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Source: https://dissidentvoice.org/feed/

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<title>Ongoing Expulsion</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/ongoing-expulsion/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Visualizing Palestine]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 18 May 2024 19:17:37 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Genocide]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Nakba]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150484</guid>
<description><![CDATA[On May 15, we will commemorate the 76th anniversary of the Nakba amid another catastrophe. Since 1948, Palestinians have suffered a profound and enduring trauma, as families were forcibly uprooted from their ancestral lands by Zionist militias, villages were destroyed, and communities were torn apart to create the settler colonial state of Israel. The Nakba […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/ongoing-expulsion/">Ongoing Expulsion</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[On May 15, we will commemorate the 76th anniversary of the Nakba amid another catastrophe. Since 1948, Palestinians have suffered a profound and enduring trauma, as families were forcibly uprooted from their ancestral lands by Zionist militias, villages were destroyed, and communities were torn apart to create the settler colonial state of Israel. The Nakba represents not only a historical event but an ongoing reality, as it laid the foundation for the continued colonization and occupation of Palestinian land and violent dispossession of the Palestinian people. This series captures how the genocide and mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza is an extension of the 1948 Nakba.
<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/VP-Nakba-ongoing-expulsion.jpg"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/VP-Nakba-ongoing-expulsion-820x1024.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="624" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-150485" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/VP-Nakba-ongoing-expulsion-820x1024.jpg 820w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/VP-Nakba-ongoing-expulsion-240x300.jpg 240w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/VP-Nakba-ongoing-expulsion-768x959.jpg 768w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/VP-Nakba-ongoing-expulsion-1229x1536.jpg 1229w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/VP-Nakba-ongoing-expulsion-1639x2048.jpg 1639w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/VP-Nakba-ongoing-expulsion.jpg 1773w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" /></a>The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/ongoing-expulsion/">Ongoing Expulsion</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>New Caledonians Demand Complete Independence from France</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/new-caledonians-demand-complete-independence-from-france/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Africa Awakens]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 18 May 2024 18:36:38 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Colonialism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Emmanuel Macron]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[France]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[New Caledonia]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Resistance]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Sovereignty]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Video]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Kanaks]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150480</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The latest violent anti-French protests by New Caledonians seeking independence from France show clearly that it is time France respected the right of self-determination of the Kanak people of New Caledonia.
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/new-caledonians-demand-complete-independence-from-france/">New Caledonians Demand Complete Independence from France</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[The latest violent anti-French protests by New Caledonians seeking independence from France show clearly that it is time France respected the right of self-determination of the Kanak people of New Caledonia.
<iframe title="New Caledonians Demand Complete Independence From France!" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JoxWR6VNUlQ?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/new-caledonians-demand-complete-independence-from-france/">New Caledonians Demand Complete Independence from France</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Hell in a Very Small Place</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/hell-in-a-very-small-place/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[T.P. Wilkinson]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 18 May 2024 18:15:42 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Academia]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Catholicism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Corporations]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Elitism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Militarism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Innocent III]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[John Harvard]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Laurence Douglas Fink]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Massachusetts Bay Colony]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[McDonalds]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[National Security Act of 1947]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[salvation]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150478</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Hell: the creditor of last resort Note: While I was writing this I thought about many things I experienced and read. Then as I was posting this the title of a book I read many years ago came to mind. Bernard Fall’s Hell in a Very Small Place. Fall was and remained a sympathizer with […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/hell-in-a-very-small-place/">Hell in a Very Small Place</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 decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-149241" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/cover_TP-300x219.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="219" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/cover_TP-300x219.jpg 300w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/cover_TP-1024x748.jpg 1024w, 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: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a>Hell: the creditor of last resort
Note: While I was writing this I thought about many things I experienced and read. Then as I was posting this the title of a book I read many years ago came to mind. Bernard Fall’s Hell in a Very Small Place. Fall was and remained a sympathizer with the imperial powers that exploited Indochina, both French and American. His account of the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu was a combination of despair and appeal for a more sensible counter-insurgency strategy that would waste fewer (French) lives. While Gaza and Dien Bien Phu are by no means politically or historically comparable. The ambiguities in the assessment of this military operation do bear some similarity to the contradictions among opponents of the annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza. Thus the reference to Fall’s title is not intended as analogy or allegory but as cognitive provocation.
Between BlackRock and a hard place
According to published sources, whatever one may think of Wikipedia’s notoriously selective entries, the university named after the Puritan merchant-adventurer of Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Harvard, constitutes a corporation with the largest academic endowment in the world, valued at some USD 50 billion as of 2022. This had led to at least one wag designating “Harvard” as a hedge fund with a university in its portfolio. Hedge funds are unregulated entities that permit people with real money to move it from one source of extraction to another with various benefits such as offshore opacity, tax avoidance, and sundry immunities obtained through the efforts of correspondingly empowered managers to influence investment conditions and outcomes. The hedge fund is a modern version of the Latin Church’s vast traffic in salvation, otherwise known as the indulgence business and Crusades.
Salvation is the intangible product promised by the Latin Church in the context of its risk management business. Financial risk management is the modern product for which the hedge fund was developed. The rabbinical-papal financial services industry — concentrated in the Vatican by Innocent III — is composed of the congregations that preach damnation, those that preach salvation, and the orders and offices that deliver the risk management products, i.e. various types of sacraments, indulgences, dispensations and preferment. Parallel to but in fact a logical extension of the Latin Church’s financial system, the hedge fund has superseded the bank as the core instrument for trading life in return for death.
The university corporations upon which the US Ivy League were based are found in the renowned collegiate universities located in Cambridge and Oxford. Unlike most universities today, the collegiate university was created on the basis of ecclesiastical endowments — hedge funds by which the founders secured dispensation and protected their wealth from those they had robbed in their lifetime. When the Latin Church was nationalized under the Tudors, the English Church succeeded in title but the business continued otherwise unabated. The history of exclusion from the Oxford and Cambridge colleges has been presented as a history of arbitrary prejudice and discrimination, all of which was successively remedied by the post-1945 order. This is a crass avoidance of the real issue. The Oxford or Cambridge college was foremost a financial institution. One must recall that both universities were entitled to send members to the House of Commons. That was not because of their learned activity but because they were property and asset holders and as such satisfied the requirements for the franchise whereas municipalities with ordinary tenants did not.
In other words to become a member of a college in either university made one a shareholder in the corporation and at least a limited beneficiary of the wealth extraction instruments inherent in these entities. From the standpoint of the university corporations, it was clearly inconceivable that persons otherwise not entitled to property or the franchise be admitted to these universities. The fact that Oxford and Cambridge graduates enjoyed privileged access to government, after the precedence of aristocracy and the great public schools, was not based on academic merit but on class membership and in some cases meritorious service to the ruling class. The US elite universities were founded with the same principles and the same structures, albeit without the loyal toast at high table. Later foundations, the post-colonial colleges and universities were controlled by a similar business model. Then the 1862 (and 1890) Morrill Acts, created the basis for the so-called Land Grant universities. Federal land, generously transferred from the indigenous population to the US government, was allocated to the states for the purpose of establishing universities, mainly of the agricultural and technical type. These were a departure from the collegiate structure and more closely resembled the German technical college. Toward the end of the 19th century the US would largely abandon the English model in favour of the German Hochschule. On one hand this was because the Anglo-American elite needed engineers and technicians to develop the country and lacked (rejected) the occupational dual-education system common on the Continent. On the other hand it was implicitly desired to replace hereditary aristocracy with quasi-hereditary “meritocracy”. The Ivy League was to continue to indoctrinate the senior civil service and managerial class as well as issue credentials to the runs of the plutocratic litter so as to preserve the latent class structure in America’s “classless society.” The Anglo-American elite, in contrast to the latifundista of the “Blessed Isle”, recognized the need for merchants and engineers or mechanics to convert a stolen and progressively vacated continent into fungible assets. The settler-colonial elite in North America did not have the benefit or obstacle of the millions with which first the East India Company and then HM Viceroy was confronted.
As a result of this distinct historical development most of the US higher (tertiary) education system is in fact state established and funded by the public purse. After the Second World War, the US elite — in panic after failure to destroy the Soviet Union or even inhibit its technological and social development — adopted legislation to inject massive amounts of public funds into education, a policy deeply antithetical to Anglo-American elite culture, Thomas Arnold and John Dewey notwithstanding. Harvard and Yale graduates were forced to recognize that even their theological seminaries (the new business schools) were not enough to train the masses of indoctrinated technicians needed to confront the Ivan who had not only taken Berlin but launched the first artificial satellite into orbit. Places like Michigan State specialized in counter-insurgency to help the regime terrorize Vietnamese. However even here the bulk of the money went to private universities. This was not only because of the personal union of grantors and grantees but because funnelling public funds for research at MIT or Columbia promoted the money-laundering schemes by which these foundations retained their exclusivity.
Behind the mask of merit, the endowment (and the gravy train to public research funding) permit the university to operate profitably without regard for tuition fees. Essentially the “research grants” subsidize these tax dodges (universities are generally tax-exempt and can accept donations for tax exemption) and constitute a covert subsidy to those corporations or wealthy individuals who endow them. What is in a name? A library by any other name would smell as mouldy.
There is another less obvious but intellectually insidious aspect of this business model. Elite universities become repositories of rare and valuable cultural, intellectual and scientific resources. They are able to hoard them and restrict access accordingly. Thus a poor or mediocre scholar can establish himself as an authority by virtue of using the sources held by such endowments to which others have only restricted access, if any. In a system where canonical texts are used to exemplify dominant ideology, limiting access to such materials gives authority to the loyal servants while diminishing that of scholars forced to rely on secondary or even tertiary sources. It should be recalled that until the Reformation even possession of a Bible by anyone without ecclesiastical license could be punished by death. When our loquacious regurgitators of doctrine and dogma preach against conspiracy they are protected by the locks and keys of the Hoover Institution and the US Holocaust Museum as well as the soft files that saturate the corporate, espionage and secret police bureaucracies.
Which leads us to the business at hand: what is actually happening at the renowned universities of the Great North American republic? The charming claims that academic freedom is being violated are really nothing more than charming. As George Carlin said about “rights”, they are a cute idea. There has never been anything called “academic freedom”, unless one means by that “free enterprise” applied to universities as businesses. As I have already argued elsewhere, science was wholly replaced by Science after the Manhattan Project and the less known biological warfare unit run by Merck during the great war against communism (aka WW2). Where scholarship has been genuinely free it has been despite the university not because of it. The same applies even more rigorously to teaching. There is a reason why teacher colleges (once the only venues to accept women) were called “normal schools”. John Dewey, celebrated for his assertions that education was essential for democracy, never vocally challenged the plutocracy that obstructed it. His education for democracy was ultimately distilled into indoctrination of an emergent multi-ethnic society such that they possessed no identity capable of coherent interest articulation. Unlike the Soviet Union, defunct successor to a historically multi-ethnic state, the US was not only founded on the extermination of the indigenous but on the acidic brain dissolution of the immigrant. Genetic engineering is in fact a deep technological application of the ideology by which humans can be infinitely reconfigured beyond Donald Cameron’s reprogramming at the Allan Memorial between 1957 and 1964.
Barely buried, the FBI asset and GE lackey appointed governor of California and later POTUS, Ronald Wilson Reagan, was canonized for his propaganda (to use the term Edward Bernays did his best to replace) contributions to the complete privatization of what little public and potentially democratic space had emerged in the US despite the victory of finance capital in 1913. Under so-called New Deal policies, the historic mercenary forces of corporate industrial and financial capital managed by so-called White Shoe law firms in cooperation with the US Marine Corps (don’t take my word for it, USMC General Smedley Butler knew what he was he was being ordered to do), was temporarily nationalized. As the war drew to an end there were some who wanted to dissolve these state agencies like the OSS and return liability for piracy to the private sector. However the prescient, mainly Ivy League, elite recognized that the propaganda they had embedded in the UN Charter made a return to open corporate criminality bad for the US image in the competition with the unfortunately surviving system competitor. Thus the National Security Act of 1947 preserved the state protection of the US plutocracy that prevails to this day. Saint Ronald is worshipped like Our Lady of Fatima, by the witting for his PR success and the unwitting because of their blind faith.
Meanwhile there have been numerous challenges to the brutality perpetrated by the militarized police forces of cities where even elite universities reside. They have not prevented the police repression. However some have at least insinuated—as in the case of Columbia — that the actions are not entirely based on local law enforcement perceptions. The relationship between a certain Ms Weiner, as head of NYPD intelligence and counter-terrorism (let’s call it NYC’s Phoenix Program) embedded in the university faculty like what the NSDAP called a “Führungsoffizier” (a party leadership officer responsible for assuring ideological compliance under the Hitler regime) and NYPD liaison to the state terrorist apparatus in Tel Aviv has been illuminated without innuendo. The investigators recognize that the conclusions one can draw are hopelessly obvious. This archetypical infiltration of a primary academic and research institution has been rightfully criticized. However it is not a new phenomenon. The FBI and through cut-outs the CIA have always had agents in the educational institutions deemed critical for the system. These agents served as “talent scouts” and police informers. What appears quite unique to this period of campus protest is on one hand the willingness of students to make demands on the “official permanent and privileged victim state” aka as the State of Israel in Palestine and the violence with which the agents and assets of that State without constitutional or moral boundaries are prepared to perpetrate in their largest host country. As Ron Unz et al. have said with justifiable vehemence, the masks have fallen. The State of Israel is demonstrably capable not only of buying the entire federal legislature and considerable assets at state level, it is able and willing to dictate individual police actions at municipal and university level.
The debate has begun — albeit only among already sensitized critics — about how the precedent set by Lyndon Johnson in suppressing the investigation and condemnation of the State of Israel for its murderous attack on the USS Liberty in 1967 created the immunity of that settler-colonial regime’s officials from any liability under any recognized law. The blatant interventions have followed pronouncements by the reigning head of government with such rapidity that only an idiot could imagine that diplomatic channels were even necessary. This atrocious and obvious capacity to intervene in the minutia of US domestic politics (whereby these are surely not purely domestic matters) may, even if only at the pace of snails or winter maple syrup, produce a partial revulsion against the gut feeling of many sharing that primitive spirit of national sovereignty residual from the 19th century.
Yet beyond the mathematical equation by which the thermodynamics of dog and tail are integrated, there is a more elemental quality that bears consideration. Morse Peckham once wrote and frequently said that “man does not live by bread alone, but mostly by platitudes”. Thomas Friedman wrote that McDonald’s was inseparable from McDonnell Douglas (all now Boeing, I believe). And Harvard is a hedge fund with a university in its portfolio.
Take these platitudes seriously for a moment, in their combination. It helps to be specific. A McDonald’s in Saigon needed an F-4 Phantom. And hedge funds need collection agents, too. Before 1947 these were usually the USMC. Ajax and PBSuccess were the style of the 1950s. FUBELT was the name given to the CIA’s operation on behalf of ITT et al. University students were a disproportionate target of the first wave since they formed the potential cadre in support of the Allende government. In fact, at least two academic economists from North America were successfully marginalized for the rest of their careers just because they supported the new government and not the Rockefeller economics of the University of Chicago. Not only is there no academic freedom under capitalism there is unlimited vindictiveness toward those who violate the free market. We do not know what the cryptonyms for the current counter-insurgency operations are. However, it is important to see their true origins.
While there is no doubt as to the smell of cordite and the hands upon which the powder stains can be found, a more fundamental force is at work, that of the hedge fund. The world’s leading hedge fund and the paramount of this criminal tribe is BlackRock, known also through the peculiar person of one Mr Laurence Douglas Fink, where students of his alma mater have recently been attacked by SA-like gangs for protesting against the mass murder perpetrated by the armed forces of the state occupying Palestine, is reported to have more than USD 10 trillion (billion in continental terms) of “assets under management”. There are diagrams that illustrate the degree to which just this hedge fund has penetrated the world economy, both private and private-public. There is no reason to doubt that the hubris of this graduate of the First Boston school of financial engineering (aka as legalized securities fraud) reflects the asset class to which he belongs.
It may help to diverge for a moment to explain a few basics of the formal corporate and municipal debt business. Gustavus Meyer’ History of the Great American Fortunes (written before he, like Ida Turbell in the matter of Standard Oil, was persuaded to write with more sympathy) explains in lay vocabulary how the bond and stock market actually function. Corporate finance is taught at business schools like typing is taught at vocational schools. However once one has obtained a proper degree in finance or business from one of the gateway institutions—or through viciousness has worked his or her way up after graduation from a less prestigious school — the process begins by which one learns the work of hard selling, usury, stock watering, legislative influence, tax and accounting fraud and deployment of ratings agencies. In short, an investment banking apprenticeship is a course in how — in Adam Smith’s terms — one meets to collude, fix prices and manipulate markets. Cigars only available to those who can evade the general embargo beyond the Strait of Florida or the narcotics beyond the substance control by the CIA/DEA lubricate the Rolex and Patek Philippe adorned wrists.
These cardinals and bishops, prelates of finance capital, sell financial salvation to unwitting penitents and their pastors. They must protect the faith in their product, the belief in the sin for which these sacraments, indulgences and penance are sold. They must retain the value of the derivative instruments for which universities (and other tax dodges) have been established. At the height of the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition together with whatever massed mercenary forces and police power the rabbinical papacy could command, from Brazil to Wittenberg, from Rome to Lima, from Milan to Manila, perpetrated every conceivable and heinous violence against ordinary humans to preserve the credit rating, to secure the value of discounted cash flows.
And so it is today. What we witness at US universities, especially those financed for the benefit of tax dodging hedge fund operators, is command performance. These are not merely the punishment ordered by some barbarian of Polish descent leading a settler-colonial regime in Palestine. These are the acts of the apostles. Acts of the apostles of the holy hedge funds who have succeeded the Latin Church — although consensually — to deliver truly catholic salvation. Salvation that is wealth for the quick and the grave for the dead.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/hell-in-a-very-small-place/">Hell in a Very Small Place</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
</item>
<item>
<title>Modest Proposal to Prevent Hurt Feelings over Demos against Genocide by Israel</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/modest-proposal-to-prevent-hurt-feelings-over-demos-against-genocide-by-israel/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Yves Engler]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 18 May 2024 17:50:12 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Genocide]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[indoctrination]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150470</guid>
<description><![CDATA[According to a Parliamentary Commission Jewish students are feeling “unsafe” on Canadian campuses. Last week a House of Commons justice committee hearing instigated by Liberal MP Anthony Housefather heard from a half dozen students about how difficult life has become as their peers criticize Israel’s holocaust in Gaza. As the Grind’s Dave Gray-Donald pointed out, […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/modest-proposal-to-prevent-hurt-feelings-over-demos-against-genocide-by-israel/">Modest Proposal to Prevent Hurt Feelings over Demos against Genocide by Israel</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[According to a Parliamentary Commission Jewish students are feeling “<a id="m_3896844056726123397OWAd944743e-646f-3f43-d846-93287d6f6417" href="https://thecjn.ca/news/antisemitism-on-campus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thecjn.ca/news/antisemitism-on-campus/&source=gmail&ust=1716140478579000&usg=AOvVaw2Byu2NNSBrHx1R1RO3xKA0">unsafe</a>” on Canadian campuses.
Last week a House of Commons justice committee hearing instigated by Liberal MP Anthony Housefather heard from a half dozen students about how difficult life has become as their peers criticize Israel’s holocaust in Gaza. As the Grind’s Dave Gray-Donald pointed out, the media ignored that three of the students who testified previously held positions in Israel lobby organizations. But focusing only on those paid to promote a foreign state ignores the depth of the problem.
The problem begins when two and three-year olds are indoctrinated into worshiping a far-away apartheid state. The daycare and preschool at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre in Toronto 
<a id="m_3896844056726123397OWAfb5f97ea-0c4b-a244-e700-814cc74860cf" href="https://yvesengler.com/2023/10/29/place-where-protests-didnt-happen-does-support-israel/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://yvesengler.com/2023/10/29/place-where-protests-didnt-happen-does-support-israel/&source=gmail&ust=1716140478579000&usg=AOvVaw12ZCaKpPZdxlPgkHuQEWSr">has Israeli</a> flags on the wall and describes “Israel as a Source and Resource”.
From daycare to summer camp to kindergarten, many young Jews are conditioned to be “terrified” by those opposing genocide. At a number of private elementary schools, they paint the kids’ faces with Israel’s colours on special occasions and regularly sing the national anthem of one of the most violent states in history. At Montréal’s Hebrew Academy Israeli emissaries lead five- and six-year-olds in “<a id="m_3896844056726123397OWA1ce25a1d-83b1-da56-d0d2-3a5a5607097f" href="https://yvesengler.com/2021/05/07/why-is-a-montreal-school-pushing-students-to-join-the-israeli-military/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://yvesengler.com/2021/05/07/why-is-a-montreal-school-pushing-students-to-join-the-israeli-military/&source=gmail&ust=1716140478579000&usg=AOvVaw3446VJzEeI6VT83b2Gu6Cp">fun IDF programs</a>”. Photos of Israeli soldiers and IDF emblems are common and schools also show movies that celebrate the Israeli military and have students send gifts to IDF bases.
Beyond instilling an emotional attachment towards the Israeli military, the kids are radicalized into fundraising for colonial land theft. Schools distribute Jewish National Fund Blue Boxes as part of “<a id="m_3896844056726123397OWAf6916754-b235-fb44-04c5-40b94ec5686c" href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2017/04/using-children-for-israeli-propaganda/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dissidentvoice.org/2017/04/using-children-for-israeli-propaganda/&source=gmail&ust=1716140478579000&usg=AOvVaw0qTgoJocousj2mYK6F7Ogy">educating</a> Jewish youth and involving them in these efforts in order to foster their Zionistic spirit and inspire their support for the State of Israel. For many Jews, the Blue Box is bound up with childhood memories from home and the traditional contributions they made in kindergarten and grade school.” Blue Boxes raise funds for the explicitly racist JNF, which has played an important role in the colonization of Palestine. A number of Montreal Jewish schools have also recently brought grade three and fours to “JNF Day” events that show maps of Israel that include the illegally occupied West Bank.
At Tuesday’s Israel Independence Day rally in Montreal hundreds, maybe a thousand, students were bused in from private schools. The DJ belted out different school names as the kids danced, waived Israeli flags and knocked beach balls around.
