Category: Opinion

  • I groan at the screen when I see my kids watching one of the typical portrayals of the ‘modern dad’. Perhaps the most common depiction is the well-intentioned, loving but equally clueless, hopeless and bumbling father. I grew up on this imagery courtesy of Homer in The Simpsons in the 90s and now that I am a father, the representation has not changed much at all. This type of dad is in way too many stories and shows.

    My two children have loved Peppa Pig, where Daddy Pig is doing not much of anything, except falling over and lazing around. Of course, there’s the dad who is off working all day and comes home ready for dinner and a cuddle. In my home, we recently discovered the animated show, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, with its surprisingly scintillating British voice cast, and catchy tune from Robbie Williams. Even though the show is based on a 1968 book it doesn’t appear dated in 2021 because so little has shifted culturally. Then there’s the emotionally distant, aloof or altogether absent father who doesn’t tend to his children at all. Almost every Disney movie fits this category.

    The fact is, kids love storytelling. Reading a book, watching an adventure-filled show or creating some fantastic backstory for a new game to play, storytelling adds colour and vibrancy to childhood experiences, instils children with lifelong values and passions and significantly influences their cognitive development. But what are kids learning from stories about the role of dads in their lives?

    At a time when more men are trying to juggle work to allow more family time, when young dads are trying to take parental leave and share the load, fatherhood depictions remain horribly outdated and narrow.

    This Facebook post is a classic example of dads being shown as hopeless and incapable of doing their share. It’s meant to be funny. But what message does it really send? 

    Research demonstrates all men are capable of providing the physical and emotional support children require to develop into skilled, confident and socially adjusted people. Yet one of the great parenting myths is that men are thoroughly incapable and inattentive, and women naturally attuned to children’s needs. We are feeding that myth to our kids every day because it remains deeply ingrained in our popular culture and children’s entertainment.

    If we go back to popular culture again, sadly, Bandit Heeler on Bluey (pictured above), the loving, emotionally involved and active dad, is the exception to the rule. He is doing almost all the heavy lifting to change the perception of fatherhood. While we all celebrate this show, we can’t expect one gorgeous animated blue heeler and his adorable family to change perceptions alone. And we can’t just let the next generation passively absorb such counter-productive tropes. Role modelling inside our homes offers a much more positive depiction of fatherhood than books and screens ever could, and is an absolute necessity. Our kids must experience dad nourishing them, playing games, nursing them on sick days, and counselling them with vulnerability, sensitivity and affection when problems arise. Our children need a high-definition dad ‘for real life’ as Bluey and Bingo would say.

    Equally, we must help our children develop a healthy curiosity about how gender norms are depicted. When we bump up against the unhelpful depictions of dopey dads and overworked mums, we can pause and inquisitively ask our kids whether this reflects their life, and even whether they think it’s fair only one parent runs the home. One of the best qualities we can gift our children is the capacity to question the order of all things, especially gender norms. Ginger Gorman, author and editor of BroadAgenda, says she finds herself regularly engaging in such a commentary with her kids,

    “Not long ago one of my kids brought home a home reader. And mummy was cooking everyone breakfast and getting the kids to school, meanwhile Daddy just walked out of the door to go to work. This kind of cultural indoctrination teaches very small kids that in heterosexual relationships, this is what can be expected from Dads – they don’t share the domestic load and put the burden entirely on their partner.”

    Ginger says she can see the progress she’s made within her family, “I’ve taught my kids to be gender literate, and my then 6-year-old daughter instantly picked up on this disparity. At the time, she said: ‘Why is mummy doing all the housework and daddy just goes off to work? That will make mummy cranky and tired, and she won’t have time for a shower before she goes to work [herself].’ It was cute that she could so clearly see the issues. But also infuriating that little people are being taught this gender inequity from such a small age”.

    The culture inside our homes is as important as anything portrayed in a book, show or game. Every family can reshape the representations of fatherhood by taking concrete action every day. If we do this, over time, hopefully our children start creating more empowering and enlightening stories of their own.

     

     

    The post Our storytelling around fatherhood must change appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • The war on Afghanistan has been anything but. It’s actually been a money grab for private security firms and arms traders. There’s been a grab at resources and infrastructure. Most importantly of all, it’s been a decimation of Afghan people.

    And, really, there’s no reason to assume that these things won’t continue on the part of the West.

    Understanding the war on terror

    You can’t really understand Afghanistan without having, at the very least, the context of the last 20 years of the so-called ‘war on terror.’ 9/11 started a concerted campaign headed by the US that’s been the latest breeding ground of suspicion and surveillance against Muslims. The foreign policy of Western nations can’t be understood without this context – that’s how central it is to global politics.

    It’s almost 20 years since 9/11, and 20 years of injustices have followed. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have seen these countries ransacked and gutted. Cultures, histories, and peoples have been decimated. Torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib. Illegal detainments in Guantánamo Bay. Surveillance of Muslim communities globally.

    Point out a major Western nation, and you can point out foreign and domestic policy stitched together with a deadly suspicion trained at Islam and Muslims.

    Debates on outcome

    Historically, many nations around the world have had the British invade and then ‘leave’ at some stage. The last 20 years of the ‘war on terror’ are full of multiple instances where the British and the US have invaded and then left a country.

    The latest instance has had the usual crowd of ex-soldiers, foreign policy ‘experts’, and other assorted whites offering up their opinions.

    As usual, these opinions pay no attention to the colonial interests of invading militaries. The fact that the US left Afghanistan after 20 years and the Taliban took over in 10 days has been pointed to as a reason why the whole thing has been a failure. People have also pointed to how this means lots of soldiers died for nothing.

    They didn’t die for nothing – they died to preserve Western interests (financial or otherwise). They died to allow the West to assert control over a region which has had more written about its women, culture, and religion than George W. Bush has done dodgy paintings in his retirement from being a war criminal.

    These efforts in Afghanistan are about the West’s power and control over so-called developing nations. They’re about the West sustaining itself on the resources, people, and cultures of nations who’ve been outstripped by the machine of neoliberalism.

    It’s imperial fantasy wrapped up in modern day coloniality.

    Civilising mission

    Despite what all those foreign policy experts are saying, there was only ever one desired outcome: a civilising mission that took centre stage while Western nations ransacked the place backstage.

    Western exceptionalism underpins the machinery of war and the theatre of civilising missions that fuels countries like the US and Britain. Western exceptionalism uses Afghani women as symbols of how civilised, democratic, and free white and Western women are.

    Afghanistan was never invaded to save women. It was invaded to cement the identity of Western nations as civilised, peaceful, and freedom loving.

    It was never about women. The endless pieces on Afghani women who skate, or the pictures of Afghani women in hijab – the cheap novels featuring heavily lined eyes staring out from a veil – all of these products exist to reinforce certain values. These values try to tell us that Afghani and Muslim women are backwards – other. Caught in the fantasy of aggressive and uncultured Brown men who control them, these women are just puppets for Western values.

    White people in the West need to think of women halfway across the world as inferior, backwards, and repressed. We think we have it bad over here, but look over there! We could never be that oppressed! Let’s go and save them! By bombing them!

    As usual, these types of views say more about colonisers than they do the colonised.

    Clash of cultures

    Which takes us to where we are now.

    It’s little wonder that people are constantly wringing their hands in Britain about race relations, ethnicity, diversity, or multiculturalism. You can understand why British people as a society are so racially illiterate. Just like clockwork, there’ll be another moral panic about race. The same red-faced talking heads will froth at the mouth about political correctness gone mad. And so the cycle goes.

    They simply don’t have the range to understand the weight of colonialism and the impact it has now.

    Afghanistan is the latest version to be in British news cycles. All the discussion of refugees and heart-wrenchingly desperate people clinging to a moving plane has been set in motion by a decades-long campaign that has displaced millions of people.

    This is who Britain is

    These Western values are about world-building. It doesn’t matter if it’s documentaries, novels, images, or news media about Afghanistan. If it’s made in the West, it tells us more about the West than it does about Afghanistan.

    Gargi Bhattacharyya, a sociologist who works on racial capitalism, writes:

    As long as the great men believed their own stories, they felt justified in using violence to maintain their privilege; after all, this was the right and natural order. As long as the rest of the world believed at least some of the great men’s stories, they remained feeling sad and powerless, unable to imagine routes out of social structures which accorded them no value.

    Much of the coverage of Afghanistan has been dripping with Islamophobia and racism. That changes how we understand the narrative of Afghanistan. It also changes how we understand the people of Afghanistan. They’re not stories, or lessons, or warnings. They’re humans who have been terrorised by Western nations.

    The very least the rest of the world can do is to imagine pathways out of the stifling narratives presented to us.

    Featured image via Unsplash/Mohammad Rahmani

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Once upon a time Nationalism was an ideology reserved for extremists, but in recent years it has moved from the irrelevant fractious fringes to become a central movement in western politics. Rooted in fear, it feeds on tribal instincts and has become mainstream by offering oversimplified explanations to complex problems, such as poverty and immigration.

    The ideal of a post-cold war tolerant world where resources (including food and water), are shared equitably, governments cooperate and borders soften has been usurped by rabid intolerance and racism, wall building, flag waving, cruel unjust immigration policies and violent policing of migrants and migrant routes. Rather than addressing issues and tackling underlying causes the ardent nationalist blames some group or other, ethnic, religious or national.

    Love, distorted but potent, and hate sustain the monster: love and corrupted pride of nation and ‘our way of life’, seen among the flag wavers as somehow superior; hatred of ‘strangers’, and hatred of change to that which is familiar. It is an insular reactionary movement of introspection and division based on false and petty notions of difference: skin color, religion, language, culture, even food.

    Such prejudices lead to an agitation of suspicion and hatred of ‘foreigners’. National interests are favored over international responsibilities; minorities and refugees insulted, abused or worse. Covid has intensified such vile human tendencies, and highlighted what were already strained relations with ‘outsiders’ –  those that are differentwith ‘the other’.

    People of Asian appearance have been victimized in various countries, most notably the US, Australia and Britain; trapped in refugee camps, asylum seekers/migrants have been forgotten, and vaccine nationalism, the “me first approach”, with wealthy western countries buying up vaccines, has been widespread. As a result of this injustice, while the rich will have their populations vaccinated by late 2021, developing countries (relying on the inadequate COVAX scheme) are looking at mass vaccination by the end of 2023, if ever. It is a moral outrage that flows from and strengthens ideas of global separation, inflames resentment and will prolong the virus.

    Central to the fear-inducing nationalist program is reductive national identities and cultural images tightly packaged in ‘the flag’. Described as “primordial rag[s] dipped in the blood of a conquered enemy and lifted high on a stick” (in Flags Through the Ages and Across the World by Whitney Smith), national flags evolved from battle standards and means of group identification held aloft during the Middle Ages. They are loved by nationalists who always believe their country to be ‘the greatest on Earth’, their people the strongest and the ‘best’, their way of life superior.

    Such ignorant, meaningless and completely false ideas have become common elements of political rhetoric. Politicians (of all colors) in many, if not all, western democracies believe they must reinforce such crass sentiments, or face losing populist support, being attacked as ‘enemies of the people’ – as High Court Judges were in Britain during the Brexit fiasco, or labelled ‘traitors’.

    Torrents of abuse

    There are various interconnected threads to, and expressions of, Nationalism, from the political realm to mainstream and social media, popular culture to education. This suffocating network strengthens discrimination and prejudice of all kinds, including racism. During the recent Euro ’21 tournament black England players who had missed penalties in the final were subject to a torrent of abuse online. The same England ‘fans’ booed opposition teams singing national anthems and their own team, when they ‘took the knee’ before matches; a universal non-political act of solidarity that UK Home Secretary, Priti Patel disparagingly described as “gesture politics”.

    She was later (rightly) accused of “stoking the fires of racism”, by refusing to endorse the players’ actions. Her new widely condemned immigration policy, has also given license to nationalist bigots and racists. Some of them have recently been recorded hurling abuse from the beaches of southern England at refugees in boats crossing the English Channel.

    Irresponsible nationalist politicians like Patel (and the world is full of them), thick with ideology and ambition, are dogmatic in their beliefs and concerned solely with getting and retaining power. To this narcissistic end they employ the inflammatory rhetoric of nationalism – ‘our country’, ‘this great nation of ours’, ‘controlling immigration’, and ‘the flag’. Predictable and crude methods used to cajole the slumbering masses and agitate their tribal tendencies.

    In order to strengthen their nationalist credentials presidents, politicians and military men and women, adorn themselves with the national emblem: embossed badges, a trend led by the US, who are flag-waving world leaders, and at press briefings/interviews they are rarely seen without a flag at their side – two, where there was no pre-Covid, in the case of the totally inept UK Government, desperate one suspects to shift the focus away from their homicidal management of the pandemic, and the calamity that is Brexit Britain. The flag is not, in itself, the problem, but its growing use is a powerful sign of the unabated rise of nationalism, a trend that with the fall of Trump, many had hoped was in decline.

    Unifying acts of kindness

    Nationalism grows out of fear. It feeds hate, leads to violence, and creates a climate of ‘us’ and ‘them’.  Indeed it thrives and is dependent upon such divisions. The stranger, the foreigner, refugee, asylum seeker or migrant is targeted. Blamed for the country’s ills, slandered as criminals, rapists, murderers. Accused of stealing jobs, draining health care services, degrading housing, corrupting the pristine national culture with their vile, primitive habits and beliefs.

    In this way the ‘stranger’ becomes dehumanized, making it possible to abuse and mistreat him or her in varying degrees: From verbal insults on the street, the workplace or in the classroom to violent assault; detained in offshore prisons (Australia), imprisoned for years without charge (Guantanamo e.g.), housed in inhumane conditions in refugee camps, detention centers and/or temporary housing, or allowed to drown in the Mediterranean, North Sea and elsewhere.

    Such atrocities are all fine, because the men, women and children who are being mistreated constitute the ‘them’. ‘They’ are the enemy, the destroyer of civilisation and decency, less than human, even the children, and as such they deserve it. And the further away such ‘strangers’ are kept the easier it is to perpetuate the demonisation myth, maintain suspicion and strengthen hate. Conversely as Joe Keohane makes clear in The power of strangers: the benefits of connecting in a suspicious world, “connecting with strangers helps to dispel partisanship and categorical judgements, increase social solidarity and make us more hopeful about our lives.” Mistrust of ‘strangers’ is strengthened by division and dispelled by contact; by sharing a moment, by acts of kindness – given and received, in which our common humanity is acknowledged.

    Nationalism poisons the mind and the society and must be rooted out. Despite the apparent signs to the contrary, it is completely at odds with the tone of the times, which is towards unity – greater cooperation, tolerance and understanding. It is in reaction to this unifying movement that the demon of nationalism has risen; it is  cruel, ugly and extremely dangerous and must be countered by unifying acts of kindness and compassion wherever it is seen.

    If the unprecedented crises confronting humanity – environmental emergency, displacement of people, poverty and armed conflict – are to be faced, mitigated and overcome, individuals, communities, businesses and governments must increasingly come together, agree methods and global policies and build united integrated societies founded on compassion. Given the unprecedented scale and range of the issues, particularly climate change and the broader environmental calamity, there is no alternative.

    The post The Poison of Nationalism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • ANALYSIS: By Keith Locke

    After the fall of Kabul, the obvious question for New Zealanders is whether we should ever have joined the American war in Afghanistan. Labour and National politicians, who sent our Special Forces there, will say yes.

    The Greens, who opposed the war from the start, will say no.

    Back in 2001, we were the only party to vote against a parliamentary motion to send an SAS contingent to Afghanistan. As Green foreign affairs spokesperson during the first decade of the war I was often accused by Labour and National MPs of helping the Taliban.

    By their reasoning you either supported the American war effort, or you were on the side of the Taliban.

    To the contrary, I said, New Zealand was helping the Taliban by sending troops. It was handing the Taliban a major recruiting tool, that of Afghans fighting for their national honour against a foreign military force.

    And so it has proved to be. The Taliban didn’t win because of the popularity of its repressive theocracy. Its ideology is deeply unpopular, particularly in the Afghan cities.

    But what about the rampant corruption in the Afghan political system? Wasn’t that a big factor in the Taliban rise to power? Yes, but that corruption was enhanced by the presence of the Western forces and all the largess they were spreading around.

    Both sides committed war crimes
    Then there was the conduct of the war. Both sides committed war crimes, and it has been documented that our SAS handed over prisoners to probable torture by the Afghan National Directorate of Security.

    Western air power helped the government side, but it was also counterproductive, as more innocent villagers were killed or wounded by air strikes.

    In the end all the most sophisticated American warfighting gear couldn’t uproot a lightly armed insurgent force.


    Taliban claims it will respect women’s rights, press freedom. Reported by New Zealand journalist Charlotte Bellis for Al Jazeera. Video: AJ English

    There was another course America (and New Zealand) could have taken. Back in 2001 the Greens (and others in the international community) were pushing for a peaceful resolution whereby the Taliban would hand over Osama bin Laden to justice. The Taliban were not ruling that out.

    But America was bent on revenge for the attack on the World Trade Centre, and quickly went to war. Ostensibly it was a war against terrorism, but Osama bin Laden quickly decamped to Pakistan, so it became simply a war to overthrow the Taliban government and then to stop it returning to power.

    The war had this exclusively anti-Taliban character when New Zealand’s SAS force arrived in December 2001. The war would grind on for 20 years causing so much death and destruction for the Afghan people.

    The peaceful way of putting pressure on the Taliban, which could have been adopted back in 2001, is similar to how the world community is likely to relate to the new Taliban government.

    Pressure on the Taliban
    That is, there will be considerable diplomatic and economic pressure on the Taliban to give Afghan people (particularly Afghan women) more freedom than it has to date. How successful this will be is yet to be determined.

    It depends on the strength and unity of the international community. Even without much unity, international pressure is having some (if limited) effect on another strongly anti-women regime, namely Saudi Arabia.

    The Labour and National governments that sent our SAS to Afghanistan cannot escape responsibility for the casualties and post-traumatic stress suffered by our soldiers. Their line of defence may be that they didn’t know it would turn out this way.

    However, that is not a good argument when you look at the repeated failure of Western interventions in nearby Middle Eastern countries.

    America has intervened militarily (or supported foreign intervention) in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Palestine, Somalia and Libya. All of these peoples are now worse off than they were before those interventions.

    “Civilising missions”, spearheaded by the American military, are not the answer, and New Zealand shouldn’t get involved. We should have learnt that 50 years ago in Vietnam, but perhaps we’ll learn it now.

    Former Green MP Keith Locke was the party’s foreign affairs spokesperson. He writes occasional pieces for Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by The Spinoff and is republished here with the author’s permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • As the Taliban take over Kabul’s presidential palace, you’d be forgiven for wondering who it is that two decades of war and foreign occupation has benefited.

    In 2001, the US, UK, and their allies invaded Afghanistan. The invasion certainly hasn’t benefited the people of Afghanistan; since 2001, an estimated 47,245 civilians have been killed.

    Most people in the US haven’t benefited either, with $2.261tn spent on the war, and 2,442 military personnel killed.

    Neither has it helped ordinary people in the UK. More than 450 British soldiers have been killed, and in 2013, the estimated cost of the UK’s war in Afghanistan stood at £37bn. Most UK combat troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 2014, but 750 remained until this summer as part of NATO’s force.

    So who has benefited?

    One of the groups of people who have clearly benefited from two decades of war are the CEOs and directors of international arms companies.

    For example, British weapons company BAE’s profits shot up after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

    Many of the people who’ve been at the helm of the UK’s Afghanistan policy have also directly had skin in the arms game.

    Defence secretary Ben Wallace cried crocodile tears on LBC recently. But what he didn’t mention is that he used to be a director of QinetiQ, an arms company whose share prices were soaring 11 years ago after it gained contracts to supply weapons for the war in Afghanistan. British rapper Lowkey tweeted:

    The revolving door goes the other way too. Data from Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) shows that 196 ex-public servants are now in arms trade jobs.

    And they’re meeting in London this September

    From 14-17 September, one of the world’s largest arms fairs is coming back to London’s Docklands. At least 1,700 arms companies will be exhibiting, and official delegations and government employees from the UK and abroad will be doing their shopping. No doubt the industry attendees will be counting their profits from two decades of war in Afghanistan and looking for new conflicts to exploit.

    It’s worth remembering that the Defence Security and Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair was underway 20 years ago, on 11 September 2001, when the planes hit the World Trade Center and lit the spark which paved the way for the US’s disastrous ‘War on Terror’.

    One person who was at the demonstration back in 2001 reflected:

    On [September 11] I was among about the hundreds of people taking part in a protest organised by CAAT outside the DSEi arms fair. Many events were cancelled that day and in the following days and weeks. Sports events, cultural events, political events, the UN Special session on Children, which I was had been doing some work around  –  all these we cancelled. The arms fair however, continued.  More deals were signed and more arms contacts were made even in the light of that awful mass killing.

    Whilst the fact that there was a major arms fair taking place in the UK at the very same time as this awful act of terrorism was something of a coincidence I think there are [connections] here. I think there are real connections between for example, our proliferation of weaponry through the arms trade and our real insistence – despite all evidence to the contrary –  that world security is best served by an ever increasing ability to inflict death and destruction on others  – and that  desperate, awful, self-destructive act of mass violence.

    The Canary‘s senior editor, Emily Apple, was also at the protests that week:

    On 12 September, share prices across the world had crashed and many major events were cancelled. But DSEI continued and arms company share prices soared. So we were back on the streets, blockading arms dealers from reaching the fair. We were told by the police that we should be ashamed of ourselves, that we had no respect for the dead because we were out protesting. But they didn’t think to question the fact that DSEI continued, didn’t care that those who’d make obscene profits from the attack, and the inevitable subsequent war, were continuing their business as usual.

