the recent history of the country.

    In February 2014, a violent coup d’etat against the elected president and legislature of Ukraine was staged by extreme-right political parties and their associated paramilitary legions. The coupmakers successively manipulated prevailing social and economic dissatisfaction among many Ukrainians that had them longing for new economic ties to Europe, particularly if these would expand their right to emigrate and work there. For several years, Yanukovych had considered embarking on a path of greater trade and investment ties with Europe, but in late 2013 he changed course after the Russian government offered substantial expansion of investment and trade ties between the two countries. Several months of violent protests, centered in Maidan Square in central Kyiv, followed.

    Millions of Ukrainians live and work in Poland and other countries in Europe, and millions more aspire to do the same.

    Yanukovych sought refuge in Russia following the coup. An election was staged three months later to replace him and the members of the legislature. In addition to an economic ‘turn to Europe’, such as it has been, the new, right-wing government in Kyiv embarked on an ideological drive to break up the country’s multi-national character and renounce its history as a component of the Soviet Union. An ultra-nationalist ideology with roots in the World War Two collaboration by Ukrainian nationalists with Nazi Germany has become predominant. Widespread measures have been enacted to downgrade if not suppress the status of the Russian language and culture and the shared history of Russia and Ukraine as components of the Soviet Union.

    The coup and its aftermath did not go over well, to say the least, with the large sections of the population that reject the ideology of right-wing nationalism if not neo-Nazism. Opposition to the coup was quick to organize, above all in Crimea but also in the eastern (Donbas) and southern (Odessa) regions of the country and in the center of the country where Kyiv is situated. But this opposition was met with extreme violence.

    Crimea

    Crimea was uniquely placed to resist the coup. Its population is multinational, with approximately 65 per cent of Russian ethnicity and the remainder divided between Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar ethnicities. It was the only region of Ukraine with an autonomous governing authority, the ‘Autonomous Republic of Crimea’ (Wikipedia). Its origins go way back to the self-determination policies of the Russian Revolution which became codified in the constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (founded in 1922). The elected government of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea’ held powers roughly equivalent to U.S. states and Canadian provinces.

    Crimeans voted by more than 70 per cent in favour of Yanukovych during the presidential election of 2010 (the vote result for Yanukovych in Donbas was even higher). Using their autonomous institutions that were preserved through the riotous years following the collapse of the Soviet Union (albeit falling short of the outright independence from Ukraine that so many sought), the Crimean people turned to their autonomous government for protection in 2014 from the coup violence that threatened to engulf their republic at the hands of the ultra-nationalist paramilitaries. The government appealed to the Russian military to help preserve social peace, and it organized a referendum vote on March 16, 2014 to secede from the new, right-wing Ukraine and join (many Crimeans would say ‘rejoin’,) the Russian Federation.

    The vote passed overwhelmingly, and polls during the years that followed showed strong satisfaction with the result, including among the minority Ukrainians and Tatars. An op-ed by three Western researchers published in the Washington Post on March 18, 2020 reported: “Here’s what we found: Support for joining Russia remains very high (86 per cent in 2014 and 82 per cent in 2019) — and is especially high among ethnic Russians and Ukrainians. A key change since 2014 has been a significant increase in support by Tatars, a Turkic Muslim population that makes up about 12 per cent of the Crimean population. In 2014, only 39 per cent of this group viewed joining Russia as a positive move, but this figure rose to 58 per cent in 2019.”

    There was no ‘Russian invasion’ of Crimea in 2014 because thousands of Russian troops were already there by virtue of the military treaty signed by Russia and Ukraine in 1997 (Wikipedia). It guaranteed Russia’s continued military presence in Crimea.

    As to the role of Russian troops in preserving social peace, the evidence for that is overwhelming and positive, as polling has consistently reported. There has been precious little social violence in Crimea in the years following the referendum vote, certainly in comparison to the bloodletting that beset Ukraine during and following the coup. Economically, Crimea has become one of the fastest growing regions in Russia, helped along by the construction of the first, lasting road and rail link between Crimea and the Russian mainland.

    The Kerch Strait Bridge (formally named the Crimean Bridge) fully opened in 2020. It became a vital project for the Crimean peninsula immediately after the referendum vote in 2014 because in response to the vote, Ukraine severed all road, rail and aircraft ties to Crimea. It even severed the pipeline carrying Crimea’s largest supply of fresh water, though the Western ‘human rights’ brigades did not issue a peep of protest and concern.

    Donbas region

    Tragically, Odessa and Donbas regions as well as other regions in central and southern Ukraine were quickly engulfed by violence following the coup. Odessa and Donbas had little, meaningful local governing authority to which to turn to protest the coup and they had little recent history of autonomous political organizing within Ukraine’s highly centralized governing structures. On May 2 in the city of Odessa, right-wing paramilitaries attacked a large protest calling for political autonomy for Odessa and other regions alienated from the central government in Kyiv. The rightists burned down the Trade Union House in the city where protesters had taken refuge, killing dozens and wounding hundreds. The Odessa Massacre passed unnoticed in Western media, or it was presented as a confusing ‘clash’ with no one and everyone to blame.

    In Donbas, right-wing paramilitaries invaded the region beginning in May 2014. But the proximity to the Russian border, long distances from the parts of Ukraine where the paramilitaries had their social base, and the valiant, early actions of small numbers of pro-autonomy military forces bought enough time, over months, for the population to organize armed self-defense and new organs of autonomous political rule. Today, Donbas consists of two ‘people’s republics’ with elected governments—the former Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk (population app. 2.3 million, similar to Crimea) and Lugansk (app. 1.5 million). Travel to Russia and the right to work there and acquire citizenship are freely available.

    The above presents a starkly different picture than the comical presentation in Western media which posits a frightening Russia looming over Ukraine, just waiting for the opportunity to once again ‘invade’ or otherwise ‘threaten’ its poorer and less well armed Slavic cousin.

    Even informative and well-intentioned writers can trip up on the history. For example, in an article published on April 6, writer Vijay Prashad wrote, “In March 2014, after Russian troops entered Crimea, the population voted to join Russia…”

    Another informed writer, Oliver Boyd-Barrett at Bowling Green State University, wrote on April 14 of the “separatist republics” of Donetsk and Lugansk. The term ‘seperatist’ is a perjorative one universally employed by Western media. It ignores the fact that the initial struggle in Donbas was a struggle for autonomy and only turned, over time, against continued association with Ukraine when the latter invaded the region and let fly its artillery and snipers in the heavily urbanized region. To this day, the bombs and shells are still falling, egged on if not guided by NATO’s military trainers in Ukraine.

