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<title>Veterans to Biden: US Law Says No Weapons to Nations with A-Bombs if They’ve Not Signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. That Means Israel</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/veterans-to-biden-us-law-says-no-weapons-to-nations-with-a-bombs-if-theyve-not-signed-the-non-proliferation-treaty-that-means-israel/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dissident Voice Communications]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2024 21:34:22 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Antiwar]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Peace]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Weaponry]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150210</guid>
<description><![CDATA[In a letter 18 April to President Biden and top members of his administration, Veterans For Peace cited existing federal law that gives the President “…no discretion whatsoever to allow any military assistance of any form to be delivered to Israel,” based on that country’s “serial violations of the Symington-Glenn Amendments, codified at 22 U.S.C. § […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/veterans-to-biden-us-law-says-no-weapons-to-nations-with-a-bombs-if-theyve-not-signed-the-non-proliferation-treaty-that-means-israel/">Veterans to Biden: US Law Says No Weapons to Nations with A-Bombs if They’ve Not Signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. That Means Israel</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[In a<a href="https://www.veteransforpeace.org/files/8917/1345/5099/VFP_Israel_nukes_ltr_FINAL____4-18-24.pdf" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.veteransforpeace.org/files/8917/1345/5099/VFP_Israel_nukes_ltr_FINAL____4-18-24.pdf&source=gmail&ust=1714858151536000&usg=AOvVaw2eMYGnFBz03jgjT2E84fGq"> letter 18 April to President Biden </a>and top members of his administration, Veterans For Peace cited existing federal law that gives the President “…no discretion whatsoever to allow any military assistance of any form to be delivered to Israel,” based on that country’s “serial violations of the Symington-Glenn Amendments, codified at 22 U.S.C. § 2799aa.”
The letter cites a lengthy list of credible reports that Israel has possessed nuclear weapons for decades. Because Israel has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), the Symington-Glenn Amendments to the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, which allow no presidential discretion, goes into effect, including:
<ul>
<li>termination of assistance under the Foreign Assistance Act, except for humanitarian assistance or food or other agricultural commodities;</li>
<li>termination of defense sales and licensing of Munitions List exports;</li>
<li>termination of foreign military financing;</li>
<li>denial of U.S. government credit, credit guarantees, or other financial assistance (except for medical and humanitarian assistance and agricultural exports from the United States);</li>
<li>U.S. government opposition to any loan or financial or technical assistance from international financial institutions (IFIs);</li>
<li>prohibition of any loan or credit from U.S. banks to the foreign government (except for the purchase of food or other agricultural commodities); and</li>
<li>prohibition under the Export Administration Act of exports to that state of specific goods and technology licensed by the Commerce Department (except for food and other agricultural commodities).</li>
</ul>
The letter states, “The President may not waive the cutoff of the above aid and exports under the Glenn Amendment where there has been a nuclear weapons detonation, or the offending state has received a nuclear explosive device. Congress would have to enact new legislation authorizing the President to waive some or all of these sanctions.”
VFP National Director, Mike Ferner, said, “Israel’s possession of The Bomb and the U.S.’ refusal to take appropriate action is yet another example of how the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA58cjxCyII" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DOA58cjxCyII&source=gmail&ust=1714858151536000&usg=AOvVaw15f3IG_Sbqo2cHb9TDhNEb">Madmen Arsonists</a> – the Raytheons, Boeings, General Dynamics – actually govern our country and determine policy. The law is quite simple – Does Israel have an unregulated nuclear weapons arsenal? Yes, it does. Is Israel a signatory to the NPT? No, it isn’t. So, the question to Biden is, ‘will you obey the law or the Madmen?’”
Ferner added, “This election year our members will ask their Congressional representatives, ‘Will you hold hearings to enforce existing law, or let the Madmen Arsonists continue to run our country?’”
Highlights of the letter:
<ul>
<li>Senator John Glenn was prompted to seek a change in the law because of a reported theft of 100 kg of highly enriched uranium from an NRC vendor in 1968, later traced to the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/secret-israel-nuclear-construction-ecd8b6f3ffb329aa1fc566b9f9336038" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://apnews.com/article/secret-israel-nuclear-construction-ecd8b6f3ffb329aa1fc566b9f9336038&source=gmail&ust=1714858151536000&usg=AOvVaw0d7mSvFOAsE5GatvV7_iNg">Dimona reactor complex</a> in Israel. (pg. 3)</li>
<li>Repeated CIA assessments and remarks of Colin Powell in 2016 that the U.S. knew Israel had at least 200 warheads at that time. (pgs. 4-9)</li>
<li>Israel prosecuted and jailed Mordecai Vanunu for his courageous whistleblowing disclosure in the 1980’s that Israel has The Bomb. (pg. 7)</li>
<li>Benjamin Netanyahu was identified by the FBI as being directly involved in an Israeli smuggling operation in the 1980’s that successfully stole 800 krytrons, a prized device used for triggers in nuclear weapons. (pg. 7)</li>
<li>The Symington-Glenn amendment has been implemented by previous administrations. (pg. 4)</li>
<li>What the President must do (pg. 10)</li>
<li>Contrary to other instances where the Biden administration is allowed to ignore aid limitations, this one may be litigable in court. (pg. 10)</li>
</ul>
Veterans For Peace members across the U.S. are telling their members of Congress to <a href="https://www.veteransforpeace.org/take-action/veterans-peace-responds-war-gaza/do-not-sign-discharge-petition" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.veteransforpeace.org/take-action/veterans-peace-responds-war-gaza/do-not-sign-discharge-petition&source=gmail&ust=1714858151536000&usg=AOvVaw1vAsJ1rFl5zZ5p3-Mrwwfp">vote NO on any more weapons for Israel</a> and hold hearings to hold the Biden administration accountable They have participated in numerous protests and acts of civil disobedience to highlight Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/veterans-to-biden-us-law-says-no-weapons-to-nations-with-a-bombs-if-theyve-not-signed-the-non-proliferation-treaty-that-means-israel/">Veterans to Biden: US Law Says No Weapons to Nations with A-Bombs if They’ve Not Signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. That Means Israel</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
</item>
<item>
<title>The Heat’s On Big Time!</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/the-heats-on-big-time/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Hunziker]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2024 18:50:31 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CO2 Emissions]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150208</guid>
<description><![CDATA[“Nearly nineteen thousand (19,000) weather stations have notched record high temperatures since Jan. 1.” (Source: “Earth’s Record Hot Streak Might be a Sign of a New Climate Era”, The Washington Post, April 19, 2024). A blistering start to the 2024 year is breaking all-time global temperature records of 2023 and bringing to the forefront a […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/the-heats-on-big-time/">The Heat’s On Big Time!</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[“Nearly nineteen thousand (19,000) weather stations have notched record high temperatures since Jan. 1.” (Source: “Earth’s Record Hot Streak Might be a Sign of a New Climate Era”, The Washington Post, April 19, 2024).
A blistering start to the 2024 year is breaking all-time global temperature records of 2023 and bringing to the forefront a looming threat of Wet Bulb temperature concerns.
Even though summer ‘24 has not officially begun for the Northern Hemisphere (solstice June 20th), according to DW News (German public broadcast network) d/d April 25th, 2024, “Extreme Heat in Southeast Asia Leads to School Closures”:
<blockquote>Hundreds of millions of people across South and Southeast Asia are facing soaring temperatures and drought as a heatwave grips the region. Dozens have been killed by heatstroke in Thailand alone. Authorities in the capital Bangkok are warning their citizens of the ‘extremely dangerous’ conditions. Schools have been closed in the Philippines and Bangladesh for tens of millions of children and the daytime temperature in Myanmar has reached nearly 46 degrees Celsius. The UN has warned that deaths due to heatstroke were widely underreported, calling heat a ‘silent killer.</blockquote>
Throughout several regions:
<blockquote>Soaring heat and drought have been felt in recent weeks from India, which is carrying out the world’s largest election in temperatures that have risen above 40C, to the coffee plantations of Vietnam… Earlier this month, the United Nations Children’s Fund warned that more than 243 million children across East Asia and the Pacific are at risk of heat-related illnesses and death, as the region braces for an unusually hot summer… The prolonged heat wave already forced the Philippines to close some schools earlier this month, prompting a return to remote learning that became the norm during Covid, while the government urged people to save electricity as power plants were forced to shut down. (Source: “Southeast Asia Heat Wave Shuts down Schools, Stokes Power Demand“, Bloomberg News, April 28, 2024).</blockquote>
“Japan Launches New Alert System as Heat Stroke Deaths Rise”, JapanToday, April 25, 2024: “When the alert is issued, municipalities will open designated facilities such as libraries and community centers to residents as ‘cooling shelters.’ The system will be in effect through Oct 23 this year…The nation’s average temperature in the summer of 2023 was the highest since the Japan Meteorological agency began recording comparable data in 1898.
The Wet Bulb Temperature Peril
The Wet Bulb temperature effect is a killer that is unfortunately gaining new respect.
<blockquote>New research suggests that with Wet Bulb temperature above 31.5C the body can no longer cool itself and without air conditioning death follows. (Source:<a href="https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/policy-watch-countries-slow-wake-up-mounting-deaths-heat-stress-2024-03-18/"> “Policy Watch: Countries Slow to Wake up to the Mounting Deaths from Heat Stress</a>“, Reuters, March 18, 2024).</blockquote>
In that regard, Wet Bulb temperature (which was formerly calcuated to be 35C or approximately 95°F/100% humidity) based upon new research can now occur at 31.5C in a range of temperature/humidity configurations: 87°F/100% humidity to 100°F/60% humidity. This means the Wet Bulb temperature barrier is lower and more of a threat than previously thought.
For an interesting, yet gruesome, aside about the risks of human death caused by Wet Bulb temperatures, Andrew Forrest, founder of Australian mining giant Fortescue, attended COP28 in Dubai last year to press politicians to take the Wet Bulb threat seriously:
<blockquote>If our bodies can’t release the heat, then our bodies turn into ovens and they start to cook – our blood, our organs, and, of course, the proteins which our lives depend on. They basically can never come back, it’s like cooking an egg,” he told The Ethical Corporation. “That is what is going to make increasingly large parts of the world beyond the limits of human survival. (Ibid.)</blockquote>
Human migration, an ongoing worldwide phenomenon, is but one symptom of this devastating risk to human life.
According to EU Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), March 2024 was the 10th straight month of record global heat at 1.68°C hotter than an average March between years 1850-1900, which is a reference period for pre-industrial.
For perspective of too much heat, if monthly all-time record heat is continued year-by-year the final result is Venus, aka: “Earth’s Twin” or “Earth’s Sister Planet.” According to NASA, Venus formed in the same inner part of the solar system as Earth out of the same materials and similar in size but, over time, with a different atmosphere. Venus has a thick carbon dioxide -CO2- atmosphere that has a powerful greenhouse effect resulting in scorching temperatures over 900°F or hot enough to melt lead.
Here on Earth, with one eye on Venus, climate scientists have warned about global warming for decades; however, those warnings have been low and not taken seriously enough. But with fossil fuel CO2 emissions now at full blast, in fact, quadrupling, as oil and gas companies crank up production, given enough time, the entire planet turns into a gigantic heat ball right before everybody’s eyes. Hello Venus.
At the Paris 2015 climate conference, delegates from around the world agreed that measures had to be taken to hold global average temperatures under 1.5°C above pre-industrial or suffer challenging consequences. At the time, nobody thought the 1.5C limit would be hit as early as 2024 and before global implementation of effective mitigation measures to reduce CO2 emissions, which measures, by the way, are a big farce, as CO2 emissions steadfastly increase by the year, and now accelerating, in the face of every mitigation measure adopted to date. Moreover, the often-discussed hopeful lifeline Carbon Capture & Sequestration unfortunately is not a viable solution. Al Gore calls it “a fraud” and for good reason.
Meanwhile, the outlook for global warming is bleak. (It should be noted that the IPCC calculates the 1.5C barrier on a decadal basis, but so what? It’s a big problem right now.)
In January 2024 AP News carried the following article: “Earth Shattered Global Heat Record in ’23 and it’s Flirting with Warming Limit European Agency Says”:
<blockquote>On average, global temperatures in 2023 were 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.66 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than pre-industrial times. If annual averages reach above 1.5 degrees Celsius, the effects of global warming could become irreversible, climate scientists say.</blockquote>
Humanity has pushed the planet to a limit that climate scientists warned about for decades; e.g., Dr. James Hansen, former head of NASA Space Studies, in 1988 warned the US Senate that human influence was changing the chemistry of the atmosphere that would bring global warming. He was spot on. (“<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/24/us/global-warming-has-begun-expert-tells-senate.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=google1tap">Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate”,</a> The New York Times, June 24, 1988).
Now, 36 years later, there are politicians at the highest levels of government in Washington, D.C. who still deny the reality of human-caused global warming. Canada’s National Observer has taken notice: “<a href="https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/03/28/opinion/climate-denial-american-politics">Climate Denial in American Politics</a>” d/d March 28, 2024:
<blockquote>Climate denial is a sinister movement that denies the science of climate change that has infiltrated deep within American politics and is still thriving today. The widespread oppression of science in America is a rarity in modern history — with the exceptions of Germany and Russia during the 1930s — and has never been seen before in a democracy to this extent.</blockquote>
Sinister! Germany 1930s! Some words stick with you.
<blockquote>The environment and energy portfolios of Trump’s administration appeared to be puppets under the control of the “oiligarchs” — the powerful among the energy-industrial complex. As an American election looms later this year, the thought of another Trump presidency sends shivers down the spines of many in the scientific community… This alternate reality is built on alternate facts and alternate science (i.e., fake). We have been too tolerant for too long of this deviant behaviour by elected officials; the time to vote these politicians out of office is long overdue. (Ibid.)</blockquote>
According to <a href="https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2">CO2.Earth</a>: “A reminder that our world is pushing the planet’s thermostat beyond safe levels at 350 ppm CO2, and that more people are needed to combine our ingenuity and resources to keep the present overshoot brief”:
April 26, 2024 428.59 ppm
April 26, 2023 424.34 ppm
April 26, 1974 333.20 ppm
Good luck with that because the last time CO2 was at a safe level was 50 years ago. The only way to return to 350 is to cut CO2 emissions, but CO2 emissions have never been so robust.
 When it comes to knowledge about climate change, Americans are embarrassingly ignorant:
<blockquote>If you live in the U.S. and happen to get most of your news from national broadcast channels ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox… During the record-smashing year of 2023, these four TV stations spent less than 1% of their news time addressing climate change.” (Source: “Here’s What Record-Breaking Temperatures Looked Like Around the Globe, Yale Climate Connections, April 29, 2024).</blockquote>
 One year ago, the favorite web site for the White House and lawmakers, The Hill article said:
<blockquote>When it comes to the ‘wet bulb temperature’ nearly all of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas are under ‘extreme threat. (Source: “Extreme Threat”: Large Swathe of Southern US at Dangerous ‘Wet Bulb Temperature’”, The Hill, June 29, 2023).</blockquote>
How are the congressional delegations and state politicos from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas doing with the climate change/global warming issue?The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/the-heats-on-big-time/">The Heat’s On Big Time!</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
</item>
<item>
<title>Authoritarian Ireland and the Secular Apocalypse</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/authoritarian-ireland-and-the-secular-apocalypse/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2024 14:54:59 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Book Review]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150182</guid>
<description><![CDATA[In his book, How The Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe, Thomas Cahill shows how the Irish monks maintained European culture during the dark ages when Rome was sacked by Visigoths and its empire collapsed. In the subsequent chaos and […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/authoritarian-ireland-and-the-secular-apocalypse/">Authoritarian Ireland and the Secular Apocalypse</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/unnamed-1.jpg"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-150183" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/unnamed-1.jpg" alt="" width="258" height="386" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/unnamed-1.jpg 258w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/unnamed-1-201x300.jpg 201w" sizes="(max-width: 258px) 100vw, 258px" /></a>
In his book, How The Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe, Thomas Cahill shows how the Irish monks maintained European culture during the dark ages when Rome was sacked by Visigoths and its empire collapsed. In the subsequent chaos and illiteracy, symbolism took over from analysis. Cahill writes:
<blockquote>The intellectual disciplines of distinction, definition, and dialectic that had once been the glory of men like Augustine were unobtainable by readers of the Dark Ages, whose apprehension of the world was simple and immediate, framed by myth and magic. A man no longer subordinated one thought to another with mathematical precision; instead, he apprehended similarities and balances, types and paradigms, parallels and symbols. It was a world not of thoughts, but images. Even the “Romans” at Whitby presented their point of view in the new way. They did not argue, for genuine intellectual disputation was beyond them. They held up pictures for the mind – one set of bones versus another. (p. 204)</blockquote>
One thousand years later as the symbolism of the Dark ages and medievalism waned, a new movement arose to replace it: Romanticism. In the Romanticist outlook, passion and intuition determined our understanding of the world combined with themes of isolation and loneliness, and a delight in horror and threat. Beauty became about strong emotional responses and not about form. The Romanticists rejected Enlightenment Era artists who, like the Irish monks, were interested in ideas and thoughts, and who used them to depict and critique social relations.