In a sign of what’s being taught at the schools, the Montreal Gazette reported on a student yelling “<a id="m_3896844056726123397OWA9f36c600-e194-a375-74e6-7e32263c95be" href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/montreal-israel-independence-rally-palestinian-protest-may-14-2024" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/montreal-israel-independence-rally-palestinian-protest-may-14-2024&source=gmail&ust=1716140478579000&usg=AOvVaw26PAdnk6M_FkAWO2DZR62t">fuck off</a>” as their bus passed by the Palestine counter demonstration. An hour later, at a cafe a few blocks away, a large group of 16- and 17-year-olds sat down next to me with Israeli flags draped over their shoulders. When I asked how they felt about the 15,000 Palestinian children killed one joked about liking to eat 15,000 of the ice creams he was consuming.
As the kids grow older, the indoctrination becomes more intense and sophisticated. At Toronto’s TanenbaumCHAT all grade 12s were recently given a copy of the Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism and the Delegitimization of Israel Noa Tishby’s book Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth. They also entice students to join the IDF. Former Israeli soldiers visit and school alumni sometimes speak to the teenagers from their IDF bases. Hebrew Academy, TanenbaumCHAT and others also celebrate those who join the Israeli military.
Is it surprising that kids who have endured this indoctrination feel threatened by criticism of Israel? For many, university may be their first sustained interaction with anti-Zionism (or even non-Jews).
One certainly can have sympathy for young people who have been brought up in a fantasyland in which Israel is the “only democracy in the Middle East” and a place where settlers made an empty land “bloom”. They’ve been told over and over the IDF is “most moral army in the world” and “there’s no such thing as Palestinians”. We should pity those who have been sheltered from the real world in which billions around the world perceive Israel as a settler colonial state engaged in an ongoing genocide against millions of displaced people.
Something must be done to help them. What can we do to prevent the shock of entering the real world when they attend university? Require changes in the curriculum? Demand historical honesty?
Parliament should investigate what can be done to save these students from feeling frightened by social justice activists opposing genocide.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/modest-proposal-to-prevent-hurt-feelings-over-demos-against-genocide-by-israel/">Modest Proposal to Prevent Hurt Feelings over Demos against Genocide by Israel</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>South China Sea Drama Unfolds</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/south-china-sea-drama-unfolds/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[CGTN]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 18 May 2024 17:40:53 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Indonesia]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Philippines]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[South China Sea]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Taiwan]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Video]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Viet Nam]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[#PhilippineNavy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[AtinIto]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Fishing Rights]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Huangyan Dao]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Philippine Coast Guard]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Scarborough Shoal]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150468</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A Filipino civilian convoy called “Atin Ito” claims to have breached China’s blockade around the Huangyan Dao, also known as Scarborough Shoal, in the South China Sea. The convoy reportedly aimed to resupply Filipino fishermen but stopped 50 nautical miles from the shoal. The Philippine Coast Guard and Navy monitored the mission. What are the […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/south-china-sea-drama-unfolds/">South China Sea Drama Unfolds</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[A Filipino civilian convoy called “Atin Ito” claims to have breached China’s blockade around the Huangyan Dao, also known as Scarborough Shoal, in the South China Sea. The convoy reportedly aimed to resupply Filipino fishermen but stopped 50 nautical miles from the shoal. The Philippine Coast Guard and Navy monitored the mission. What are the real goals behind it? Are the fishermen being exploited, and are there other forces at play? Join us as we uncover the real story behind this high-stakes maritime drama.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="S. China Sea Drama Unfolds: A Political Play?" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1zy4Ny8oC-s?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/south-china-sea-drama-unfolds/">South China Sea Drama Unfolds</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Promising the Impossible: Blinken’s Out of Tune Performance in Kyiv</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/promising-the-impossible-blinkens-out-of-tune-performance-in-kyiv/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Binoy Kampmark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 18 May 2024 04:19:10 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA["Aid"]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Antony Blinken]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ukraine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Weaponry]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150444</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Things are looking dire for the Ukrainian war effort. Promises of victory are becoming even hollower than they were last summer, when US President Joe Biden could state with breathtaking obliviousness that Russia had “already lost the war”. The worst offender in this regard remains the United States, which has been the most vocal proponent […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/promising-the-impossible-blinkens-out-of-tune-performance-in-kyiv/">Promising the Impossible: Blinken’s Out of Tune Performance in Kyiv</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Things are looking dire for the Ukrainian war effort. Promises of victory are becoming even hollower than they were last summer, when US President Joe Biden could <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/us/politics/russia-momentum-ukraine-war.html">state</a> with breathtaking obliviousness that Russia had “already lost the war”. The worst offender in this regard remains the United States, which has been the most vocal proponent of fanciful victory over Russia, a message which reads increasingly as one of fighting to the last Ukrainian.
Such a victory is nigh fantasy, almost impossible to envisage. For one thing, domestic considerations about continued support for Kyiv have played a stalling part. In the US Congress, a large military aid package was stalled for six months. Among some Republicans, in particular, Ukraine was not a freedom loving despoiled figure needing props and crutches. “From our perspective,” <a href="https://www.paul.senate.gov/op_eds/courier-journal-op-ed-dr-rand-paul-heres-how-we-prevent-war-ukraine/#:~:text=For%20Ukraine%20to%20survive%2C%20">opines</a> Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, “Ukraine should not and cannot be our problem to solve. It is not our place to defend them in a struggle with their longtime adversary, Russia.” The assessment, in this regard, was a matter of some clarity for Paul. “There is no national security interest for the United States.”
Despite this, the Washington foreign policy and military elite continue to make siren calls of seduction in Kyiv’s direction. On April 23, the Senate finally <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-ukraine-aid-tiktok-senate-8fe738b17e5c4b2636bc0de11b2620b7">approved</a> a $US95.3 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, with the lion’s share – some US$61 billion – intended for Ukraine’s war effort.
On April 24, a press release from US Secretary State Antony Blinken <a href="https://www.state.gov/united-states-announces-significant-new-military-assistance-for-ukraine/#:~:text=This%20package%2C%20which%20is%20valued,defend%20its%20territory%20and%20protect">announced</a> a further US$1 billion package packed with “urgently needed capabilities including air defense missiles, munitions for HIMARS, artillery rounds, armored vehicles, precision aerial munitions, anti-armor weapons, and small arms, equipment, and spare parts to help Ukraine defend its territory and protect its people.”
On May 14, in his <a href="https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/a-free-prosperous-and-secure-future-for-ukraine/">address</a> to the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Blinken described what could only be reasoned as a vast mirage. “Today, I’m here in Kyiv to speak about Ukraine’s strategic success. And to set out how, with our support, the Ukrainian people can and will achieve their vision for the near future: a free, prosperous, secure democracy – fully integrated into the Euro-Atlantic community – and fully in control of its own destiny.” This astonishingly irresponsible statement makes Washington’s security agenda clear and Kyiv’s fate bleak: Ukraine is to become a pro-US, anti-Russian bastion, with an open cheque book at the ready.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has made the prevention of that vision an article of faith. While Russian forces, in men and material, have suffered horrendous losses, the attritive nature of the conflict is starting to tell. While Blinken was gulling his audience, the military realities show significant Russian advances, including a threatening push towards Kharkiv, reversing Ukrainian gains made in 2022.
There are also wounding advances being made in other areas of the conflict. US and NATO artillery and drones supplied to Ukraine’s military forces have been countered by Russian electronic warfare methods. GPS receivers, for instance, have been sufficiently deceived to misdirect missiles shot from HIMARS launchers. In a number of cases, the Russian forces have also identified and destroyed the launchers.
Russian air power has been brought to bear on critical infrastructure. Radar defying glide bombs have been used with considerable effect. On the production and deployment front, Colonel Ivan Pavlenko, chief of EW and cyber warfare at Ukraine’s general staff, <a href="https://www.afr.com/world/europe/russia-has-the-upper-hand-in-electronic-warfare-with-ukraine-20240108-p5evul">lamented</a> in February that Russia’s use of drones was also “becoming a huge threat”. Depleted stocks of weaponry are being replenished, and more soldiers are being called to the front.
Despite concerns, one need not scour far to find pundits who insist that such advances and gains can be neutralised. Michael Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/us/politics/russia-momentum-ukraine-war.html">admits</a> to current Russian “material advantage” and holding “the strategic initiative,” though goes on to speculate that this “may not prove decisive”.
The gong of deceit and delusion must, however, go to Blinken. Americans, he <a href="https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/a-free-prosperous-and-secure-future-for-ukraine/">claimed</a>, understood “that our support for Ukraine strengthens the security of the United States and our allies.” Were Putin to win – and here, that old nag of appeasement makes an undesirable appearance – “he won’t stop with Ukraine; he’ll keep going. For when in history has an autocrat been satisfied with carving off just part, or even all, of a single country?”
Towards that end, “we do have a plan,” he coyly insisted. This entailed ensuring Ukraine had “the military that it needs to succeed on the battlefield”. Biden was encouraged by Ukrainian mobilisation efforts, skipping around the logistical delays that had marred it. Washington’s “joint task” was to “secure Ukraine’s sustained and permanent strategic advantage”, enabling it to win the current battles and “defend against future attacks. As President Biden said, we want Ukraine to win – and we’re committed to helping you do it.”
Even by the standards of US Secretaries of States, Blinken’s conduct in Kyiv proved brazen and shameless. A perfect illustration of this came with his <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/blinken-ukraine-russia-rockin-in-the-free-world-neil-young-rcna152335">musical effort</a> alongside local band, 19.99, involving a rendition of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.”
Local indignation was quick to follow. “Six months of waiting for the decision of the American Congress” had, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/blinken-ukraine-russia-rockin-in-the-free-world-neil-young-rcna152335">fumed</a> Bohdan Yaremenko, legislator and former diplomat with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party, “taken the lives of very, very many defenders of the free world”. What the US was performing “for the free world is not rock ’n’ roll, but some other music similar to Russian chanson.”
As for the performance itself, the crowd at Barman Dictat witnessed yet another misreading – naturally by a US politician – of an anthem intended to excoriate American failings, from homelessness to “a kinder, gentler machine gun hand”. Appropriately, the guitar, much like the performer, was out of tune.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/promising-the-impossible-blinkens-out-of-tune-performance-in-kyiv/">Promising the Impossible: Blinken’s Out of Tune Performance in Kyiv</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Permafrost Showdown</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/permafrost-showdown/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Hunziker]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 18 May 2024 03:50:18 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Antarctica Ice Melt]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CO2 Emissions]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Permafrost]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150439</guid>
<description><![CDATA[“Deep below the glistening surface of a frozen Arctic lake, something is bubbling—something that could cause global warming to accelerate beyond all previous projections… Now the freezer door is opening, releasing the carbon into Arctic lake bottoms. Microbes digest it, convert it to methane, and the lakes essentially burp out methane.’ Scientists estimate that permafrost […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/permafrost-showdown/">Permafrost Showdown</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[“Deep below the glistening surface of a frozen Arctic lake, something is bubbling—something that could cause global warming to accelerate beyond all previous projections… Now the freezer door is opening, releasing the carbon into Arctic lake bottoms. Microbes digest it, convert it to methane, and the lakes essentially burp out methane.’ Scientists estimate that permafrost holds up to 950 billion tons of carbon. As it thaws, 50 billion tons of methane could enter the atmosphere from Siberian lakes alone. That’s ten times more methane than the atmosphere holds right now,” (Katey Walter Anthony, biogeochemist, National Geographic Explorer Since 2011)
Rapid warming of Arctic permafrost has brought a significant threat to all life forms. Consequently, The Royal Society (est. 1660) felt compelled to support publication of a new video that exposes this threat: What Happens When the Permafrost Thaws? BBC in partnership with The Royal Society by Daniel Nils Roberts, British-Norwegian director, April 15, 2024.
“Thermokarst lakes (formed when permafrost melts) are projected to release approximately 40% of ancient permafrost soil carbon emissions this century.” (Source: K.M. Walter Anthony, et al, “Decadal-scale Hotspot Methane Ebullition Withing Lakes Following Abrupt Permafrost Thaw”, Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 16, No. 3, 2021).
“The Tibetan Plateau is the largest alpine permafrost region in the world, accounting for approximately 75% of the total alpine permafrost area in the Northern Hemisphere. Similar to high-latitude permafrost regions, this region has experienced fast climate warming and extensive permafrost thaw, which has triggered the widespread expansion of thermokarst lakes and other types of abrupt permafrost thaw. The number of thermokarst lakes in this permafrost region is estimated to be 161,300.” (Source: Guibiao Yang, et al, “Characteristics of Methane Emissions from Alpine Thermokarst Lakes on the Tibetan Plateau”, Nature Communications 14, Article No. 3121, 2023).
Ecosystems throughout the planet are rapidly transforming because of human-generated global warming. After all, what does the formation of 161,300 thermokarst lakes in only the Alpine permafrost region alone say about the impact of global warming?
Scientists are expressing renewed concerns about monster climate events lurking beneath the frozen ground of permafrost, which is 15% of the exposed land surface of the Northern Hemisphere (MIT Climate Portal). And monsters lurk above solid grounding in Antarctic glacial formations, starting to fracture as fissures widen like ogres of the deep.
From the Arctic to Antarctica the planet is sagging, dripping, slouching, changing the face of 10,000 years of nature coexisting with humanity side-by-side until only recently as it transforms into an adversarial relationship. Permafrost ranks alongside the Arctic, Antarctica, Greenland, The Great Barrier Reef, and the world’s three largest rainforests as the most important determinates of this changing future. Within permafrost’s confines exist thousands of years of latent ingredients that have the potential to set the world on fire. Its impact could be transcendent.
“Most of Earth’s near-surface permafrost could be gone by 2100, an international team of scientists has concluded after comparing current climate trends to the planet’s climate 3 million years ago… The team found that the amount of near-surface permafrost could drop by 93% compared to the preindustrial period of 1850 to 1900. That’s under the most extreme warming scenario in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” (Source: Study: “Near Surface Permafrost Will Be Nearly Gone by 2100″, Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, September 15, 2023).
What Happens When the Permafrost Thaws (the film): “Permafrost is of huge importance to the entire planet… including one-half of Canada and two-thirds of Russia… and the Tibetan Plateau… permafrost is rock, sediment or ice that remains at or below zero degrees Celsius for two or more consecutive years… depending upon where it is found, permafrost can be millions of years old.”
Interviews in the What Happens film, living in permafrost regions, like Svalbard, Norway, when discussing noticeable climate change: “This kind of weather, it’s not supposed to be like this in October, it’s supposed to be minus 15°, clear, dry climate, and it’s not. It’s a rainstorm.”
As a result of abnormal climate behavior, especially where permafrost hangs out, the “active layer” of permafrost is getting deeper and deeper throughout the world. This is bad news. This creates more and more exposure to thousands of years of accumulation of “who knows what?” It’s happening at a fast enough rate now that it could expose 10,000,000 woolly mammoths (a very rough estimate by somebody?) as well as ancient viruses, and who knows what else?
Moreover, aside from 10,000,000 woolly mammoth skeletons with some of them kinda well-preserved skin, fur, etc., a unique study claims up to 20,000 toxic contamination sites could be exposed: “Here we identify about 4500 industrial sites where potentially hazardous substances are actively handled or stored in the permafrost-dominated regions of the Arctic. Furthermore, we estimate that between 13,000 and 20,000 contaminated sites are related to these industrial sites.” (Source: Moritz Langer, et al, “Thawing Permafrost Poses Environmental Threat to Thousands of Sites with Legacy Industrial Contamination”, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-37276-4">Nature Communications</a>, March 28, 2023).
“But there’s something else that concerns scientists much more. The scariest thing that is happening with permafrost is what it is doing to the climate itself… permafrost acts as a storage… it locks up the carbon from dead vegetation quite effectively, and it’s accumulated over many thousands of years.” (What Happens).
Now, the freezer door is open. Nobody knows for sure what’ll come through. But the biggest concern is permafrost competing with human-driven carbon emissions like CO2. This could drive global warming to unspeakable levels.
“There’s estimated to be four times the amount of carbon in permafrost than all the human-generated CO2 emissions in modern history. The release into the atmosphere of even a fraction of this as carbon dioxide and methane will have a profound impact on the climate.” (What Happens)
“What can be done” is an open question that’s semi-addressed in the film What Happens: We can make more informed decisions and build communities that are resilient to changes, highlighted by the ways that humans are entangled with nature. In other words, adaptation is the most realistic solution, other than stopping fossil fuels, which is not happening.
Meanwhile, the backup position to frustration over ongoing CO2 emissions that are continuing to ratchet up, now at all-time highs, scientists are increasingly calling for “adaptation to climate change” instead of pounding the table for a halt to emissions. For example, a recent report by the prestigious Columbia Climate School makes the case: “Experts are warning that policymakers should consider adaptation to sea-level rise a primary concern.” But, how to adapt to permafrost thaw is an altogether different matter… the most challenging of all.
In truth, climate change is far ahead of schedule, as scientific models of yesteryear look like distant history. It’s likely that history will designate the 21st century “The Age of Adaptation” by default as countries react, after the fact, to collapsing ecosystems, which guarantees a future full of surprises beyond wildest imagination.
There are scientists who believe permafrost thawing will accelerate global warming beyond the comfort zone of life in several regions of the planet; in fact, it’s already very close to a large scale event in Pakistan, India’s Indus River Valley, eastern China, and sub-Saharan Africa.
Still, regardless of circumstances, finding a way forward to the future is in the lifeblood of humanity. In that regard, there is some good news (kinda good): According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) renewables will meet 35% of “global power generation” by 2025, thus a significant rise in CO2 emissions from global power activity is unlikely over the next few years. However, global power generation is not the full enchilada of world energy: Along those lines, coal consumption is expected to drop 13.5% by 2030 but natural gas and oil will both rise as renewables, alongside fossil fuels, experience strong growth to meet increasing levels of demand. According to the IEA, fossil fuels will still account for 70% of world energy, down from today’s 82%, by 2030. This is progress but is it too slow, not enough soon enough? Moreover, and as endorsed by several oil CEOs, the IEA expects oil supply to remain robust into 2050. Hmm -global warming is all about excessive levels of fossil fuel CO2 emissions. Those emissions are not going away anytime soon, which will please the permafrost thawing gods.
As for US influence to lessen the impact of permafrost thawing, although not expressly stated as such in the legislative bill, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides $370 billion in clean energy investments. But can Biden’s IRA survive political wars? Is IRA bulletproof? More importantly, is it enough soon enough?
According to Barron’s d/d April 1, 2024: “Trump Is Taking Aim at Biden’s Climate Law”: He calls it a waste of money, and instead, has promised oil and gas CEOs favorable treatment, including scrapping Biden’s IRA, if elected, assuming they pony-up $1 billion for his campaign. Is this a bribe? It’s MAGA’s BMGW “Buy More Global Warming” to subsidize thawing of permafrost.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/permafrost-showdown/">Permafrost Showdown</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Is the U.S. blackmailing India over assassination allegations to be more hostile toward China and Russia?</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/is-the-u-s-blackmailing-india-over-assassination-allegations-to-be-more-hostile-toward-china-and-russia/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Finian Cunningham]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2024 08:52:46 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Assassinations]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Australia]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[BRICS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Canada]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[India]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Justin Trudeau]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Khalistan Movement]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Norendra Modi]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United Kingdom]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150429</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The United States and its Western allies have stepped up a media campaign to accuse India of running an assassination policy targeting expatriate dissidents. The government of Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, has furiously denied the allegations, saying there is no such policy. Nevertheless, the American Biden administration as well as Canada, Britain and Australia […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/is-the-u-s-blackmailing-india-over-assassination-allegations-to-be-more-hostile-toward-china-and-russia/">Is the U.S. blackmailing India over assassination allegations to be more hostile toward China and Russia?</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[The United States and its Western allies have stepped up a media campaign to accuse India of running an assassination policy targeting expatriate dissidents.
The government of Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, has furiously denied the allegations, saying there is no such policy.
Nevertheless, the American Biden administration as well as Canada, Britain and Australia continue to demand accountability over <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-68148447" target="_blank" rel="noopener">claims</a> that New Delhi is engaging in “transnational repression” of spying, harassing and killing Indian opponents living in Western states.
The accusations have severely stained political relations. The most fractious example is Canada. After Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-66886559" target="_blank" rel="noopener">accused</a> Indian state agents of involvement in the murder of an Indian-born Canadian citizen last year, New Delhi expelled dozens of Canadian diplomats.
Relations became further strained this month when The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/29/india-assassination-raw-sikhs-modi/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published</a> a long article purporting to substantiate claims that Indian security services were organizing assassinations of U.S. and Canadian citizens. The Post named high-level Indian intelligence chiefs in the inner circle of Prime Minister Modi. The implication is a policy of political killings is sanctioned at the very top of the Indian government.
The targets of the alleged murder program are members of the Sikh diaspora. There are large expatriate populations of Sikhs in the U.S., Canada and Britain. In recent years, there has been a renewed campaign among Sikhs for the secession of their homeland of Punjab from India. The New Delhi government views the separatist calls for a new state called Khalistan as a threat to Indian territorial integrity. The Modi government has labeled Sikh separatists as terrorists.
The Indian authorities have carried out repression of Sikhs for decades including political assassination in the Punjab territory of northern India. Many Sikhs fled to the United States and other Western states for safety and to continue their agitation for a separate nation. The Modi government has accused Western states of coddling “Sikh terrorists” and undermining Indian sovereignty.
Last June, a prominent Sikh leader was gunned down in a suburb of Vancouver in what appeared to be a professional hit-style execution. Hardeep Singh Nijjar was murdered by three assailants outside a religious temple. Indian state media described him as a terrorist, but Nijjar’s family denied he had any involvement in terrorism. They claim that he was targeted simply because he promoted Punjabi separatism.
At the same time, according to The Post report, the U.S. authorities thwarted a murder plot against a well-known American-Sikh citizen who was a colleague of the Canadian victim. Both men were coordinating efforts to hold an unofficial referendum among the Sikh diaspora in North America calling for the establishment of a new independent state of Khalistan in the Punjab region of northern India.
The Post article names Vikram Yadav, an officer in India’s state spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), as orchestrating the murder plots against the Sikh leaders. The Post claims that interviews with US and former Indian intelligence officials attest that the killings could not have been carried out without the sanction of Modi’s inner circle.
A seemingly curious coincidence is that within days of the murder of the Canadian Sikh leader and the attempted killing of the American colleague, President Biden was hosting Narendra Modi at the White House in a lavish state reception.
