The French Government is introducing a tougher vaccine passport regime today. Now, only vaccination (and not natural immunity or covid tests) will count to allow access to cafes, libraries, sports facilities, and long-distance trains.
The near-hysterical arguments made by the French political class justifying this new pass are strikingly unguarded and reveal the inner dynamics behind the vaccine passport drive. These debates show that vaccines are no longer a simple medical product. Instead, the vaccine has become a way in which states are establishing their authority, and creating a new QR-code citizenship based on regular compliance with medical procedures.
Vaccination has become a test for entry into the civic body. The ‘test’ of the vaccine is not your degree of medical immunity, or the degree to which you stand to suffer personally from COVID-19 infection. (The vaccine pass goes down to the age of 12 in France, while in New York it applies to those aged five and above).
Instead, the new meaning of vaccination is an act of compliance; it is a matter of doing what is asked and expected of you. The French Prime Minister Jean Castex said that the vaccinated have “played the game”, they have done what is asked of them. President Emmanuel Macron said that the vaccinated, “near-totality of people”, have “adhered” or “subscribed” to what they were asked to do. These people are “responsible”. By contrast, it is a “very small” that is “refractory” or “resistant”. They are “irresponsible”, says Macron, and “a irresponsible person is longer a citizen”.
Here, the state claims the right to set conditions for entry to civic life. The question of being part of social life is not a right, but something provisional; it is a permission that is granted by the state. The new gatekeepers of civil society are the waiter at a cafe, the head of a sports club, the door staff at the theatre, who from Monday will not only scan QR codes but check people’s ID cards too.
“To be a free citizen means to be a responsible citizen,” says Macron. “Duties come before rights.” You can only have rights (enter society) once you have done your duty (been vaccinated). The idea that duties come before rights means, at base, that the state comes before the citizen: the citizen only takes his place in society at the behest of the state.
This is not a matter of two shots and you are done. There is an ongoing demand for compliance, whereby your citizenship – and claim to ‘responsibility’ – is continually renewed. France has followed Israel in requiring a booster shot for vaccine passes to remain valid. Currently, you have seven months to get a booster, but this will shorten to four months in February. A French Government guide sets out the exact timetable expected of you: this is a jurisprudence of medically based citizenship. Every injection gives a ‘valid QR card’ that you can use to access social life; if you don’t get the booster in the required window then this QR code will expire. France has also followed Israel with a special offer (available until February 15th) allowing first-time jabbers to “benefit from a valid vaccine pass” after their first dose, so long as they get their second jab within 28 days.
The discounting of natural immunity is very telling. Natural immunity yields a wider spectrum of anti-bodies than vaccination and is likely to confer longer protection against infection and against new variants. And yet natural immunity has no political meaning. It is a strength that your body has gained through its own efforts, without involving the state or wider society. The ‘pass sanitaire’ that had been in operation in France since last summer recognised natural immunity and negative covid tests, alongside vaccination; the new ‘pass vaccinal’ recognises vaccination alone. The French Prime Minister now claims that natural immunity provides “only very little immunity”, while the source of genuine immunity is a “full course of vaccines”. This claim reflects more about the different political value placed upon these two routes to antibodies. One route is deemed “protective”, robust, and the other very weak, as something that “wanes”, only because one has a robust relationship with the state and the other relates to the state “only very little”.
(Indeed, as we saw with the Novak Djokovic saga, natural immunity – and the claim to exemption based on natural immunity – in fact now poses a threat, so dangerous that a person must be imprisoned and deported. Natural immunity poses a threat not to actual public health, but to the new social order based on vaccination that is being built by the Australian government.)
The fetishism of Covid vaccination is at base a fetishism of bureaucracy. The vaccinated person has a pass, they have a QR code; they are on these grounds judged safe. You can feel ‘reassured’ when you are in a public space and everybody has passes on their phones. The unvaccinated person has no card or QR code and therefore they are seen as risky and posing a danger to others. In declining to be vaccinated, they are not merely refusing a medical procedure – with its attendant benefits and risks – but they are refusing to relate to bureaucracy. The absolute power attributed to a vaccine card – to show that someone is safe, to show that they care for others, and are willing to protect themselves and others – owes less to the medical effects of vaccination than to vaccination as an insignia for bureaucracy.
This is why it is repeatedly asserted that only the unvaccinated are infectious. The French prime minister says that the unvaccinated cannot be allowed to go around “infecting others with impunity”. He even claims that the unvaccinated intend to infect others, that they think to themselves, “I’m going to infect others.” This belief persists in the face of sky-high vaccinated case rates; in the face, even, of the Prime Minister’s own recent Covid infection.
There is a long history of blaming dissident elements for infectious disease – as with the expulsion of beggars, Jews and prostitutes from medieval plague towns, or in the nineteenth century the association between cholera and revolutionary urban uprisings. Infectious disease has often been associated with elements outside the system or that cut against social or religious hierarchy. Michel Foucault said that the absolutist state saw the plague as “a form… of disorder”, a disease of “rebellions, crimes, vagabondage, desertions, people who appear and disappear, live and die in disorder”.
Now too, the unvaccinated are seen as the source of all ills of society. The Italian Prime Minister said that “most of the problems we are experiencing today are due to the fact that there are unvaccinated people”, as he introduced a new tougher vaccine pass for Italian citizens on January 10th. The unvaccinated are even, perversely, presented as the cause of repressive instruments designed by politicians. Emmanuel Macron said that the unvaccinated didn’t merely put other people’s lives at risk, but they also “restricted the liberty of others”, which was “unacceptable”. The French Prime Minister said the unvaccinated “put in danger the life of the whole country and restrict the daily life of the immense majority of French people”.
The eight per cent or so of people who have not been vaccinated in France appear to be the single focus of state authority. Macron recently said that his primary aim was to “piss off the unvaccinated”, and that he will continue to do this “until the end”. In his New Year’s message, he urged the unvaccinated to join the fold, telling them that “all of France is counting on you”, as if the course of the pandemic – indeed the very fate of France – depends upon them agreeing to the jab.
The project of improving national health has been replaced by a project of integrating the population into a bureaucracy by means of health status. The health of the nation has become confused with the proportion of the population that has a valid health pass.
The pursuit of the ideology of vaccination at the expense of health outcomes is shown most vividly in the imposition of vaccination mandates upon healthcare professionals. Here, we see the sheer blindness of sacking of experienced medical staff in the midst of a pandemic on the basis of a vaccine that has no bearing on the risk they pose to patients. It also shows how far the notion of the ‘irresponsible’ unvaccinated person is from the reality, given that healthcare workers have given and contributed more than anyone. In French Guadeloupe, vaccine mandates led to a 30% reduction in staff at the main hospital and the reduction of services to a skeleton operation. The scene there now is colonial: black healthcare staff picketing the hospital were removed by white mobile gendarme units, and now there is an armed police checkpoint at the hospital entrance. Vaccination mandates are a test of allegiance for healthcare professionals. Authorities show that they are prepared to run hospitals into the ground, to risk lives, to protect the ideology.
The vaccine passport is a citizenship test for a morally and politically vacuous age. It is entirely passive – it is the simple act of consenting to a medical procedure, after which you are crowned with a civic virtue. This is a citizenship test that occurs on the level of what the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls “bare life”; that is, it is a question of merely biological existence, rather than a question of how a life is lived. Receiving a vaccine pass is mute; there are no words, there is no oath of allegiance to party, country or leader. You offer your body and receive a QR code in return: this is the nature of the new social contract between citizen and state. “Vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate” is the mantra for reconstituting authority and society in an age where this authority cannot be grounded on a substantial social basis.
The vaccine is being treated as a mystical state or collective substance that incorporates people into the collective body. Vaccination now is like a sacrament, a transubstantiation ritual; through the vaccine we are receiving the body of the state into our body and therefore joining the community.
One casualty in this is vaccination itself. Considered scientifically, a vaccine – as with any drug – is not a protective talisman or means for membership of a community. It is a medical product with particular qualities and uses, and particular side effects and risks. It may be useful for some groups but not others, and in some contexts but not in others. The rational use of a drug is as important as the drug itself, to ensure that it is directed towards the appropriate ends.
The ideological weaponisation of vaccines distorts these cost-benefit judgements. The vaccine is forced upon people who have little or no need of it, such as children and those with natural immunity, while ignoring those who have need of it. (The older and more vulnerable someone is, the less they are affected by vaccine passports.)
This episode is violating the very basis of health and medical ethics. Through vaccination passports and mandates, it has become acceptable to force someone to take a medical treatment, even a treatment that is not really in their medical interest. When Jean Castex boasted that the vaccine passport led to a rise in people getting their first vaccination, the interviewer pointed out “but they were forced”. Castex shrugged. In normal times, medical force is unacceptable; medical force means the Nazis. When France began vaccinating a year ago, it insisted upon consent forms and pre-vaccine interviews to ensure that people were really consenting. Now, the use of force has become entirely acceptable, it has become ethical in fact. It is the duty of the state to get people to do their duty.
And in this, the state is claiming rights over our bodies, the right to say what we put in them and what we don’t. A citizen under the vaccine passport regime is not in fact a citizen at all, but rather a chattel: you sign your body over to the state, and agree to take the latest required treatments in order have your QR code renewed. You sell your rights over your body for the price of drinking a cup of coffee in a cafe.
Josie Appleton is the author of Toxic Sociality – Reflections on a Pandemic and Officious – Rise of the Busybody State. She writes at notesonfreedom.com.
January 25, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, France, Human rights, Israel |
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Shortly after World World Two, The Rockefeller Foundation set forth on a quest to bring about a transformation of world agriculture. They did this, in part, by “socially engineering” the scientific culture to not only accept but promote the use of GMO foods and dangerous biotechnologies. And now, they are at it again.
This new attempted policy change is outlined in a document titled “The True Cost of Food: Measuring What Matters to Transform the U.S. Food System”. In the report, mention is made of both the Covid-19 crisis and the climate crisis, claiming that now is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for to effect “transformative change” in food production.