<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/unnamed-2.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-150184" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/unnamed-2.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="602" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/unnamed-2.jpg 474w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/unnamed-2-236x300.jpg 236w" sizes="(max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px" /></a>Dockers (1934) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_MacGonigal" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_MacGonigal&source=gmail&ust=1714785264334000&usg=AOvVaw331H6ZXKX3Vwhsdcucb3sK">by</a> Maurice MacGonigal
Unfortunately, Romanticism is a movement that is not only dominant in the production of culture but is also favoured by the institutions of commendation. One such institution is the Booker Prize for literature, and a good example is the 2023 winner, Prophet Song, a dystopian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophet_Song" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophet_Song&source=gmail&ust=1714785264334000&usg=AOvVaw01WGUuj5i8PbhcxI6N8q8M">novel</a> by the Irish author Paul Lynch:
<blockquote>The novel depicts the struggles of the Stack family, including Eilish Stack, a mother of four who is trying to save her family as the Republic of Ireland slips into totalitarianism. The narrative is told unconventionally, with no paragraph breaks.</blockquote>
As we always love to reference James Joyce here in Ireland, we could argue that this paragraphless state of Prophet Song is influenced by the Molly Bloom soliloquy at the end of Ulysses, which was radical for its time in having no punctuation. (Indeed, Eilish Stack’s daughter is called Molly).
Furthermore the style of Prophet Song, in general, is similar to Molly Bloom’s stream of consciousness in that we get, merged together, Eilish’s thoughts, worries and utterances.
Throughout the novel we also get, in a staccato rhythm, brief descriptions of the coercive actions of the state as it faces the growing opposition of a resistance movement that strengthens and spreads countrywide.
<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/unnamed-3-e1714700168922.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-150185" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/unnamed-3-e1714700168922.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="379" /></a>Communicating With Prisoners (1924) <a href="https://www.theirishstory.com/2016/11/17/revisiting-three-historical-paintings-by-jack-b-yeats/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.theirishstory.com/2016/11/17/revisiting-three-historical-paintings-by-jack-b-yeats/&source=gmail&ust=1714785264334000&usg=AOvVaw3LKPo4J-u4zZYr76K0sNrg">by</a> Jack Butler Yeats (1871–1957)
From the off, the dark terror commences with knocking at her door which reveals two men ‘almost faceless in the dark'(p. 1). The increasingly fascisitic Irish state is shown through the imprisonment of her trades’ union husband (p. 29), an Emergency Powers Act (p. 53), government controls on judiciary (p. 58), national service (p. 73), unmarked cars pulling up silently (p. 76), foreign media internet blackout (p. 175), and the government closing the schools (p. 183).
The rebels, on the other hand, are really not that much different. And this is the crux of the issue. There has always been a large gap between the Romantic heroes and working class heroes. In Romanticism the ‘resistance’ or ‘rebels’ are often ‘rejected by society’ with various combinations of introspection, wanderlust, melancholy, misanthropy, alienation, and isolation.
And even though “the worm is turning” (p. 147), and the armed insurrection growing (p. 130) the violence is abstracted into terrorism (p. 160), and Eilish “is overcome by loathing, seeing not men but shadows parading the day born from darkness, seeing how they have made an end of death by meeting it with death” (p. 202). The two opposing forces meld into one in the confusion as Eilish encounters “one checkpoint after another” with “different faces speaking the same commands” (p. 283). Her escape from the mystical terror across the border into the unknown dark countryside to the sea could have come directly from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s (1749–1832) The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). Goethe wrote: “From the forbidding mountain range across the barren plain untrodden by the foot of man, to the end of the unknown seas, the spirit of the Eternal Creator can be felt rejoicing over every grain of dust”, emphasising the fearful, the mysterious and the unsure.
We live in stark, dark times, surrounded by media that is saturated with the Romanticist gloop of horror, terror, fantasy, science fiction, romantic egoism, etc., that threatens to slow society down and trap us into infinite and endless imagination to the detriment of any progressive forms of social consciousness and societal change.
Yet in the language of the Prophet Song there are many connotations of Ireland’s centuries long struggle against British Imperialism and colonialism: Ireland’s War of Independence, the war against the might of the British Empire in the description of the military men on horses (p.190), state forces moving in on college green (the scene of rebellions going back to the 19th century) (p. 94), cycling before the curfew, crossing the border (p. 112), the harp emblem (p. 123), a stage set up at the old parliament (now the Bank of Ireland HQ) against emergency powers and calling “for all political prisoners to be released” (p. 87). However, Prophet Song is not about a popular rising continuing on from Ireland’s tradition of radical opposition to authoritarian state forces.
<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/unnamed-4.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-150186" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/unnamed-4.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="449" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/unnamed-4.jpg 640w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/unnamed-4-300x210.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /></a>The Apocalypse tradition: Karl Bryullov, The Last Day of Pompeii, 1833, The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism#/media/File:Karl_Brullov_-_The_Last_Day_of_Pompeii_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism%23/media/File:Karl_Brullov_-_The_Last_Day_of_Pompeii_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg&source=gmail&ust=1714785264334000&usg=AOvVaw2lgiehH6XZjMA_qBofkutR">State</a> Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
It is in the Romanticist tradition of a powerful figure (the Prophet) who cries for the lack of love and compassion in the world and, in the apocalyptic tradition, calls for people to change their ways to avoid the wrath of God and the end of the world. The secular version, the postmodernist ‘End of History’ thesis leaves no hope for those who do not benefit from neoliberalism. The Romanticist escape to Utopia, the remote, the exotic, and the unknown, is in stark contrast with the real lives of past leaders and activists of collectivist and communitarian movements who suffered, struggled, and died for real social change.
<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/cover2-1-e1714702429508.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-150191" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/cover2-1-e1714702429508.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="445" /></a>The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/authoritarian-ireland-and-the-secular-apocalypse/">Authoritarian Ireland and the Secular Apocalypse</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Overcapacity: The West’s New Narrative against China</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/overcapacity-the-wests-new-narrative-against-china/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dongsheng News]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2024 14:25:32 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Corruption]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Economy/Economics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Employment]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Narrative]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Resistance]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Students]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Taiwan]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Trade]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Universities/Colleges]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Xi Jinping]]></category>
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<description><![CDATA[This week we would like to recommend to you a Chinese song from 1967 called Bravely March On, Arab People! (奋勇前进，阿拉伯人民) in support of the pan-Arab movement. If you don’t have a lot of time, this is what you should know: For China, Iran’s attack on Israel was “an act of self-defense” The West’s new […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/overcapacity-the-wests-new-narrative-against-china/">Overcapacity: The West’s New Narrative against China</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[This week we would like to recommend to you a Chinese song from 1967 called <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=bbe95479fa&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3Dbbe95479fa%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486331000&usg=AOvVaw1IAzdOzr1zMn8sxG2c5uh9">Bravely March On, Arab People!</a> (奋勇前进，阿拉伯人民) in support of the pan-Arab movement.
If you don’t have a lot of time, this is what you should know:
<ul>
<li>For China, Iran’s attack on Israel was “an act of self-defense”</li>
<li>The West’s new narrative against China: overcapacity</li>
<li>China exceeds its 5% GDP growth target in first quarter</li>
<li>Historic “peace trip” by former Taiwanese leader Ma Ying-jeou</li>
</ul>
For China, Iran’s attack was “an act of self-defense”
In the context of the genocide that Israel is perpetrating on the Palestinian population, and in retaliation of Israel’s attack on its embassy compound in Damascus (Syria), Iran carried out a missile and drone attack on Israeli territory for the first time in history, repeatedly puncturing the famous “iron dome”.
After the military response, Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=700f85e505&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3D700f85e505%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486331000&usg=AOvVaw166fDfPGG2h-WsYnWo3LM8">called</a> his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. During their discussion, Wang Yi again condemned Israel’s “unacceptable” attack on the Iranian embassy in Syria, saying it was a serious violation of international law. He also stated that “Iran can handle the situation well and prevent the region from further turmoil while safeguarding its sovereignty and dignity.” The Iranian foreign minister assured Foreign Minister Wang that his country was willing to be moderate and had no intention of escalating the situation further. He further stressed that “the Islamic Republic of Iran advocates an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and supports China’s positive efforts to promote a ceasefire.”
In contrast, Yuval Waks, deputy head of the Israeli mission to China, said Israel <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=96ee9b880b&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3D96ee9b880b%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486331000&usg=AOvVaw3FSeojWaNphEfenW9s5Xb9">was not satisfied</a> with China’s current response to Iran’s attack as, in his words, they had expected “a stronger condemnation and a clear recognition of Israel’s right to defend itself.”
A few days later, the US House Speaker labeled Iran, China, and Russia the new <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=3139e83e32&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3D3139e83e32%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486331000&usg=AOvVaw0NZbIXPMI4wUG3FKngIVEx">“axis of evil”</a> while supporting the latest bill to send $60 billion to Ukraine.
For years, China has advocated a two-state solution, the creation of an independent Palestinian state, and full Palestinian membership in the UN. In fact, last week, it <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=490d68b98d&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3D490d68b98d%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486331000&usg=AOvVaw3R3i8zjnyMiNxi1gkBR4Py">again supported</a> a UN Security Council motion to that effect, but it was vetoed, once again, by the United States.While everyone is talking about Iran’s actions in recent weeks, a major shift in Iran’s energy trade has been taking place in recent years. Despite Western sanctions, Iran’s oil exports <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=a6810a8a52&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3Da6810a8a52%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486332000&usg=AOvVaw1qsWlwcxisYUL7VLRmAAaA">reached a 6-year high</a>, boosting its economy by $35 billion per year.
<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Irans-oil-exports.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Irans-oil-exports.png" alt="" width="500" height="292" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-150199" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Irans-oil-exports.png 500w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Irans-oil-exports-300x175.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" /></a>
Iran sold an average of 1.56 million barrels per day, of which the vast majority were sold to China. Approximately one-tenth of China’s oil imports come from Iran.
This makes it more difficult for the new sanctions that the United States and Europe may impose because of the conflict with Israel to really affect the Iranian economy. We could be witnessing a phenomenon similar to that of the Western sanctions against Russia since February 2022: by increasing trade with the economies of the Global South, driven by China, which does not engage with Western sanctions, the economy, which in theory should suffer, ends up strengthening and reducing its dependence on the West. It is too early to say but the indications provided by Iranian oil exports seem to point to this.
The West’s new narrative against China: overcapacity
During her visit to China at the beginning of April, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen expressed her concern about an alleged overcapacity in the Asian giant’s new energy sector. In the last few weeks, this idea has been circulating in the Western media, accusing the Chinese government’s subsidies to energy sector companies as “unfair”. However, the decision to subsidize or not an industrial sector is a national sovereignty decision of the country and a common practice in international trade. The fact is that Europe heavily subsidizes its agricultural sector (and has even been accused of <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=3599c73f3f&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3D3599c73f3f%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486332000&usg=AOvVaw0MwVeDGqwIkQ-2W6iJ52vY">dumping</a> practices) and, historically, the United States has had a protectionist policy to boost its domestic industry. The bottom line is that both the US and Europe are concerned about China’s sweeping advance in the production of electric cars, solar panels, technology, and robotics, products at the core of China’s current industrial development.
A good example is China’s largest automation company<a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=f65aff0fec&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3Df65aff0fec%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486332000&usg=AOvVaw0zrpeStI3UxB5efFEtPa1m"> Innovance</a>, which has a market capitalization of US$ 25 billion. Known as “little Huawei”, it was founded by former Huawei engineers and today is the main supplier of AC servo systems parts (those that produce motion in industrial machines) and the second largest national producer of industrial robots. Its 2023, revenues increased by 30% to US$ 4 billion; its R&D investment is significant, and it has two factories in Hungary and one in India.
According to figures from the International Federation of Robotics, in 2022 more than half of all industrial robot installations in the world were in China.
<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Industrial-robots-installed.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Industrial-robots-installed.png" alt="" width="500" height="328" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-150201" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Industrial-robots-installed.png 500w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Industrial-robots-installed-300x197.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" /></a>
This boost in China’s new energy industries is an opportunity for countries in the Global South, Dongsheng member Marco Fernandes told <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=79d281a093&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3D79d281a093%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486332000&usg=AOvVaw2K2b0irRrIbK62E-rBy422">CGTN</a> in an <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=5fdf35bbf8&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3D5fdf35bbf8%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486332000&usg=AOvVaw3ZOtpHn7lvho_SvhqiWcBC">interview</a>. He emphasized that “…it is the first time that we have a major economy, such a strong economy in the Global South, so it is absolutely strategic” and that for developing countries it is “…a matter of trying to have balanced partnerships”.
In this way, China’s alleged overcapacity seems more of a threat to the traditional powers than to the world’s developing countries. Both Europe and the United States insist on decoupling or “de-risking” from China, but the data show that such a thing is far from being achieved. According to a <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=7930b7fdf7&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3D7930b7fdf7%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486332000&usg=AOvVaw2VhSc1UxywMftc3yhE-QPe">Brookings paper</a> last year, US manufacturers are far more dependent on China than standard calculations that examine the origin of intermediate goods, i.e., imports used to make US products, suggest.
<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Decoupling-from-China.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Decoupling-from-China.png" alt="" width="500" height="258" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-150202" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Decoupling-from-China.png 500w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Decoupling-from-China-300x155.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" /></a>
The paper reveals that, in 2018, China was the supplier for more than 90% of US manufacturing sectors, particularly apparel, motor vehicles, and electrical equipment. In 1995, Japan was the main foreign source for about 40% of US manufacturing sectors, followed by Canada with about 30%. This high dependence on Chinese intermediate goods implies, for the authors, that “decoupling from China will be much, much more difficult and much slower than many people think, and may be impossible.”
In the same vein, it was Siemens CFO <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=ebbb80c356&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3Debbb80c356%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486332000&usg=AOvVaw3TOnbKP_2j4-aQ9GtqNAd1">Ralf Thomas</a> who said a few days ago that it will take “decades” for German manufacturers to reduce their dependence on China. “Global value chains have been built up over the last 50 years – how naive do you have to be to believe that this can change in six or 12 months?” he remarked. This is a small sample of the dependence that European countries also have in their trade with China. Following Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit, China announced that it <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=67f48bb719&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3D67f48bb719%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486332000&usg=AOvVaw1UiHuYrmjIdiwB1DbAmQ5j">will reduce controls</a> on German agricultural products, including pork, apples, and some beef products. Similar measures were taken earlier this year on products from Spain, Belgium, and Austria, in a clear sign of Beijing’s intentions to improve its ties with Europe.
First quarter economy: China exceeds its 5% GDP growth target
China’s economy exceeded expectations and <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=6b8cd64fdd&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3D6b8cd64fdd%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486332000&usg=AOvVaw0NhaR3mdOzCMxlZrqFY3NX">grew by 5.3%</a> year-on-year in the first quarter, consistent with the annual growth target of “around 5%” set at the Two Sessions earlier this year.
Amid China’s productive reorganization, based on manufacturing, not real estate, as the cornerstone of growth, the investment in fixed assets reached 10 trillion yuan (1.4 trillion USD), up by 4.5%. Amid the restructuring of industry, investment in real estate continues to fall (-9.5%), while manufacturing and infrastructure made up the overall growth in investment, increasing by 9.9 and 6.5%, respectively.
China’s industrial value-added grew 6% in the first quarter, especially in the high-tech sector whose manufacturing growth accelerated. China’s <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=0cb9a753d3&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3D0cb9a753d3%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486332000&usg=AOvVaw3_AZTEMAd_Kc3TnH8S3q5R">central bank</a> will set up a 500 billion yuan ($70 billion) re-lending program to support the country’s science and technology sectors for small and midsize companies.
<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Unemployment-rate.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Unemployment-rate-1024x525.png" alt="" width="500" height="256" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-150203" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Unemployment-rate-1024x525.png 1024w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Unemployment-rate-300x154.png 300w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Unemployment-rate-768x393.png 768w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Unemployment-rate.png 1056w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" /></a>
On the international front, the use of the RMB in international transactions continued to grow. According to SWIFT, the share of the yuan in global payments rose to a record high in March (4.69%), remaining the world’s fourth most active currency. The US dollar continued to have the largest share in global payments, at around 47% and the euro fell below 22%.
When SWIFT began tracking the use of the yuan in 2010, the currency accounted for less than 0.1 percent of global settlements.
Moreover, the use of the yuan in China’s cross-border transactions for trade in goods was nearly 30% in the first quarter, up from 25% in 2023 and 18% in 2022.
Historic “peace trip” by former Taiwanese leader Ma Ying-jeou
Ma Ying-jeou, the former leader of the island of Taiwan from 2008 to 2016, made a <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=931227d7c8&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3D931227d7c8%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486332000&usg=AOvVaw3dwSdhNUyi_6X2J6ZqNBNA">peace trip</a> to mainland China where he met with Xi Jinping. At the meeting, Xi affirmed that “there are no problems that cannot be discussed and no forces that can separate us” and that “external interference cannot contain the historical trend of national reunification”. For his part, Ma said that upholding the 1992 Consensus and opposing “Taiwan independence” are the common political basis for the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations.
Ma belongs to Taiwan’s main opposition Kuomintang party, which is more inclined to maintain a friendly relationship with the mainland. The Democratic Progressive Party, which has ruled since 2016, won the last regional elections. In a few days, the new leader <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=db692622e8&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3Ddb692622e8%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486332000&usg=AOvVaw0pgPj1Y4jFW7JK7WjBhFwo">William Lai Ching-te</a>, who will succeed Tsai Ing-wen, will take office. Since Tsai came to power in 2016, talks with the central government have been frozen since the Taiwanese government stopped recognizing the 1992 Consensus that respects the One China principle.