    Altogether, the referendum vote in Crimea and the formation of the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk were acts of political self-determination par excellence. Yet liberal opinion in the West and much of left-wing opinion, too, refuse to recognize this fact.

    The terms of the Minsk 2 agreement are crystal clear—they envision autonomy, not independence or affiliation to the Russian Federation, for Donetsk and Lugansk. (Of course, after years of being under direct military attack by Ukraine, it is not at all clear that the populations of Donetsk and Lugansk would accept rejoining the violent, right-wing state of Ukraine, even with an autonomy status.) Until social and political protests in Ukraine proper can loosen the stranglehold of extreme-right ultra-nationalists and NATO military advisors over the country, prospects for peace in Donbas are, tragically, remote.

    The hold of right-wing Ukrainian nationalism in the West

    Liberals and soft-left social-democrats in the West are near-to universal in their acceptance of the received, ‘official’ history of Ukraine and its relations within the Soviet Union, then with Russia. According to this history, Ukraine has been universally oppressed and exploited by the Soviet Union then Russian Federation since its emergence as a modern country following World War One.

    Nazism is whitewashed in this scenario because little attention is paid by its ideologues to the calamitous German invasion and occupation of Ukrainian and other Soviet territory during World War Two. Worse, an ‘equivalency’ school of history has arisen in the West during the past decade or so, according to which the crimes of Nazism are said to be equivalent to those during the same years in the Soviet Union, under Stalin. Celebrated author Timothy Snyder tells this version of history in his bestselling 2010 book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. A lengthy essay and review sharply criticizing that book by writer Daniel Lazare was published in Jacobin in 2014 and remains essential reading for understanding this history.

    Added to this are the years of the Cold War against Russia following WW2, when an unrelentingly negative image of the Soviet Union was burned deeply into the consciousness of people in the West.

    Many self-proclaimed Marxists in the West, particularly those of Trotskyist origin, share the ‘official’ view of an unrelenting oppression in Ukraine. A key piece of this view is the false claim that the government in the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin perpetrated a ‘genocide’ against the peasants of Ukraine in 1932-33 in the form of a deliberate famine. The Holodomor, as it is known in Ukrainian terminology, is officially recognized by many Western governments. Schools and other public institutions in Canada and the U.S. recognize the fourth Saturday of November as ‘Holodomor Memorial Day’ and statues and memorials have been erected in both countries.

    But Holodomor is a myth. There was a ghastly famine in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. Tens of thousands died. But there were famines simultaneously in other parts of the Soviet Union as well during those terrible two years. Soviet government policy of the day contributed to famine conditions because of the chaotic conditions which the rushed policy of collectivization of agriculture, begun in 1928, created. But the larger responsibility for the Soviet famines (plural) of the day were multifold:

    • The backward conditions of agriculture inherited by the Soviet Union from the empire of the Tsarist monarchy overthrown by the Russian Revolution in 1917.
    • The destruction caused by the Western invading armies following 1917, seeking to overthrow the Revolution.
    • The harsh economic embargoes by these same Western powers following the defeats of their military interventions of 1918-1921.
    • And harsh climactic conditions which beset the Soviet Union in 1932-33.

    For all the chaos that collectivization of agriculture sowed, the early 1930s were the last years of famine in the Soviet Union (the war years under Nazi occupation excepted).

    Historian Mark Tauger at West Virginia University is a leading scholar on the Soviet famines of those years. His writings and research and those of other writers can be found here.

    The widespread acceptance of Holodomor theory across the political spectrum in the West was an early sign of the political degeneration that came to hobble so many liberals and leftists in Western countries during the latter half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. Attention and research to the evolving Soviet Union fell away. Inattention deepened following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Racist stereotypes against the people of China and Russia that are rooted in the years of the Cold War remained strong in popular consciousness.

    In the case of the Trotskyist doctrine, its was deeply scarred by a founding ultraleftism, notably in its dismissal of the significance of the mixed-economy, New Economic Policy which guided the early Soviet Union from 1921 to 1928, and its formal revival in 1929 of the theory of permanent revolution. The latter displaced the theory and strategy of Vladimir Lenin, proven correct in 1917 and countless times since, of the central importance of an alliance of the working class and peasantry for any successful revolutionary transformation.

    Today’s global political situation is historically unprecedented. Two, large non-imperialist countries—Russia and China—are resisting imperialist diktats and striving for a multipolar world. This creates countless openings for countries such as Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea to break from the imperialist strangleholds that marked the latter decades of the 20th century and forge alternative economic and political ties that strengthen national sovereignty.

    The imperialist countries have been waging military threats and economic embargoes against the peoples of Russia, Crimea and Ukraine for nearly ten years now. It is long past due for the progressive people of the world to condemn these policies and campaign to end them.

    This is doubly the case now that China has come squarely into the West’s gunsights. Here, too, the political left in the West needs to rise to the defense of the people and government of China against military threats and economic embargoes.

    Rising imperialist war and militarism, the collapse of social policy as evidenced by the coronavirus pandemic, and global warming cry out for building broad-based social and political movements that unite the oppressed peoples of the world in a fight for a world of social justice. Broad-based anti-imperialist unity should be the strategic path for all those concerned about the fate of the planet.

    The post NATO Raises Military Tensions against Russia over False Accusations of Russian Threats against Ukraine first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A new round of disinformation and threats against Russia is being staged by the NATO military powers and their state and corporate media outlets.

    The backdrop is the continued military occupation and aggression by Ukraine in sections of the Donbas region in the east of the country, combined with the Ukrainian government’s ongoing refusal to implement the ceasefire and peace measures of the 2015 ‘Minsk 2’ agreement, Minsk 2 was signed by Ukraine and the pro-autonomy forces of Donbas, with the governments of Russia, France and Germany agreeing to act as guarantors. It was ratified unanimously by no less than the UN Security Council, on February 17, 2014. But this proved of little value in bringing peace because for NATO and its propaganda services, nothing less than heightened military tensions would do. Instead, the world gets a new round of stories of imminent ‘Russian aggression’ or ‘Russian invasion’ against Ukraine.