The report is the result of a collaboration between the Rockefeller Foundation, various academics from leading universities, the World Wildlife Fund and the True Price Foundation. Leading the analysis were members of “True Price”, a Dutch company that describes itself as a “social enterprise with the mission to realize sustainable products that are affordable to all by enabling consumers to see and voluntarily pay the true price of products they buy”.
Leading the True Price team is Michel Scholte, an alumnus of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Network, Adrian de Groot Ruiz, also a former WEF “Global Shaper” and Herman Mulder, former Director-General at ABN AMRO, one of the world’s leading agribusiness banks!
The intended goal of the report is to uncover the “true cost” of food in the US, which is claimed to be at least $3.2 trillion per year, three times more than than $1.1 trillion that Americans spend annually on food.
Included in this “cost analysis” are things like diet-related diseases, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and reduced biodiversity – all reasonable concerns. However, to understand the true agenda at play, one must read past the flowery language and popular buzzwords. As noted by author and researcher, William Engdahl:
“The message is that the current American food production is to blame and that radical and costly changes are urgently needed. The difficulty in reading the report is that the language is deliberately vague and deceptive. For example one of the most damaging components of American agriculture since the 1990s has been the wholesale introduction of GMO crops—especially soybeans, corn and cotton and the highly carcinogenic Monsanto-Bayer Roundup with glyphosate. The Rockefeller report omits their direct role in fostering that devastation by their creating and promoting Monsanto and GMO for decades, knowing it was destructive.”
As Engdahl makes clear, such a report detracts attention away from the fact that most of the “costs” associated with the food industry can be traced directly to the Rockefellers themselves and their role in creating the current industrialized food chain that has not only wrought destruction on global agriculture but contributed to the explosion of chronic disease. The adverse health effects caused by the introduction of GMO crops into modern farming and the subsequent lack of safety testing cannot be overstated. This will be detailed in part 2.
Following the classic problem-reaction-solution model, the report makes mention of the impact of Covid-19 on the current food supply chain, stating that the food system needs to become more resilient.
“Food insecurity has skyrocketed during the pandemic, with more than 54 million Americans (one in six Americans), of which over 18 million are children, facing uncertainty around their next meal.”
This is ironic considering that these issues are a direct result of political decisions to institute draconian lockdowns and other nonscientific policies, NOT a virus or a disease called “Covid-19”. And lest we forget the 2012 Rockefeller publication, “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development” (p.18, “Lockstep”) describes many aspects of the Covid-19 drama in haunting detail.
According to the Rockefeller report, the way to construct a more resilient food supply chain is by increasing corporate involvement through a focus on industrialization and technological innovation. However, these are the very same measures that caused many of the issues being outlined.
For example, the report makes mention of “soil health” as a primary concern. However, it is precisely the widespread implementation of modern farming techniques (which involve the use of artificial fertilizers and the spraying of pesticides) – advocated for by the Rockefellers – that has depleted the soil of its nutrients in the first place.
Unsurprisingly the report makes no mention of agroecology or other regenerative methods of natural farming that seek to harness, maintain and enhance biological and ecological processes in agricultural production.
The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) describes agroecology as an approach to farming that:
“Favours the use of natural processes, limits the use of external inputs, promotes closed cycles with minimal negative externalities and stresses the importance of local knowledge and participatory processes that develop knowledge and practice through experience, as well as scientific methods, and the need to address social inequalities”.
According to Indian environmental activist, Dr. Vandana Shiva (emphasis added):
“Agroecology, which encompasses common ecological principles – organic farming, permaculture, biodynamic farming, natural farming regenerative agriculture, among many others – has been recognized as the most effective sustainable and equitable method of farming which also addresses the challenges of feeding the world in an era of climate crises.”
Back to the Rockefeller report… Which claims that one of the fundamental shifts required across the current food system is an acceleration in the development of new tools to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As stated in the report, “this includes new financial markets related to natural capital including carbon, water, soil nitrogen and biodiversity”.
It is not stated how these new financial markets will be constructed, but this seems like a reference to the recent Rockefeller/Wallstreet-backed creation of a new asset class called a Natural Asset Company. NACs are specialized corporations “that hold the rights to the ecosystem services produced on a given chunk of land, services like carbon sequestration or clean water”.
Journalist and researcher Whitney Webb explains the true motives behind the creation of NACs in no uncertain terms:
“The ultimate goal of NACs is not sustainability or conservation – it is the financialization of nature, i.e. turning nature into a commodity that can be used to keep the current, corrupt Wall Street economy booming under the guise of protecting the environment and preventing its further degradation.”
Another method of reducing GHG emissions, according to the Rockefeller/Gates/WEF initiative, is by introducing plant-based, meat-free alternatives. Once again, the threat of “Covid-19” is subtly exploited to highlight the importance of this transition.
“[meat] processing plants that continued to operate became transmission sites for the disease. Reports show approximately 300,000 excess cases of Covid-19 due to proximity to a livestock plant and approximately 5,000 deaths happened among workers in meat processing facilities.”
Here it’s worth noting that the President of the Rockefeller Foundation, Rajiv Shah, is the former Director of Agricultural Development at the Gates Foundation and that Bill Gates is personally invested in Impossible Foods, Memphis Meats and Beyond Meats – companies that produce synthetic meat and dairy products from plants, using laboratory techniques including gene editing.
In Gates’ 2021 book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” he advocates for the replacement of beef with fake meat. In a recent interview with MIT technology review, he said that people’s behaviors should change for them to learn to like fake meat, and if that doesn’t work, appropriate regulations should be put in place.
This agricultural transformation advocated for by Gates, the Rockefellers and the WEF, one that seeks to increase industrialization, patentable crops and the consumption of lab-grown “meat”, stems in part, from the mechanical mind and its reductionist theory of food.
The “reductionist” view of food tells us that food is digested in the body where it’s broken down into its constituent parts, sent to different areas of the body and, ultimately, used as “fuel” for the body to burn. Much emphasis is put on the caloric content of food, rather than its nutritional value or its other medicinal properties/benefits. This view stems from our scientific establishment which views the body as nothing more than a complex “machine”.
Furthermore, as is evident, the transhumanists seek to alter our perception of food from something that is grown naturally in the earth beneath our feet to something that is synthetically engineered in laboratories. Companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger have raised millions of dollars, promoting their concoctions on the basis of claims that “Lab-grown meat will replicate the taste and consistency of traditional meat”.
If taste alone doesn’t hook people in, they play the “climate change” card, touting the consumption of fake meat as “necessary” for us to avoid an environmental disaster. Ironically, research indicates that the production of lab-cultured meat could require more energy than the preparation of regular meat. Adding to this irony is the fact that Gates, who lives in a 66,000-square-foot mansion and travels in a private jet, is himself a carbon super-emitter.
In 2019, the USDA and FDA announced a regulatory framework for lab-grown meat, a move that elated the fake-meat industry. Why would synthetic meat producers be happy about this? Kelsey Piper, in an article for Vox, gives us the answer:
“… consumer confidence is absolutely critical. If people don’t believe that cell-based meat products are safe, regulated, and healthy, then they’ll stick with slaughtered meat”.
In other words, no matter how fraudulent, an “FDA Approved” badge constitutes an irreplaceable marketing tool. For example, data indicate that Covid-19 vaccination rates increased after the vaccines were given full FDA approval.
With a regulatory framework in place, startups are working to build out the technological infrastructure that will allow for the production of lab-grown meat at scale. The next step in this “transhumanist tiptoe” will be “food” created using nanotechnology. As stated by author and researcher Aaron Franz,
“Nanotech could take the atoms from an otherwise useless source and turn it into something useful. You could turn dirt directly into food with nanotech.”[1]
Related to this is the developing science of “molecular manufacturing”, which may be defined as “the hypothetical future use of reprogrammable nanoscale ‘assemblers’ to build products atom by atom”.
Franz explains the transhumanist mindset behind the development of such a technology:
“Molecular manufacturing is hailed by transhumanists as a way to conquer scarcity. In a scarcity-free world people would be able to concentrate on things other than survival.”[1]
However, a quick search through the scientific literature indicates that the use of molecular manufacturing in food production goes far beyond alleviating “scarcity” and may have more to do with altering the structure and function of the body itself. For example, a 2015 review paper states that (emphasis added):
“The potential benefits of utilizing nanomaterials in food are improved bioavailability, antimicrobial effects, enhanced sensory acceptance and targeted delivery of bioactive compounds.”
Another review published in the American Journal of Food Technology makes mention of “nanotechnology-based biosensors” for the detection of food-borne pathogens. Shades of the DARPA/NIH brainchild, Profusa, and their research into developing an injectable biosensor that can “detect future pandemics”.
Once again, “public acceptance” is cited as a major hurdle to the introduction of food created using nanotechnology, and therefore one can reasonably predict to see further regulatory frameworks created specifically for such products.
FOOD AS INFORMATION
Despite the reductionist, body-as-a-machine doctrine expounded by the transhumanists, new research argues that food is a form of information and that this information interacts directly with our genetic infrastructure, effecting epigenetic changes by turning on and off various genes – “You are what you eat”, as the old adage goes.
“Epigenetics” refers to the science of how cells control gene activity without changing the DNA sequence. Our food and our environment are two important factors that drive epigenetic changes. One of the primary epigenetic mechanisms is DNA methylation – a process that regulates gene expression by altering protein activity and/or inhibiting the binding of transcription factors.
Abnormal DNA methylation is observed in cancer patients and as researchers note, “Dietary nutrient intake and bioactive food components are essential environmental factors that may influence DNA methylation”. The discovery of epigenetics revealed the profound importance of food intake on disease risk and phenotypic expression.
But DNA methylation is not the only mechanism by which food interacts with our DNA. All food, whether of plant or animal origin, contains non-coding RNA that can survive digestion to affect profound changes in the expression of our genes. These RNAs are shuttled in virus-sized (!) “microvesicles” (also called “exosomes”). A groundbreaking study published in 2011 found that exogenous plant micro RNAs could regulate gene expression changes in humans.
These findings may extend the role of exosomes to that of interspecies communication, thereby highlighting the significance of food as a source of information transfer, affecting the body on a nutritional, energetic and genetic level.