    Two decades of resistance

    DSEI has encountered over two decades of mass street resistance. As the US’s ‘War on Terror’ got underway – a smokescreen for neo-colonial foreign policies – thousands took to the streets. Shoal Collective interviewed anti-militarist organiser Sam Hayward in Red Pepper:

    That year, millions of people were involved in the opposition to the invasion of Iraq,’ Sam says. ‘When the war began it wasn’t clear how to oppose it and many anti-militarist activists fell away, not knowing what to do. I started thinking about how imperialist wars couldn’t happen without the weapons being manufactured and sold by the arms companies — beneficiaries of aggressive imperialist wars.’

    One tactic at DSEI 2003 was to stop the arms dealers from getting to the ExCeL Centre. Sam explains how this happened: ‘Activists climbed onto the roofs of DLR trains and locked themselves on, stopping the trains. As a result, the arms dealers were brought in on buses. Protesters stopped the buses, laying down in front of them. Delegates started arriving by taxi and on foot, so people blocked the roads. There were thousands of activists involved. It was successful in delaying the arms dealers getting there, but ultimately the arms fair still took place’.

    In 2011, anti-militarists rowed kayaks into the path of a battleship, which was on the way to be used as a reception area at the DSEI arms fair. One of them told Red Pepper: 

    Four of us launched inflatable kayaks from a hidden spot in the Thames, so we were on our way before the river police spotted us. The ship was equivalent to about three storeys tall.

    “blocking the DSEI arms fair is an obligation”

    In 2019, I joined the resistance against DSEI along with several other writers from The Canary. One of them was Canary journalist Eliza Egret, who wrote at the time:

    For me, blocking the DSEI arms fair is an obligation. My activism and writing has taken me to Palestine, Kurdistan and Syria. I have seen first-hand the devastation caused by this sickening arms industry. I have interviewed families whose children have been murdered with weapons made in Europe. I have met a 10-year-old boy who miraculously survived after an Israeli sniper shot a bullet through his brain. I have had tear gas and sound grenades fired at me in Palestine, and I have been surrounded by armoured vehicles in Kurdistan. I have stood on rubble that was once family homes, and I have seen human blood splattered on the walls of buildings.

    So it is my duty to take action against this disgusting weapons exhibition. As I write this, arms deals are being made, mostly by privileged men who have never had to experience the terror of living in a war zone.

    Two of us from The Canary also launched kayaks on to the water and disrupted a military boat display by BAE Systems at the fair.

    Join us at DSEI 2021

    In 2021, campaign group Stop the Arms Fair is calling for people to take action to disrupt the setting up of the arms fair. The set-up of DSEI is a major operation, as the exhibition itself takes place on 100,000 square metres of land at the ExCeL Centre in London’s Docklands. It set out some of the actions that have happened in previous years:

    As lorries and trucks transporting armoured vehicles, missiles, sniper rifles, tear gas and bullets attempted to get on site, people from around the world were there to put their bodies in the way.

    Dabke-dancing, aerobics, an academic conference, a gig on a flatbed truck, abseilers dangling from a bridge, theatre, military veterans undertaking unofficial vehicle checks for banned weapons, Kurdish dancers, rebel clowns, religious gatherings, hip-hop artists, radical picnics, a critical mass of cyclists, Daleks, political choirs, and lots of people in arm-locks all blocked the entrances to the DSEI arms fair repeatedly over the course of a whole week.

    Thousands more amplified the protests by signing petitions, lobbying decision-makers, speaking out online and in their own communities, and helping in diverse ways to make the protests possible.

    In September, arms dealers, many of whom will have profited from Afghanistan, will be coming together to make more deals that will cause more war and suffering.  It’s important to be there to resist the fair, and to show solidarity with those who are under attack by state militaries armed with weapons bought at DSEI.

    Featured image via The Canary

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • 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.

  • On 23 June, 184 nations at United Nations voted for an end to the half-century long USA embargo against tiny Cuba. Only the USA and Israel voted against the resolution.

    A Reuters article reprinted in the New York Times wrote:

    Cuba said earlier this month the decades-old U.S. trade embargo cost it a record total of more than $9 billion over the last financial year, hurting its ability to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.

    Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told the General Assembly that sanctions had made it harder for Cuba to acquire medical equipment needed to develop its own COVID-19 vaccines and for other uses as well as equipment for food production. “Like the virus, the blockade asphyxiates and kills, it must stop,” Rodriguez told the General Assembly.

    Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark once wrote of America’s penchant for violence:

    The consistent underlying psychology of the United States, … should be understandable to anyone who has ever known a violent neighborhood bully. The government of Americans means to have its way through the use and threatened to use of superior force. It will lie. It will deceive. It will kill. It will escalate the threat and use of force to the highest level it dares. It will bluff, dangerous as that can be. It will do whatever is must to dominate.1

    In the case of Cuba, US President Kennedy, approved bombing, an invasion that took the lives of 900+ Cubans, brought even the threat of nuclear war to bear, and thereafter had his Attorney General Robert Kennedy run what was called Operation Mongoose, which included deadly sabotage and attempts to assassinate Cuba’s Prime Minister Fidel Castro.

    All, while at the same time, USA’s greatest trading partner was, and is more than ever, Communist Party run China.

    USA Does Not Embargo Communist China 

    The USA has not invaded China big time since the US looted imperialist Peking in 1900.

    But it tried to stop the Chinese revolution and in 1950 used its 7th Fleet to protect Chiang Kai-shek who with his Nationalist (Capitalist) Army invaded Taiwan and installed a draconian dictatorship.2

    However, China has the gumption to call for the US to end its embargo of Cuba. Newsweek reported, “China has called on the United States to promptly lift its decades-long trade restrictions on Cuba.”3

    Might Cuba Herself Request Help with Such a Boycott?

    If no other agency sees fit to call for an international boycott of American products in sympathy with the US caused suffering of the Cuban people, may heaven see the Cuban government itself call for such a boycott of US products. 

    We have seen for some years now, Russia, China, and Iran avoiding the use of the US dollar currency.

    In any obviously unequal fight, the tendency is for onlookers to side with the little guy, for the underdog and against the bully. This could auger success for such a boycott to catch on.

    A lot of salt-of-the-Earth hard-working, ordinary citizens and their families might enjoy joining in to help fight the injustice of the superpower nation of 331 million in a land of 3.797 million square miles relentlessly attacking a nation of 11 million on an island of 42,426 square miles.

    Millions of shoppers passing up buying “Made in USA” or an American brand name made in Vietnam, Thailand, or Indonesia, when a non-American-made item from, for example, Japan or China is just as acceptable, might just be a little unsettling with all the other troubles America seems to be having these days.

    What the Hell! When all is said and done and everything settles down, ending the embargo might be the best thing for all sides in both countries.

    1. Cubans in Cuba could lead more enjoyable and normal lives with the latest modernities.
    1. The Communist Party of Cuba could focus on what is most important for the welfare of Cubans, rather than be focused and concerned about finances and providing food.
    1. Americans aware of the genocidal crimes of their government against Cuba and most other Latin American peoples (and Asian, Middle Eastern and African nations), could applaud at least one improvement in US genocidal foreign policy and feel hopeful for more.
    1. The evil minds of the criminal Deep-State-Military-Industrial-Complex-Wall Street investors in war, for the flood of US tourists and visitors and money and consumer culture and indulgence into Cuba, could have a good chance of witnessing the demise of the intensity of Cuban revolutionary spirit for overthrowing (perhaps too precipitously), the neocolonial capitalist domination of society at home in the USA as well as abroad in the poor and still financially plundered captive Third World. After all ‘they,’ the bad guys of Wall Street, are still number one, though probably not for all that much longer. Imperialist White folks are losing their edge in weaponry, and though there are so so very many of those people of differing hues of skin color, they haven’t yet gotten riled up enough to realize that they really don’t have to put up with just a few White US billionaires owning more wealth than half of humanity collectively.)4

    In any case, with all the changes now happening in the USA about “Whose Lives Matter,” maybe this murderously long, unfair Yankee embargo of Cuba and military occupation of Guantanamo will just logically peter out.

    Your author won’t prejudice such an expected felicitous outcome, by crowding it with the mention of more recent crimes against humanity by the United States of America in and on Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Haiti. However, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Haiti’s turn at rectification, if not remuneration, should follow on the heels of the end of the crimes against Cuba, whether or not hastened by the international boycott suggested in this brief article.

    1. US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, in his forward to nuclear physicist Micho Kaku’s To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon’s Secret War Plans.
    2. The Great Debate: Chiang Kai-shek’s Role in 21st Century Taiwan,” The Diplomat.
    3. “China Says U.S. Should ‘Immediately’ Lift Cuba Embargo and Stop Interfering,” Newsweek, 7/19/21.
    4. These 6 Men Have as Much Wealth as Half the World’s Population,” Common Dreams.
      Just 8 men own same wealth as half the world,” Oxfam.
      World’s Richest 1 Percent Own Twice as Much as Bottom 90 Percent,” PND.
    The post Why Not Boycott US Products Until It Ends Its Embargo of Cuba and Leaves Guantanamo? first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jay Janson.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • EDITORIAL: By the Samoa Observer Editorial Board

    It has become obvious in recent weeks that the strategy of Samoa’s oldest political party is to “repeat a lie long enough that it becomes the truth”.

    And these untruths have been disbursed through multiple platforms: television, radio and social media as well as through protest marches and vehicle convoys.

    It explains why the former prime minister and Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) leader, Tuila’epa Dr Sa’ilele Malielegaoi and his party deputy, Fonotoe Pierre Lauofo, have been on air lately, as part of a party-led crusade to disparage the judiciary, following the Appellate Court’s decision last month to install the Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) government.

    Last week the Ministry of Justice and Courts Administration (MJCA) felt compelled to set the record straight — in the face of a slew of misinformation by the HRPP leadership recently — on the 23 July 2021 judgment of the Appellate Court and where the court views the position of the Head of State in relation to the Constitution.

    Perhaps, the former prime minister needs to be reminded again of the position that the Head of State occupies under the Constitution, as laid out by the Appellate Court’s ruling:

    “It may not be a well-known fact that the Head of State, except as otherwise provided in the Constitution, has no option but to comply with the advice of the Cabinet or the Prime Minister; such advice is deemed to be accepted by the Head of State after a period of 7 days.

    “Respectfully, the Head of States authority is to do what he is told to do by Cabinet or the Prime Minister as his responsible Minister.

    “He is like everyone else, a servant of the Constitution, not its Master.”

    — (Paragraph 60 of the court’s decision notes.)

    So aren’t we blessed that our forefathers foresaw what could come many years later — when a sitting prime minister could have illegally used a Head of State to usurp the powers of the Constitution — and therefore drafted in the provisions to ensure the Head of State remains subservient to the Cabinet or the Prime Minister (not a caretaker cabinet or caretaker prime minister) at all times?

    One thing we know for sure is Tuila’epa and Fonotoe have been cherry-picking the courts’ judgments to suit their party’s political agenda, which is why the MJCA felt the need to release a statement last week to point out the role of the courts as the guardians of the Constitution.

    So what is the endgame for these two notable politicians, one a former prime minister and the other a former deputy prime minister, as they persist in churning out flawed interpretations of the court’s judgement?

    We ask this question because both have reached the highest echelons of political power in Samoa, one as a prime minister and the other deputy prime minister, and basked in the glory that came with their terms in office including the triumphs of successive HRPP governments over the years.

    Speaking on TV1 Samoa’s Good Morning Samoa programme on Wednesday, Fonotoe claimed “Samoa is slipping into a failed state” and then unleashed a barrage of untruths on how the judiciary is “causing the erosion of the Constitution” and “effectively putting itself above Parliament” on the televised show.

    And this is from a politician who has practised as a lawyer and made submissions as a barrister before the same court, which he and party boss continue to disrespect to this very day with their Machiavellian commentary, following their party’s loss at the April general election.

    But then how can Samoa be a failed state when the international community immediately stepped forward with congratulatory messages for the FAST government and Samoa’s first female Prime Minister, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa after the Appellate Court handed down its 23 July 2021 ruling?

    The international community showed total confidence in the ability of our judiciary to rule without fear or favour to resolve the three-month-long constitutional crisis, and this was demonstrated by their acceptance of the court’s judgement.

    Therefore, the call by Tuilaepa for the international community to assist “restore Samoa’s democracy to where it should be” appears to be at best tongue-in-cheek, consigned to the annals of Samoan political history.

    How can he be taken seriously as a leader on the international stage when history now shows how him and his party members tried to manipulate the Constitution to prolong their illegal tenure in office?

    Nonetheless the highest court in the land has spoken, let’s respect the wisdom of its judgement and enable the new government to get on with the job of governing, and delivering on its promises to the people of this nation.

    If you haven’t noticed storm clouds have been gathering recently and the people want their government to be ready to tackle these challenges, so if you have nothing positive to contribute, then it is in the public’s interest that you step aside and let those who’ve been given the mandate to lead take charge.

    This Samoa Observer editorial was published on 13 August 2021. It is republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Law schools should have courses on the expanding immunities of government and corporate officials from criminal prosecution and punishment. Guest lecturers, speaking from their experience, could be Donald J. Trump, George W. Bush (criminal destruction of Iraq), Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, the Sackler Family of opioid infamy, and the top officials at Boeing, led by its CEO Dennis Muilenburg, for the 346 homicides in their deadly 737 MAX aircraft.

    They should all be charged in varying degrees with manslaughter. Note how the definition fits the facts on the ground:

    Reckless homicide is a crime in which the perpetrators were aware that their act (or failure to act when there is a legal duty to act) creates significant risk of death or grievous bodily harm in the victim, but ignores the risk and continues to act (or fail to act), and a human death results.

    Trump violated willfully and repeatedly so many laws, including obstruction of justice, that it would take a large well-staffed special prosecutor’s office to handle his offenses. (Biden’s Attorney General, Merrick Garland, has decided to immunize Trump by doing nothing). (See, Letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, June 17, 2021).

    War criminal George W. Bush violated the Constitution by invading Iraq without a Congressional declaration of war, lying about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, killing over one million Iraqis, in addition to causing injuries, sicknesses, and devastation of critical public infrastructure. During this process of torture and mayhem, Bush violated federal statutes, international treaties, and returned to Texas immunized in fact, though not in law. He and former Vice President Dick Cheney could still be prosecuted.

    New York lawyer and former homicide prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, Robert C. Gottlieb, called for the prosecution of Trump over willful, disastrous actions and inactions concerning the Covid-19 pandemic, under the presidential duties to act, which led to many tens of thousands of preventable losses of life. Trump began dismissing the dangers of the fast multiplying virus as soon as it entered the U.S. from China.

    Gottlieb gives examples of when the average citizen could not be able to escape criminal prosecution, citing the conviction of the owner (and two others) of a New York City residential and commercial building of homicide. Reckless drivers resulting in the deaths of innocents are often convicted of manslaughter and jailed.

    Governor Ron DeSantis, confronting overwhelmed hospitals, and 25,000 new Covid-19 cases just in one day, still is brazenly advocating the maskless, crowd-together-if-you-choose-behavior of ‘live free and die.’ Somehow, he got through Harvard Law School uneducated to become a perilous promoter of opposing mask mandates in schools and hospitals, opposing required vaccinations for hospital workers (though he favors vaccinations generally), and is described politely by contagious disease specialists as being “in a state of denial.” Gritting his teeth, DeSantis, a fervent Trump supplicant, says again and again, “People are going to be free to choose to make their own decisions.” What? Free to infect others with a lethal disease? Does he not know of past public health campaigns against tuberculosis, smallpox, and the 1919 influenza epidemic?

    Some Florida school districts, mandating masks to protect their children, have disregarded his ideological orders. Had DeSantis lost the last election, many more Floridians would be living today.

    The same situation exists under Texas Governor Greg Abbott. The Dallas, Houston, and Austin school districts are defying his homicidal executive order prohibiting mandates for masks by complying with CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) standards. The Dallas County officials sued Abbott, declaring that the governor’s ban violates Texas law.

    The headline in Wednesday’s New York Times tells the story: “Texas Hospitals Are Already Overloaded. Doctors Are ‘Frightened by What is Coming.’” The more contagious Delta variant has spread everywhere, to which Abbott replied, “We must rely on personal responsibility, not government mandates.” Has he spoken to the deadlier Delta variant lately about his delusions?

    When it comes to the crimes of large corporations and their bosses, immunity or impunity is what they expect. When, once in a while, they’re caught in the act, the company pays the dollar penalties and the company’s rulers and backers get off with no “personal responsibility.”

    In one of the biggest corporate marketing/promotional crimes – over 500,000 opioid deaths so far and accelerating, the Sackler’s company, Purdue Pharma, escaped into bankruptcy while the Sacklers escaped any criminal prosecution. As a part of the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy the Sacklers negotiated for personal immunity from further civil suits, and the wrongdoers only had to fork over $4.5 billion, (spread out over years no less!) of their immense fortune. Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to three felony charges in 2020, but under the settlement with the Justice Department, the Sacklers agreed to pay $225 million but made no admissions of wrongdoing. I once recall a person stealing a donkey in Colorado going to jail for 15 years.

    Then there are the criminal Boeing bosses who committed the manslaughter of 346 passengers and crew members in Indonesia and Ethiopia. Boeing’s stealth cockpit software, not provided to the pilots, the airlines, and deceptively conveyed to the FAA, took away control of the two ascending 737 MAX planes from the pilots and drove the aircraft into the sea and ground in 2018 and 2019.

    The Trump Justice Department sweetheart-settled a criminal case against Boeing, with the prosecutor subsequently quitting and joining Kirkland & Ellis, the law firm for Boeing. There was no trial or jail for any Boeing bosses, just a modest $2.5 billion exaction, mostly going to the airlines and the government with the rest to the grieving families. The civil tort suits will come under Boeing’s insurance with the rest being mostly deductible against the few federal income taxes Boeing pays.

    Next time you hear any prominent person announce that “Nobody is above the law,” you can ask: “Really, with all the corporate and government lawbreaking we read about, tell us just how many of these big-time crooks are in orange suits serving time?”

    The post “Nobody is Above the Law” – Except the “Big Boys” first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • As a veteran of the war, and a journalist who has reported from the country, the endgame in Afghanistan is a bizarre and rather personal spectacle.

    To see generals and politicians who were involved in the disaster finger-pointing at each other, even as the UK deploys troops to evacuate the last remaining Britons, demeans the tragic human story of that country.

    The news of the rescue mission comes as the Taliban take territory at an alarming rate. The latest major city to fall is Kandahar, the insurgent group’s spiritual home. One report suggests that Kabul could fall within 90 days. Or perhaps even within a month.

    Nearer to home, the same sorts of people – and, in some cases, literally the same people – who oversaw the disaster for decades have picked out US president Joe Biden as the culprit.

    Biden’s decision to pull out, they claim, risks plunging the country into chaos.

    Finger pointing

    I am hardly a fan of Biden, who on matters of war is as imperialistic as a Bush, an Obama, a Trump, Blair or Cameron. But those protesting loudest are just as implicated.

    To name just a few, the finger-pointers include:

    All of them say the decision to pull out (albeit, of a place the west never had any right to occupy) is a terrible one for all concerned.

    General Richards also attacked the UK government. As did members of the Murdoch press, which supported the disastrous wars throughout. Among those levelling blame at the UK government is the Times‘ Tom Newton Dunn:

    But the truth is, it isn’t quite as simple as any of these figures want to suggest. They talk as if the decision that doomed Afghanistan was made in 2021. But the truth is that it is was made in 2001.

    Squandered peace

    As political hip-hop artist Lowkey has correctly pointed out, it never had to be this way. Way back in the beginning, the 20-year conflict could have been avoided. And with it hundreds of thousands of deaths. Including those of several people I knew personally.

    US journalist Spencer Ackerman, whose new book on the wars has just been released, makes a similar point:

    Remember that the Taliban offered terms in December 2001. Donald Rumsfeld rejected them. Everything that followed made the Taliban stronger.

    Elsewhere, NATO, which officially oversaw the US-led occupation for most of the 20-year period, announced that leaders would meet Friday to discuss the crisis. And in London, a Cabinet Office Briefing Room (better known as ‘Cobra’) meeting of senior ministers and military figures was announced for 13 August

    Unfolding disaster

    Amid the chaos, it seems likely the rescue party of troops will be from the Parachute Regiment. That’s ironic given that the unit’s deployment in 2006 led to years of fighting in Helmand province – the location where most of the UK’s 456 deaths occurred. I remember it well. I deployed with 16 Air Assault Brigade that spring.

    What’s missing among the finger pointing is a little honesty about the events of that period. That deployment was neither necessary nor wise. Before 2006, the Taliban were a spent force. Their leadership had mostly fled to Pakistan – an ally of the UK and US whose intelligence services consistently support the Taliban to this day.

    I have no doubts that that deployment – codenamed Operation Herrick – led us to this point. Our presence there became a lighting rod for an insurgency which previously had not existed. And it set the pattern for the following years, energising locals against our unwanted presence.

    And I am aware today that the reasoning behind the 2006 deployment was deeply hubristic: the British had failed in Iraq in American eyes. This left the British desperate for another theatre in which to prove their usefulness to the US. Helmand, with horrific results, was that opportunity.

    And, as fate would have it, the army brigade which lobbied successfully for a new deployment was my own. Within months what was framed as a peacekeeping-style operation had turned into a brutal counter-insurgency war.

    Blame

    This background, just one of the important details missing from the analysis of people like Richards, Tugendhat and Stewart, is key to understanding how we got here.

    Their arguments for pulling out being a bad idea forget to mention that we never had any right to be there in the first place.

