Many will have been pleased this morning to read the Covid vaccine mandate for NHS and social care workers is on its way out. But what happens now to the care home staff who already lost their jobs when the vaccine became a requirement for them in November?
They are expected to be able to return to their jobs, though some say this isn’t enough. The ‘Freedom Alliance’ party says these should receive reparations, funded by a windfall tax on the pharmaceutical industry.
Leader Jonathan Tilt said:
“These care employees should all be compensated for their lost income, consequential loss and psychological harm caused. This formal system of reparations should be managed by the Government and funded by a windfall tax on the pharmaceutical industry.
The Government chose to deliberately target care workers back in November 2021 believing that as a group they were an easy target for introducing medical mandates. They were wrong and the bravery of the care staff… has prevented the further extension of the totalitarian medical mandates. These brave workers deserve full and proper compensation for the loss they have suffered and the harm they have been caused.
February 1, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, UK |
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Corona Collapse: Reader Reports Wanted
Containment is collapsing around the world. I want to compile reader reports on local debates and the mood on the street.
I am grateful for anything you can give me, but local information is golden. What your friends think, how local politicians are reacting, how mask rules and other regulations are received, what’s up with testing, how people feel about vaccine coercion, the difference between what the law demands and what is enforced – all of this can be hard to get from press reports, and is what I most value from you, my fantastic readers.
Write to me with your report at containment@tutanota.com.
I read everything you send me. Even if I can only respond to a few emails, I really do read everything you send, I have learned so much from all of you.
February 1, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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Is the territorial integrity of Ukraine a cause worth America’s fighting a war with Russia?
No, it is not. And this is why President Joe Biden has declared that the U.S. will not become militarily involved should Russia invade Ukraine.
Biden is saying that, no matter our sentiments, our vital interests dictate staying out of a Russia-Ukraine war.
But why then does Secretary of State Antony Blinken continue to insist there is an “open door” for Ukraine to NATO membership — when that would require us to do what U.S. vital interests dictate we not do: fight a war with Russia for Ukraine?
NATO’s “open door policy” is based on Article 10, which declares that NATO members, “may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State … to accede to this Treaty.”
Moreover, membership is open to “any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area.”
Note that NATO admission requires “unanimous” consent of all 30 present members.
Blinken has often stated this as U.S. policy: “From our perspective, NATO’s door is open and remains open, and that is our commitment.”
What Blinken is saying is this: While America will not fight for Ukraine today, America remains open to Ukraine’s accession to NATO, in which event we would have to fight for Ukraine tomorrow, were it attacked by Russia.
What the U.S. needs to do is to say with clarity that while Ukraine is free to apply to NATO, NATO is free to veto that application, and the enlargement of NATO beyond its present eastern frontiers is over, done.
In this crisis, we need to recall how and why NATO was created.
In 1949, the year China fell to Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin exploded an atom bomb, we formed NATO as a defensive alliance to prevent a Russian drive west, from the Elbe to the Rhine to the Channel.
Of the original 12 members of NATO, the U.S. and Canada were on the western side of the Atlantic. Iceland and the U.K. were islands in the Atlantic. France and Portugal were on the Atlantic’s eastern shore.
Denmark, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg were astride the avenue of attack the Red Army would have to take to reach the Channel.
Norway was the lone original NATO nation that shared a border with the USSR itself. Italy was the 12th member.
Clearly, this was a defensive alliance to prevent a Soviet invasion of Western Europe such as Hitler had executed in the spring of 1940, when Nazi Germany overran Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg and France, and threw the British off the continent at Dunkirk.
Nations that joined NATO during the Cold War were Greece and Turkey in 1952, Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982.
But, with the end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the overthrow of Soviet Communism, and the breakup of the USSR into 15 nations by 1991, NATO, its goal — the defense of Central and Western Europe — achieved, its job done, did not go out of business.
Instead, NATO added 14 new members and moved almost 1,000 miles east, into Russia’s front yard and then onto Russia’s front porch.
The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined in 1999. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia became NATO nations in 2004. Albania and Croatia joined in 2009, Montenegro in 2017, and North Macedonia in 2020.
Understandably, Russian President Vladimir Putin asked himself: To what end, and for what beneficent purpose, was this doubling in size of an alliance that was formed to contain us, and, if necessary, fight a war against Mother Russia?
Alliances, which involve war guarantees, commitments to fight in defense of the allied nations, invariably carry costs and risks as well as rewards and benefits in terms of strengthened security.
But when we brought Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia into NATO, what benefits in added strength did we receive to justify the provocation this would be to Russia, and the risk it might entail if Moscow objected and, one fine day, walked back into these Baltic states?
If we will not fight for the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine, the second largest nation in Europe with a population of over 40 million people, why would we go to war with a nuclear-armed Russia over Estonia, a tiny and almost indefensible nation with a population of 1.3 million?