    NATO head Jens Stoltenberg wrote on Twitter on April 6, “I called President @ZelenskyyUa to express serious concern about Russia’s military activities in and around Ukraine & ongoing ceasefire violations.”

    White House press secretary Jen Psaki chimed in on April 8 (CNBC) with: “The United States is increasingly concerned by recent escalating Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine, including Russian troop movements on Ukraine’s border.”

    The same CNBC report offered in its own words: “In recent weeks, Russia has increased its military presence along the Ukrainian border, sparking concerns in the West of a budding military conflict between the two neighboring countries.”

    The seasoned, anti-Russia Globe and Mail daily in Canada baldly asserted on April 10 that there are “too many parallels with 2014”. That’s when, according to the newspaper’s crack anti-Russia writer, “a Russian invasion” of Ukraine saw an “annexation’ of Crimea” and the rise of a “Kremlin fueled conflict” in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine [the former Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk and Lugansk].

    Another tack in the Western media and government propaganda drive is to express bewilderment at why Russia would choose to supposedly act aggressively in recent weeks. “It’s not completely clear what the Russians are doing there, we’d like to understand that more, and that uncertainty is obviously not contributing to a more stable, more secure situation,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters on April 7.

    The Washington Post printed a front page story on April 9 saying, “Russia’s motivations for the buildup are still unclear and do not necessarily signal a looming offensive, Ukrainian and Western officials said.”

    The New York Times‘ key anti-Russia reporter, Andrew Kramer, keyed in, also on April 9, with, “Videos of military movements have flooded Russian social media for the past month, shared by users and documented by researchers. Western governments are trying to find out why…”

    No peace in Ukraine because Kyiv and NATO reject Minsk 2 agreement

    Western media carefully avoids reporting the background to the tensions it is stoking, namely that the Minsk 2 ceasefire and agreement remains stalled and unimplemented due to Ukrainian government intransigence, with the blessing of NATO.

    As the anti-Russia Politico.eu reported in October 2020, “The Minsk II peace agreement, brokered and guaranteed by France and Germany, has barely inched forward since Zelenskiy and Putin met in December in Paris [2019] with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel — largely because of the standoff over holding local elections and changes to the Ukrainian constitution that would grant ‘special status’ to the embattled regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.” The text of the Minsk 2 agreement (as distinct from the ‘Minsk Protocol’ of September 2014) is here.

    Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova laid out the situation in her weekly media briefing on April 9. She blamed “Kyiv’s belligerent attitude” for the rise in tensions, saying this is “still based on the illusion that there can be a military solution to the conflict in [Ukraine’s] southeast. Troops and military equipment are being deployed there. Reservist mobilisation plans are being updated. Ukrainian media are fanning hysteria about a mythical Russian threat and Moscow’s plans to attack Ukraine very soon. All this is happening at the prompting of Kyiv’s Western sponsors, with overt public support… We are calling on the Kyiv authorities yet again to act responsibly and start implementing their obligations under the Minsk Package of Measures.”

    She explained further, “I would like to remind you that throughout this year alone, NATO is planning seven military exercises in Ukraine. The active phase of the Defender Europe 2021 exercise, the most extensive exercise for many years, is to commence near Ukraine soon. This event is to involve 25 states. NATO warships are entering the Black Sea ever more frequently; the number of such visits increased by one-third last year. U.S., British, Canadian and Lithuanian training missions are deployed in the country. It should be noted that Ukrainian service personnel that have been trained by NATO instructors are often sent to the zone of the so-called ‘anti-terrorist operation’ directed against certain districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.”

    In her briefing of April 16, Zakharova reported: “According to the latest report by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM), the number of ceasefire violations [in Donbas] in the previous two weeks has doubled compared to two weeks earlier, reaching 4,300. The shelling of towns in the Lugansk and Donetsk regions by the Ukrainian armed forces has become heavier. Casualties among civilians in Donetsk and Lugansk are growing. Kyiv continues to deploy more military vehicles and troops in the region. According to SMM reports, Grad multiple rocket launchers, the use of which is banned under the Minsk agreements, have been seen in the settlement of Druzhkovka to the north of Donetsk.”

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with Argumenty i Fakty newspaper published on April 8 and reported by TASS, “Things are bad regarding the Normandy format [meetings of the governments of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France]. We can say that under President Zelensky, things haven’t budged either in fulfilling the Minsk Package of Measures or in further agreements achieved in Paris,” he said.

    TASS continued, “Peskov also noted that tensions have been mounting on the contact line. ‘Over the past six months we have heard many times that Kyiv considered the Minsk agreements as dead, that this deal cannot be fulfilled and new documents were needed and so on. This is probably the most dangerous thing,’ Peskov stressed, noting that apart from the Minsk agreements there was no other basis for building international efforts for settlement in Donbas.”

    On April 9, Zakharova also blamed Ukraine’s volatile quest to join the NATO military alliance. “We have taken note of a statement by Ukrainian President Zelensky, who visited Donbas yesterday [April 8] and said that the country’s accession to NATO would supposedly help end the conflict in the region. However, contrary to Kyiv’s expectations, potential NATO accession will not only fail to bring peace to Ukraine but will, by contrast, lead to a large-scale rise in tensions in the southeast, possibly causing irreversible consequences for Ukraine’s statehood.”

    The unresolved conflicts arising from the 2014 coup in Ukraine

    Western media and governments are having a relatively easy time with bamboozling their consumers and subjects, respectively, over events in Ukraine because of widespread ignorance of the recent history of the country.

    In February 2014, a violent coup d’etat against the elected president and legislature of Ukraine was staged by extreme-right political parties and their associated paramilitary legions. The coupmakers successively manipulated prevailing social and economic dissatisfaction among many Ukrainians that had them longing for new economic ties to Europe, particularly if these would expand their right to emigrate and work there. For several years, Yanukovych had considered embarking on a path of greater trade and investment ties with Europe, but in late 2013 he changed course after the Russian government offered substantial expansion of investment and trade ties between the two countries. Several months of violent protests, centered in Maidan Square in central Kyiv, followed.

    Millions of Ukrainians live and work in Poland and other countries in Europe, and millions more aspire to do the same.

