On the occasion of the death of the remarkable, pro-women’s rights US Supreme Court judge but fervent supporter of genocidally racist Zionism, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG), one notes that in her outstanding over 60 year career she was utterly silent about the human rights of Palestinians, and that women and children are 75% of the 14 million sorely oppressed Palestinians, the 7 million Exiled Palestinians, the 8 million Palestinian refugees, the 5 million Occupied Palestinians with zero human rights in the military-guarded Gaza Concentration Camp (2 million) and West Bank ghettoes (3 million), and the 2 million Palestinian Israelis living as Third Class citizens of Apartheid Israel under over 60 race-based laws.
Genocidally racist American and British Zionists played a key role in the Balfour Declaration and the defeat of Germany in WW1 that had the dreadful consequences of Nazi German anti-Jewish anti-Semitism, WW2, the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million Jews killed through violence or deprivation) and the ongoing Palestinian Genocide (2.2 million Palestinian deaths from violence, 0.1 million, or from imposed deprivation, 2.1 million, since the Australia-assisted British invasion of the oil-rich Middle East in 1914).1
Silence is complicity. Kathryn Shihadah has written about these horrendous historical realities and has described Judge Ginsburg’s Palestinian Genocide-complicit silence as “Progressive Except Palestine” (PEP) (2017): “Ginsburg [first Jewish woman on the US Supreme Court] has pursued justice wholeheartedly all her life, and has throughout her career advocated for progressive causes. In 1972, she co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU, and fought more than 300 gender discrimination cases between 1973 and 1974. But these admirable convictions we see in Ginsburg that are common among many Americans – empathy toward the marginalized, advocacy for defenseless – suddenly evaporate in certain situations. Perhaps it’s subconscious, but there lurks another loyalty ready to override the cause of true justice and compassion. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is among the many influential members of the P.E.P. Club: Progressive Except Palestine. For someone dedicated to liberty and justice for all, she is resoundingly silent on the issue of Palestine. Nowhere in her recently published collection of writings, My Own Works , do the words ‘Palestine’ or ‘Palestinian’ appear. Even ‘Arab’ is nowhere to be found, although she discusses the Holocaust, Zionism, and Israel.”
Kathryn Shihadah has further commented on the malignant impact of Zionist US Supreme Court judges on WW1, WW2, the Jewish Holocaust and the Zionist invasion of Palestine (2017): “Ruth Bader Ginsburg is [was] a big fan of the Supreme Court’s first Jewish justice, Louis Dembitz Brandeis. Brandeis is revered today as a great judge, but at the time of his appointment – 1916 – he was recognized by some as ‘unscrupulous’ in his methods and at times ‘unethical’ in his behaviour… In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson named Brandeis to the Supreme Court. As required, Brandeis officially resigned from his formal affiliations, including stepping down from his leadership role in Zionism. However, he zealously continued his work on a more informal basis, even from his Supreme Court chambers. Later, he would persuade the next 2 Jewish justices – Cardozo and Frankfurter – to join the ranks of the Zionist Organization of America, assuring a continued, subtle partiality toward the Jewish project… Samuel Landman, secretary of the World Zionist Organization, claimed in a 1936 article in World Jewry, that it was ‘Jewish help that brought USA into the war on the side of the Allies.’ The goal was not victory for the Allies, but real estate in Palestine, so Brandeis and associate Felix Frankfurter reportedly worked to ensure the war would last until Palestine was in the bag. They even reportedly sabotaged a potential opportunity to end the war in May 1917 (18 months early), which would have saved much destruction and many lives, including Brandeis’ fellow Americans. Eventually, of course, Germany was defeated. According to historian Henry Wickham Steed, one of Germany’s top generals considered the Balfour Declaration to be ‘the cleverest thing done by the Allies in the way of propaganda,’ and wished Germany had thought of it first. Landman further stated that Germany was aware of the Jewish connection, and, chillingly, this ‘contributed in no small measure to the prominence which anti-Semitism occupie[d] in the Nazi program’ only a few decades later. This horrific irony can not be overstated.”2
Seen in the light of this appalling history, at a personal level for me another ultimate consequence of malignant racist Zionism was the extermination of all but a dozen of my family in the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Hungary in 1944-1945. It is now too late to tell the famed human rights advocate but shamefully pro-Zionist and Palestinian human rights-ignoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg that silence is complicity.