Besides Ukraine, two nations have been considering membership in NATO: Finland and Georgia. Accession of either would put NATO on yet another border of Russia, with the usual U.S. bases and forces.
While this would enrage Russia, how would it make us stronger?
Perhaps, instead of adding new nations on whose behalf we will go to war with a great power like Russia, we consider reducing the roster of NATO and restricting the number of nations for whom we must fight to those nations that are vital to our security and bring added strength to the alliance.
February 1, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular | NATO, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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For 200 years, the Monroe Doctrine – asserting a US sphere of influence over Latin America – has been a cornerstone of American policy. But as Russia and China assert their opposition to the US-led world order, American dominance in the region is beginning to look a little shaky.
As the “Russian invasion” scare enters its fourth month, and Russian tanks still fail to roll into Kiev, the parameters of Moscow’s likely response to the West’s rejection of its security demands are becoming a little clearer. Frustrated with what it sees as decades of Western contempt for its concerns, Moscow has demanded that the US offer it security guarantees, including a promise not to expand NATO further to the east. As has become clear through America’s negative response this week, the US has no intention of doing as Russia desires. The issue is now how the Kremlin will react.
Despite hysterical headlines in the Western media about a Russian invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has categorically ruled this option out. “Our nation has likewise repeatedly stated that we have no intention to attack anyone. We consider the very thought that our people may go to war against each other unacceptable,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexei Zaitsev this week.
This is not surprising. Russian officials and security experts have repeatedly made clear that Ukraine is a secondary issue and that their primary concern is a much broader one – the general nature of the international system and of the security architecture in Europe. The idea that failure to achieve agreement on the latter would lead to the invasion of the former was never very logical. Instead of targeting Ukraine, Russia’s response to the current diplomatic impasse is much more likely to be directed at the party deemed by Moscow to be most responsible for the problem, namely the US.
And what better way to do this than to challenge America in its own back yard? Since President James Monroe declared his famous “doctrine” in 1832 – according to which any foreign interference in the politics of the Americas is deemed a hostile act against Washington – the US has fiercely asserted its primacy in both North and South America.
Nowhere has this been clearer than in successive US administrations’ efforts to depose the government of Cuba, as well as the imposition of sanctions on that country for over 60 years. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, Washington made it clear that it was willing even to risk nuclear war to prevent potentially hostile weaponry being deployed close to its borders. Meanwhile, elsewhere it has used other methods to undermine or overthrow Latin American governments deemed insufficiently friendly. These include supporting coups and insurgencies, such as aiding the Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
But Washington’s ability to bend Latin America to its will appears somewhat weakened. Support for regime change in Bolivia and Honduras has backfired, with members of the deposed governments having returned to power. Meanwhile, China is expanding its Belt and Road Initiative into South America, with seven countries having signed up to join and negotiations under way with Nicaragua to add an eighth. The US is no longer the only player in town.
Russia has now stepped into the mix. In the past few weeks, President Vladimir Putin has held telephone conversations with the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, all countries with whom Washington has very poor relations. According to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, agreement was reached with all three “to deepen our strategic partnership, with no exceptions, including military and military-technical.”
Asked if this meant deploying Russian troops to those countries, Lavrov’s deputy Sergey Ryabkov failed to rule it in, but failed to rule it out also. “The president of Russia has spoken multiple times on the subject of what the measures could be, for example involving the Russian Navy, if things are set on the course of provoking Russia, and further increasing the military pressure on us by the US,” he said.
A much-discussed extreme option would involve going back to 1962 and placing missiles in Cuba or Venezuela. Given that Russia now has missiles with hypersonic capabilities, this would give it the capacity to strike the US in a matter of minutes, rendering any defense impossible.
It seems unlikely, though, that the Russian government would take such a provocative step unless the US first did something similar in Ukraine or elsewhere close to the Russian border. Even the option mentioned by Ryabkov of some Russian naval deployment to the region is far from certain. “We can’t deploy anything” to Cuba, said former president Dmitry Medvedev this week, arguing that it would harm that country’s prospects of improving its relations with the US and “would provoke tension in the world.”
Still, the threat of such action now dangles in the air. So, too, does the possibility of lesser options, such as additional arms sales as well as economic assistance to enable the Cubans and others to resist American sanctions. For now, we will have to wait and see exactly what “military and military-technical” measures Moscow has in mind. But it is likely that whatever it is will not be to the Americans’ liking. Nor will Russia’s more general support of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.
Reacting to talk of Russian military deployments in the Americas, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has promised that the Americans would respond “decisively.” This is somewhat ironic, since Sullivan and his peers in the US government seem to deny Russia the right to respond to American deployments close to its borders. But that is by the by. In reality, it’s hard to see what Washington could actually do, short of starting a catastrophic war. Efforts to overthrow the Cuban and Venezuelan government having failed, and economic ties having been almost fully broken, its leverage against those countries is weak.