Another source of information comes from the microbes that accompany most plant foods. The “microbiome” as it’s termed refers to the collective microbial (fungal, bacterial, etc) content of our body, much of which is found in the gut. Recent discoveries have illuminated the importance of the microbiome and its role in nearly every chronic disease from depression to cardiovascular disease.
Beneficial microbes help to regulate bowel pH, produce vitamins, maintain mucosal integrity, regulate immune function, reduce inflammation, and ferment complex carbohydrates that are normally inaccessible to human digestion.
Microbes represent a profound “store” of information, relayed to us through the food we eat. Fermented foods (such as kimchi) are thus irreplaceable sources of beneficial bacteria that help to promote optimal bowel conditions, reduce disease risk and restore balance to a microbiome decimated by overly processed foods, glyphosates and other toxins common to modern-day life.
Understanding food as more than merely a source of energy allows us to comprehend the magnitude of the agenda that seeks to promote the consumption of genetically modified, synthetically produced, test-tube mulch cooked-up in corporate laboratories. With this firmly in mind, we are now prepared to dive into the history of GMOs and modern “agribusiness”, with an emphasis on highlighting the role of the Rockefellers and other wealthy elite actors.
To be continued…
REFERENCES
[1] Franz, A. Revolve: Man’s Scientific Rise to Godhood. Franz Productions. 2011.
Ryan Matters is a writer and free thinker from South Africa. After a life-changing period of illness, he began to question mainstream medicine, science and the true meaning of what it is to be alive. Some of his writings can be found at newbraveworld.org, you can also follow him on Gab.
January 22, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Environmentalism, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, WEF |
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The Facebook page belonging to Russia’s delegation to the security and arms control talks in Vienna was blocked for days without explanation. The diplomats have blasted it as an act of censorship specifically targeting Moscow.
The act of censorship took place last Friday, Konstantin Gavrilov, head of the continent told RT. The diplomats were so surprised by the development that they initially believed it had been some sort of technical error on the US tech giant’s part. “We waited for two days” before reaching out to Facebook and to the Russian Foreign Ministry in a bid to resolve the issue, he said.
The social media service, however, did not clarify the reasons for the ban.
“There was no explanation; nothing from them,” Gavrilov said, adding that he was still wondering what exactly might have triggered the move.
The delegation posted “nothing [that could be considered] prohibited” on its account, where the content included official statements on subjects like security guarantees, the situation in Ukraine, and some other strictly “practical political issues.” It was “very strange” to find out the page had been shut down, he added.
The account was used by the Russian diplomatic delegation to the Negotiations on Military Security and Arms Control in Vienna, held under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Its role was to publish official statements and press briefings by the Russian Foreign Ministry’s officials and Moscow’s mission to the OSCE.
Gavrilov believes it was all part of a targeted anti-Russian campaign waged by western social media giants. These companies have a “policy” of erasing any content that “does not correspond to their views” and they “can do anything they want,” the diplomat said, admitting that his own personal Facebook page had been blocked three times.
“They all follow our accounts very closely and when they think it is too much, they block them without explanation,” Gavrilov said. “This is ridiculous. No proof, nothing. It is an unprecedented policy of the western media against us,” he said, adding that, according to his estimations, Russian officials are targeted much more often than any of their foreign counterparts.
Eventually, the diplomats were forced to request assistance from the Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor. The agency issued a statement on Sunday, accusing Facebook of an “act of censorship” and warning it that such actions are forbidden under Russia’s constitution. It also demanded the account be restored “immediately” and urged Facebook to provide an explanation for its removal.
The US social media giant has not yet made any public statements about the incident. The delegation’s page was restored on Monday.
Facebook has been repeatedly fined in Russia over non-compliance with national legislation. The list of violations range from breaching privacy laws by storing the personal data of Russians outside of the country’s territory to repeatedly failing to delete content banned in Russia.
Facebook also cracked down on media outlets it has deemed linked to Russia, such as the RT-affiliated Redfish. The ban of the service’s account drew criticism from the International Federation of Journalists.
Gavrilov believes that the enormous power wielded by social media companies should be counterbalanced. “It is necessary to do something to regulate this,” the diplomat said, adding that the Russian government is currently “working hard” on drafting legislation that would create a legal framework for their operation on Russian territory.
January 17, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | Facebook, United States |
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By the time solar energy reaches Earth’s surface it is spread very thin – even midday sunshine will not boil the billy or make toast. And solar collectors will only convert about 20% of that weak energy into electricity. Thus thousands of solar panels are needed to collect significant energy, and lots more to charge the expensive batteries needed to maintain electricity supply overnight and during cloudy weather. Despite these disadvantages, force-feeding of “green” energy by all levels of government has given Australia nearly three million solar collectors (mainly imported from China).
It requires scads of land to generate significant electricity from the sun’s weak rays. But even in sunny weather they produce nothing for 16 hours every day. And a sprinkling of dust, pollen, ash or salt, or a few splatters of poop from birds or flying foxes can reduce output by 50%, while night, snow or heavy cloud cover snuffs them out completely.
Solar energy collection is maximised if the panels face the sun exactly and follow the daily and seasonal movements of the sun across the sky. No rooftop collectors and only 40% of ground facilities can do this. Thus to produce the planned energy requires an even bigger area of collector panels, covering even more land.
More interested in propaganda than science, greens call land-based arrays “solar farms” suggesting they are plant-friendly places. However solar panels steal sunlight, leaving real plants beneath them to die. Solar “farms” have nothing in common with real farms except the need for large areas of open countryside – usually consuming valuable flattish cleared farmland or open grassland.
In fact growing plants are a liability to solar “farms” because they can block solar energy, so the operators must prevent grass, weeds and bushes from shadowing the panels and stealing their sunshine. Thus most plant-life in solar “farms” is killed – either by the blocking of the sun, or by regular applications of herbicide, or by roadways.
A big solar “farm” in Australia could contain one million solar panels and smother 2,000 acres of land. Each operation also needs miles of cleared access roads and transmission lines to maintain the facility, collect the electricity and transmit it to urban demand centres. Most of the time these transmission lines are operating well below capacity, creating an expensive web of inefficient maintenance liabilities.
Australia is also a world leader in installing subsidised rooftop solar. But a quick drive around the suburbs will show that few panels have the size, the ideal orientation or the cleanliness to be efficient collectors of solar energy – they are green status symbols designed to collect subsidies. Many will fail to recover the real cost of manufacture, transport, installation, maintenance and restoration. They destabilise the electricity network and elevate average electricity prices for industry and for those who cannot afford a house, let alone one with its own solar panels.
All for ZERO climate benefits.
Intermittent “green” energy forces coal and gas plants to operate at full capacity to cover peak demands around sunrise and sunset, but to wind back or shut down when solar energy pours into the system around midday. Recently in just one week in South Australia (Australia’s green energy guinea pig), electricity generation went from “over 130% renewables to less than 4%, renewables with everything in between”. Despite South Australia being home to “the biggest battery in the world”, the energy regulator has been forced to lease diesel back-up generators and to order gas-fired plants to stand by in case the wind suddenly drops – this encourages mechanical and financial breakdowns, and high electricity costs.
Europe has also gone out onto the green energy limb, but this is no comfort for Australians who cannot import nuclear power from France, gas from Russia or hydro-power from Scandinavia.
Every solar installation consumes energy to mine metals, manufacture, transport and erect panels and to build access roads and transmission lines over long distances. Careful analysis will show an energy deficit over their short lifetimes. And when an earthquake, hailstorm, cyclone or hurricane smashes these exposed rows of solar panels, rubbish dumps of mangled trash will be left. Most of this debris cannot be recycled and tonnes of metals, glass and plastic are destined to end their life as toxic, non-degradable land fill.
Bureaucrats will try to force solar operators to clean up, but smart operators will have bankruptcy petitions prepared for such emergencies.
Here’s a solar “farm” after a cyclone or typhoon:
Storm Destroys Solar “Farm” in Puerto Rico (producing lots of landfill). Picture Credit: Bob Meinetz. www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger
Proven and reliable electricity generators, driven by coal, gas, hydro or nuclear, with a small land footprint and housed in storm-proof structures, are far less damaging to the green environment than these landscapes of inefficient, intermittent, expensive plant-killing “farms”.
Where are the Green objectors now?
More Food for Thought:
Solar Energy in Australia:
https://list.solar/plants/largest-plants/australia/
https://www.csiro.au/en/news/News-releases/2021/Australia-installs-record-breaking-number-of-rooftop-solar-panels
The Effects of Dust on Solar Panels:
http://www.alionenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Effects-of-Dust-on-the-Performance-of-PV-Panels.pdf
The Growing Solar Panel Waste Problem:
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/solar/the-mounting-solar-panel-waste-problem/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23/if-solar-panels-are-so-clean-why-do-they-produce-so-much-toxic-waste/
Paving Virginia with solar slabs is bad law:
by David Wojick
https://www.cfact.org/2021/12/27/paving-virginia-with-solar-slabs-is-a-bad-law/
Australia’s looming energy security disaster:
https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2017/06/looming-disaster-energy-security/
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/australian-energy-council-warns-on-electricity-market-intervention/news-story/af00cdd9300e6a2df7621782b7e9bdd0
Concentrated Solar Power – another Solar Scam:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/01/yet_another_solar_scam.html
World’s Biggest Battery becomes World’s biggest Joke:
https://iowaclimate.org/2021/09/26/worlds-biggest-renewable-energy-battery-becomes-worlds-biggest-joke/
January 16, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Environmentalism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular |
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Over the past several days, the news story that has dominated British news headlines, and consequently, the news headlines of the rest of the Western world, is controversy over a leaked email confirming Boris Johnson’s attendance at a Downing Street garden party in May 2020 – a time when the Summer weather is usually at its peak in Britain, and incidentally, the same time when the entire country was under stringent lockdown measures.
In spite of offering an almost immediate apology in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Johnson has faced intense calls to resign from his position.
Not only from the opposition of Keir Starmer’s Labour, Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats and Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP, but also from prominent members of his own Conservative Party such as Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross. With the main point of contention being that members of the British public were prohibited from seeing gravely ill loved ones at the same time as Johnson’s attendance of said garden party due to the restrictions put in place.