Below is a 50-item summary of a century of horrors inflicted upon the Palestinians but utterly ignored by famed, pro-human rights, Jewish American Supreme Court judge, Ruth Bader Ginsburg:
(1). The ongoing Palestinian Genocide has been associated with 2.2 million Palestinian deaths from violence, 0.1 million, or from imposed deprivation, 2.1 million, since the British invasion of the Middle East in WW1.
(2). Eminent International law expert Professor Francis Boyle (University of Illinois) has stated: “The Palestinians have been the victims of genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, under which a government can be guilty of genocide even if it intends to destroy a mere “part” of the group”.
(3). Of 14 million Palestinians (75% women and children), 7 million are Exiled from Palestine, 5 million are Occupied Palestinians highly abusively confined under military rule to the Gaza Concentration Camp (2 million) or to West Bank ghettoes (3 million), and nearly 2 million are Palestinian Israelis living as Third Class citizens under over 60 Nazi-style, race-based laws.
(4). In 1880 there were 25,000 Jews (mostly immigrants) and 500,000 Indigenous Arab Palestinians living in Palestine.
(5). The Palestinian Genocide commenced with the famine deaths of 100,000 Palestinians associated with conquest of Palestine in WW1 by the British and the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC).
(6). Palestine became disposable British ”property” with the 1916 Sykes Picot Agreement that divided the oil-rich Middle East between the UK and France.
(7). The notorious Balfour Declaration from racist Lord Balfour to Zionist Lord Rothschild (2 November 1917) was sent only 2 days after the Australian cavalry charge victory over the Turks at Beersheba, Palestine (31 October 1917).
(8). The draft of the Balfour Declaration was strongly opposed by anti-racist Jewish British Government Minister Sir Edwin Montagu (only the second British Jew to enter the British Cabinet) as a grave injustice to the Indigenous Palestinians, and as “anti-Semitic and in result will prove a rallying ground for Anti-Semites in every country in the world”. Australia’s anti-racist Jewish Governor General Sir Isaac Isaacs, the first Australian-born Governor General, was also resolutely anti-Zionist.
(9). Orthodox Jewish rabbis, most notably the outstanding German rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (after whom my great grandfather was named), were resolutely opposed to Zionism.
(10). Fervently pro-Zionist Jewish British historian Professor Sir Martin Gilbert in a book on WW1 stated that the Balfour Declaration was offered as an inducement for Zionist Communists to keep Russia in WW1. Professor Martin Gilbert has documented about 20 suggested locations around the world for a Jewish state, and indeed genocidal racist Theodor Herzl (the founder of Zionism) suggested Argentina as an alternative to Palestine.
(11). The violent killing of Indigenous Palestinians commenced with the 10 December 1918 Surafend Massacre by Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) soldiers in which about 100 Palestinian villagers were massacred.
(12). Genocidally racist American and British Zionists played a key role in the Balfour Declaration and the defeat of Germany in WW1 that had the dreadful consequences of Nazi German anti-Jewish anti-Semitism, the horrors of WW2, the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million Jews killed through violence or deprivation), the ongoing Palestinian Genocide and the ongoing, US-imposed Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide.
(13). Zionists contributed to the WW2 Jewish Holocaust by collaborating with the Nazis before and during WW2, and opposing Jewish refugees finding sanctuary anywhere except Palestine.
(14). In 2020 there are 13.9 million Israeli subjects, these comprising 6.6 million Jewish Israelis, 1.9 million Indigenous Palestinian Israelis, 5 million Occupied Palestinians, and 0.4 million non-Jewish and non-Arab Israeli subjects. Jewish Israelis are a 47% minority of the subjects of Apartheid Israel, and Indigenous Palestinians are 50% of Apartheid Israeli subjects.
(15). UN General Assembly Resolution 3246 (29 November 1974) states in part: “7. Strongly condemns all Governments which do not recognize the right to self-determination and independence of peoples under colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation, notably the peoples of Africa and the Palestinian people”.
(16). 90% of Palestine has now been ethnically cleansed of Indigenous Palestinian inhabitants in an ongoing war criminal ethnic cleansing that has been repeatedly condemned by the UN and most recently by UN Security Council Resolution 2334 that was unanimously supported except for a remarkable Obama US abstention.