Since the summer of last year, the Biden administration has repeatedly <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20231204-us-delegation-visits-india-to-discuss-alleged-plot-to-murder-sikh-separatist" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pressured</a> the Modi government to investigate the allegations. President Biden has personally contacted Modi about the alleged assassination policy as have his senior officials, including White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and CIA director William Burns. Despite New Delhi’s denial of such a policy, the Modi government has <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20231204-us-delegation-visits-india-to-discuss-alleged-plot-to-murder-sikh-separatist" target="_blank" rel="noopener">acceded</a> to American requests to hold an internal investigation, suggesting a tacit admission of its agents having some involvement.
But here is where an anomaly indicates an ulterior agenda. Even U.S. media have remarked on how lenient the Biden administration has been towards India over what are grave allegations. It is inconceivable that Washington would tolerate the presence of Russian or Chinese agents and diplomats on its territory if Moscow and Beijing were implicated in killing dissidents on American soil.
As The Washington Post report <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/29/india-assassination-raw-sikhs-modi/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">noted</a>: “Last July, White House officials began holding high-level meetings to discuss ways to respond without risking a wider rupture with India, officials said. CIA Director William J. Burns and others have been deployed to confront officials in the Modi government and demand accountability. But the United States has so far imposed no expulsions, sanctions or other penalties.”
What appears to be going on is a calculated form of coercion by the United States and its Western allies. The allegations of contract killings and “transnational repression” against Sikhs in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia and Germany are aimed at intimidating the Indian government with further embarrassing media disclosures and Western sanctions. The U.S. State Department and the Congress have both recently <a href="https://thewire.in/rights/us-congress-research-service-india-human-rights" target="_blank" rel="noopener">highlighted</a> claims of human rights violations by the Modi government and calls for political sanctions.
The objective, it can averred, is for Washington and its Western allies to pressure India into toeing a geopolitical line of hostility towards China and Russia.
During the Biden administration, the United States has assiduously courted India as a partner in the Asia-Pacific to confront China. India has been welcomed as a member of the U.S.-led <a href="https://www.army.mil/article/270153/building_the_quad_a_diamond_of_national_security" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Quad</a> of powers, including Japan and Australia. The Quad overlaps with the U.S. security interests of the AUKUS military partnership with Britain and Australia.
Another major geopolitical prize for Washington and its allies is to drive a wedge between India and Russia.
Since the NATO proxy war blew up in Ukraine in February 2022, the United States has been continually cajoling India to condemn Russia and to abide by Western sanctions against Moscow. Despite the relentless pressure, the Modi government has spurned Western attempts to isolate Russia. Indeed, India has <a href="https://www.livemint.com/videos/news/modi-governments-firm-stand-on-buying-russian-oil-pays-off-india-saved-7-9-bn-in-2024-watch-11714979547122.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">increased</a> its purchase of Russian crude oil and is importing record more quantities than ever before the Ukraine conflict.
Furthermore, India is a key member of the BRICS forum and a proponent of an emerging multipolar world order that undermines U.S.-led Western hegemony.
From the viewpoint of the United States and its Western allies, India represents a tantalizing strategic prospect. With a foot in both geopolitical camps, New Delhi is sought by the West to weaken the China-Russia-BRICS axis.
This is the geopolitical context for understanding the interest of Western powers in making an issue out of allegations of political assassination by the Modi government. Washington and its Western allies want to use the allegations as a form of leverage – or blackmail – on India to comply with geopolitical objectives to confront China and Russia.
It can be anticipated that the Western powers will amplify the media campaign against India in line with exerting more hostility toward China and Russia.
• First published in <a href="https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/05/13/is-us-blackmailing-india-over-assassination-allegations-to-be-more-hostile-toward-china-and-russia/">Strategic Culture Foundation</a>The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/is-the-u-s-blackmailing-india-over-assassination-allegations-to-be-more-hostile-toward-china-and-russia/">Is the U.S. blackmailing India over assassination allegations to be more hostile toward China and Russia?</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Gaza Genocide 2.0</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/gaza-genocide-2-0/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Paul Larudee]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2024 08:06:11 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Antony Blinken]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Crimes against Humanity]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Genocide]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Hospitals]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Housing/Homelessness]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Hunger/Famine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Hypocrisy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israeli Defense Force (IDF)]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Joe Biden]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Khan Younis]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Rafah]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[The "West"]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[War Crimes]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Weapons Sales]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ministry of Health]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150433</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The most widely reported figure currently used for Palestinian casualties in Gaza since October 7, 2023, is more than 35,000 killed and 78,000 wounded. These are only the civilian casualties, reported by the Ministry of Health. More than two-thirds are women and children. Combatant casualties are not included. The Ministry of Health maintains a list […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/gaza-genocide-2-0/">Gaza Genocide 2.0</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[The most widely reported figure currently used for Palestinian casualties in Gaza since October 7, 2023, is more than 35,000 killed and 78,000 wounded. These are only the civilian casualties, reported by the Ministry of Health. More than two-thirds are women and children. Combatant casualties are not included. The Ministry of Health maintains a list of the casualties, by name, gender and age classification (e.g. “infant”). This usually means that a medical professional has tended to the individual, usually at a hospital. The list is conservative in the extreme: it reports only the casualties that it can identify and confirm.
The inevitable consequence of this sort of tally is that while it provides hard data, it vastly undercounts the actual total, since most of the hospitals have been destroyed, and many of the medical personnel either killed or taken captive. The uncounted casualties are therefore necessarily at least 200 or 300% greater than those reported, as <a href="https://nader.org/2024/03/05/stop-the-worsening-undercount-of-palestinian-casualties-in-gaza/">Ralph Nader</a> has pointed out, and as I discussed in “<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/02/not-all-of-the-genocide-is-being-livestreamed/">Not all of the genocide is being live-streamed</a>” more than three months ago.
How many have died without ever being reported to the Ministry of Health? How many on the list of wounded die later for lack of treatment, but are never reported as dead from weapons of war? How many are nameless and unidentified bodies? How many are corpses that have not even been found? How many are newborn infants that died without ever having a registered name?
But there is another category, potentially even greater, that is becoming the new focus of Israel’s genocide: deaths by starvation, disease, exposure, and dehydration. These are not currently included in the Ministry of Health statistics, and they are largely anonymous deaths.
Israel loves anonymous deaths. It interprets condemnation of its genocide project as mainly an image problem, generating pressure to stop the elimination of the population in Gaza. Israel therefore loves deaths that do not appear on Al-Jazeera or even in social media. The media are only interested in death from the skies, demolition of neighborhoods, massacres of civilians, masses of refugees fleeing on foot with their few remaining possessions. Deaths due to “natural causes” are not this dramatic.
This is why Israel has modified its plans for the invasion of Rafah: fewer bombs, more starvation and deprivation. The first step was to capture and occupy the Rafah border crossing, in violation of Israel’s treaty with Egypt. This has enabled Israel to entirely stop relief supplies to the people of Gaza, whose limited farms and food production had already been destroyed along with their homes. Then they destroyed the hospitals and the sanitation and health services. In addition, they forced the population – many of them already living in makeshift tents – to flee once again, this time to more desolate locations with even fewer (zero) amenities, such as the barren al-Mawasi sand dunes, and thus more conducive to death by “natural causes”.
This quieter form of genocide suits Israel’s US accomplices in the Biden administration, as well. President Biden and Secretary Blinken have been under public pressure and criticism that they and their allies in the Israel lobby have been unable to quell by control of the news media, censorship of social media, or repression of freedom of speech and assembly, notably in the student movement. They are reluctant to withhold the tools of genocide from Israel, but welcome any change that might reduce the public outrage (and improve their chances in the November presidential elections).
Israel seems to think that removing and preventing the means to sustain life in Gaza, as an alternative to bullets, bombs and explosives, may achieve that objective. They seem to be taking a page from the Armenian genocide, which herded large numbers of the unwanted population into the Syrian desert and abandoned them there, or the native American genocide, where the food supply was destroyed.
If the list of casualties grows more slowly while a vastly larger number of Palestinians die uncounted, this will further the goal of killing and/or expelling the population of Gaza, and advances the day when an empty Gaza can be annexed to Israel, for developers to build beach condos for Zionist settlers, with subsidies and low-cost loans from the US and Germany.
POST SCRIPT: As this article heads for publication, the completion of the US floating pier on the shore of central Gaza was announced. Its ostensible purpose is to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinians. We are permitted to be skeptical. Why create such a cumbersome procedure to deliver aid, when mountains of supplies are waiting at the Egyptian border?
Why indeed? Some possibilities:
<ul>
<li>To put the US and Israel in total control of Gaza and shut out the UN</li>
<li>To export the Palestinians from Gaza</li>
<li>To create a “Guantanamo East” US naval base</li>
<li>To garner votes of the faithful for Biden before the election and then let Israel toss the Palestinians into the sea</li>
</ul>
I don’t have answers or even good speculations at this point, but stay tuned for Gaza Genocide 3.0The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/gaza-genocide-2-0/">Gaza Genocide 2.0</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>My Heart Makes My Head Swim</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/my-heart-makes-my-head-swim/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Vijay Prashad]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2024 13:57:39 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Apartheid]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Genocide]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Murder]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[UNRWA]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[War Crimes]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Frantz Fanon]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[occupation]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Philippe Lazzarini]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Rafah]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150426</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Malak Mattar (Palestine), Hind’s Hall, 2024. The title of this newsletter, ‘My heart makes my head swim’, comes from Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952). In a chapter called ‘The Fact of Blackness’, Fanon writes about the despair that racism produces, the immense anxiety about living in a world that has decided that certain […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/my-heart-makes-my-head-swim/">My Heart Makes My Head Swim</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<img decoding="async" class="CToWUd a6T" tabindex="0" src="https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/meips/ADKq_Nbk7b3DEzc4Cs-xW9snooMBLuuXNsaLBpK58F_BYAqOrE74fCZFRUeecf1I7Xzu0mG59NqMtzXSXLnMgOp6ptJsv3pJPCenjq3jgzPCh0UO0laiFJ6PkNQSCCmknh0qWDp4_Ihe-woUhAlvInXix5pupaZ_3geR-nrecEj3eks9wxZxcrhDS_5L=s0-d-e1-ft#https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Malak-Mattar-Palestine-Hinds-Hall-2024-e1715711723445.jpeg" alt="" width="500" border="0" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-102625" data-bit="iit" />
Malak Mattar (Palestine), Hind’s Hall, 2024.
The title of this newsletter, ‘My heart makes my head swim’, comes from Frantz Fanon’s <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=b85852a219&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3Db85852a219%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw0z4nN6cYcyPhD9FHMk-jbM">Black Skin, White Masks</a> (1952). In a chapter called ‘The Fact of Blackness’, Fanon writes about the despair that racism produces, the immense anxiety about living in a world that has decided that certain people are simply not human or not sufficiently human. The lives of these people, children of a lesser god, are assigned less worth than the lives of the powerful and the propertied. An international division of humanity tears the world into pieces, throwing masses of people into the fires of anguish and oblivion.
What is happening in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, is ghastly. Since October 2023, Israel has ordered 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza to move southwards as the Israeli armed forces have steadily moved their gunsights across the Wadi Gaza wetlands down to the edge of Rafah. Kilometre by kilometre, as the Israeli military advances, the so-called safe zone moves further and further south. In December, the Israeli government claimed, with great cruelty, that the tent city of al-Mawasi (west of Rafah, along the Mediterranean Sea) was the new designated safe area. A mere 6.5 square kilometres (half the size of London’s Heathrow airport), the supposed safe zone within al-Mawasi is nowhere near large enough to house the more than one million Palestinians who are in Rafah. Not only was it absurd for Israel to say that al-Mawasi would be a refuge, but – according to the laws of war – a safe zone must be agreed upon by all parties.
<img decoding="async" class="CToWUd a6T" tabindex="0" src="https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/meips/ADKq_Nb3QHFHQNImiky7yqPQJMVoKVRBO_bRfna88nxgp4rM1o8RYmFzKaCXMa52dkflmYiQZXzCShmVKZJ6cjJ-n-R8K0gy-Y1mF7zcDRm1-UZ_wBJ34es0mGC6Al4fNMH5HfixxMfVCjqPx4t3ua6tXEkeoZgStQZnCVwj7Je2WiqD_1MhpEY=s0-d-e1-ft#https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Ismail-Shammout-Palestine-Odyssey-of-a-People-1980.jpg" alt="" width="500" border="0" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-102574" data-bit="iit" />
Ismail Shammout (Palestine), Odyssey of a People, 1980.
‘How can a zone be safe in a war zone if it is only unilaterally decided by one part of the conflict?’, <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=765ee0d1a4&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3D765ee0d1a4%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw1IsVWcrth2bV9OzsxcV87x">asked</a> Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA); ‘It can only promote the false feeling that it will be safe’. Furthermore, on several occasions, Israel has bombed al-Mawasi, the area it says is safe. On 20 February, Israel attacked a shelter operated by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, killing two family members of the organisation’s staff. This week, on 13 May, an international UN staff member was <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=5f77798043&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3D5f77798043%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw0Yhkxw8zYCwsNuPlmh0TB3">killed</a> after the Israeli army opened fire on a UN vehicle, one of the nearly 200 UN workers <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=427930c428&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3D427930c428%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw3BevT1d80rv2xbB5bbtl1_">killed</a> in Gaza in addition to the <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=05d7ab7791&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3D05d7ab7791%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw1i6znMhlGCY7sjycJDRA_E">targeted assassination</a> of aid workers.
<img decoding="async" class="CToWUd a6T" tabindex="0" src="https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/meips/ADKq_NYzREfjlL_LHanx6uLwzEqTb7sJ1NY-hlNknAEP1nvQMYYs_rzmrDtMzZw5N0d2LpU5wEgNlypQzKkfaqsP3ccIEuG0PRU2B16q1M1L5k0XjEdSLBM-AeOPS5yC8GEdpnA27yXhIJKug-6Jl4ahm6rdutf_BdAe=s0-d-e1-ft#https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Arif-El-Rayyes-Lebanon-Untitled-1963.jpg" alt="" width="500" border="0" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-102584" data-bit="iit" /> 
Aref El-Rayyes (Lebanon), Untitled, 1963.
Not only has Israel begun to bomb Rafah, but it hastily sent in tanks to seize the only border crossing through which aid dribbled in on the few trucks a day that were allowed to enter. After Israel seized the Rafah border, it prevented the entry of aid into Gaza altogether. Starving Palestinians has long been Israeli <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=356081acbc&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3D356081acbc%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw0MkBVBG2KEhYSI8FPv0Ikb">policy</a>, which is of course a war crime. Preventing aid from entering Gaza is part of the international division of humanity that has defined not only this genocide, but the occupation of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank since 1967 and the system of apartheid within the borders defined by Israel following the 1948 Nakba (‘Catastrophe’).
Three words in this sentence are fundamentally contested by Israel: apartheid, occupation, and genocide. Israel and its Global North allies want to claim that the use of these words to describe Israeli policies, Zionism, or the oppression of Palestinians is tantamount to anti-Semitism. But, as the United Nations and numerous respected human rights groups note, these are legal descriptions of the reality on the ground and not moral judgments that are made either in haste or out of anti-Semitism. A short primer on the accuracy of these three concepts is necessary to counter this denial.
<img decoding="async" class="CToWUd a6T" tabindex="0" src="https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/meips/ADKq_NZW60d6k261T4LEkitn7VeM3kJH5vaLvPcHTRYCSjdgR-gwRB_CcZOhcMUEzpRZBsp8MQhwRaYTZhrl0ATYCcKM7fdbyWpoFRzoTSFk5EaI5I-YCCRAW55bnAqQxtIwC_cDhhkbHGFCFDyi76ldhe2rDOPd30CKefA8TLAox66Y0wCl9zzOPyooCQ=s0-d-e1-ft#https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Nelson-Makamo-South-Africa-Decoration-of-the-Youth-2019.jpg" alt="" width="500" border="0" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-102594" data-bit="iit" />
Nelson Makamo (South Africa), Decoration of the Youth, 2019.
Apartheid. The Israeli government treats the Palestinian minority population within the borders defined in 1948 (21%) as second-class citizens. There are at least <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=d52ad9579c&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3Dd52ad9579c%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw1vdmaQJLMpCgfNbVMzjAM4">sixty-five</a> Israeli laws that <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=a3307f27a7&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3Da3307f27a7%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw2S4ikV0K5ndH1_yACxMx-t">discriminate</a> against Palestinian citizens of Israel. One of them, <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=a292693fd1&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3Da292693fd1%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw2iB8ZJw275XUF3d-vkP_fE">passed</a> in 2018, declares the country a ‘nation state of the Jewish people’. As the Israeli philosopher Omri Boehm <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=b2e0dfa472&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3Db2e0dfa472%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw3MXkFHbUak2B_bfyTjrvax">wrote</a>, through this new law, the Israeli government ‘formally endorses’ the use of ‘apartheid methods within Israel’s recognised borders’. The <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=c7167d4c97&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3Dc7167d4c97%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw0Z8N4ujyVkk7HSDcuRyoIH">United Nations</a> and <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=61ab37a7c3&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3D61ab37a7c3%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw3PLJlqueqmFaUSAQBWnWXa">Human Rights Watch</a> have both said that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians falls under the definition of apartheid. The use of this term is entirely factual.
<img decoding="async" class="CToWUd a6T" tabindex="0" src="https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/meips/ADKq_NYrzp_Prl3jl3H9XetzZtCgAbVoW0bwyWhtCYJSZFzzFzbQ3qCBZZsRJd7ZIk-_edP7UAmboxnTKWm0IRNO39kkCwIbv0dl5rkO0b73dlZh-4y00RTRloU_DlTmypOffXe3MPTXkScvRE0W_2zgumRj2veUZnhDFmh92s8EKDdEZg=s0-d-e1-ft#https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Laila-Shawa-Palestine-The-Hands-of-Fatima-2013.jpg" alt="" width="500" border="0" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-102604" data-bit="iit" />
Laila Shawa (Palestine), The Hands of Fatima, 2013.
Occupation. In 1967, Israel <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=5383b77299&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3D5383b77299%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw0qs1zoABxTfOL0_mxigdcq">occupied</a> the three Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. From 1967 to 1999, these three areas were referred to as part of the Occupied Arab Territories (which at different times also included Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Syria’s Golan region, and southern Lebanon). Since 1999, they have been termed the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). In UN <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=e8d4249ffc&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3De8d4249ffc%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw0bmE0Odc4fyDcPT4IYYEHb">documents</a> and at the <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=54fbbc7ba1&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3D54fbbc7ba1%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw2OWk1I4S2-0gxo1YijDJGC">International Court of Justice</a>, Israel is referred to as the ‘occupying power’, which is a term of art that requires certain obligations from Israel toward those whom it occupies. Although the 1993 Oslo Accords set up the Palestinian Authority, Israel remains the occupying power of the OPT, a designation that has not been revised. An occupation is identical to colonial rule: it is when a foreign power dominates a people in their homeland and denies them sovereignty and rights. Despite Israel’s military withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 (which included the dismantling of twenty-one illegal settlements), Israel continues to occupy Gaza by building a perimeter fence around the Gaza Strip and by policing the Mediterranean waters of Gaza. Annexation of parts of East Jerusalem and the West Bank as well as the punctual bombing of Gaza are violations of Israel’s obligation as the occupying power.
An occupation imposes a structural condition of violence upon the occupied. That is why international law recognises that those who are occupied have the right to resist. In 1965, in the midst of Guinea Bissau’s struggle against Portuguese colonialism, the United Nations General Assembly <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=d677af23db&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3Dd677af23db%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw2SpZjKpOY_pyt94kndusX3">passed</a> Resolution 2105 (‘Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples’). Paragraph 10 of this resolution is worth reading carefully: ‘The General Assembly… [r]ecognises the legitimacy of the struggle by the peoples under colonial rule to exercise their right to self-determination and independence and invites all States to provide material and moral assistance to the national liberation movements in colonial Territories’. There is no ambiguity here. Those who are occupied have the right to resist, and, in fact, all member states of the United Nations are bound by this treaty to assist them. Rather than sell arms to the occupying power, who is the aggressor in the ongoing genocide, the members states of the United Nations – particularly from the Global North – should aid the Palestinians.
<img decoding="async" class="CToWUd a6T" tabindex="0" src="https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/meips/ADKq_NaCHJWAkfIlg_dJtlb8r8fJTVqjLebDLX_8jxhia3eYYhiezVpFyQGV041Zk8-Nx6yMZ4IbuaKyAqF_QT9BRISBJHu7ZHTZPG_cMMp5D97W6ELRRexvR4kmwAtmPnaRYdSSAp2nylygVynA2uREbx2WK9KPXLkDorRr5tIZd3Czs9998tbxcQ=s0-d-e1-ft#https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Abdulqader-al-Rais-United-Arab-Emirates-Waiting-1970.jpg" alt="" width="500" border="0" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-102614" data-bit="iit" />
Abdulqader al-Rais (United Arab Emirates), Waiting, c. 1970.
Genocide. In its <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=b46c6e09ef&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3Db46c6e09ef%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw1gjicXSSHqp3tsWea8xk5n">order</a> published on 26 January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that there was ‘plausible’ evidence of Israel committing genocide against Palestinians. In March, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Francesca Albanese, published a monumental <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=08bdd2b608&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3D08bdd2b608%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw0UjA4amCVFKlvBYaEzm7Sb">report</a> called Anatomy of a Genocide. In this report, Albanese wrote that ‘there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met’. ‘More broadly’, she wrote, ‘they also indicate that Israel’s actions have been driven by a genocidal logic integral to its settler-colonial project in Palestine, signalling a tragedy foretold’.
Intent to commit genocide is easily proved in the context of Israel’s bombardment. In October 2023, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=b12ae63520&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3Db12ae63520%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw1bJCPxYWvayKDjfXQdsbJD">said</a> that ‘an entire nation out there is responsible’ for the attacks on 7 October, and it was not true that ‘civilians [were] not… aware, not involved’. The ICJ pointed to this statement, among others, since it expresses Israel’s intent and use of ‘collective punishment’, a <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=25c5756536&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3D25c5756536%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw2k1hF-q2ndElJUtYyimoQZ">genocidal war crime</a>. The following month, Israel’s Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=480bf9c4fe&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3D480bf9c4fe%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw0XwgUJ0c6-WbxNIKxdplsB">said</a> that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza was ‘an option’ since ‘there are no non-combatants in Gaza’. Before the ICJ ruling was published, Moshe Saada, a member of the Israeli parliament from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=e0b701b503&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3De0b701b503%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw1zuVXCe_SyMyEH5H4MOK10">said</a> that ‘all Gazans must be destroyed’. These sentiments, by any international standard, demonstrate an intent to commit genocide. As with ‘apartheid’ and ‘occupation’, the use of the term ‘genocide’ is entirely accurate.