Washington now has to face the reality that while it remains the foremost power in the world, it can no longer be fully confident of its hegemony even close to home. Its decline is a very gradual process. Nothing very dramatic will likely result from Russia’s latest announcement. It is also possible that Moscow would have decided to cooperate more deeply with Cuba and others even in the absence of current East-West tensions. But had relations been good, one can imagine that the Kremlin might have been inclined not to challenge the US in its own neighborhood.
As it is, the news highlights the fact that pressuring Russia is not a cost-free option from Washington’s point of view and may well rebound to its disadvantage. That’s something that the authorities in the White House could do well to consider.
Paul Robinson is a professor at the University of Ottawa. He writes about Russian and Soviet history, military history and military ethics, and is author of the Irrussianality blog.
February 1, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | China, Cuba, Latin America, Nicaragua, Russia, United States, Venezuela |
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You cannot discuss Corona or any other academic topic anywhere on the internet, without self-righteous small-minded debunkers demanding to know whether the studies you’re citing are peer reviewed. A lot of people, it seems, believe that there are no certain proofs or arguments, unless some random anonymous academics have approved them.
In my short time on this earth, I’ve done a lot of peer review. I’ve had my own stuff peer reviewed, and I’ve peer reviewed other people’s stuff. It is a cumbersome, arbitrary and worthless process. Whether any particular research has been peer reviewed or not, tells you nothing about its quality. What peer review does tell you, is that the peer reviewed item is very likely to be boring and to say more or less the same thing that all the other peer reviewed stuff says.
The purpose of peer review, is not to enhance the integrity or reliability of academic publications. Peer reviewed studies turn out to be wrong all the time. It is rather one of many mechanisms, via which academics aim to police their own discourse and exclude outside ideas.
I’ve written before about James Lindsay’s distinction between internet hive mind theories and ideas, and official establishment theories and ideas. The theories and ideas promoted by crazy anonymous internet people turn out to be far more dynamic, interesting and predictive, than the theories and ideas promoted by establishment media sources and heavily credentialed, tenured professors. The anonymous internet world is one with very low barriers to entry, many more participants, and ruthless selection for interesting, explanatory content. Here as elsewhere, there are many wrong and crazy ideas, but there is also a broader competitive process that weeds out the least defensible theories, and promotes the most interesting ones. Even when they are wrong, internet theories – by the time they come to your notice – have much more depth and texture to them than the intellectual products of establishment organs.
To save syllables, and widen the applicability of the concept, it is probably better to distinguish simply between curated and uncurated discourse. Curated establishment discourse was always managed and stifling, but before the internet, the people running it at least had the advantage of extensive networking. Professional organisations, periodicals and conferences are the main ways that professors network among each other and share ideas. Before the internet, people outside these academic networks remained comparatively isolated. They had their own local religious, social and professional networks, but it was not easy for them to build large networks around common intellectual interests. In this world, the gate-keeping mechanisms of academia excluded outside ideas, in much the same way as the press kept dissident politics out of the media and away from public notice for decades.
Social media and the internet have changed all of this. For 20 years now, blogs and internet commentary have destroyed the legacy media control over political discourse, and gone a long way to discrediting journalism. The barriers to networking have also fallen, and there now flourish enormous and highly sophisticated uncurated discourses in fields from ancient Greek history to microbiology. Hundreds of thousands of people participate in these discussions, and the curated discourse looks every day less interesting.
The internet did not make academics vulnerable, of course; it just overcame their defences. Universities have feared the ideas of outsiders for a very long time, because it is painfully obvious to every honest person here that most of what we do is wide open to amateurs.
January 31, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19 |
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Despite the fact that U.S. officials are playing the innocent in the Ukraine crisis, the fact is that the U.S. government will be responsible for the death toll that results from a Russian invasion of Ukraine. That’s because it is the U.S. government, specifically the Pentagon and the CIA, who have precipitated the crisis.
If the U.S. government had not kept NATO in existence at the ostensible end of the Cold War in 1989, Russia would not be feeling the need to invade Ukraine today. Or if the U.S. government had not had NATO absorb former Warsaw Pact countries and then threaten to absorb Ukraine, Russia would not be feeling the need to invade Ukraine today. The only reason that Russia feels the need to invade Ukraine today is because the Pentagon and the CIA kept NATO in existence and then had NATO move its forces eastward toward Russia’s borders by gobbling up former Warsaw Pact countries and by then threatening to do the same with Ukraine.
It should be noted that Congress has never specifically approved any of this NATO absorption. Ultimately, it’s the Pentagon and the CIA who make the determination as to who NATO will absorb and not absorb, notwithstanding the fact that the lives of America’s young people are being pledged to the defense of these countries.