(17). Apartheid Israel has also annexed and ethnically cleansed a small part of Lebanon and a large part of Syria.
(18). There are 8 million Palestinian refugees, 7 million Exiled Palestinians, 5 million Occupied Palestinians, and 1.9 million Israeli Palestinians, with all of these 14 million Palestinians variously excluded from all or part of Palestine, a land known as such for about 2,500 years after the Philistine coastal inhabitants of circa 1,000 BCE.
(19). 5 million Occupied Palestinians have zero (0) of the human rights set out in the 30 Articles of the Universal Charter of Human Rights.
(20). Nearly 2 million Palestinian Israelis live as Third Class citizens under over 60 Nazi-style race-based discriminatory laws and under threat of further genocidal mass expulsion.
(21). Despite massive and deadly imposed deprivation and repeated episodes of genocidal mass expulsion (800,000 in the 1948 Nakba or catstrophe and 400,000 in the 1967 Naksa or setback), Indigenous Palestinians today represent 50% of the subjects of Apartheid Israel (the ruling Jewish Israelis represent a 47% minority).
(22). 73% of the Indigenous Palestinian subjects of Apartheid Israel cannot vote for the government ruling them i.e. they are subject to egregious Apartheid that has been described by anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish South African anti-Apartheid heroes as worse than Apartheid in South Africa.
(23). Dr H. F. Verwoerd (Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966 and the “Architect of Apartheid” in South Africa) at the UN (1961): “Israel is not consistent in its new anti-apartheid attitude… they took Israel away from the Arabs after the Arabs lived there for a thousand years. In that, I agree with them. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.”
(24). The “GDP per capita” is US$42,000 for Apartheid Israel but a deadly $3,000 for Occupied Palestinians.
(25). 50% of the egregiously mal-treated Occupied Palestinians are children and 75% are women and children.
(26). In the 21st century each year an average of about 550 Occupied Palestinians have been killed violently by Apartheid Israel, and a further average of about 4,200 have died annually from imposed deprivation.
(27). In the 21st century there have been 1,615 non-terrorism Israeli deaths from homicide by Israelis, 164 Israeli deaths from terrorism in Israel (excluding Jerusalem), 1,183 further Israeli deaths from terrorism elsewhere in Zionist-ruled Palestine, 9,505 Occupied Palestinian deaths by Israelis, and 72,000 Occupied Palestinian avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation (2017 estimates).
(28). In the period 1920 – February 2017 there were 3,847 Israeli/Zionist deaths from Palestinian violence as compared to about 100,000 Palestinians violently killed by Zionists and about 2 million Palestinians dying from imposed deprivation.
(29). In the 21st century each year an average of 70 Zionists are killed by Palestinians versus 550 Palestinians violently killed by Apartheid Israel, and through imposed deprivation, each year Apartheid Israel passively murders about 2,700 under-5 year old Palestinian infants and passively murders 4,200 Occupied Palestinians in general who die avoidably from deprivation each year. under Israeli Apartheid.
(30). There is a circa 10 year life expectancy gap between Occupied Palestinians and Israelis, this grossly violating Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War that demand that an Occupier must provide life-sustaining food and medical services to the Occupied subjects “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”.
(31). UN experts have recently described conditions in the illegally blockaded and regularly shelled and bombed Gaza Concentration Camp as verging on the “unliveable”.
(32). Apartheid Israel has attacked 13 countries and occupied 5, whereas Iran that Apartheid Israel threatens with nuclear destruction has not invaded another country for 1,300 years (i.e. from the time of the Sassanian Empire).
(33). Arabic has been the main language of Palestine for 1,400 years, and Indigenous Palestinians are 50% of the subjects of Apartheid Israel. However Arabic was relegated to merely a “special language” in the recent Nazi-style Apartheid Israeli “Jewish Nation State Legislation”.
(34). In its genocidal treatment of the Palestinians, US-, UK-, Canada-, France- , EU- and Australia-backed Apartheid Israel ignores numerous UN General Assembly Resolutions and UN Security Council Resolutions, the UN Genocide Convention, the Geneva Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Rights of the Child Convention, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the UN Refugee Convention, the UN Convention on Apartheid, and many other aspects of International Law.