    Yanukovych sought refuge in Russia following the coup. An election was staged three months later to replace him and the members of the legislature. In addition to an economic ‘turn to Europe’, such as it has been, the new, right-wing government in Kyiv embarked on an ideological drive to break up the country’s multi-national character and renounce its history as a component of the Soviet Union. An ultra-nationalist ideology with roots in the World War Two collaboration by Ukrainian nationalists with Nazi Germany has become predominant. Widespread measures have been enacted to downgrade if not suppress the status of the Russian language and culture and the shared history of Russia and Ukraine as components of the Soviet Union.

    The coup and its aftermath did not go over well, to say the least, with the large sections of the population that reject the ideology of right-wing nationalism if not neo-Nazism. Opposition to the coup was quick to organize, above all in Crimea but also in the eastern (Donbas) and southern (Odessa) regions of the country and in the center of the country where Kyiv is situated. But this opposition was met with extreme violence.

    Crimea

    Crimea was uniquely placed to resist the coup. Its population is multinational, with approximately 65 per cent of Russian ethnicity and the remainder divided between Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar ethnicities. It was the only region of Ukraine with an autonomous governing authority, the ‘Autonomous Republic of Crimea’ (Wikipedia). Its origins go way back to the self-determination policies of the Russian Revolution which became codified in the constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (founded in 1922). The elected government of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea’ held powers roughly equivalent to U.S. states and Canadian provinces.

    Crimeans voted by more than 70 per cent in favour of Yanukovych during the presidential election of 2010 (the vote result for Yanukovych in Donbas was even higher). Using their autonomous institutions that were preserved through the riotous years following the collapse of the Soviet Union (albeit falling short of the outright independence from Ukraine that so many sought), the Crimean people turned to their autonomous government for protection in 2014 from the coup violence that threatened to engulf their republic at the hands of the ultra-nationalist paramilitaries. The government appealed to the Russian military to help preserve social peace, and it organized a referendum vote on March 16, 2014 to secede from the new, right-wing Ukraine and join (many Crimeans would say ‘rejoin’,) the Russian Federation.

    The vote passed overwhelmingly, and polls during the years that followed showed strong satisfaction with the result, including among the minority Ukrainians and Tatars. An op-ed by three Western researchers published in the Washington Post on March 18, 2020 reported: “Here’s what we found: Support for joining Russia remains very high (86 per cent in 2014 and 82 per cent in 2019) — and is especially high among ethnic Russians and Ukrainians. A key change since 2014 has been a significant increase in support by Tatars, a Turkic Muslim population that makes up about 12 per cent of the Crimean population. In 2014, only 39 per cent of this group viewed joining Russia as a positive move, but this figure rose to 58 per cent in 2019.”

    There was no ‘Russian invasion’ of Crimea in 2014 because thousands of Russian troops were already there by virtue of the military treaty signed by Russia and Ukraine in 1997 (Wikipedia). It guaranteed Russia’s continued military presence in Crimea.

    As to the role of Russian troops in preserving social peace, the evidence for that is overwhelming and positive, as polling has consistently reported. There has been precious little social violence in Crimea in the years following the referendum vote, certainly in comparison to the bloodletting that beset Ukraine during and following the coup. Economically, Crimea has become one of the fastest growing regions in Russia, helped along by the construction of the first, lasting road and rail link between Crimea and the Russian mainland.

    The Kerch Strait Bridge (formally named the Crimean Bridge) fully opened in 2020. It became a vital project for the Crimean peninsula immediately after the referendum vote in 2014 because in response to the vote, Ukraine severed all road, rail and aircraft ties to Crimea. It even severed the pipeline carrying Crimea’s largest supply of fresh water, though the Western ‘human rights’ brigades did not issue a peep of protest and concern.

    Donbas region

    Tragically, Odessa and Donbas regions as well as other regions in central and southern Ukraine were quickly engulfed by violence following the coup. Odessa and Donbas had little, meaningful local governing authority to which to turn to protest the coup and they had little recent history of autonomous political organizing within Ukraine’s highly centralized governing structures. On May 2 in the city of Odessa, right-wing paramilitaries attacked a large protest calling for political autonomy for Odessa and other regions alienated from the central government in Kyiv. The rightists burned down the Trade Union House in the city where protesters had taken refuge, killing dozens and wounding hundreds. The Odessa Massacre passed unnoticed in Western media, or it was presented as a confusing ‘clash’ with no one and everyone to blame.

    In Donbas, right-wing paramilitaries invaded the region beginning in May 2014. But the proximity to the Russian border, long distances from the parts of Ukraine where the paramilitaries had their social base, and the valiant, early actions of small numbers of pro-autonomy military forces bought enough time, over months, for the population to organize armed self-defense and new organs of autonomous political rule. Today, Donbas consists of two ‘people’s republics’ with elected governments—the former Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk (population app. 2.3 million, similar to Crimea) and Lugansk (app. 1.5 million). Travel to Russia and the right to work there and acquire citizenship are freely available.

    The above presents a starkly different picture than the comical presentation in Western media which posits a frightening Russia looming over Ukraine, just waiting for the opportunity to once again ‘invade’ or otherwise ‘threaten’ its poorer and less well armed Slavic cousin.

    Even informative and well-intentioned writers can trip up on the history. For example, in an article published on April 6, writer Vijay Prashad wrote, “In March 2014, after Russian troops entered Crimea, the population voted to join Russia…”

    Another informed writer, Oliver Boyd-Barrett at Bowling Green State University, wrote on April 14 of the “separatist republics” of Donetsk and Lugansk. The term ‘seperatist’ is a perjorative one universally employed by Western media. It ignores the fact that the initial struggle in Donbas was a struggle for autonomy and only turned, over time, against continued association with Ukraine when the latter invaded the region and let fly its artillery and snipers in the heavily urbanized region. To this day, the bombs and shells are still falling, egged on if not guided by NATO’s military trainers in Ukraine.

    Altogether, the referendum vote in Crimea and the formation of the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk were acts of political self-determination par excellence. Yet liberal opinion in the West and much of left-wing opinion, too, refuse to recognize this fact.

    The terms of the Minsk 2 agreement are crystal clear—they envision autonomy, not independence or affiliation to the Russian Federation, for Donetsk and Lugansk. (Of course, after years of being under direct military attack by Ukraine, it is not at all clear that the populations of Donetsk and Lugansk would accept rejoining the violent, right-wing state of Ukraine, even with an autonomy status.) Until social and political protests in Ukraine proper can loosen the stranglehold of extreme-right ultra-nationalists and NATO military advisors over the country, prospects for peace in Donbas are, tragically, remote.