It remains to be seen how these relations will develop with the new government. Ma, after his visit to the mainland, <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=4696da02c3&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3D4696da02c3%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486332000&usg=AOvVaw1Xa6QpwGzaxdzjWbKwmQgV">urged the elected leader</a> to respond “pragmatically” to Xi Jinping’s call for peace, and to respect the One China principle.
China launches third round of anti-corruption inspections of the financial sector
China launched another series <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=b207a0d106&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3Db207a0d106%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486332000&usg=AOvVaw0yPdEZN3dV1OPJJE3B44TC">of disciplinary inspections</a> of key government departments and state-owned financial institutions.
The third round of routine inspections, following the last one in 2021, will target 34 agencies, including central government ministries, the central bank, the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, the largest state-owned banks and insurers, as well as policy lenders.
<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Anti-corruption.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Anti-corruption.png" alt="" width="500" height="254" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-150204" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Anti-corruption.png 500w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Anti-corruption-300x152.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" /></a>
The anti-corruption campaign launched by Xi Jinping in 2013 has covered all sectors of governance. From ministries, finance, and state-owned enterprises, to health and sports. More than <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=1b64f579a1&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3D1b64f579a1%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486332000&usg=AOvVaw0sED53pZaurx9etBUd7V7y">four million</a> CPC regional cadres and 533 at the vice-ministerial level and above have been investigated since the start of the anti-corruption campaign.
Pork prices plummet in China
Chinese pork prices are in a prolonged slump due to oversupply. After peaking at 26 yuan (US$ 3.6) in October 2022, they have now hit a low of 14 yuan (US$ 1.93). This product accounts for 60% of the country’s meat consumption, so fluctuations in its prices have multiple implications.
<ul>
<li>For a start, it puts deflationary pressure on the Consumer Price Index, which in March rose by 0.1% year-on-year, below the government’s 3% target.</li>
<li>If China decides to reduce the number of pigs raised, it will most likely have an impact on the global grain market, as a decrease in feed demand will put downward pressure on international prices.</li>
<li>In addition, the downward price trend puts producers at risk of bankruptcy and may put many small producers out of production, as has happened on other similar occasions.</li>
</ul>
That is why the Chinese government started to take action, announcing plans to reduce its target number of breeding sows by about 5% starting in March, from 41 million to 39 million. In addition, it will consider 92% of that target (about 35.9 million sows) as an acceptable level.
China’s coastal cities will be below sea level within a century
A quarter of China’s coastal land will sink below sea level within a century, according to a <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=5379d96c93&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3D5379d96c93%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486332000&usg=AOvVaw0X7TSZqrR9AU2ApadHPFOd">new study</a> by Chinese and US researchers published in the journal Science. They found that about one-third of the population of the 82 cities analyzed live in regions that drop more than 3 mm per year, while 7% live in areas that drop more than 10 mm per year. The paper also found that 270 million Chinese currently live on subsiding land.
Changes in groundwater and the weight of construction would be among the reasons, and a possible solution could lie in long-term control of groundwater extraction.
Subsidence causes cracks in the ground, damages buildings, and increases the risk of flooding. In addition, land subsidence-related disasters in China have injured or killed hundreds of people and cost an annual direct economic loss of more than 7.5 billion yuan (US$1 billion) in recent decades.
The team mapped the subsidence of cities between 2015 and 2022 using a technique powered by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellites to measure vertical land movement.
New university graduates choose smaller cities for work
Chinese university graduates are increasingly opting to leave the country’s major cities and seek employment in smaller <a href="https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee&id=1ce3301b3d&e=4dca26c102" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dongshengnews.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D3804e8517f18cc127a31574ee%26id%3D1ce3301b3d%26e%3D4dca26c102&source=gmail&ust=1714768486332000&usg=AOvVaw3cA0MhJMxttGOLHRmnfSwn">cities and counties</a>. According to a Mycos survey, in 2018, only 20% of respondents were working in counties and cities six months after graduation, but this figure increased to 25% by 2022.
It’s because graduates want to move closer to family and avoid the pressure that comes with working in big cities. Counties and cities also offer more opportunities to get public sector jobs.
Nearly 60% of respondents working in counties and cities had been in the same place for at least five years and their average monthly income had increased from 4,640 yuan ($641) in 2018 to 5,377 yuan in 2022. Their average job satisfaction rate increased from 67% to 76% during the same period.
Some regions push policies aimed at promoting the return of graduates to their hometowns. For example, Suichang County in Zhejiang Province offers those with master’s degrees a housing allowance of 300,000 yuan and an annual living allowance of 30,000 yuan for five years.
<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Quality-of-life.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Quality-of-life.png" alt="" width="500" height="279" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-150205" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Quality-of-life.png 500w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Quality-of-life-300x167.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" /></a>The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/overcapacity-the-wests-new-narrative-against-china/">Overcapacity: The West’s New Narrative against China</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>The Hidden Messages of the Power Elite’s Cultural Apparatus</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/the-hidden-messages-of-the-power-elites-cultural-apparatus/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Edward Curtin]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 May 2024 21:54:36 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Beliefs]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Christianity]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Philosophy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Crimestop]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Max Weber]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Terry Eagleton]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[The Cloisters]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150178</guid>
<description><![CDATA[photo by Jeanne Lemlin To be crucified is to suffer and die slowly and agonizingly. It was a common form of execution in the ancient world. It is generally associated with Rome’s killing of Jesus and carries profound symbolic spiritual meaning for Christians. In its figurative sense, it refers to many types of suffering and […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/the-hidden-messages-of-the-power-elites-cultural-apparatus/">The Hidden Messages of the Power Elite’s Cultural Apparatus</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-5773 size-large aligncenter" src="https://edwardcurtin.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image11-1024x768.jpeg" alt="" width="500" height="375" />
photo by Jeanne Lemlin
To be crucified is to suffer and die slowly and agonizingly. It was a common form of execution in the ancient world. It is generally associated with Rome’s killing of Jesus and carries profound symbolic spiritual meaning for Christians. In its figurative sense, it refers to many types of suffering and death inflicted on the weak by the strong, such as the ongoing genocidal slaughter of Palestinians by the Israel government.
Twenty or so years ago when the wearing of crosses by all types of people was the cultural rage, a woman I know said she was thinking of getting one. When I asked her why, since she was Jewish, she said it was because she thought they were beautiful. She seemed oblivious to the fact that to Christians they were gruesome but revelatory spiritual symbols, the equivalent of the electric chair or a noose, but linked to the Easter Resurrection and the non-violent triumph over death that is at the core of Christianity.
Her focus on beauty forcibly struck me that secular culture had triumphed in its establishment of an anti-creed creed wherein the pursuit of a sense of well-being and aesthetic tranquility had trumped traditional belief, while it used all faiths in its pursuit of a self-centered nihilism through a faux-spirituality linked to a precious aesthetic of beauty.
Philip Rieff noticed this in the mid-1960s when he wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic:
<blockquote>To raise the question of nihilism, as sociologists since Auguste Comte have done, demonstrates a major change in tone: the note of apprehension has gone out of the asking. We believe that we know something our predecessors did not: that we can live freely at last, enjoying all our senses – except the sense of the past – as unremembering, honest, and friendly barbarians all, in a technological Eden. . . . this culture, which once imagined itself inside a church, feels trapped in something like a zoo of separate cages. Modern men are like Rilke’s panther, forever looking out of one cage into another.</blockquote>
While today those cages would better be described as cells – as in cell phones – Rieff’s point was prescient in the extreme, echoing in its way Max Weber’s 1905 prophecy in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism of the coming “iron cage.”
It would be understandable if you assumed the photograph of the crucifix that precedes my words was taken in a church since its foregrounding before the apse of the Medieval Spanish church of San Martin at Fuentidueña makes it seem so. It was not, except if you realize that museums have become the modern churches, where people flock to revere art for art’s sake and perhaps to find some consolation they have lost at a deeper level.
Museums that have been built and maintained by the very rich to serve as their own churches to the glory of mammon and their own self-deluded immortalization.
Mammon that has been built on the backs of the poor and working class, just as these edifices have.
Beneath all high cultural institutions such as museums and arts venues like The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Lincoln Center in New York, etc., lies the expropriated labor and land of the lower classes, the same classes whose sweat and blood was exploited throughout capital’s historical transmutations from commercial to industrial to financial to create the immense wealth of the super-rich.
There is a reason the nineteenth-century America industrialists such as Vanderbilt, Mellon, Carnegie, Rockefeller, et al. were called “The Robber Barons.” They were crooks. They are still with us, of course, aided and abetted by today’s latest billionaire class. They build and finance the aforementioned cultural institutions as well as own and operate the major institutions of mass communication and entertainment, such as newspapers, television networks, telecommunication corporations, film studios, etc. – the entertainment industrial complex. In this direct communication capacity, they control the mediation of “reality” to the general population. They serve the interests of what the great crusading sociologist C. Wright Mills called the power elite in and out of government, of which they are an interlocking part, and through which they move smoothly in a game of revolving chairs. They operate the great Spectacle for the general population while moving the levers of power backstage.
When he died, Mills was working on a massive book exploring what he provisionally titled The Cultural Apparatus. He defined this complex as follows:
<blockquote>The cultural apparatus is composed of all the organizations and milieux in which artistic, intellectual, and scientific work goes on and of the means by which such work is made available . . . it contains an elaborate set of institutions: of schools and theaters, newspapers and census bureaus, studios, laboratories, museums, little magazines and radio networks. . . Inside this network, standing between men and events, the images, meanings, and slogans that define the worlds in which [we] live are organized and compared, maintained and revised, lost and cherished, hidden, debunked, celebrated. Taken as a whole the cultural apparatus is the lens of mankind through which men see; the medium by which they report and interpret what they see.</blockquote>
Columbia University, where he taught and is today in the news headlines for its police crackdown on student dissent for their pro-Palestinian protest, is one of those elite cultural institutions, a place Mills was never comfortable at and whose colleagues looked at him askance for his critique of the power elite’s warfare state.
Columbia, with its racist history as it saw its elite status threatened by the growth of the neighboring black community in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s, and Columbia’s further expansion into these neighborhoods since.
Columbia, like all elite cultural institutions, born in its own mind sui generis and raised to the heights in purity and innocence, but whose foundation is rotten with dirty money.
Yet, as Terry Eagleton recently <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n08/terry-eagleton/where-does-culture-come-from">wrote</a> in the London Review of Books, “This is not the way culture generally likes to see itself. Like the Oedipal child, it tends to disavow its lowly parentage and fantasise that it sprang from its own loins, self-generating and self-fashioning.” Like Columbia and all the elite universities of “higher learning” – Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc. – that serve as legitimating tools for the power elite and their mendaciousness, the museums and other well-known arts institutions exert an enormous influence, not only over culture in the high cultural sense, but over the transformation of society as a whole, often in ways that go unnoticed. Eagleton again:
<blockquote>There’s an irony here, since few things bind art so closely to its material context as its claim to stand free of that context. This is because the work of art as autonomous and self-determining, an idea born sometime in the late 18th century, is the model of a version of the human subject that has been rapidly gaining ground in actual life. Men and women are now seen as authors of themselves . . .</blockquote>
The photo of the crucifix and the apse that precedes my words was recently taken in <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/visit/plan-your-visit/met-cloisters">The Cloisters</a> in upper Manhattan, New York City, where the ghosts of dead religious beliefs prowl about the rooms. It is meant to present a “chapel-like gallery.” The Cloisters is a museum owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is now known as The Met Cloisters. It, and the beautiful 67 acre Fort Tryon Park upon which it sits, was created and financed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. who, according to The Met’s <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/press/news/2006/the-cloisters-a-history">website</a> was fascinated with the past. “The expert artistry of medieval art as well as its innate spirituality strongly appealed to this philanthropist and collector,” we are told.
Spirituality from the Middle Ages, I will amend, that when it had been transported to the museum was devoid of its living context and could be presented as a gift from a Robber Baron family to the people of NYC who needed to be uplifted by the noblesse oblige kindness of the Rockefellers. Dead spirits devoid of living inner religiousness who smuggle secret messages to a public hungry for meaning.
Like my friend who considered getting a cross, Rockefeller no doubt found the crucifix and apse that frames it quite beautiful and spiritually uplifting, but not the living spirituality of the criminal Jesus whose message about wealth never informed the Rockefellers’ ruthless exploitation of others on their rise to power.
In years long past, when I first visited The Cloisters, being a native Bronx New Yorker, it was known simply as The Cloisters, even though The Met owned it since its inception in the 1930s. Before I visited it as a young man, I had the impression it had some religious significance, as the name cloister suggests (early 13c., cloystre, “a monastery or convent, a place of religious retirement or seclusion”).
But I was wrong; it is a museum, a beautiful museum build with stones from European monasteries, churches, and convents transported long ago across the Atlantic and reconstructed on the heights above the Hudson River. It is filled with medieval art collected by Rockefeller, George Gray Barnard, and other wealthy art collectors. For those so disposed to wondering what royalty prayed for in medieval days – was it to slaughter as many Muslims as possible in the Crusades? – one can view the tiny prayer book once owned by the Queen of France – and imagine. Such imagining might cause one to realize how little things have changed and how little things mean a lot. The trick is to notice them.
Political power needs cultural power to operate effectively. The elites can’t just slam people around and expect no response. They need to worm their ideological messages into the public consciousness in pleasing ways. Writing of Edmund Burke, Eagleton says, “Instead, he recognises that culture in the anthropological sense is the place where power has to bed itself down if it is to be effective. If the political doesn’t find a home in the cultural, its sovereignty won’t take hold.”
Thus, for an example from Hollywood and the pop-cultural realm, <a href="https://williambowles.info/2024/04/29/five-blockbuster-movies-secretly-co-written-by-the-pentagon/">we might notice</a> how many movies and TV shows were secretly co-written by the Pentagon.
Another name for this is propaganda
Cultural messaging is where the power elite need to seduce regular people that power is being exercised for their own good and everyone is in bed together. Soft power. Nice power. Power that is disguised as beneficial for all. Beautiful power. “Spiritual” power.
As I said, Fort Tryon Park (designed by the Olmsted brothers, sons of the designer of Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted) and The Cloisters are spectacularly beautiful. Walking through the park on a sunny spring day to reach the museum on its northern end – the flowers and cherry blossom trees dazzling and the Hudson River glistening below – one is overwhelmed by the beauty and grateful to its human gift giver – John D. Rockefeller, Jr. It takes a little mental stretching to grasp the paradox or the delusional dream of such thankfulness. But it cuts to the heart of the power of the cultural complex and the ways it works to soften the ruthlessness of its ultra-rich capitalistic controllers.
First they rob you, then they gift you with a walk in the park.
And when you step inside their institutions, you are provided with opportunities to think within controlled parameters, while also getting a whiff of the theatrical nature of your experience. The whiff is as important as the thinking, for it is a reminder to keep your mouth shut and you too will flourish. The fraudulence of the cultural entertainment-educational complex can dawn on some who have been invited into the inner sanctums of power and prestige, as it has done presently for many college students (and some faculty) whose consciences do not allow them to sit still while Palestinians are slaughtered. But if you dare to act upon your sense of being taken for a ride, watch out! You will be banned from the pleasures that are offered for your acquiescence, as these students are now finding out.
They have rejected that part of the learning experience that George Orwell called Crimestop:
<blockquote>. . . [it] means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.</blockquote>
Sometimes real thinking and conscience win the day, for the power of the elite’s cultural institutions is not omnipotent. Everyone is not for sale, even those invited into the banquet. Teach people to think and meditate on history and they just might think outside the cage of your expectations.
While the genocide of the Palestinians is transparent for everyone to see, the leaders of these elite universities, unlike the rebellious students, turn a blind eye to the obvious. They follow the script they were handed when they accepted their prestigious positions of power, living up to Julian Benda’s famous appellation – The Treason of the Intellectuals.
But “beautiful” power becomes the iron fist when the plebes get too uppity and actually take seriously their studies and rebel as human beings with consciences. This is the flip side to the hidden messages of the elite cultural institutions.
This two-sided process of hidden and obvious messages operates also in the media complex (see <a href="https://edwardcurtin.com/the-subtleties-of-anti-russia-leftist-rhetoric/">this</a>). While the so-called liberal and conservative media – all stenographers for the intelligence agencies – pour forth the most blatant propaganda about Palestine, Israel, Russia and Ukraine, etc. that is so conspicuous that it is comedic if it weren’t so dangerous, the self-depicted cognoscenti also ingest subtler messages, often from the alternative media and from people they consider dissidents. They are like little seeds slipped in as if no one will notice; they work their magic nearly unconsciously. Few notice them, for they are often imperceptible. But they have their effects and are cumulative and are far more powerful over time than blatant statements that will turn people off, especially those who think propaganda doesn’t work on them. This is the power of successful propaganda, whether purposeful or not. It particularly works well on “intellectual” and highly-schooled people.
Some people think that if you see more than is apparent when visiting sites such as The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park, you are incapable of enjoying the beauty of these “gifts.” This is not true. They are not mutually exclusive. The great African-American scholar W.E.B. DuBois coined a term double-consciousness which I think can be used in this context to describe some people’s experience, not just that of African-Americans. They see at least two truths simultaneously. Their unreconciled double-consciousness prevents them from single vision when visiting the power elite’s beautiful creations. William Blake’s words – “May God us keep from single vision and Newton’s sleep! – inform their perspective.