<img decoding="async" class="CToWUd a6T" tabindex="0" src="https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/meips/ADKq_NYt7hLO9RtmJtTpxrJ2i5LW4vUCC8EgIGMduGkN5eQx26UeaubvPTpMd13q9tzt3m-yLjb-TcM-syiNy0C4pVZlXUhC81mxwVlFX6mu-qLcsvMxygxm02xbNQ1ISnjKgxq7ej1aID7xtwqdAwrLN_cULA=s0-d-e1-ft#https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/IMG_0038-scaled-e1715711968232.jpeg" alt="" width="500" border="0" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-102645" data-bit="iit" />
Vijay Prashad presents Frantz Fanon’s daughter, Mireille Fanon Mendès-France, with a poster of the cover of the new isiZulu edition of her father’s classic, The Wretched of the Earth, in Paris, France, 2024.
Earlier this year, Inkani Books, a Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research project based in South Africa, published the isiZulu translation of Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=4f643b7ba3&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3D4f643b7ba3%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw23xZSq-DqpYJjEVU0MDnGq">Izimpabanga Zomhlaba</a>, translated by Makhosazana Xaba. We are so proud of this accomplishment, bringing the work of Fanon into another African language (it has already been translated into Arabic and Swahili).
When I was last in Palestine, I spoke with young children about their aspirations. What they told me reminded me of a section from <a href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=1bea772cab&e=08d2c475ec" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6%26id%3D1bea772cab%26e%3D08d2c475ec&source=gmail&ust=1715953073715000&usg=AOvVaw0-g1zTRJ35hUZciQVAhLAF">The Wretched of the Earth</a>: ‘At twelve or thirteen years of age the village children know the names of the old men who were in the last rising, and the dreams they dream in the douars [camps] or in the villages are not those of money or of getting through their exams like the children of the towns, but dreams of identification with some rebel or another, the story of whose heroic death still today moves them to tears’.
Children in Gaza will remember this genocide with at least the same intensity as their ancestors remembered 1948 and as their parents remembered the occupation that has loomed over this narrow piece of land since their own childhood. Children in South Africa will read these lines from Fanon in isiZulu and remember those who fell to inaugurate a new South Africa thirty years ago.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/my-heart-makes-my-head-swim/">My Heart Makes My Head Swim</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>A Brutal Punishment: The Sentencing of David McBride</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/a-brutal-punishment-the-sentencing-of-david-mcbride/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Binoy Kampmark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2024 06:39:30 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Australia]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Courts and Judges]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[David McBride]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[War Crimes]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Whistleblowing]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150418</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Sometimes, it’s best not to leave the issue of justice to the judges. They do what they must: consult the statutes, test the rivers of power, and hope that their ruling will not be subject to appeal. David McBride, the man who revealed that Australia’s special forces in Afghanistan had dimmed and muddied before exhaustion, […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/a-brutal-punishment-the-sentencing-of-david-mcbride/">A Brutal Punishment: The Sentencing of David McBride</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Sometimes, it’s best not to leave the issue of justice to the judges. They do what they must: consult the statutes, test the rivers of power, and hope that their ruling will not be subject to appeal. David McBride, the man who revealed that Australia’s special forces in Afghanistan had dimmed and muddied before exhaustion, committed atrocities and faced a compromised chain of command, was condemned on May 14 to a prison term of five years and eight months.
Without McBride’s feats, there would have been no <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-11/killings-of-unarmed-afghans-by-australian-special-forces/8466642">Afghan Files</a> published by the ABC. The <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BriefingBook47p/BreretonReport">Brereton Inquiry</a>, established to investigate alleged war crimes, would most likely have never been launched. (That notable document subsequently identified 39 instances of alleged unlawful killings of Afghan civilians by members of the special forces.)
In an affidavit, McBride <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/27/war-crimes-whistleblower-david-mcbride-reveals-why-he-went-to-the-media">explained</a> how he wished Australians to realise that “Afghan civilians were being murdered and that Australian military leaders were at the very least turning the other way and at worst tacitly approving this behaviour”. Furthermore “soldiers were being improperly prosecuted as a smokescreen to cover [the leadership’s] inaction and failure to hold reprehensible conduct to account.”
For taking and disclosing 235 documents from defence offices mainly located in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), the former military lawyer was charged with five national security offences. He also found Australia’s whistleblowing laws feeble and fundamentally useless. The Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 (Cth) provided no immunity from prosecution, a fact aided by grave warnings from the Australian government that vital evidence would be excluded from court deliberation on national security grounds.
Through the process, the Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, could have intervened under <a href="http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ja1903112/s71.html#:~:text=(1)%20When%20any%20person%20is,by%20warrant%20under%20his%20or">Section 71</a> of the Judiciary Act 1903 (Cth), vesting the top legal officer in the country with powers to drop prosecutions against individuals charged with “an indictable offence against the laws of the Commonwealth”. Dreyfus refused, <a href="https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/attorney-general-enacts-bare-minimum-protections-for-public-sector-whistleblowers/">arguing</a> that such powers were only exercised in “very unusual and exceptional circumstances”.
At trial, chief counsel Trish McDonald SC, representing the government, made the astonishing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/16/whistleblower-david-mcbride-loses-bid-trial-public-interest-defence-act">claim</a> that McBride had an absolute duty to obey orders flowing from the oath sworn to the sovereign. No public interest test could modify such a duty, a claim that would have surprised anyone familiar with the Nuremberg War Crimes trials held in the aftermath of the Second World War. “A soldier does not serve the sovereign by promising to do whatever the soldier thinks is in the public interest, even if contrary to the laws made by parliament.” To justify such a specious argument, authorities from the 19th century were consulted: “There is nothing so dangerous to the civil establishment of the state as an undisciplined or reactionary army.”
ACT Justice David Mossop tended to agree, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky7B1cckcjs">declaring</a> that, “There is no aspect of duty that allows the accused to act in the public interest contrary to a lawful order”. A valiant effort was subsequently made by McBride’s counsel, Steven Odgers SC, to test the matter in the ACT Court of Appeal. Chief Justice Lucy McCallum heard the following <a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2023/11/16/mcbride-trial-appeal-bid-rejected-public-interest-still-denied/">submission</a> from Odgers: “His only real argument is that what he did was the right thing. There was an order: don’t disclose this stuff, but he bled, and did the right thing, to use his language, and the question is does the fact that he’s in breach of orders mean that he’s in breach of his duty, so that he’s got no defence?” The answer from the Chief Justice was curt: Mossop’s ruling was “not obviously wrong.”
With few options, a guilty plea was entered to three charges. Left at the mercy of Justice Mossop, the punitive sentence shocked many of McBride’s supporters. The judge <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/14/david-mcbride-former-army-lawyer-sentenced-to-five-years-for-stealing-and-leaking-afghanistan-war-documents">thought</a> McBride of “good character” but possessed by a mania “with the correctness of his own opinions”. He suffered from a “misguided self-belief” and “was unable to operate within the legal framework that his duty required him to do”.
The judge was cognisant of the Commonwealth’s concerns that disclosing such documents would damage Australia’s standing with “foreign partners”, making them less inclined to share information. He also rebuked McBride for copying the documents and storing them insecurely, leaving them vulnerable to access from foreign powers. For all that, none of the identifiable risks had eventuated, and the Australian Defence Force had “taken no steps” to investigate the matter.
This brutal flaying of McBride largely centres on clouding his personal reasons. In a long tradition of mistreating whistleblowers, questions are asked as to why he decided to reveal the documents to the press. Motivation has been muddled with effect and affect. The better question, <a href="https://theconversation.com/david-mcbride-goes-to-prison-and-australian-democracy-takes-a-hit-230007">asks</a> Peter Greste, executive director of the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, is not examining the reasons for exposing such material but the revelations they disclose. That, he argues, is where the public interest lies. Unfortunately, in Australia, tests of public interest all too often morph into a weapon fashioned to fanatically defend government secrecy.
All that is left now is for McBride’s defence team to appeal on the crucial subject of duty, something so curiously rigid in Australian legal doctrine. “We think it’s an issue of national importance, indeed international importance, that a western nation has such as a narrow definition of duty,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/14/david-mcbride-former-army-lawyer-sentenced-to-five-years-for-stealing-and-leaking-afghanistan-war-documents">argued</a> his defence lawyer, Mark Davis.
John Kiriakou, formerly of the Central Intelligence Agency, was the only figure to be convicted, not of torture inflicted by his colleagues during the clownishly named War on Terror, but of exposing its practice. McBride is the only one to be convicted in the context of alleged Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, not for their commission, but for furnishing documentation exposing them, including the connivance of a sullied leadership. The world of whistleblowing abounds with its sick ironies.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/a-brutal-punishment-the-sentencing-of-david-mcbride/">A Brutal Punishment: The Sentencing of David McBride</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Gaza is our moment of truth</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/gaza-is-our-moment-of-truth/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Susan Abulhawa]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2024 02:54:09 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Censorship]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Corporate Media]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Crimes against Humanity]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Democrats]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ethnic Cleansing]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Genocide]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Hunger/Famine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israeli Defense Force (IDF)]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Land Theft]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Militarism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Occupation]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Police brutality]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ruling Class]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[The "West"]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[War Crimes]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[War Industry]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Weaponry]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Weapons Sales]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Zionism]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150410</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A protest by students at George Washington University. Probal Rashid SIPA USA) Powerful student movements in the 1960s and 1970s shook the world’s conscience to end America’s slaughter in Vietnam and Cambodia. The moral force of Black people rising together in their pain and rage against legislated racism changed the social fabric of America, ending […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/gaza-is-our-moment-of-truth/">Gaza is our moment of truth</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/sipaphotosnineteen177365-e1715824372458.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-150411" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/sipaphotosnineteen177365-e1715824372458.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" /></a>A protest by students at George Washington University. Probal Rashid SIPA USA)
Powerful student movements in the 1960s and 1970s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/24/polling-student-protests-vietnam/">shook</a> the world’s conscience to end America’s slaughter in Vietnam and Cambodia. The moral force of Black people rising together in their pain and rage against legislated racism changed the social fabric of America, ending formal segregation and ushering a new era in the struggle against institutional racialism.
Power did what power does, deploying brute force, murder, intimidation, silencing, marginalizing, surveillance and all manner of corrupt policing.
We see the outcome and we think we know it.
Labels like “victory” and “advancement” are applied. “Civil rights” is a term spoken as an absolute, a singular point of history with a terrible before and liberated after.
It’s the “happy ending” reframing of what is indeed a boundless thread of struggle for Black liberation stretching in both directions through time.
The resilience of elite capitalist rule relies heavily on such narrative construction that manipulates public imagination with platitudes and reversible concessions, followed by a rebranding of oppression.
Enslavement becomes mass incarceration and purposeful drug addiction. Segregation is sacrificed to be replaced with conscription of Black faces around the same table of power ethos.
Rebooted with greater cruelty
Power adapted since the 1960s, creating new stops, levers, gates and gatekeepers. They lulled us back into their system, rebooted it with greater cruelty and corruption, and retooled it with distractions and celebrity worship while they consolidated and concentrated power in the hands of a tiny minority.
They bought politicians, who in turn work to safeguard and increase the wealth and influence of this elite minority, turning millionaires into billionaires and soon <a href="https://views-voices.oxfam.org.uk/2024/01/worlds-first-trillionaire-fair-taxes-now/">trillionaires</a>, a staggering wealth gap built on the misery of the masses. They created laws to exonerate their criminality and criminalize dissent.
They busted up the unions, subjugated workers and pitted them against each other. Instead of confronting the bosses, workers were manipulated into demanding iron borders and separation of families at those borders.
They gutted regulations and bought up the airwaves to now dictate the content of 95 percent of everything we see, hear and read in the way of journalism, entertainment, education and cultural productions.
This is the reason terrorist characters dominate Arab depictions in Hollywood. It’s the reason for the unusually high number of casual mentions of Israeli benevolence or genius in so many television series and films; the reason why Palestinian humanity is ignored or at best obscured in both print and broadcast news media no matter how many atrocities we face at Israel’s hands.
It’s why Black media outlets, <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/local-news/shari-redstone-israel-antisemitism-racism-jewish-black-hollywood-1235621524/">owned</a> and <a href="https://deadline.com/2023/03/media-mogul-byron-allen-slams-rise-of-antisemitism-work-with-the-people-whove-shown-you-the-love-1235276119/">run</a> by Zionists of all stripes, take out <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/amanda-seales-receiving-support-backlash-205526497.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall">hit pieces</a> on the likes of Amanda Seales for her <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CzQYs4euRSY/">righteous stand</a> on Palestine.
Instead of paying taxes, these billionaires “donate” to universities sufficient sums to impose their vision not only for higher education, but for the acceptable expression of constitutional rights like the First Amendment.
For example, outraged by a Palestinian literature festival – a beautiful celebration of Palestinian excellence and indigenous heritage – the billionaires Marc Rowan, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/25/business/palestine-writes-literature-festival-what-happened/index.html">Dick Wolf</a> and the Lauder family <a href="https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/the-billionaire-donor-taking-on-his-alma-mater-over-antisemitism-2d1637cd">conspired</a> to remove the president of the University of Pennsylvania for her insufficient deference to their interpretation of academic freedom.
Enlisting their hired goons in Congress, they and others of their ilk, like Bill Ackman, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/03/bill-ackman-billionaire-attacks-claudine-gay-harvard-twitter-x">denigrated</a> and/or removed more university presidents for the same reason.
They even managed to bring the internet – which gave the 1990s generation hope for real democracy – under their nefarious control through algorithms and various forms of surveillance and censorship.
Hiding the horrors
Americans tried to stop the march of US corporate and Zionist warmongers toward war in the early 2000s, but they marched on, trampling our will and the bodies of millions of Iraqis. And the world watched as the US pulverized Iraq, a once glorious, high functioning ancient society.
An “embedded” media hid the bloody horrors and kept the secrets of US corporate looting of Iraq’s treasures and laundering of US tax dollars through <a href="https://www.npr.org/2003/08/28/1414557/halliburton-wins-lucrative-iraq-deals">rebuilding</a> schemes.
Desensitized, Americans didn’t bother protesting when the US did the same in <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/columbia-students-confront-hillary-clinton-her-war-crimes">Libya</a>, spurring a staggering de-development of one of Africa’s most advanced nations into a veritable human slave market.
The enslavement and mutilation of Congolese children and whole families in mineral mines to <a href="https://medium.com/@hanna.le/dark-side-of-tech-73ad0fb20b25">benefit</a> American tech billionaires (as well as Israel’s <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/diamonds-drenched-blood-unmasking-israels-role-crisis-jay-he-him--xqotc/">blood diamond trade</a>) barely elicit a blip in Western media, a shockingly cruel reality they continue to obscure.
There are hundreds more examples of American and Israeli militarism killing and destroying others in the service of this ruling corporate class.
Mass surveillance of the populace followed the gutting and looting of public education in the United States. The rich got richer and the poor became destitute.
In the name of technology and efficiency, capitalists degraded our food and water – <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/david-cronin/water-apartheid-gaza-and-flint">poisoned</a> them even – benefitting pharmaceutical billionaires who keep the masses teetering on the edge of health.
Popular gurus pushed philosophies of individualism, contempt for family, and various forms of alienation that shattered community and social or familial bonds, leaving vast swaths of the people unable to cope with life without drug varieties, both legal and illegal.
They have weighed us down with the fake dreams they scripted for us – insurmountable debt as a stand-in for family and education, blood diamonds as a stand-in for love and carnage abroad as a stand-in for greatness. They sold us a glorious pile of shit and made us think it was a normal – even inevitable – way of life.
They glorified obsessive consumerism and obscenely ostentatious lifestyles. And we let them, believing it was our choice.
But we had none.
An American illusion
Choice, like democracy and free press, is an American illusion, a fairytale they peddle in school, newspapers and songs.
Look how quickly they disbanded, silenced and erased memory of the <a href="https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/ten-years-later-examining-occupy-movements-legacy">Occupy Wall Street</a> movement in 2011. Look how we are taught to believe that change can only come through the ballot box, where we’re told to “choose” between two war criminals one election after another.
This moment of livestreamed genocide is the culmination of decades of global capitalist criminality and genocidal Western and Zionist imperialism. We watch in horror as whole Palestinian families are buried alive in their homes, crushed beneath the weight of rubble, their bodies torn and shredded.
Then they gaslight us.
Politicians, spokespeople, pundits, journalists and broadcasters take to the airways to convince us that we hadn’t just seen brains, tongues and eyeballs spilling from the crushed skulls of children and babies. Or worse, that they somehow deserved it.
“Fog of war.”
“Collateral damage.”
“Hamas. Hamas. Hamas.”
“The only democracy.”
“Self-defense.”
Over and over they use their wicked justifications and obfuscations. They speak to us as if we’re stupid because they’re accustomed to our silence and acquiescence.
And they go on, prancing into the Met Gala in obscene finery, the vulgarity of which is made all the more apparent in juxtaposition to the burned and dismembered small bodies on the same day, pouring into Gaza’s few remaining hospitals, screaming, bewildered, in shock and in pain.
But thank God for the <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/student-intifada-sweeps-us-campuses">students</a>.
Thank God for every Palestinian journalist and every Palestinian healthcare worker risking their lives day in and out to serve their people.
For every fighter choosing martyrdom over indignity.
For the local organizations and activists you never hear about, but whose work has been keeping thousands alive. I dare not say their names, lest they become targets.
For <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/naledi-pandor">Naledi Pandor</a> in South Africa, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/francesca-albanese">Francesca Albanese</a> at the United Nations and <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/german-eu-chief-downplays-holocaust-while-spouting-infamous-zionist-lie">Clare Daly</a> in the European Parliament.
For the masses rising up in <a href="https://blockout2024.org/">#Blockout2024</a>. For artists and musicians from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkfYeo2tIts">Roger Waters</a> and <a href="https://bdsmovement.net/news/boycott-open-source">Talib Kweli</a>, to <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/24153524/macklemores-anthem-gaza-protest-song-apolitical-music">Macklemore</a> and <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2021/05/over-600-artists-worldwide-sign-musiciansforpalestine-letter/">Black Thought</a>, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-05-27/patti-smith-questlove-run-the-jewels-support-palestine-boycott-israel">Questlove</a> and more.
For <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/jon-elmer/yemens-naval-blockade-support-gaza">Yemen</a>, South Africa and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/1/colombia-to-cut-diplomatic-ties-with-israel-over-gaza-war-petro-says">Colombia</a>. For every person who refuses to remain silent.
All dots connected
This time is different from the uprisings of the 1960s and 1970s. There is a new sense of global interconnection, an emerging class consciousness and foundational political analyses predicated on post-colonial studies and intersectionality.
Back then the white students protesting the war wouldn’t unite with the Black Panthers because they couldn’t connect the dots. All dots are connecting now.
Gaza is no longer the enclave sealed and besieged by Israel and Abdulfattah al-Sisi’s Egypt into a concentration camp. Gaza is no longer the densely-populated strip of Israeli-occupied land.
Rather, Gaza is now all the world.
Gaza is our collective moment of truth, the meaning in our lives. It is the clarity we need and seek.
It is the definitive divide between us and the ruling class that tramples us.
It is us or them. There is no middle place now.
All the borders fade, leaving us united to confront this greedy genocidal minority everywhere.
Gaza is the most anguished place on earth at this hour, dimmed by unimaginable Zionist cruelty, which their military and society conduct with perverted glee that they set to music for TikTok.
And from this tortured place of rubble, death and misery there springs the greatest light we have ever known to guide us out of the darkness in which we’ve been forced to live. The light of our ancestors – from Palestine and Alkebulan to Turtle Island and Aotearoa.
Gaza may well be our last chance to save humanity.
If we allow the wheels of this genocidal Zionist engine to keep turning, there will be no more limits to fascism. There will be no shame or red lines before which they will halt.
This struggle can no more be just about a ceasefire. It must demand liberation and accountability across our burning planet.
Already they are using the tactics of brute force, violent intimidation, suspension and marginalization. They will attempt the same dismantlement, silencing and erasure they did with the Occupy Wall Street movement.
They will offer half-baked promises with no teeth, enough to quiet matters long enough to adopt new strategies and enact new laws.
If we stop they will adapt, and they will do so with artificial intelligence, against which we may well have no defenses, not for a long time to come. So beware of their concessions.
Beware of victory that pulls us back into the lanes they made.
We cannot allow Israeli genocide against a defenseless and captive indigenous population to become a whitewashed, declawed historic moment of before and after.
We cannot leave the lawns and streets and courts and battlefields until Zionism is dismantled and Palestine is free.
This moment belongs to the people. We can dream our own dreams and create a new world in every personal act of refusal to participate in this horrible system predicated on genocide and unending exploitation.
Together we are powerful beyond our wildest imaginations. Compassion and defiance are our superpowers, and this is just our origin story.
The youth are leading and showing us that the future is ours, if we dare to claim it.
• First published in <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/gaza-our-moment-truth/46401?utm_source=EI+readers&utm_campaign=8f65f964e8-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e802a7602d-8f65f964e8-299308067">The Electronic Intifada</a>
<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/against-the-loveless-world-9781982137045_lg.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-150416" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/against-the-loveless-world-9781982137045_lg.jpg" alt="" width="258" height="400" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/against-the-loveless-world-9781982137045_lg.jpg 258w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/against-the-loveless-world-9781982137045_lg-194x300.jpg 194w" sizes="(max-width: 258px) 100vw, 258px" /></a>The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/gaza-is-our-moment-of-truth/">Gaza is our moment of truth</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>The Arsenal of Genocide: the U.S. Weapons That Are Destroying Gaza</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/the-arsenal-of-genocide-the-u-s-weapons-that-are-destroying-gaza/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2024 03:19:54 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Crimes against Humanity]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Genocide]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Hunger/Famine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israeli Defense Force (IDF)]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Joe Biden]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Militarism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Rafah]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Student Protests]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Universities/Colleges]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[War Crimes]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Weaponry]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Weapons Sales]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[BAE Systems]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[General Dynamics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Lockheed Martin]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Northrop Grumman]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150397</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Protesters block the entrance to the BAE factory in Kent, UK. (Photo credit: Reuters) On May 8, 2024, as Israel escalated its brutal assault on Rafah, President Biden announced that he had “paused” a delivery of 1,700 500-pound and 1,800 2,000-pound bombs, and threatened to withhold more shipments if Israel went ahead with its full-scale […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/the-arsenal-of-genocide-the-u-s-weapons-that-are-destroying-gaza/">The Arsenal of Genocide: the U.S. Weapons That Are Destroying Gaza</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/pasted-image-0-e1715734807479.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-150398" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/pasted-image-0-e1715734807479.png" alt="" width="500" height="333" /></a>Protesters block the entrance to the BAE factory in Kent, UK. (Photo credit: Reuters)
On May 8, 2024, as Israel escalated its brutal assault on Rafah, President Biden <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/politics/joe-biden-interview-cnntv/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/politics/joe-biden-interview-cnntv/index.html&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw1lA0IkIAs-j-Qq83qhiGLi">announced</a> that he had “paused” a delivery of 1,700 500-pound and 1,800 2,000-pound bombs, and threatened to withhold more shipments if Israel went ahead with its full-scale invasion of Rafah.