    Their disingenuous appeal to humanitarian ideals ignores the fact that the UK isn’t in the business of morality when it comes to international affairs.

    And their placing blame on particular governments or leaders skips over the fact that they themselves were happy to be key players in the disaster which is unfolding today.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Sgt Steve Blake RLC.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • By Fiona Hurd, Auckland University of Technology and Suzette Dyer, University of Waikato

    The revelations last week of toxic workplace behaviour and a “boys’ club” culture at MediaWorks raise questions about organisational policies and processes that go well beyond a single company.

    The MediaWorks review by Maria Dew QC identified instances of bullying, sexism, harassment, inappropriate relationships and use of illegal drugs. Her report’s 32 recommendations will now inform a culture change plan at the company.

    The case provides a warning and an example for other organisations looking to improve their own cultures. But it also underlines how pervasive and resistant to change these problems can be — as our own research has shown.

    We analysed three years of reflections by tertiary human resources (HR) students who had just completed a training session on sexual harassment processes and responses. While all felt they better understood definitions of sexual harassment and bullying after the course, they also felt there was a lack of consequences for the harassers, and that victims often lose everything.

    More concerning, the students almost unanimously said they would be unlikely to raise the matter if they witnessed an act of harassment. Many also felt they would find it difficult to speak up about or improve inadequate HR policies or processes they might find at future employers.

    They felt to do so would be a “black mark” on their own career development. While many “hoped” they would speak out, they were unsure how they would act in reality. Those who had experienced sexual harassment themselves reflected on how “difficult it is to make a complaint”.

    HR is part of the culture
    This last observation is important. Not unlike the findings in the recent Christchurch Girls High School survey, close to half of the HR students reported instances of either experiencing or witnessing an act of sexual harassment in the workplace.

    Most reported they would likely “remain silent and just leave” if faced with instances of harassment in their future professional lives. Simply put, as other research has also shown, we found sexual harassment was experienced as a “normal” and complex part of working within a corporate environment.

    This is not a criticism of HR students, who will no doubt move on to become ethical, high-performing professionals. In fact, their responses mirror those we see across employee groups.

    But our study is unique — most research has focused on managerial or employee experiences of sexual harassment, whereas ours involves practitioners who play a critical role in harassment policy design and implementation, as well as in developing work cultures intolerant of harassment.

    To see such responses in a group that is often blamed for organisational failure by high-profile inquiries suggests we first need to acknowledge that HR people themselves are working within a wider culture that can inhibit meaningful change.

    Why workers don’t speak up
    The responses in our research reflect the expectations of a corporate culture these future leaders are already well versed in — that to speak up means potentially sacrificing your own professional progression, or risking being seen as someone who “can’t take a joke”.

    Many people will understand this dilemma, which is not limited to speaking up about harassment and bullying. Those who speak up against racism and discrimination based on sexual orientation or disability face similar issues.

    If even those charged with developing processes to support positive work cultures are not confident in speaking up, how do organisations do better? This is surely an issue of critical importance to all New Zealand organisations, given recent reports suggesting the problem is widespread and certainly not limited to high-profile cases.

    As the Mediaworks report showed, solutions have to go beyond fixing the support processes for employees who have experienced harassment, and involve confronting the largely invisible drivers of toxic organisational culture.

    These are not easily captured in a traditional “organisational values” statement. The idea of “culture” extends to the language, behaviours and micro-interactions we have with one another every day.

    Our research participants reported their own experiences of needing to “adapt to the crass behaviour” and the difficulty in stepping outside taken-for-granted norms: “You can’t put up a force field.”

    Leaders need to be honest
    Given this, perhaps recommendations around processes and training programmes specific to sexual harassment are not enough. Instead, the key might lie in seeing this behaviour as part of wider cultural behaviours that, on their own, might not immediately raise alarm bells.

    Studies have shown that any form of disrespectful behaviour — such as refusing to help, spreading rumours, subtle undermining, or even leadership behaviour such as “shoulder tapping” for preferential treatment — can lead to a culture that supports toxic power structures and where harassment and bullying become risks.

    Many of these behaviours are seen as a “normal” part of office politics, easy to dismiss or difficult to see. More importantly, they can be hard for leaders to admit to — we all want to lead organisations with strong, positive organisational cultures.

    But having clear, candid and honest discussions with colleagues around the leadership table about the invisible culture will open a dialogue and create the potential for change.

    Importantly, it takes a willingness by leaders to be brave enough to take an honest look in the cultural “mirror” and be open to what is revealed.The Conversation

    Dr Fiona Hurd, head of department, International Business, Strategy and Entrepreneurship, Auckland University of Technology, and Suzette Dyer, senior lecturer in human resource management, University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • He’s back!  Harvey Weinstein, American film producer and convicted sex offender, was recently extradited from New York to LA where he faces 11 rape and sexual assault charges. He is also appealing his 23-year conviction in New York which he has been serving at the Rikers Island jail complex. This man, who has had over 100 women accuse him of sexual assault, has pleaded not guilty.

    I have, in print no less, made the shameful admission that when I first heard of Harvey Weinstein and his sex crimes, I thought ‘casting couch’. A regretful and regurgitated brain-fart from my past where I had managed to duck and weave those situations with men where my hair would start to prickle at the back of my neck, all the while being fed the patriarchal narrative that women who didn’t must have asked for it.

    I have Prime Minister Julia Gillard to thank for loosening the knots on those crusted-on narrow-minded views years before Harvey Vile-Stain was headlines. In her famous 2012 speech in Australia’s Parliament, she called out the hypocrisy of the leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott, in accusing her of being sexist.  Known as the Misogyny Speech, it was voted ‘most unforgettable’ moment in Australian TV history in a poll run by The Guardian in February 2020.  I remember it well, especially the bit where I scrambled for my computer and googled ‘misogyny’.

    Julia_Gillard_2010

    Former Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard at a Q & A Session in Rooty Hill, New South Wales,
    Wednesday, 11 August 2010. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

    Pennies didn’t just drop; I was hit by the entire contents of a poker machine on pension day.  Ping, ping, ping, Tony Abbott was a misogynist!  I just didn’t know there was a word for it when I encountered him on a charity bike ride, years earlier. I knew he was arrogant, the way he would put the whole peloton at risk by riding erratically.  I knew he was ego-driven, trying to keep up with the fastest group.  But I never had the word for when he belittled and ridiculed the women who were riding in another group.  Women who had done the fundraising heavy lifting. Women who were challenging themselves to an extraordinary physical feat.

    Julia’s speech inspired me when I’ve experienced sexism in the workplace myself. A former board member at a company where I worked got into a head-to-head dispute with the sitting Board Chair – they had a long, factious history – and insinuated that he must have been having an affair with me.  I didn’t even work in the same office as either of them, let alone the same State! I was a pawn in their shirt-fronting melee.

    Previously I might have shrunk away from something like this but this time, I wasn’t going to take it lying down. I insisted that the comments be printed-out and put on the member’s record with a file note that I wrote myself.  I told a number of Board members that I was offended. I was surprised he wasn’t sanctioned. Needless to say, I didn’t stay much longer in that job. Hardly a powerful Julia moment I grant you, but when I reflect on my younger working life it was a far sight better than agreeing to have a job interview in a hotel room. Baby steps.

    Literally as fingers are typing this article, my computer is alerting me to more news of this ilk. This from the ABC, 4 Aug 2021, ‘Joe Biden says New York Governor Andrew Cuomo should resign after probe finds he sexually harassed multiple women.’  Eleven women were found to have credible complaints against the US Governor, for which he has denied all.

    Thanks to the #MeToo movement, which was started by sexual harassment survivor Tarana Burke and went viral when actor Melissa Milano encouraged all women to use it on Twitter when accusations against Vile-Stain emerged, I did not for one nano-second think anything but support and solidarity for yet another group of women speaking out. That monkey has well and truly been cut off my back. Mr. Cuomo, you might want to buckle-up.

    So, in my Misogyny 101 course I have learned that the spectrum of hatred for women covers a huge expanse and can even infect women’s perceptions of women. If I could personally acknowledge the roll of Julia and Harvey in my awakening, here’s what I’d say:

    Julia, thank you for being so freckin’ awesome, for challenging my vocabulary, and for breaking the seal of my late onset feminism.”

    “Harvey Vile-Stain, in paraphrasing a saying I found online, may the fleas of a thousand camels invade your crotch, and may your arms be too short to scratch them.”

    Top image: Harvey Weinstein, Chairman, The Weinstein Company. Picture: Thomas Hawk. This photo is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

    The post Breaking the seal of my late onset feminism appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • … Surely, a possibly purloined pangolin, or other intermediate critter, shall appear to relieve us of any lingering doubts that this malingering pandemic virus, SARS-CoV-2, may have originated in a human, all-too-human, high level Bio-lab?  Of course, as recently as most of last year, the “lab-leak hypothesis” was considered by all manner of High and Mighty expert-idiot Soothsayers to be “debunked,” and without so much as a shred of evidence to support the opposite conclusion, namely:  that this particular novel coronavirus was all-natural, or zoonotic, in origin.  Such was the sad and fictive state of scientific affairs in 2020, when a mysterious consensus of scientistic politicos and their Corporate Media megaphones decided that a “lab-leak origin” story was not only absolutely false, but –“Stop, or at least content moderate, the Presses!” — perniciously so…

    Unfortunately for the true-believing zoonotic tribe, we’re all now deep into 2021, and their pet pangolin theory, formerly presumed to be incontrovertible “fact,” is now on the endangered species list, with the prospects of a scaly anteater “hosting” bat-to-human COVID transmission having dwindled to the infinitesimal on the probability scale.  The “zoonotic narrative” has fallen so far that even Big Pharma’s feisty little lap dog, Friar Fauci, has been forced to publicly acknowledge the possibility that the virus could have been human-engineered after being lightly grilled on the subject by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (See: “Weasel vs Weasel,” May 11, 2021, also known as the Senate Hearing of the “Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions” Committee).

    The May 11 Senator Paul-Saint Fauci exchange also featured this “flame-broiled whopper” from the Big Media-worshipped witch doctor, Anthony Fauci:  “I don’t favor gain-of-function research.”  Perhaps Dr Fauci has a split personality, or is merely a pathological liar, but he’s entirely on record as being the foremost promoter of gain-of-function studies in America, if not the World, during the last decade. On December 30, 2011, the Washington Post published an op-ed by the truth-deficient Fauci provocatively entitled:  “A Flu Virus Risk Worth Taking.”  In it, the authors (including then-and-current NIH Director Francis Collins and revolving-door pharmaceuticalist Gary Nabel) wrote the following:  “This laboratory virus does not exist in nature.  There is, however, considerable concern that such a virus could evolve naturally…Important information and insights can come from generating a potentially dangerous virus in the laboratory.”  Although the precise term “gain-of-function” is not used in the text of this WaPo op-ed, that is exactly the kind of experimentation for which Fauci and Friends were advocating in that piece.

    In the course of this writing, there has been another notable dust-up between Rand Paul and Anthony Fauci on the Senate Floor.  During this testy July 20 “showdown,” the visibly shifty-eyed Fauci is possibly even more defensive than his May 11 performance, and goes on to flat-out deny that the definition of gain-of-function research, in fact, defines what gain-of-function research is.  Perhaps Witch Doctor Fauci was having a “Bill Clinton” moment here, and whatever the meaning of “is” is was pinging all over what’s left of his brain, so “Tony” started jazz-handing and finger-pointing like he thought Andy Cuomo or Brother Bill Gates was gonna give this Holy Cross grad an Emmy or somethin’…If nothing else, Fauci’s idiotic display of sophistry would have gotten him kicked out of the Ancient Greek “Protagoras School for Aspiring Liars”; that a pompous political thespian like Rand Paul plays the role of Socrates here is almost equally ridiculous.

    However, beyond the Corporate political theater that “Inside the Beltway!” provides, some important questions arise from this line of inquiry.  For example, any mention of a “lab-leak origin” for COVID-1984 would have gotten a Major Social Media user de-platformed last year, a fact of Pandemic censorship which raises the question:  What is so compelling about that laboratory origin story that it was “raised from the Dead” in 2021?  Merely the fact that no squirrelly-acting pet pangolin has been caught on a CCTV camera yet?  What if we got a Commission together to “water-board” Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, Fauci’s middleman partner-in-crime on the Siberian–or Fort Detrick–Wuhan Express; would Daszak be able, under a bit of “enhanced interrogation,” to gurgle something of interest about the current “Flu Virus Risk Worth Taking”?  (By the way, no human being or other animal should ever be “water-boarded” under any circumstance; but, on a related note:  if one were to throw the Nuremburg Code at either Fauci or Daszak, the guess here is that it would stick…)

    And so the COVID “narrative” keeps shifting, as it desperately tries to keep its vanishing viral life alive.  One of the ways this insidious Virus is maintaining its Brave New World Order status is summed up in this New York Times article recently published on-line (July 26) by Yahoo! News, titled:  “The Delta Variant is the Symptom of a Bigger Threat:  Vaccine Refusal.”  One does not need to be an accredited virologist, immunologist, or evolutionary biologist to parse this headline, whose by-line is accredited to a suspiciously certain, all-too-certain, stenographer for the COVID-crisis named Apoorva Mondavilli.  Among many others, Mondavilli’s propaganda puff-piece includes this dull gem:  “The unvaccinated will set the country on fire again and again.”  Holy Cassandra, but this article was apparently judged by an NYT editor to be “news,” and not merely an opinion or promotional piece, which it clearly is.  Ironically, as data from the “vaccinated” camp begins to emerge, it appears that the “vaccinated” can not only get infected by COVID, but also transmit the beastly little bug, although the rabid mRNA-shot pushers now insist that their voodoo jabs significantly reduce the severity of infection (speaking of shifting the COVID “vax” party line!).

    The obvious inference here is that the “vaccinated,” too, “will set the country on fire again and again” — just maybe in a more controlled burn kind of way.  In this context, there is also ample room to speculate that these miraculous COVID “vaccines” are more akin to novelty therapeutics than cures, which goes a long way to explain why known anti-viral agents like hydroxychloriquine and Ivermectin have been so loudly vilified by the Pfizer-shilling crowd: “Hey, they just want their unfair Market share!” — has this bat been smoked out “of the belfry” yet?  Another way to state that question:  Has anyone at the CDC heard of Vitamin C?  Vitamin D?  Magnesium or zinc?

    If nothing else, this entire “COVID-19” episode — which is threatening to become an Absolute Franchise — has demonstrated that a certain manifest idiocy — now doddering into senility with JR Biden’s regime — rules the top of the post-industrial food-and-vaccination chain in the Western world.  These guys, and gals, or guy-gals (gargoyles?), as the cases may be, amidst the blurring of all possible shapes, contours, and lines, are druggedly Captaining an all-too-sinking Ship. “The only pandemic is among the Unvaccinated…They’re killing people” was a recent Joe Bidenism, as this un-Stately stick-figure of a United States President was drifting off to a nearby helicopter to whisk him away from the Public that he’s completely out-of-touch with…One wonders:  “Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that drone in your hand…?”  He doesn’t know, and neither did Trump, while Obama had a hunch, but preferred to remain aloof, and let the Boys and Girls down at the Death Star and CIA decide the dirty drone work (meanwhile, W’s still Painting Cats, only these days with Hunter Biden as his apprenticed accomplice…).  Of course, the “Build Back Better” Biden’s also got a syringe in his hand, just dripping with the new pharmaceutical goo, so “Why don’t you just get the jab, man!”  Thankfully, the door-to-door Bible-Vaccine-Salesman approach to getting everyone “Vaxxed Up!” was scrapped as quickly as ersatz “scrappy” Joe proposed it, as if Biden were the second coming of Donald “Trial Balloon” Trump.  These “salesman” Presidents are really too much, but they all kind of morph together when one thinks about it…

    But surely, there’s a squirrelly-acting purloined pangolin possibly scurrying around somewhere with a “Delta Plus” varmint-variant that’s certain to beat the Brand Praying On if we don’t get that “Basket of Deplorables”– excuse me, as I also mean Mitt Romney’s “47%,” and we’re all about “inclusion” in these pages –“vaccinated” before even worse spin-offs of the original and wildly (or Bio-Lab-leakedly…) popular COVID-19 Virus Show vanish into the hollow thin graveyard air of all other previously known pandemic pathogens?  Where is the formerly catastrophic 1918-19 H1N1 influenza virus now:  Doing a poorly attended reunion tour in Elderly Care Homes around the planet?  Is the “We still think we’re the Ruling Class” puppeteering Emmanuel Macron as the lead-minion for their distorted vision of the “Future,” whilst simultaneously propping up a zombie-like Joe Biden as his TransAtlantic partner-in-Crime?

    The other shift to emphasize in this “Trickster Virus” update is to note that while originally we were supposed to be all worried about “Granny,” now the clear focus of this weird propaganda campaign about “a virus” is all about the “Young.”  In case this shift of emphasis has been missed, the COVID-Apps’ emphasis is all about keeping the “youngsters” masked at all times, and especially in “schools,” where nothing of historical relevance is taught, per usual;  yet, the youngest amongst us must be indoctrinated into the current “Religion of Science” now prevailing, based primarily upon the mandates of democratically elected Fascists who decree — willy-nilly — what “Science” is.  Of course, the “kids” will still be forced to read Eric Blair-well’s 1984 against their wills, but that’s kind of what “Education,” or “Indoctrination Science,” is for.  “Ignorance is Knowledge”:  Who can reasonably dispute such platitudes?  Certainly not the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is scratching its bonkers bat head wondering why Fort Detrick ain’t getting the same scrutiny — just speaking of “Science?”

    As “spades” are sometimes “diamonds” or “clubs in the rough,” and the “Jack of Hearts” is all out-to-lunch, let’s just say that no one knows very much about COVID-19, including its “origin story,” which seems about as Hobby-Horsefull-of-Shit as Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy.  Anthony Fauci’s out there jazz-handing about this or that about masks or double-masks or whatev-uh; so what?  The truth is the health of your community before “Whatever” came to town, where you live.  Fascism is rearing its completely un-Dead Head wherever you are, and COVID-19 appears to be, its “passport” into your place, where you exist, and:  Isn’t it high time to kick these Fascists out into Space, where “Space” doesn’t necessarily want Them, meaning the Fascists, but at least we get their Fascist Asses off of this Globe — and, perhaps, the Sun will take them in?  Wouldn’t that be a form of Justice, and maybe we could re-assume the task of tending to the Earth like every other animal upon it?  Seriously:  Do I need to bring Jonathan Swift into this?

    The post COVID-1984 Update:  No “Smoking Bat” Yet, But… first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • As we say goodbye to another Olympics, there’s a sizeable section of the Australian population that might breathe sigh of relief about not having to sit through another rendition of our national anthem.  At least until the Grand Final.  I’m admitting to being part of this group of Australians, which, I’ll wager a bet, amounts to millions of us.  So, for those of you who aren’t with us on this, the following is my response to your question: Why do we struggle with it? Or in the words of one of my recent correspondents: Why can’t you just accept that fair means fair?

    Is it the fact that Advance Australia Fair is a bit of a dirge? That the tune goes down, where it should go up?  “In jorful strines then let us seeng, Advaannce Austraeileeah Feair”.  Actually, this is what we may most like about it.  It makes us feel at home, in the shared identity of our accents.  Musically, let’s face it, it’s appalling, but our compatriots created Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi, so we’re okay with that.

    No. Our concerns are to do with the words, and the meanings behind them. The current Prime Minister surprised us all last summer with his captain’s call on the words in the second line; following a suggestion of Gladys Berejiklian, he swapped the word ‘young’ for ‘one’, creating the new line “Australians all let us rejoice, For we are one and free”.  Missing far more respectful alternatives contributed over the decades by many people, including Yorta Yorta librettist Deborah Cheetham and Mutti Mutti musician Kutcha Edwards and Judith Durham of The Seekers, the Prime Minister’s new wording compounded the problems, forcing a singular identity on what has always been the diversity expected of a continent, in the case of Europe anyway.  In the case of the continent we now know as Australia, this anthemic singularity was imposed on hugely diverse languages and cultural traditions that date back to the world’s earliest known cultures and civilisations.  And, although it’s evidently hard for the PM’s office to countenance, this diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and languages lives on, despite British colonisation.

    But there’s something else: our national anthem, that in Prime Minister Morrison’s view, unites us as Australians, hides an unpleasant truth.  It’s a truth we might expect from a nation whose first act of parliament in 1901 was the Immigration Restriction Act (the White Australia Act).  The ‘fair’, as originally composed in 1878 by Scottish-born Peter Dodds McCormick, is almost certainly a play on words. A racist play on words.

    The etymology of the word ‘fair’ can be traced back to the Old English faeger and before that, to the reconstructed, proto-Germanic language of the European Iron Age, where it is defined as meaning ‘suitable, fitting, appropriate, nice’. By the 12th or 13th centuries, it had acquired its additional meanings of lightness in colour of skin or hair, as well as its dual association with justice, equity, and freedom from bias.  Composing his song just twelve years out from the promulgation of the Immigration Restriction Act, at the height of political advocacy for a White Australia, it is impossible to believe that McCormick or his musical admirers wouldn’t have understood the double meaning behind the words Advance Australia Fair. And this is where the truth of our national anthem becomes challenging, and, for those of us who are critical of the anthem, harmful, for us as a nation.

    The ‘fair’ that we are all admonished to believe in as meaning solely just and morally right is not fair. It hides racial injustice, and in a double injury, it obscures the truth of that injustice.  As Debbie Bargallie points out in her 2020 book ‘Unmasking the Racial Contract’, this dual process, of obscuring and enabling injustice, is a core process in white power and privilege.  The wording of our national anthem makes it just that bit easier for our major party politicians to vote to hold people in indefinite detention when they claim their rights under international law to asylum in Australia.  It is part of a shared national delusion that allows Australian parliamentarians to see themselves as upholding human rights while imprisoning men, women, and children who have broken no laws and done nothing wrong.