U.S. officials innocently claim that Russia has nothing to fear from NATO troops, missiles, and tanks along Russia’s border. They say that the U.S. government is a peace-loving government that would never do anything bad to Russia.
Really? How about asking the Afghan people about that peace-loving bit? Or maybe the Iraqi people. My hunch is that they might have a slight disagreement with that peace-loving bit. Or maybe the Iranian people, who have suffered under years from brutal U.S. economic sanctions. Or the Cuban people, who have suffered for decades from the brutal U.S. embargo.
Moreover, let’s not forget something important: Those NATO forces on Russia’s border will include Germany, whose forces invaded Russia and killed more than 20 million Russian people. Yes, 20 million! That’s a lot of people. I suppose the Pentagon and the CIA would argue that the Russians just need to get over that.
Oh, yes, I know that U.S. officials are saying that Ukraine is a sovereign and independent country that has the “right” to join NATO. But if it really is a sovereign and independent country, then why did U.S. officials intervene in Ukraine to bring about regime change that ended up installing a pro-U.S. puppet regime in the country? Doesn’t a genuinely sovereign and independent nation have the “right” to be free from that sort of foreign interventionism?
While we are on the subject of sovereignty and independence, how do U.S. officials justify their decades-long interventions against Cuba? That’s a sovereign and independent country, isn’t it? Cuba has never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. It’s always been the exact opposite. The Pentagon and the CIA have aggressed against Cuba since 1959 with their brutal embargo against the Cuban people, their assassination plots against Fidel Castro, their assassination partnership with the Mafia, their invasion of Cuba, and their acts of sabotage and terrorism within Cuba.
Moreover, let’s not forget the U.S. response when Russia installed nuclear missiles in Cuba back in 1962. Correct me if I’m wrong but the Pentagon/CIA response was not to claim that the Russians had the “right” to do that because Cuba was a sovereign and independent country. Their response, if I recall it correctly, was to go ballistic, exhorting President Kennedy to immediately begin bombing and invading the country.
In other words, the U.S. reaction to having Russian troops, tanks, and missiles 90 miles away from America’s border was quite similar to the Russian response to having German and American troops, tanks, and missiles right next to Russia’s borders.
Indeed, when Russian President Putin recently suggested that Russia might install troops or missiles in Cuba and Venezuela, U.S. officials had the same reaction that Russia has toward U.S. plans to install troops and missiles on Russia’s border. How’s that for a bit of hypocrisy?
After 20 years of death, injuries, maiming, suffering, misery, lies, and destruction from the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, Pentagon and CIA officials haven’t skipped a beat. Everything is business as usual, with ever-expanding budgets, power, and influence — and, of course, perpetual crises to justify it all.
The question is: How long are the American people going to put up with all this deadly, destructive, and dangerous interventionism? There is no better time than now to put a stop to it. Dismantle NATO, end all foreign interventionism, abandon all foreign military bases, bring all U.S. troops home and discharge them, dismantle America’s national-security establishment, and restore our founding system of a limited-government republic. That’s what is needed to get America back on the road to liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony with the people of the world.
January 31, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | NATO, United States |
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The media’s found yet another reason you might have a heart attack
In only our second article of this new year, This Year in the New Normal, OffG predicted that a major news story of 2022 would involve predicting and explaining heart problems that hadn’t actually happened yet.
Not even a month later, we’ve already been proven right.
Urgent warning as 300,000 Brits living with stealth disease that could kill within 5 years
That’s a Sun headline from three days ago.
The article is about a recent study, which apparently found that aortic valve stenosis is likely far more prevalent in the community than previously thought.
Aortic Stenosis (AS) is a disease affecting the valve of the heart which connects to the aorta, causing it to never open fully and making it more difficult for blood to flow.
Those with AS can suffer fatigue, chest pains, dizzy spells and even sudden death. Known complications include blood clots, which can lead to strokes or heart attacks.
According to the article…
the overall prevalence of severe aortic stenosis among the over 55s in the UK in 2019 could be almost 1.5 per cent – equal to around 300,000 at any one time.
Just under 200,000 (68 per cent) were symptomatic – meaning they had severe disease that would be eligible for surgery.
The remaining 90,000 (32 per cent) had a “silent” case of the condition and will probably not be diagnosed unless they are being screened for another problem.
Without timely treatment, up to 172,859 (59 per cent of the overall total) will die over the next five years to 2024, it’s estimated.
Are you following?
Let me sum it up for you in neat bullet points:
- Aortic Stenosis is a potentially deadly disease affecting the heart.
- A review has found that it is “under diagnosed”.
- Around 100,000 people in the UK could have the disease and not even know it.
- Many of them will likely die in the next five years.
Thus, any rise in heart attacks or other cardiac diseases is fully explained.
Any heart problems that do occur are totally unrelated to the experimental “vaccines” which are known to cause heart problems and blood clots, they want to be very clear on that.