(35). Apartheid Israel has violently invaded the territory of 13 countries (this including planes and ships, to whit Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Uganda, Tunisia, and the US (the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967 that killed 34 and wounded 171), and has occupied the territory of 5 other countries, namely Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan.
(36). The 1950-2005 avoidable deaths (excess deaths) from deprivation in 5 countries variously occupied by Apartheid Israeli total 24 million.
(37). Of 5 million Occupied Palestinians (half of them children), many are routinely blackmailed through imprisonment, torture or denial of life-saving medical care to spy on fellow Palestinians for Apartheid Israel.
(38). 5 million Occupied Palestinians (half of them children) are excluded by armed military check points from Jews-only areas and Jews-only roads.
(39). 50% of Israeli children are physically, psychologically or sexually abused each year, but 100% of Occupied Palestinian children are subject to traumatizing human rights abuse by the serial war criminal Israel Defence Force (IDF) through actual or threatened deadly violence.
(40). With continuing deadly blockade and after repeated, large-scale destruction of homes, schools, hospitals and infrastructure, conditions in the Gaza Concentration Camp are appalling. Only about 30 Israelis gave ever been killed by home-made Gaza rockets but the grossly disproportionate Israeli bombing and shelling reprisals have devastated densely populated Gaza, and killed 4,600 and wounded about 20,000, most disastrously in 2008-2009 and in 2014.
(41). Since March 2018 the Israelis have killed about 200 unarmed Palestinians and wounded about 20,000 more out of scores of thousands of unarmed Occupied Palestinians protesting the Occupation weekly in Gaza (in the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in Apartheid South Africa police killed 69 demonstrators and wounded 220 more).
(42). Apartheid Israel backed Apartheid South Africa and was variously complicit in the Guatemalan Mayan Genocide, the Sri Lanka Tamil Genocide, the Myanmar Rohingya Genocide, the Iraqi Genocide and the US-backed neo-Nazi Ukrainian Revolution.
(43). In repeated recent elections 6.6 million Jewish Israelis have overwhelmingly supported Apartheid, Occupation and the ongoing Palestinian Genocide.
(44). Apartheid Israel reportedly has up to 400 nuclear weapons, has 6 German-supplied submarine launch platforms, and helped Apartheid South Africa acquire nuclear weapons.
(45). Jewish Israelis overwhelmingly derive from Yemeni, Berber and Khazar converts to Judaism whereas it is actually the Indigenous Palestinians who are the descendants of the Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine at the time of that wonderful, Aramaic-speaking, Palestinian humanitarian, Jesus.
(46). Molecular biological and linguistic studies variously reveal that the Ashkenazim (the minority ruling Apartheid Israel) derive from Khazar converts to Judaism in the first millennium CE, and that there is a substantial prehistoric European ancestry amongst Ashkenazi maternal lineages.
(47). Zionist leaders from genocidal racists Theodor Herzl (Palestinian Genocide) and Winston Churchill (WW2 Bengali Holocaust) to genocidally racist Israeli prime ministers from David Ben Gurion to Benjamin Netanyahu have uttered deeply racist and indeed genocidal comments about Palestinians that would be totally unacceptable in the “politically correct Western democracies that back Apartheid Israel.3
(48). President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy unsuccessfully sought registration of Zionists as agents of a foreign power. Successive US administrations became beholden to the Zionists after Apartheid Israel acquired nuclear weapons by 1967 with French and US help.
(49). Successive US administrations have committed $6 trillion to Zionist-backed wars in which 32 million Muslims have died from violence (5 million) or deprivation (27 million) in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity that killed 3,000 people.
(50). Over 30 million Americans have died preventably since 9-11 from “lifestyle choice” and “political choice” reasons. Thus successive US administrations have committed $6 trillion to killing over 30 million Muslims abroad instead of trying to keep 30 million Americans alive at home.
The United States Army Air Forces destroyed most Japanese cities during World War II, and a few cities in China as well. These were not precision airstrikes but mass bombings designed to destroy the city and kill residents.
Back at the beginning of the Trump administration in January 2017, it was all the rage for media on the left to accuse Trump and his people of being “anti-science.” I compiled a collection of such accusations in a post on January 27 of that year, using the title “Who Again Is ‘Anti-Science’?” Among those I cited as making the accusation was the venerable magazine Scientific American, which had published a piece on January 18, 2017 with the title “Trump’s 5 Most Anti-Science Moves.”