    The hold of right-wing Ukrainian nationalism in the West

    Liberals and soft-left social-democrats in the West are near-to universal in their acceptance of the received, ‘official’ history of Ukraine and its relations within the Soviet Union, then with Russia. According to this history, Ukraine has been universally oppressed and exploited by the Soviet Union then Russian Federation since its emergence as a modern country following World War One.

    Nazism is whitewashed in this scenario because little attention is paid by its ideologues to the calamitous German invasion and occupation of Ukrainian and other Soviet territory during World War Two. Worse, an ‘equivalency’ school of history has arisen in the West during the past decade or so, according to which the crimes of Nazism are said to be equivalent to those during the same years in the Soviet Union, under Stalin. Celebrated author Timothy Snyder tells this version of history in his bestselling 2010 book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. A lengthy essay and review sharply criticizing that book by writer Daniel Lazare was published in Jacobin in 2014 and remains essential reading for understanding this history.

    Added to this are the years of the Cold War against Russia following WW2, when an unrelentingly negative image of the Soviet Union was burned deeply into the consciousness of people in the West.

    Many self-proclaimed Marxists in the West, particularly those of Trotskyist origin, share the ‘official’ view of an unrelenting oppression in Ukraine. A key piece of this view is the false claim that the government in the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin perpetrated a ‘genocide’ against the peasants of Ukraine in 1932-33 in the form of a deliberate famine. The Holodomor, as it is known in Ukrainian terminology, is officially recognized by many Western governments. Schools and other public institutions in Canada and the U.S. recognize the fourth Saturday of November as ‘Holodomor Memorial Day’ and statues and memorials have been erected in both countries.

    But Holodomor is a myth. There was a ghastly famine in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. Tens of thousands died. But there were famines simultaneously in other parts of the Soviet Union as well during those terrible two years. Soviet government policy of the day contributed to famine conditions because of the chaotic conditions which the rushed policy of collectivization of agriculture, begun in 1928, created. But the larger responsibility for the Soviet famines (plural) of the day were multifold:

    • The backward conditions of agriculture inherited by the Soviet Union from the empire of the Tsarist monarchy overthrown by the Russian Revolution in 1917.
    • The destruction caused by the Western invading armies following 1917, seeking to overthrow the Revolution.
    • The harsh economic embargoes by these same Western powers following the defeats of their military interventions of 1918-1921.
    • And harsh climactic conditions which beset the Soviet Union in 1932-33.

    For all the chaos that collectivization of agriculture sowed, the early 1930s were the last years of famine in the Soviet Union (the war years under Nazi occupation excepted).

    Historian Mark Tauger at West Virginia University is a leading scholar on the Soviet famines of those years. His writings and research and those of other writers can be found here.

    The widespread acceptance of Holodomor theory across the political spectrum in the West was an early sign of the political degeneration that came to hobble so many liberals and leftists in Western countries during the latter half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. Attention and research to the evolving Soviet Union fell away. Inattention deepened following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Racist stereotypes against the people of China and Russia that are rooted in the years of the Cold War remained strong in popular consciousness.

    In the case of the Trotskyist doctrine, its was deeply scarred by a founding ultraleftism, notably in its dismissal of the significance of the mixed-economy, New Economic Policy which guided the early Soviet Union from 1921 to 1928, and its formal revival in 1929 of the theory of permanent revolution. The latter displaced the theory and strategy of Vladimir Lenin, proven correct in 1917 and countless times since, of the central importance of an alliance of the working class and peasantry for any successful revolutionary transformation.

    Today’s global political situation is historically unprecedented. Two, large non-imperialist countries—Russia and China—are resisting imperialist diktats and striving for a multipolar world. This creates countless openings for countries such as Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea to break from the imperialist strangleholds that marked the latter decades of the 20th century and forge alternative economic and political ties that strengthen national sovereignty.

    The imperialist countries have been waging military threats and economic embargoes against the peoples of Russia, Crimea and Ukraine for nearly ten years now. It is long past due for the progressive people of the world to condemn these policies and campaign to end them.

    This is doubly the case now that China has come squarely into the West’s gunsights. Here, too, the political left in the West needs to rise to the defense of the people and government of China against military threats and economic embargoes.

    Rising imperialist war and militarism, the collapse of social policy as evidenced by the coronavirus pandemic, and global warming cry out for building broad-based social and political movements that unite the oppressed peoples of the world in a fight for a world of social justice. Broad-based anti-imperialist unity should be the strategic path for all those concerned about the fate of the planet.

    Roger Annis is a writer and retired aerospace worker living in Vancouver, Canada. His articles are compiled on his website A Socialist In Canada. Each day, the website publishes extensive headlines (with weblinks) of news and analysis in three categories: World, Ecology, Canada. Read other articles by Roger.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Fiji has dropped three places in the latest Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index and been condemned for its treatment of “overly critical” journalists who are often subjected to intimidation or even imprisonment.

    The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog has criticised many governments in the Asia-Pacific region for censorship and disinformation that has worsened since the start of the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic last year.

    “On the one hand, governments use innovative practices often derived from marketing to impose their own narrative within the mainstream media, whose publishers are from the same elite as the politicians,” says RSF.

    “On the other, politicians and activists wage a merciless war on several fronts against reporters and media outlets that don’t toe the official line.”

    Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan and Philippines are among the regional countries condemned for draconian measures against freedom of information. China was given a special panel for condemnation in a summary report.

    “Thanks to its massive use of new technology and an army of censors and trolls, Beijing manages to monitor and control the flow of information, spy on and censor citizens online, and spread its propaganda on social media,” says RSF.

    Independent journalism was also being fiercely suppressed in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and and Nepal.

    ‘Less violent repression’
    “A somewhat less violent increase in repression has also been seen in Papua New Guinea (down 1 at 47th), Fiji (down 3 at 55th) and Tonga (up 4 at 46th).” The Tongan “improvement” was due to the fall in other countries.

    In the country report for Fiji, reference is made to the “draconian 2010 Media Industry Development Decree, which was turned into a law in 2018, and under the regulator it created, the Media Industry Development Authority”, which is under direct government oversight.

    “Those who violate this law’s vaguely-worded provisions face up to two years in prison. The sedition laws, with penalties of up to seven years in prison, are also used to foster a climate of fear and self-censorship.