    It obscures the fact that our nation holds the world record for incarcerating Indigenous Peoples, from ages as young as ten.  It aids and abets the thinking of most Australians that the Stolen Generations are in the past, when record numbers of Aboriginal children are currently removed from their families this year.  At one and the same time, it hides and increases the likelihood that an Aboriginal woman phoning police for help stands a fair chance of instead finding herself locked up and her children taken from her.  And it makes it just more likely that Aboriginal people, Torres Strait Islanders and migrant settlers of colour who raise concerns about racism will find themselves accused of bullying and misconduct. Because racism is in the eye of the beholder.  And in the case of debates about the national anthem, the beholder is wilfully and wrongfully misunderstanding the meaning of the word ‘fair’.  All these racial injustices are enabled by our delusion that we are a fair country, as reinforced on the national and international stage by our anthem.  And that is why we need to ditch the racist play on words, along with the dirge, and move on.  It will take us a long time to get to justice, but at least we’ll be closer to the truth.

     

     

     

    The post Fair go? Why the national anthem is racist appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.


  • Somewhere in Kansas, there’s a long plodding line. In it, as on any given day, some 5,000 cattle slowly amble forward, each steer or heifer following the one just ahead. For the most part, they’re calm; it’s just another bovine line; cattle get used to them. Abruptly, for a few near the front, the familiarity changes and then it’s not the same old tired line anymore. Alarming sounds and frightening smells suddenly come from beyond a strange, curtain-like barrier. There’s some panic, but before realization has a chance to really set in, each is dangling upside down, hanging from a chain wrapped around at least one rear hoof. There’s no more normalcy, only pain and panic. If lucky, it happens quickly; the last sensation is probably a sharp clap to the skull, and then there are no more realizations to be had anymore. But the line doesn’t stop; it keeps moving forward through several areas where bleeding, skinning, beheading, and evisceration take place. The time elapsed could be measured in minutes: it was a steer slow-stepping in line, now it’s a carcass hanging in a cool room where it will rest in refrigerated purgatory for up to several days. Eventually, upon dispensation, it’s placed at the start of yet another line, a de-assembly line, passing through station after station where the carcass is sliced into smaller and smaller parts. At the line’s end, a truck awaits to transport the blessed parts to their final resting place: the stomachs of sometimes nearly starving, sometimes kind of hungry, and sometimes merely gluttonous human beings.

    Somewhere in New York, about 30,000 people follow one another into an old minor league baseball park. Today it’s not for a baseball game; it’s for an annual Fourth of July event. They’ve come to watch human beings eat hot dogs. “Eat” is probably the wrong verb; the action more resembles a process of repetitious insertions. The winner of the 2021 men’s contest will be its oft-repeating champion: Joey Chestnut will insert, bite, and swallow 76 hot dogs in ten minutes (it’s a new world record). Michelle Lesco will win the ladies half of the contest. She won’t set a new record, but will still manage to swallow a respectable 30.75 hot dogs in the allotted ten minutes. All told, 30,000 human beings will watch 30 fellow human beings ingest about 750 hot dogs in twenty minutes. After the contest (or during), some of the less than seasoned contestants will likely puke-up their intake. The polished professionals, the ones who train properly, will keep it all down. After a few hours, the world champion will have a 76-hotdog-inspired bowel movement. Perhaps to assure its audience that they’ve witnessed more than puke and feces in the making, the event’s sponsor (Nathan’s Famous) will announce a donation of 100,000 additional hot dogs to New York City food banks. Somewhere in Kansas, a steer is dangling upside down by its hind hooves to make it all possible.

    I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore; there’s more than the smell of cattle or hot dogs in the air. All around the world, but especially in The United States, millions of people have their eyes trained skyward, and it’s not to see the usual solar eclipse. Bigger things than that are happening up there. Moguls and media say so.

    From somewhere in New Mexico, Richard Branson and three fellow crewmembers are leaving the earth to enjoy three minutes of zero-gravity influence at the edge of space. He’s spent 17 years and nearly a billion dollars to experience this lofty moment. It’s not just a one-off undertaking. More than 600 wealthy adventurers have already reserved $250,000 tickets for similar moments on future flights (if you didn’t ante up early, bring $450,000), and government contracts are expected to help fund related endeavors. Still, it’s been a major risk; the investment consumed nearly 20% of his net wealth. He’s now 70 years old and will have only about four and a half billion dollars left to spread out over his remaining lifetime.

    Not to be outdone, fellow billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are joining Branson in a quest for the great enrichments that await mankind on Earth’s moon, on Mars, and perhaps on planets as far away as Pluto. Bezos is spending even more than Branson to advance his Blue Origin space adventure. It’s an awful lot of money, but then again, he has more to play with — perhaps as much as 214 billion dollars. Elon Musk is right there with the other big boys, perhaps bringing more business savvy and long-term goals (like the colonization of Mars). Beyond Musk’s personal billions, his SpaceX program is supplemented with additional billions provided by outside investors and government contracts. If you add it all up, billions from the big boys and billions from even bigger governments, if you pool it all together; well, let’s just say it’s a big pile of hot dog money.

    Somewhere in California, there’s a long line. In it, as on any given day, hundreds of factory workers are assembling Tesla’s. Elsewhere, in warehouses all around the country, workers are scampering up and down aisles to locate and relocate heavy boxes. And in nearly every American neighborhood, truck drivers are coursing the streets and walking up driveways (and perhaps peeing in bottles) to deliver boxes in timely fashion. In each case, employees are earning about 15 bucks an hour to help make the recreational zero-gravity experience of their employers possible. Perhaps to assure grounded earthlings that more is being witnessed than rich people floating in space, media and sponsors (who are likely earning a bit more than 15 bucks an hour) dust off old phrases for renewed contemplation: “another giant leap for mankind,” “just another example of American Exceptionalism,” and so on.

    It was governmental effort that first sent men into space and then to the moon’s surface. It was the same kind of national effort that sent rovers to Mars and satellites beyond (like to the gravitational field of Pluto). For the first fifty or sixty years, only governments had access (taxation) to the assets required of space exploration. The scene has changed. Governments have delegated the burden of “taxation” to private enterprise; there’s been some resultant asset relocation taking place in America (and elsewhere). The era of entrepreneurial endeavor is upon us. Corporations (and individuals) with government sized budgets are assuming the reins. Space cowboys are here.

    Is it now, or will it ever be worth it? All across America, all around the world, the oft meager wages of a billion-plus people are making the multi-billion-dollar big-boy dream possible. Whether of governmental or entrepreneurial effort, what will the bulk of mankind gain from it? It certainly won’t be the three minutes of zero-gravity adventure alluded to by Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin founders; their mega-dollar amusement park ride is beyond the sensible vacation allocation required of ordinary wage earners. Does it offer more than the joy of watching a 21st century version of yacht-club racing? What’s really in the giant leap for mankind?

    Elon Musk has a bigger dream that reaches far beyond sixty miles or the moon. He’d like to permanently colonize Mars with a million people, and he’d like to do it over the course of his remaining lifetime (he’s fifty – do the math). He’s in a hurry for several stated reasons: (1) natural disasters may make the Earth uninhabitable (volcanoes, comets, etc.), (2) humans may make the world uninhabitable (nuclear war, etc.), (3) a population collapse on Earth might be imminent (low birthrates, etc.), and (4) if none of the afore mentioned scenarios play out, Earth will be engulfed by the Sun in about six billion years.

    Presumably, the dream isn’t anchored to Mars (an exploding sun might be bad news there, also). It will only be the beginning of mankind’s journey to the stars. Someday, humans will be scattered throughout the universe. We’ll jump from star to star, and in a truly cosmic sense, we’ll move onward and outward for all eternity. Well, maybe not all of us; there’s a lot of “us” that won’t be found in “we.”

    Musk isn’t the first human (or perhaps non-human) to consider star-jumping. Writers have long mused on the possibility, and some say we’ve already been visited by intelligent beings from other galaxies. We have our movies and the frequent citing of UFOs to bolster the consideration. We imagine the possibility of space visitors all the time. If they’re actually here or on their way, what kind of world would they likely have come from? Would the world they left behind be like our world of 200 competitive and often adversarial nations? Would they have departed from a planet hosting 30 forms of governmental control? Would they have hopped from star to star towing 4,200 spiritual religions? What’s the possibility of a world such as ours, a world so often at war with itself, a world so divided and fractious, to ever reach beyond its own solar system in a meaningful way?

    Consider that first step envisioned by Musk: the colonization of Mars (in less than fifty years). Imagine the technologies (and assets) required to not just transport a million people, but to also create a self-sustaining city under protective bubbles on a hostile planet. Beyond thought of the required means and resource allocation, who would be the voyagers? Would the million chosen travelers reflect the demographics of the multi-billion inhabitants of Earth whose labors and lives would be tapped to support the effort? Or, would it be an elite kind of cohesive group that shared similar characteristics and values: race, ethnicity, religion, politics, etc. So, it’s complicated from the get-go. If elite, it wouldn’t be fair. If fair, it would be fractious (and what would be the point of spreading that into space?).

    In either case, what of those left behind on a planet feared dying? Is it, “Good luck; stay in touch?” In Musk dreamland, does he or his protégé fly away and escape the pending holocaust with a cadre of enlightened, compliant, and dedicated workers? Does the entrepreneurial self-indulgent spirit so instrumental in the plundering and endangerment of Earth, temporarily resettle on Mars and then somehow assume a utopian kind of sensibility before eventually lifting off again to far distant stars?

    It’s an elitist kind of dream, a vision of the ultimate gated community: escape from all the riff-raff and travails of Earth to live in adventurous harmony on another planet with like-minded and deserving constituents. It’s a “giant leap for mankind” that would exclude nearly all of mankind.

    They used to be called pipe dreams — the short-lived, but grand visions one entertained when under the influence. They were profound in the evening’s haze, and laughable in the morning sunlight. It was the dope back then; today it’s the money. Money provides influence, and there’s a lot of potent influence wafting through the air, even in the sunlight. Perhaps it’s only the riff-raff, those beyond the cloud of influence, who are shaking their heads.

    I’ve a feeling we’re not in Nathan’s Famous anymore — but we are watching a hot dog eating contest. There’s a lot of nourishment being consumed in a short amount of time, nourishment that will provide little sustenance. For the most part it’s wasted; it’s heading to glimmering porta potties in the sky. Amazing feats are being witnessed, but that’s all they are. Today’s “giant leap for mankind” made in space, will have about as much meaning for mankind as did the first: not much. Armstrong made the first such touted leap in 1969; after the moon-dust and hyperbole settled, little changed for mankind on Earth. Man’s small misstep in Vietnam continued as before, and didn’t finally end until six years later. Since the end of that war in 1975, the world has stepped into more than 90 additional armed conflicts that have killed millions. Civil and international wars transpire unabated, and we persist in abusing ourselves and the planet in countless other ways. We are a troubled planet, and we are in need of a giant leap for mankind, but hosting a zero-gravity ride, planting a flag on Neptune, or building a bubble dome on Mars will not provide it. We are a divided planet lacking the sensibility and cohesiveness required of meaningful space travel. Until a giant leap for mankind is made on the surface of Earth, any step taken in space will not be a leap, and it will not be taken for mankind. It will be a small step, a strutting small step taken by a man.

    The post One Small Step for Man, One Giant Hot Dog for Mankind first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A BBC documentary called Sickness and Lies has received a huge backlash on social media. And the angry reaction from people affected by the film is entirely justified. Because the programme is little more than dangerous and trashy propaganda.

    A new BBC documentary: Sickness and Lies

    The BBC shared the new documentary on Twitter:

    Sickness and Lies is about chronically ill people who people are accusing of faking or exaggerating their conditions. But the documentary has caused anger on social media. And if you have experience of chronic illness, it’s easy to understand why.

    “Faking illness”?

    I have lived experience and a vested interest in Sickness and Lies. My partner is chronically ill. She lives with 15 different illnesses and conditions. These include the genetic connective tissue disorder Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), and different types of seizures.

    Journalist Octavia Woodward made and presented the documentary. As the show notes describe:

    The chronically ill community has exploded in the last few years, with high-profile members like Lady Gaga, Selena Gomez and Lena Dunham. With 15m people in England alone living with a long-term condition, and numbers rising, it’s no surprise chronic illness influencers on social media are attracting huge followings.

    But, as their profiles have grown, so have accusations of fakery. Can the accusers be right? Are some influencers faking illnesses for fame, money and attention?

    Woodward delved into the world of chronic illness and accusations of fakery. But Sickness and Lies barely holds up to scrutiny.

    No clue

    For example, Woodward notes:

    I’ve had some of the procedures that these influencers post about. And I understand everyone reacts differently. But some things just don’t add up. Influencers asking for multiple types of feeding tubes, at once, into stomachs that supposedly no longer work – and still eating normally.

    With this was a picture of a social media post. It was quoting someone living with a chronic illness who posted a photo of a plate of food. The quote said:

    She “can’t swallow” but chooses to order this

    My partner lives with gastroparesis (where her stomach doesn’t empty). This would be an example of someone who can have a stomach that sometimes ‘no longer works’ but can also eat. She has been hospitalised on numerous occasions for uncontrolled vomiting. As I write this, she’s in the middle of a flare now. The vomiting will probably last for about 20 hours. She’ll take several days to recover, but the majority of the time she can eat. She also has dysphagia (difficulty swallowing). But again, this comes and goes – contrary to the social media screenshot Sickness and Lies showed.

    The point being – people can have feeding tubes or not be able to swallow properly for periods of time and eat at others. Some of the influencers mentioned are likely to be in that situation.

    The dark world of Reddit

    Sickness and Lies goes on to discuss the Reddit group which sparked Woodward’s investigation. A quick scan of it shows it’s littered with people commenting on things they have little understanding of. For example, someone lifted a picture of an Insta post from someone talking about Lyme disease. The Reddit caption was:

    “There is no cure for Lyme disease” Maybe try some antibiotics Ash? Oops never mind, your doctor refused to prescribe them bc you tested negative for Lyme with RELIABLE tests in the doctors office

    The person talking about Lyme disease, whose Instagram post was then put on the Reddit group, is Ashley. She lives with multiple chronic illnesses, and she’s currently being tested for Lyme disease – which in this context would likely be so-called chronic Lyme disease. Contrary to the Reddit poster’s assertion, chronic Lyme cannot be treated with antibiotics. Testing for it is limited and unreliable. Yet the Reddit poster seems certain that Ashley is making this up.

    Psychiatry or quackery?

    Woodward goes on to talk to “eminentpsychiatrist Marc Feldman. He created the condition Munchausen by Internet (MBI). Feldman describes it as:

    a pattern of behavior in which a person seeks attention and sympathy by feigning illnesses in online venues such as forums and social media sites.

    Sickness and Lies lists some of the warning signs of this condition. But a quick scan of them shows that some are chronically ill people’s day-to-day lives. Or, they are just Feldman speculating over things he doesn’t understand. For example:

    • “Near-fatal bouts of illness alternate with miraculous recoveries”: that is chronic illness for many people
    • “There are continual dramatic events in the person’s life, especially when other group members have become the focus of attention”: some people’s chronic illnesses fluctuate wildly in the space of a few hours.
    • “There is feigned blitheness about crises that will predictably attract immediate attention”: if you live with a chronic illness, you’ll understand that quite often ironic cheerfulness over your body is part and parcel of living with it.
    Just for balance

    Seemingly for balance, Woodward goes on to claim she was struggling with the idea people could be faking illness. But she then finds a person who’s sister was pretending to have cancer. It’s the only concrete, evidenced example given in the programme. Moreover, Woodward then goes on to quote people who cast doubt over just how ill a chronic illness influencer who died in April 2019 was.

    Sickness and Lies also speaks with one of the moderators of the Reddit group who is a “medical professional”. This person claims a friend at university pretended to have her illnesses. The point being, that’s what’s driven her to ‘out’ people she believes are faking their conditions. Woodward then speaks to a forensic psychology researcher who backs up some of the Reddit group’s claims.

    At the end, Woodward does conclude that this “callout culture” is extreme. And she notes how it has affected some of the victim’s lives.

    Unprovable. But we’ll run it, anyway.

    Woodward concludes of the chronic illness influencers:

    without access to their private medical records, there’s no way of knowing what’s really going on with them.

    But the BBC and Woodward decided to make Sickness and Lies anyway – without being able to prove anything.

    There’s a lot to unpack with the programme and Woodward’s reporting. But overall, it has pushed various, highly damaging ideas with no concern for the consequences for chronically ill people.

    PACE trial

    Not least of these issues is that, as one Twitter user said:

    chronically ill people are literally dying because they can’t convince anyone, including medical professionals, that they’re ill, and you’re fine with posting irresponsible shit like this?

    ME is a prime example. People living with it have for decades been disbelieved, stigmatised, given incorrect treatment, or told it’s ‘all in their heads’. Much of this comes from the now-discredited PACE trial. It was a study, part-funded by the UK government, into treatment for ME. It found that people could recover from the disease by having cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). In other words, people living with a very-real, viral-based illness should just ‘think themselves better’. Essentially, the trial pushed the notion that the disease was part-psychosomatic or ‘made up’ by patients. But the trial’s findings haven’t held up, with its proponents accused by some of scientific fraud and causing potentially the “biggest medical scandal of the 21st century”.

    Long Covid next in line

    The psychologisation of physical illnesses has been happening for many years. That is, when a doctor can’t find a physical cause for a person’s illness, they claim their mental health is causing it; ‘psychosomatic‘ or, it is ‘all in their heads’. Generally this is nonsense. For example, my partner was sectioned under the UK Mental Health Act (committed to a mental institution) because doctor’s said she was making her illnesses up.

    Psychologisation has gained traction, and it’s partly due to governments trying to deny people social security and also pushing psychiatry and antidepressants because they’re cheaper than finding out what’s physically wrong with someone. And as I previously wrote, people with long Covid may well be next in line to be subjected to this.

    Medical misogyny is another factor in accusations of fakery. The majority of people Sickness and Lies featured were women. The insinuation that a woman is wrong/stupid, or is making her illnesses up, is all too common in the medical and scientific communities – and in society more broadly. For example, EDS disproportionately affects women. Yet it takes on average 19 years of symptoms before a medical professional diagnoses someone with EDS. In my partner’s case, it wasn’t until the age of 32. She’d been symptomatic from the age of around five.

    The problems with the BBC as a public service broadcaster is another factor. As The Canary has documented, it repeatedly pushes government agendas over impartial, public interest broadcasting. In this instance, as one Twitter user summed up:

    BBC News is perpetuating a toxic mythology in order to pave the way for denying benefits to people with #LongCOVID. That’s why they figured it’s an awesome time for a story about malingering for money. You don’t even have to connect the dots, they’re on top of one another.

    Blatant prejudice

    There’s another important but uncomfortable point that has to be made.

    Most chronically ill people I know would not have even considered making this programme. People’s furious responses in the Twitter thread show this. Yet disabled journalist Woodward chose to – and seems pleased with it. This sadly sums up a tiny, but generally unspoken problem within the disabled community. People with physically visible impairments (like Woodward, who lives with spinal muscular atrophy) sometimes don’t understand, or even dismiss, people living with chronic illnesses.

    I’ve witnessed it first hand with my partner. She has experienced this from a minority of disabled people and disabled people’s organisations (DPOs). It’s like the conditions of chronically ill people are less valid than people with visible, physical impairments. The fact that Woodward had the idea to do this documentary, let alone make it, for me shows that. Would anyone question her diagnosis, given she is visibly, physically disabled? I very much doubt it. But for people living with invisible impairments, they’re clearly fair game.

    Toxic programming

    Sickness and Lies is utterly toxic programming from the BBC. The size of the issue it claims to address is tiny. Therefore, it serves no other purpose than to compound the stigma and discrimination that exists around chronic illness. The programme is riddled with holes. Woodward should have known better than to even begin this project. But moreover, editors at the BBC should have immediately flagged it as unsuitable for broadcast. Yet they still released it anyway.

    There are potentially millions of people who spend their lives trying to prove how ill they are. To have an entire programme perpetuate the stigma and hate that they’ve experienced is catastrophic. Not that anyone involved in its making seems concerned. But why would they be? It probably doesn’t affect them.

    I now have to go and empty my partner’s sick bucket. Maybe Woodward and her team would like to come and watch her vomit for 20 hours – just in case she’s ‘faking it’.

    Featured image via BBC iPlayer – screengrab 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Despite a climate of continuing mask confusion and deviantly “variant” COVID-19 strains: “It’s Tourist Season Again in the United States of America!”  Now, if you’re traveling across the USA this Summer, you may encounter a startling sight known as the St Louis “Gateway” Arch as you navigate which Interstate Highway will best deliver you to your preferred destination in this Continental Empire.  The Arch, however, is pretty far from a navigational device; it’s really a free-standing sculpture that defies all of the prairie-woodlandscapes that you’ve just driven through.  To local boosters, St Louis and its Arch are known as “The Gateway to the West”; but, if you follow the sightline from Kansas City, like KC culture writer Calvin Trillin, then this Mississippi river town morphs into “The Exit from the East.”