The ongoing controversy over ‘partygate’ however is in stark contrast to the minuscule Western media coverage of Boris Johnson’s key role in what is currently the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, the now seven-year long Saudi Arabia-led war on Yemen.
A conflict that has resulted in the worst Cholera outbreak of all time, the deaths of 10,000 children directly through the ensuing violence, and the further deaths of more than 85,000 children through the mass-starvation the conflict has triggered.
In July 2016, following his appointment as Foreign Secretary under the then-government of Theresa May, Johnson approved the sale of more than £1.2bn worth of British made-weaponry to Downing Street-ally Saudi Arabia – the Gulf Kingdom immediately putting it to use on Yemen’s agricultural, health and sanitation infrastructure.
This lead directly to the aforementioned Cholera outbreak and famine in what is already the most impoverished nation on the Arabian Peninsula, a situation exacerbated even further by a Saudi blockade preventing food and medical supplies from entering the country.
British support for the Saudi-led conflict goes far beyond lucrative arms sales to Riyadh however, with British military advisors on hand alongside their US counterparts in the Saudi command room to assist in the selection of targets for the Royal Saudi Air Force – more than 100 Saudi pilots have also been trained at RAF airbases in Britain over the past decade alone.
With both policies remaining in place since Johnson became Prime Minister in July 2019, alongside the aforementioned arms sales which have resulted in significant profit for British defence contractors such as BAE Systems.
Perhaps the most crucial role in Britain’s decision to support the Yemen war however, is a geopolitical ambition that Downing Street shares with the United States and Israel – the containment of Iran within the region.
The Islamic Republic, a long-time Western foe since the 1979 Islamic Revolution saw the US-UK aligned Shah deposed and replaced with the anti-Western and anti-Zionist Ayatollah Khomeini, is widely accused of backing the Ansar Allah rebel movement, more commonly known as the Houthis. Whose seizure of the Yemeni capital Sana’a and overthrow of the then pro-Saudi President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi in early 2015 would result in Riyadh launching its US-UK backed air campaign in March of that year in a bid to restore the government of its favoured candidate.
It is also the reason why, in addition to multi-billion pound arms deals between London and Riyadh, that what has now amounted to a seven-year long US and UK backed genocide of the Yemeni people, has received scarce media coverage in the West – in stark contrast to a Summer garden party held by a British Prime Minister who has himself played a key role in the slaughter.
Gavin O’Reilly is an Irish Republican activist from Dublin, Ireland, with a strong interest in the effects of British and US Imperialism; he was a writer for the American Herald Tribune from January 2018 up until their seizure by the FBI in 2021, with his work also appearing on The Duran, Al-Masdar, MintPress News, Global Research and SouthFront. He can be reached through Twitter and Facebook.
January 15, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Saudi Arabia, UK, Yemen |
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“One lesson of recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it’s sometimes very difficult to get them to leave.”
The level of hubris-laced ignorance it would take an ostensibly intelligent, well-informed individual to make such a statement, in public, in an official capacity, goes beyond political parody.
And yet, there was the American Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, uttering those words at the tail end of a press statement where he questioned the legitimacy of Russia’s dispatch of military forces to Kazakhstan. The Russian actions took place in the wake of widespread violence that prompted the Kazakh President to request help from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which Russia leads.
It should be noted that Russia was invited to send troops to Kazakhstan. Russia was also invited to send troops to Syria. As Blinken was speaking, the US had between 900 and 1,200 troops inside Syria, none of whom were there at the request of the Syrian government. Likewise, the US continues to maintain a force of some 2,500 troops in Iraq, even though the Iraqi parliament has called for their withdrawal for more than a year.
When it comes to understanding what an “unwanted houseguest” looks and acts like, Tony Blinken need only look in the mirror for the perfect illustration.
The US is scrambling to seize the moral high ground when it comes to the issue of military intervention, seeking to exploit the 2008 Russian-Georgian War, the 2014 reabsorption of Crimea, and the 2015 military intervention in Syria to illustrate its position.
While the issue of Russo-Georgian relations is a difficult one, dating to before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it is an undisputed fact – indeed, one backed up by the European Union’s inquiry into the incident – that the 2008 conflict was triggered by a Georgian military incursion into South Ossetia, including an unprovoked attack on Russian peacekeeping forces stationed there. Subsequent Russian actions are attributable to Georgian aggression.
Likewise, Russia’s actions vis-à-vis Crimea and the Donbass region, where Moscow supports ethnically Russian separatists, all derive from the so-called ‘Maidan Revolution’, a US and EU-backed insurrection that overthrew Viktor Yanukovich, the duly elected president of Ukraine, and replaced him with a more Washington-friendly government.
And, lastly, the Russian intervention in Syria came at the request of the legitimate government in Damascus, which was under siege from foreign-funded and trained terrorists and insurrectionists. Russia’s actions were decisive, helping shift the military balance in favor of the Syrian government, and leading to the defeat of most of the anti-government fighters. The irony behind the Russian intervention is that it exposed the hypocrisy of the US, in so far as several of the terrorist groups Russia helped defeat were not only affiliates of Al-Qaeda but were also being funded by the US and its allies.
The US presence in Iraq and Syria, however, is the direct consequence of the illegal US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Between the US and Russia, only one nation has violated international law when it comes to disregarding the sovereignty of others – and it is not Russia.
Tony Blinken did not limit his Russo-phobic commentary simply to the issue of unwanted houseguests. When asked during an interview on a Sunday morning talk show on January 9 whether he agreed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was seeking to restore the Soviet Union, Blinken answered: “I think that’s right… I think that’s one of President Putin’s objectives, and it is to re-exert a sphere of influence over countries that previously were part of the Soviet Union,” something that, Blinken added, was “unacceptable.”
First and foremost, as Russia has been making clear during its ongoing European security framework discussions with the US, NATO, and the OSCE this week, the issue of what is or isn’t acceptable when it comes to defining the scope and scale of Russian national security and related spheres of interest, is not something Moscow is willing to subordinate to Washington or its allies. Rather, it is a matter for Russia alone to decide.
It is the US, not Russia, which is seeking to continuously breathe life into the Cold War relic that is the NATO alliance. The history of broken American promises when it comes to the issue of NATO expansion – “not one inch east” has a different meaning in Brussels than anywhere else, it seems.
The ostensibly “defensive” NATO alliance has been, since the end of the Cold War, used for almost exclusively offensive military action, much of which has taken place outside the geographic boundaries defined by the treaty. Whether it be intervention in the former Yugoslavia, the dismemberment of Serbia, intervention in Libya, supporting the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, or sustaining the illegal presence of US forces in Syria, NATO has made itself an unwanted houseguest across the globe.
Truth be told, if it were not for NATO actively seeking to attract both Georgia and Ukraine to its roster, the events of 2008 and 2014 might have unfolded completely differently.
Tony Blinken’s comments about the suitability of Russia as a houseguest are as fact-free as any made by senior international statesmen in modern times. The reality is the US is the unwanted houseguest, habitually overstaying its welcome, sowing chaos, death, and destruction in its path.
Using this analogy, Russia could be seen as the emergency clean-up crew tasked with trying to clean up the mess that accrues in the wake of America’s foreign policy tornado. Tony Blinken and his boss, President Joe Biden, seem to have difficulty focusing on the real consequences of their words and deeds, as their gaze is constantly fixed on an artificial horizon that only they can see.
Unfortunately for Washington, the rest of the world knows the truth, and who is to blame for what. Blinken can continue uttering nonsense about Russia but, from such ignorance, does not sound policy come. This should be a lesson for any nation, especially those in Europe, who are looking to the US for sound guidance and leadership when it comes to solving the world’s problems.
January 13, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | NATO, United States |
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The mayor of Washington DC has decided to introduce new Covid restriction to the US capital starting on January 15, when businesses and many venues will start asking for proof of vaccination and, on top, a picture ID as yet more proof – that their vaccine pass really belongs to them.
The new rules concerning ID verification will apply to everyone over 18 who wishes to enter a restaurant, bar, gym, movie theater, etc., and the mandate is being introduced by Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat. Bowser announced the more stringent measures back in December.
Children aged 12 to 18 will also have to show vaccination cards if they wish to enter restaurants, concert venues, bowling alleys, and other venues. In addition, these businesses will have to put a sign in their window that notifies customers and reads, “Attention: Per Mayor’s Order 2021-48, COVID-19 Vaccination is REQUIRED to enter this business” – the Washington DC government’s site explains.
However, the inclusion of photo IDs in the vaccine mandate scheme in the District as an order coming from a Democratic mayor looks puzzling to those who recall that the party’s leaders, including President Biden, previously equated requiring photo IDs to vote to “21st century Jim Crow” – referring to historical state and local racial segregation laws in the US.
When Biden went after Georgia last summer for its new voter law that required citizens to prove their identity with an ID, he effectively accused the state and Republicans of introducing discrimination against minorities, who are most likely to lack picture IDs, saying the new legislation was “un-American” and designed to deny people their rights – in that case, the right to vote.
Biden went on to accuse his political opponents of enacting a law that was “a blatant attack on the Constitution and good conscience.”
But no such consideration seems to now be extended to Washington DC residents who will have to show their ID cards, driver’s licenses, passports, or another state-issued document to avoid getting cut off from many everyday activities.
January 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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Various commentators have suggested that I write something about recent events in Kazakhstan. I’ve been loath to do so since my knowledge of the country is very limited, but there are some interesting things to say about what others have been writing on the topic, particularly concerning how it all relates to Russia. Notably, a certain part of the online commentariat has been keen to express indignation that Russia has “invaded” Kazakhstan to suppress a “democratic revolution”.
The rapid spread of violence in Kazakhstan generated hopes in some circles that the mob would topple the “regime” and install a new government that would somehow or other distance the country from Russia. Alternatively, the hope was that “democracy” would arrive in Kazakhstan. With this, another brick in the wall of authoritarianism would collapse, bringing closer the day when it would collapse in Russia too.