If you look at that 2017 Scientific American piece, or the other articles that I cited in my post, you will see that those commenters are conceiving of “science” not as a special methodology, but rather as something more like: “science is what people who call themselves scientists do.” The basic complaint of the commenters was that Trump was “anti-science” because he was listening to or appointing people who disagreed with — or worse, sought to de-fund — functionaries in the government who called themselves scientists.
I have a different definition of the term “science.” Here’s my definition: “Science is a process for understanding reality through using experiment or data to attempt to falsify falsifiable hypotheses.” Those are my words, but I have tried there to capture the gist of the classic conception of the scientific method articulated by philosopher Karl Popper. For a somewhat longer articulation of the same thing, here is an excerpt discussing Popper’s principles from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Popper’s falsificationist methodology holds that scientific theories are characterized by entailing predictions that future observations might reveal to be false. When theories are falsified by such observations, scientists can respond by revising the theory, or by rejecting the theory in favor of a rival . . . In either case, however, this process must aim at the production of new, falsifiable predictions. . . . [Popper] holds that scientific practice is characterized by its continual effort to test theories against experience and make revisions based on the outcomes of these tests. By contrast, theories that are permanently immunized from falsification by the introduction of untestable ad hoc hypotheses can no longer be classified as scientific.
Astute readers of this passage will immediately recognize that today’s political environment is full of theories that claim the mantle of science — indeed, claim to be scientifically-established truth — but at the same time are “permanently immunized from falsification.” Exhibit A is the religion going under the name of “climate science.” Or consider Exhibit B, in the field of social science, the hypothesis that “systemic racism” is the cause of all economic underperformance by African Americans. There are plenty more such examples.
In recent years Scientific American has somehow gotten itself into the position of defending the truth of many such non-falsifiable claims, but most notably in its strenuous advocacy of climate change alarmism. How to reconcile such advocacy with the use of the term “Scientific” in its title? If you are wondering how that could even be attempted, check out the piece in the current issue by a guy named Mano Singham, with the title and sub-title, “The Idea That a Scientific Theory Can Be ‘Falsified’ Is a Myth; It’s time we abandoned the notion.” Singham is identified as a member of the American Physical Society, and is apparently a retired professor from Case Western Reserve University.
Singham begins by acknowledging that “[E]ver since the seminal work of philosopher of science Karl Popper, for a scientific theory to be worthy of its name, it has to be falsifiable by experiments or observations.” However, Singham now understands that that whole approach has become passé. Apparently, there is a new field, going by the name “science studies,” that “compris[es] the history, philosophy and sociology of science.” People in this new field have now demonstrated that “falsification cannot work even in principle.” Here’s the explanation:
[A] theoretical prediction is never the product of a single theory but also requires using many other theories. When a “theoretical” prediction disagrees with “experimental” data, what this tells us is that that there is a disagreement between two sets of theories, so we cannot say that any particular theory is falsified.
Got that? And now that we’ve deep-sixed falsifiability as having anything to do with science, what’s the replacement?
Science studies . . . show[] that the strength of scientific conclusions arises because credible experts use comprehensive bodies of evidence to arrive at consensus judgments about whether a theory should be retained or rejected in favor of a new one. . . . It is the preponderance of evidence that is relevant in making such judgments, not one or even a few results.
Well, Mano, let’s consider my hypothesis that the thing that causes the sun to come up every morning is my going to sleep the night before. I formulated this hypothesis a year ago based on some ten thousand consecutive nights where I had gone to sleep and the sun therefore arose the next morning. I then tested the hypothesis for a full year of going to sleep every night and observing that sure enough, the sun arose every succeeding morning, 365 consecutive times. Surely my hypothesis has been established as true.
A friend points out that one time back in college I pulled an all-nighter, and the sun still came up. So what? Under Singham’s “science studies” principles, that’s just putting “one result” up against “the preponderance of the evidence.” That one conflicting observation does not tell us that my hypothesis has been falsified, but rather only that “there is a disagreement between two sets of theories.” (Another thing that it might be telling us is that Singham is not very bright.)