    East or West, this rather conspicuous Jefferson Expansion Memorial structure, the Arch, was erected in the middle 1960s from a monumental idea sprung during the middle 1930s to aesthetically revitalize the blighted banks of an overmidland city astride the mighty Mississippi River, sometimes conceived of as the “New World Nile” of North America (e.g., the names of cities like Cairo and Memphis south of St Louis).  And there it stands, over one-half century later:  so much stainless and carbon steel, curved and soaring, catenary, this Gateway Arch, its core and foundation concrete.  Besides representing a most emphatic incarnation of 20th century building materials, the Arch also embodies a decisively fascist quality:  this stainless steel monolith piercing the river face of St Louis that not only unifies, but totally dominates, the space and perspective around it.

    Neither quaint, cozy, nor cuddly, this Sky-thrusting Arch literally overarches its riverine urban environment and, like any good fascist sculpture worth its oversize:  Commands attention!  And — I like it!  Who doesn’t?  Compared to the sepia-toned jumble of industrial mish-mash that otherwise characterizes the St Louis riverfront, the Arch superimposes a certain surreal allure that absolutely epitomizes the epithet “neo-futurist.”  Technically, if we follow the sightline from Wikipedia, then the Arch is a form of “structural expressionism,” which the entry goes on to note is more typical of the 1970s.  Either way, the Arch is a forward-looking structure, as well as a monument to the conquest of the American West.

    At first glance, the association of this massive catenary monolith to fascism, whether aesthetic or political, might sound outlandish; however, there is historical precedence for advancing this claim.  Eero Saarinen, the Arch’s Finnish-American architect, for example, explicitly rejected any interpretation of his design as “fascist.” The “fascist view” of the Arch was perhaps first forwarded by Gilmore D. Clarke, a New York engineer and landscape architect in 1948, the very month and year that Saarinen’s Arch proposal won a unanimous thumbs-up from the Jefferson Expansion Memorial committee.  An “Arch was born!”  Meanwhile…

    The committee itself, composed primarily of local architects, also maintained that the “Arch form is not inherently fascist,” which was a civic-good thing to say at the time, since the forces of conventional fascism had only quite recently been “defeated,” at considerable cost in U.$ lives, propaganda, and treasure; after all, “We didn’t whip’em in the field only to have them take first prize in our mid-continental art competitions — No Way!”

    Nevertheless, all civic-nationalist-minded boostering aside, as a historical symbol, the fascist case for the Arch is easy enough to make.  Although void of any overt political content as a purely aesthetic object, the Arch’s cultural context as a Westward Expansion Monument certifies its political significance and triumphal essence.

    To be sure, no one has ever mistaken the Arch for a wigwam or teepee, and for good reason.  The defeat and subsequent subjugation of indigenous North American people in the concentration camp foreshadowing Reservation System is inscribed in each and every heavy metal rivet that helps bear the Gateway Arch aloftwaffe (The recent Israeli aggressions against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza apply as contemporary analogues to this situation, historically sprechen…).  The term “Expansion” here functions as  an obvious euphemism for “domination,” Manifest Destiny, and lebensraum or “living space,” in Mein Kampf-speak, to re-appropriate one of Adolf Hitler’s favorite pet concept-phrases.  So, “We the People” expanded West after the Jefferson Louisiana Purchase (1803), and aggressively expropriated the lands of Native Americans already occupying them.  The Arch unavoidably consecrates this militaristic conquest of the West, into which the Euro-American invaders expanded — like a gas..

    Thus the Arch appears, in its Westward Expansionist context, in all of its triumphal glory, as a symbolically fascist hood ornament to our alien domination of the Northern American land mass and its pre-existing inhabitants.  This inherently fascist quality of the Arch becomes doubly ironic when seen in the klieg-light of our totalitarian victory over the most traditionally known forms of modern historical Fascism–“You know, the European ones!” — during the 1940s.  Herein lies the real twist of steel in the “fascist view” of the Gateway Arch.

    To re-iterate:  Eero Saarinen, the Arch architect, flatly denied any “fascist” connotation in his award-winning design.  He maintained that the arch form is perfectly natural, or, put another way:  pre-ideological.  He was, and is, technically correct.  Even the swastika turned 45 degrees, for example, is only “fascist” by historical association, defined by the use the Nazis made of this ancient symbol.

    We moderns (or latter-day Lilliputians…) are structurally conditioned to see things ideologically:  thus the “swastika” as German Fascist, bad; and so the Arch, White American expansionist, good.  In the same sightline, we are conditioned to view our own militarism through the prismatic lens of “Freedom,” substituting odorless terms like “expansion” for aggression and domination.  In the Nazi case, or the traditional, historical form of fascism, we see pure brutal force in an unqualified sense, absolutely.  On the one hand, the “freedom-loving” mask of “expansion”; on the other, the fascist face behind the mask.

    On a less loft-wafting note, leaving various nightmares of History to the side for a moment, I found myself on the Laclede’s Landing Metrolink light-rail station platform the other day, contemplating Saarinen’s Arch in profile through the masonry arches of the Eads Bridge, that other architectural marvel of the St Louis riverfront, completed almost one century (1874) before the Arch.  The view seemed almost painted, the Sky an azure shade of linoleum blue with a wispy scree of clouds, the Arch itself an apotheosis of steel, as if an alien civilization had left it there to bedazzle the New Natives of this overmidland city river town  As views of the Gateway Arch go, whatever fascist elements it may or may not reflect, I totally recommend it.

    Further Note

    As the gods of Synchronicity would have it, I was considering re-purposing the above essay, written and spoken aloud 7 years ago at a local coffee shop Open Mic forum, a few weeks back when someone suggested, entirely “out of the blue,” that the Arch was designed as a “weather modification device.”  I’ve lived most of my 53 years in and around St Louis, and had never encountered this idea, which nevertheless seemed somewhat plausible on its face, given the freaky-deaky nature of this steely curved behemoth structure.  Conducting a cursory research, I found little to support this speculation beyond a colleague of Saarinen’s who broke his “vow of silence” to say in effect that, yes, “weather modification” was, in fact, a thought in Saarinen’s thinking about the design.  Interestingly enough, perhaps, in this connection, Saarinen worked for the Office of Strategic Services (immediate precursor to the Christian — I mean, “Central” — Intelligence Agency we unfortunately still don’t know enough about today…) during WW2.

    Saarinen,himself, was a bit of a titan in the architectural and design world of the middle 20th century.  He appeared on the cover of Time magazine, for example, in 1956, and his line of designer chairs and tables were “Space Age”-prolific enough to be featured in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 retro-visionary masterpiece 2001: a Space Odyssey, the opening scenes of which, quite coincidentally, I very recently revisited (a tale of two Monoliths, perhaps?).  An amusing side-note to the “Story of the Arch”:  Initially, Eero Saarinen’s father, also an architect who had entered a design in the Jefferson Expansion Memorial competition, thought that he had “won,” but because his Finnish name also begins with an “E,” and the local-yokel St Louis committee couldn’t come up with the ink to spell out the “winner’s” full first name in the letter, Daddy Saarinen was none the wiser for 3 days until the mis-identification got solved (It appears that the local-yokel Committee sent the notification of “win-ification” to the wrong Saarinen, or: “Welcome to St Louis!”).

    However all that may be, St Louis maintains a long and low profile in the National Security State business.  One need look no further than the Defense Mapping Agency (or the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency –“NGA” — as it’s been re-branded), which pin-points “targets” in the “War on Terror” all across the Globe, including during the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003.  Currently, its south city campus is being re-located a bit north, to the tune of almost $2 billion.  As the agency’s press release puts it, ironically — or iconically — enough:  “The Gateway Arch will be visible from our future north St Louis campus, too.  It will continue to project that bold spirit of Lewis and Clark.  Just as their journey started from here to map our nation’s future, NGA is charting the future of our Agency in St Louis.”  Quite often, St Louis checks in as the “Murder Capital of the USA,” and, given the NGA’s prominent role in our multiple undeclared wars abroad, it appears that we can add many more murders to the “local” list…

    The current NGA location, in south St Louis –“with, of course, an excellent view of the Arch!”– has deep roots in America’s storied, but often falsified, militaristical past, extending all the way back to 1827, when an “arsenal” was established on the site of the current campus of the NGA.  This “Arsenal” provided munitions for both the manifestly expansionist “Mexican-American War” of 1845-6, as well as the “Civil War” of the crazy “New Continental” Americans during the early 1860s.

    Fast forward a bit, and the “Military Industrial Complex” association with St Louis, Missouri, becomes abundantly clear.  The atomic bomb fires that flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945, actually began here; and, furthermore, are still burning, as “sub-surface smoldering events,” a few miles Northwest of where I am writing.  Kind of crazy, 80 years later, but this is an EPA-certified fact. Technically, this location “closed to the Public” is known as the West Lake “land-fill,” and contains the waste matter of a substance known as barium sulfate, which was used to refine uranium mined from the Belgian Congo, in Africa, into bomb-grade material.  In 1942, the “spooks” of the ultra-secretive “Manhattan Project” approached the St Louis-based Mallinckrodt Chemical Works company, which began as a pharmaceutical manufacturer in the very late 19th century, with a “problem to be solved.”  Mallinckrodt “solved” the “problem,” and a Nuclear Bomb was born…

    Not to be too much of a “civic booster” here, but:  Before the University of Chicago, or Oak Ridge, Tennessee, or even Los Alamos, New Mexico, St Louis was the crazy origin point of the “Bomb” we all presumably still fear today, as indisputably demonstrated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945.  For a better telling of the St Louis history in Nuclear Weapons production, I refer the reader to Alison Carrick and local journalist C.D. Stelzer’s 2015 documentary The First Secret City; they tell the tale in far more trenchant detail than I do here.

    So, if you happen to be passing through St Louis this apparently possibly “safe” traveling season, and you look out and see this totally amazing structure, the Arch, and wonder — if only for a moment –“What in The Wizard of Oz is that?”, know that its steely silence speaks volumes for a murderous-to-genocidal Past; but also know that the Future the Arch incarnates, perhaps, has not yet been written

    The post Structural Conditioning or “Meet Me in St. Louis” first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Todd Smith.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • In May, the HBO television network aired a new two-part documentary exploring America’s ongoing opioid epidemic entitled The Crime of the Century. The first episode summarized the role of the pharmaceutical industry in the crisis, specifically that of Sackler family drug-maker Purdue Pharma and its deadly prescription painkiller, OxyContin. Part One also thoroughly investigates the complicity of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the deceptive marketing by the drug company to obtain U.S. government approval for oxycodone despite its high risk of abuse and dependency, just as the pharmaceutical lobby bribes lawmakers in Washington. Later, the second half of the series charts the current rising use of even more powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyl. During COVID-19, the number of fatal overdoses have reportedly spiked in an epidemic already estimated to be taking nearly 50,000 lives per year. The HBO production is one of a slew of recent films such as Netflix’s The Pharmacist and The Young Turks’ The Oxy Kingpins which highlight the responsibility of the pharmaceutical industry but omit discussion of a related issue that has become taboo for media to even mention. While the film’s scathing indictment of Big Pharma is certainly relevant, it unfortunately neglects to address another enormous but lesser-known factor in America’s escalating drug problem.

    Corporate media would have us believe it is simply fortuitous that during the exact time opioid overdose deaths in the U.S. began to increase in the early 2000s, the so-called War on Terror began with the conquest and plundering of a country abroad that has since become the world’s epicenter for opium production. By the end of August, American combat forces are scheduled to fully withdraw from Afghanistan shortly before the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that preceded the October 2001 invasion and subsequent two decade occupation. Contrary to the spin put on the announcement by the Biden administration, the pledge to finally remove troops from the longest war in U.S. history was actually yet another postponement, as the Trump administration had previously agreed with the Taliban to a complete draw-down by May. Time will tell whether the new deadline is Washington kicking the can down the road again in the endless war, but the withdrawal has already drawn criticism from the bipartisan foreign policy establishment with former Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice voicing their objections to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Unfortunately for the Beltway chicken hawks, polls show an increasingly war-weary American public are unanimously in support of the move, which is little wonder given they have endured a silent epidemic that can be partly traced back to the conflict-ridden nation.

    Even though the FDA approved OxyContin six years before the U.S. took control of the South Central Asian country, an increase in domestic heroin overdoses has been intertwined with the uptick in abuse of commonly prescribed and man-made opioids which have become gateway drugs to the morphium-derived opiate in the new millennium. Meanwhile, Afghanistan has become the globe’s leading narco-state under NATO occupation which accounts for more than 90% of global opium production that is used to make heroin and other narcotics. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), poppy cultivation in the Islamic Republic increased by 37% last year alone. At the same time, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that heroin use in the U.S. more than doubled among young adults in the last ten years, while 45% of heroin users were said to be hooked on prescription opioid painkillers as well. Yet the impression one gets from mainstream media is that the vast majority of smack on America’s streets is coming solely from Mexican cartels, a statistical impossibility based on the scale of the U.S. user demand in proportion to the amount of hectares produced in Latin America, when the majority is inevitably being sourced from a country its own military has colonized for two decades.

    The predominant narrative is that the illegal trade is the Taliban’s primary source of income financing its insurgency which has put the Pashtun-based group in nearly as strong a position today as it was prior to its overthrow when it presided over three quarters of the country. While the newly rebranded movement’s bloody and intolerant history cannot be whitewashed, one would have no idea that the lowest period in the previous thirty years for Afghan opium growth was actually under the five-year reign of the Islamists who strictly forbid poppy farming a year before the U.S. takeover, though it is claimed they were merely deceiving the international community. Nevertheless, where opium harvesting really flourished preceding the NATO invasion was under the border lands controlled by the Northern Alliance, the same coalition of warlords and tribes later armed by the C.I.A. to oust the Taliban, while United Nations observers even acknowledged the success of the Sharia-based ban until its ouster.

    Beginning in 2001, Afghanistan was instantly transformed into the chief global heroin supplier entering Turkey through the Balkans into the European Union and via Tajikistan eastward into Russia, China and beyond. In the midst of the U.S. exit, there is a general agreement that the days are numbered for the Kabul government as the Taliban continue to make gains. Still, the question remains — if the self-described Islamic Emirate and its asymmetric warfare is to blame for the opium boom, then where on earth did the billions NATO allocated for its counter-narcotics strategy go? Even in the rare instances when major news outlets have reported on the U.S. military’s non-intervention policy toward opium farming with American marines suspiciously under orders to turn a blind eye to the poppy fields, the yellow press simply refuses to connect the dots. Under the smokescreen of supposedly protecting the only means of subsistence for the impoverished locals, NATO forces are in reality safeguarding the lethal product lining the pockets of the Afghan government. Why else would the Western coalition continue to overlook the Taliban’s main source of revenue if it is only the Pashtun nationalists who profit?

    In reality, it was under the initial post-Taliban regime of President Hamid Karzai where drug exports began to surge as the very regime installed by the Bush administration shielded the unlawful trade from its cosmetic prohibition effort. Even though voter fraud was rampant during both the 2004 and 2009 Afghan elections, Karzai was championed as the country’s first “democratically-elected” leader while receiving tens of millions in behind the scenes payments from the Central Intelligence Agency. A longtime Western asset, Karzai had previously raised funds in neighboring Pakistan for the anti-communist mujahideen during the Afghan-Soviet War in the 1980s. Not only did the ranks of the Islamic ‘holy warriors’ armed and funded in the C.I.A.’s Operation Cyclone program include Karzai and the eventual core of both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda — including Osama bin Laden himself — but it is also well established the jihadists were deeply immersed in drug smuggling as the U.S. looked the other way. The late, great historian William Blum wrote:

    CIA-supported mujahideen rebels engaged heavily in drug trafficking while fighting the Soviet-supported government, which had plans to reform Afghan society. The Agency’s principal client was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the leading drug lords and the biggest heroin refiner, who was also the largest recipient of CIA military support. CIA-supplied trucks and mules that had carried arms into Afghanistan were used to transport opium to laboratories along the Afghan-Pakistan border. The output provided up to one-half of the heroin used annually in the United States and three-quarters of that used in Western Europe. U.S. officials admitted in 1990 that they had failed to investigate or take action against the drug operation because of a desire not to offend their Pakistani and Afghan allies. In 1993, an official of the DEA dubbed Afghanistan the new Colombia of the drug world.

    As maintained by the UNODC, the heroin flooding out of Afghanistan and Central Asia into Western Europe passes through the Balkan route consisting of the independent ex-Yugoslav states, together with Albania and the partially-recognized protectorate of Kosovo. Not coincidentally, this transit corridor largely began to swell with narcotraffic proceeding the NATO war on Yugoslavia in the 1990s, especially in the wake of the Kosovo conflict which saw the Clinton administration shore up the Al Qaeda-linked Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) to secede the disputed province from Serbia. Even with their previous State Department designation as a terrorist organization until 1998, the Islamist militants were given an instant facelift as freedom fighters. Apart from the fact that the ethnic Albanian separatists had considerable ties to Salafist extremist networks, the C.I.A.-backed Kosovar insurgents also subsidized their military campaign, which involved serious war crimes and ethnic cleansing, through narcoterrorism and drug running with Albanian crime syndicates — in above all, heroin. As journalist Diana Johnstone writes inFools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions:

    The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and other Western agencies were well aware of the close links between the UCK/KLA and the Kosovo Albanian drug traffickers controlling the main flow of heroin into Western Europe from Afghanistan via Turkey. The CIA has a long record of considering such groups as assets against governments targeted by the United States, whether in Southeast Asia, Africa or Central America.

    Shortly after the Red Army retreated in 1989, Afghanistan became one of the world’s top opium producers for the first time throughout the next decade until Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Omar issued a fatwa against the lucrative crop in 2000. When the comprador Karzai assumed office the very next year, another family figure emerged as a key coalition ally in the country’s south — younger half-brother Ahmed Wali Karzai — who was appointed to govern poppy-rich Kandahar Province until his assassination in 2011. Just a year earlier, it was revealed by WikiLeaks embassy cables that Washington was well aware the younger Karzai was a corrupt drug lord, not long after The New York Times divulged his key role in the opium trade while simultaneously on the C.I.A. payroll. Even though this partial hangout was publicized by the Old Gray Lady, the newspaper of record never bothered to further investigate the links between Langley and the Karzai family’s deep pockets from the drug market. Instead, they continued to craft the misleading perception that taxes on poppy farming within Taliban-held areas was chiefly responsible for the illegal industry dominating the Afghan economy and fueling the never-ending war that Washington has a vested interest in prolonging.

    Many commentators have drawn parallels between the recent disorganized abandonment of Bagram Airfield, the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan, and the final evacuation of American combat troops from South Vietnam during the Fall (Liberation) of Saigon in 1975. The mountainous country situated at the intersection of Central and South Asia along with Pakistan and (to a lesser extent) Iran comprises what is known as the ‘Golden Crescent’, one of two main hubs of opium turnout on the continent. In the Vietnam era, most of the globe’s heroin came from the other major axis of poppy-plant growth in the ‘Golden Triangle’ of Southeast Asia located at the border junction between Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. This crossroads continued to be the largest region for harvesting of the flower until the early 21st century when Afghanistan surpassed it in out-turn. While there has yet to be revealed a smoking gun, per se, implicating the C.I.A. in drug trafficking from the Golden Crescent, it is at the very least food for thought given the precedent set by the agency throughout its 73-year history.

    From the beginning of the Cold War, Langley intimately conspired with organized crime to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives. Following the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the rogue spy agency frequently enlisted the Mafia in its many failed attempts to overthrow Fidel Castro and decades later many still believe that the same elements likely had a hand in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Still, it was not until 1972 during the Vietnam War when historian Alfred W. McCoy famously uncovered the extent to which the C.I.A. was involved in the international drug trade in The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. The explosive study meticulously documented how the narcotics coming out of the Golden Triangle were being transported on a front airline known as Air America run by U.S. intelligence as part of its covert operations in bordering Laos.

    In the Laotian civil war, the C.I.A. had secretly organized a guerrilla army of 30,000 strong from the indigenous Hmong population to fight the communist Pathet Lao forces aligned with North Vietnam and the highland natives were economically dependent on poppy cultivation. When the heroin exported out of Laos didn’t find its way to cities in America, it ended up next-door in Vietnam where opiate habits among G.I.s reached epidemic proportions, one of many instances of ‘blowback’ from U.S. collusion with worldwide drug smuggling. Believe it or not, however, this was not the first correlation between an American war and an opiate epidemic at home, as previously during the Civil War in the 1870s there was widespread morphine addiction among Union and Confederate soldiers.

    It appears that almost everywhere U.S. interventionism goes, the drug market seems to follow. In the early 1980s, the C.I.A. mobilized another counter-revolutionary fighting force in Central America as part of the Reagan administration’s dirty war against the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua. During the Nicaraguan civil war, Congress had forbidden any funding or supplying of weapons to the right-wing Contras as stipulated in the Boland Amendment. Instead, Washington used go-betweens like Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, a long-standing C.I.A. operative closely linked to narco-trafficking through Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel, until the U.S. later turned against the strongman. In what became known as the Iran-Contra affair, the Reagan White House was embroiled in scandal after it was divulged that the C.I.A. had devised a rat line funneling arms to a most unlikely source in the Islamic Republic of Iran — a sworn enemy of the U.S. under embargo — by which the takings were diverted to the Nicaraguan terrorists. Although the official excuse for the secret deal was an arms-for-hostages exchange for U.S. citizens being held in Lebanon, the real purpose for the arrangement was to finance the Contras whose other proceeds happened to come from a different illicit enterprise — cocaine.

    Despite the fact that a 1986 inquiry by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee found that the agency knew the anti-Sandinista rebels were engaged in cocaine trafficking just as use of its highly-addictive freebase variation was surging in cities across America, it was not until a decade later when investigative journalist Gary Webb in his controversial Dark Alliance series fully exposed the link between Contra drug operations under C.I.A. protection and the crack epidemic domestically. Public outcry over the three-part investigation resonated most strongly within the African-American community whose inner city neighborhoods were devastated by the crack explosion and the indignation culminated in a Los Angeles town hall where a large audience confronted C.I.A. Director John Deutch.