On the same trip to The Cloisters, my wife and I walked extensively through Central Park, surely one of the most beautiful parks in the world. It was spectacularly aflame with Cherry Blossom trees and people from all over the world enjoying its pleasures, as did we. I, however, when entering and exiting this paradise, couldn’t help thinking that this park was caged in by the massive apartment complexes of the super-rich elite class, as if to say to the park’s visitors: you can visit but not stay. We oversee your pleasures.
Max Weber <a href="https://ratical.org/PandemicParallaxView/WeberProtestantEthicSpiritOfCap.pdf#page=202">said it well</a> a century ago:
<blockquote>No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might be said: “Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”</blockquote>The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/the-hidden-messages-of-the-power-elites-cultural-apparatus/">The Hidden Messages of the Power Elite’s Cultural Apparatus</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Has Zionism Caused the Destruction of the Jews?</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/has-zionism-caused-the-destruction-of-the-jews/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dan Lieberman]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 May 2024 21:44:40 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Genocide]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[War Crimes]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Zionism]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150173</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The proven danger of two million Gazans, blasted from their homes and struggling to find survival, is being overshadowed by unproven “safety concerns” for a relatively few Jewish college students who argue they are harmed by careless words and show no physical injuries. News reports reveal malicious intent and media complicity — divert the protests […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/has-zionism-caused-the-destruction-of-the-jews/">Has Zionism Caused the Destruction of the Jews?</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[The proven danger of two million Gazans, blasted from their homes and struggling to find survival, is being overshadowed by unproven “safety concerns” for a relatively few Jewish college students who argue they are harmed by careless words and show no physical injuries. News reports reveal malicious intent and media complicity — divert the protests against genocide to a non-existent anti-Semitism and impede the effectiveness of the campus demonstrations by citing “safety concerns.” Generate hate of the campus demonstrators and disguise the malice by falsely accusing them of hate, the Zionist Modus operandi from its inception — hide the truth and answer critics by labeling them anti-Semites.
<a href="https://substack.com/redirect/db383533-24f2-4c25-906e-941230d2016d?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/db383533-24f2-4c25-906e-941230d2016d?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1714768486382000&usg=AOvVaw1xxh46TgtEfkXgSjjQEg13">NBC News</a>
<blockquote>A growing number of leaders and organizations have called on Columbia University and its president to protect students amid reports of antisemitic and offensive statements and actions on and near its campus, which has been the site this week of a pro-Palestinian encampment and protest.</blockquote>
<a href="https://substack.com/redirect/90544a20-f186-48eb-8be0-05808ddccc5b?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/90544a20-f186-48eb-8be0-05808ddccc5b?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1714768486382000&usg=AOvVaw3cAstGs99VE3cQNtSChdIY">CBS NEWS</a>
<blockquote>NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A Jewish Yale University student said she was assaulted during pro-Palestinian protests on campus and now the university is investigating. Sahar Tartak, editor-in-chief of the Yale Free Press, said she was assaulted Saturday night while covering demonstrations on the campus in New Haven, Connecticut. Tartak believes she was targeted for wearing Jewish attire. “I wear a Star of David necklace,” she said. “One of them taunted me by waving a Palestinian flag in my face and jabbed me with it in the eye.”</blockquote>
<a href="https://substack.com/redirect/501905e5-d1b9-4b32-84ce-93669c7e7afd?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/501905e5-d1b9-4b32-84ce-93669c7e7afd?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1714768486382000&usg=AOvVaw2SLhEutEfV_A0AreJmX6Tx">New York Post</a>
<blockquote>A Jewish Yale University student journalist reporting on an anti-Israeli protest at the Ivy League school Saturday night was stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag, while her assailant has gone unpunished.</blockquote>
<a href="https://substack.com/redirect/082e664e-35a6-4a87-9162-592a5c2e2c9e?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/082e664e-35a6-4a87-9162-592a5c2e2c9e?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1714768486382000&usg=AOvVaw1S1K5WHtTT1qZKMPT3LVSR">Breaking Points</a>
<blockquote>Krystal and Saagar discuss the ‘stabbed in the eye’ girl being debunked by the video of the incident. “This is all complete B.S.”</blockquote>
Examine the press reports
The campus demonstrations are protests against U.S. policy of assisting Israel in its genocide of the Palestinian people, and the press cites them as either “pro-Palestinian” or “anti-Israel.” These opposing descriptions give an impression that the protests have a bias, do not affect the American people, and mainly concern those who favor the Palestinians and those who are repulsed by actions taken against Israel. A few words, constantly repeated, affect the mindset of the American people and distract them from understanding their government’s disgraceful policies.
The NBC report is not news; it is an advertisement for organizations that have an agenda and manufacture rumors to satisfy the agenda, not different from an exterminator falsely telling Columbia University authorities to protect students amid reports of rodents infesting the campus. Note also the mental link to “a pro-Palestinian encampment and protest.”
The New York Post, an infamous rag sheet, turns an unverified statement by an Israeli supporter into her being “stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag, while her assailant has gone unpunished.” The victim, Sahar Tartak, came to the demonstration with a video camera, wearing a Star of David necklace, and accompanied by another person described as having the appearance of an Orthodox Jew, an indication of purposeful intent to broadcast that she and the other person are Jewish students. Neither Sahar Tartak’s video camera nor any video camera recorded an attack upon her persona. There is no hospital report to show she was injured and her appearance immediately after the incident does not indicate harm to an eye.
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Did Ms. Tartak come to the demonstration as a provocateur attempting to initiate verbal or physical attacks on her or the other Jewish student? When she did not succeed, did she fabricate an incident?
Striding as obvious Jewish students, Ms. Tartak and her friend walked untouched through the angry crowd. Her behavior initiated no attacks and showed that if there are attacks on Jewish students, they must be rare. Will Columbia University investigate her actions, which appear belligerent, untruthful, and purposely agitating? Isn’t it twisted to repress those who struggle to prevent genocide and follow the dictates of those who approve genocide?
Don’t Columbia and other universities know about the genocide and the terrible consequences inflicted on the Palestinians? Is their negligence due to American media — print, online, television, and radio — treating Israel as a friendly neighbor and a victim of terrorism, and approaching the two million Palestinians as collateral damage to Israel’s overpowering a few thousand Hamas militants who have no anti-tank weapons to halt tanks, no guided missiles to cause critical damage, and no handheld missile systems to destroy drones and aircraft? Nobody equipped Hamas with an adequate defense or for an effective offense. Militants crossed the border, walked a few miles, committed random havoc, and, after being alerted, Israeli forces wiped them out.
October 7, 2023, taught the Israeli military it had no problem in containing powerless Hamas; as soon as the militants met a prepared Israeli military they were quickly defeated. Israel had a temporary border problem of relaxation and apathy, which allowed the Hamas militants to enter. Stationing troops at the border and assuring they are alert rectified the situation. There was no need to send a massive number of soldiers into Gaza, have a number of them killed, slaughter the Gazans, and ensure none of the captives survived. Why did Israel pursue the more punishing path?
(1) The Israeli government did not want to engage in talks with Hamas, which would elevate Hamas’ importance and put Israel on the defensive.
(2) Israel has pursued one path — steal the Palestinian land and patrimony and contrive a means to cleanse the Palestinians from the area. Hamas’ resistance is a continuous block to the pursuit and a change in tactics was ordered.
(3) The Hamas attack presented an opportunity to change the tactics from a slow ethnic cleansing to a more rapid genocide — fool the world into believing the demolishing of the Gazans is retribution and not genocide. With the obedient Western media occupied with reports from Gaza, less attention will be given to the violent ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.
Attempts to subdue campus demonstrations that protest the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people reveal the obvious — since day one of their appearance, spurious anti-Semitism has been a constant weapon of Zionists to disguise the truth, foment hatred of their opponents, and advance their agenda. Their deceptive tactics have enraged segments of U.S. and European societies and directly led to animosity and attacks against Jews. Describing their state as a “Jewish state,” and having a majority of Jews throughout the world support the state and its genocidal actions is causing a backlash to the Jews. The only salvation for the Jewish community is separation from Zionism, its oppressive state, and its suicidal inclinations and halt the continuation of relying on the media to confuse the populace into favoring, protecting, and urging governments to rescue the Jewish community.
PBS’ News Hour, supposedly a more respected element of the U.S. media, on April 26, featured Israelis mark Passover amid conflict, loss and trauma. Description of the program: “This week, Jews around the world are observing Passover, the festival of liberation that marks the historic exodus from ancient Egypt.”
“The historic exodus from Egypt?” Is there any history that tells us of this mythical exodus? Are news broadcasts a compilation of facts or fiction?
<blockquote>But, this year, joy is tempered with loss and trauma. More than 160,000 Israelis will mark the holiday while displaced from their homes, as the war with Hamas continues. Still others have empty chairs at the dinner table, their loved ones still held captive by Hamas.</blockquote>
Upon orders from their command, and not due to excessive danger, a small percentage of Israelis are taking a respite from their daily lives and still established homes and eating matzah in temporary hotel quarters. Almost all Palestinians have been forced out of destroyed homes, where relatives still lie under the rubble, and they search to find a tent or place to house their permanently displaced families and obtain some bread, leavened or non-leavened, to eat. They don’t have empty chairs at dinner tables; they have no chairs and dinner tables and suffer the loss of the tens of thousands of loved ones and captives held by Israel.
The biblical “Exodus” story did not free the Jews. Just the opposite, it has been used to keep Jews in perpetual bondage to a spurious history and to promote an attitude of constant victimhood, while distracting them from realizing the role they play in the injustices done to others. Hopefully, Jews who absorb verified history will awaken other Jews to the destructive impulses generated from Israel, which prevents them from recognizing the roots and appeal of modern Judaism and instead induces them to adopt atavistic and reactionary attitudes from ancient Hebrew stories and its fictitious world — recreating the Passover plagues that now kill Palestinian livestock and crops and sent lice, flies, frogs, wild animals, locusts, hail, boils, and extended darkness throughout Gaza, and death to the firstborn child in every Palestinian household.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/has-zionism-caused-the-destruction-of-the-jews/">Has Zionism Caused the Destruction of the Jews?</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Presidential Candidate Jill Stein Attacked in St. Louis</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/presidential-candidate-jill-stein-attacked-in-st-louis/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Don Fitz]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 May 2024 14:08:42 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA["Third" Party]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Democracy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Elections]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Freedom of Expression/Speech]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Genocide]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Joe Biden]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Students]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[War Crimes]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Jason Call]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Kelly Merrill]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150158</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Green Party member Jill Stein center. After attacking Dr. Jill Stein, St. Louis police charged her with assaulting them. Stein is the presumptive Presidential candidate of the Green Party. On April 27 she spoke at a program of the Green Party of St. Louis and then went to support student protesters at Washington University. There, […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/presidential-candidate-jill-stein-attacked-in-st-louis/">Presidential Candidate Jill Stein Attacked in St. Louis</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/KellySteinHallByChicCrop-scaled.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/KellySteinHallByChicCrop-1024x723.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="353" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-150159" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/KellySteinHallByChicCrop-1024x723.jpg 1024w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/KellySteinHallByChicCrop-300x212.jpg 300w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/KellySteinHallByChicCrop-768x542.jpg 768w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/KellySteinHallByChicCrop-1536x1084.jpg 1536w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/KellySteinHallByChicCrop-2048x1445.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" /></a><center>Green Party member Jill Stein center.</center>
After attacking Dr. Jill Stein, St. Louis police charged her with assaulting them. Stein is the presumptive Presidential candidate of the Green Party. On April 27 she spoke at a program of the Green Party of St. Louis and then went to support student protesters at Washington University. There, she was arrested along with Green Party campaign managers Jason Call and Kelly Merrill with about 100 others.
As students peacefully gathered in tents and on the lawn, they were soon confronted by police from four departments: University City, Richmond Heights, St. Louis City and St. Louis County. When Stein arrived at the campus, students asked her to help defuse an already tense situation.
She identified herself to onlooking university administrators as a Green Party Presidential candidate. Stein, along with St. Louis Aldermanic President Megan Green and Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier, attempted to persuade university administrators to let students stay. Police moved to block the conversation. A reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who attempted a discussion with university vice-chancellor Julie Hail Flory was ordered to leave the campus.
Merrill and Stein looked for a restroom and found all doors locked, but a student was able to unlock one door. Hearing yelling that the police were about to attack, they quickly went outside. They walked into the space between students and police, pleading for calm. But the police stormed in.
Merrill reported that “This was the first time I understood why so many police are on bicycles. They picked them up and used them as weapons to push people down.” When police began assailing protesters, they targeted Stein first and did not bother the two Democratic Party officials. They threw Stein on her head, threw Merrill to the ground, jumped on Call, and dozens became their victims.
Students were charged with trespassing and disruptive behavior. Those who were arrested have been prohibited from re-entering campus even if they will miss final examinations and not graduate. The administration-police reaction followed a pattern at universities across the US as if it had been scripted in Joe Biden’s office.
Being assaulted, arrested and jailed was only the beginning of Stein’s ordeal. Not being told what would happen to her, Stein sat alone in a cell for hours before being released. Exhausted, she did not make it to our house to sleep until 3:00 in the morning.
On Monday morning, April 29 Stein took a break from her mid-states tour to get checked out at University Hospital in Columbia MO. They found that, though very bruised, her rib was not broken; and she continued to Kansas City.
Bob Suberi is a Jewish member of the St. Louis Green Party who has made several solidarity visits to the West Bank. He brings back stories of the Israeli Defense Forces’ deliberately provoking Palestinians in order to have an excuse for over-reacting, sometimes with a massive raid. Similarly, Washington University students committed the trivial infraction of occupying space regularly used for events such as carnivals and this became the excuse for a police invasion.
The similarities between practices in Palestine and on US campuses is unmistakable. This is true not only for intolerance of dissent and brutality. It is also the case with the way Israelis destroy sanitary facilities in Gaza, leaving people with nowhere to relieve themselves except on sidewalks. This serves both to humiliate Palestinians and create a health crisis.
The mounting opposition to Israel’s war is reflected by the wide variety of speakers at the St. Louis Green Party event: Andrew de las Alas (Asians Demanding Justice), Saish Satyal (College Democrats), Lila Steinbach (Jewish Students for Palestine), Bahar Bastani MD (Dar al-Zahra Mosque and Education Center), Shahab Mushtaq (Green Party of St. Louis), Bob Suberi (Veterans For Peace), Chibu Asonye (Green Party of Illinois), Zaki Baruti (Universal African Peoples Organization) and Omali Yeshitela (African People’s Socialist Party).
Jewish herself, Stein insists that “The students are not the villains in this struggle against Israeli violence. They are in fact the heroes, defending the right of free speech and to peacefully protest. Many already see the villains being the Washington University administration, those who conspired with them to destroy free speech, and the Biden gang whose fingerprints are all over efforts to shut down peace initiatives. Out of one side of his mouth Biden claims he is working to end the killing and maiming of Palestinians. From the other side of his mouth comes the push for billions of war dollars that are causing the genocide.”
Dr. Stein joined tens of thousands of students in campuses across the US who are demanding university divestment from Boeing and other companies that manufacture weapons used by Israel. Students presented Washington University with five demands:
<li>Cut ties with Boeing.</li>
<li>Boycott Israeli educational institutions.</li>
<li>Drop charges and suspensions against protesters and defund university police.</li>
<li>Stop buying land in surrounding communities and make payments in lieu of taxes to University City and St. Louis.</li>
<li>Release a statement condemning Palestinian genocide and calling for an immediate ceasefire.</li>

University officials told the press that they felt that they had to take action because the demonstrators “had the potential to get out of control and become dangerous.” Apparently skilled at ignoring the obvious, these officials have never noticed that the corporate behavior of their partner, Boeing, has vastly exceeded the “potential” to become dangerous.
One of the great ironies of the episode is that above the April 28 Post-Dispatch story which described events at Washington University was another front page story reporting that Boeing was abandoning efforts to outsource much of its work. It approvingly announced that this would save 550 St. Louis jobs.
Of course, the Post-Dispatch has not published stories regarding the creation of peace-related jobs for Boeing employees if the war-manufacturer were to be downsized. Also worthy of note is the fact that no Boeing executive or government official working with them has been arrested for crimes against humanity, complicity with genocide or any other charge. Maybe they would have to peacefully sit in a tent on the Washington University campus to get busted.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/presidential-candidate-jill-stein-attacked-in-st-louis/">Presidential Candidate Jill Stein Attacked in St. Louis</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>The Little Flotilla that Almost Could</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/the-little-flotilla-that-almost-could/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Craig Wood]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 May 2024 02:59:44 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA["Aid"]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Freedom Flotilla to Gaza]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Genocide]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Humanitarianism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Türkiye]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150144</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The flotilla cargo ship in Istanbul (Photo credit: Medea Benjamin) Two gutsy activists from the Twin Cities flew to Istanbul, Turkey April 17 to join over three-hundred others from about 40 countries on an eleven-hundred mile voyage across the Mediterranean Sea to raise awareness and bring lifesaving aid to Gaza. Vietnam Vet and member of […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/the-little-flotilla-that-almost-could/">The Little Flotilla that Almost Could</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/mail-e1713835050881.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-149927" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/mail-e1713835050881.png" alt="" width="600" height="334" /></a>The flotilla cargo ship in Istanbul (Photo credit: Medea Benjamin)
Two gutsy activists from the Twin Cities flew to Istanbul, Turkey April 17 to join over three-hundred others from about 40 countries on an eleven-hundred mile voyage across the Mediterranean Sea to raise awareness and bring lifesaving aid to Gaza.