Now, you could argue this is just a coincidence, a routinely hysterical public health scare story that just happened to land in the middle of the pandemic.
Obviously, we can’t prove that’s not the case, but there is plenty of evidence arguing against it.
For one thing, it is not as if aortic stenosis is a regularly recurring public health talking point, like breast cancer or diabetes. A brief google news search shows that, prior to Covid times, there was scant mention of the condition in the media for the past ten years. Only a handful of articles about celebrities having the condition or academic papers about new treatments.
It’s not a disease that has ever, as far as we can see, been thrust to the forefront of the public consciousness… until now.
It should also not be forgotten that this is not the first time an explanation for future heart attacks has been proferred. We have been hip-deep in pre-emptive explanations of cardiac arrest for weeks.
Remember “post pandemic stress disorder”? It’s a (completely made-up) nervous condition that some doctors predicted would increase the number of heart problems in the UK by 300,000 this year.
Interestingly, that’s 300,000 again. Both scares predicting the same exact number of cases is a funny little coincidence.
There are further examples, earlier this week it was reported that people who have had Covid are more likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes.
Research papers claim “long covid” can lead to blood clots, heart inflammation and strokes (all acknowledged side effects of the “vaccines”).
It’s not just predictive anymore either, Scotland is in a rush to explain its sharp rise in heart attacks and strokes.
One such story might be a coincidence… but four or five?
The media just keeps coming up with more and more reasons we may see a lot of heart attacks in the near future.
Interesting that.
January 31, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine, UK |
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I’ll assume you have been reading my blog and agree with me that an attempt at gaining world domination is at this very moment failing.
It required a deadly pandemic, vaccines that actually worked, and the ability to snooker billions of people into believing that the responses of the government were logical, beneficial and well-intentioned.
It required keeping people separated from each other, communicating primarily via easily surveilled devices.
It required keeping people frightened and distrustful of one another.
It required loosening or destroying the bonds between family members.
It required uniform messaging by virtually all mass media.
It required making doctors and patients distrust one another, while yet submitting to government-enforced medical edicts, denying us the ability to act within any normal doctor-patient relationship.
It required a profound fear of death and loss, enough to supercede our normal instincts regarding loyalty, interpersonal relationships and friendship.
It required massive carrots and sticks to enforce a uniform narrative, against all data (most of which was persistently rigged) and the surrender of common sense.
The carrots came mostly in the form of taxpayer dollars. In the US, trillions have been spent since the start of the pandemic to enforce government lockdown edicts, masks, distancing, vaccinations… The list could go on and on.
No doubt plenty was spent before the pandemic as the chess pieces (crooks) were moved into place to get ready for the coup, under the guise of a medical emergency.
Fauci was already there. He moved Walensky in to control CDC. Janet Woodcock was made acting FDA Commissioner, and FDA sat without a Presidentially-appointed Commissioner for an entire year. Presumably the coup leaders had no one else who could be trusted to ruthlessly carry out every needed act. Such acts included issuing and then retracting EUAs to confuse the public over HCQ; doing a bait and switch with a Comirnaty license; then suing to prevent release of the licensing data, which no doubt failed to justify an EUA, let alone a license.
Here is one reasonable proposal for a way forward. Trillions were doled out to industry, schools, federal agencies, media etc. to get them to fall in line and do whatever was required.
These were federal contracts. We have the contracts. Simply require every entity that got paid off to give the money back to the federal treasury. Or, they can keep some of it if they clean up their act. Can’t pay it back? Ever heard of debtors’ prison?
Will media figure out how to stop lying and fearmongering? I think they could solve that in a heartbeat if it meant they did not have to return all the money.
What about schools? Could they ditch bogus curricula, mask mandates, plexiglass, vaccine mandates, testing… if the alternative was returning $190 billion dollars to the federal treasury?
Emergency rules at the state level: rescind them immediately or return the federal grants to states and state agencies. Give them a choice.
Remove the chief medical officers of every hospital and state agency, every state CDC, and HHS Department. All federal executive agencies. Have the deputies take over immediately. Pay the former agency heads their prior salary if they take on their new role: documenting all the methods by which martial law was imposed. Later they can go through a truth and reconciliation process. Based on South Africa’s example, if they fully spill the beans, they are pardoned. If not, they stand trial for their crimes. The deputies must also spill their beans, btw.
Honesty, kindness and consideration for one’s fellow man will become the new norms that are praised by society. Greed will not be seen as something to aspire to, and the tax structure will disincentivize greed. Under JFK, those paying the highest marginal tax rate had to part with 91% of their top earnings. We can do that again; why not? The tax structure is what allowed the Gateses and Bezoses and their ilk to amass the ill-gotten gains. The tax structure can also take away.
Antitrust prosecutions will be undertaken unless large corporations break themselves up in an approved manner.