    Amid the fallout, Webb found himself the target of a media-led smear campaign disputing the credibility of the exposé which destroyed his life and derailed his career, even though his findings were based on extensive court documents and corroborated by former crack kingpins like “Freeway” Rick Ross and ex-LAPD narcotics officer Michael C. Ruppert. Sadly, the journalist would later die of a highly suspicious suicide in 2004 but eventually Webb’s muckraking was the subject of a favorable Hollywood depiction in 2014’s Kill The Messenger. In the end, the fearless reporter was punished for revealing that many of the individuals most involved in cocaine trafficking in the eighties were the same exact individuals the C.I.A. employed to channel guns to the Contras, thereby permitting drugs to flow into the U.S..

    Although there has yet to be the equivalent of a Vietnam or Nicaragua-level disclosure of incontrovertible evidence incriminating Uncle Sam in the Afghan drug business as the troop removal approaches, the answer may lie with who is set to replace them. A Defense Department report from earlier this year indicates that at least 18,000 security contractors remain in the war-torn country, where outsourcing to private military companies like Academi (formerly Blackwater) has increasingly been relied upon in the 20-year war, including for futile drug enforcement measures. As the services of guns-for-hire with a penchant for human rights abuses grew in the lengthy conflict, oversight and accountability diminished to the point where the Pentagon is unable to accurately keep track of defense firms or what mercenaries are even doing in the country. Meanwhile, private security services have made a fortune being contracted out for the abortive anti-drug effort just as Afghanistan set records in opiate production.

    Alfred W. McCoy, the acclaimed historian who unearthed C.I.A. collaboration with opiate trafficking in Indochina, not long ago chronicled the imminent downfall of the U.S. as a superpower in In the Shadows of American History: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power. In his work, McCoy notes how the U.S. has set out to fulfill the “Heartland Theory” geostrategy envisioned by the architect of modern geopolitics, Sir Halford Mackinder, in his influential 1904 paper “The Geographical Pivot of History.” The English analyst reconceived the continents as poles of interconnected global power and cited the way in which the British Empire joined with the other Western European nations in the 19th century to prevent Russian imperial expansionism in “The Great Game” with Afghanistan serving as a battleground. Fearing that the Russian Empire would enlarge toward the south, the British sent forces to Afghanistan as a containment strategy, a decision which ultimately proved to be a humiliating defeat for the East India Company but according to Mackinder blocked the Russian sphere of influence in British India. He then theorized that the country which conquered the Eurasian ‘Heartland’ of the Russian core would come to dominate the world. For the strategist, the geographical notion of Eurasia also consisted of China which the British had used drug addiction to destabilize and overcome in the Opium Wars.

    In 1979, the National Security Adviser in the Jimmy Carter administration, Zbigniew Brzezinski, put Mackinder’s blueprint into practice after the U.S. was forced to pull back in Vietnam by luring the Soviet Union into its own impregnable quagmire in a new “Great Game.” The scheme worked like a charm and just months after the Polish-born Russophobe persuaded the 39th president to lend clandestine support to the mujahideen in Afghanistan, aid from Moscow was requested by the socialist government in Kabul and the rest was history. Like the British Empire and Alexander the Great before it, the U.S. is itself now bogged down in the ‘graveyard of empires’ after  forgetting the lessons of history. Unintended or not, one of the adverse results of America’s empire-building has been the pouring of fuel on the fire of an initially homegrown opioid crisis begun by Big Pharma by turning Afghanistan into a multi-billion dollar narco-economy whereby heroin is circulated for consumption all over the map.

    Like the Pentagon Papers released during the Vietnam War, the internal memos of the Afghanistan Papers made public in 2019 proved officials were deceiving the American people about the reality of the no-win situation on the ground. It remains to be seen what impact the U.S. handover to the corrupt Kabul regime will have for dope distribution as a Taliban seizure of power appears near, but the latest report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) determined that officials have long known the war was ill-fated from the outset and warns Washington is bound to repeat the same errors in the future. Unless critical steps are taken to rein in the military-industrial complex, we have to assume that with another forever war there will unavoidably come the opening of another C.I.A.-controlled international drug route with Americans either suffering the consequences with their pocketbooks or their lives.

    The post The War in Afghanistan: The real “Crime of the Century” behind the Opioid Crisis first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • I tried listening to some podcasts the other day, but every one of them — regardless of their general theme — chose to focus on “vaccine hesitancy.” None of them offered any new evidence to back up their jab fetish. However, that did not stop them from creating a straw man army to gleefully mock what they called “anti-vaxxers.” All this as the CDC warns about a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” — once again, without any compelling evidence to back up this blatant pandering. Instead, the vilification of those who have rejected an experimental gene therapy continues to be ramped up.

    So, once again, I’ll explain: 

    Meanwhile, the “delta” variant is also dominating the headlines despite — yet again — no compelling evidence. I’ll offer one case in point. In my hometown, it’s wall-to-wall stories about the scourge of the “delta” variant. From the NYC Health Department, we learn that “variants can be detected through genomic sequencing, a process that involves analyzing the virus’s genetic material.” Scroll down just a little further in that same report and discover this: Since February 2021, the city’s Pandemic Response Laboratory (PRL) has been “sequencing randomly selected specimens that meet certain technical criteria.” But, only a “small proportion of all confirmed COVID-19 cases are now being sequenced citywide. As such, all findings related to variant data are based on a small subset of all confirmed COVID-19 cases” and these include “samples from NYC Health & Hospitals emergency departments, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, and other sources, which may bias data toward more severe cases.”

    Repeat: “All findings related to variant data are based on a small subset of all confirmed COVID-19 cases … which may bias data toward more severe cases.” 

    You wouldn’t know this from perusing local news [sic] outlets. They’re busy whipping my neighbors into a frenzy with headlines like: “Delta Replacing All Other NYC COVID Strains as New Case Average Soars 32%.” None of these news [sic] reports mention that “All findings related to variant data are based on a small subset of all confirmed COVID-19 cases … which may bias data toward more severe cases.” #TrustTheScience 

    Think about it:

    • A politician promises that the donations they get from the super-rich do not affect how they vote. Logically, you don’t believe them.
    • During Pride or Black History or Women’s History month, massive multi-national corporations claim to care about diversity. Logically, you don’t believe them.
    • The military swears that their drone strikes only hit “bad” guys. Logically, you don’t believe them.
    • Police forces across the country declare that they do fair and transparent investigations whenever one of their own is accused of a crime. Logically, you don’t believe them.
    • Famous male predators put out statements that the dozens of women accusing them of sexual assault are just out to get them. Logically, you don’t believe them.

    The list goes on and on… so why then do you suddenly trust a government-corporate cabal when they tell you to hide in your homes for years and submit to an untested drug that’s never before been used on humans and for which they have zero liability? Why do you allow these nefarious professional criminals to convince you to turn on your neighbors, friends, and family if any of them dares to question the approved narrative? 

    What happened? When and why did you surrender your intellectual autonomy to the will of those who gain the most from your submission? Pro tip: It’s not too late to step away from the programming and propaganda and begin thinking for yourself. In fact, this is our daily, hourly project. There is no finish line so embrace the process and spread the word. 

    The post Vaccines, Variants, and Vilification first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Today the Victorian Women’s Trust launches its new podcast series, The Trap, written and hosted by leading Australian investigative journalist and award-winning author, Jess Hill, pictured, and produced by lauded documentary-maker Georgina Savage. BroadAgenda editor, Ginger Gorman, chatted with Jess about how the pod tackles love, abuse and power. 

    Congratulations on your new podcast! Jess, you’ve done so much work around domestic abuse now. Why the need for “The Trap”? What will people hear that they haven’t heard before?

    This series is taking listeners even deeper into the experience of coercive control, how and why it is perpetrated, and the way it’s too often perpetuated by our systems. We go directly to the motels women and kids go to hide, we record inside family violence call centres, we speak to a group of men who’ve been trying to change their behaviour, we hear from teenagers, and we interview a number of police whistleblowers. We’re grappling with so many controversial topics – what do you do with abusive men who refuse to change? What role do police and the courts have in responding to coercive control? Will an increase in gender equality see a reduction in domestic violence? I learnt so much putting this series together, and that’s after working on this issue for the best part of a decade!

    Why did you choose audio to tell this story? 

    There’s so much more you can do with audio – people feel more comfortable speaking off camera, and you can more easily protect their identity. But it’s also brings to life so much more than you can in print: you can hear the child’s voice, and the words they emphasise; you can hear as people’s voice begins to crack, and details that might look inconsequential on the page are suddenly loaded with the emotion of the moment. These voices are coming directly into your ears, without the visuals to distract from what they’re saying. It’s an act of communion.

    You say this is a series about love. But it’s also about power. What do you mean?

    We commonly hear that abuse is not love, but in our efforts to distinguish the two we forget the part that love plays in domestic abuse. How our ideas of romantic love blind us to the early signs of coercive control. How love can lead a victim survivor to rationalise the abuse, to hold tight to the potential their love once promised. How some abusive people can actually be so terrified of losing their partners that they keep them trapped through control, so they won’t leave. Love misused can be a particularly malignant type of power. But power, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. It’s the particular type of power we’re talking about – the patriarchal value of ‘power-over’ – that we really need to understand and confront – in our relationships, our families, and within our systems.

    You’re addressing questions we don’t ask about domestic abuse. What kind of questions?

    Gosh, so many… First and foremost, we do answer the questions that still plague this issue, like ‘Why don’t they leave?’ But more urgently, we address the most important question: ‘Why doesn’t he let her leave?’ But there are also bigger questions to address, in terms of how we solve this problem. Perhaps the most controversial: ‘Will an increase in gender equality really lead to a decrease in domestic abuse?’

    Often as an investigative journalist, delving into hard issues like this is scarring and confronting. How can you personally manage to go back to issues like this again and again? How does it affect you?

    Honestly, sometimes I don’t manage that well. This work has definitely come at a significant personal cost. Even when I’m collaborating with other people, as I have on The Trap, I’m almost always working alone, and usually in my living room, so there’s kind of no break from it. But there are so many reasons to keep coming back to it. Firstly, it is fascinating, and teaches me something new every day. The people who survive this, and those who work in this area, are just incredible – and the camaraderie and support you get working on this topic is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Every time I get an email from someone saying that understanding coercive control gave them the language they needed to change their life – to help them leave, or ditch the self-blame… That’s like fuel. I’ve never worked on something that was simultaneously so challenging and so rewarding.

    Was there a key moment in making this series for you? Or a key thing you learned? Please describe it.

    There are so many, but probably the most intense moment was going out with the night crew with Brisbane Domestic Violence Service. Every night, they visit and take supplies to women and kids they’ve hidden in motels across the city. The night we went out together, we went to pick up a woman from a police station. Police had been called by her bank after she asked them to put a lock on the account because she thought her partner might be stealing from her. The bank suspected domestic violence, and called police. When the police showed up, they discovered that she had been trapped inside her partner’s apartment for two months: she had been treated like a slave, the hot water had been turned off and even the towels removed so she couldn’t shower. When we picked her up, she looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks, and she spoke so softly we could barely hear her. Over the next couple of hours, she started to joke with us, and her voice became gradually louder – she was claiming back her space in the world. It was phenomenal to be there for that – it was like watching someone come back to life. But it was also horrifying to see that this literal type of entrapment was happening in a regular apartment in an Australian city, especially knowing that stories like this are playing out across the country every single night.

    There are so many systems in place that are meant to protect targets of domestic abuse (largely women and children). But too often they don’t. How do you address this in the pod?

    It’s important to highlight how these systems both fail and succeed. If you highlight only where these systems fail you risk dissuading victim survivors from seeking help, and that’s the last thing we want to do. But we are asking fundamental questions about the structure of our systems, from police to family law: are they fit for purpose? What would it take to make these systems safe – can they be reformed? Feminists have a vexed history working with patriarchal state institutions like police and the courts. But for now, these are the systems we have, and I believe it’s our duty to victim survivors and their families to make them safer, while we dedicate ourselves to reimagining and reinventing them.

    Is there anything else you want to say? 

    I’ve dedicated the past few years to revealing the true nature of domestic abuse because it affects every single one of us. It is a corrosive element at the heart of our society, affecting millions of Australians, and hundreds of millions of adults and kids worldwide. For me, ending oppression and violence in the home, and making our systems safe for everyone, is one of the most vital feminist projects.

    Pictured above: Australian investigative journalist and award-winning author, Jess Hill. Picture: Saskia Wilson

    The first two episodes of The Trap available today (5 August, 2021) with new episodes becoming available weekly on all major podcast platforms. Listen and subscribe here or on your preferred podcast app. 

    The post The Trap: love, abuse and power appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • Last week, five people were given prison sentences totalling more than 14 years between them.

    Over 75 people have been arrested after a confrontation with the police during Bristol’s 21 March Kill the Bill demonstration against the authoritarian Police, Crime Sentencing and Courts Bill. So far, 29 of them have been charged with riot, which carries a maximum of ten years imprisonment. Two of them are in prison on remand awaiting trial.

    On 21 March, police attacked the crowd with horses, batons, and pepper spray outside Bridewell Police Station. People fought back, seizing police batons, helmets, and shields.

    The people in court now are those who stood up and defended their comrades against the violence of the police, and they deserve our support.

    But the Bristol defendants are not just up against the police and the court system, they also have the power of the mainstream media stacked against them.

    If we are serious about defending our comrades facing repression, then we need a courageous and radical media that’s ready to turn the state’s narrative on its head.

    MSM journalists are accomplices in the state’s repression of the defendants

    Mainstream media (MSM) journalists have – right from the very start –  been willing accomplices in the repression of the Kill the Bill defendants.

    In the days following the clash at Bridewell, defendants’ mugshots were circulated by the likes of the Bristol Post, The Independent, and Sky News, helping the police to find those who had fought back.

    The mainstream media also parroted the police’s claims that officers had suffered broken bones at the hands of protesters. It was left to the likes of The Canary to point out the long history of police forces making false claims like this in order to control the narrative. And – shock! horror! – less than a week after 21 March, it was uncovered that the police had indeed lied about their injuries.

    There was a slight shift in the MSM narrative in the weeks following 21 March, as riot police attacked Kill the Bill demonstrators again and again in Bristol, and outlets such as the Guardian did deem to report on the worst of the police violence. Videos were circulated of police bringing their heavy riot shields down on the heads of demonstrators. These ‘revenge’ policing tactics were condemned in an All Party Parliamentary inquiry in July.

    But the police’s violence has quickly been forgotten by MSM journalists, and replaced with across the board condemnation of those arrested after the clash of Bridewell. The MSM stories of the last week read as if the demonstrators had attacked a group of defenceless school children – not defended themselves against the aggression of a mob of tooled-up riot police.

    The story being told in the mainstream media would leave you believing that no-one in Bristol (or anywhere else) could support the defendants. However, a look at the grassroots support for those in court tells a very different story. A crowdfunder to help support them in prison has raised – as of the time of publication – over £17k in just 5 days.

    The MSM is owned by billionaires; its not in their interests to support our struggles

    There’s a good reason why the MSM is subservient to those in power. Most UK MSM outlets are controlled by a handful of billionaires. Research in 2019 showed that just six billionaires control the majority of the UK’s national newspapers. It will never be in the class interests of these media tycoons to support people’s struggles against power, because the success of our struggles would jeopardise their profits.

    Those sentenced last week are the ones who have been dehumanised

    In sentencing the five defendants on 30 July, judge Patrick – laughably – said that they had “dehumanised” the police.

    But it’s the defendants that have been dehumanised, not the police. Their photographs were plastered all over the tabloid press last week, and the police allegations against them were reported uncritically without a whisper of the police violence that had been levelled against them. The press repeated the police’s claims that the demonstrators were a ‘mob’, and reported the highly personal statements made on behalf of the defendants in mitigation, with no concern for their privacy. In contrast, the judge treated the police’s statements saying they were traumatised by the ‘violence’ from protesters with the greatest sympathy.

    ‘Well didn’t they plead guilty?’, you might ask; ‘doesn’t that mean they admitted the allegations against them?’. Well, while a guilty plea does technically mean that the defendants admitted the allegations, the reality is more complicated. When someone is charged with a crime, they are told by the courts that they will get a shorter sentence if they plead guilty at the earliest opportunity. What that means for defendants is a decision on whether to fight their case and risk more prison time or plead guilty with the hope of a shorter sentence. Defendants that plead guilty can’t challenge any of the police account except – to a very limited extent – in mitigation. As you can imagine, this can entail accepting all sorts of allegations against them that – to be frank – may be total bullshit.

    Of course, in reality judges don’t always play by the rules. In the highly politicised context of riots, those that enter the first guilty pleas may end up getting treated the most harshly, as judges want to ‘set an example’ to deter more people from rebelling against the system.

    The accounts of 21 March that have made it into the MSM so far are the state narrative – pure and unadulterated. This is creating a situation where the state’s eye view of what happened on 21 March is being accepted as truth. It’s the job of a truly radical media to turn that narrative on its head.

    We need to create our own narrative

    We need to work as hard as we can to tell the real story of what happened at Bridewell, and to do that we need to develop a strong, radical media which serves the people instead of power.

    Bristol already has a relatively strong radical media, with media cooperative The Bristol Cable and grassroots media website Alternative Bristol providing accounts of what happened at Bridewell. Local online magazine Bristol 24/7 also stepped up and republished parts of the statement in support of those facing charges. Nationally, Autonomy News, Phoenix Media Cooperative, and Freedom News – as well as The Canary – have provided a different perspective too. But the role of the MSM in the state’s repression of those arrested at Bridewell shows how important these alternative platforms are.

    Grassroots media has played a big part in previous campaigns against state repression. In the 1990s, the Trafalgar Square Defence Campaign and others published their own newsletters in support of those facing repression after people rioted against Margaret Thatcher’s Poll Tax. Local alternative media newsletters also played a big part in spreading a radical perspective during the 1990s movement against the 1994 Criminal Justice Act. Perhaps the most famous was SCHnews – or Squatted Court House News – a collective that formed during an occupation of the old court building in Brighton. SCHnews kept on running for 20 years. The transnational movement against globalisation – which kicked off in earnest with 1999’s battle of Seattle – triggered the creation of decentralised Indymedia collectives that provided an autonomous space for people to post their own news.

    We need to create our own media

    Grassroots alternative media has suffered a serious blow with the advent of social media. Social media platforms provide a space that is accessible, but which is tightly controlled by big corporations. For example, Instagram – which is owned by Facebook – ‘shadowbans‘ accounts sharing radical content. This means that radical voices are actively deprioritised. Shadowbanning has been used recently to silence Palestinian voices calling out Israel’s colonial policies. We need to be thinking about ways we can work round this to ensure our content is reaching people.

    If we want to ensure that there is a space for truly radical voices, we need to cultivate and grow a truly radical media to counteract the state narrative. This is an essential part of building our autonomy and ability to defend our communities against the state’s narrative.

    Featured image provided to The Canary with permission

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • I remember chatting with a man from Iraq in 2016.  He was driving a taxi in Germany.  I wrote about him in one of my essays:

    “Last month, I was chatting with an Iraqi taxi driver in Berlin. My 12 year old son and I took a cab from the Museum for Contemporary Art to our hotel. I couldn’t help but ask the cab driver why he ended up in Berlin. He said it was something to do with the availability of the visa. He stressed that he had to leave because he didn’t like Islam. He said Muslims were killing each other.

    I felt very slightly sad because he sounded like he had to say that to prove that he wasn’t a “terrorist”. I told him that it was the US that supported Saddam when it was convenient. Then, the US flipped, changing its policy, as doing so became more convenient. I asked him, Taliban, al Qaeda, ISIS, same old story, no?

    Then he said something unexpected. He said it was a “people’s revolution”. “We stood against Saddam”.  He was referring to the first gulf war in 1991. He went on to describe how it didn’t go as people wished, and it brought about the devastating trade embargo, more war, ISIS and so on.  His voice was passionate.  I felt the anger and frustration against war and imperialism that I also feel myself, in his voice.”

    The imperial war against countries that defy the US hegemonic imperatives involves a few steps.  The target population is deprived of their basic necessities by economic embargo, trade sanctions, travel restrictions and demonization of its leader.  The society is destabilized by the lack of resources and economic activities.  The opposing forces in the country are generously funded by the empire to build a momentum against the defying “regime” in the name of “revolution,” “democracy,” “freedom”, etc. The communities are divided. The institutions are compromised to serve capital, adding more confusions and predicaments to the population.

    Quite often this is sufficient enough to silence those who defy such interventions and it results in an overthrow of the existing order.  The society is transformed to suit the colonial policies concocted by western industries, which result in resource extraction, privatization, financialization, exploitation of cheap labor, construction of US military bases and so on.

    Quite a few middle eastern countries have defied such interventions resulting in proxy wars and western military interventions.

    That was the war on terror which continues to this day as the US forces are freely employed against the world according to its “war on terror legal framework,” while its measures are still in place as restrictions against our legal rights as well as restrictions at airports and so on.

    Many of us raised our voices against the obvious crime of invading other countries, colonizing them and subjugating them.  To my surprise there were people who objected to our assertion saying that if we didn’t invade them, they would have invaded us, they were “terrorists,” and so on.

    Enormous profits were generated by this huge public project, war, at the expense of the people in the war torn countries as well as oppressed people in some of the richest countries of the world. No one was held accountable for deaths and destruction.  The war to save people from terrorists was a huge capitalist project to expand the power and wealth of hardened criminals who call themselves politicians, philanthropists, businessmen, intellectuals, patriots, academics, and so on.