Vietnam Vet and member of Veterans For Peace (VFP) Barry Riesch was nervous about signing on with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), but felt he should try to do something for the vast majority of Gazans lacking medical care and being deliberately starved. Apart from the mission’s goal of delivering over five-thousand tons of urgently needed food, water and medical supplies (including five ambulances, and an abundance of baby formula), Reisch said he wanted to do this for his grandkids in hopes “they won’t have to grow up in a world that would ignore such a tragedy.”
Riesch has good reasons to be nervous. Since the Free Gaza Movement began in 2006, only a handful of small ships have been allowed to bring humanitarian aid to Gazans. Retired U.S. Army Colonel and former diplomat Ann Wright is a member of the 2024 FFC Steering Committee. She was a participant (resistor) on five previous flotillas that never reached Gaza. In 2010 she watched Israeli troops rappelling from helicopters onto the deck of the Mavi Marmara from a nearby boat. Ten resistors were killed and 50 more wounded after some of them allegedly tried to fight back in international waters against the Israeli invaders who were using pressurized water hoses on them. In a video, Wright gave other accounts of Israeli troops harassing and beating resistors before confiscating their belongs and taking them against their will to Israeli jails until they could be deported.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu contends that Israel has been unfairly targeted by resistors trying to break his country’s illegal navel blockade and bring humanitarian aid into Gaza. During a 2015 speech in Tel Aviv he told the Jewisih Agency Assembly “They send flotillas to Gaza, they don’t send flotillas to Syria. It’s amazing, this travesty of justice, this violation of the truth, the rape of truth.”
Former FBI agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley is a member of VFP and Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) couldn’t disagree with Netanyahu more. She hopes that he and his cronies will be called to answer for their criminal behavior sooner than later. Rowley has been speaking at academic and other professional venues with an emphasis on ethical decision-making for twenty years. Before flying to Istanbul she talked over the phone with me about the “berserk Israelis” who have “shredded the law” — not only breaking the rules of the high seas for murder and kidnapping, but with their ongoing violations of international humanitarian law and war crimes on land. In a recent television interview she said “ I told people I can’t help seeing the faces of my own grandchildren (I have five grandchildren now) in the faces of these poor Gazan children who are being orphaned, starved and murdered.”
Riesch and Rowley attended intensive nonviolence training shortly after arriving in Istanbul. “The most frightening part of the training was a simulation replete with deafening booms of gunfire and exploding percussion grenades and masked soldiers screaming at us, hitting us with simulated rifles, dragging us across the floor, and arresting us” author/activist Medea Benjamin wrote in a Counterpunch article. During an April 19 Zoom meeting in Istanbul, resistors discussed their fears about the trip. One recalled a mock situation where three doctors from New Zealand laid on the floor during a seminar and instructed resistors on what to do if their heads are stepped on in the dark. Lawyers provided legal advice about separating “false authority” from “legitimate authority” along with tips for walking away from precarious situations. Despite their fears, resistors believe what they are doing not only has to be done, it is morally and legally justifiable, citing a recent ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that it is “plausible” Israel has committed acts of genocide: The court further maintains, that it is now incumbent upon citizens and governments of the world to do what they can to stop the genocide.
The location of the launch was kept secret due to Israel’s history of sabotaging boats in port and the departure dates were pushed back repeatedly because of outside pressures — mostly from the Israeli and U.S. governments. Last week the Israelis made an announcement about intercepting the flotilla that prompted Huwaida Arraf, U.S. human rights attorney and FFC Steering Committee member to say “Governments must refuse to collaborate in maintaining Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza by obstructing the flotilla in any way. We call on the governments of the 40 countries represented on the Freedom Flotilla to uphold their obligations under international law and demand that Israel guarantee the flotilla safe passage to Gaza.” Soon after, UN experts reaffirmed Arraf’s demand “As the Freedom Flotilla approaches Palestinian territorial waters off Gaza, Israel must adhere to international law, including recent orders from the International Court of Justice to insure unimpeded access for humanitarian aid.”
But on April 26, the doubts crept home. During a morning call, Riesch talked about his dwindling hopes that the flotilla would make it to Gaza “Now there’s a problem with ship flags” — this is the fourth delay.” According to Reuters, Guinea-Bissau made a decision to remove its flag from flotilla boats. Istanbul activists answered with this: “The Guinea-Bissau International Ships Registry (GBISR), in a blatantly political move, informed the Freedom Flotilla Coalition that it had withdrawn the Guinea Bissau flag from two of the Freedom Flotilla’s ships, one of which is our cargo ship.”
Riesch mentioned that frustrated resistors were already drifting away and during last night’s FFC meeting, he found out numerous other boats loaded with activists were preparing to join the flotilla in a show of solidarity, even though Israelis planned to stop them with a blockade. So, it was decided the flotilla would meet up with the blockade and wait a few days before turning around. The earliest departure time he said would be Sunday April 28 — if they could clear customs. Later that evening he sent a text saying the trip was canceled.
During a follow-up Q&A TikTok post, Wright told Benjamin that Israel always uses delay tactics before flotilla launches and the State Department invariably issues travel warnings and cautions Americans about challenging the Israeli government — especially now since the U.S. has been so openly complicit with the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Gaza. While support for the flotilla remains high from Turkish nationals, Wright strongly believes the U.S. is using economic pressures including military aid, ito derail the project in Turkey.
If nothing else, those who traveled to Istanbul succeeded in bringing much-needed attention to the plight of captive and undernourished Palestinians waiting in refugee camps for the next bombing campaign. About 45% of the people living in Gaza are children under the age of 15. So far, well over one hundred fifteen thousand Palestinians have been killed or wounded — most were women and children. It may take decades to rebuild the parts of Gaza already destroyed but for now, resistors are packing their bags — some hope to return this summer.
<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Image1-e1714564268363.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-150146" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Image1-e1714564268363.png" alt="" width="500" height="667" /></a>First row — Coleen Rowley far left and Barry Riesch third from left
<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Image_1-e1714564683712.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-150147" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Image_1-e1714564683712.png" alt="" width="600" height="450" /></a>Ann Wright second from left, and Medea Benjamin second from back in Istanbul The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/the-little-flotilla-that-almost-could/">The Little Flotilla that Almost Could</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>When Safety is a Fiction: Passing the UK’s Rwanda Bill</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/when-safety-is-a-fiction-passing-the-uks-rwanda-bill/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Binoy Kampmark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 May 2024 02:14:49 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Asylum]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Australia]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Migration/Migrants]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Paul Kagame]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Refugees]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Rwanda]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United Kingdom]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150156</guid>
<description><![CDATA[What a stinking story of inhumanity. A country intent on sending asylum seekers to one whose residents have actually applied for asylum and sanctuary in other states. But the UK-Rwanda deal, having stalled and stuttered before various courts and found wanting for reasons of human rights, has become law with the passage of the Safety […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/when-safety-is-a-fiction-passing-the-uks-rwanda-bill/">When Safety is a Fiction: Passing the UK’s Rwanda Bill</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[What a stinking story of inhumanity. A country intent on sending asylum seekers to one whose residents have actually applied for asylum and sanctuary in other states. But the UK-Rwanda deal, having stalled and stuttered before various courts and found wanting for reasons of human rights, has become law with the passage of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill.
The story of this deal has been a long one. On April 14, 2022, the government of Boris Johnson announced the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/memorandum-of-understanding-mou-between-the-uk-and-rwanda/memorandum-of-understanding-between-the-government-of-the-united-kingdom-of-great-britain-and-northern-ireland-and-the-government-of-the-republic-of-r">Asylum Partnership Arrangement</a> with Rwanda, which was intended “to contribute to the prevention and combating of illegally facilitated and unlawful cross border migration by establishing a bilateral asylum partnership”. Rwanda, for a princely sum, would receive those whose asylum claims would be otherwise processed in the UK through the “Rwanda domestic asylum system” and have the responsibility for settling and protecting applicants.
This cynical effort of deferring human rights obligations and not guarding asylum seekers and refugees from harm has been made all the more hideous by Kigali’s less than savoury reputation in the field. Refugees have been shot for protesting over reduced food rations (twelve from the Democratic Republic of Congo died in February 2018). Refugees have also been arrested for allegedly spreading misinformation about Rwanda’s less than spotless human rights record. And that’s just a smidgen of a significantly blotted copybook.
Notwithstanding this, UK home secretaries have gushed over Kigali’s seemingly falsified credentials. Suella Braverman, who formerly occupied the post, was jaw dropping <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/6/20/rwanda-is-no-refuge-for-uk-asylum-seekers">in her claim</a> that “Rwanda has a track record of successfully resettling and integrating people who are refugees or asylum seekers”. This is markedly ironic given that the Rwandan government <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/6/20/rwanda-is-no-refuge-for-uk-asylum-seekers">has been accused</a> of creating its own complement of refugees running into the tens of thousands.
The UK government has a patchy legal record in trying to defend the legitimacy of the exchange with Rwanda. The Court of Appeal in June 2023 <a href="https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/AAA-v-SSHD-judgment-290623.pdf">reversed</a> a lower court decision on the grounds that those asylum seekers sent to Rwanda faced real risks of mistreatment prohibited by Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Rwanda, it was noted, was “intolerant of dissent; that there are restrictions on the right of peaceful assembly, freedom of the press and freedom of speech; and that political opponents have been detained in unofficial detention centres and have been subjected to torture and Article 3 ill-treatment short of torture.”
The government also failed to convince the UK Supreme Court, which <a href="https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2023/42.html">similarly found</a> in November 2023 that people removed to Rwanda faced a real risk of being returned to their countries of origin in violation of the principle of non-refoulement. That principle, by which persons are not to be sent to their countries of origin or third countries if they would be placed at risk of harm, is a cardinal rule in several instruments of international law and enshrined in British law.
In what can only be regarded as a legal absurdity, the Safety of Rwanda bill essentially directs the home secretary, immigration officials, courts and tribunals to deem Rwanda a safe country in accordance with UK law and UK obligations to protect asylum seekers. It also bars decision makers from considering the risk of refugees being sent by Rwanda to other countries and disallows UK courts from drawing upon interpretations of international law, including the European Convention of Human Rights. Effectively, a sizeable portion of the UK’s own Human Rights Act 1998 has been rendered inconsequential in these determinations.
A final, nasty feature of the legislation is the grant of power to a Minister of the Crown to decide whether to abide by interim measures made by the European Court of Human Rights regarding any removal to Rwanda. This is astonishing on several levels, not least because it repudiates the <a href="https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/d/echr/pd_interim_measures_eng">binding nature</a> of such interim measures.
Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, <a href="https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/-/serious-human-rights-concerns-about-united-kingdom-s-rwanda-bill">could barely believe</a> the passage of such an obnoxious bit of legislation. Not only did it fly in the face of obligations to protect refugees, it constituted a direct interference in the judicial process. “The United Kingdom government should refrain from removing people under the Rwanda policy and reverse the Bill’s effective infringement of judicial independence.”
Shadowing these proceedings is an unmistakable, ghoulish legacy of Australian origin. The former Home Secretary Priti Patel openly acknowledged that elements of the “Australian model” of processing asylum claims in third countries were appealing and something to emulate. The particularly attractive element of the plan was the refusal by Canberra to ever permit those found to be refugees to ever settle on Australian soil. Other countries, including such European states as Denmark, have also chosen Rwanda as an appropriate destination for unwanted asylum seekers.
The entire affair is a stunning example of political entropy, a howl from an administration marching before the firing squad. With each failure, the Tories have tried to claw back respectability in the hope of appearing muscular in the face of irregular migration. They have accordingly cooked up a scheme that is not merely cruel, but one of staggering cost (each asylum seeker of the current cohort promises to cost the British taxpayer £1.8 million) and ineffectualness. Sunak, a laughably weak and unpopular prime minister, is, politically speaking, at death’s door. Despite getting the legislation through, legal struggles from potential deportees are bound to tear into the arrangements. What Britain’s judges do will prove a true test of character.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/when-safety-is-a-fiction-passing-the-uks-rwanda-bill/">When Safety is a Fiction: Passing the UK’s Rwanda Bill</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Returning to the 11th Century</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/returning-to-the-11th-century/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[T.P. Wilkinson]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 May 2024 21:31:39 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Artificial Intelligence (AI)]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Crimes against Humanity]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Viet Nam]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[War Crimes]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Intelligence]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Joseph Weizenbaum]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Phoenix program]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Russell Ackoff]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150152</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Technology fetishism and dogmatic irresponsibility Without the use of digital devices, instead mainly that analog apparatus known as the pen, I have managed to retain meaningful recollections and engage in analytical reflection for the better part of sixty two years. The manner in which I have worked since the earliest moments I can remember has […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/returning-to-the-11th-century/">Returning to the 11th Century</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/cover_TP-scaled.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/cover_TP-1024x748.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="365" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-149241" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/cover_TP-1024x748.jpg 1024w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/cover_TP-300x219.jpg 300w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/cover_TP-768x561.jpg 768w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/cover_TP-1536x1122.jpg 1536w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/cover_TP-2048x1496.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" /></a>
Technology fetishism and dogmatic irresponsibility
Without the use of digital devices, instead mainly that analog apparatus known as the pen, I have managed to retain meaningful recollections and engage in analytical reflection for the better part of sixty two years. The manner in which I have worked since the earliest moments I can remember has engendered the habit of collecting, sorting, observing and evaluating life as I lived it or perceived it by others. It was about 1976 that I was introduced to Russell Ackoff, a professor at the Wharton School in the University of Pennsylvania. He was introducing some basic tenets of systems theory, also outlined in his short book Redesigning the Future. My attendance was accidental since it was my high school physics teacher who took me to this meeting of a regional planning commission where Professor Ackoff had been invited to speak. He was quite droll and said several witting things. However, the most important statement he made was that the purpose of planning was not to produce a plan. Rather planning was a purpose in its own right. What he clearly meant – and that was reiterated in the book I subsequently read – was that planning was an attitude toward the future or toward life and not an industrial process for producing planning documents. The logical consequence of Ackoff’s argument was that the attitude of planning was more important than the creation of machines for churning out plans which would be obsolete before they could be implemented.
Although I only learned about the book ten years later, Joseph Weizenbaum, a professor of computer science at various universities and one of the early researchers in what became the field of artificial intelligence (AI), published Computer Power and Human Reason in the same year. 1976 was one year after the ignominious withdrawal of US Forces from Vietnam, ending more than 30 years of their organized terror in that part of Southeast Asia. The US war against Vietnam was the first testing ground for both systems theory and artificial intelligence. These concepts and the technology developed to apply them were dedicated to surveillance, planning, target acquisition and destruction of the so-called Vietcong infrastructure, i.e. the civilian government that operated in lieu of the criminal state established by the French and US Americans first in Hanoi and then in Saigon after the partition of the country in Geneva. The government agency primarily responsible for planning and implementing the destruction of the popular government of Vietnam was the US Central Intelligence Agency. ICEX was the first name given to what became known as the Phoenix Program. One of the CIA officers interviewed after the war called it “computerized mass murder”. He was referring to the kill lists generated by the PHIS, the Phoenix Information System by which all the data about Vietnamese citizens was collated and evaluated to guide the deployment of the various hunter-killer teams. These teams were composed of local hires, mercenaries, RVN and US military personnel like the infamous Lt. Caley, and other contractors working on behalf of the Agency. Recently there has been mild consternation because of the PHIS legacy product used by the IDF to perform the same kinds of tasks. Lavender is called an AI solution. It is just a later version of the same computer-driven murder planning machine deployed half a century ago.
No one should wonder about this since the Israel Defense Force and the other government agencies in occupied Palestine were actively informed and involved in every stage of these system developments. The systems-driven assassination program was a major component of the US counter-insurgency operations throughout Latin America. Death squads and data processing are natural partners going back to IBM’s computer support to the NSDAP. Artificial intelligence is fundamentally an intelligence operation and part of the systems theory of mechanized murder. It has no other serious application.
Permit me to return to Joseph Weizenbaum. In 1976, many AI fetishists will argue, the technology was simply not very sophisticated. ELIZA and other experimental platforms were primitive and lacked the support of today’s super-computers. I met Weizenbaum shortly before he died. He had returned to Berlin, the city of his birth from which his family had emigrated in the 1930s. He had been invited to talk at the Einstein Forum in Potsdam. Having read the book in the 1980s I was anxious to meet the man who had so politely trashed the AI project. He was introduced by an obnoxious and obsequious American whose other qualities or qualifications left no impression on me. The young man tried to impress the audience by telling us that Joseph Weizenbaum was working at Case Western University when the university decided they needed a computer– and Weizenbaum built it. Normally such calculated flattery would be met with a demurred nod of appreciation. Professor Weizenbaum retorted that Case Western did not need a computer. Moreover no one needed one! That was the last we heard of the young man from Einstein Forum.
Nearly 30 years after his book was published Weizenbaum was just as adamant. Not the Internet (which most people clearly forget is an adjunct to the US atomic warfare system) or the so-called super-computers, whether in the US or China, have altered the premises upon which his argument is based. As recently as today I read some conversation strings about AI in which one author argues:
<blockquote>The result of having this ability is not to contest who is right or wrong, but to learn to be right most of the time so that the AI can successfully maintain a peaceful, harmonious human society. At the end of the day, humans are seriously flawed and cannot be trusted to run this society. Therefore, human management will be phased out.</blockquote>
The author and those who follow his reasoning clearly believe that the strip mining of the Congo and other parts of the world to obtain the rare (and toxic) minerals essential for super-computing capacity along with the impoverishment of all other components of human culture in favour of electrical engineering and computer sciences is the price to be borne by humanity so that computation can fully displace human judgement (and humanity itself). The naive yet thin veneer of modernism and claims to sophistication in the interest of peace and harmony are deeply anti-human, not only in their objectives but at every link in the chain these AI proponents would forge from cradle to grave.