All this was somewhat unspoken, but once the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which includes Russia, announced that it would send troops to help restore order in Kazakhstan, and once Kazakh forces took the offensive and began clearing away anti-government protestors, all these hopes were dashed. The Kazakh government isn’t out of the woods yet. Protests continue in several cities, and things could still go horribly wrong. But at the moment it’s looking like the regime will survive. The internet’s keyboard warriors and online regime changers are seriously annoyed and looking for someone to blame. The guilty party is obvious – Russia.
However, despite the headlines in today’s newspapers about Russia sending troops to “quell” the uprising, the Kazakh state’s survial has little to do with the Russians or the CSTO. It seems as if the CSTO contingent in Kazakhstan will amount to no more than about 2,500 troops, which for a country that size is a tiny quantity. The role of the CSTO is largely symbolic – it sends a message to protestors and Kazakh security forces alike that the government isn’t backing down and has powerful external support. That should deter some of the former while putting a bit of steel in the spines of the latter. Perceptions of strength matter in situations like this, and thus the CSTO’s support perhaps makes a slight difference. But the hard work of restoring order belongs largely to the Kazakhs themselves. Whatever the press tells you, “Russia” isn’t “putting down” the uprising.
Nor can it be said that Russia has “invaded” Kazakhstan, as so many have liked to claim this past week on Twitter. Take for instance all these Tweets from the likes of one-time US Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul and former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves:
Various themes repeat themselves in all these: invasion, occupation, the “crushing” of democracy, and comparisons of Russia with Nazi Germany. It is, to be frank, more than a little over the top. You can’t invade, let alone occupy, a country the size of Kazakhstan with only 2,500 troops. Furthermore, the troops are there at the invitation of the internationally recognized government – recognized by us in the West as well as by everybody else. That’s hardly an invasion.
Maybe it’s because I’m a total reactionary, but I’m not too fond of the mob, and I’ve never understood why street protest (accompanied by looting and burning) is associated with democracy. The thing is that all those complaining about the efforts to restore order in Kazakhstan aren’t too fond of the mob either, at least when it starts attacking things that they like. A year ago, McFaul and others were complaining loudly about the crowd that assaulted the Capitol building in Washington DC. And none of those whose Tweets I copied above were to be seen complaining when the Ukrainian military responded to protests in Donbass by firing rockets from aircraft and shells from multiple launch rocket systems.
Somehow, though, people are rather inclined to like the mob when it attacks somebody or something they don’t like. If it’s anti-American, that’s bad. But if rioting and looting damages Russian interests – they’re all for it.
But here’s what really gets me. Do the McFauls and Ilveses truly believe that it would be better for Kazakhstan if the Russians and CSTO didn’t help restore order and the state collapsed? There’s a very real danger of at best anarchy and at worst civil war. How would that help anybody? We’ve seen this scenario before. In Ukraine, revolution led to counter-revolution and bloody violence. In Syria, likewise. And so on. It tends not to turn out well.
But it seems like people don’t care. The attitude appears to be “The worse the better”, as long as the chaos is not at home but on Russia’s borders. Let Kazakhstan descend into anarchy – that’s to be preferred to an order backed by the Russians. Suffice it to say, I don’t agree.
January 7, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | Kazakhstan |
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Driven by climate madness, the environmental movement has become the greatest advocate of destructive industrial development in history.
As Kant said: “To will the end is to will the means”. In this case the means to the phantom end of climate control have led environmentalists to abandon all of their principles. Solar and wind require environmental destruction on an unprecedented scale. Electrification requires the use of toxic chemicals on a similar scale. The hazardous waste stream is enormous.
Solar is the worst because the destruction of forests and open land is complete. Perhaps something lives under these vast solar slabs but not much and certainly nothing like what they destroy and displace.
As I pointed out in my recent article on Virginia’s ill-named Clean Economy Act, we are talking about hundreds of square miles of solar devastation today, for just one state.
To actually meet our need for electricity would require several thousand square miles of destruction just for Virginia. For the whole country the numbers are staggering, easily the biggest environmental disaster in our history.
Wind is environmentally destructive too, just in a different way.
Let me make this personal. I live in the mountains, in far eastern West Virginia. When I drive to the county seat I get a grand view of the big mountain to the west. It is called the Allegheny Front, the height of land between the Atlantic and Mississippi watersheds. My magnificent natural view is now being industrialized, dotted with windmills and more on the way.
I am sure natural vistas are everywhere threatened, because that is where the best wind is. Mind you we almost never get sustained winds strong enough for full power, but that just means they need more intrusive industrial wind machines to produce the juice.
Even worse, there is a viewpoint up on the Front called Bear Rocks, where crowds gather every fall to watch the hawk migration. Great numbers of hawks come by in swirling groups called kettles, working their way slowly southward down the Front. Surely significant numbers will be killed by the growing phalanx of giant chopping blades.
West Texas has something like 10,000 choppers and other states are rapidly going the same way. That the environmentalists can allow the killing of enormous numbers of protected birds is a clear abandonment of their principles. This is Silent Spring in real life, with entire species threatened.
Then too, environmentalists fight hard for roadless areas. Scattering giant wind machines around a mountain top requires a dense system of access roads, one to every tower. In rugged terrain these systems can be complex and so big, destructive land users.
At the other end of the wire we have chemicals, especially enormous numbers of big batteries.
First come the huge battery arrays needed to turn highly intermittent wind and solar power into reliable juice. Then come the myriad batteries needed to electrify our transportation system, which also requires a lot more solar and wind devastation. Note that a lot of juice will go through batteries twice on its way to use.
Minimizing the use of toxic chemicals has been a cornerstone environmental principle. That the movement should now opt for chemical energy as a central feature of our energy system is a complete abandonment of that principle.
Then there is solid waste, which has always been a central environmental concern. Compared to conventional power plants, wind blades and solar panels are short lived, batteries are ridiculously so. In a solar, wind and battery world we are likely talking about billions of tons of toxic waste.
I think just about every principle of environmentalism is violated by the proposed massive buildout of wind, solar and electrification. Why the environmentalists are not screaming and suing to stop this vast open land destroying, wildlife killing and chemically intensive action is beyond me. Clearly environmentalism has lost its way.
David Wojick contributes Posts at the CFACT site. He is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy.
January 5, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Environmentalism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | United States |
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Over the past several decades, the progressive Left has successfully fulfilled Antonio Gramsci’s famed admonition of a “long march through the institutions”. In almost every Western country, its adherents now dominate the education system, media, cultural institutions, and financial behemoths.
But what do they have to show for it? Not as much as they might have expected. Rather than a Bolshevik-style assumption of power, there’s every chance this institutional triumph will not produce an enduring political victory, let alone substantially change public opinion.
Even before Biden’s botched Build Back Better initiative, American progressives faced opposition to their wildly impractical claims about achieving “zero Covid” and “zero emissions”, confronting “systemic racism” by defunding the police, regulating speech, and redefining two biological sexes into a multiplicity.
Increasingly, the “march” has started to falter. Like the French generals in 1940 who thought they could defeat the Germans by perfecting World War One tactics, the progressive establishment has built its own impressive Maginot Line which may be difficult to breach, but can still be flanked.
That is not to deny the progressives’ limited successes. It has certainly developed a remarkable ability to besmirch even the most respected institutions, including the US military. But that is where its achievements stop.
While the Pentagon’s top brass focused on “domestic terrorists” and a progressive social agenda, it calamitously bungled its withdrawal from Afghanistan and appears utterly unprepared for Chinese or Russian competitors. And the effect of this progressive march is plain to see: the percentage of Americans who feel “a great deal of trust and confidence in the military” has dropped in just three years to 45% from 70%.
This decline in trust in major institutions, so evident in America, is also rife across Europe and Australia. In Europe, for example, young people express less pride in their cultural and religious heritage, and are almost three times as likely as their elders to believe that democracy is failing.
The great paradox of progressivism is that nowhere are its shortcomings more evident than in its geographic heartland: the dense urban centre. Conventional wisdom has dictated that America’s high-tech economic future will be shaped in dense urban areas, where superstar companies stand the best chance of recruiting superstar employees.
But while the upper crust of the labour force continue to head to the dense urban cores, on the ground people are moving in the other direction. Across the high-income world, not only in America but Europe as well, the vast preponderance of growth has taken place in suburbs and exurbs. In the last decade over 90% of all US metropolitan population growth and 80% of job growth took place on the periphery. On the ground, then, the progressive dream is withering.
The pandemic has greatly enhanced these trends, with downtown neighbourhoods recovering far less quickly than suburban, exurban, and small towns. But even if these changes are not permanent, at least not entirely, city residents will still have to contend with another pitfall of the progressive agenda: rising crime. Twelve American cities have experienced record homicides this year; all are ruled by Democratic, often progressive, leaders, many of whom explain away crime and excused, even praised, the looting and mayhem caused by protestors in the summer of 2020.
Yet despite this visceral impact on urban neighbourhoods, it is in education that our new hegemony could have its most long-lasting impact. The West’s new educational mandarins, increasingly strident and increasingly influential, have no use for our liberal inheritance, which they consider little more than a screen for racists and misogynists.
In Canada, we have seen an instance of “flame purification” for everything from old encyclopaedias and maps to Depression-era cartoons. In America, the disconnect between the professoriate and the people also keeps growing, as conservatives head towards extinction on many campuses: on some well-regarded campuses such as Williams, Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans reaches between 70 and 132 to 1.
These trends have long been evident in the fading humanities and social sciences, but now even the sciences are becoming politicised. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that universities are losing credibility even among some traditional Leftists, who marvel at how they burnish their progressive credentials while making huge profits off their endowments and seriously underpaying most of their employees.
And just as with the growing disaffection for the military, teachers, students and parents are starting to push back. A number of teachers who have been “cancelled” or otherwise threatened for dissenting are now fighting back in the courts. There’s also considerable criticism from parents and alumni, some of whom are now pledging not to contribute to their schools, and instead support well-publicised and well-funded efforts to start new initiatives, such as the recently announced University of Austin. Even more importantly, would-be students are also voting with their feet: after decades of rapid expansion, the number of college students enrolments fell by 5% last decade, and dropped an additional 6.5% since 2019.