    “Sedition charges poisoned the lives of three journalists with The Fiji Times, the leading daily, until they were finally acquitted in 2018. It was the price the newspaper paid for its independence, many observers thought.”

    RSF also referred to the banning of Fiji Times distribution in several parts of the archipelago at the start of the covid-19 pandemic in March 2020.

    A year ago, RSF condemned an op-ed by a pro-government Fiji military commander in Fiji defending curbs on freedom of expression and freedom of the press in order to enforce the lockdown imposed by the government to combat covid-19.

    “In times of such national emergency such as this […] war against covid-19, our leaders have good reasons to stifle criticism of their policies by curtailing freedom of speech and freedom of the press,” Brigadier-General Jone Kalouniwai wrote in an op-ed in the pro-government Fiji Sun newspaper on 22 April 2020.

    ‘Enemy within’
    General Kalouniwai, the Republic of Fiji Military Forces chief-of-staff and who is regarded as close to Prime Minister Bainimarama, went on to voice “deep concerns about this enemy within, which have been fuelled by irresponsible citizens selfishly […] questioning the rationale of our leader’s decision to impose such restrictions.”

    “No authority, and certainly not a military officer, should be arguing in favour of placing any kind of curb on press freedom,” declared Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk at the time.

    “These comments recall the worst time of the Fijian military dictatorship from 2006 to 2014. We urge the Fijian government to do what is necessary to guarantee the right of its citizens to inform and be informed, which is an essential ally in combating the spread of the virus.”

    In late March, after the first coronavirus case was confirmed in the western city of Lautoka, police manning a roadblock outside the city prevented delivery of the Fiji Times, the country’s only independent daily.

    Its pro-government rival, the Fiji Sun, was meanwhile distributed without any problem.

    RSF noted “two other significant media actors that sustain press freedom” in the country – the Fiji Village news website and associated radio stations, and the Mai TV media group.

    PNG journalists ‘disillusioned’
    In Papua New Guinea, the ousting of Peter O’Neill by James Marape as prime minister in May 2019 was seen as an encouraging development for the prospects of greater media independence.

    However, “journalists were disillusioned” in April 2020 when the police minister called for two reporters to be fired for their ‘misleading’ coverage of the covid-19 crisis.

    “In addition to political pressure, journalists continue to be dependent on the concerns of those who own their media. This is particularly so at the two main dailies, the PNG Post -Courier, owned by US-Australian media tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, which is above all focused on commercial and financial concerns, and The National, owned by the Malaysian logging multinational Rimbunan Hijau.”

    In contrast to the Pacific drops in the index, Timor-Leste rose seven places to 78th.

    “In 2020, journalists came under attack from the Catholic clergy, which is very powerful in Timor-Leste. A bishop [attacked] two media outlets that published an investigative article about a US priest accused of a sexual attack on a minor.

    “The Press Council that was created in 2015 plays an active role in defusing any conflicts involving journalists, and works closely with university centres to provide aspiring journalists with sound ethical training.

    “But the media law adopted in 2014, in defiance of the international community’s warnings, poses a permanent threat to journalists and encourages self-censorship.”

    ‘Press freedom models’
    In other regional developments, RSF said that the “regional press freedom models – New Zealand (up 1 at 8th), Australia (up 1 at 25th), South Korea (42nd) and Taiwan (43rd) – have on the whole allowed journalists to do their job and to inform the public without any attempt by the authorities to impose their own narrative”.

    In Australia, “it was Facebook that introduced the censorship virus.

    “In response to proposed Australian legislation requiring tech companies to reimburse the media for content posted on their social media platforms, Facebook decided to ban Australian media from publishing or sharing journalistic content on their Facebook pages.”

    Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

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    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Fiji has dropped three places in the latest Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index and been condemned for its treatment of “overly critical” journalists who are often subjected to intimidation or even imprisonment.

    The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog has criticised many governments in the Asia-Pacific region for censorship and disinformation that has worsened since the start of the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic last year.

    “On the one hand, governments use innovative practices often derived from marketing to impose their own narrative within the mainstream media, whose publishers are from the same elite as the politicians,” says RSF.

    “On the other, politicians and activists wage a merciless war on several fronts against reporters and media outlets that don’t toe the official line.”

    Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan and Philippines are among the regional countries condemned for draconian measures against freedom of information. China was given a special panel for condemnation in a summary report.

    “Thanks to its massive use of new technology and an army of censors and trolls, Beijing manages to monitor and control the flow of information, spy on and censor citizens online, and spread its propaganda on social media,” says RSF.

    Independent journalism was also being fiercely suppressed in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and and Nepal.

    ‘Less violent repression’
    “A somewhat less violent increase in repression has also been seen in Papua New Guinea (down 1 at 47th), Fiji (down 3 at 55th) and Tonga (up 4 at 46th).” The Tongan “improvement” was due to the fall in other countries.

    In the country report for Fiji, reference is made to the “draconian 2010 Media Industry Development Decree, which was turned into a law in 2018, and under the regulator it created, the Media Industry Development Authority”, which is under direct government oversight.

    “Those who violate this law’s vaguely-worded provisions face up to two years in prison. The sedition laws, with penalties of up to seven years in prison, are also used to foster a climate of fear and self-censorship.

    “Sedition charges poisoned the lives of three journalists with The Fiji Times, the leading daily, until they were finally acquitted in 2018. It was the price the newspaper paid for its independence, many observers thought.”

    RSF also referred to the banning of Fiji Times distribution in several parts of the archipelago at the start of the covid-19 pandemic in March 2020.

    A year ago, RSF condemned an op-ed by a pro-government Fiji military commander in Fiji defending curbs on freedom of expression and freedom of the press in order to enforce the lockdown imposed by the government to combat covid-19.

    “In times of such national emergency such as this […] war against covid-19, our leaders have good reasons to stifle criticism of their policies by curtailing freedom of speech and freedom of the press,” Brigadier-General Jone Kalouniwai wrote in an op-ed in the pro-government Fiji Sun newspaper on 22 April 2020.

    ‘Enemy within’
    General Kalouniwai, the Republic of Fiji Military Forces chief-of-staff and who is regarded as close to Prime Minister Bainimarama, went on to voice “deep concerns about this enemy within, which have been fuelled by irresponsible citizens selfishly […] questioning the rationale of our leader’s decision to impose such restrictions.”