The move elicited an outcry from <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/05/08/israel-us-weapons-pause-rafah-hostage-talks" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.axios.com/2024/05/08/israel-us-weapons-pause-rafah-hostage-talks&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw2jBP54MsEpLUlk5YzCkv1e">Israeli officials</a> (National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir tweeted “Hamas loves Biden”), as well as <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/05/10/republicans-biden-israel-weapons-pause" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.axios.com/2024/05/10/republicans-biden-israel-weapons-pause&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw00bvbXwfKOlvVynjV81VGZ">Republicans</a>, staunch anti-Palestinian<a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/05/09/biden-democrats-israel-weapons-rafah" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.axios.com/2024/05/09/biden-democrats-israel-weapons-rafah&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw2xFbbowianW8wss8xEDLvr"> Democrats</a> and pro-Israel <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/05/10/israel-gaza-biden-rafah-donors" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.axios.com/2024/05/10/israel-gaza-biden-rafah-donors&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw2etzTy5rkNidPWedJhaBmU">donors</a>. Republicans immediately prepared a bill entitled the <a href="https://rules.house.gov/sites/republicans.rules118.house.gov/files/Israel_Assistance_xml%20%28002%29.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://rules.house.gov/sites/republicans.rules118.house.gov/files/Israel_Assistance_xml%2520%2528002%2529.pdf&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw1DhOvlCrhfstCu-Jajkyog">Israel Security Assistance Support Act</a> to prohibit the administration from withholding military aid to Israel.
Many people have been asking the U.S. to halt weapons to Israel for seven months, and, of course, Biden’s move comes too late for 35,000 Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza, mainly by American weapons.
Lest one think the administration is truly changing its position, two days after announcing the pause, the State Department released a convoluted <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Report-to-Congress-under-Section-2-of-the-National-Security-Memorandum-on-Safeguards-and-Accountability-with-Respect-to-Transferred-Defense.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Report-to-Congress-under-Section-2-of-the-National-Security-Memorandum-on-Safeguards-and-Accountability-with-Respect-to-Transferred-Defense.pdf&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw2oafgHANc6nQzaDYuaWgOy">report</a> saying that, although it is reasonable to “assess” that U.S. weapons have been used by Israeli forces in Gaza in ways that are “inconsistent” with international humanitarian law, and although Israel has indeed delayed or had a negative effect on the delivery of aid to Gaza (which is illegal under U.S. law), Israel’s assurances regarding humanitarian aid and compliance with international humanitarian law are “credible and reliable.”
By this absurd conclusion, the Biden administration has given itself a green light to keep sending weapons and Israel a flashing one to keep committing war crimes with them.
In any event, as Colonel Joe Bicino, a retired U.S. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4n14merj97o" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4n14merj97o&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw2CL1_XSOmTylefMYhNNrGg">artillery officer</a>, told the BBC, Israel can “level” Rafah with the weapons it already has. The paused shipment is “somewhat inconsequential,” Bicino said, “a little bit of a political play for people in the United States who are… concerned about this.” A U.S. official <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/07/biden-delays-weapons-israel-rafah/?ref=forever-wars.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/07/biden-delays-weapons-israel-rafah/?ref%3Dforever-wars.com&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw1l9XwXOQcNILGmJ6egAS39">confirmed</a> to the Washington Post that Israel has enough weapons already supplied by the U.S. and other allies to go ahead with the Rafah operation if it chooses to ignore U.S. qualms.
The paused shipment really has to be seen in the context of the arsenal with which the U.S. has equipped its Middle Eastern proxy over many decades.
A Deluge of American Bombs
During the Second World War, the United States proudly called itself the “Arsenal of Democracy,” as its munitions factories and shipyards produced an endless supply of weapons to fight the genocidal government of Germany. Today, the United States is instead, shamefully, the Arsenal of Genocide, providing<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68737412" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68737412&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw2qGsNXDuQ8Vwjr9FKNffCA"> 70%</a> of the imported weapons Israel is using to obliterate Gaza and massacre its people.
As Israel assaults Rafah, home to 1.4 million displaced people, including at least 600,000 children, most of the warplanes dropping bombs on them are F-16s, originally designed and manufactured by General Dynamics, but now produced by Lockheed Martin in Greenville, South Carolina. Israel’s 224 F-16s have long been its<a href="https://www.flightglobal.com/download?ac=98881" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.flightglobal.com/download?ac%3D98881&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw3-Z3kaZMvtxgpONQRshWw5"> weapon of choice</a> for bombing militants and civilians in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.
Israel <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Israel_Defense_Forces" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Israel_Defense_Forces&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw2oQYAYrkaP6CLTOaxOusz7">also has</a> 86 Boeing F-15s, which can drop heavier bombs, and 39 of the latest, most <a href="https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a44717238/f-35-jet-lockheed-martin-profits/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a44717238/f-35-jet-lockheed-martin-profits/&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw1HO1bQA2ZLle1EEzpYgulo">wastefully</a> expensive fighter-bombers ever, Lockheed Martin’s nuclear-capable F-35s, with another 36 on order. The F-35 is built in Fort Worth, Texas, but components are manufactured all over the U.S. and in allied countries, including Israel. Israel was the first country to attack other countries with F-35s, in violation of U.S. arms export control laws,<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lockheed-f35-israel/israel-says-it-is-the-first-country-to-use-u-s-made-f-35-in-combat-idUSKCN1IN0ON/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lockheed-f35-israel/israel-says-it-is-the-first-country-to-use-u-s-made-f-35-in-combat-idUSKCN1IN0ON/&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw0a4a6sQvsTI_Vk4rSJg7pO"> reportedly</a> using them to bomb Syria, Egypt and Sudan.
As these fleets of U.S.-made warplanes began bombing Gaza in October 2023, their<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/7/timeline-israels-attacks-on-gaza-since-2005" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/7/timeline-israels-attacks-on-gaza-since-2005&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw1I7EikZjo6Lv0FJu5JrLFz"> fifth</a> major assault since 2008, the U.S. began rushing in new weapons. By December 1, 2023, it had <a href="https://archive.is/k0f6a" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://archive.is/k0f6a&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw0PciaBbzmwntyXMqTeP4rs">delivered</a> 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells.
The U.S. supplies Israel with all sizes and types of bombs, including 285-pound GBU-39 small diameter glide bombs, 500-pound Mk 82s, 2,000-pound Mk 84s and BLU-109 “bunker busters,” and even massive 5,000-pound GBU-28 bunker-busters, which Israel<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1525/jps.2009.XXXVIII.3.175" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1525/jps.2009.XXXVIII.3.175&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw0IIyZd76nJmsCw0MXR21IT"> reportedly</a> used in Gaza in 2009.
General Dynamics is the largest U.S. bomb manufacturer, making all these models of bombs. Most of them can be used as “precision” guided bombs by attaching Raytheon and Lockheed Martin’s Paveway laser guidance system or Boeing’s JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munitions) GPS-based targeting system.
<a href="https://archive.is/tYbic" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://archive.is/tYbic&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw3CtxM37ptswxFLMFYKa43J">Little more</a> than half of the bombs Israel has dropped on Gaza have been “precision” ones, because, as targeting officers explained to +972 magazine, their Lavender AI system generates thousands of targets who are just suspected rank-and-file militants, not senior commanders. Israel does not consider it worth “wasting” expensive precision munitions to kill these people, so it uses only “dumb” bombs to kill them in their homes—obliterating their families and neighbors in the process.
In order to threaten and bomb its more distant neighbors, such as Iran, Israel depends on its seven Lockheed Martin KC-130H and seven Boeing 707 in-air refueling tankers, with four new, state-of-the-art Boeing KC46A tankers to be<a href="https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/55669" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/55669&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw3yI1nsqisrDDi-SlBYAcAt"> delivered</a> in late 2025 for over $220 million each.
Ground force weapons
Another weapon of choice for killing Palestinians are Israel’s 48 Boeing Apache AH64 attack helicopters, armed with Lockheed Martin’s infamous Hellfire missiles, General Dynamics’ Hydra 70 rockets and Northrop Grumman’s 30 mm machine guns. Israel also used its Apaches to kill and incinerate a<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/21/october-7-forensic-analysis-shows-hamas-abuses-many-false-israeli-claims" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/21/october-7-forensic-analysis-shows-hamas-abuses-many-false-israeli-claims&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw166gj5pwIbVZcbZgy5D3mx"> still unknown</a> number of Israelis on October 7, 2023—a tragic day that Israel and the U.S. continue to exploit as a false pretext for their own violations of international humanitarian law and of the Genocide Convention.
Israel’s main artillery weapons are its 600 Paladin M109A5 155 mm self-propelled howitzers, which are manufactured by BAE Systems in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. To the layman, a self-propelled howitzer looks like a tank, but it has a bigger, 155 mm gun to fire at longer range.
Israel assembles its 155 mm artillery shells from U.S.-made components. One of the first two U.S. arms shipments that the administration notified Congress about after October 7 was to resupply Israel with artillery shell components valued at $147.5 million.
Israel also has 48 M270 multiple rocket launchers. They are a tracked version of the HIMARS rocket launchers the U.S. has sent to Ukraine, and they fire the same rockets, made by Lockheed Martin. U.S. Marines used the same<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-usa-mosul-idUSKCN12Q1PQ/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-usa-mosul-idUSKCN12Q1PQ/&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw1lO3y_2CmAM7V5x5hLRtPA"> rockets</a> in coordination with U.S. airstrikes to devastate Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, in 2017. M270 launchers are no longer in production, but BEA Systems still has the facilities to produce them.
Israel makes its own Merkava tanks, which fire U.S.-made tank shells, and the State Department<a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/12/09/1218407156/israel-tank-ammunition-sale-gaza-congress-state-department" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.npr.org/2023/12/09/1218407156/israel-tank-ammunition-sale-gaza-congress-state-department&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw0MDX6lIKcDzBn54Ye3soEv"> announced</a> on December 9, 2023, that it had notified Congress of an “emergency” shipment of 14,000 120 mm tank shells worth $106 million to Israel.
U.S. shipments of artillery and tank shells, and dozens of smaller shipments that it did not report to Congress (because each shipment was carefully calibrated to fall below the statutory reporting limit of $100 million), were paid for out of the $3.8 billion in military aid that the United States gives Israel each year.
In April, Congress passed a new war-funding bill that <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-breakdown-of-whats-in-the-95-billion-foreign-aid-package-passed-by-the-house" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-breakdown-of-whats-in-the-95-billion-foreign-aid-package-passed-by-the-house&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw1r3j-PIyaHO2jQ7eih1HWW">includes</a> about $14 billion for additional weapons. Israel could afford to pay for these weapons itself, but then it could shop around for them, which might erode the U.S. monopoly on supplying so much of its war machine. That lucrative monopoly for U.S. merchants of death is clearly more important to Members of Congress than fully funding Head Start or other domestic anti-poverty programs, which they routinely underfund to pay for weapons and wars.
Israel has 500 FMC-built M113 armored personnel carriers and over 2,000 Humvees, manufactured by AM General in Mishawaka, Indiana. Its ground forces are armed with several different types of U.S. grenade launchers, Browning machine-guns, AR-15 assault rifles, and SR-25 and M24 SWS sniper rifles, all made in the USA, as is the ammunition for them.
For many years, Israel’s three Sa’ar 5 corvettes were its largest warships, about the size of frigates. They were built in the 1990s by Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, but Israel has recently taken delivery of four larger, more heavily-armed, German-built Sa’ar 6 corvettes, with 76 mm main guns and new surface-to-surface missiles.
Gaza Encampments Take On the Merchants of Death
The United States has a long and <a href="https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/codepink/pages/11661/attachments/original/1537128915/War_Profiteers_The_US_War_Machine_the_Arming_of_Repressive_Regimes_Sept_2018.pdf?1537128915" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/codepink/pages/11661/attachments/original/1537128915/War_Profiteers_The_US_War_Machine_the_Arming_of_Repressive_Regimes_Sept_2018.pdf?1537128915&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw3JzUOelvaeXSK1PKXufNxU">horrific</a> record of providing weapons to repressive regimes that use them to kill their own people or attack their neighbors. Martin Luther King called the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” and that has not changed since he <a href="https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-04-06/the-greatest-purveyor-of-violence-in-the-world/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-04-06/the-greatest-purveyor-of-violence-in-the-world/&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw3cTiN5_29jRN-MiS1MEVY5">said it</a> in 1967, a year to the day before his assassination.
Many of the huge U.S. factories that produce all these weapons are the largest employers in their regions or even their <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingalls_Shipbuilding" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingalls_Shipbuilding&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw3Q36cDKPpBcoqfFOHEix5y">states</a>. As President<a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw3jgvnI1qgTCY2M0UXv__37"> Eisenhower</a> warned the public in his farewell address in 1960, “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” has led to “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”
So, in addition to demanding a ceasefire, an end to U.S. military aid and weapons sales to Israel, and a restoration of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the students occupying college campuses across our country are right to call on their institutions to divest from these merchants of death, as well as from Israeli companies.
The corporate media has adopted the line that divestment would be too complicated and costly for the universities to do. But when students set up an encampment at<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/08/trinity-college-dublin-agrees-to-divest-from-israeli-firms-after-student-protest?ref=upstract.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/08/trinity-college-dublin-agrees-to-divest-from-israeli-firms-after-student-protest?ref%3Dupstract.com&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw22m7saCY05VtyFpSEwCHxk"> Trinity College</a> in Dublin, in Ireland, and called on it to divest from Israeli companies, the college quickly agreed to their demands. Problem solved, without police violence or trying to muzzle free speech. Students have also won commitments to consider divestment from U.S. institutions, including Brown, Northwestern, Evergreen State, Rutgers and the Universities of Minnesota and Wisconsin.
While decades of even deadlier U.S. war-making in the greater Middle East failed to provoke a sustained mass protest movement, the genocide in Gaza has opened the eyes of many thousands of young people to the need to rise up against the U.S. war machine.
The gradual expulsion and emigration of Palestinians from their homeland has created a huge diaspora of young Palestinians who have played a leading role in organizing solidarity campaigns on college campuses through groups like <a href="https://nationalsjp.org/about" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" shape="rect" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://nationalsjp.org/about&source=gmail&ust=1715821040938000&usg=AOvVaw0UF5nDww9RRGKEJTbrjfVj">Students for Justice in Palestine</a> (SJP). Their close links with extended families in Palestine have given them a visceral grasp of the U.S. role in this genocide and an authentic voice that is persuasive and inspiring to other young Americans.
Now it is up to Americans of all ages to follow our young leaders and demand not just an end to the genocide in Palestine, but also a path out of our country’s military madness and the clutches of its deeply entrenched MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media- academia-think-tank) complex, which has inflicted so much death, pain and desolation on so many of our neighbors for so long, from Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan to Vietnam and Latin America.
<a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/War_in_Ukraine_3D__24164.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-150402" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/War_in_Ukraine_3D__24164-e1715741976481.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="308" /></a>The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/the-arsenal-of-genocide-the-u-s-weapons-that-are-destroying-gaza/">The Arsenal of Genocide: the U.S. Weapons That Are Destroying Gaza</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>A Nanny State Idiocracy: A Tale of Too Many Laws and Too Little Freedom</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/a-nanny-state-idiocracy-a-tale-of-too-many-laws-and-too-little-freedom/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2024 00:47:53 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Authoritarianism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Overcriminalization]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Overregulation]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150395</guid>
<description><![CDATA[We are caught in a vicious cycle of too many laws, too many cops, and too little freedom. It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves), a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/a-nanny-state-idiocracy-a-tale-of-too-many-laws-and-too-little-freedom/">A Nanny State Idiocracy: A Tale of Too Many Laws and Too Little Freedom</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[We are caught in a vicious cycle of too many laws, too many cops, and too little freedom.
It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-kleptocracy/2017/01/04/42b30d72-c78f-11e6-8bee-54e800ef2a63_story.html">kleptocracy</a> (a government ruled by thieves), a <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-finkelstein/kakistocracy-a-word-you-s_b_132417.html">kakistocracy</a> (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens), or a Nanny State <a href="http://time.com/4327424/idiocracy/">Idiocracy</a>.
Whatever the label, this overbearing despotism is what happens when government representatives (those elected and appointed to work for us) adopt the authoritarian notion that the government knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the citizenry’s public, private and professional lives.
The government’s bureaucratic attempts at muscle-flexing by way of overregulation and overcriminalization have reached such outrageous limits that federal and state governments now require on penalty of a fine that individuals apply for permission before they can grow exotic orchids, host elaborate dinner parties, gather friends in one’s home for Bible studies, give coffee to the homeless, let their kids manage a lemonade stand, keep chickens as pets, or braid someone’s hair, as ludicrous as that may seem.
As the Regulatory Transparency Project explains, “There are over 70 federal regulatory agencies, employing hundreds of thousands of people to write and implement regulations. <a href="https://rtp.fedsoc.org/paper/government-regulation-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/">Every year, they issue about 3,500 new rules</a>, and the regulatory code now is over 168,000 pages long.”
In his CrimeADay Twitter feed, Mike Chase highlights some of the more arcane and inane laws that render us all guilty of violating some law or other.
As Chase notes, it’s against the law to try to make an unreasonable noise while a horse is passing by in a national park; to leave Michigan with a turkey that was hunted with a drone; to refill a liquor bottle with different liquor than it had in it when it was originally filled; to offer to buy swan feathers so you can make a woman’s hat with them; to enter a design in the Federal Duck Stamp contest if waterfowl are not the dominant feature of the design; to transport a cougar without a cougar license; to sell spray deodorant without telling people to avoid spraying it in their eyes; and to <a href="https://twitter.com/CrimeADay">transport “meat loaf” unless it’s in loaf form</a>.
In such a society, we are all petty criminals.
In fact, Boston lawyer Harvey Silvergate estimates that the average American now unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to an overabundance of vague laws that render otherwise innocent activity illegal and an inclination on the part of prosecutors to reject the idea that there can’t be a crime without criminal intent.
The bigger the government grows, the worse the red tape becomes.
Almost every aspect of American life today, including the job sector, is now subject to this kind of heightened scrutiny and ham-fisted control.
Whereas 70 years ago, one out of every 20 U.S. jobs required a state license, today, almost <a href="https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2492-occupations-requiring-licenses.html">1 in 4 American occupations requires a license</a>.
According to business analyst Kaylyn McKenna, <a href="https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2492-occupations-requiring-licenses.html">more than 41 states require that makeup artists be licensed</a>. Twenty-eight states require a license before you can work as a residential painter. Funeral attendants, whose duties include placing caskets in visitation rooms, arranging flowers and directing mourners, have to be licensed to do so in Kansas, Maine and Massachusetts.
The problem of overregulation has become so bad that, as one analyst notes, “getting a license to style hair in Washington <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/08/braiding_african_american_hair.html">takes more instructional time than becoming an emergency medical technician</a> or a firefighter.”
This is what happens when bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing the citizenry to march in lockstep with the government.
Overregulation is just the other side of the coin to overcriminalization, that phenomenon in which everything is rendered illegal, and everyone becomes a lawbreaker.
As policy analyst Michael Van Beek <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/484928-ridiculous-laws-are-symptom-of-americas-overcriminalization-problem/https:/thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/484928-ridiculous-laws-are-symptom-of-americas-overcriminalization-problem/">warns</a>, the problem with overcriminalization is that there are so many laws at the federal, state and local levels—that we can’t possibly know them all.
“It’s also impossible to enforce all these laws. Instead, law enforcement officials must choose which ones are important and which are not. The result is that they pick the laws Americans really must follow, because <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/484928-ridiculous-laws-are-symptom-of-americas-overcriminalization-problem/">they’re the ones deciding which laws really matter</a>,” concludes Van Beek. “Federal, state and local regulations — rules created by unelected government bureaucrats — carry the same force of law and can turn you into a criminal if you violate any one of them… if we violate these rules, we could be prosecuted as criminals. No matter how antiquated or ridiculous, they still carry the full force of the law. By letting so many of these sit around, just waiting to be used against us, <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/484928-ridiculous-laws-are-symptom-of-americas-overcriminalization-problem/">we increase the power of law enforcement</a>, which has lots of options to charge people with legal and regulatory violations.”
Case in point: in New Jersey, in what journalist Billy Binion describes as “yet another example of the effects of <a href="https://reason.com/2021/04/20/cops-arrest-teen-bike-licenses-traffic-violations-perth-amboy-police/">overcriminalization, which increases interactions between civilians and police with little benefit to actual public safety</a>,” police went so far as to arrest a teenager and seize other teen’s bicycles for so-called traffic violations and a failure to register their bikes with the state.
This is the police state’s superpower: it has been vested with the authority to make our lives a bureaucratic hell.
“Such laws,” notes journalist George Will, “which enable government zealots to accuse almost anyone of committing three felonies in a day, do not just enable government misconduct, they incite prosecutors to intimidate decent people who never had culpable intentions. And to inflict punishments without crimes.”
This is what happens when the American people get duped, deceived, double-crossed, cheated, lied to, swindled and conned into believing that the government and its army of bureaucrats—the people we appointed to safeguard our freedoms—actually have our best interests at heart.
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>, the problem with these devil’s bargains is that there is always a catch, always a price to pay for whatever it is we valued so highly as to barter away our most precious possessions.
In the end, such bargains always turn sour.