Likewise, only one in three Americans have confidence in their public schools, where the education establishment’s goal seems to be to obliterate merit. In my adopted home state of California, this “post-colonial” approach includes deemphasising the importance of tests, excusing bad behaviour, and imposing ideology on often ill-educated students. The San Diego Unified School District, meanwhile, is busily getting rid of mandates for such things as knowing course material, taking tests, handing in work on time, or even showing up; all these, the district insists, are inherently “racist”. This in a state that ranked 49th in the performance of poor, largely minority students. (Still, the situation could be worse: neighbouring Oregon no longer requires any demonstrable proof of competence to graduate.)
In the past year, this blindness has incited considerable public outrage. Criticism of Critical Race Theory buoyed the Republican win in Virginia in November, and has become a rallying principle for parents around the country, including a recall drive against San Francisco school board members.
Other parents are trying to opt out of the public system altogether. The pandemic saw the departure of more than one million American students from public schools, while 1.2 million families switched to home-schooling last academic year, bringing the total number of home-schooled students to 3.1 million, roughly 11% of the total. According to the Census Bureau, Black and Hispanic families now have the highest estimated rates of home-schooling, at 16% and 12%, respectively.
Meanwhile, the mass media, particularly its legacy outlets, constitute another progressive bastion losing credibility. One recent survey found that barely one in three Americans trusts the media, including a majority of Democrats, while only 15% of Americans have confidence in newspapers. Part of this surely stems from their bias: although there remain some powerful conservative voices, notably on talk radio and Newscorp properties, the vast majority of journalistic power lies with the Left. It’s the same story with social media, which increasingly dominates news access and is also widely distrusted.
But the media’s Maginot Line may prove more vulnerable than expected, and this breach is certainly a far better prospect than those that came with the German flanking. There is a definite challenge not just from the traditional Right but a plethora of new publications which offer intelligent analysis outside the establishmentarian party line, as well as from Substack. Unless the media oligarchs find ways to repress these elements, a resurgence of free thinking may rescue journalism from progressive editors and journalism schools.
The shift in the media parallels that in mass culture. As late as the Fifties, mass culture was seen as largely neutral. But in recent decades, it shifted towards a more monochromatic look — one which a significant portion of the public are fed up with. Gender flipping may excite progressive creatives, but politically correct remakes of household favourites have proved box offices disasters. Indeed, it’s striking that openly conservative presenters, such as Fox’s Greg Gutfeld, now do better in ratings than their more established network rivals like Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon.
Yet perhaps nothing is more ironic, and potentially dangerous, than the takeover of the corporate suite by progressive ideology. Traditionally, the dispersion of ownership and the conflicting views of entrepreneurs and inheritors fuelled the dynamism of democracy: you had far-Left businessmen like George Soros and doctrinaire Right-wingers like the Kochs in competition. They fought it out, and sometimes even aligned. But they came from diverse viewpoints.
Today this diversity of viewpoints is being obliterated by design, with corporate behaviour now married closely to the notion of the “great reset” and “de-growth”: an economy where improving conditions for the masses is replaced with lowering carbon emissions and diversity tokenism. Such standards, of course, do not apply to snotty private schools attended by their offspring, or areas that are home to their mansions.
The oligarchs may feel they deserve dispensation from the masses by their “good deeds”, but people are not as stupid or malleable as the ruling elites believe. Trust in major corporations, never too robust, is below 20%, less than one third that for small businesses. It is slowly becoming apparent that ‘woke capitalism’ will never solve divisions which are essentially economic. The key, notes Richard Parsons, former President of Citigroup, lies not with racial quotas or hiring transgender workers but the economic growth and opportunity. There will never be “unity”, he suggests, until people “feel it in their pockets”.
The question now is whether there will be sufficient pushback to turn the tide. Unlike local school boards, online magazines, and even alternative colleges, it’s difficult to replace or challenge an Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, or Morgan Stanley. Yet fortunately these institutions do not yet control all wealth. Big companies may have shamed themselves out of oil and gas, but investors are ramping up due to the soaring price of these assets.
So, here’s the good news. On what sometimes seems the inexorable course towards progressive capture, we can see multiple fronts of resistance, and the early congealing of independent-minded forces, from the rational Right to the traditional liberal-left. Our society may never regain the feistiness of previous eras, and our new elites might continue marching through our institutions. But as they become increasingly discredited, they would be unwise to forget that all long marches one day come to an end.
Joel Kotkin is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and executive director of the Urban Reform Institute. His new book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism, is now out from Encounter.
January 5, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Progressive Hypocrite, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Build Back Better, Great Reset, United States |
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Dissecting the Treaty of Versailles’s “Big Four”
In a Daily News Bulletin issued February 4, 1924, by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Jewish leaders across the nation publicly mourned the passing of former war-time president Woodrow Wilson, the self-described “staunch friend of the Jews.” The telegram goes on to commemorate Wilson’s “intense interest in Jewish questions” by reviewing his political deeds as president, appointing Louis D. Brandeis to the Supreme Court Bench despite vigorous opposition from the Court itself and urging the approval of the British Mandate over Palestine following the Balfour Declaration.
Nearly a century later, this adulation of America’s twenty-eighth president continues to be echoed by prominent Jewish leaders and intellectuals. In Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer A. Scott Berg’s book, “Wilson,” this formidable Head of State has influenced the decision-making of each succeeding American president up to former President Donald Trump. Furthermore, Berg argues that Wilson is the most pro-Jewish president in US history. This is attributed to Wilson’s breakaway from American isolationism, which guided the nation’s political function on the world stage for a hundred and twenty-five years.
Six months after winning a second consecutive term as president on the Democratic ticket (the first time since Andrew Jackson’s second term), Wilson asked the legislature to declare war on Germany in an imperative speech to Congress on April 2, 1917. His justification was to answer the question of the role the United States would play in the world – it was America’s duty to ensure that “the world must be safe for democracy.” This rhetoric has been repeated repeatedly by American politicians at all levels in subsequent generations, followed by military action.
As Wilson plunged the nation into Europe’s devastating four-year war which wrought 17 million deaths and 25 million wounded, he often portrayed himself as the beacon of progressive ideals, a missionary of self-determination, democracy, and multilateralism to the world and, by involuntary extension after the First World War, its conquered colonies from the ashes of the defeated German and Ottoman Empires. The question is on whose behalf and if foreign elements were acting abroad, at home, or both.
For example, it is entirely plausible today to assert that the invasion of Iraq was contrived almost entirely by high-ranking Jewish Zionists in the Bush administration for the long-anticipated purpose of removing Israel’s arch-nemesis at the time—Saddam Hussein—in another mission to destroy the Jewish State’s Arab neighbors and assert dominion over the region.The catch was that Israel would not be fronting the 2 trillion dollar bill and sacrificing 190,000 lives; that was left to the Americans.
Eighty years prior, before the founding of modern Israel, this similarly established Zionist paradigm in America’s political institutions persuaded the Wilson administration to do the same. Instead of winning the hearts and minds of the public through unbridled war propaganda and an unprecedented national tragedy for the specific purpose of creating a homeland for Jews, a cooperative network of Zionists in Britain, Russia, and the United States worked towards this goal through the imperial hand of the idealistic Wilson.
Jews long held Woodrow Wilson in high regard for his liberal politics and inclination to address their requests. When the former governor of New Jersey first ran for president in 1912, Boston’s Jewish Advocate published a political ad, pressing readers to join with “practically all the great Jewish leaders throughout the country” in endorsing him.These leaders included financier Jacob H. Schiff, philanthropist Nathan Straus, and Ambassador Henry Morgenthau. At the time, beginning in 1906, the United States was faced with the difficult task of admitting roughly ten million immigrants, mainly from Eastern and Southern Europe.
This sudden influx overwhelmed several facets of the native populace, whereby the “restrictionists” emerged with literary test campaigns as a method by which to curtail subsequent waves of immigration. The American Jewish Committee was the most active and significant anti-restricionist lobby group in each of these battles through delay and outright blockage of the legislative passage. During his tenure as president, Wilson assisted by vetoing three restrictive measures he believed were aimed principally at Jews before being overridden by Congress. The AJC’s particular fixation on the plight of Russian-Jewish immigrants caused an extensive lobbying endeavor in America’s foreign policy.
This emerging conflict of interest was sidestepped upon the outbreak of the First World War. The intense pogroms and anti-Jewish sentiment of Czar Nicholas II caused the American Jewish community to side more with Germany than with Allied forces. Immigrant Jews even prayed that the “more civilized” Germans would liberate their suppressed brethren in Eastern Europe from Russian harassment. In the Yiddish press, the enemy was portrayed vividly as: “The Jews support Germany because Russia bathes in Jewish blood.” Who will dare say that it is a crime for Jews to hate their torturers, their oppressors and murderers?” The German Foreign Office took advantage of this position in order to maintain its favor in the Jewish community; in September, 1914, Dr. Isaac Straus was even sent to the United States to manage propaganda work among Jews for the German Information Bureau located in New York.
The German Information Bureau, despite official American neutrality, could not be more pleased following its meeting with the Jewish press. This came at a time when most Americans would rather side with French and British allies out of strong ancestral ties: “So far as our relations with the very influential Jewish press are concerned, they are in good shape, and will be carefully nourished. It is critical in this regard that all news pertaining to them elevate Jewish self-esteem; for example, the appointment of Jewish officers, the installation of Jewish professors, and honors bestowed upon Jewish professors should all be sent here.”
While war efforts were being bolstered in the Jewish press, American Zionist leaders adopted a policy of neutrality for the time being, stemming from Theodor Herzl’s stance on non-partisanship in a neutral country as war raged. During this time, it was Britain’s Grand Fleet that managed the naval blockade of supplies into Germany, starving 400,000 German civilians to death. For the first two years of the First World War, German war efforts nevertheless proved supreme thanks to their unexpected arsenal of submarines against the wealthier, more weaponized Allied Powers. Imperial German forces nearly captured Paris, expelled Russia from the war, and drove the French Army into mutiny, all before a Western Front victory was barely in their grasp by 1918. On three separate occasions throughout 1916, Germany pursued avenues to negotiate for peace, but both British and French resolve maintained that peace would only come about upon Germany’s defeat.