Weizenbaum’s argument was not based on the state of the art in 1976. In fact he was quite clear that faster processors and larger memory storage would no doubt expand the computational capacity of the emerging technology. Instead Weizenbaum insisted that judgement was not computation. In Berlin he reiterated data is not information. Computation is nothing more than the arrangement of data according to rules defining the circulation of electrical power through increasingly complex circuits. Judgement is the result of human activity not electrical circuits. Data is the numerically codification of signals from whatever source. Information is the product of assessing data and responding to it– i.e. giving it meaning. Computers ought not to give meaning– control human responses to the world. Humans ought to control their own responses, even if they use tools like computers to generate and store data for evaluation.
<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-4819" src="https://seektruthfromfacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/IMG_5406.jpg" sizes="(max-width: 371px) 100vw, 371px" srcset="https://seektruthfromfacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/IMG_5406.jpg 371w, https://seektruthfromfacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/IMG_5406-187x300.jpg 187w" alt="" width="371" height="594" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Screenshot</figcaption></figure>
Those who, like the author cited above, imagine that machine intelligence is superior to human intelligence are, to put it mildly, confused about what intelligence is. Claiming– either naively or cynically– that machine intelligence is at least potentially far more suited for regulating human society than humans themselves, these technology fetishists betray their primitive superstitions. Artificial intelligence, which until now has never advanced beyond its intention as a weapon for mass murder and surveillance, is simply the electronic manifestation of the omnipotent deity whose every will must be fulfilled. The desire to see human management rendered obsolete or impossible is the same denial that humans have any personality beyond that defined by the absolute deity of the kind we have known from the 11th century. The dream of the AI cultist is the same dream of the absolutist papacy and the regime that survives in the modern business corporation from which this nightmare arises.
Weizenbaum did not address the whole production chain in which AI needs to be seen. His humanist position stands on its own, especially when the lines are drawn between humanism and its antitheses transhumanism and anti-humanism. Much is made of the enormous progress– far beyond what the carcinogenic West has accomplished– in Chinese AI. Suffice it here to enumerate some of the absurd claims that dominate in the media and among the cult’s prosyletizers.
Computer power rests ultimately upon the power to extract highly toxic minerals from the Earth, until now based on quasi-slave labor in Congo, i.e. central Africa. For the past half-century computer power has cost more than six million lives and the independent development of a country whose territory is roughly the size of the European Union. To this must be added the wars and other violent and corrupt interventions to obtain these resources elsewhere on the planet. Then of course we have the highly dubious benefit of employment redundancies as so-called AI systems replace human labor in the industries and service sectors previously maintained by homo sapiens. Marxists praise AI contributions to the end of alienated labor. However the implementation of AI not only aims to kill people for the IDF or other counter-insurgency agencies but to kill the conditions for economic activity for huge numbers of people at all levels of educational and occupational qualification. The subsequent radical concentration of wealth will hardly be an inducement to enhance living conditions– which after all cannot be rationally calculated except as cost minimizing. (We need not ignore the eugenicism underlying the AI cult too.)
As to the claims that these machines will be infinitely more rational and therefore better managers of human society than humans themselves, the obscenity should be obvious. Any management of humans by agents other than humans can only be accomplished by subjugation of humanity to machines. This is the dream of those whose puerile malice leads them to identify peace with the absence of other people and order with absence of responsibility for their own actions. The nightmare of AI is the dream of what was once called the Dark Ages. Don’t forget, before you leave, to turn out the lights.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/returning-to-the-11th-century/">Returning to the 11th Century</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Mayday Mayday Mayday</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/mayday-mayday-mayday/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Philip A. Faruggio]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 May 2024 16:53:41 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Antiwar]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Peace]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150149</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Fifty four years ago today this writer was getting ready to hitchhike to classes at Brooklyn College. It was a sunny, blue sky, early Spring day, and the college was a few miles from our apartment building. This writer was into just two important things in May of 1970: Meeting girls (as we called them […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/mayday-mayday-mayday/">Mayday Mayday Mayday</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Fifty four years ago today this writer was getting ready to hitchhike to classes at Brooklyn College. It was a sunny, blue sky, early Spring day, and the college was a few miles from our apartment building. This writer was into just two important things in May of 1970: Meeting girls (as we called them then) and preparing for our school’s first football schedule in over 15 years. Ah, to be twenty years old and looking “lean and mean” with my bellbottom jeans, longish, wavy hair, Joe-Namath green eyes, and white buck shoes. I was ready to Rock and Roll at the campus.
Hanging out on the campus that day, I first heard the news of President Nixon’s latest edict of sending US soldiers into the sovereign nation of Cambodia, along with our bombers, to rout the Vietcong. Up to that point, quite candidly, I cared too little (for my own good) about the shit that was going down in Nam. Why should I? My self-centered narcissism was on cruise control with my 2-S draft deferment. As long as I stayed in school and took at least 12 credit hours a term Uncle Sam could not touch me. The way I looked at it that would be at least three more years before I might be forced into uniform. Yet, when one of my old freshman baseball team pals gave me the lowdown on this latest dose of Nixonian craziness, I took notice… finally! My friend, Larry, in addition to his addiction to the trotters (harness racing) and his girlfriend, was the first “Lefty” I had ever met at school. All of my football team compatriots were not into any sort of politics at all. Why I don’t really know, but I was just like them at this time. Larry said that this latest news was just too much to take for any sane American.
We all got the news about the many college campuses throughout the nation where there were not only demonstrations, but student strikes as well. Everything accelerated when some of our college’s more radical students were demanding that all military recruiters must get off our campus… NOW! Having experienced a few guys from my neighborhood coming home in boxes now hit home with me… finally! I joined the ranks of the protestors and got myself deep into the strike that just like that fermented.
Before you know it I was up inside the school President’s office with a group of fellow strikers. The President had left his office, as had most of the other staff , including all of our professors and instructors. I organized a group of student strikers to join me in getting the campus grounds cleaned up of all the thousands of flyers throughout. I knew the local news would be there real soon, and wanted to show the world that protestors can be diligent in keeping things copacetic. A real trip was when I got a guy I knew from Buildings and Grounds, a handball buddy, to help us with the tools we needed to make things look normal.
The strike took a more ominous tone on May 4 when those four Kent State student protestors were shot dead by National Guardsman; I was just about the same age as them. The cops were soon called in, but our student strike had already petered out. You see, it’s tough to maintain such an energy when 100% of the student population are commuters. So, the war in Vietnam had finally reached many of us students. I for one grew up that May of 1970 to become what I am today, a lifelong Anti (Phony) War Activist.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/mayday-mayday-mayday/">Mayday Mayday Mayday</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>“Medicalization”: Profit and Behavior-Control</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/medicalization-profit-and-behavior-control/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[William Manson]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 May 2024 11:12:38 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Advertising/Marketing]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Health/Medical]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Pharmaceuticals]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150142</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Thanks to the credulity and docility of the majority of Americans, Big Pharma has largely succeeded in medicalizing virtually every deviation from corporate-dictated, machine-like, behavioral uniformity. In an era of expanding ignorance, fear sells–especially through meticulously crafted TV ads. (“Ask your doctor if Viagra may be right for you.”) The collusion between Big Pharma and […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/medicalization-profit-and-behavior-control/">“Medicalization”: Profit and Behavior-Control</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Thanks to the credulity and docility of the majority of Americans, Big Pharma has largely succeeded in medicalizing virtually every deviation from corporate-dictated, machine-like, behavioral uniformity. In an era of expanding ignorance, fear sells–especially through meticulously crafted TV ads. (“Ask your doctor if Viagra may be right for you.”)
The collusion between Big Pharma and its distributors (i.e., doctors), with its obviously huge profit-incentives, might also (generously) be called a folie-a-deux. Within their shared “medical model,” physiological anomalies detected by high-radiation(!) CT body-scans may suggest certain lurking diseases (or even “pre-diseases”). “Early Detection” may offer the option of preventive surgery–what physician Nortin Hadler has called Medical Malpractice Type 2 (the procedure was done perfectly but was unnecessary in the first place). In terms of the likelihood that one may “get” a certain cancer or cardiac disease, one needs only to consult CDC statistics, keeping in mind that it is the absolute, not relative, risk that matters.
As to behavior and its non-conformist or eccentric irregularities, an oppressively unequal, even unlivable socio-economic system requires authoritarian sanctions to enforce compliance with assigned and mandated role-demands. In the former Soviet Union, outspoken dissidents like the nuclear scientist Andrei Sakharov were “mentally ill” and therefore hospitalized for “treatment.” In the U.S. today, an angry, rebellious adolescent is obviously suffering from “Oppositional Defiant Disorder,” and must be therefore treated without delay. Or perhaps he/she, somewhat confused by the kaleidoscope of “gender-bending” on social media, may be suffering from “gender dysphoria”–which, if impatient parents want a quick-fix, can be “cured” by “gender-reassignment surgery” (and the post-operative, prolonged hormonal treatment required).
In recent decades, the brazenly dramatic increase in these and other diagnoses of children such as “autism spectrum” and “bipolar disorder,” should have caused decibel-deafening alarm bells at the FDA, ACLU, and children’s rights NGOs. The rationale–that diagnostic criteria and acumen are simply more fine-tuned nowadays–seems all-too-transparent. Of course, the for-profit medical industry, like others, seeks to maximize demand and profit, what anthropologist Howard F. Stein has termed “the sacred shrine of the bottom-line.”
Authoritarian control functions to reinforce the existing socio-economic system, in which individuals must conform to various role-obligations. At work, “performance reviews” enforce obedience to the arbitrary demands of the owners of the workplace, who define the output required of one’s position. Using surveillance tools, the corporation can detect and weed out signs of dissatisfaction or insubordination–thereby labeling and eliminating those who question the mandated role-obligation.
At home, one is a “husband” (etym. “house bondsman”?), whose role-obligations include certain “conjugal responsibilities.” Medicalization of sexual “performance” was successfully achieved by the laboratory study Human Sexual Inadequacy (1970), written by Masters and Johnson, who also introduced the lucrative new occupation of “sex therapist.” This celebrated team medicalized the female orgasm as the peak-resolution of arousability, which must be regularly discharged (for “hygienic” reasons).
The hapless male, possibly confronted with a grossly overweight, even unsightly female who has gone to seed because she has hubby “under contract,” finds himself suffering from a distressing condition termed Erectile Dysfunction Disorder (traditionally called impotence). Nonetheless, such dysfunction may be partially ameliorated by couples-therapy and, of course, hazardous drugs such as Viagra.
In sum: In a system in which spouses (and children) are, to a significant degree, property, those who choose to enforce such role-obligations may have the power to do so.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/medicalization-profit-and-behavior-control/">“Medicalization”: Profit and Behavior-Control</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>University Investments: Divesting from the Military-Industrial Complex</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/university-investments-divesting-from-the-military-industrial-complex/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Binoy Kampmark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 May 2024 02:26:48 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Genocide]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Police]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Universities/Colleges]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150136</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The rage and protest against Israel’s campaign in Gaza, ongoing since the October 7 attacks by Hamas, has stirred student activity across a number of US university campuses and beyond. Echoes of the Vietnam anti-war protests are being cited. The docile consumers of education are being prodded and found interested. University administrators and managers are, […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/university-investments-divesting-from-the-military-industrial-complex/">University Investments: Divesting from the Military-Industrial Complex</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[The rage and protest against Israel’s campaign in Gaza, ongoing since the October 7 attacks by Hamas, has stirred student activity across a number of US university campuses and beyond. Echoes of the Vietnam anti-war protests are being cited. The docile consumers of education are being prodded and found interested. University administrators and managers are, as they always tend to, doing the bidding of their donors and funders in trying to restore order, punish the protesting students where necessary and restrict various forms of protest. Finally, those in the classrooms have something to talk about.
A key aspect of the protest centres on university divestment from US military companies linked and supplying the Israeli industrial war machine. (The pattern is also repeating itself in other countries, including Canada and Australia.) The response from university officialdom has been to formulate a more vigorous antisemitism policy – whatever that means – buttressed, as was the case in Columbia University, by the muscular use of police to remove protesting students for trespassing and disruption. On April 18, in what she <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/04/18/columbia-student-gaza-protests-nypd/">described</a> as a necessary if “extraordinary step”, Columbia President Minouche Shafik summoned officers from the New York Police Department, outfitted in riot gear, to remove 108 demonstrators occupying Columbia’s South Lawn. Charges have been issued; suspensions levelled.
Students <a href="https://apnews.com/article/columbia-yale-israel-palestinians-protests-56c3d9d0a278c15ed8e4132a75ea9599">from other institutions</a> are also falling in, with similar results. An encampment was made at New York University, with the now predictable police response. At Yale, 45 protestors were arrested and charged with misdemeanour trespassing. Much was made of the fact that tents had been set up on Beinecke Plaza. A tent encampment was also set up at MIT’s Cambridge campus.
The US House Committee on Education and the Workforce has also been pressuring university heads to put the boot in, well illustrating the fact that freedom of speech is a mighty fine thing till it aggrieves, offends and upsets various factional groups who wish to reserve it for themselves. Paradoxically enough, one can burn the US flag one owns as a form of protest, exercise free speech rights as a Nazi, yet not occupy the president’s office of a US university if not unequivocal in condemning protest slogans that might be seen as antisemitic. It would have been a far more honest proposition to simply make the legislators show their credentials as card carrying members of the MIC.
The focus by students on the Israeli-US military corporate nexus and its role in the destruction of Gaza has been sharp and vocal. Given the instinctive support of the US political and military establishment for Israel, this is far from surprising. But it should not be singular or peculiar to one state’s warring machine, or one relationship. The military-industrial complex is protean, spectacular in spread, with those in its service promiscuous to patrons. Fidelity is subordinated to the profit motive.
The salient warning that universities were at risk of being snared by government interests and, it followed, government objectives, was well noted by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his heralded 1961 <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address">farewell address</a>, one which publicly outed the “military-industrial complex” as a sinister threat. Just as such a complex exercised “unwarranted influence” more broadly, “the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.” The nation’s academics risked “domination … by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money”.
This has yielded what can only be seen as a ghastly result: the military-industrial-academic complex, heavy with what <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/45294197">has been described</a> as “social autism” and protected by almost impenetrable walls of secrecy.
The nature of this complex stretches into the extremities of the education process, including the grooming and encouragement of Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students. Focusing on Lockheed Martin’s recruitment process on US college campuses in his 2022 <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/article/lockheed-martin-recruiting-military-industrial-complex-student-debt">study</a> for In These Times, Indigo Olivier found a vast, aggressive effort involving “TED-style talks, flight simulations, technology demos and on-the-spot interviews.” Much is on offer: scholarships, well-paid internships and a generous student repayment loan program. A dozen or so universities, at the very least, “participate in Lockheed Martin Day, part of a sweeping national effort to establish defense industry recruitment pipelines in college STEM”.
Before the Israel-Gaza War, some movements were already showing signs of alertness to the need to disentangle US learning institutions from the warring establishment they so readily fund. <a href="https://wearedissenters.org/">Dissenters</a>, for instance, is a national movement of student organisers focused on “reclaiming our resources from the war industry, reinvest in life-giving services, and repair collaborative relationships with the earth and people around the world.”
Such aspirations seem pollyannaish in scope and vague in operation, but they can hardly be faulted for their intent. The Dissenters, for instance, took to the activist road, being part of a <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/students-are-pushing-us-colleges-to-sever-ties-with-military-industrial-complex/">weeklong effort</a> in October 2021 comprising students at 16 campuses promoting three central objects: that universities divest all holdings and sever ties with “the top five US war profiteers: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics”; banish the police from campuses; and remove all recruiters from all campuses.
Demanding divestment from specific industries is a task complicated by the opacity of the university sector’s funding and investment arrangements. Money, far from talking, operates soundlessly, making its way into nominated accounts through the designated channels of research funding.
The university should, as part of its humane intellectual mission, divest from the military-industrial complex in totality. But it will help to see the books and investment returns, the unveiling, as it were, of the endowments of some of the richest universities on the planet. Follow the money; the picture is bound to be an ugly one.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/university-investments-divesting-from-the-military-industrial-complex/">University Investments: Divesting from the Military-Industrial Complex</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Helter Swelter</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/helter-swelter/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[E.R. Bills]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 May 2024 00:11:09 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Texas]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150114</guid>
<description><![CDATA[In various and fluctuating levels of awareness, we knew this was coming. Rivers ceased to flow. Lakes and reservoirs dropped to record-low levels or dried up altogether. Maybe not every year in every region, but pretty regularly over the last decade. Then, Smokehouse Creek Fire in the Panhandle this past February—the largest wildfire in Texas […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/helter-swelter/">Helter Swelter</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[In various and fluctuating levels of awareness, we knew this was coming.
Rivers ceased to flow. Lakes and reservoirs dropped to record-low levels or dried up altogether. Maybe not every year in every region, but pretty regularly over the last decade. Then, Smokehouse Creek Fire in the Panhandle this past February—the largest wildfire in Texas history.