<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/2024/05/a-nanny-state-idiocracy-a-tale-of-too-many-laws-and-too-little-freedom/">A Nanny State Idiocracy: A Tale of Too Many Laws and Too Little Freedom</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Aryan Idols and the Search for Indo-Europeans</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/aryan-idols-and-the-search-for-indo-europeans/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Lerro]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2024 17:48:26 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Asia]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Colonialism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Fascism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Germany]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Hinduism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[India]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Mythology]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Neopaganism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Norway]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Romanticism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United Kingdom]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150304</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Orientation Purpose of this article Almost 2 years ago I wrote an article called Aryan Right-Wing Mythology for the New Age based on the work of Robert Ellwood (The Politics of Myth). In it Ellwood showed the conservative nature of popular mythologists Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell. My purpose was to show how […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/aryan-idols-and-the-search-for-indo-europeans/">Aryan Idols and the Search for Indo-Europeans</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/Aryan-Idols-And-The-Search-for-Indo-Europeans.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-150305 aligncenter" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Aryan-Idols-And-The-Search-for-Indo-Europeans.jpg" alt="" width="566" height="417" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Aryan-Idols-And-The-Search-for-Indo-Europeans.jpg 815w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Aryan-Idols-And-The-Search-for-Indo-Europeans-300x221.jpg 300w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Aryan-Idols-And-The-Search-for-Indo-Europeans-768x565.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 566px) 100vw, 566px" /></a>
Orientation
Purpose of this article
Almost 2 years ago I wrote an article called <a href="https://socialistplanningbeyondcapitalism.org/aryan-right-wing-mythology-for-the-new-age-carl-jung-mircea-eliade-and-joseph-campbell-2/">Aryan Right-Wing Mythology for the New Age</a> based on the work of Robert Ellwood (The Politics of Myth). In it Ellwood showed the conservative nature of popular mythologists Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell. My purpose was to show how the naïve New Age movement took these mythologists to be liberal in spite of their conservative and even proto-fascist leanings. All three mythologists were writing from the early to the middle part of the 20th century. In this article I want to trace the history of right-wing mythology back 200 years. For this task I will be relying on two great books. One is Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science by Stefan Arvidsson; the other is Theorizing Myth by Bruce Lincoln.
In search for the Indo-Europeans 
Why explore a lost culture with little evidence to go on? From the early 19th century to the end of World War II historians, linguists, folklorists and archeologists have tried to re-create a lost culture, a people older than the Sumerians. Those scholars who have maintained that this culture existed and have called them “Indo-Europeans;” “Proto-Indo Europeans”, “Aryans” or “Japhetites”. It was in 1813 that Thomas Young coined the term “Indo-European”.
In Part I of this article I explore those theories that searched for the Indo-Europeans by dissecting language-based on the theories of Sir William Jones and Max Muller. Both these theorists suspected that India was the home of the Indo Europeans. Further on, in the hands of the Grimm Brothers, the search for the Indo-Europeans takes a nationalist turn. Finally, neo-traditional religion supports the vitality of chthonic earth gods. Lastly, I discuss the impact of racial anthropology in which the search for Indo-Europeans is now based on the climate of the area, the skin color and brain size of people in these cultures.
Part II continues this rightward turn in Indo European studies with explicitly fascist direction. Following Arvidsson, I contrast the difference between the “order” theorists and the more “barbarophilism” as they affect the rise of Hitler. India falls out of favor as the home of the Indo-Europeans and is replaced by Germany.
But later, following Bruce Lincoln we find a French fascism smuggled into the work of the great French comparative mythologist, Georges Dumezil. I close with a brief presentation of the fascist work of Roger Pearson in his efforts to carry Indo-European studies right into second half of the 19th century. By way of conclusion, I present comparative mythologist Bruce Lincoln’s ten methodological steps to be sure that the political use of mythology does not interfere with the science of comparative mythology.
Who were the Indo-European scholars and what were their methodological problems? 
Interestingly, supporters for the discovery of IE culture were a multidisciplinary lot. They consisted of historians of religions like Mircea Eliade, Jan de Vries, Jacob Grimm, Frederic Max Muller; historians such as Georges Duby and Jacques Le Goff; anthropologists such as Claude Levi Strauss and Marshall Sahlins; archeologists like Gordon Childe; sociologists like Georges Dumezil. Others included Franz Bopp, Ernest Renan and Emile Benveniste.
The problem for these scholars was that Indo-Europeans have not left behind any texts and no objects that can definably be tied to them. Given these problems, why did these scholars not give up and turn their attention to other excavations? Why did they persist under these difficult conditions? The answer Stefan Arvidsson gives is that most of these scholars did so for religious and political/ideological reasons.
I The Ideological Origins of the Search for Indo-Europeans 
Anthropology typically examines the similarities and differences between cultures. Yet anthropologists are affected by the political climate of their countries. In European colonial times of the late 18th century, there was little to gain by elites for pursuing the Enlightenment dream of finding a universality of all cultures. Instead, religious and political zealots look for differences to justify the subjugation of these countries. The ancient history of the supposed Indo-Europeans became the proof that one branch of humanity was destined to exploit and rule the others. Mythology became an ideology to justify conquest. As Arvidsson pointed out, romantics like Chateaubriand, and Joseph de Maistre stressed importance of Laws of Manu found in India as a justification for a tripart conservative ideology as we will see later.
Indo-European “Aryan” studies were appropriated at an early stage by racial science. British archeologist Colin Renfrew has concluded from his own research that the research in IE is itself a modern myth. They included those who want to rekindle the old pre-Christian IE or Aryan paganism. Even as late as 1940-44 the most important dividing line among Europe’s inhabitants were between Aryans and Semites. After the fall of Germany in World War II “Aryan” was replaced by “Indo European” because post-war scholarship was dominated by Dumezil who never spoke about “Aryan religion”. Today the term is only used by Neo-Nazis.
Why was it so important for Germany to search for a culture of its origins? Unlike Britain, France or Spain there was no Germany until the end of the 18th century. The usual process of nation-building involved a reference to an ancient geographical homeland as well as an ancient religion. In this climate of imperial ambitions, Germany had neither, so it set out to discover one.
 II Discovery of Sanskrit
Sir William Jones
The Romantic use of language interpreted by various peoples who spoke IE languages made them have an organic unity and had a common fate. They claimed that all people who spoke IE had also inherited a common belief system. IE scholars like Bryant and Jones attempted to find similarities in the myths and god figures and found traces of these beliefs in at least four places: Roman texts, Greek myths, Indian hymns and Norse saga literature. 
Bruce Lincoln, in his great book Theorizing Myth says Sir William Jones (1746-1794), established himself as one of the world’s foremost linguists with a grasp of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Turkish along with a knowledge of Persian and Arabic. He was a scholar, poet and translator sympathetic to the most liberal causes of his day. By a series of occupational happenstances, this led him to study Sanskrit.
In 1785 he gave a lecture in which he proposed the common origin of the languages (Sanskrit) to which others would later derive and give the name “Aryan”. Jones discovered the similarities between Latin and Greek European languages and the Sanskrit and Persian languages which were termed “linguistic families”. The Bhagavad Gita was translated by Jones along with The Laws of Manu. India was assumed to be the oldest member of that group.
Jones focused on four specific domains of culture a) language and letters b) philosophy and religion c) architecture and sculpture d) science and arts. In his discussion of an evaluation basing his judgments on what he took to be levels of accomplishment, he considered India first among the nations and evaluated it most favorably. He connected the peoples of India and Iran on the basis of their linguistic, religious and artistic similarities.
Romanticism and India
Interest in Sanskrit exploded. Herder (1744-1803) was the first to spread the doctrine of Indomania in German. He thought it was one of the most important steps in the development of the human race. Raymond Schwab referred to the period around 1800 as an “Oriental Renaissance”. Schlegel’s book in 1808 made the case for India as the Aryan homeland. In the translation of the Laws of Manu, the word “Aryan” means noble. The plot thickens.
For romantics the idealization of India served both as a protest against and an escape from the contemporary world that seemed like a confident march of progress. Threatened by rationalism, mechanistic science, materialistic anthropology, anti-aristocratic politics and watered down theology Romantics made India a mystical unity that did away with interdisciplinary European conflicts. While the Enlightenment advocated a contractual right of man, German Romantics argued that human races are an organic part of the natural world with India as its model. Poets such as Shelley, Lord Byron and Schopenhauer attempted to synthesize India with European thinking.
Paris was the Mecca of Orientalism during the 1830s-1840s and it was hoped that studying Sanskrit would liberate scholars from their preoccupation with Greece and Rome. For some time, ancient India became the imagined home of Indo-Europeans. The attractive power of this world grew in 1819 through the writings of Frederic Schlegel, who attempted to build a comparative linguistics (1767-1845) along with von Humboldt and Jacob Grimm (1785-1863). Like many to come, Herder believed that Asia was the original home of human unity.
The discovery of IE language transformed India, Persia and Central Asia as a kind of European Orient. Thomas Trautmann writes that Jones’ work is nothing less than a project to make the new Orientalism safe for Anglicans. Interest in India was popularized by the historian of religion, Max Muller. What we are interested in is the relationship of that discovery to political interests of colonial British rule in the late 18th and 19th centuries. 
Language mediates how nature grows in culture
For Romantics, language was the most basic expression of the soul of a people and is the foundation for musical and artistic traditions as well as social laws. The study of the origin of language (philology) was the cornerstone in the 19th century of research in the search for Indo-Europeans. Language became the vehicle through which nature grows through people.
 For Hamann and Herder, the ancient vernacular of languages and literature — poetry and myth – was a prime basis of national identity. Each language embodied the history of the people who spoke it. Each language had a basis in poetry and music far deeper than the degraded prose of modernity. For Herder, the formation of culture consisted of 4 parts:
<ul>
<li>A variety of climates — heat and cold have an impact on the disposition of customs and bodies. Climate first produces change at the body’s most superficial level. Over long periods of time the effects penetrate deeper to transform skeletal structure and even the shape of the skull and nose</li>
<li>The landscape – the features of individuals in a culture are brought into line with the features of the landscape.</li>
<li>Language impacts thought and social relations.Language impacts thought and social relations.</li>
<li>The arts through music and dance.</li>
</ul>
III Max Muller and the Birth of Comparative Religion
Comparative religion as rooted in linguistics
As a philologist, Max Muller believed that religion is tightly linked to linguistic groups. Muller thought the only scientific way of classifying religion was by language. He raised the question that if the belief in God arises naturally, why are there such different religious types? In order to explain the origins of myths he founded the discipline of comparative mythology.
Primitive religion was monotheist and rooted in sun-worship
Which natural phenomenon had been the most prominent in catalyzing the mythopoetic imagination? Was it thunder and lightning, earthquakes, volcanos or the sun and dawn? Muller suspected that primitive religion was monothetic and this divine creator had originated from humanity’s encounter with forces of nature. However, it was not the wildest and most unpredictable events but it was the ones which were the most persistent and reliable. He thought the light of the sun fit the bill. Muller hoped to find traces of the original experience of the infinite among the oldest and most primitive peoples. He believed that the origin of monotheism was India. In the hopes of finding the monotheistic roots of India, he translated the Rigveda.
Use and abuse of myth: history of myth
According to Bruce Lincoln, the word “myth” has been used in many ways depending on the historical period. Myth had been used originally in early Greek times to mean a primordial truth or a sacred story. It gradually became discredited with the rise of the Pre-Socrates and dismissed by the Romans as a “fable”. Christianity saw myth as a lie and set them in dualistic opposition to the non-mythic bible. With the rise of science myth was seen as either a sign of ignorance, the result of poetic revelry or a children’s story. Resurrected by the romantics in the 19th century, it became politicized and used to assist in the building of nation-states. In the 20th century it helped to build support for the wave of fascism in the 20th century.
Muller sees myth as degenerative
Muller was a modernist Protestant. He was not a romantic when it came to myths. He found myth irrational and immoral. Muller agreed the IE mythology was a poetic explanation of nature. But if Vedic India was equal to the West, what kept India economically and politically backward? Unlike Nietzsche and other romantics, Muller saw myth not as a foundation of all religion but as a source of religious degeneration. Like Hamann and Herder, he took poetry to be present from human origins and to reflect an innate religious awareness. Myth was a later development, a disease of language. The Jews, Muslims and Christians as staunch monotheists, were less disposed to the seductions of myth.
Muller and British colonialism
Muller hoped to influence a change in British colonial politics. He wanted to make the British colonists understand that their Indian subjects were Aryan brothers. During a long degeneration, Indian religion withered while Europeans grew and matured into monotheism. Muller hoped that the people of India would leave behind worship of idols if they received knowledge about the old Aryan Vedic religion.
IV Romantics Champion Myth and Folklore to Build Nationalism
At the end of the 18th century romanticism turned its back on the Enlightenment, especially its more deterministic tendencies. Myth was given a new lease on life. People such as Jones saw myth symbolically as veiled wisdom which simply needed to be first interpreted and then explained. Interest in the vernaculars (local language) displaced the international languages of church and court while myths and, to a lesser extent, folk songs were constitutive as an authentic primordial voice of the volk.
The use of myth at the end of the 18th century was also used by nationalists in their search for a language and set of stories on which the emergence of the nation-state could be founded. In the hands of the Brothers Grimm and others this is exactly what happened. The Grimm’s monumental research shows a Herderian interest in language and myth. They devoted themselves to the first encyclopedic compendium of German myths of 4 volumes. The Grimms argued that it was the conversion to Christianity that shattered the nexus of land-myth and folk. Myth then became entangled with attempts to contrast Aryans and Semites, as we shall see.
Grimm stirs the use of folklore to build nationalism
For the brothers Grimm, prehistory was not a period of dark barbarism but a high cultural golden age. The recovery of ancient texts during the Renaissance included Tacitus’ Germania, first published in 1457. It dealt with the German sense of honor and integrity, their physical prowess, their courage and sense of beauty. They were received with enthusiasm by the people of Northern Europe, in part because Tacitus broke the Mediterranean monopoly on antiquity by giving the Germans, Scandinavians, Dutch and Anglo Saxons their first sense of the prestige derived from a deep and noble past.
Grimm (1785 – 1863) gathered folktales from German peasants in order to recreate a strong German culture. He wanted to find rich German stories that could successfully compete with classical Judeo-Christian traditions He hoped that within the surface of folktales searchers he could find traces of a German mythopoetic prehistory. Theorists of Northern origins challenged the Bible, for orthodox religion looked to Israel as the cradle of language. Grimm’s work spread and scholars began to record tales and customs of their society. Nationalist motives were always in the search for myths whether they were folktales or rituals.
 V From Modernist to Neo-Traditional Religion: Fall of Nature Mythology of Max Muller
Modernist theories of religion see the modernization process, including science, as part of the evolution of religion. The focus of religious experience is the individual. Modernist theories of religion look for a common core in all religion and its practices involve ethics and prayer. Modernists understand animism and polytheism as late degenerate forms of primitive monotheist tendency. To study non-modern cultures it focuses the language, and it studies myth. Max Muller was a modernist.
Capitalist class rejects modernist religious interpretations
Bruce Lincoln points out that when the bourgeois class at the end of the 19th century became the ruling class, it grew all the more skeptical about modernization. One of the reasons was that more radical modernists, social democrats, communists, anarchists and union members became interested in these subjects. Events that shook bourgeois idealism and liberal humanism were the real threat of socialism as seen in the Paris Commune. Between 1880-1920, the bourgeois class became a dominating class whose interest in social change decreased, and the relationship between a civilized bourgeoisie and a barbaric working-class now became more important than the relationship between the bourgeois class and a reactionary aristocracy and priesthood which the bourgeoisie had defeated. In reaction, the bourgeois became conservative, nostalgic and nationalistic. Correspondingly, the image of IE as cultural heroes changed from a modernist to a neo-traditionalist. But what does neo-traditionalist mean?
What is neo-traditional religion?
Neo-traditional ideals of religion want to recreate a vitalized traditional religion that could serve as a counterbalance to modernization (Muller). Von Schroder, a Baltic German Indologist, wants to renew folk-national, heathen rituals. Scholars like Lang, Von Schroeder, Harrison, Mauss and Eliade think that modernization has been chocked full of what is most vital in religion which was its magical, communitarian and collective rituals. What makes religion vital is what makes religion locally dispersed. Rather than ethics and prayer, what makes religion juicy is its altered states. Animism and polytheism are not only prior to monotheism, but once monotheism comes to power the part of religion that speaks to most people is chocked off. Further, evolutionary anthropologists claimed as Muller’s theories were no more than Christian crypto-apologetics. Frazer’s theories of ancient religion were an attempt to replace Muller’s philological paradigm with an evolutionist and folkloristic theory.
Jane Harrison and the chthonic roots of Olympian Greece religion
Beyond anthropology, the importance of ritual as opposed to myth was embraced by classicists like Jane Harrison (1850-1928), Francis Cornford (1874-1943) and the Cambridge ritualists. Jane Harrison argued chthonic religion had been the true religion of Greece up to the 7th century BCE. With the Olympians’ victory over the Pelasgian religion, reflection, distinction and clarity triumph over pulsing life. She held that myth arose as an attempt to explain well-entrenched and no longer understood rites.
 VI Aryan Studies Turn Rightward at the End of the 19th Century
Aryan liberal romanticism, which began with Jones, had weakened substantially by 1870. Yet the search for the Aryans grew, with input from Michelet, Fichte, Lasson and Hubert on the left and Renan, Schlegel and Wagner on the right.
Right-wing transitions to Aryanism
On the right, Renan idealized the polytheism of the IE. He constructed a long-lived opposition between IE and Semitic people. He connected the Biblical Shem’s line with monotheistic intolerance, egotism, conservatism, otherworldliness, irrational rituals along with lack of feeling for art and nature. For conservatives, the Jews promoted modernism. From 1870 on IE became connected with anti-Semitism.
Schlegel questions whether the French Revolution really was, along with its cosmopolitan and humanistic optimism, about progress. Becoming a Catholic, he came to embrace a nationalistic, reactionary and pessimistic world view. In circles close to Schlegel people began for the first time to value the Middle Agesmore highly.
Wagner
Wagner greatly admired Grimm for all his work on folktales. He sought to connect the Volk through art rather than scholarship. According to Wagner, a total work of art would integrate music, poetry, dance, theatrical spectacle, the plastic arts and architecture. This integration of all the arts would undermine the shallowness of modernism, and rejuvenate an appreciation of folk, where the arts and rituals were once one.
Wagner worked on his materials over the next thirty years into the four dramas of The Ring Circle. This was intended as a ritual celebration, not a theatrical performance. He claimed that both the science and art of today are specialization of activities that were once unified. He believed this appreciation of the beauty of nature could arise only out of polytheism. That Wagner traced the origins of the German Volk to India shows that he understood them as part of the Aryan Diaspora.
The place and misplace of Nietzsche in Aryan politics 
For Nietzsche, myth was a necessary foundation for all religion. In his earlier writings on myth, he took Wagner’s theories as his point of departure, especially in his book Birth of Tragedy. But in his later life Nietzsche disliked the vulgar antisemitism and German nationalism of Wagner. Nietzsche threw in the towel with Wagner after The Ring premiere at Bayreuth. Nevertheless Nietzsche’s training was in classical philology and he was well-versed with research in Indo-European linguistics and myth and undertook his own studies. He was not dependent on Wagner for this.
Nietzsche has been mistakenly categorized as antisemitic, especially in liberal and socialist circles. But as Walter Kaufman pointed out many years ago in his great biography of Nietzsche, Nietzsche’s work was taken over by his sister who had fascist connections so that his work was pulverized to make it fit with Nazi ideology.
Bruce Lincoln gives us at least four reasons why Nietzsche was not antisemitic or a proponent of fascism:
<ul>
<li>Nietzsche’s “blond beast” is not a special race but a category that encompasses multiple races, including Greeks and Japanese. However, he gave them further consideration. His detailed discussion was all devoted to the Greeks and the Germans.</li>
<li>Soon after Nietzsche wrote Genealogy of Morals he came upon the Laws of Manu, an ancient Indian text on the ethics, law and social structure of India. Nietzsche admired the original religion and culture in India. While all the world’s people originated in India, he thought those of the West-Egyptians and Europeans came from the higher castes and it was for them that was reserved the title “Indo-Europeans”. While Nietzsche showed racial bias it was towards Europeans and Egyptians, not Germans.</li>
<li>Nietzsche drew a sharp distinction between ancient and modern Germans. Ancient Germans (based on the work of Tacitus) had freedom and energy, but modern Germans did not, having become ever less Aryan and ever less barbaric. Therefore, Nietzsche saw nothing in the Germans of his time that was noteworthy.</li>
<li>The Nazis were antisemitic – Nietzsche was anti-Christian. His early antipathy toward the Jews and Judaism was gradually attenuated and balanced by a growing, occasionally grudging, respect. Instead he become mercilessly more critical of Christianity. Everything wrong in Judaism was amplified and exacerbated in Christianity. The criticism he had of the Jews was that they were the first weak Christians, not that they had any of the other characteristics that fascists attributed to them. His most acidic systematic criticisms, his theory of resentment was leveled at Christianity not Judaism. Christianity is treated as the extreme form of all that is sickeningly present in Judaism.</li>
</ul>
VII) Racial Anthropology
As we’ve seen, the first Indo-European studies were grounded in linguistic observations. Max Muller equated linguistic affinity with ethnic affinity as opposed to physical appearance. In retrospect, he rightfully saw language, religion and nationality as independent of blood, skull or hair color. Jones also did not think skin color was important. However, both scholars’ contention was increasingly isolated and drowned out. The issue was how to measure being Indo-European. Did one belong with those who spoke related languages and are considered to have a similar culture, or with those who looked similar?
During the 19th century racial anthropologists began to discuss IE, threatening the proprietorship of linguists. Instead of the study of religion, language and folklore to find the origins of Indo-Europeans, the new school focused on differences between people in material and physical characteristics and their geographical location. Racial anthropologists argued that people’s physical appearance could directly explain their degree of civilization. They debated which race was the original one and whether other races were the result of evolution or degeneration. They thought pure races were more fit than mixed ones. Racial anthropology became a study of signs where the internal moral and cultural states could be interpreted from external physical signs.
Climate, skin color and physique
According to Tacitus, the German climate is harsh and damper in the North and West, windier in the South and East. The cold and damp character of the Northern environment impressed itself on the bodies of those who live there. Bruce Lincoln says the whiteness of the cold must have scorched the Indo-Europeans and produced their red color. From mid-19th century, the empirical methods of racial anthropologists were improved to measurement of skin color and the size of skulls and noses. Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869) argued that Aryans could be identified by their long skulls, blond hair and blue eyes. In his more extreme moments, Carus associated blond hair with the color of the sun and blue eyes with that of the sky, which identified Aryans as day people in contrast to the darker, lesser races.