Zionist leaders eventually came to the realization that Allied victory meant Russia’s influence would be amplified in the Near East. In early 1915, a conditional Entente agreement even allocated Constantinople to Russia. This posed an issue as Constantinople rested in the possession of the Ottoman Empire, an ally of Germany and Austro-Hungary. High-profile Zionists had their eyes eastbound on Palestine as a suitable place to lay the groundwork for a Jewish homeland. In 1896, the father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, approached Sultan Abdul Hamid II and offered to pay off the Ottoman debt in exchange for a charter that permitted Zionists access to Palestine. The Sultan outright refused.
The prospect of a promised land for Jews never escaped one highly influential man’s attention — Justice Louis D. Brandeis. Through Brandeis, Zionist leadership “passed into American hands by default.” He was considered one of the men of “light and lead” on whom Wilson relied. Born in 1856 to secular Jewish immigrant parents from the present-day Czech Republic, he graduated from Harvard Law School at the age of 20 and settled in Boston to open a law firm focused on progressive social causes. In his early career, he was distinguished for his public advocacy against powerful corporations, mass consumerism, monopolies, and public corruption while advising methods to restrict the influence of big banks and money trusts in his collection of essays, Other People’s Money and How the Bankers Use It.
These progressive positions would later be taken up by Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson on the larger question of the role of the national government and the future of the American economic system. By that time, Louis Brandeis was head of both the Federation of American Zionists and the American Zionist Movement after meeting the English-born Zionist leader and close associate of the late Herzl, Jacob de Haas. The prominent Jewish lawyer was converted into a staunch Zionist under the mentorship of leading Zionists during that time, such as Aaron Aaronsohn, Horace Kallen, Shmarya Levin, Bernard Rosenblatt, and Nahum Sokolow. From August 31, 1914, to October 1, 1916, Brandeis was also chairman of the Provisional Executive Committee for general Zionist affairs.
The Brandeis-Wilson coalition was the start of a political partnership with far-reaching consequences on the international scene until Wilson’s death. The opportunity for career advancement presented itself so visibly that Brandeis switched parties and carried his advocacies, including Zionism, into American political institutions as a high-ranking political figure with direct access to the newly elected U.S. president.
Upon Wilson’s presidential win in November, he noted to Brandeis, “You were yourself a great part of the victory.” During Wilson’s first year as president, Brandeis was instrumental in the behind-the-scenes creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. The ambitious president attempted to make Brandeis his Attorney General and later Secretary of Commerce, but intense resistance from corporate executives forced Wilson to rescind his plan to make the renowned radical part of his cabinet. Instead, he nominated him to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1916, and he was sworn in amid a public outcry.
At a time when correspondence between Zionist leaders and the American president was steadily rising, as the Great War intensified in its first year, Brandeis approached Wilson about Zionist plans, to which Wilson seemed receptive. By 1916, Brandeis established regular contact with the State Department on the future fate of the declining Turkish Empire following the war, with Hungarian-born leading Zionist and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise in communication with Wilson’s chief adviser on European politics and diplomacy during the First World War, Edward Mandell “Colonel” House, on Zionist objectives. Specifically, Wise functioned as an intermediary between Wilson and House from 1916 to 1919. Wise began his Zionist career in the late 1890’s by assisting the movement’s ideological development and organization of its membership. Another acquaintance of Herzl’s, he served as American secretary of the World Zionist Movement and was instrumental in producing the aforementioned Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs.
Opposition to American entry into the First World War cut across political, racial, and economic lines. Various factions of society, including socialists, anarchists, syndicalists, pacifists, civil libertarians, Marxists, rural southerners, Canadian and Irish nationalists, and women’s groups, were just some of the small but vocal minorities opposing American militarism. International socialist groups, for example, were keenly aware of the capitalist mobilization the war promised to big business rivals. The working class fought, while the ruling class profited. This was America’s first debut as a global military power and pitted citizen against citizen until eventually the government itself grossly violated civil liberties under the Espionage and Sedition Acts.
In 1916, Wilson reignited his bid for re-election through his continued commitment to progressive change by calling for legislation regulating work hours and a minimum wage. Democrats campaigned on the slogan, “He Kept Us Out of War,” insisting to voters that a Republican victory would mean war with Germany. Just four months after his second inauguration, Wilson reneged on his campaign promise of neutrality and officially declared war. By this time, public resistance to this betrayal was minute. The preceding years of preparedness campaigns, patriotic zeal, and heavily propagandized press cycles swayed the consensus into viewing the war as just and necessary. Thousands more dissenters continued to be jailed, silenced, and deported under newly solidified justification.
Shortly after the U.S. entered into the war, the British Foreign Minister, Arthur J. Balfour, arrived in Washington. In a cable, James Rothschild urged Brandeis to discuss Zionism with Balfour on the viability of an English Zionist program to recognize Palestine as the Jewish national homeland. “Unanimous opinion is the only satisfactory solution for Jewish Palestine under British protectorate,” Rothschild explained in a telegram. Russian Zionists fully approve. Public opinion and competent authorities here are favorable… It would greatly help if American Jews would suggest this scheme to their government.The charitable activity of the Zionist movement was over. Now an era of wielding political power has commenced to shift the tide of international conflict under the London-Moscow-New York axis.
Only one month after American entry into the war, Brandeis followed through with Rothschild’s request. Appealing to Wilson’s progressive vision for the globe, Brandeis explained that a Jewish Palestine would fulfill the conditions of the peace settlement Wilson desired; Turkish despotism would be swept aside for a democratic government where economic and cultural development would be undertaken by a historically suppressed people.In reaction to the Balfour Declaration, Wilson said, “The allied nations, with the fullest concurrence of our government and people, agree that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish Commonwealth.”
Partnered with Brandeis in courting Wilson was the Austrian-born Jewish lawyer and professor, Felix Frankfurter, a lifelong committed Zionist and member of the Zionist Organization of America. Frankfurter became acquainted with Brandeis in the Parushim, a secret Zionist society, reform movement, and arguably the first modern militant Zionist organization in America. Found by their former mentor, Horace M. Kallento, Zionist purpose was “a group much like the Peace Corps, young men and women who saw the Utopian opportunity that existed for the Jewish people in Palestine and who were willing to devote themselves to an ideal.”
The ideological motivations for endorsing Zionism were personal for Wilson as well: “To think that I, the son of the manse, should be able to help restore the Holy Land to its people.” With Wilson formally persuaded, Brandeis passed along the good news via urgent cables to Rothschild in London. Two weeks later, Jacob de Haas, now advisor to Brandeis, cabled Russian born-Zionist leader and future president of the World Zionist Organization, Chaim Weizmann, not only outlining the plan for Palestine but to communicate “an accurate statement of the prevailing sentiment in the United States to be presented to the Allied Governments.”
President Wilson was later asked directly by the British government about the likelihood of issuing a declaration of sympathy for the Zionist movement. Wilson responded that the time was not ripe. A month later, Wilson placed his full backing behind the affirmation as pressure mounted against Germany’s Turkish ally to make dispensations to the Zionists. The topic of the Balfour Declaration was on the table between the two world powers. Colonel House complained to Wilson in a note: “The Jews from every tribe have descended in force, and they seem determined to break in with a jimmy if they are not let in.”
Brandeis’ influence over Wilson in regards to Zionist ambition could not be understated. Wilson once remarked that it was Brandeis to whom he owed his career. According to Frank Edward Manuel, Wilson’s interest in Zionism and including it as part of his foreign policy was “being slowly nurtured by Louis Brandeis, one of the men who stood closest to him in the early years of the administration and who became the key figure in future American intervention in Palestine.”
A roadblock in the way of the highly anticipated declaration was the Counselor to the State Department, Robert Lansing. Lansing was completely bypassed in House and Wilson’s correspondence on the Balfour Declaration. In response, Lansing argued in a letter to Wilson why America must decline Balfour’s promise, noting that, among several reasons, “many Christian sects and individuals would undoubtedly resent turning the Holy Land over to the absolute control of the race credited with the death of Christ,” a flagrant secession from the protracted Christian support for the prophetic restoration of Israel.
Lansing ordered Ambassador Walter Hines Page to investigate and report prudently the British reasons for the Balfour Declaration. In spite of political opposition within the State Department, the declaration was officially signed by Lord Balfour after a two-year process of edits by British and American Zionists and officials. Despite its official status as a British document, it was Brandeis who spearheaded its drafting and application through Wilson.
News rapidly spread worldwide upon the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, with heaps of telegrams addressed to Wilson expressing their gratitude for his contributions. Leaflets were dropped over German and Austrian territory announcing, “The hour of Jewish redemption has arrived…” The Allies are giving the land of Israel to the people of Israel… Will you join them and help to build a Jewish homeland in Palestine? Stop fighting the allies who are fighting for you, for all the Jews… An Allied victory means the Jewish people’s return to Zion.”
By the summer of 1918, Turkish resistance was waning and President Wilson took this time to formally announce his public endorsement of the Balfour Declaration in August. Three months later, Germany was the last of the Central Powers to sign an armistice agreement with the Allies. The war was over. The next battle would be held in Paris.
The ambitions of Wilson’s liberal internationalist foreign policy were outlined in the Fourteen Points and used as the basis of terms for Germany’s surrender at the Paris Peace Conference. The Peace Conference produced five treaties, one of which was the notorious Treaty of Versailles. There were a number of high-profile Jews present, not just in diplomatic positions but in many senior and important functions within the Allied delegations. This included Baron Sonnino for Italy, Edwin Montagu for Britain, Louis Klotz for France, and Paul Mantoux as the interpreter for the “Big Three”—United States, Britain, and France.
Wilson also endorsed Rabbi Wise to promote the Jewish program for Palestine in Paris. Another Zionist delegate was Frankfurter, who was among the nearly one hundred intellectuals that signed a statement of principles for the formation of the League of Free Nations Associations. This formally enacted Wilson’s mission to dispel isolationism in favor of increasing American participation in international affairs.
In the midst of empirical savagery slicing up Germany and parceling out Europe’s colonial holdings, the case for a Jewish homeland in Palestine was presented by a delegation of the Zionist Organization led by Weizmann. The terms of the newly established British Mandate involved promoting Jewish immigration and settlement, suggesting boundaries, self-government, and the assurance of religious liberty.