In 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could substantially alter the surface temperature of the Earth through the greenhouse effect. In 1938, English steam engineer (and amateur climate scientist) Guy Callendar began gathering climate records from almost 150 weather stations around the world. From this data—and completing all the calculations by hand—he demonstrated that global temperatures had risen 0.3°C over the previous half-century (which roughly parallelled the Second Industrial Revolution and its short-term repercussions). Callendar suggested that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from industrial processes were responsible for planetary warming, but his ideas were dismissed because other scientists refused to accept the premise that human beings might be capable of drastically impacting the environment.
Callendar’s rudimentary estimates of climate change subsequently proved to be remarkably accurate and consistent with modern assessments. But the term “global warming” didn’t appear until a Science journal article published on August 8, 1975. Titled “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?”, it was written by American geochemist Wallace Smith Broecker.
It sent up red flags in Big Oil boardrooms from sea to shining sea.
American corporatists pre-empted public concerns by funding studies disproving serious analysis of Global Warming and Climate Change and favoring reports that underemphasized what was a stake. But for anyone who was really paying attention, the truth was obvious.
The truth, however, was a liability.
Now, coming up on fifty years later, the truth is more accessible than ever, but no one wants to address it. And Texas is at the forefront of American heedlessness.
Just this past Earth Day, April 22, 2024, the Texas A & M Office of the Texas State Climatologist issued a report titled “Assessment of Historic and Future Trends of Extreme Weather in Texas, 1900-2036.” In 40+ pages, this report predicts that for the next twelve years, things will be hotter and dryer, and wildfires will get worse and expand eastward. Meanwhile, the seas in the Gulf of Mexico will rise and the Gulf storms will become larger and more frequent. And winter as a season, at least, will wither, shrink and occasionally disappear.
Unless—as those pesky folks who are paying attention, again, wonder—Global Warming hastens the next Ice Age. Then, the planet will enjoy winter all year long for centuries.
But who cares when profits are up!
As of August 2023, Texas was responsible for 42% of total United States crude oil production. As of October 2023, Texas was responsible for 43% of all the natural gas produced in America. Also, as of October 2023, Texas was producing 52% of the nation’s exportable natural gas liquids.
No wonder so many Texans walk around with guns.
Like William Barret Travis, Lone Star legend of old, Texans have drawn a line in the sand. But this time we’re behaving more like Charlie Manson than Travis, vowing to normalize heat death and defend a super-sized Alamo constructed from hundreds of thousands of tons of plastic that lie in the 620,000-square-mile Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch—which is, of course, an obscenely profitable derivative of fractional crude oil distillation.
So, let’s not be coy. Texas has made gazillions from trickle-down ecocide, and we have no plans to quit. Heck, you and I even enjoy front row seats. We knew this was coming.
We just didn’t want to deal with it. Hell, we still have political leaders and pundits who refuse to acknowledge what’s even happening. So, by proxy, they’re arguably straight-facedly orchestrating this hellishness—but they will never be held responsible for it. And they definitely won’t be the ones sweating or burning or dying as a result.
But why extend the Texas State Climatologist Earth Day report only through 2036?
Even Travis knows the “official” answer to that.
The year 2036 marks the 200th anniversary of Texas Independence. Unofficially, however, conditions project to get so much worse by 2050 that truncating the truth with a historical cap was probably all the powers that be could stomach.
Capitalism is a flame-thrower and, in the end, we’ll be reduced to cinder by corporate greed or frozen to death by our own mad obliviousness.
<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/51kbjrMkznL._SY425_.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-149804" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/51kbjrMkznL._SY425_.jpg" alt="" width="283" height="425" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/51kbjrMkznL._SY425_.jpg 283w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/51kbjrMkznL._SY425_-200x300.jpg 200w" sizes="(max-width: 283px) 100vw, 283px" /></a>The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/helter-swelter/">Helter Swelter</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>The Steady Slide Towards Tyranny: How Freedom Dies from A to Z</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/the-steady-slide-towards-tyranny-how-freedom-dies-from-a-to-z/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 30 Apr 2024 22:50:40 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Authoritarianism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Deep State]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Police]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Police militarization]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Surveillance]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Tyranny]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150123</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The American governmental scheme is sliding ever closer towards a pervasive authoritarianism. The American people, the permanent underclass in America, have allowed themselves to be so distracted and divided that they have failed to notice the building blocks of tyranny being laid down right under their noses by the architects of the Deep State. This […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/the-steady-slide-towards-tyranny-how-freedom-dies-from-a-to-z/">The Steady Slide Towards Tyranny: How Freedom Dies from A to Z</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[The American governmental scheme is sliding ever closer towards a pervasive authoritarianism.
The American people, the permanent underclass in America, have allowed themselves to be so distracted and divided that they have failed to notice the building blocks of tyranny being laid down right under their noses by the architects of the Deep State.
This steady slide towards tyranny, meted out by militarized local and federal police and legalistic bureaucrats, has been carried forward by each successive president over the past fifty years regardless of their political affiliation.
Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton: they have all been complicit in carrying out the Deep State’s agenda.
Frankly, it really doesn’t matter who occupies the White House, because it is a profit-driven, unelected bureaucracy—call it whatever you will: the Deep State, the Controllers, the masterminds, the shadow government, the corporate elite, the police state, the surveillance state, the military industrial complex—that is actually calling the shots.
In the interest of liberty and truth, here’s an A-to-Z primer that spells out the grim realities of life in the American Police State that no one seems to be talking about anymore.
A is for the AMERICAN POLICE STATE. A police state “is characterized by bureaucracy, secrecy, perpetual wars, a nation of suspects, militarization, surveillance, widespread police presence, and a citizenry with little recourse against police actions.”
B is for our battered BILL OF RIGHTS.
C is for CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE.
D is for DRONES. Nearly 1500 police departments across the U.S. include drones as part of their technological arsenal, and that number is growing.
E is for EMERGENCY STATE. From 9/11 to COVID-19 and beyond, we have been subjected to an “emergency state” that justifies all manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security.
F is for FASCISM. A study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10769041/The-US-is-an-oligarchy-study-concludes.html">U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens</a>. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.”
G is for GLOBAL POLICE.
H is for HOLLOW-POINT BULLETS. The government’s efforts to militarize and weaponize its agencies and employees is reaching epic proportions, with federal agencies stockpiling millions of lethal hollow-point bullets.
I is for the INTERNET OF THINGS. This <a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/12/enterprises-billions-of-devices-internet/">“connected” industry</a> propels us closer to a future where police agencies can apprehend virtually anyone if the government “thinks” they may commit a crime.
J is for JAILING FOR PROFIT.
K is for KENTUCKY V. KING. In an 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/17/nation/la-na-court-search-20110517">ruled that police officers can break into homes, without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home</a> as long as they think they may have a reason to do so, leaving Americans with little real protection in the face of all manner of abuses by law enforcement officials.
L is for LICENSE PLATE READERS, which enable law enforcement and private agencies to track the whereabouts of vehicles, and their occupants, all across the country.
M is for MAIN CORE. Since the 1980s, the U.S. government has acquired and maintained, without warrant or court order, a database of names and information on Americans considered to be threats to the nation who can be rounded up in times of martial law.
N is for NO-KNOCK RAIDS. Owing to the militarization of the nation’s police forces, more than <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/02/17/shedding-light-on-the-use-of-swat-teams/">80,000 of these paramilitary raids are carried out every year</a>.
O is for OVERCRIMINALIZATION. Thanks to an overabundance of 4500-plus federal crimes and 400,000 plus rules and regulations, it’s estimated that the average American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it.
P is for PATHOCRACY. What we are experiencing is a <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/08/the_road_to_pathocracy.html">pathocracy</a>: tyranny at the hands of a psychopathic government, which “operates against the interests of its own people except for favoring certain groups.”
Q is for QUALIFIED IMMUNITY.
R is for ROADSIDE STRIP SEARCHES. The courts have increasingly erred on the side of giving government officials—especially the police—<a href="http://www.americanbar.org/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/2013_vol_39/may_2013_n2_privacy/upending_human_dignity_fourth_amendment.html">vast discretion in carrying out strip searches, blood draws and even anal and vaginal probes for a broad range of violations</a>, no matter how minor the offense.
S is for the SURVEILLANCE STATE.
T is for TASERS.
U is for UNARMED CITIZENS SHOT BY POLICE.
V is for OPERATION VIGILANT EAGLE. One of several government initiatives that call for heightened scrutiny of those who challenge the government’s authority, this particular program calls for surveillance of military veterans, characterizing them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123992665198727459">disgruntled, disillusioned</a> or suffering from the psychological effects of war.”
W is for WHOLE-BODY SCANNERS. Using either x-ray radiation or radio waves, scanning devices and government mobile units are being used not only to “see” through your clothes but to spy on you within the privacy of your home.
X is for X-KEYSCORE, one of the many spying programs carried out by the National Security Agency that targets every person in the United States who uses a computer or phone.
Y is for YOU-NESS. Using your face, mannerisms, social media and “you-ness” against you, you are now tracked based on what you buy, where you go, what you do in public, and how you do what you do. <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/16/technology/security/fbi-facial-recognition/">Facial recognition programs are being rolled out in states all across the country</a>.
Z is for ZERO TOLERANCE.
None of these dangers have dissipated in any way, and yet suddenly, no one seems to be talking about any of the egregious governmental abuses that are still wreaking havoc on our freedoms.
As I make clear in my book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Battlefield-America-War-American-People/dp/1590795229/">Battlefield America: The War on the American People</a> and in its fictional counterpart <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Erik-Blair-Diaries-Battlefield-Dead/dp/1954968027/">The Erik Blair Diaries</a>, this is how freedom dies.
If there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it may rest with the Tenth Amendment, which affirms that “we the people” (in the form of juries and local governments) have the power to invalidate governmental laws, tactics and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.
Nullify everything.
Nullify the court cases. Nullify the laws. Nullify everything the government does that flies in the face of the Constitution.
It’s time to rein in our runaway government, reclaim our freedoms, and restore justice in America.
<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/unnamed-1-2.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-147510" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/unnamed-1-2.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="371" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/unnamed-1-2.jpg 250w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/unnamed-1-2-202x300.jpg 202w" sizes="(max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px" /></a>The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/the-steady-slide-towards-tyranny-how-freedom-dies-from-a-to-z/">The Steady Slide Towards Tyranny: How Freedom Dies from A to Z</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>The Israel-US game plan for Gaza is staring us in the face</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/the-israel-us-game-plan-for-gaza-is-staring-us-in-the-face/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jonathan Cook]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 30 Apr 2024 15:08:19 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Antony Blinken]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ethnic Cleansing]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Genocide]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israeli Defense Force (IDF)]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Joe Biden]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Rafah]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[War Crimes]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[West Bank]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150101</guid>
<description><![CDATA[One does not need to be a fortune-teller to understand that the Israel-US game plan for Gaza runs something like this: 1. In public, Biden appears “tough” on Netanyahu, urging him not to “invade” Rafah and pressuring him to allow more “humanitarian aid” into Gaza. 2. But already the White House is preparing the ground […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/the-israel-us-game-plan-for-gaza-is-staring-us-in-the-face/">The Israel-US game plan for Gaza is staring us in the face</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-30-at-12.01.02.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-150102" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-30-at-12.01.02.jpg" alt="" width="520" height="349" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-30-at-12.01.02.jpg 520w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-30-at-12.01.02-300x201.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 520px) 100vw, 520px" /></a>
One does not need to be a fortune-teller to understand that the Israel-US game plan for Gaza runs something like this:
1. In public, Biden appears “tough” on Netanyahu, urging him not to “invade” Rafah and pressuring him to allow more “humanitarian aid” into Gaza.
2. But already the White House is preparing the ground to subvert its own messaging. It insists that Israel has offered an “extraordinarily generous” deal to Hamas – one that, Washington suggests, amounts to a ceasefire. It doesn’t. According to reports, the best Israel has offered is an undefined “period of sustained calm”. Even that promise can’t be trusted.’
3. If Hamas accepts the “deal” and agrees to return some of the hostages, the bombing eases for a short while but the famine intensifies, justified by Israel’s determination for “total victory” against Hamas – something that is impossible to achieve. This will simply delay, for a matter of days or weeks, Israel’s move to step 5 below.
4. If, as seems more likely, Hamas rejects the “deal”, it will be painted as the intransigent party and blamed for seeking to continue the “war”. (Note: This was never a war. Only the West pretends either that you can be at war with a territory you’ve been occupying for decades, or that Hamas “started the war” with its October 7 attack when Israel has been blockading the enclave, creating despair and incremental malnutrition there, for 17 years.)Last night US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken moved this script on by stating Hamas was “the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire… They have to decide and they have to decide quickly”.
5. The US will announce that Israel has devised a humanitarian plan that satisfies the conditions Biden laid down for an attack on Rafah to begin.
6. This will give the US, Europe and the region the pretext to stand back as Israel launches the long-awaited assault – an attack Biden has previously asserted would be a “red line”, leading to mass civilian casualties. All that will be forgotten.
7. As Middle East Eye <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-israel-planning-ring-checkpoints-prevent-men-fleeing-rafah" rel="">reports</a>, Israel is building a ring of checkpoints around Rafah. Netanyahu will suggest, falsely, that these guarantee its attack meets the conditions laid down in international humanitarian law. Women and children will be allowed out – if they can reach a checkpoint before Israel’s carpet bombing kills them along the way.
8. All men in Rafah, and any women and children who remain, will be treated as armed combatants. If they are not killed by the bombing or falling rubble, they will be either summarily executed or dragged off to Israel’s torture chambers. No one will mention that any Hamas fighters who were in Rafah were able to leave through the tunnels.
9. Rafah will be destroyed, leaving the entire strip in ruins, and the Israeli-induced famine will worsen. The West will throw up its hands, say Hamas brought this on Gaza, agonise over what to do, and press third countries – especially Arab countries – for a “humanitarian plan” that relocates the survivors out of Gaza.
10. The western media will continue describing Israel’s genocide in Gaza in purely humanitarian terms, as though this “disaster” was an act of God.
11. Under US pressure, the International Court of Justice, or World Court, will be in no hurry to issue a definitive ruling on whether South Africa’s case that Israel is committing a genocide – which it has already found “plausible” – is proved.
12. Whatever the World Court eventually decides, and it is almost impossible to imagine it won’t determine that Israel carried out a genocide, it will be too late. The western political and media class will have moved on, leaving it to the historians to decide what it all meant.
13. Meanwhile, Israel is already using the precedents it has created in Gaza, and its erosion of the long-established principles of international law, as the blueprint for the West Bank. Saying Hamas has not been completely routed in Gaza but is using this other Palestinian enclave as its base, Israel will gradually intensify the pressures on the West Bank with another blockade. Rinse and repeat.
That’s the likely plan. Our job is to do everything in our power to stop them making it a reality.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/the-israel-us-game-plan-for-gaza-is-staring-us-in-the-face/">The Israel-US game plan for Gaza is staring us in the face</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Unbecoming American: The Fourth Dimension</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/unbecoming-american-the-fourth-dimension/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[T.P. Wilkinson]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 30 Apr 2024 15:00:11 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Uniform Code of Military Justice]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150087</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Stories, Histories, Fantasies and Desire Essentially there are three standard scripts for the history of the United States of America. They partly overlap, exposing or concealing contradictions. They are taught or staged in schools, in homes, at work, on the playground and in the workplace. They are taught all over the world, too. The USA […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/unbecoming-american-the-fourth-dimension/">Unbecoming American: The Fourth Dimension</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
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Stories, Histories, Fantasies and Desire
Essentially there are three standard scripts for the history of the United States of America. They partly overlap, exposing or concealing contradictions. They are taught or staged in schools, in homes, at work, on the playground and in the workplace. They are taught all over the world, too.
The USA originates as part of British North America, especially after the French were all but driven out of the continent with British ascendency and the capture of Quebec. A UDI followed by an insurgency, aided by the vindictive French, leaves 13 colonies to themselves while Upper and Lower Canada remain British. Some of the departed French are replaced by loyalist who flee the victorious settler-colonialists south of the St. Lawrence. These colonies become America about the same time the taunting French allies are busy overthrowing the Bourbon monarchy. France‘s new regime eventually cedes its claim to a third of the North American continental massif central- Louisiana and the Mississippi valley. America doubles in size. The Anglo-Americans fail to absorb or conquer Canada but reach the Pacific Ocean by colonizing Nueuva España/ Mexico and in turn seizing the northern provinces from its southern rulers. America becomes the dominion from “sea to shining sea“.
Of course that story would be incomplete without the script that tells of all the heroism and adventure as the coastal merchants and latifundistas pushed their servants West to occupy lands inhabited and exploited by “Injuns”. America became bountiful as its settlers collected bounties for removal of “useless eaters”. Subsequently, albeit barely mentioned, was the Asian bonded labor (aka known as “contract labor”) abused to connect the coastal regimes in San Francisco and New York. They were barred from becoming American until after the lands of their birth and descent had been ravaged in the Second World War.
Then there is the script known and best loved. This is the story of all those “huddled masses yearning to be free”. In the fine print, freedom included to be free of history, language, love and loyalty as part of “becoming American”. Traditionally “becoming American” has been a process analogous to accepting all the Latin sacraments, from infant baptism to extreme unction. There could be no greater blessing on Earth. Even vicarious consumption could bring the willing to conversion. Becoming American was possible with clothes, food, cinema, music, and political-cultural habits. The world could and should become American even if the iron and razor wire gates to that North American heaven were opened only very selectively. Any indifference or independence of life was simply unbecoming.