    The underlining mentality of neo-colonial violence is based on prejudice against the peoples of the targeted countries.  Those peoples, who reside within countries governed by “leaders” who have sworn to obey imperial policies, are subjected to tighter measures of exploitation and subjugation in order to serve the interests of the imperial institutions. The predicaments of the subject population—poverty, social unrest, and corruption, which stem from the economic subjugation, justify the mental superiority among westerners, falsely proving the inferiority of the “barbaric” population which must be “assisted” by westerners.  If the leader of a colonized country attempts to amend the unfair situation by implementing policies that serve that country’s own people, the western authority would mobilize policies to remove such an element.  The policies are firmly backed by the prejudice amongst the imperial population. Simple slogans and key words such as “he is killing his own people,” “save the children,” “regime,” “dictatorship” and “genocide” can trigger the colonial mentality as well as the white savior mentality in the imperial population.

    Fast forward to 2021 — the era of war on virus. We are experiencing a massive wealth transfer to the rich and powerful, which can be best described by Jeff Bezos thanking his workers and customers for his rocket ride. The cynical exploitative violence inflicted against workers is found in all sectors across the country, creating destruction of small community businesses, massive homelessness, suicide surge, spike in drug related deaths.  Lockdown measures are wreaking havoc in vital social relations, which must now be reorganized.

    The virus event has turned the dwindling healthcare system into mask wearing, social distancing and getting injected with extremely lucrative experimental GMO drugs—which are surrounded by  unprecedented numbers of injuries and deaths, far surpassing all combined prior vaccine injury and death reports to the CDC reporting system VAERS.  The lockdown measures and profit oriented measures against the virus further narrowed the capacity of the general healthcare system, resolution in huge numbers of patients without vital care for their urgent conditions. Destroying the healthcare system for the sake of saving lives is only an aspect of the current mobilization.  The education system, which has been under attack for generations by corporate forces, has received a blank check to fire faculties, turn classes into online tutorials, and pursue a new mission to create obedient workers for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The financial institution has accelerated its herding of the population into the digital realm where people are conditioned, commodified, and exploited as data.  In every industry, a massive restructuring process for profit is occurring in the name of Covid measures.

    Now, I understand that respiratory illnesses can be very dangerous.  If you look up articles from pre-Covid time, you find desperate calls from healthcare professionals screaming about the risk of flu epidemics due to the lack of facilities and resources. This has become reality after Covid, as massive death tolls have resulted from nursing home lockdowns.  Profit oriented treatment options have been promoted while effective options were restricted, resulting in yet even more deaths and hospitalizations.  But statistically, all these deaths in the US had not exceeded the range of year to year variation in death rate.  This crucial fact has been observed in various countries.  The Covid situation, if anything, is very much a manmade event. It can not be described as a deadly pandemic comparable to the bubonic plague. This should shatter virus event narratives propped up by “cases“ concocted by unreliable PCR tests—its inaccuracy has been highly criticized by many scientists—including the inventor of the PCR test himself–due to its arbitrary results depending on the degree of amplification in search of the targeted DNA fragments.

    The above observation is strictly based on the opinions of numerous healthcare professionals, doctors, and scientists across the globe. At the very least, it must be recognized that there are significant disagreements within the field of science on every aspect of Covid-19, its treatments, and lockdown measures.

    However, none of those are examined in a serious manner by the establishment.  In fact, there are many instances of healthcare professionals being disciplined for reporting cases of vaccine injury, speaking against the treatment policies, and questioning the prevalent assumptions regarding the virus.  Healthcare professionals are actively forced to play along with the official Covid narrative.

    For the general public the mixed emotions over the contradictions have turned to frustration, and the frustration has turned to anger as if we are stuck in a pressure cooker made with official narratives and structural impediments of lockdowns and forced vaccine injection. The heat and pressure have broken down the social fabric as our daily routines are dictated by “new normal.”

    So many things have happened since last year.  But somehow things don’t seem to fit in right places in our heads.

    We mark our sense of time and space with traditional events, daily routines and our common knowledge.  When we lose those, we are left with a series of elements and dynamics without those markers.But alternate markers have been provided by those who have deprived us of the markers.  Our lives are marked with lockdowns, masks and social distancing — the “new normal”.

    Now we mark our lives with it.

    We are told that there is a deadly disease out there and the only solution is to vaccinate.  Our life and death are determined by one of the largest corporate entities, the medical industrial complex.

    Just as the war on terror was described as a “crusade”—legitimizing the twisted religious and cultural superiority of the colonizers, disguising white man’s burden as humanitarian obligation — the war on virus crowns “science” as its guiding force.  However, needless to say, the credibility of the “science” is proportional to the accompanying might of wealth and power—just as the facts of war are bought and sold as “journalism”. Propaganda lies fill the air as those who oppose are marked as “others” who  deserve to be castigated as being outside of the protection of the gated community.

    This way of framing—the medical industrial complex—is useful in understanding the dynamics within the capitalist hegemony. However, such an entity is also a part of the media industrial complex, non profit industrial complex, political industrial complex, and, of course, military industrial complex.  In short, our lives are dictated by multiple dynamic forces of oligarchs, orchestrating a “reality” which firmly manifests as a capitalist framework—a cage to condition our lives based on its imperatives.

    As the current virus mobilization reframes our society, obliterating existing values, norms and beliefs, the corporate institutions and their owners are consecrated as absolute beings which determine our life and death. This is why decrees legitimated by the “emergency”  are acceptable political means now.  This is why large corporations have gained enormous wealth.  This is why our lives are herded into the digital realm where we are commodified, conditioned to be exploited, and truncated to be stripped of the mystery of life and the unknown.

    But where do the anger and frustration go?

    The US establishment is well aware of the boiling anger and frustration over the situation.  The momentum of anger is cultivated and it is being shaped to put the people against each other—an old corporate duopoly trick, which has grown steadily as a dynamic tool of social engineering in the US.  The ghosts of the Civil War still determine the means of enslavement, while allowing the ruling class to preside over the theater of “democracy,” “freedom” and “humanity”—a manufactured “reality.”  Individualism, self-determination and a sense of freedom based on the sacrifices of many oppressed people are a privilege only allowed to people with economic security.  This is a part of the reason why the resistance against the Covid lockdown measures encompasses a reactionary element.  In particular, erroneously defining the trajectory as “socialism” or “communism”.  This ironic twist, the capitalist oppression being blamed on the enemy of capitalists, once again reveals the mechanism of the imperial duopoly as well as the expansion of the exploitative violence against a formerly economically secure segment of the population, which will require tighter measures of draconian restrictions.

    It is not a coincidence that the red states have embraced the opposing positions while the blue states firmly adhere to the official narratives on vaccines and lockdown measures.  The subject populations are allowed to choose the mode of enslavement, but the slight differences in the choice are big enough to activate colonial hatred toward each other.  The unresolved historical pain, emotion and grudge have found urgent expression against “enemies” among us.  A fight between teeth baring wolves and cunning foxes, as Malcom X would call it, channels the anger and frustration safely within the capitalist framework.  The media, politicians and major institutions carefully instigate conflicts among the people by demonizing opponents over vaccines and lockdown measures, while protecting “pandemic” narratives one way or the other.

    Some people might think that things must get worse before it gets better. Things can certainly get worse but it looks like it only means more fragmentation of communities and destabilization of institutions, which allows further erosion of people’s interests by the capitalist domination along with justifications for its draconian measures.  This probably gives a comfortable feeling for those privileged ones in gated communities. This also accompanies the exacerbation of fascist momentum, which always justifies the forces of western imperial hegemony—remember how the Trump phenomenon pushed neoliberal policies, which are embraced by both corporate parties, while justifying anything else to oppose Donald Trump, who was largely perceived as an obvious caricature of the narcissistic failing empire?  The US capitalism moves forward while oscillating left and right within the acceptable spectrum of imperialism.

    In short, everything is under control according to those who destroyed the middle eastern countries.  The only difference is that now the target is us.  We are under attack.  Some of us are demonized by the establishment to play the role of scapegoats.  Some of us are praised as heroes saving lives and sacrificing themselves. Our communities are being destroyed to be further consumed by the colonizers of humanity and nature.

    The war on virus is meant as a crucial background of destabilization and fear which helps extract huge amount of public spending in the name of saving lives, saving environment and saving people’s livelihoods—which are all under attack by the savagery of the very capitalist domination.   Since the war on virus is largely targeting the public money, we are bombarded with an unprecedented amount of wholesale propaganda narratives, as if we are thrown into the process of corporate electoral process—we are supposed to vote yes to those lucrative capitalist fixes for the capitalist problems by going along with the narratives.  Public outcries against the policies are safely consumed among the populations as people are forced to fight among themselves.

    Moreover, the war on virus is meant to be a perpetual war.  Inconceivable “mistakes” will be made, victories would be declared here and there, facts will be revealed when convenient, while much of the facts are distorted to prop up the pretense of this vast protection racket scheme by the oligarchs.  One step forward, and one step backward, our lives swirl within the torturous theater of the “medical crisis,” but the real solution is never to be found within it.  The empire can not lose the war but the empire has no intention of winning the war either, for the winning can destroy the domesticated momentum of the in-fighting among the people, as well as an assortment of “activism” backed by the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, which effectively drives capitalist agendas in the name of “our democracy”. After all, we are many. The oppressors are not.  The mechanism of the domestication must be kept in place to tame the masses within the feudal hierarchy of money and violence.  Meanwhile, fear, doubt and real threat against our livelihood in the form of economic strangulation continue to force us to swallow the protection racket deal with the criminal enterprise.

    Ultimately, the trajectory points to a complete domestication of our species through management of all means of production, its products, and the distribution system.  As the peoples become products themselves with biotech procedures, the social relations within the digital realm seamlessly merge with the fabricated reality, virtually cementing the feudal hierarchy of the absolute power.

    As we operate within social media outlets, as we present our identities within their frameworks, and as we are injected with GMO drugs to modify our physical response to the natural world, we have already stepped into a dangerous stage which might very well spell the end of our species as we know it.

    What could Iraqis do as they suffered the deadly embargo and invasions?  The question is ours now.  Unfortunately, many of those who stood with the empire are still insisting on fighting the imperial war as we have become the targets of the war, demonizing our community members as enemies, repeating slogans and talking points to justify the imperial restructuring, as our communities fall apart to be devoured by the colonizers.  It is no coincidence that those who oppose the current mobilization are accused of being racists, conspiracy theorists, or fascist worshippers—just as not agreeing with bombing brown people would be accused of letting brown children die by the hand of a “dictator.”

    Our real enemy is not the “antivaxxers,” or the gullible people swallowing the corporate propaganda.  The real enemy is the imperial oligarchs who are shaping our society in order to continue their ways of exploitation and subjugation.  They are shaping the capitalist cage to squeeze the last remnants of our imagination and our connection to humanity and nature.  How can we defy the colonization of humanity and nature?  How can we be a part of the resistance against the criminal pyramid scheme which is bound to implode with its destructive nature?  How can we build our ways to be in harmony with ourselves, with each other and with nature?  We are a part of the countless people who have held the dream of such a harmony.  We stand strong with them in solidarity.  We are many. The oppressors are not.

    The post We Are Many:  the Oppressors are not first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • COMMENT: By Michael Field of The Pacific Newsroom

    Apologies are, more or less by custom, the end of things.

    Say sorry, and don’t mention it again.

    As warm and moving as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s apology was over the immigration Dawn Raids of the 1970s, it will mostly fade away. At the function, standing under an Auckland Town Hall plaque honouring one of New Zealand’s worst administrators of Samoa (and Tokelau), no one I spoke to, knew who he was.

    Auckland Town Hall plaque
    The Auckland Town Hall plaque honouring Major-General Sir George Spafford Richardson. Image: Michael Field

    And yet nine years ago Prime Minister Helen Clark formally apologised for his actions and others.

    Apologies are a bit of a sugar rush; something else is needed.

    Which brings me to Australian-based academic Katerina Teaiwa who, during the dawn raid apology, tweeted it was great to hear, and added: “We’ll have to work on some specific recognition and support for Banabans from Kiribati & Fiji whose island was sacrificed for NZ, Aus & UK development/agriculture/farming/food security.”

    Understanding what happened to Banaba is vital for Pacific futures; not just for correcting historical wrongs that can be dealt with a glitzy Town Hall confession of guilt.

    Tragic story of Banaba
    That said, the tragic story of Banaba and New Zealand’s role in it – and in Nauru – justify a formal state apology but Teaiwa is right to suggest a rather more ongoing process.

    Banaba is vitally important for a number of reasons.

    First there is the brutal business of not only robbing a people of their land, but also of enforced exile to another part of the world. Sea level rise, alone, may well make this more the norm, than unusual. Banabans, how they were treated and their response, offer much to an endangered low lying Pacific.

    And as Pacific states move toward the business of seafloor mining, Banaba offers lessons in issues as diverse as “beware strangers offering lavish gifts” to “and where do we live after the strangers have taken all the riches….?”

    What is also alarming about the Banaba story (and Nauru’s) is that their corrupt, illegal and deceptive plunder was done to make, in particular, Aotearoa and Australia rich. The soils of Banaba and Nauru contain motherlodes of phosphate which is needed to grow grass for agriculture.

    Here is the rub: almost no New Zealanders know the story of Banaba or Nauru. And when pressed, some will say, reflecting colonial propaganda, that “we paid a fair price for the phosphate”.

    No ‘fair price’
    A simple reply: no we did not. Never did.

    An apology to Banaba is necessary but only after Aotearoa and others come to terms with what they did to around a thousand people who, for centuries, have lived peacefully on a beautiful island.

    Its stark ruins today should remind us that just saying sorry is mostly not enough.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • EDITORIAL: By the editorial board of The Jakarta Post

    After chairing a cabinet ministers meeting on July 13, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said the 20th National Games (PON) in Papua would go ahead as scheduled from October 2 to 15. The subsequent National Paralympic Games are then to be held from November 2 to 15.

    The government postponed the two sporting events last year over covid-19 concerns – although it didn’t seem too concerned when it pushed for regional elections in 270 regions last December.

    The President’s decision to allow the PON to go ahead was based on good intentions, such as giving an opportunity and pride to Papuan people to host a national sports event, a luxury that eludes many other regions. But at what cost?

    As in 2020, Papua today is still not free of the deadly disease and it may remain that way for the foreseeable future given the province’s poor testing, tracing and treatment capacity and very low vaccination rate. Therefore, we call on the government to once again delay the event until we can flatten the transmission curve of the coronavirus.

    The PON will only turn into a dangerous game to play.

    The President should listen to Mimika Regent Eltinus Omaleng, who plans to send an official letter to the head of state to ask for the PON’s rescheduling because the regency, the mining site of PT Freeport, now is preoccupied with a rising number of covid-19 cases The local government is also facing shortages of oxygen, medicines and patient beds.

    Papua Governor Lukas Enembe has shared the same concerns and will officially request a delay to the Games.

    The central government needs to listen to the local leaders, because they know very well the development on the ground. Youth and Sports Minister Zainuddin Amali is among the staunchest proponents of the PON in Papua, saying all sports venues and equipment would be 100 percent ready for the Games next month.

    Despite the minister’s confidence, however, it will be the Papuan leaders and people who will have to bear the brunt of all consequences if Jakarta insists the show must go on.

    Indonesian Military (TNI) commander Air Chief Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto and National Police chief General Listyo Sigit Prabowo have also pledged their commitment to safety and security of all participants during the PON and Paralympic Games. But how about the threat of the deadly disease?

    According to the original plan, the PON will be held in Jayapura city, Jayapura regency, Mimika regency and Merauke regency. The four-yearly event will feature 37 sports and 6400 athletes plus 3500 officials from 34 provinces across the country. The Paralympics will be held in Jayapura city and Jayapura regency, featuring 1,935 athletes.

    With more than 12,000 people gathering, the risk of the Games becoming a new covid-19 cluster should not be disregarded, even if the government bans spectators from all sports venues, and all participating athletes and officials are vaccinated before the PON begin.

    Papua can host the PON once we can rein in the pandemic. The President should not let unnecessary victims fall simply because he wants to show to the world the development progress in Papua.

    This is a matter of life in very real terms.

    The Jakarta Post pubished this editorial under the title “Dangerous Papua Games” on 31 July 2021.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Once upon a time a new class of people emerged. They were scholars and elitists, ‘special people,’ well ensconced in academia, politics, economics and military intelligence. They righteously demanded eradication of current norms and established ways of being. They insisted that prevailing antiquated inferior practices be replaced with new better ways of living. This required a purging of the old system by any means necessary. Accordingly, those who dissented were either re-indoctrinated, thrown in jail, exiled to other lands or done away with.

    These notable visionaries pontificated a whole new outlook on life. Society will prosper! The masses will flourish! There will be no class! We are one!

    Eventually, with reluctance or zeal everyone got on board with all the life affirming rhetoric. Well, except for those few unsavory stragglers who were always throwing in a wrench by daring to question the ruling thought system. To adequately manage these problematic skeptics a committee of the purest of the pure, the moral gatekeepers if you will, devised a game plan.

    Appealing to the collective quest for power and belonging, the committee ventured forth with teasing out who was aligned and who deviated from partisan loyalty. Some good old fashioned spying would do the trick! Most important, they had to concoct a strategy to nullify those pesky beliefs that sullied right thinking.

    To diminish ideological impurities the committee established an auxiliary sub-committee. In charge of assembling and broadcasting interesting and distracting stuff that would encourage agreement amongst the multitudes, the sub-committee culled and re-culled all sorts of stories! With unified intent they agreed that by playing to the collective instinctual need for tribal belonging and highlighting the ethos of upward mobility while simultaneously igniting fear, all-encompassing compliance would be ensured.

    Harking back to unconscious reminders of the ‘primal horde’ and raising hopes and fears, proved to be a revolutionary form of thought control. The committee and sub-committee were very pleased. The campaign was so persuasive that without a hitch, it incited the common folk to evince an onslaught of aggression towards those who persisted in thinking for themselves. In fact, it was recognized as their moral and civic duty!

    Indeed, this ‘us versus them’ strategy worked beautifully, but there was still more to be done to guarantee complacency. To offset the irritating concerns with the recent unavoidable interruption of economic activity, needs had to be gratified. Hence, with the sanction of Executive Order everyone in the land received monetary incentives. These social safety nets allowed folks to stay home, insulated from the dangers in the world while being entertained in the comfort of their living rooms!

    Naturally just in case, a contingency plan was devised.

    “Should all else fail,” the committee members concurred, “we will simply raise taxes or go to war to pillage the resources of some unsuspecting nation… for the purpose of humanitarian intervention of course!”

    Hence, with the populace sufficiently dutiful and distracted, the rulers in charge got to the important work of brainstorming and changing the world.

    Of course, this Kafkaesque allegory is a simplified account of historical trends. It is a repetitive reality that all forms of government irrespective of ideology, are ultimately reducible to the rule of a few global elitists. Likewise, the mass dissemination of a collectively revered ideology accompanied by the manipulation of information has always been standard procedure whenever power has been transferred from one elite class to another.

    For instance, when we examine the French revolution, and the Bolshevik’s Russian revolution it’s clear how goals of reform formulated by select elites, drove the movements. These elitist intellectuals introduced a new doctrine that appealed to the people and catalyzed rebellion against the monarchy and the aristocracy.

    Revisiting the onset of the French Revolution (1789), reveals the emergence of a new class which had great wealth but no political power. This new class wanted wealth and power, but the monarch class (royalty) refused to share power because of the historic notion that it was their inherent Divine right to rule. This dilemma ignited mutiny.

    The monarchy was brought down and a new ruling class known as the Bourgeoisie (middle class) was established. We see a similar trajectory (1917) during the first World War when the Russian Monarch was also brought down by the elite class known as the Bolsheviks.

    In both revolutions the violent seizure of power required the support, or at the very least the compliance of the citizenry. Naturally this meant that the throngs were seduced with proclamations of unbridled freedoms. Eventually however, public opinion was policed and injurious speech became a criminal offense subject to execution. Traitors were to be exposed and annihilated.

    Accordingly, the Reign of Terror, under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre, achieved their political goals through executing enemies of the revolution. Euphemistically referred to as the Committee of Public Safety, this powerful war council leveled extreme measures to protect the security of the new regime.

    Similarly, the Bolshevik’s Red Terror emulated the Reign of Terror. The removal of state enemies entailed the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of suspected subversives, many who were tortured and executed. Any hint of opposition signified guilt.

    Like their predecessors, contemporary elites who possess comparatively greater power and influence within institutions, organizations, and movements engineer decisive political outcomes. In this age of advanced technology, these architects of group indoctrination are members of a powerful superclass. They determine foreign policy, run the government, industry, and the worlds of finance and media. How they mobilize their influence has tremendous bearing not just on the collective mindset, but also on morality.

    Charismatic leaders and celebrities are enlisted by these global elitists to promote prescriptive beliefs and agendas. Our susceptibility to aggrandizing and mythologizing of high-ranking people and eminent personalities, who by the way are no more capable than the average person of assuming a political role or declaring scientific expertise, sways us to adapt and conform.

    Social psychologist Gustave Le Bon (1895 / The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind) explained how the collective group mind yields to instincts, resulting in a singular mindset. This phenomenon eradicates individual critical thought and makes ‘subordinate’ members of the group malleable to indoctrination and suggestion by powerful leaders.

    Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, who achieved acclaim as the “father of public relations” due to his masterful understanding of the psychological workings of propaganda, expanded on Le Bon’s ideas. His writings about how collective collusion with a dominant ideology encapsulated the principle, “if you are not for us, then you must be against us.”