We can do this. Let’s just be creative and fair. There are plenty of models around to draw ideas from. Let’s move carefully and deliberately back from the abyss.
And paper ballots, with identifiable markings and no scans or electronic ballots, will be all that is acceptable, with video cameras documenting the vote counts. Votes cannot be moved around–they will be counted where they are cast. Absentee ballots will require a visit to a public office with ID, preceding the date of any election.
Courts will be established to review initial information re corruption very quickly on members of Congress and other critical figures; if there is reasonable evidence of malfeasance, they will have to take a leave from office while the evidence is weighed.
January 31, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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Israel has apparently reprimanded a soldier for firing rounds into Gaza. That’s all very well, but what about the countless other soldiers who have done the same for years, maiming and killing Palestinian civilians?
The soldier, who posted his bravado video to TikTok, reportedly got 10 days in military prison. According to an Israeli army statement, “The soldier’s behavior in the video does not conform with the norms expected of soldiers and commanders.”
His sentencing and the media reporting around the incident is pure theatre, given the reality of how the Israeli army routinely targets Palestinians working on land in Gaza’s east and northern regions. While this one particular soldier received a mild punishment, many others who attack unarmed civilians are not held accountable.
Since pulling the illegal settlers out of Gaza in 2005, Israel has implemented a kill zone – dubbed the “buffer zone” or “no go zone” – where, on a regular basis, its soldiers shoot at Palestinian civilians. Ostensibly, it comprises a band of land 300 metres from the fence encaging Palestinians in Gaza. In reality, Israeli soldiers fire upon civilians well over a kilometre away, or even further, as I have experienced myself.
As I reported some years ago, “According to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the 300 metres off-limits area extends in areas to at least 1.5 km. PCHR [the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights] has documented the Israeli army targeting of Palestinian civilians as far as 2 km from the border.”
Israeli soldiers in sniper position. © Eva Bartlett
Between 2008 and 2013, I regularly accompanied farmers and other civilians in border areas, and on many of the occasions that we came under fire, we were 500 metres or more from the fence. Among the disturbing incidents was an attack one morning in February 2009, when I came under prolonged Israeli gunfire while accompanying a group of farm labourers on land roughly 500 metres from the fence. By then, I was accustomed to the routine – I would walk with farmers on their land, the Israeli soldiers would arrive in jeeps, assume sniper position and begin firing at us.
On this occasion, the young men had finished their parsley harvest and were pushing a stalled pickup truck when the Israeli gunfire began. The incident was captured on video, as I was there to document such attacks, and as I wrote at the time, “The lightly-dressed, unarmed farmers were clearly visible to… the several Israeli army jeeps and the Hummer which had patrolled the border fence, stopping for long intervals to watch the farmers work, then moving on.” I noted that the soldiers had observed us for a good half hour before shooting, choosing to fire at precisely the time when the farmers were leaving.
Shooting just beyond where I stood in a fluorescent vest, an Israeli soldier hit 20-year-old Mohammad al-Buraim in his leg, and continued to fire at us for a further 15 minutes. Some weeks prior, an Israeli soldier shot his cousin Anwar in the neck, killing him and leaving his wife, young children, and extended family without a breadwinner. Anwar had been on land 600 metres from the fence, also doing farm labour work.
When someone gets injured in these areas, the injury is compounded by the fact that ambulances cannot reach them, as they are targeted by the Israeli army. So, locals need to somehow get the injured to a point where an ambulance can safely reach them. If this is not done quickly enough, the injured risks bleeding to death.
On another occasion, again with farm workers in Gaza’s southeast, I came under intense Israeli fire lasting over 40 minutes from soldiers roughly 500 metres away. Bullets flew within metres of our hands, heads, and bodies. This proved to be an especially interesting case, as a representative from the Canadian embassy in Tel Aviv – who had been informed of the shooting by other volunteers – called me to express concern for my safety.
This dissipated as soon as she realized I was being fired on by an Israeli soldier, and not a Palestinian. Her superior, the then-attache in the Tel Aviv office, had the gall to state quite clearly that they were fine with Israel’s “security measures” – firing on an unarmed Canadian and unarmed Palestinians and internationals, who in no way posed any threat to the heavily armed Israeli soldiers – and that we should be aware of the risks.
In another example, in February 2009, also in the southeast on land 550 metres from the fence, I accompanied elderly farmers and their families who intended to harvest some of their meagre crops. Shortly after we had arrived on the land, Israeli soldiers started firing very close to us, less than a metre from where we stood.