Anyway, there is an obvious purpose for Singham’s piece appearing at this time in Scientific American, which is to attempt to defend the climate “science” scam against attacks that it is not real science because it lacks falsifiable hypotheses. Singham:
[The] knowledge [of science studies] equips people to better argue against anti-science forces that use the same strategy over and over again, whether it is about the dangers of tobacco, climate change, vaccinations or evolution. Their goal is to exploit the slivers of doubt and discrepant results that always exist in science in order to challenge the consensus views of scientific experts.
I don’t know how Singham chose his examples of arguments used by what he calls “anti-science forces,” but a look at those examples demonstrates what his exercise is really about, which is exempting climate “science” from the requirement of falsifiable hypotheses. The hypothesis that cigarette smoking is a significant factor in causing lung cancer could definitely be falsified by a study of thousands of randomly-selected non-smokers who developed lung cancer at the same rates as smokers. The hypothesis that life forms change over time through a process of evolution could be falsified by discovery of “fossil rabbits in the Precambrian,” in a famous formulation of J.B.S. Haldane that is actually quoted by Singham in his piece. And vaccinations are subjected to double-blind clinical trials, which are explicit attempts to falsify the hypothesis that they are effective. So the only one of the four examples selected by Singham that actually lacks falsifiable hypotheses, and that seeks to be “permanently immunized from falsification,” is climate change.
Overall, this is a thoroughly embarrassing performance, not just by Dr. Singham, but by Scientific American. It is beyond explanation how the editors of this once-prestigious publication, with the term “Scientific” in its name, could have so completely lost track of what makes science science. And then to top it off, they call the people who actually understand what science is “anti-science.”
My message to the editors is this: The proponents of climate change alarmism, if they want to make any kind of legitimate claim to the mantle of “science,” need to specify the falsifiable hypothesis that they claim has been established, and also the evidence which, if it emerged, they would agree had falsified the hypothesis. Until they do that, their assertions have no more claim to the label of “established science” than does my hypothesis that my going to bed is what causes the sun to come up the next morning. Those of us who understand what the scientific method is are onto the climate scammers. As for Scientific American, your reputation at this point is beyond rehabilitation.
We all know the story of the Library of Alexandria, the vast repository of ancient texts that was burnt to the ground by Caesar in 48 B.C. While the story itself isn’t accurate, it speaks to us today as we face the digital book burnings that are threatening the modern-day Library of Alexandria: the internet. In this speech delivered at the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth’s Justice Rising conference on September 13, 2020, James Corbett connects the dots from that ancient story to the internet censorship of today, and outlines what we can do to fight the fire that is threatening our most important information.
For seven decades, the world has been told that an invasion of Taiwan is imminent. The American military-industrial-congressional complex needs threats to justify wartime budgets, and China provides one excuse. American warships and aircraft routinely operate just off China’s coast. If China complains, the world is warned that China is threatening military action. The good ole “China will soon invade Taiwan” tale is a perpetual favorite. In reality, China lacks the naval power to invade Taiwan and attempting to conquer this large island would prove bloody, devastate the Chinese economy, lead to domestic unrest, and may not succeed.
“Taiwan’s Next Batch of Stealthy Catamarans Will Have Serious Mine-Laying Capabilities”; Joseph Trevithick; The Warzone; May 24, 2019; https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone…
Another grim milestone has just passed in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia’s war against the poorest country in the Middle East reached its two-thousandth day. Ostensibly, the war was launched to restore President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi to power after he was ousted following Houthi-led popular protests amid the Arab Spring.
Realistically, the war has become little more than a pretext to control Yemen’s strategic sites and natural wealth. Saudi Arabia and the UAE now occupy entire southern provinces from al-Mahara to the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Somehow, though, they have not yet allowed Haddi and his old guard to return.
Grim statistics
The numbers are astonishing. Since 2015, Saudi-led coalition warplanes have pounded the country with over 250,000 airstrikes. Seventy percent of those have hit civilian targets, killing more than 100,000 people since January 2016, according to a report by the Armed Conflict and Location Event Data Project (ACLED). Those numbers do not include those who have died in the humanitarian disasters caused by the war, particularly starvation and thousands of tons of weapons, most often supplied by the United States, have been dropped on hospitals, schools, markets, mosques, farms, factories, bridges, and power and water treatment plants.
Unexploded ordnance has been left scattered across populated areas, particularly in the urban areas of Sana’a, Sadaa, Hodeida, Hajjah, Marib, and al-Jawf, and have left the country one of the most heavily contaminated in the world.