While a private soldier, seaman or airman from the other ranks is punished like a criminal for misconduct and possibly less than honorably discharged from the service, the commissioned ranks are treated differently. Article 133 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice – UCMJ provides for serious violations of military discipline by those holding a warrant or commission to be punished by dismissal “for conduct unbecoming an officer (and a gentleman) ”. Ordinary crime is expected among the enlisted. The commissioned class is subject to different standards, even if the UCMJ applies to all members of the US Forces. An officer expelled from his class is also disgraced.
There is a fourth script that is rarely if ever staged and in many ways remains unfinished. Individuals have been punished and disgraced for charges of disloyalty to the US. In fact even entire populations have been subjected to the terrible swift sword wielded by the Grand Republic. Conduct unbecoming an American is easily a capital offense. However in a world in which America, i.e. the United States of America, is one out of many rather than “the one from many” (e pluribus unum) only Americans should owe loyalty to Columbia. It should be natural that those citizens of other nations live and love in their own homes and not those portrayed in Hollywood films and TV series. But to do so, without betrayal, it must be possible to unbecome American, to escape the abusive parentalism of those who churn on the great Wurlitzer or the other machines of Oz.
By turning most of the world into cultural captives (also huddled masses) the US has advertised itself with propaganda, both unarmed and armed, as the only source of freedom, the one true church outside of which salvation is impossible. Unfortunately the Protestant Reformation did not end papal and clerical power. It forced its reorganization. The ostensible decline of Rome on the Potomac will not end the power of its corporate clerical caste. More fundamental change is necessary. We must dare unbecoming in conduct and faith. Give to god what is god’s and give to caesar what is caesar’s. Give America to the Americans and keep one’s own country for oneself.
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0D2TCL5PS/dissivoice-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Unbecoming American: A War Memoir</a> is a compilation of articles, many of which were first published in Global Research, Dissident Voice, The Greanville Post, and in some cases were presented as papers at scholarly conferences. The essays are the product of some forty years reflection on what makes the US Empire so irresistable even as it demonstrates its incapacity to win on the battlefield or in the marketplace. The author, who emigrated from the US more than 40 years ago also renouncing his citizenship, has dedicated years of observation during travels to South America, Africa, East Asia and throughout the western peninsula of Eurasia trying to understand why nearly everyone he met was becoming American – and no one could understand that he had surrendered his locker room keys. As a witness to interruptions in Brazil (1986), Germany (1989), South Africa (1991) and numerous less visible caesures at the fin de siecle, the discrepancy between the apparent opportunities and the vivid realities could not be ignored. These essays are the product of those experiences and reflection on them.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/unbecoming-american-the-fourth-dimension/">Unbecoming American: The Fourth Dimension</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>The Stupidity of It All</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/the-stupidity-of-it-all/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dan Lieberman]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 30 Apr 2024 14:06:08 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Militarism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Taiwan]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ukraine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Zionism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Agnes Callamard]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150099</guid>
<description><![CDATA[House of Representatives legislation that includes “$60 billion for Kyiv, $26 billion for Israel and humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza, and $8 billion for the Indo-Pacific region,” informs the world of the stupidity of it all — from Kyiv to Taiwan, dumbness governs fate. Examine each appropriation, one at a time. […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/the-stupidity-of-it-all/">The Stupidity of It All</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
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House of Representatives legislation that includes “$60 billion for Kyiv, $26 billion for Israel and humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza, and $8 billion for the Indo-Pacific region,” informs the world of the stupidity of it all — from Kyiv to Taiwan, dumbness governs fate. Examine each appropriation, one at a time.
Kyiv
Forced into a political decision that makes it appear that America does not desert its allies, the appropriation accomplishes nothing except to assure that more Russians are killed. It does not save Ukrainian lives or enable Ukraine to gain a leading edge in the war.
In the short run, Ukraine is better protected, which means the war is extended. The kill and destruction rate will be lessened and the time for killing and destruction will be lengthened. The appropriation serves to slightly lessen Ukrainian misery each day and extend the misery for a longer time. The total misery will be the same and feel worse.
Ukraine cannot win the war; it can barely contain the war. Russian troops occupy 1/3 of the country and not one Ukraine soldier is on Russian soil. This is a war of attrition, and, by numbers, Russia wins that war. The deaths and sorrows solicit a solution and not a continuation. The U.S. House of Representatives proudly announces its contribution to the continuation of death and sorrow and does not realize the stupidity of it all.
Some day, at least before all Ukrainian life has been extinguished, the war will end and not satisfactorily for Ukraine. Why wait? Russia has most of what it wants — Crimea and Donbass — both of which were part of the Russian Empire since the late 18th century. If Putin wants Odessa and territory that reaches Transnistria, this may mean extensive negotiations, which is still preferred to extensive slaughter.
Israel
Tied to $17 billion in assistance to Israel’s war effort is $2 billion in humanitarian aid to Gaza. This gives Israel ample funds for acquiring supposed defensive weapons, which it would not need if it stopped offending others, and enables the Zionist kingdom to use its funds for offensive weapons and continue the genocide of the Palestinians. After contributing to infliction of more deaths and sorrows upon the Palestinians, appropriations will be available to relieve their suffering from the $17 billion worth of weapons given to Israel. I have an idea — stop Israel’s attacks on others and its genocide of the Palestinians and then no appropriations will be necessary for anyone.
Not recognizing the use of the October 7 attack as an excuse for the genocide of the Palestinian people is inexcusable. Assisting the genocide by enriching the aggressor is criminal. <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/edcb2722-f640-4c58-bf27-d6625545e703?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/edcb2722-f640-4c58-bf27-d6625545e703?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1714571228887000&usg=AOvVaw2_Uqy0tZaiV8jUw2IKGi2Z">The United Nations(UN) Office of Expert Scholars</a>, several nations, Craig Mokhiber, former director of the New York office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Francesca Albanese at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, and a large mass of humanity consider Israel’s destruction of the Palestinians as genocide. Amnesty International’s Secretary General, Agnès Callamard says, “Palestinians in Gaza are at risk of genocide, more than 32,000 people have been killed, children have been starved to death amid an imminent Israeli-engineered famine and vast swathes of the Strip have been rendered uninhabitable.” <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/dd1cc991-902e-4e1d-9511-87081792cc6a?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/dd1cc991-902e-4e1d-9511-87081792cc6a?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1714571228887000&usg=AOvVaw32dVyPwj6yvYTipXT7Fj_X">Over a hundred organizations and human rights defenders</a> are calling for arrest warrants for Israeli officials to prevent genocide of the Palestinians.
Despite the authoritative, credible, and legal knowledge, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the US State Department said, “We don’t have any evidence of genocide being [committed]” by Israel in Gaza.” They have no evidence because the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and AIPAC, two of their “reliable” sources, have told them there is no evidence and the Biden administration does not want evidence that involves Americans in committing genocide. The public accepts the ugly attachment and willingly donates funds to enhance the slaughter. This is strange. The Holocaust occurred in Europe and the US has tens of Holocaust memorial museums, which have been built to give Americans a “guilt trip“and educate them on the prevention of genocide. These museums have been counterproductive, as are most US policies; instead of preventing genocides, the museums have encouraged genocide. Let’s close these wasteful museums, pay less attention to the word Holocaust, which crowds out GENOCIDE IN GAZA, and hold 24/7 education sessions for all Americans on the Gaza genocide. Include the moribund US government officials who aren’t ashamed to be in the stupidity of it all.
Indo-Pacific Region
This donation to increase tension is mostly about Taiwan. If the People’s Republic of China (PRC) attacks, military assistance to Taiwan may lessen casualties to the Taiwanese but it will lengthen the conflict and cause more casualties to the Peoples Liberation Army. No amount of military assistance to Taiwan can prevent the PRC of 1.3 billion people, an army of 2,035,000 active personnel and 510,000 reserve personnel from overcoming Taiwan’s 23.7 million population and its army of 180,000 active personnel and 1,657,000 reserve personnel. No amount of provocation will push the PRC to attack its fellow Chinese. The appropriation is a waste of taxpayer money and another stupidity of it all.
Immediately after the United States recognized the PRC and terminated diplomatic relations with Taiwan on January 1, 1979, the PRC could have walked into Taiwan and the US would have done nothing. China has had 75 years to invade and reincorporate Taiwan into the PRC and has not set the Taiwan Straits straight. Hasn’t China been patient and sensible? The Hong Kong protests, contradictory to US press assertions of China’s brutality, demonstrated China’s care and restraint — no protester died due to police action in an incident related to the demonstrations. In a protest demonstration in Iraq, which occurred at a similar time, the Associated Press reported, “at least 320 protesters have been killed in the demonstrations.”
By law, de jure, Taiwan is a province in China. Beijing designates the island as “Taiwan province.” The PRC does not recognize the Taiwanese passport and issues temporary IDs for Taiwanese who travel to China. The holders of the temporary IDs are treated as Chinese citizens in China. International agencies also give China de jure recognition of Taiwan. <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/05b4397a-b71c-40f1-8af9-bc7344938f57?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/05b4397a-b71c-40f1-8af9-bc7344938f57?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1714571228887000&usg=AOvVaw0b4D7tZjqnUzI3dZ6f4HsQ">The World Bank sometimes calls it “Taiwan District</a>.” The International Monetary Fund prefers the declarative “Taiwan Province of China.” The International Olympic Committee calls it “Chinese Taipei.”
China also wins Taiwan by default. The island is not recognized as a country. To be a country requires diplomatic recognition by the member states of the United Nations. Because Taiwan was removed as a member of the UN, it is classified as a territory. <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/59da345e-17f0-4ea7-b053-31d5d615386f?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/59da345e-17f0-4ea7-b053-31d5d615386f?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1714571228887000&usg=AOvVaw3pl4Rcjf0nRLE8yxRCL1Sv">Only 11 countries and the Vatican, all small, recognize Taiwan</a> — Belize, Eswatini, Guatemala, Haiti, Marshall Islands, Palau, Paraguay, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tuvalu, and Vatican City. If Taiwan is not a country then to whom does it belong?
Everyone has a fantasy — Taiwan may say it is not part of China but it is a separate part of China, slightly in rebellion. China may say it is a province but it is an uncontrolled province, and the US may constantly accuse China of provocations and prepared to invade Taiwan but it is the US who is provocative and behaving most aggressively. The US actions, which have no purpose and do not change Taiwan’s status are the most fantastic and another stupidity of it all.
Jewish people
Dumbest are the Jewish people for maintaining faith in the Zionist mission and the Israeli government who are preparing their demise. Let us recite the facts, and there is no possible refutation to them – a state that calls itself Jewish and a preponderance of world Jewry are committing genocide of the Palestinian people and don’t expect retribution.
To offset attention to the genocide, Israel’s supporters use media control and continue to flood the ether with Holocaust stories. A latest exposé, on the CBS program Sixty Minutes, charges the British government with covering up the killing of Jewish concentration camp inmates (??? may have only been laborers who died) and others on German captured and controlled Guernsey Island during World War II. Seems the Jewish victims, who have not been well identified by cause of death and name, are added to the total of Holocaust victims. Nothing more pleasing to these Holocaust worshippers than to have more Jews killed; nothing makes them happier.
An advertisement that charges anti-Semitism and asks all to reject hate, mentions that 385 synagogues have received false alarm calls of bombs within the buildings. No bombs, no casualties, and the calls may all be from one person. Different in Gazan mosques; no calls, real bombs, thousands of casualties, and from an entire army of hate.
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Do the guardians of hate in America, who don’t run ads on the magnitude more serious attacks on Muslims, Orientals, Hispanics, Blacks, and LGBT citizens, expect the world not to despise those guilty of committing genocide? Do they believe they can turn truth into anti-Semitism? Due to the carelessness of university presidents, they may be succeeding. The huge campus protests against the killing fields of genocide are given sinister motives and featured are protests by a few persons who voice complaints about bad words and slaps at a half dozen persons on the campuses who happen to be Jews. The complaints don’t merit much attention.
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Only a few Jewish students have been touched and none severely injured in the campus protests. If a student does not want to be bothered, then why not stay away from the demonstrations? And beware of Zionist provocateurs, infiltrators who cause trouble and then yell trouble. In every catastrophic situation, emotions, anger, tension, and tempers are volatile and exaggerated. Taking a few instances of anger in this highly volatile situation, when people want to scream out against the most serious injustice to millions, and deceitfully making it into a contrived torrent of anti-Semitism that gains attention is… you got it… another stupidity of it all. Why isn’t this hyperbole exposed? Why is it allowed?
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</div>The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/the-stupidity-of-it-all/">The Stupidity of It All</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>URGENT: Don’t Punish Nicaragua for Defending Gaza</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/urgent-dont-punish-nicaragua-for-defending-gaza/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[John Perry]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 30 Apr 2024 05:50:37 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Nicaragua]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Sanctions]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Solidarity]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150089</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Dear Friend We need your help to push out this petition (see below), urging the US Senate to Vote No on S1881 – a bill that will place additional unilateral coercive measures/sanctions on Nicaragua. This Bill moved in the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee after Nicaragua argued at the International Court of Justice to defend the […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/urgent-dont-punish-nicaragua-for-defending-gaza/">URGENT: Don’t Punish Nicaragua for Defending Gaza</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Dear Friend
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We need your help to push out this petition (see below), urging the US Senate to Vote No on S1881 – a bill that will place additional unilateral coercive measures/sanctions on Nicaragua. This Bill moved in the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee after Nicaragua argued at the International Court of Justice to defend the Palestinian people from genocide. We have also just found out that it will no longer pass through the Senate’s Banking Committee, where we would have had an opportunity to slow it down, but go directly to the full Senate for a vote. This could happen very quickly. We need to gather at least 1,000 signers to this petition in the next few days so that it can be delivered to Senators mid week. Please share widely through your networks and social media. Signers do not have to be from the United States – please share internationally.
It is tweetedbhere: <a href="https://twitter.com/SolidarityNica/status/1784295271662252276" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/SolidarityNica/status/1784295271662252276&source=gmail&ust=1714514957355000&usg=AOvVaw0V29TbRLv5NNytEYBbrPxN">https://twitter.com/SolidarityNica/status/1784295271662252276</a>
Thank you for taking urgent action!
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JohnThe post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/urgent-dont-punish-nicaragua-for-defending-gaza/">URGENT: Don’t Punish Nicaragua for Defending Gaza</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Intervention in Gaza</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/intervention-in-gaza/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Paul Larudee]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 30 Apr 2024 05:34:01 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Genocide]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Intervention]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israeli Defense Force (IDF)]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150096</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Is there a point at which the genocide in Gaza becomes egregious enough to provoke other countries to directly intervene in the Gaza Strip to prevent further genocide? Can Israel exterminate the entire population without anyone stopping them? This is not a rhetorical question. Intervention is not merely judgments by the International Court of Justice […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/intervention-in-gaza/">Intervention in Gaza</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Is there a point at which the genocide in Gaza becomes egregious enough to provoke other countries to directly intervene in the Gaza Strip to prevent further genocide? Can Israel exterminate the entire population without anyone stopping them?
This is not a rhetorical question. Intervention is not merely judgments by the International Court of Justice or resolutions introduced at the United Nations. It is not even shiploads of supplies sent to queue up for delivery into Gaza, pending permission from the Israeli occupying authorities. Rather, intervention means forcing one’s way into Gaza, whether the occupying authorities like it or not, and being prepared for confrontation.
If there is such a point for some countries, what is that point? Half a million deaths, by massacre, starvation, dehydration, hypothermia, hyperthermia, exposure and disease? A million? And what are the countries that are willing to take action? Or can Israel exterminate the entire population without any countries intervening to stop the genocide?
The question is essential and not rhetorical, because it is now clear that there is no level of atrocity that Israel is not willing to commit, nor that the United States is not willing to support with all armaments necessary to commit the deed, as well as all aid necessary to sustain the Israeli economy. Israel will not be deterred by economic or diplomatic isolation. It is willing to be boycotted by the entire world other than the US. It cares nothing for legal judgments against it. Whether delusional or not, it sees genocide as its only means of survival, and will pursue it until it is deprived of the means to do so.
It therefore behooves us to ask the question whether there are any countries willing to intervene to stop the genocide, and at what point they will be willing to do so. If there are such countries, they will need to define the tripwire for their intervention and the means that they are willing to use to enforce it. They will need to form a consortium that is prepared to act in concert. The consortium will have to act outside the United Nations, because the US veto will prevent any UN action, other than symbolic.
The intervention need not be belligerent, but it must not accept to be impeded, nor to be attacked by the forces of the Israeli government. It must be prepared to defend itself if necessary. A suggested model for such an intervention may be found at <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/03/gaza-airdrops/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/03/gaza-airdrops/&source=gmail&ust=1714540467610000&usg=AOvVaw37-bGBIpeL18N2WcUeDTJi">https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/03/gaza-airdrops/</a>, but the participating countries will make their own plans according to their own means and priorities.
The demonstrations, sit-ins, speeches, letters, phone calls, emails, boycotts, flotillas, legal judgments and other actions to apply pressure to stop the genocide are successful in raising awareness, changing opinions, and perhaps even partially forestalling the inevitable. But they have not in the least affected Israeli actions or US government support for them. Direct intervention is the only way that Israel can be made to stop.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/04/intervention-in-gaza/">Intervention in Gaza</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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