As I wrote at the time, “We could almost taste Tuesday’s firing, and the distinct ping-whizz sound they make was somehow impossibly loud, so close the shots were. One of the older women was having trouble walking away, stumbling in her fear. As the shots dug in around her she fell to the ground in terror. Positioning ourselves between the elderly farmers and the Israeli snipers, we accompanied them off the field. A few hundred metres away, the Israeli snipers continued to shoot. Another elderly woman had dived in terror behind a rock and adamantly wouldn’t get up. “They’ll kill me, they’ll kill me,” she cried in fear…”
Thankfully we did make it away that day in one piece. But this was just one of many examples of the terror Palestinian farmers face on a daily basis. And it’s not just farmers – at around the same time, a 17-year-old girl standing around 800 metres from the fence, near the ruins of her home (destroyed in the war just a month previously), was shot in the kneecap by an Israeli sniper.
Children going to school in the eastern village of Khoza’a were, at the time, being fired upon by Israeli soldiers at the fence 1km away. Teens and young men gathering scrap metal from demolished homes routinely come under Israeli fire. One example was 15-year-old Said Abdel Aziz Hamdan, who went to an area in Gaza’s north with his 13-year-old brother, to try to earn money for their large family. After finishing his work, an Israeli soldier fired at him, hitting his leg, without warning.
“People go there every day to gather bits of metal and concrete. The Israelis see us and know we are just working, it’s normal,” he told me when I visited him in hospital.
Palestinians don’t only face Israeli sniper fire, but also flechette shelling – dart bombs – which Israel has indiscriminately used against civilians and medics. One victim was 17-year-old Saleh Ahmad al-Medani, whose shoulder and neck were punctured by the two-inch-long, razor-like, dart-shaped bits of metal packed by the thousands into a single shell. He was attacked while walking home after midnight in June 2009, in northwestern Gaza, over 1km from the wall.
As I wrote at the time, “Due to their design, flechettes dig deeply into their target, with their “tails” frequently breaking off, leaving multiple injuries and rendering them nearly impossible to extract without inflicting more injury in the surgical search. In most cases, doctors opt against surgery, leaving the darts inside the victim’s body.”
The routine and very dangerous Israeli policy of harassment, which risks maiming or killing targets, also means farmers frequently stay off their land, meaning plants don’t get watered, and crops don’t get harvested. These are not isolated and random instances. They are part of a policy that aims to cut off any means of self-sufficiency the Palestinians try to engage in. Other Israeli army tactics include burning Palestinian crops, destroying wells and cisterns, and demolishing homes, livestock farms, and trees throughout the border regions.
So, please, let’s not get carried away with the fact that Israel has thrown one soldier in prison for unacceptable behaviour. It is quite clear that Israel doesn’t hold its own soldiers accountable for their crimes, including killing children or firing white phosphorus on heavily populated civilian areas. Neither does the United Nations nor anybody else appear willing to make Israel take responsibility for its decades of crimes against Palestinians.
One headline about one soldier being reprimanded for posting his tough-guy video on TikTok should not fool anyone.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
January 30, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Secretly and quietly, the Biden administration has continued to use the killing machine crafted by President George W. Bush, expanded by President Barack Obama and employed from time to time by President Donald Trump. These presidents have used drones and other unmanned missiles and projectiles to target persons in foreign countries with which the United States is not at war.
They have done this notwithstanding the prohibition of taking life, liberty or property from any person — not just any American, but any person — in the Constitution each has sworn to uphold, and they have done so pursuant to secret rules that they themselves have established for these killings.
Last week, 11 senators and 39 members of the House of Representatives — Democrats all — to their credit sent a harshly worded letter to President Joseph R. Biden asking him to stop the killings. As of this writing, he has not publicly replied.
Here is the backstory.
The purpose of the Bill of Rights — the first 10 amendments to the Constitution — is to protect personal liberty by restraining the government.
The Fifth Amendment prohibits killing persons, restraining liberty and taking property without due process; that means a jury trial at which the government must prove fault. Until President Abraham Lincoln waged war on half the country, the operative clause in the Fifth Amendment was understood to prohibit all federal killing without a declaration of war or due process.
If the country is at war — lawfully and constitutionally declared by Congress — obviously the president can use the U.S. military to kill the military of the opposing country. And if an attack on the U.S. is imminent, the president can strike the first blow against the military of the entity whose attack is just about to occur.
There are no other constitutional circumstances under which a president may kill.
All this changed — culturally, not constitutionally — when President Harry Truman targeted Japanese civilians in Japan as the Japanese government was within days of surrendering in World War II. Truman was, of course, not the first American president to target civilians, as Lincoln criminally targeted American civilians during the War between the States.
Notwithstanding his unprosecuted war crimes, and with the government’s version of Pearl Harbor still fresh in many Americans’ minds, Truman was regarded as heroic for ordering the profoundly immoral, militarily useless, criminal mass killings against the hated Japanese using atomic bombs.
Fast-forward to the 9/11 era, and Bush had precedent to begin his own presidential killings of people the government wanted Americans to hate. While Congress did authorize him to use force against those who caused or aided the 9/11 attacks, we all know that his thirst for Middle Eastern blood knew no regard for the Constitution, evidence, proportionality, civilian lives, morality or human decency.