The changing meaning of “barbarians” 
Bourgeois humanists before 1870 looked down on barbarians for having had destroyed classical Rome. But as romanticism gained hold of bourgeois ideology, barbarian invasions were seen in a more positive light. As European romantics grew more cynical of the benefits of civilization and they studied the decline of other world civilizations and tumultuous migrations, the violence of the barbarians seemed to be necessary steps in a process of revitalization. Over a period of time from 1870, the barbarian origin of Europe changed from having been a source of guilt and shame to being something honorable.
The right turn against India
A racial anthropology of India begins in 1840s. It was discovered that not all Indian languages were Sanskrit. South Indians had Dravidian language roots. From this, John Stevenson developed the racial theory of Indian civilization. According to him Indian races were divided into Aryans and Dravidians. It was thought the caste society was developed as a protective mechanism against racial mixing. In other words, violence was justified as a means of maintaining racial purity. This theoretical framework served to legitimatize British colonialization. The relations of the British as a new invader into India was only the latest version of a hierarchical order that had existed thousands of years before. These vital colonizers had no use for romanticizing India.
Arthur de Gobineau and Germany as the proposed new home of Indo-Europeans
Scholars like Gobineau, Chamberlain and Paul Broca described Indo-Europeans as blond, blue-eyed and tall with straight noses, a straight profile and long narrow skulls. In their hands, Indo-Europeans were no longer a large group of different people who spoke IE languages but a delineated group of people with defined physical characteristics.
According to Gobineau, what happened in India was that white Aryans became brown and their culture and religion had degenerated into Hinduism. This racist historiography was also backed up by philological interpretations of India’s oldest source, the text the Rigveda as an interpretation of the description of the Aryan Dravidian conflict. Gobineau’s moral of history claimed that when whites racially mix their superior civilization degenerates Indo-Europeans were looking less and less like Indians and Iranians and more and more like Germans. Led by Renan, the culture that was Indo-European was no longer to be discovered in West Asia but ultimately in Germany. Wagner was friends with Gobineau and tried to make de Gobineau’s theories less pessimistic and more antisemitic. Wagner’s son-in-law was Houston Chamberlain (1855-1927) whose book in 1899 was the foundation text for the development of Nazi ideology.
Please see my table which compares the framework for the changing meaning of Indo-Europeans.
Changing Meaning of Indo-European –19th-20th Centuries
<table width="662">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td width="192">Second-Half of 19th century</td>
<td width="192">Time period</td>
<td width="192">Early 20th century</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="192">Rising bourgeoisie</td>
<td width="192">Situation of the bourgeoisie</td>
<td width="192">Declining Attempted imperialism</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="192">Liberal values and humanistic ideals of science</td>
<td width="192">Political views</td>
<td width="192">Neo-traditionalist ideas</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="192">No Anti-Semitic and sometimes anti-Christian but not connected to a racial ideology</td>
<td width="192">Is there a racial ideology?</td>
<td width="192">Yes. Connected to racial ideology John Stephenson on racial anthropology in India: Aryans vs Dravidians</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="192"> Muller, Jones</td>
<td width="192">Theoreticians</td>
<td width="192">Renan, Stephenson (India)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="192">They were heroic, idealistic free thinking and rational humanists who fought against despotic power and antiquated customs</td>
<td width="192">The stories told of Indo-Europeans</td>
<td width="192">Stories of how Indo-European colonizers in ancient times conquered dark primitive original population (Stephenson)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="192">Civilized India, Iran</td>
<td width="192">Where Indo-Europeans came from</td>
<td width="192">Barbarian Germanic, Nordic</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="192">Comparative linguistics</td>
<td width="192">What was used to measure differences?</td>
<td width="192">Physical criteria – long, narrow skull, blond hair blue eyes Gobineau</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="192">Extraordinary language and culture</td>
<td width="192">Why were Indo-Europeans successful? </td>
<td width="192">(Violence) No racial mixing
(Gobineau)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="192">Fought against backward superstition</td>
<td width="192">What did the Indo-Europeans do?</td>
<td width="192">They were a regeneration and revitalizing growth movement</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="192">Originally monotheists Animism and polytheism is degenerate</td>
<td width="192">Religious origin</td>
<td width="192">Originally animists and polytheists Monotheists degenerative</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="192">Shameful for barbarians having destroyed ancient Rome</td>
<td width="192">Attitude towards the barbarians</td>
<td width="192">Necessary for clearing out the rot of modern life</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="192">Humble monotheists</td>
<td width="192"> </td>
<td width="192">Proud pagans who don’t bend their knees</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/aryan-idols-and-the-search-for-indo-europeans/">Aryan Idols and the Search for Indo-Europeans</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>The Kindness of Strangers?</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/the-kindness-of-strangers/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Philip A. Faruggio]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2024 13:49:12 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Housing/Homelessness]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Militarism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Tax]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Claude Berri]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[germinal]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150386</guid>
<description><![CDATA[I was channel surfing the other evening and watched the Supreme Court’s new case concerning homeless encampments, etc. What got me was how the government’s lawyer kept explaining how the homeless situation was being handled. HIs retort was that Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have been unsuccessful in giving the necessary helping hand to this burgeoning […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/the-kindness-of-strangers/">The Kindness of Strangers?</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[I was channel surfing the other evening and watched the Supreme Court’s new case concerning homeless encampments, etc. What got me was how the government’s lawyer kept explaining how the homeless situation was being handled. HIs retort was that Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have been unsuccessful in giving the necessary helping hand to this burgeoning crisis throughout our nation, especially in most cities. Is it me or isn’t it the responsibility of Uncle Sam to use our tax dollars to help address the needs of our homeless? The justices all acknowledged that many of our nation’s homeless are mentally ill individuals, discounting to some extent the millions of others who just cannot afford to pay for shelter. Well, think about this: How many of us who do not own a home can actually afford the outrageous rents the “land lord” charges? I say “land lord” because the term comes from feudalism when the “lord of the manor” owned the rental property for his serfs. Go and get the fine Claude Berri 1993 French film Germinal and see how this feudal arrangement played out. Disgusting!
The case at issue for this Supreme Court is The City of Grants Pass vs. Johnson. Via the internet this is a thumbnail of the case:
<blockquote>The legal issue is whether they can fine or arrest people for sleeping outside if there’s no shelter available. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has deemed this cruel and unusual punishment, and this case is a pivotal challenge to that ruling.
The high court declined to take up a similar case in 2019. But since then, homelessness rates have climbed relentlessly. Street encampments have grown larger and have expanded to new places, igniting intense backlash from residents and businesses. Homelessness and the lack of affordable housing that’s helping to drive it have become key issues for many voters.</blockquote>
So, even the monopoly media is realizing how terrible the homeless situation is. Who gets hurt, in addition to someone who becomes homeless, but the local community? No one wishes to see so many poor souls out in the open, or hidden within the brush, to fend for themselves. Funny how the court does all it can to dance around the solution.
For all those good religious folks who attend their places of worship and echo that we are all our brother’s keeper: do something about it! Start telling your wonderful (yeah, right) elected officials to start increasing the taxing of the Super Rich, AKA Mega Millionaires and Billionaires. When JFK took office the top federal income tax rate was 90%. Over the years it dropped down to 78%, 71%, 50% all the way down to 39% and now at 37%. Do you think perhaps that our Super Rich fellow Americans have it damn good now? You bet your $1,000,000 and up home or shall I call it estate? My plan, the Farruggio Millionaire Flat Surtax Plan, would generate many of the funds needed to not only build affordable housing, but help treat the millions of mentally ill fellow citizens who cannot get the care needed to exist properly. My plan is to have a flat surtax of 50% on any income over 1 million dollars, with NO deductions… period! The first $one million would be taxed at the present rate, with any and all deductions allowed now. The other money would go directly to Uncle Sam to subsidize the homeless and mentally ill… or both. Do you think it is unreasonable for someone now earning $5 or $10 million (or a few $billion) a year to keep HALF that money TAX FREE?
On top of that teepee we need to stop the 50% of our discretionary spending that goes for our War Industries. How about spending 25% and use the remainder of the hundreds of billions of dollars saved to be directed for other social net needs? President Eisenhower, in his farewell address, called it what it was then and still is, a Military Industrial Complex. And the way it has always worked is simple, just follow the money. The House of Representatives just passed another bill for $95 billion in aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Some estimates are that about half of that money is going into the pockets of US weapons manufacturers and other assorted War related businesses. During the Vietnam debacle whenever a Huey helicopter was destroyed the manufacturer.
Bell Helicopter, sold another one to Uncle Sam for $1 million. In the kill zone of Iraq in 2003, a US Apache Helicopter cost Uncle Sam around $30 million. Today, these vehicles can run from $60 million to over $130 million… of your tax dollars for more of our phony wars and aggressions. How many homeless and or mentally ill Americans can an Apache subsidize?The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/the-kindness-of-strangers/">The Kindness of Strangers?</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Dodging the Issue: The Biden Administration Report on Israel’s Use of US Weapons</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/dodging-the-issue-the-biden-administration-report-on-israels-use-of-us-weapons/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Binoy Kampmark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2024 06:31:55 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Crimes against Humanity]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Genocide]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israeli Defense Force (IDF)]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Joe Biden]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Terrorism (state and retail)]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[War Crimes]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Weaponry]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Weapons Sales]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150389</guid>
<description><![CDATA[It truly is pushing the envelope of lunacy to assume that this latest revelation was revelatory. US weapons, the wonks in Washington find, are being used by the Israeli Defense Forces to kill their opponents, many of them Palestinians, and most of them civilians. These are detailed in a report ordered by the White House […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/dodging-the-issue-the-biden-administration-report-on-israels-use-of-us-weapons/">Dodging the Issue: The Biden Administration Report on Israel’s Use of US Weapons</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[It truly is pushing the envelope of lunacy to assume that this latest revelation was revelatory. US weapons, the wonks in Washington find, are being used by the Israeli Defense Forces to kill their opponents, many of them Palestinians, and most of them civilians. These are detailed in a <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Report-to-Congress-under-Section-2-of-the-National-Security-Memorandum-on-Safeguards-and-Accountability-with-Respect-to-Transferred-Defense.pdf">report</a> ordered by the White House pursuant to <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2024/02/08/national-security-memorandum-on-safeguards-and-accountability-with-respect-to-transferred-defense-articles-and-defense-services/">National Security Memorandum 20</a>, also known as “National Security Memorandum on Safeguards and Accountability With Respect to Transferred Defense Articles and Defense Services”.
NSM-20 requires the Secretary of State to obtain credible and reliable assurances within 45 days from any country engaged in armed conflict in which US defence articles are used. The NSM-20 report, in addition to Israel, considers Colombia, Iraq, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia and Ukraine. But Israel, by far, is the most significant, given that it is the most prominent recipient of US weapons. As John Ramming Chappell <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/95583/israel-weapons-hamas-us-report-takeaways/">notes</a> for Just Security, these include reported transfers of “bombs, artillery shells, precision guidance kits (which are attached to bombs for targeting purposes), tank ammunition, guided missiles, firearms, drones, various types of ammunition, and other weapons”.
The Israeli entry starts off with various qualifying conditions about the horror of the Gaza conflict. Hamas is blamed for embedding “itself deliberately within and underneath the civilian population to use civilians as human shields.” The scene is set.
In a pitiful dodge, the report claims it is “difficult to determine facts on the ground in an active war zone”, a state of mind that is bound to lend itself to justifications. “The nature of the conflict in Gaza and the compressed review period in this initial report amplify those challenges.”
The report acknowledges various “reported incidents to raise serious concerns” that US weaponry is being used in a manner not in conformity with international law. While it was “difficult to assess or reach conclusive findings on individual incidents,” it was “reasonable to assess that defense articles covered under NSM-20 have been used by Israeli security forces since October 7 in instances inconsistent with IHL [International Humanitarian Law] obligations or with established best practices for mitigating civilian harm”.
The discussion is filled with softening qualifiers. Israel had “the knowledge, experience, and tools to implement best practices for mitigating civilian harm in its military operations” but “results on the ground, including high levels of civilian casualties, raise substantial questions as to whether the IDF is using them effectively in all cases.”
Despite concerns about IHL violations, the report accepts that in Israel, there are “a number of ongoing, active criminal investigations pending and there are hundreds of cases under administrative review.” Surely this would be a troubling, rather than assuring fact.
The report goes on to reveal the view of the US Intelligence Community (IC) that, while Israel had “inflicted harm on civilians in military and security operations, potentially using US-provided equipment”, it had “no direct indication of Israel intentionally targeting civilians.” It could, however, “do more to avoid civilian harm.” How high a body count does one need before the intention to kill is evinced?
Mindful of the image of an ally, the report is seemingly less concerned by the staggering civilian death toll than “the impact of Israel’s military operations on humanitarian actors.” Despite the intervention of the US government and engagement between humanitarian organisations with Israeli officials regarding deconfliction and coordination procedures, “the IDF has struck humanitarian workers and facilities.”
Inexplicably, Israel gets a clean bill of health in terms of section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, which <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/22/2378-1">bars military aid</a> to a state that “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United states humanitarian assistance.” This, despite the acceptance that Israeli actions had “delayed or had a negative impact in the delivery of aid to Gaza”. Current levels of aid reaching Palestinian civilians “while improved” remained “insufficient”.
The assessment of Israel’s use of US weapons, all in all, is paltry. It glaringly omits making any specific adverse findings regarding breaches of international law. This proved to be a satisfactory state of affairs for Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who <a href="https://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/dem/release/chair-cardin-on-developments-in-israel-the-administrations-nsm-20-report">agreed</a> with the “assessment that Israel has not violated International Humanitarian Law and that military assistance to support Israel’s security remains in the US interest and should continue.”
Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen begged to differ, <a href="https://twitter.com/elizhagedorn/status/1789048179167486066">noting</a> the report’s failure “to do the hard work of making an assessment and ducks the ultimate questions that the report was designed to determine.”
In a fuller statement, Van Hollen identifies the “continuation of a disturbing pattern where the expertise and analyses of those working most closely on these issues at the State Department and at USAID have been swept aside to facilitate a predetermined policy outcome based on political convenience.”
While the Biden administration <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/05/08/us-israel-bombs-shipment-gaza-pause">recently paused</a> the transfer of a weapons shipment to Israel comprising 1,800 2000-pound bombs, and 1,700 500-pound bombs, Congressional sentiment is seemingly in favour of the status quo. Despite the grumbling of some lawmakers, the general view is that the business of supplying the IDF is a sound one. The killing of Palestinian civilians can, in all its ghoulishness and cruelty, continue.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/dodging-the-issue-the-biden-administration-report-on-israels-use-of-us-weapons/">Dodging the Issue: The Biden Administration Report on Israel’s Use of US Weapons</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Victory Days: Military without Militarism?</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/victory-days-military-without-militarism/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[T.P. Wilkinson]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 13 May 2024 15:48:54 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Militarism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[World War One]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[World War Two]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[People's Liberation Army]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150370</guid>
<description><![CDATA[I could not have been a pacifist, if by that one means waiver of the use of physical force in disputes. The reason is simple. In my childhood I had to actually hit someone who threatened me or positioned himself as if he would in order to end at least two years of harassment, including […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/victory-days-military-without-militarism/">Victory Days: Military without Militarism?</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" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-149241" src="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/cover_TP-300x219.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="219" srcset="https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/cover_TP-300x219.jpg 300w, https://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/cover_TP-1024x748.jpg 1024w, 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: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a>I could not have been a pacifist, if by that one means waiver of the use of physical force in disputes. The reason is simple. In my childhood I had to actually hit someone who threatened me or positioned himself as if he would in order to end at least two years of harassment, including destruction and theft of my personal property while travelling to and from school. The actual punch that like a miracle sent some invisible wave throughout the scholastic environment was a panic reaction, a thrust to the face of the boy who once had been a playmate and for some only years later explicable reason had converted to lead tormenter.
Although I grew up in a semi-military household, everyone on my father’s side had served in the armed forces, while no one on my mother’s side had, the military as regular and pernicious institutional violence was not present in my youth. We did not play “cowboys and Indians” in the fifth grade. Instead we imagined World War 2 battlefields. As I recall our sandpits resembled most the campaign waged in Italy after Anzio. My classmates had plastic rifles or machine guns with the advantage that they could make noise. I was armed with a wooden training rifle in the shape of the bolt action Springfield issued to US soldiers in the Great War. On one hand I was sorry that the only noise it made was a click when the bolt was drawn or the trigger pulled. Yet, it had been used to drill ordinary soldiers, and hence it was more realistic than all the other guns in our war games. In retrospect, I find minor consolation that I did not wholly absorb the domestic enemy images in Western films. Nor did I ever acquire the fondness for violence which makes armed service so natural for many. These were games and not real life.
Throughout my life, I have known soldiers and others engaged in warfare, mainly those serving either in the Forces of the United States or Her Britannic Majesty. Yet, I have been spared the personal participation in war. Unlike many of my classmates whose military interest was technological—they liked guns—my interest the military as an organization. I began very early to read military history and the classics of military science. Strategy, tactics, and logistics are above all organizational matters. Even if there were not a single rifle or warship employed, the military organisation remains distinctive, a particular way of getting work done.
On 9 May the Russian Federation, as the successor to the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, the largest and core constituent entity in the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, celebrated the defeat of the Western fascist invasion spearheaded by the German Wehrmacht under the codename Unternehmen (Operation) Barbarossa. The Second World War is called in the former Soviet Union the Great Patriotic War (Velikya Otechestvennaya voyna). I can recall the years when condescending aspersions were cast on occasion of the military parades in Moscow on 1 and 9 May. These parades were always presented as evidence of Soviet aggressive intent.
Trooping of the Colour and the armaments and martial display in Paris on Bastille Day (14 July) were never subjected to such derision, despite the continued foreign wars in which both Britain and France were (and are engaged). National holidays in countries that fought for their independence or safety might be forgiven for celebrating the forces with which those goals were attained. However, 4 July commemorates the UDI and not the battles to be fought. Trooping the Colour is celebration of the British monarch’s birthday by means of a loyal display of close order massed formation of the regiments responsible for defending the monarchy, not Britain, from invasion. The Guards uniforms and massed bands add to the pageantry at Horse Guards Parade, Whitehall. However the archaic drill formations are not decorative. They are a living example of 18th and early 19th century infantry tactics for producing massed firepower from single shot muskets and rifles. Anyone with some knowledge of French history would find the parade down the Champs Elysées on 14 July incongruent with the storming of the prison by which the start of the French Revolution is remembered. After ignominy in the Great War and the surrender to fascism in June 1940, the ruling class, represented by a banker of 172 cm (while the emperor of the French was only 157 cm tall), can lay no serious claims to heroism in defence of the nation. Presidential celebration of the Jour de Bastille is essentially a commercial display for the French armaments industry, in tough competition with its Western allies.
Pacifism is a personal choice, like so many ethical decisions made by individuals, to be respected. Perhaps there is a potential message for millions that conflict resolution or interest imposition must not necessarily require force of arms. However, like vegetarianism and veganism, pacifism relies on simplifications of the world that are just as problematic as those simplifications that dictate force of arms as the pure means of resolving conflicts. If the purpose of conflict resolution is to prove one side to be right and the other wrong, then war is inevitable. There is no way to prove the ideas of someone else absolutely wrong unless one is prepared to exterminate all those who hold those ideas. Conflict resolution cannot be based on proving who is right and who is wrong—even if in our hearts we believe we know this. Instead of proof of right or wrong—although wartime slogans are usually stated in platitudes and absolutes—conflict, even armed conflict aims to produce terms which both combatants can agree are sufficient to end hostilities.
The primitive propaganda of the NATO members, jointly and severally, has consistently argued that there is an absolute solution to end the war and that is to comply with the dictates of the West in NATO assembled. Pursuant to this unilateralism the Russian Federation, portrayed as the aggressor and hence in the wrong, is alleged to have the same absolute aims that the West in NATO assembled proclaims. Merely asserting this does not make it so—except in the minds of the other enemy NATO has pursued since 2001. This war in Ukraine, designated a special military operation by the Russian Federation and as a war for Ukrainian liberation from Russia in the West, is simultaneously a war against the ordinary inhabitants of the West, with a focus on the frontline sacrifice along the point of contact, stretches of the former NATO-Warsaw Pact border.
Watching the military parades in Russia and China it is tempting to see them as large scale militarist exhibitions. The serried ranks parading past the review stand in Moscow or Beijing cannot help but impress in terms of drilled precision. The strong presence of women, wearing skirts not trousers, conveys the image of an entire population under arms—if only because of the numbers in China. Casual Western observers and insincere critics alike are inclined to see such massive marching formations as incompatible with peace. I can even hear the sceptical remarks that such enormous displays prove that the Russians and Chinese are at least as belligerent as the armed forces in NATO. It is easy to wish that Russia or China, if they really wanted peace, would not so flagrantly display their military resources. Regular presence of US Armed Forces in all manner of sporting events with mass audience appeal is treated as routine with no ideological significance for countries beyond its borders.
Parades and all forms of pageantry are political events—even if promoted as entertainment. It is childish, ignorant or mendacious to attribute political motives to the parades of another country, one’s enemy, while pretending that one’s own country has no political motives for marching on holidays. It is necessary to ask what the motives of an event are and to consider them in historical context. Simply asserting that the bigger the military parade the more militaristic the parading is insufficient.
Long ago the so-called Western allies, Britain and the United States (for most of the war France was occupied by Germany or governed by an explicitly fascist regime in Vichy), were barely engaged in war against the Hitler regime in Germany. Despite claims to the contrary, the facts show that the Anglo-American alliance (essentially a Rhodes-Round Table compact made without the populations of either country) were on the side of anyone who would wage war against the Soviet Union. US ambassador to Moscow, Joseph Davies, was convinced that France and Britain were on the side of Hitler in preparing war against the USSR. So this conclusion as it applied until 1944 was no historical revision. It was in plain sight. The US was neutral until 1941 and Britain had nothing to say in the matter except to make money and avoid outright losses in its imperial corridors.
Although Vladimir Putin essentially repudiated the Soviet Union he was very clear in his speech this year that the military assembled were the descendants of the heroic men and women who defeated Nazism and the West’s second major invasion of the Russian heartland. Their parents and grandparents sacrificed more than their lives to stop German militarism and its allies from destroying what the citizens of the Soviet Union had produced. They can claim the legacy of great armies of liberation in the hell poured over them since the October Revolution.