At the request of President Wilson, Jewish statesman and Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch attended the Paris Peace Conference as an advisor to negotiate a deal with the victorious Allied powers on the destiny of Germany. He served as a member of the American Delegation to the Preliminary Peace Conference and on the Committee on Form of Payments of Reparations. Baruch is credited with managing America’s economic mobilization in the First World War while chairman of the War Industries Board. While Baruch opposed the strenuous financial tenets of punishing Germany, he nonetheless attempted to assist the Senate in passing the Treaty of Versailles.
Baruch also played a significant role in securing France’s vote in favor of the Palestine Partition Plan. He swayed their vote by visiting France’s UN delegate and heavily suggesting that failure to support the resolution could result in America withholding desperately needed monetary support as the war devastated France’s financial market.
The renowned English economist, John Maynard Keynes, was also in attendance at the Peace Conference as a delegate of the British Treasury. Disgusted by the ravenous nature of the treaties, particularly the Versailles Treaty, Keynes publicized a negative portrayal of the treaties in his book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace. In response, Baruch paid John Foster Dulles $10,000 to ghostwrite his own book, The Making of the Reparation and Economic Sections of the Treaty, to counter Keynes by exalting the treaties.
The most significant of American Jewish attendees, however, was Justice Brandeis himself, whose task at the world’s peace tables was to assist Colonel House “in collecting peace data for President Wilson.” The task was clear: “Colonel House will devote his attention to problems concerning the war in the west, while Justice Brandeis will study the near eastern question.” Their work will form the basis for the country’s contention.”
For a liberal president known for endorsing and exporting democratic ideals even through coercion, its inconsistent implementation was noted during the peace talks and formally addressed on August 28, 1919, through the presentation of the King-Crane Commission. The commission argued that the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine would inevitably lead to an immediate violation of the right of the indigenous Palestinian people to self-determination and deemed the Zionist program incompatible.
The report also stated that meetings with Jewish representatives led them to conclude that “the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine through armed forces” and begged the Peace Conference to reject Zionist proposals. The findings of this report were suppressed for three years by Brandeis until after the Peace Accords were passed. Working diligently to ensure the stipulations of the Balfour Declaration were incorporated into the final arrangement was Frankfurter, who found the findings of the commission to “cheat Jewry of Palestine.”
As the dissolution of the former Ottoman Empire began via the Treaty of Sevres, the vehicle for colonizing Palestine as spelled out by the Balfour Declaration was put into effect under the Brandeis-guided Wilson. The Council of the League of Nations and the United States both approved the Mandate for Palestine in July of 1922. It was clear from the beginning that the flagrant denial of self-government for the Palestinian population would continue until the Jews were strong enough to take the reins of government in the region.
For four days in April 1922, Congress debated resolutions brought forth to reaffirm the colonial implications of the Balfour Declaration as urged by Zionists. One of the vocal participants of its opposition was Professor Edward Bliss Reed, who testified in a prophetic hearing before Congress about the outcome of what American support entailed: “If you indorse the Balfour declaration, you are caught absolutely in the mandate…” What I want to warn you against is getting caught up in the mandate in what I consider an impasse. It will devastate this country, Palestine. I want to prevent my country from doing something that will bring it untold trouble.”
Nevertheless, Congress was subjected to endless Zionist pressure and passed the Lodge-Fish Resolution endorsing the British Mandate for Palestine as laid out by the Balfour Declaration, which was signed by Wilson’s presidential successor, Warren G. Harding, on September 21, 1922.
When Wilson died two years later, the President of the Zionist Organization of America, Louis Lipsky, stated publicly, “Mr. Wilson followed with interest the progress of the Zionist movement even after he retired to private life.” In 1921, when informed that the Mandate for Palestine had been finally ratified, he telegraphed to the Zionist Organization of America: “I am proud that it should be thought that I have been of service to the Jewish people.”
The First World War was proclaimed to represent “the war to end all wars”, bringing about a golden future on the promise of self-determination, democracy, mutual security, and peace. The cost would only be the blood and ashes of young, idealistic men committed to the service of their nation. What resulted was the pervasive indifference and lack of cohesive understanding of the memory of the war in spite of its devastating cost. As Steven Trout tried to explain the lack of American consciousness toward the war, “What exactly should the nation recall about the war? Is neutrality failing? The bravery of the combat soldier? The futility of trench warfare? The racial discrimination that permeated the ranks? Are there domestic attacks on German Americans? The botched peace processes? ”
Not to mention the American public that had opposed entry into Europe’s war was forced to grapple with the casualties of 120,000 soldiers and the reintegration of 200,000 wounded men, crippled of mind and body. For Wilson, it was his lifelong and close political partnerships with notable Jewish Zionists fully entrenched in American institutions that prompted his breakaway from isolationism—to which the United States has never returned. More consequential was Wilson’s setting the pattern for amplifying and servicing the dominance of a foreign state as the costs continue to rise.
Footnotes
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Galia Licht, “Who Was the Most Pro-Jewish U.S. President? Woodrow Wilson, Obviously, ” Haaretz.com, September 25, 2013, https://www.haaretz.com/life/books/premium-which-prez-was-most-pro-Jewish-1.5340052.
Casey Titus, “History’s Deceptive Buildup Against Saddam Hussein,” The Duran, accessed March 22, 2021, https://theduran.com/history/deceptive-buildup-against-Saddam-Hussein
Nathan Guttman, “Top White House posts go to Jews,” The Jerusalem Post, https://www.jpost.com/jewish-world/jewish-features/top-white-house-posts-go-to-jews, last modified April 25, 2006.
Paulina Cachero, “According to reports, US taxpayers have paid an average of $8,000 per person and more than $2 trillion in total for the Iraq War alone.”Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/us-taxpayers-spent-8000-each-2-trillion-iraq-war-study-2020-2, last modified February 6, 2020.
Jonathan D. Sarna, “Woodrow Wilson: A Jewish Hero.”What Should We Do with His Racism? ” The Forward, November 15, 2016, https://forward.com/opinion/450092/woodrow-wilson-was-a-hero-to-jews-what-should-we-do-about-his-racism/?
Joseph Rappaport, “The American Yiddish Press and the European Conflict in 1914.” 113–28 in Jewish Social Studies 19, no. 3/4 (1957).http://www.jstor.org/stable/4465551.
Rappaport, page 116.
Jon Guttman, “Did the Germans Try to Make Peace in 1916?,” HistoryNet, https://www.historynet.com/did-the-germans-try-to-make-peace-in-1916.htm, last modified December 18, 2014.
Elis Gjevori, “How Theodor Herzl Failed to Convince the Ottomans to Sell Palestine,” https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/how-theodor-herzl-failed-to-convince-the-ottomans-to-sell-palestine-46991, last modified May 25, 2021.
Adler, Selig. “The Palestine Question in the Wilson Era.” Jewish Social Studies 10, no. 4 (1948): 303–34. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4615334.
Jewish Virtual Library, “Louis D. Brandeis,” last modified January 2016, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/louis-d-brandeis.
Jonathan D. Sarna, “Louis D. Brandeis: Zionist Leader,” Brandeis University, last updated in 1992, https://www.brandeis.edu/hornstein/sarna/americanjewishcultureandscholar.
American Jewish Archives, “A Finding Aid to the Stephen S. Wise Collection, 1893-1969,” The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, accessed December 31, 2021, https://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0049/ms0049.htm
Catherine Gilchrist, “Socialist Opposition to World War I,” Dictionary of Sydney, last modified in 2014, https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/socialist_opposition_to_world_war_i
Rothschild and Chaim Weizmann to Brandeis (cable), April 21, 1917 (received April 25), Zionist Archives, New York City, Jacob de Haas Archives.
Lebow, Richard Ned. “Woodrow Wilson and the Balfour Declaration.” The Journal of Modern History, 40, no. 4 (1968): 507 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1878450.
Jewish Virtual Library, “U.S. Presidential Quotes About Jewish Homeland & Israel,” Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/u-s-presidential-quotes-about-jewish-homeland-and-israel-jewish-virtual-library, accessed December 31, 2021.
Schmidt, Sarah. “The ‘Parushim’: A Secret Episode in American Zionist History.” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 65, no. 2 (1975): 122. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23880453
De Haas Archives, Brandeis to Rothschild (cable), May 9, 1917.
Adle, Selig. “The Palestine Question in the Wilson Era.” Jewish Social Studies 10, no. 4 (1948): 306. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4615334.
Ahmed, Hisham H. “From the Balfour Declaration to World War II: The U.S. Stand on Palestinian Self-Determination.” Arab Studies Quarterly 12, no. 1/2 (1990): 9–41. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41858937.
Brendan Devenney, “Chapter One—Zionism: The Beginning,” Medium, last modified November 2, 2021, https://medium.com/@dubhelloco/chapter-one-b8d8b77b38b8.
Levene, Mark. “Nationalism and Its Alternatives in the International Arena: The Jewish Question in Paris, 1919.” Journal of Contemporary History 28, no. 3 (1993): 522. http://www.jstor.org/stable/260644.
Gunther, Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge, 261.
“BERNARD BARUCH: A PUBLIC MAN’S PRIVATE LIFE,”https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/, n.d.https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/bernardbaruch/world-war-i/.
Saul J. Singer, “Bernard Baruch: ‘America First’,” The Jewish Press-Breaking News, Opinions, Analysis and More on Israel and the Jewish World | Last modified March 29, 2017, https://www.jewishpress.com/sections/features/features-on-Jewish-world/bernard-Baruch-America-first/2017/03/29/.
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Butler Citizen, “Zionist Louis Brandeis Takes Control of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference,” Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/35334878/zionists-louis-brandeis-takes-control/, last modified October 2, 1917.
Ahmed, 23,
United States. Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs, Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Sixty-seventh Congress, Second Session, on H. Con. Res. 52, Expressing Satisfaction with the Re-creation of Palestine as the National Home of the Jewish Race April 18, 19, 20, and 21, 1922 (Kessinger Publishing, 1922), 23–24.
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January 4, 2022
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