    Le Bon and Bernays analysis of the mob mentality is evidenced in the aggressive posturing of political correctness and cancel culture. Through the daily utilization of identification with race, class, gender, religion, nationality and political ideology, special interest groups and the elite corporate media shape the group mind. Carefully crafted campaigns uphold imperialist values, state sponsored violence and incontestable lockdowns.

    By championing shaming and cruelty, under the guise of moral superiority, folks submit to the will of the group. This incites boycotts, marred reputations, social ostracism and destroyed livelihoods. In the spirit of moral relativism, it’s all chalked up to ‘the greater good’.

    Consequently, we are distracted by what we are instructed to align with, oblivious to the machinations of corporate interests and motives disguised as humanitarian intervention.

    Attempts to think for oneself in accordance with a personal moral code, or even factual information is met with an onslaught of aggression.

    Still, there will always be those few non-conformists who oppose the ruling thought system. They are the subversives, the whistle-blowers, the conspiracy theorists. (Julian Assange, Martin Luther King, Karen Silkwood, Frank Serpico, Kathryn Bolkovac, Edward Snowden, Gary Webb, Berta Cáceres. The list goes on.) As freedom of expression is restricted to the overriding popular opinion, their controversial views are squelched and the Orwellian corruption of language and thought ensues.

    As Edward Snowden endeavored to reveal, the National Security Agency (NSA) in direct violation of the 4th amendment, engages in warrantless surveillance of large volumes of Americans’ phone content and e-mail messages. Agents within the National Security Agency (NSA), have anonymously told the New York Times that the spy agency monitors millions of e-mail communications and telephone calls made by Americans.

    This infringement on private communication continues to take on new meaning as government officials are working directly with Facebook to limit the spread of “misinformation.” The escalation of censorship under another name (i.e., managing domestic terrorism and disinformation) appears virtuous. Even while the Biden administration recently moved to shut down the websites of 33 foreign media outlets, it was spun as security protection, not an obvious attack on the 1st amendment.

    Nevertheless, being spoon fed questionable narratives through mass deception campaigns dubbed as journalism is nothing new. Instituted in the early 1950s, the Mockingbird Project revealed the CIA’s involvement with major US news media. Through bribing journalists and publishers, propaganda was peddled to the masses. Acclaimed Watergate Reporter Carl Bernstein wrote a piece in 1977 for Rolling Stone magazine, “The CIA and the Media” in which he imparted, that since the early 1950’s the CIA “secretly bankrolled numerous foreign press services, periodicals and newspapers, both English and foreign language which provided excellent cover for CIA operatives.”

    Now with six corporations controlling 90 per cent of media outlets in the U.S. (AT&T, CBS, Comcast, Disney, News Corp and Viacom) it’s not a huge surprise that the press has acclimated to the expectations of these corporatized media giants.

    In fact, a survey by the Pew Research Center and the Columbia Journalism Review in 2000 found, “Self-censorship is commonplace in the news media today…. About one-quarter of the local and national journalists say they have purposely avoided newsworthy stories, while nearly as many acknowledge they have softened the tone of stories to benefit the interests of their news organizations. Fully four in ten (41%) admit they have engaged in either or both of these practices.”

    Capitalizing on survival fears the government sponsored corporatized media bans, persecutes and censors those who deviate from popular opinion. Oppositional views are vilified, in effect muzzling those who question popular narratives. Regrettably many take the bait and participate in random emotionally charged exchanges that culminate in a mob mentality and a snitch culture. Aggressive social norms quickly take hold as hateful communication infiltrates a throng of followers. Competitive rancor and righteous indignation usurps the possibility of rational discourse when group shaming is exalted as a noble feat.

    Ironically the proverbial silver lining is that eventually it all self destructs. Elitists and the masses end up fighting amongst themselves, maligning each other for not measuring up to fanatical purity tests.

    As Plato conveyed in The Republic, mediocrity is our hubris and our demise. It is what brings down all systems.

    Plato also imparted that those who know how to govern, ‘The Philosopher Kings’, are the wise, just elders who through debating and resolving with dialogue and intellect, contribute to mankind’s evolution. They are capable of upholding George Orwell’s interpretation of liberty as “the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

    Indeed it is only when we have the freedom to choose and think for oneself that true morality can flourish. Until then forbidden perspectives will continue to go underground. Regrettably, that which could benefit from examination will not only remain hidden, it is destined to quietly foment into backlash and dissent waiting to erupt.

  • First published at Dialogue & Discourse.
  • The post When Questioning Popular Opinion is Prohibited first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • It’s not new to anyone that the Olympics has a bit of an issue when it comes to gender equality. John Coates’ treatment of Annastacia Palaszczuk at the moment of triumph was a textbook example of what women have been putting up with for eons. But even prior to this masterclass in mansplaining, there were painful examples of sexism and discrimination.

    With 11 years until Brisbane hosts the 2032 Olympics, we can hope that there’s been wholesale reform of Olympic practices by then – though in reality many of the rules about participation, uniforms and compliance which have been the source of recent grief are outside the control of the host city.

    Where the host city and country do have control is EVERYWHERE ELSE. And if we start right now we could make the Brisbane 2032 Olympics the most inclusive and diverse yet.

    Each Olympics Games is a decade long infrastructure, tourism and communications project, with some sport at the end. The Brisbane Olympics is no different. Slated to cost at least $4 billion, the Brisbane Games will drive infrastructure and transport investment, develop new technologies and be supported by huge logistics and promotions campaigns. What’s that got to do with gender equality, diversity or inclusion?

    Well, all expenditure creates a decision point about who gets the business and what gets purchased. The same as you or I might buy from one company because it aligns with our values, every dollar spent by government is an opportunity to direct funding to particular businesses or markets, to set minimum requirements in procurement, to decide who to engage with when identifying outcomes, to set targets for inclusion and safety, and to establish reporting and accountability frameworks. This called Gender Lens Investing, Innovative Finance or putting your money where your mouth is.

    Brisbane’s bid already committed to sustainability – it can also commit to diversity and inclusion through some pretty straight forward action in four core areas which are all within the direct control of the relevant governments.

    First up, commitment to diverse leadership and staffing in all parts of the government machinery preparing for and implementing the 2032 Games. There should be gender equality and representation of First Nations Australians, people of colour and people with disability (including beyond the Paralympics) across internal and outward facing leadership roles and in staffing across Olympic structures. And make leaders accountable – put inclusion in their KPIs and make it a senior someone’s job to drive and report on the whole commitment.

    Second, spend that huge budget well. Set minimums for procuring services and products through women, First Nations and disabled people owned and run businesses. Insist on minimum diversity standards through the whole procurement chain, ensuring that only those who comply with key diversity and inclusion standards get a slice of the action. Put Gender on the Tender for construction and other male dominated industries, creating a market for those industries to demonstrate the meaningful action they are taking to attract, support and retain women workers.

    Next, engage those with lived experience to identify challenges, and commit time and funding to co-designing and implementing solutions. Work with disabled people to move beyond wheelchair accessible stadiums – let’s talk buses and toilets, ticketing websites, accessible experiences for those with hearing and vision impairments. Talk to expert women’s groups about how to make the Games safe – for those attending and working at the Games and for those at home. Work with community organizations to harness opportunities in Olympic advertising and messaging to promote positive and inclusive messages to combat sexism, racism and ablism.

    Finally, represent diversity in EVERY. SINGLE. ASPECT.  In the art and designs used, in who gets to speak, in who is represented in promotional materials, in signage, ticket sales, volunteers – everything.

    We’ve got 11 years to get this right, but we need to commit now. And we need to get started now.

     

    • Amy Haddad is the Director of Gender Inclusion, Disability and Social Inclusion at Tetra Tech International Development Asia Pacific, and the Chair of the Criterion Institute’s Power of Policy Advisory Committee.

    The post Training for a 2032 inclusion Olympics starts now appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • SPECIAL REPORT: By Yamin Kogoya

    Shocking video footage showing brutal and inhumane treatment of a deaf Papuan teenager named Steven has emerged from the Merauke region of Papua and sparked outrage.

    This assault occurred on Monday, July 26, 2021, around Jalan Raya Mandala, Merauke (Jubi, July 27).

    The video shows an altercation between the 18-year-old and a food stall owner. Two security men from the Air Force Military Police (Polisi Militer Angkatan Udara, or POMAU) intervened in the argument.

    One of the officers grabbed the teenager and pulled him from the food stall. The victim was slammed to the pavement and then stomped on by the Air Force officers.

    The two men, Serda Dimas and Prada Vian, trampled on Steven’s head and twisted his arms after knocking him to the ground. The young man was seen screaming in pain, but the two men continued to step on his head and body while the officers casually spoke on the phone.

    In response to this assault, the commander of POMAU in Merauke, Colonel Pnb Herdy Arief Budiyanto, apologised for the actions of the two military policemen.

    Assaukt of deaf Papuan teenager 26 July 2021
    Two Indonesian Air Force military policemen stomping on the head of a deaf Papuan teenager in the Merauke region on 26 July 2021. Image: Screenshot from video

    In a press statement released on Tuesday, July 27, Colonel Herd stated that his men had overreacted and acted as vigilantes. The victim (Steven) and his adoptive mother, along with Merauke Police Chief, Untung Sangaji, and Vice-chairman of the regional People’s representative, Marotus Solokah, attended Tuesday’s press briefing (Jubi, July 27).

    Military policemen detained
    Kadispenau from the Air Force stated that the two men had now been detained under Commander J.A. Merauke’s supervision while POMAU Merauke investigates the incident.

    Kadispenau said: “The Air Force army does not hesitate to punish according to the level of the wrongdoings.”

    Papuan human rights defender Theo Hesegem said the two Air Force officers’ actions were unprofessional and should immediately be dealt with in accordance with the law applicable in the military judiciary in Papua, not outside Papua.

    “They should be dismissed and fired,” Hesegem said.

    Tabloid Jubi report of 'knee' assault
    How Tabloid Jubi reported the assault in an article three days later on 29 July 2021. Image: Tabloid Jubi

    Natalius Pigai, Indonesia’s former human rights commissioner, slammed the incident as “racist”.

    Pigai said on his Twitter account: “Not only members of the security forces, but Indonesia’s high officials who are racist should also be punished.”

    “Unless,” Pigai added, “Indonesia’s president Jokowi nurtures the racism committed by his tribe.” (Warta Mataram, July 27).

    Suitable place for the ‘lazy’
    Recently, Tri Rismaharini, Social Affairs Minister of Jokowi’s government, said that “lazy people” in the state civil service would be moved to Papua. Inferring that Papua was a suitable place for lazy, useless, and low-IQ humans.

    The racism issue will not be solved if people like Tri Rismaharini are not punished for their offensive remarks to Papuans.

    Pigai remarked as such because of countless denigrating comments and statements from Indonesia’s highest office, in which he himself is often the target of racism.

    But still, the country’s justice system fails to deliver justice for Papuan victims and hold the perpetrators accountable.

    These incidents are not isolated incidents – they are just the tip of the iceberg of what Papuans have been facing for 60 years under Indonesian rule. Tragic footage like the one in Merauke attracts public attention only because someone captured it and shared it.

    Most inhumane treatment in Papua’s remote villages rarely get recorded and shared in this way.

    Growing up in a highland village, I witnessed these barbaric behaviours by members of Indonesia’s armed force. They were walking around in uniforms with guns; they did many horrible things to Papuans — just as they wished, without consequence.

    Submerged in dirty fishpond
    One elder from my village was forced to stay underwater in a dirty fishpond. They military tied a heavy log to his legs so that his body remained underwater all day.

    I also remember that my cousin, a young girl aged 13 -14 with whom I went to school, often provided sexual services to a nearby Indonesian military post.

    Many soldiers would have their way with her. Not just her, but many young female children face the same fate throughout the villages.

    The video of the inhumane treatment of deaf Papuan youth Steven a few days ago in Merauke by Indonesia’s Air Force officers reminded me of many horrible things I had witnessed in the highlands of Papua.

    Unfortunately, these crimes hardly get resolved, and perpetrators walk free while victims get punished.

    George Floyd street art
    The killing of 46-year-old black man George Floyd in Minneapolis, USA, on 25 May 2020 triggered massive street protests worldwide – and also street art. Image: Soundcloud

    This inhumane treatment brings to mind the tragic killing of George Floyd 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.

    However, in this case, the four officers involved were dismissed from their jobs and prosecuted. Derek Chauvin was sentenced to more than 20 years for the killing on June 25, 2021.

    Rarely face justice
    Tragically, in Papua, the perpetrators of these sorts of crimes rarely face justice and may even get promoted despite their atrocious acts.

    Although Jakarta has already apologised for the Merauke atrocity, Jakarta elites are delusional, thinking that empty apologies alone will solve Papua’s protracted conflicts.

    If anything, this cheap word “sorry” does more damage and rubs even more salt in the Papuans’ wounds.

    Jakarta’s favourite word, “sorry”, has its own value when used appropriately in a specific place and time, like when you accidentally tip over your friend’s coffee cup.

    Papuans and Indonesians protracted wars are not fought over spilling a cup of coffee; these wars are fought are over serious gross human rights violations committed by Indonesia’s state-sponsored security forces, supported by Western powers.

    Hence, neither Papuans’ wounds nor their dignity can be healed or restored with a cheap apology. Papuans need and demand justice.

    Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

     

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ANALYSIS: By Dominic O’Sullivan, Charles Sturt University

    The arrest of nine Fijian opposition politicians, including party leaders and two former prime ministers, once again exposes Fijian democracy’s fragility. The intimidation doesn’t bode well for the parliamentary elections due next year (or early 2023).

    The political crisis has been overshadowed by Fiji’s covid-19 crisis, which has seen more than 25,000 infections and more than 100 deaths since April. Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama even used a covid analogy when he called those arrested “super-spreaders of lies”.

    While no charges have been laid, the nine are accused of inciting unrest by opposing a government bill to change the management of iTaukei (indigenous) land rights.

    The original iTaukei Land Trust Act 1940 allows for long-term land leases to private interests. The idea is to maximise the economic return on land, while protecting it against permanent alienation.

    The act aims to protect indigenous interests by prohibiting the sub-lease or raising of mortgages on leased land without the consent of the iTaukei Land Trust Board.

    The proposed amendment would remove the requirement to obtain the board’s consent, and prevent land owners going to court to dispute land use.

    Arresting the opposition
    Bainimarama, who also chairs the board, says the bill’s purpose is to remove bureaucratic obstacles to minor activities such as arranging electricity or water supply. He says the board takes too long to provide consent and this is a constraint on economic development.

    But critics of the bill, including some of those arrested, argue it will weaken iTaukei land rights. Opposition MP Lynda Tabuya was accused of a “malicious act” after she posted a “Say no to iTaukei Land Trust Bill” cover picture on Facebook last week.

     

    In a separate post, demonstrating the low threshold for “malice” in modern Fiji, she asked:

    What protection is left for landowners? This is absolutely illegal and a breach of human rights of landowners. This is not a race issue, this is a human rights issue and breaches Section 29 of the Fijian Constitution.

    Tabuya is not alone. The National Federation Party has said the government has not properly consulted on the bill, and party leader Professor Biman Prasad was among those arrested, along with former prime ministers Mahendra Chaudhry and Sitivini Rabuka.

    Limited media scrutiny
    Media coverage, too, has felt the effects of the arrests. For example, the Fiji Sun’s one story on the issue in its July 28 edition cited only supporters of the bill and offered no insight into why it was controversial.

    This isn’t surprising, given Fijian journalism operates under a constitutional provision limiting its rights and freedoms “in the interests of national security, public safety, public order, public morality, public health or the orderly conduct of elections”.

    The Fiji Times took a risk last week by publishing an opinion column arguing poor drafting and failure to consult meant the bill goes further than its purported aims of administrative simplicity and efficiency.

    Beyond the legal complexities of the land bill, however, the real problem is political. As the article asks, “What’s the issue?”.

    As I discuss in my book Indigeneity: a politics of potential — Australia, Fiji and New Zealand, the issue is that Fiji is a fragile, reluctant and conditional democracy.

    Frank Bainimarama
    A military grip on power … Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama. Image: The Conversation/GettyImages

    Military interference
    Coups in 1987 and 2006, and a putsch in 2000, happened because democracy failed to provide the perpetrators with the “right” answers to complex political questions at the intersection of class, military power and personal interest.

    The rights of indigenous Fijians were always a side issue, as the present conflict shows.

    The 2013 constitution established that “it shall be the overall responsibility of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces to ensure at all times the security, defence and well-being of Fiji and all Fijians”.

    Military oversight of the workings of government is intentional and explicit. When
    Bainimarama (then head of the military forces) led the 2006 coup, he was dismissive of accusations of political interference. If the military did not act against the government, he said, “this country is going to go to the dogs”.

    He also claimed then-prime minister Laisenia Qarase was trying to weaken the army by attempting to remove him: “If he succeeds there will be no one to monitor them, and imagine how corrupt it is going to be.”

    But critics of the bill, including some of those arrested, argue it will weaken iTaukei land rights. Opposition MP Lynda Tabuya was accused of a “malicious act” after she posted a “Say no to iTaukei Land Trust Bill” cover picture on Facebook last week.

    No room to move
    Intimidation is political strategy in Fiji. The proposed amendments to the iTaukei Land Trust Act are not what is at stake — a functioning parliamentary process could identify and resolve any substantive disagreements.

    The bigger issue is that autocratic leadership, and the national constitution itself, leave little room for Fijian citizens to work out for themselves the kind of society they want.

    This also leaves little room for Fijians to demand more effective policy responses to their country’s covid-19 crisis.The Conversation

    Dr Dominic O’Sullivan is adjunct professor in the Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Last week, Annabel Crabb’s outstanding ABC series Ms Represented included accounts from women across the political spectrum on what Julie Bishop called ‘gender deafness’.

    Gender deafness is a phenomenon well known to women. It is the experience of a woman saying something in a meeting, being ignored or treated as if she hasn’t spoken, and then a man makes exactly the same point a few minutes later and is heard. Worse still, the man is often congratulated, even celebrated (and perhaps, on occasion, someone has offered to host a party for him) – such is the recognition of his brilliance as exhibited in the point he just made. You know, after a woman had already made that point, just before he did.

    As a woman, it is likely that your ideas will be appropriated this way, or ‘bro-propriated’ as I now like to call it – the ‘bro’ being slang talk for ‘brother’.

    When one of the ‘bros’ repeats a good idea you have shared a few minutes later and the room erupts into a chorus of ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’, it can be confusing. As many of the women on Ms Represented this week showed, a common reaction is to feel perplexed and ask yourself, ‘Did I not just say that?’. It appears you didn’t, because everyone in the room is congratulating someone else.

    Another common reaction, particularly after one realises this is an ongoing and pervasive phenomenon that works to silence women, is fury. Every single woman I have mentored over the past couple of decades has experienced bro-propriation. Every. Single. One. It’s remarkable. And infuriating.

    A few years ago, I’d had enough of gender deafness and I started calling bro-propriation out. I now do the following every time I see bro-propriation in a meeting: When a woman’s ideas are repeated by a man in a meeting, I say something like, ‘Great idea [insert man’s name]. I’m not sure if you heard it, but that’s exactly what [insert woman’s name] said just a few minutes ago.’

    Sometimes when I do this, I get a response like, ‘Yeah but I think [insert woman’s idea]’ from the man. I politely wait for him to finish before repeating the point that [insert woman’s name] also thinks the same thing and said it a few minutes before he did.

    Men don’t like this. I’ve been taken aside more than once after a meeting and had it mansplained to me that I embarrassed the man by doing this. I have then calmly and politely explained back that the man had appropriated the views of the woman and expressed them as his own, and I didn’t feel that was right.

    Sometimes it is a man who calls bro-propriation out. I love these moments so much. They’re rare but they do happen. They let me know that things are changing in positive ways. I always follow up with these men after a meeting to note and acknowledge what they did, thank them and let them know their actions are making a positive difference.

    If you’re a man and you want to help women at work, you could consider stepping in when bro-propriation happens. All you need to do is say something like, ‘Great idea, Dave, that’s exactly what Sophie said a few minutes ago.’ Dave will look confused. Too bad. After the meeting, you could help Dave understand that he heard Sophie say the same thing, processed it, and then somehow believed he just thought of it on his own. Either that, or he wasn’t listening when Sophie spoke, which is a bit rude. And a bit sexist.

    This is an edited abstract of Marcia Devlin’s book Beating the Odds: A practical guide to navigating sexism in Australian universities. 

    The excerpt is published with permission.

    The post Gender deafness is widespread, but can be cured appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • COMMENT: By Shailendra Singh in Suva

    This poignant photo by Max Vosailagi captures Fiji’s fixation with rugby sevens, with winning a second Olympic Gold last night by beating New Zealand 27-12 in the men’s final.

    Two young boys, glued to what is apparently a TV screen through a neighbourhood front door during the Tokyo Olympic qualifiers, oblivious to their surroundings.

    Covid restrictions could have prevented the boys from getting closer to the action.

    Some quick Fiji reflections:

    • The sevens addiction starts young;
    • It’s inescapable — during game time every house with a TV will be tuned in;
    • If your house doesn’t have a TV, not a problem — the neighbour’s house probably has one;
    • Sevens is escapism from the country’s myriad problems, from politics to poverty.
    • It is more than escapism — it’s a career and income for players, not to mention the strongest uniting force in a country beset by ethnic tensions; and
    • Every young Fijian dreams of donning the national white team jersey one day.

    Fiji is also playing in the women’s rugby sevens Olympic competition which begins today and ends with the gold medal match on Saturday.

    Dr Shailendra Singh is senior lecturer and coordinator of the journalism programme at the University of the South Pacific. This comment is from Dr Singh’s social media posts and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.