As the war officially passes its two-thousandth day, the Eye of Humanity Center for Rights and Development, a Yemeni advocacy group, issued a report on where some of the estimated 600,000 bombs have landed. According to the non-governmental organization, those attacks have destroyed more than 21 economically-vital facilities like factories, food storage facilities, fishing boats, markets, and food, and fuel tankers and have damaged 9,000 pieces of critical infrastructure, including 15 airports, 16 seaports, 304 electrical stations, 2,098 tanks and water pumps, and 4,200 roads and bridges. At least 576,528 public service facilities, including more than 1,000 schools, 6,732 agricultural fields, and 1,375 mosques have been destroyed or damaged.
The blockade and bombing of civilian infrastructure, particularly hospitals, have also crippled Yemen’s health system, leaving it unable to deal with even the basic public health needs. Eye of Humanity reports that the coalition has destroyed 389 hospitals and health centers while most of the country’s estimated 300 remaining facilities are either closed or barely functioning as COVID-19 spreads through the country like wildfire.
Household food insecurity now hovers at over 70 percent, with fifty percent of rural households and 20 percent of urban households now food insecure. Almost one-third of Yemenis do not have enough food to satisfy basic nutritional needs. Underweight and stunted children have become a regular sight, especially among holdouts in rural areas.
This is Yemen after 2,000 days of war. A dirty war and a brutal siege on a forgotten people subsisting in unlivable conditions. If one is able to dodge death from war, starvation, and COVID-19, they face unprecedented levels of disease. Yemen’s average life expectancy now hovers at around 66, one of the lowest in the world. The Saudi blockade has imposed tight control over all aspects of life, severely restricting not only the movement of aid and people but also of UN flights. Last week, both the Ministry of Transportation and the General Authority of Civil Aviation and Meteorology announced that Sana’a International Airport was no longer equipped to receive the official airplane of UN Special Envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffith.
Oil-rich Saudi Arabia is still preventing fuel tankers from delivering much-needed fuel to Yemen’s hospitals, water pumps, bakeries, cleaning trucks, and gas stations, plunging it, particularly northern districts, into a fuel crisis. The blockade has not only forced thousands to wait for days in lines as far as the eye can see but has forced many facilities to shut down altogether. All while Saudi Arabia and its local militias plunder crude oil in Marib, Shabwah, and Hadramout.
After normalization, the UAE steps up attacks
For many Yemenis,there is little reason for optimism entering what feels like the third phase of the war against their country, as Israel ostensibly enters the fray. They believe that the situation will escalate as a result of normalization between the UAE and Israel, and indeed, Tel Aviv’s entrance into the already convoluted theater appears to have already opened the door for further escalation.
Since normalization, UAE warplanes have intensified airstrikes against populated areas throughout the country’s northern provinces. In Sana’a, approximately 20 aerial attacks hit densely populated neighborhoods and brazenly targeted the Sana’a Airport, a military engineering camp, and a poultry farm, among other targets.
UAE warplanes are believed by locals to be receiving logistical support by Israel, although no evidence has yet surfaced yet to substantiate those fears. In a stark departure from the UAE’s more conciliatory tone in Yemen over the past year, UAE aircraft have carried out more than 100 airstrikes since August 13, when Trump announced the normalization between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv. They also pounded the oil-rich province of Marib, located east the country, where UAE jets dropped more than 300 bombs targeting transport trucks, fuel stations, homes, and farms. Advanced military sites belonging to the Ansar Allah-led were also targeted.
Reinforcing the hopelessness is that the United States continues to neglect Yemen’s suffering, despite its designation by the United Nations calling it the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Even with the 2020 election looming and President Donald Trump leaning heavily into his foreign policy accomplishments, the U.S. role in Yemen has been noticeably absent from the discussion. Biden has been no better, leaving little hope that the December elections could bring an end to the war.
Half-hearted attempts at peace
There are efforts underway to bring some semblance of peace to Yemen by parties in both Qatar and Oman. Secret negotiations have been held in Sana’a, but they seem aimed at stopping the Houthi advance in Marib and not the war in general.
In reality, international voices are loudest when the war begins to affect Saudi Arabia, as they were last September when Saudi oil facilities were attacked, or when a Houthi advance threatens the Saudi border as it did in August of 2019 when an operation captured 4,000 square kilometers of Saudi territory in Najran.