Julian Assange sits in a British dungeon awaiting decisions on his extradition to the U.S. because he courageously, lawfully and constitutionally published documents and videos demonstrating conclusively that Bush’s use of drones targeted and murdered Afghan and Iraqi civilians, and his administration covered it up.
Obama took this to another level when he targeted and killed Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son, both of whom were born in the U.S. Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, advised Obama that the killings were lawful, as al-Awlaki had encouraged folks in the Middle East to fight against American soldiers there. Holder likened killing al-Awlaki to a shooting at a bank robber who is being chased by police and shooting at them.
Holder forgot that al-Awlaki was not charged or indicted for any crime, was never accused of violence and was not even the subject of an arrest warrant when a drone evaporated him while sitting at an outdoor cafe in Yemen.
The exercise of power by the federal government is largely based on precedent and politics. Whenever a president wants to kill secretly, he need only find an example of a predecessor having killed secretly with impunity — without due process, without a declaration of war and without an imminent attack. And then he needs only to calculate what he thinks he can politically get away with.
Stated differently, Joe Biden — whose drones in 2021 targeted innocent civilians in Afghanistan, killing dozens — is using unlawful powers that his modern predecessors used and got away with to target and kill unsympathetic persons.
The nature of political power is to expand so that it fills a perceived need, unless there are mechanisms in place to restrain its expansion.
The founding generation believed that British monarchs had no limits on their power and that was a good enough reason for the 13 colonies to secede. They also believed that they had crafted founding documents — the Constitution and the Bill of Rights — for the new nation that imposed sufficient restraints on the federal government.
After all, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Its language is clear that only Congress writes laws and declares war, and presidents can kill only troops in wartime or civilians consistent with due process.
Moreover, every president takes an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution as it was written, not as they may wish it to be.
Sadly, the Founders were wrong.
Today, the president writes laws and rules that let him restrain personal liberty and kill with impunity, and Congress and the American people let him get away with it. Formally, we still have a Constitution. Functionally, it has utterly failed to restrain the government.
Ultimately, we have ourselves to blame for these killings. Why do we repose the Constitution for safekeeping into the hands of those who subvert it? If a future president uses Bush’s lust and Obama’s logic and Biden’s stealth to kill Americans in America, no one’s life, liberty or property will be secure.
Creators Syndicate, Inc. © 2022
January 30, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Human rights, Joe Biden, Obama, United States |
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IT IS reported that 21 councils have found a solution to the soaring cost of energy: a source of free electricity which they are providing to wealthy owners of electric vehicles.
One of the councils that has made this startling discovery is Lancaster District Council. Their website proudly proclaims ‘The council is providing free electricity’ for electric vehicle owners.’
A spokesperson for the well-represented Green Party on the council was unapologetic about how they prioritised the distribution of the ‘free electricity’. When asked why they favoured the provision of free fuel to the owners of already subsidised Teslas and Mercedes-EQs, rather than giving it to residents of sub-standard housing who were unable to heat their homes, she replied in a rather abrupt manner: ‘Don’t you know there’s a Climate Emergency! For goodness sake, it’s on the BBC every night! How do you expect the City Council to do its bit to control the weather if rich people drive around in their big cars belching out emissions that are literally killing baby polar bears. It is beastly of you to even ask that question!’
After taking a few moments to compose herself, she put down her cat, dabbed her eyes, and continued, ‘We already do a tremendous amount for the poor people. It is horrid of you to imply that we don’t care about them. We send them leaflets which tell them where they can buy cheap overcoats and jumpers. We encourage them to go to the library to keep warm, and we suggest that they buy a second hand bicycle so they can ride up and down our cycle paths. We even send them our ten favourite vegan quinoa recipes. We simply can’t do everything. There is only so much free electricity to go round. One day we hope to give everyone in the District an electric vehicle, or at least an electric scooter.’
When asked about the source of the free electricity, a representative of the City Council’s secretive Special Initiatives Department, based in a bunker in the Forest of Bowland, declined to give too much away. ‘Let me just say that we are working closely with Lancaster University, members of the Morecambe Witchcraft Society and local alchemists, but other than that my lips are sealed. However, I am allowed to tell you that we are about to make a major announcement about our work on the philosopher’s stone. Watch this space.’
Some have suggested that the electricity being given to electric car owners is not exactly ‘free’ but is courtesy of the council tax payer. If this is the case, it is clearly seen as a ‘vital service’. In a report about the decision to increase council tax in 2021, the Lancaster Guardian wrote that Anne Whitehead, the cabinet member with responsibility for finance, said: ‘We are acutely aware of the additional burden that this rise will place on some households and we do not want to have to ask households to pay more. But as with all public services, the City Council is under pressure financially and needs to protect the vital services it provides.’
January 30, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Green Party, UK |
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