    “No authority, and certainly not a military officer, should be arguing in favour of placing any kind of curb on press freedom,” declared Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk at the time.

    “These comments recall the worst time of the Fijian military dictatorship from 2006 to 2014. We urge the Fijian government to do what is necessary to guarantee the right of its citizens to inform and be informed, which is an essential ally in combating the spread of the virus.”

    In late March, after the first coronavirus case was confirmed in the western city of Lautoka, police manning a roadblock outside the city prevented delivery of the Fiji Times, the country’s only independent daily.

    Its pro-government rival, the Fiji Sun, was meanwhile distributed without any problem.

    RSF noted “two other significant media actors that sustain press freedom” in the country – the Fiji Village news website and associated radio stations, and the Mai TV media group.

    PNG journalists ‘disillusioned’
    In Papua New Guinea, the ousting of Peter O’Neill by James Marape as prime minister in May 2019 was seen as an encouraging development for the prospects of greater media independence.

    However, “journalists were disillusioned” in April 2020 when the police minister called for two reporters to be fired for their ‘misleading’ coverage of the covid-19 crisis.

    “In addition to political pressure, journalists continue to be dependent on the concerns of those who own their media. This is particularly so at the two main dailies, the PNG Post -Courier, owned by US-Australian media tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, which is above all focused on commercial and financial concerns, and The National, owned by the Malaysian logging multinational Rimbunan Hijau.”

    In contrast to the Pacific drops in the index, Timor-Leste rose seven places to 78th.

    “In 2020, journalists came under attack from the Catholic clergy, which is very powerful in Timor-Leste. A bishop [attacked] two media outlets that published an investigative article about a US priest accused of a sexual attack on a minor.

    “The Press Council that was created in 2015 plays an active role in defusing any conflicts involving journalists, and works closely with university centres to provide aspiring journalists with sound ethical training.

    “But the media law adopted in 2014, in defiance of the international community’s warnings, poses a permanent threat to journalists and encourages self-censorship.”

    ‘Press freedom models’
    In other regional developments, RSF said that the “regional press freedom models – New Zealand (up 1 at 8th), Australia (up 1 at 25th), South Korea (42nd) and Taiwan (43rd) – have on the whole allowed journalists to do their job and to inform the public without any attempt by the authorities to impose their own narrative”.

    In Australia, “it was Facebook that introduced the censorship virus.

    “In response to proposed Australian legislation requiring tech companies to reimburse the media for content posted on their social media platforms, Facebook decided to ban Australian media from publishing or sharing journalistic content on their Facebook pages.”

    Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • In March of last year as the coronavirus panic was starting, I wrote a somewhat flippant article saying that the obsession with buying and hoarding toilet paper was the people’s vaccine.  My point was simple: excrement and death have long been associated in cultural history and in the Western imagination with the evil devil, Satan, the Lord of the underworld, the Trickster, the Grand Master who rules the pit of smelly death, the place below where bodies go.

    The psychoanalytic literature is full of examples of death anxiety revealed in anal dreams of shit-filled overflowing toilets and people pissing in their pants.  Ernest Becker put it simply in The Denial of Death:

    No mistake – the turd is mankind’s real threat because it reminds people of death.

    The theological literature is also full of warnings about the devil’s wiles.  So too the Western classics from Aeschylus to Melville. The demonic has an ancient pedigree and has various names. Rational people tend to dismiss all this as superstitious nonsense.  This is hubris.  The Furies always exact their revenge when their existence is denied.  For they are part of ourselves, not alien beings, as the tragedy of human history has shown us time and again.

    Since excremental visions and the fear of death haunt humans – the skull at the banquet as William James put it – the perfect symbol of protection is toilet paper that will keep you safe and clean and free of any reminder of the fear of death running through a panicked world.  It’s a magic trick, of course, an unconscious way of thinking you are protecting yourself; a form of self-hypnosis.

    One year later, magical thinking has taken a different form and my earlier flippancy has turned darker. You can’t hoard today’s toilet paper but you can get them: RNA inoculations, misnamed vaccines. People are lined up for them now as they are being told incessantly to “get your shot.”  They are worse than toilet paper. At least toilet paper serves a practical function.  Real vaccines, as the word’s etymology – Latin, vaccinus, from cows, the cowpox virus vaccine first used by British physician Edward Jenner in 1800 to prevent smallpox – involve the use of a small amount of a virus.  The RNA inoculations are not vaccines.  To say they are is bullshit and has nothing to do with cows. To call them vaccines is linguistic mind control.

    These experimental inoculations do not prevent the vaccinated from getting infected with the “virus” nor do they prevent transmission of the alleged virus. When they were approved recently by the FDA that was made clear.  The FDA issued Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) for these inoculations only under the proviso that they may make an infection less severe.  Yet millions have obediently taken a shot that doesn’t do what they think it does.  What does that tell us?

    Hundreds of millions of people have taken an injection that allows a bio-reactive “gene-therapy” molecule to be injected into their bodies because of fear, ignorance, and a refusal to consider that the people who are promoting this are evil and have ulterior motives.  Not that they mean well, but that they are evil and have evil intentions.  Does this sound too extreme?  Radically evil?  Come on!

    So what drives the refusal to consider that demonic forces are at work with the corona crisis?

    Why do the same people who get vaccinated believe that a PCR test that can’t, according to its inventor Kary Mullis, test for this so-called virus, believe in the fake numbers of positive “cases”?  Do these people even know if the virus has ever been isolated?

    Such credulity is an act of faith, not science or confirmed fact.

    Is it just the fear of death that drives such thinking?

    Or is it something deeper than ignorance and propaganda that drives this incredulous belief?

    If you want facts, I will not provide them here. Despite the good intentions of people who still think facts matter, I don’t think most people are persuaded by facts anymore. But such facts are readily available from excellent alternative media publications.  Global Research’s Michel Chossudovsky has released, free of charge, his comprehensive E-Book: The 2020-21 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup D’Etat, and the “Great Reset.”  It’s a good place to start if facts and analysis are what you are after.  Or go to Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s Childrens Health Defense, Off-Guardian, Dissident Voice, Global Research, among numerous others.

    Perhaps you think these sites are right-wing propaganda because many articles they publish can also be read or heard at some conservative media. If so, you need to start thinking rather than reacting. The entire mainstream political/media spectrum is right-wing, if you wish to use useless terms such as Left/Right.  I have spent my entire life being accused of being a left-wing nut, but now I am being told I am a right-wing nut even though my writing appears in many leftist publications. Perhaps my accusers don’t know which way the screw turns or the nut loosens.  Being uptight and frightened doesn’t help.