The People’s Liberation Army, the descendants of the Eight Route Army and other Chinese revolutionary formations, not only defeated the Japanese and united a country torn by foreign invasion, exploitation and civil war. The PLA formed the basis for China’s mobilisation to become the modern industrialised country it is now. When huge divisions parade before the reviewing stand in Beijing, they are celebrating the accomplishments of the fastest and largest poverty reduction in human history for which the PLA’s organisational skills, bureaucratic structures and accumulated industrial know-how was essential.
Unlike the parades in Paris or London, trade shows for the parasitic weapons industry of revanchist France and monarchist Britain, the uniformed and armed or unarmed servants of the Russian and Chinese states can justly claim to honor the peoples their recent forefathers and mothers fought and died to defend and develop. One need only look at the percentages of the war budgets of Russia and China and compare them to what prevails in NATO to see that military is not automatically militarism.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/victory-days-military-without-militarism/">Victory Days: Military without Militarism?</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Time to End the Proposed WHO Treaty Now</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/time-to-end-the-proposed-who-treaty-now/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Malone]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 13 May 2024 15:01:04 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Health/Medical]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[World Health Organization (WHO)]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150366</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A letter signed by every single Republican Senator demands that President Biden withdraw US support from the proposed Pandemic Treaty and IHR Amendments. The Senators call upon Biden to: Withdraw support for the current IHR amendments and pandemic treaty negotiations. Shift focus to comprehensive WHO reforms that address its persistent failures without expanding its authority. […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/time-to-end-the-proposed-who-treaty-now/">Time to End the Proposed WHO Treaty Now</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="https://substack.com/redirect/6732ac9e-b2bd-4250-afda-852681dfd331?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/6732ac9e-b2bd-4250-afda-852681dfd331?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1715619186418000&usg=AOvVaw1g1QZv2Ct_sMbzEyRj4lhN"><img decoding="async" class="CToWUd" src="https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/meips/ADKq_NatSaiKddrY8fK-VK4TQOUATl92aYYLcM4hLFcnXqOB5_ZqV5-Y-b6dxHuF7rAeDCCjB5Uizky8CV_sMoF_0P1i9vJzAyCCpDJybOPcJIml1jzyw_KXbRuTdLLMOpX6igshZhJ26IgUWTttU9pya8Pk9nNem2XrtRlLPHGkwIPLqUsYyhjqzIJVZ_9L4hMCf5Q0IwTn3KA9DSxG2BBtjESHzGnvY6HaIro43GZBj5VmW5QF0SkSaMS4xRcTWZqYKmH-qhL7N9j6i-2gBtFVCZbnaXGUfdNVeDGZ9UUISPxIFuYbyidyGXv48A=s0-d-e1-ft#https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_507,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff5a45fd4-d17e-4911-b555-6d8ec58cb3bc_1562x1114.png" alt="" width="507" height="361.44642857142856" data-bit="iit" /></a>
A letter signed by every single Republican Senator demands that President Biden withdraw US support from the proposed Pandemic Treaty and IHR Amendments. The Senators call upon Biden to:
<ol>
<li>Withdraw support for the current IHR amendments and pandemic treaty negotiations.</li>
<li>Shift focus to comprehensive WHO reforms that address its persistent failures without expanding its authority.</li>
<li>Should Biden ignore this advice, the Senators demand that President Biden submit any pandemic-related agreement to the Senate for its advice and consent.</li>
</ol>
<a href="https://substack.com/redirect/7aa70a7d-a8d7-4d5a-9257-876ed35a4c43?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/7aa70a7d-a8d7-4d5a-9257-876ed35a4c43?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1715619186418000&usg=AOvVaw2jh6JHp-0YdLY7TPfywYAn"><img decoding="async" class="CToWUd" src="https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/meips/ADKq_NY2AwUvP_-w_fNLw9nvGhYr-V1hcgjw8i-n2TP92SQ0P_D-XG2acIAOI63ScD-GtvWaLvXx2VKXdJuFjbFYtkdM4DXeRppu6LUKV3qGbNvZkYNatYVZ6BZkFDlIN1GeGBNpGKJmnuDN2c6FWpKYBx1BIv6AP-ZJhh-X6l0rmimftiG_eEhOAoy2JKbjw6C7ucnEXHcWdDYD5OVkIKHg6snG6TE2i2veDBnLvM1DW7sekqZHZfvDEi2ikKCCk8NbTXODKfb59VQ3vx_6Hq-DsedSIcCF_iZQPbmeASHJN40v6Rjk60MFmgNIQNE=s0-d-e1-ft#https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_2912,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F63827892-192b-4915-9fd8-355bf4563b66_1462x1710.png" alt="" width="500" height="584.8" data-bit="iit" /></a>
<hr />
<a href="https://substack.com/redirect/d0bb6104-e52d-4b0b-9459-05f8c3599d7a?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/d0bb6104-e52d-4b0b-9459-05f8c3599d7a?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1715619186418000&usg=AOvVaw0xIlYIfezAFGdLuw9hHLkA">The full letter with all of the signatures can be found here.</a>
There was a House bill introduced (HR1425) titled: “<a href="https://substack.com/redirect/0f238ffb-5a65-4c0e-81ff-7ed4bcfe5ba9?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/0f238ffb-5a65-4c0e-81ff-7ed4bcfe5ba9?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1715619186418000&usg=AOvVaw1BZq1q9jv9a0W_eH15IIOb">No WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty Without Senate Approval Act</a>”. This bill would have established that any convention or agreement on pandemic-related issues reached by the World Health Assembly (WHA) shall be deemed to be a treaty requiring the advice and consent of the Senate.
Unfortunately, the bill was sent to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, which never voted on it. Near as I can tell, this has essentially killed that pending legislation. This is called a pocket-veto.
Congressman Michael McCaul is the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. If you wish to contact him to discover when HR 1425 will be voted on, so it can be released out of committee- <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/a5b93d08-a25f-4461-acc0-ab233cc2603d?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/a5b93d08-a25f-4461-acc0-ab233cc2603d?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1715619186418000&usg=AOvVaw3Kyygg2dWpPGAFy07jI6Wc">please follow this link</a>. To find your Congressional member to ask them to support HR1425, <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/948bda3a-f4f4-444e-a557-de643455d4d3?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/948bda3a-f4f4-444e-a557-de643455d4d3?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1715619186418000&usg=AOvVaw3HNl0JAL2w6li51HY88ULz">go here</a>.
For a list of other House Foreign Affairs Committee members to ask them to support HR1425 getting out of committee, <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/a7850e67-b071-4349-9c2f-9197787e9582?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/a7850e67-b071-4349-9c2f-9197787e9582?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1715619186418000&usg=AOvVaw2uSa0WLRfDBRPLsqbH_nuS">go here</a>.
Senator Ron Johnson introduced <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/93b83b6c-1df0-4f60-9af2-ff3e7e9a1a5a?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/93b83b6c-1df0-4f60-9af2-ff3e7e9a1a5a?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1715619186418000&usg=AOvVaw1dSlLX2isZwKbzWSYZ0n5T">Bill S.444</a> in March 2023, which is the companion to the above. The bill had 49 co-sponsors (all republicans). The Committee on Foreign Relations has also pocket-vetoed this bill, as it never left the committee. Also, consider reaching <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/e70ddd5d-ff21-4bd1-ae27-d919cce51295?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/e70ddd5d-ff21-4bd1-ae27-d919cce51295?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1715619186418000&usg=AOvVaw1wOpwmoUKYyy8SOOzAh7wr">out to your senator</a> or the <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/6aefaef3-4c75-4789-b2ab-cdcdb177a806?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/6aefaef3-4c75-4789-b2ab-cdcdb177a806?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1715619186418000&usg=AOvVaw2DDeVVoVtywKXnNOCpSvac">committee</a> to voice your concerns.
Please also reach out to both sides of the aisle. Even a single vote from “the other side” would make all the difference for passing HR1425 and S444.
<hr />
In the WHO’s 75-year history, only been one legally binding treaty has been agreed upon, and that was a tobacco control treaty in 2003. There is very little precedence for this treaty, and it is time to end WHO’s power grab now.
<hr />
On a completely different topic.
You can’t make this stuff up.
<a href="https://substack.com/redirect/657b0f27-06c3-46f3-8a27-add4e38c520e?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/657b0f27-06c3-46f3-8a27-add4e38c520e?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1715619186418000&usg=AOvVaw0LvszcFxo5pVQ29nQunEfJ"><img decoding="async" class="CToWUd" src="https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/meips/ADKq_NZW1HZgk3O1SL4tGbBRPP4gwtT5RI10k-YQ1J6nGs1A7M23Osb08NNlVRSbkcx0X2htdHAJtPlistPJxA-Z7ftdceiPASrzwvApvjf8ApNCMfHbSZxy7DzYVCKWQy5RqAUyMK_RtshCWkXm_QCgXyEtJkSk_DA1aIlDE-gae1B1KbpS-0vPSSRwCCXDGcr_38IjY-8CQLj1zZeMkxDMt06y2tSN6kJBryiciCwwJYvJDclNsQIV9QHC8aCoaUhIOPwBoC8TgTez3UlHxSnBglkBbUUESsYzkJ4kq8kinkuK_La4t9UycwQ=s0-d-e1-ft#https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_451,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F161baf1d-5650-464d-b998-0552bb75b1dc_908x580.png" alt="" width="451" height="288.0837004405286" data-bit="iit" /></a>
<blockquote><a href="https://substack.com/redirect/16ef889b-5906-4fb8-94ad-398fd58eb160?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/16ef889b-5906-4fb8-94ad-398fd58eb160?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1715619186418000&usg=AOvVaw3OzlccZbm8QCbni6yG4Dr0">Reuters</a>: Paying farmers to snuggle up with half-ton heifers is all the rage in the United States thanks to social media. For visitors, cuddling dairy or beef cattle can be therapeutic, or simply an adventure for city dwellers looking for good old country fun.
But this practice of opening the barn door to the public is facing a new risk, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) confirmed bird flu in dairy herds in nine states.</blockquote>
FYI – anyone who is “cow cuddling” as a hobby or for kicks and giggles, please be aware the government is feeding you more disinformation. It is extremely hard to get bird flu from hugging or working with cattle. This is fear porn. Most likely this fear porn is to create a need for an mRNA influenza vaccine coming to a Walmart near you…
In the meantime, out of 330 million people in the USA – there has only been ONE non-lethal case of bovine H5N1 (avian influenza)- only <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/0db49288-1867-4d7b-b0aa-c72cd7ccec28?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/0db49288-1867-4d7b-b0aa-c72cd7ccec28?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1715619186418000&usg=AOvVaw0q6DPc9XR9kVbrq2lEUZD5">one human case</a> has been linked to this outbreak in dairy cows, which was <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/0db49288-1867-4d7b-b0aa-c72cd7ccec28?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/0db49288-1867-4d7b-b0aa-c72cd7ccec28?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1715619186418000&usg=AOvVaw0q6DPc9XR9kVbrq2lEUZD5">reported</a> by Texas on April 1, 2024. It is extremely hard for humans to contract H5N1. End of story.The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/time-to-end-the-proposed-who-treaty-now/">Time to End the Proposed WHO Treaty Now</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
</item>
<item>
<title>Violate, Violations, and Violence</title>
<link>https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/violate-violations-and-violence/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dan Lieberman]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 13 May 2024 14:31:45 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Genocide]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Students]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Zionism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Li Peng]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Rashid Hussain]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Tiananmen Square]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Zhao Ziyang]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=150360</guid>
<description><![CDATA[No end to the twists and turns in the genocide of the Palestinian people. Violate the ground they possess, commit violations against the body they possess, and provoke them into violence. The coordination of using the “V” words to prevent victory applies to the suppression of those who fight for the sanctity of life, against […]
The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/violate-violations-and-violence/">Violate, Violations, and Violence</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></description>
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No end to the twists and turns in the genocide of the Palestinian people. Violate the ground they possess, commit violations against the body they possess, and provoke them into violence. The coordination of using the “V” words to prevent victory applies to the suppression of those who fight for the sanctity of life, against oppression, and for the peace and comfort of everyone.
Images and reports of the campus protests against those assisting and abetting in the genocide of the Palestinian people did not show violence by the campus campers — no bloody faces, no prostrate corpses, no images of broken windows, no sticks and stones to break bones — not until police arrived to unsettle and beat the protestors, and counter-demonstrators violated their rest, committed violations against the barriers that politely separated them from the public, and impolitely provoked the protestors into countering the violence committed upon them.
Faulty strategy by the counter-protestors. Marches, congregations, and protests generally aren’t “big news” after the first day. Front-page news needs thrills, excitement, sensation. Front page news adores violence. The violence provoked by counter-protestors gave the campus protestors a space on the front page and an introduction to a wider audience.
Who are the protestors? They are dedicated people who want those who enable genocide to disinvest from their investment in the slaughter of innocents.
Who are the counter-protestors? They are unlawful people who defend Israel’s genocide.
Who should government and law favor and protect? In the hypocritical American democratic system, genocide is selective, those who seek the contemporary genocide are favored and those who combat the genocide are thwarted. The genocide of the Palestinian people, certified by United Nations (UN) Human Rights officials as genocide, is selected by US government officials as not genocide, not even to be regarded as a serious oppression of innocent people. One difference between UN Human Rights officials and US government officials — the former does not follow the Zionist agenda and the latter promotes it.
Rather than call in the National Guard to shoot up the campus, as was done at the 1970 Kent State protest, where the Ohio National Guard fired on students and ended the Vietnam War demonstrations, a propped-up Joe Biden read from a Zionist-prepared script.
<blockquote>Not a peaceful process and against the law… People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked… No place for anti-Semitism or threats of violence against Jewish students, no place for islamophobia, no place for racism in America.</blockquote>
President Biden indirectly said, “We will allow the police and counter-demonstrators to forcibly remove those against the genocide and return the campuses to the control of the genocide perpetrators and those assisting in the genocide.” By changing the nature of the campus protests from being against genocide to harboring racism, the US president informed all citizens that we should disregard the genocide and bring contemporary genocidal maniacs and contemporary genocide victims together and this will do away with the racism that has caused the genocide. Biden should read the <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/63099ed7-5509-456e-86f7-999173bc408d?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/63099ed7-5509-456e-86f7-999173bc408d?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1715617991586000&usg=AOvVaw31getdduXO8LLnCvdJ76gR">New York Times observations</a> of the violence at UCLA, which shows all violence committed by counter-protestors while the police stand by and permit the violence. His attitude and the speed with which police have attempted to squash the campus protests has a comparison — student protest at Tiananmen Square.
Tiananmen Square
On April 22, 1989, the day of former CCP general secretary Hu Yaobang’s funeral, tens of thousands of students gathered in Tiananmen Square to mourn his death. From this assembly merged a petition for a meeting between student representatives and government officials to discuss government corruption and more freedom of assembly and speech for the masses. Three meetings were held between the demonstrators and government officials and no agreement was obtained. One of these was a nationally televised meeting between Prime Minister (PM) Li Peng and leaders of the students’ movement. I recall viewing the televised broadcast and remember student leaders were confusing and contradictory in their demands and Li Peng was confused at what he was hearing.
In a gesture of conciliation, PM Li Peng and Communist Party leader, Zhao Ziyang, went to Tiananmen Square and talked with hunger strikers. According to the official New China News Agency, Communist Party leader Zhao told the students, ”You have good intentions. You want our country to become better. The problems you have raised will eventually be resolved. But things are complicated, and there must be a process to resolve these problems.” Prime Minister Li Peng concluded that chaos in Beijing was spreading all over the country and demanded that the students refrain from further demonstrations.
For 44 days, up to one million students and citizens, some from Taiwan, occupied the Square and its surroundings, slept in tents, littered China’s most important Plaza with refuse and rubble, prevented tourists from exploring, and detoured Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev to “an obscure back entrance into China’s Great Hall of the People for what was planned as a solemn ceremony marking the first Sino-Soviet summit in three decades.” During that time, no police interfered within the Square, no protestor was arrested, and no violence occurred.
Several times, unarmed Chinese troops (PLA) tried to reach Tiananmen Square and convince the demonstrators to leave. From television reports of those days, which were before the Internet and are difficult to reestablish today, I remember unarmed Chinese soldiers in buses being attacked as they moved toward Tiananmen Square. The buses were set on fire with soldiers unable to evacuate; other unarmed soldiers were badly beaten. An infamous photo of an incinerated PLA soldier was an unpleasant image. Rather than publish the disturbing image I have given it a <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/466e0f0e-54f2-481f-93b7-0777bfabb893?j=eyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://substack.com/redirect/466e0f0e-54f2-481f-93b7-0777bfabb893?j%3DeyJ1Ijoiam4wMmoifQ.PaddeBtKle9joHJvDN3ueADzsKO9yeCM5BKLmMw0ldw&source=gmail&ust=1715617991586000&usg=AOvVaw0FCAQNR8PeiAL0UztDowVG">link</a>.
On June 4, 1989, with martial law in effect and no other means to dislodge the crowd from Tiananmen Square, Chinese troops entered Beijing and fought their way to the Square. The rest is history, severely distorted by Western media, which claimed thousands were killed at Tiananmen Square when no students were killed in the Square. The few hundred fatalities were civilians on the avenue leading to Tiananmen Square, shot by PLA forces who retaliated against those who attacked them and blocked their passage, and soldiers killed by anti-government citizens.
Comparison of China’s (PRC) response to the Tiananmen Square protest and US response to campus protests reveals the hypocrisy of US democratic action.
<ul>
<li>Student protestors exercised freedom of assembly and camped out in China’s main square for 44 days. Chinese police did not interfere. US police arrived on US campuses only a few days after the protestors camped out on university grounds. Freedom of assembly is fruitless without a place to assemble. Where else can students assemble other than on their campus?</li>
<li>Top officials of the PRC met and dialogued with the students, one time at Tiananmen Square and three times in Beijing. No American government official met with any of the students. Without the voice receiving a response from those to whom the speech is directed, free speech is only a word. It is a voice in the wilderness when controlled media masks the expressions.</li>
<li>Student protestors at Tiananmen faulted their government’s domestic policies; they wanted more freedoms for themselves ─ a subjective petition. Student protestors at US campuses faulted their government’s foreign policy; they wanted their government not to assist in denying the ultimate freedom to a human being, the freedom to live ─ an objective petition</li>
<li>Tiananmen had other dissidents, who had grievances against the government and supported the students’ demands. Students may have disagreed on tactics but no counter-demonstrators or provocateurs appeared in the square. The Chinese respected the student demands and their right to protest. The US protests featured counter-demonstrators supporting a foreign government and eager to provoke. Elements of the US public did not respect the student demands and their right to protest. Videos show many of the counter-protesters wearing pro-Israel slogans on their clothing, playing Israel’s national anthem, and singing an Israeli song about the Israel Defense Forces’ campaign in Gaza. The media promoted a ridiculous assertion that Hamas influenced the students and did not publicize Israelis’ role in the counter-demonstrations.</li>
<li>The PLA performed brutally in its objective of clearing Tiananmen Square of all inhabitants. Considering martial law had been declared and resistance to their march to the square caused the casualties, the troops’ brutality was proportioned by the wounds inflicted upon them. In the US colleges, police were brutal and that brutality was not proportional to the wounds inflicted upon them.</li>
</ul>
Conclusion
Government and public response to the protests reveal much about the nation where the protests occur. The campus protests showed the courage of America’s new generation, the apathy of the US public, and the treachery of the US government ─ the downfall of America.
The encounter between the campus protestors and the counter-protestors at the UCLA campus tells the story. A protest against genocide can solicit questions, and maybe arguments, but no sane human being forcibly counters those who demonstrate against a genocide. A deceptive treachery of dismantling a most valid demonstration by considering it anti-Semitic because it prevented a few students from attending class is incredulous. Observing LA Police standing aside while counter-demonstrators representing a foreign nation, beat, intimidate, and provoke American youth indicates the US has no leadership; it is influenced by a foreign power.
The Zionists saw the WWII massacre of Jews as their most opportune moment ─ use the genocide to convince the world that Jews were not safe without their own nation. Anytime, anyone complains about Israel’s deceptions and oppressions, bring in media stooges to publicize the WWII genocide and use the opportunity to denigrate the complaint as anti-Semitic. The next step has the ADL raise an alarm of redundant and manipulated statistics showing a rapid growth in anti-Semitism ─ Jews are in trouble and need protection. Attention to Israeli Jews’ oppression of the Palestinians is sidetracked by attention to spurious anti-Semitism.
The hundreds murdered each day by Israeli Jews are considered less significant than the one or two Jewish persons who have received rude remarks from American youth. The deaths of the Palestinians, similar to the deaths of the WWII European Jews, have been perverted and used to reinforce the belief in a Zionist mission of helping well-educated, well-positioned, and well-established Jews escape spurious anti-Semitism. This hides the truth of the Zionist mission ─ seizing all Palestinian land and resources and expelling and murdering the Palestinian community.
As soon as the campus demonstrations started, the Zionists did what they always do, turned a negative into an opportunity. The demonstrations have been shadowed by false charges of a spontaneous hatred of Jews, the same Jews who are responsible for the genocide. The Jews who deserve animosity for their participation in the genocide are now the victims of those rallying against the genocide. Growing hatred of innocent Jews is now the topic.
The campus demonstrations have stirred the world but have been prevented from accomplishing their purpose of changing US foreign policy ─ stop aiding and abetting Israel in the genocide. Just the opposite, with false charges of massive “anti-Semitism” promoted by Israel’s stooges and invading the conscience of the Western world, Israel has its green light to commit genocide of the Palestinians.
<div>
I am against my country’s revolutionaries 
Wounding a sheath of wheat
</div>
Against the child 
Any child 
Carrying a hand grenade
I am against my sister 
Feeling the muscle of a gun 
Against it all 
And yet
What can a prophet do to a prophetess 
When their eyes 
Are mad to drink 
The sight of the raiders’ hordes?
I am against boys becoming 
Heroes at ten
Against the tree flowering Explosives 
Against branches becoming scaffolds 
Against the rose-beds turning to trenches 
Against it all
And yet When fire cremates my friends My youth And country 
How can I Stop a poem from becoming a gun?
“Opposition” by Rashid Hussain
</div>
</div>The post <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/violate-violations-and-violence/">Violate, Violations, and Violence</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org">Dissident Voice</a>.]]></content:encoded>
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