    I am interested in asking why so many people can’t accept that radical evil is real.  Is that a right-wing question?  Of course not.  It’s a human question that has been asked down through the ages.

    I do think we are today in the grip of radical evil, demonic forces. The refusal to see and accept this is not new.  As the eminent theologian, David Ray Griffin, has argued, the American Empire, with its quest for world domination and its long and ongoing slaughters at home and abroad, is clearly demonic; it is driven by the forces of death symbolized by Satan.

    I have spent many years trying to understand why so many good people have refused to see and accept this and have needed to ply a middle course over many decades. The safe path. Believing in the benevolence of their rulers.  When I say radical evil, I mean it in the deepest spiritual sense.  A religious sense, if you prefer.  But by religious I don’t mean institutional religions since so many of the institutional religions are complicit in the evil.

    It has long been easy for Americans to accept the demonic nature of foreign leaders such as Hitler, Stalin, or Mao.  Easy, also, to accept the government’s attribution of such names as the “new Hitler” to any foreign leader it wishes to kill and overthrow.  But to consider their own political leaders as demonic is near impossible.

    So let me begin with a few reminders.

    The U.S. destruction of Iraq and the mass killings of Iraqis under George W. Bush beginning in 2003.  Many will say it was illegal, unjust, carried out under false pretenses, etc.  But who will say it was pure evil?

    Who will say that Barack Obama’s annihilation of Libya was radical evil?

    Who will say the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the firebombing of Tokyo and so many Japanese cities that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians was radical evil?

    Who will say the U.S. war against Syria is demonic evil?

    Who will say the killing of millions of Vietnamese was radical evil?

    Who will say the insider attacks of September 11, 2001 were demonic evil?

    Who will say slavery, the genocide of native people, the secret medical experiments on the vulnerable, the CIA mind control experiments, the coups engineered throughout the world resulting in the mass murder of millions – who will say these are evil in the deepest sense?

    Who will say the U.S. security state’s assassinations of JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, Jr., Robert Kennedy, Fred Hampton, et al. were radical evil?

    Who will say the trillions spent on nuclear weapons and the willingness to use them to annihilate the human race is not the ultimate in radical evil?

    This list could extend down the page endlessly.  Only someone devoid of all historical sense could conclude that the U.S. has not been in the grip of demonic forces for a long time.

    If you can do addition, you will find the totals staggering.  They are overwhelming in their implications.

    But to accept this history as radically evil in intent and not just in its consequences are two different things.  I think so many find it so hard to admit that their leaders have intentionally done and do demonic deeds for two reasons.  First, to do so implicates those who have supported these people or have not opposed them. It means they have accepted such radical evil and bear responsibility.  It elicits feelings of guilt. Secondly, to believe that one’s own leaders are evil is next to impossible for many to accept because it suggests that the rational façade of society is a cover for sinister forces and that they live in a society of lies so vast the best option is to make believe it just isn’t so.  Even when one can accept that evil deeds were committed in the past, even some perhaps intentionally, the tendency is to say “that was then, but things are different now.” Grasping the present when you are in it is not only difficult but often disturbing for it involves us.

    So if I am correct and most Americans cannot accept that their leaders have intentionally done radically evil things, then it follows that to even consider questioning the intentions of the authorities regarding the current corona crisis needs to be self-censored.  Additionally, as we all know, the authorities have undertaken a vast censorship operation so people cannot hear dissenting voices of those who have now been officially branded as domestic terrorists. The self-censorship and the official work in tandem.

    There is so much information available that shows that the authorities at the World Health Organization, the CDC, The World Economic Forum, Big Pharma, governments throughout the world, etc. have gamed this crisis beforehand, have manipulated the numbers, lied, have conducted a massive fear propaganda campaign via their media mouthpieces, have imposed cruel lockdowns that have further enriched the wealthiest and economically and psychologically devastated vast numbers, etc.  Little research is needed to see this, to understand that Big Pharma is, as Dr. Peter Gøtzsche documented eight years ago in Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare, a world-wide criminal enterprise.  It takes but a few minutes to see that the pharmaceutical companies who have been given emergency authorization for these untested experimental non-vaccine “vaccines” have paid out billions of dollars to settle criminal and civil allegations.

    It is an open secret that the WHO, the Gates Foundation, the WEF led by Klaus Schwab, and an interlocking international group of conspirators have plans for what they call The Great Reset, a strategy to use  the COVID-19 crisis to push their agenda to create a world of cyborgs living in cyberspace where artificial intelligence replaces people and human biology is wedded to technology under the control of the elites.  They have made it very clear that there are too many people on this planet and billions must die.  Details are readily available of this open conspiracy to create a transhuman world.

    Is this not radical evil?  Demonic?

    Let me end with an analogy.  There is another organized crime outfit that can only be called demonic – The Central Intelligence Agency.  One of its legendary officers was James Jesus Angleton, chief of Counterintelligence from 1954 until 1975.  He was a close associate of Allen Dulles, the longest serving director of the CIA.  Both men were deeply involved in many evil deeds, including bringing Nazi doctors and scientists into the U.S. to do the CIA’s dirty work, including mind control, bioweapons research, etc.  The stuff they did for Hitler.  As reported by David Talbot in The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, when the staunch Catholic Angleton was on his deathbed, he gave an interviews to visiting journalists, including Joseph Trento.  He confessed:

    He had not been serving God, after all, when he followed Allen Dulles.  He had been on a satanic quest….’Fundamentally, the founding fathers of U.S. intelligence were liars,’ he told Trento in an emotionless voice.  ‘The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted…. Outside this duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power.  I did things that, looking back on my life, I regret.  But I was part of it and loved being in it.’  He invoked the names of the high eminences who had run the CIA in his day – Dulles, Helms, Wisner.  These men were ‘the grand masters,’ he said.  ‘If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell.’  Angleton took another slow sip from his steaming cup.  ‘I guess I will see them there soon.’

    Until we recognize the demonic nature of the hell we are now in, we too will be lost.  We are fighting for our lives and the spiritual salvation of the world.  Do not succumb to the siren songs of these fathers of lies.

    Resist.

    The post Denying the Demonic first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.