Qatari and Omani efforts are not the only ones on the ground. The United Nations envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, is leading other efforts aimed at stopping the Houthi advance in Marib. Griffiths said during a recent Security Council session that, “The situation in Marib is of concern. Military shifts in Marib have ripple effects on conflict dynamics. If Marib falls, it’d undermine prospects of convening an inclusive political process that brings about a transition based on partnership and plurality.”
Neither the efforts in Qatar nor those by the UN even purport to be focused on bringing an end to the war or mitigating the blockade, instead, they seem only concerned with assuring the Coalition retains its competitive advantage.
2,000 days of war, in fact, have proven an insufficient term to bring peace to the war-torn country. With the exception of a fragile ceasefire in Hodeida and a small number of prisoner releases, negotiations between the two sides, even on minor issues, often reach a dead end. Numerous negotiations between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia have failed, including UN-brokered peace talks in Switzerland last year.
The Houthis grow stronger
When the war began over five years ago, Saudi leaders promised a decisive victory in a matter of weeks, one or two months at most. Yet the Houthis remain steadfast in their resistance and, in fact, have grown even more powerful leading to consternation in the Kingdom, with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz dismissing the leader of the Coalition forces Fahd bin Turki and a number of senior officers following a series of recent Saudi battlefield failures.
On Thursday, Houthi forces carried out drone strikes against the al-Abha Airport in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern province of Asir. The operation was the fifth against the airport and a sign that half of a decade of war has done little to bring security to the Kingdom.
In fact, the Houthis now seem intent on moving the frontline into Saudi Arabia and UAE territory and have even promised retaliatory action against Israel should they continue to escalate their involvement in the war. According to Houthi spokesman Mohammed AbdulSalam, “the Saudi-led war on Yemen the price the Arab nation is paying for taking a firm stance against Israel,” adding “Israelis are involved in most of the conflicts plaguing the region, including the Riyadh-led aggression against Yemen.”
Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.
The Cabal of Global Oligarchs is losing control of the narrative they’ve kept under wraps for so long and the cover-upperers have gone berzerk in their effort to hide what they are doing. In this video I look at the latest anti-anti-human trafficking pieces from the media, as well as the reaction to a new, revolting Netflix film.
Today on Questions For Corbett, Corbett Report member Scott asks about a potential flu vaccine / COVID link. James demonstrates how even the mainstream science shows that such a correlation does exist, although it isn’t being trumpeted in the Big Pharma-funded corporate media.
Veterans from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) terrorist organization feel confident that because they were once supported and backed by the US and Western Europe in their campaign to violently separate Kosovo from Serbia, they are immune from prosecution and believe that their crimes can remain hidden. However, Milovan Drecun, the president of the Working Group of the Assembly Committee for Kosovo and Metohija, will soon launch a drive aimed at international audiences to highlight the brutal crimes committed by the KLA during the Kosovo War of 1998-1999, and have those responsible prosecuted.
Drecun, a Member of the Serbian Parliament since 2012 for the Serbian Progressive Party, has been collecting facts and evidence with the working group to shed light on crimes against not only the Serbian minority in Kosovo, but also against other national communities like the Roma, Gorani (Slavic Muslims in southern Kosovo) and Bosnian Muslims. He also refutes allegations made by the Secretary of the Association of KLA War Veterans, Faton Klinaku, that the facts and evidence collected were from interviews conducted in Serbia under pressure and from threats of death.
“First, the representatives of that association are lying when they talk about the manner of questioning witnesses. Our authorities can mediate in establishing contact with our citizens with whom the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office wants to talk,” said Drecun.
Statements are taken by the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office, and that is a major inconsistency in the claims made by the KLA veterans association. The Specialized Prosecutor’s Office was formed on the basis of law adopted by the Pristina Parliament. Drecun highlights that his group do not hide that they “have an extremely important database and documents” and “have the names of potential witnesses for crimes committed by the criminal KLA.”
Authorities in Serbia meticulously collected all data on crimes committed during and after the 1998-1999 conflict. The findings were made available to the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office to try and establish the truth about criminal allegations and to punish perpetrators if found guilty.
“However, we now have a completely different situation here, where terrorists from the criminal KLA are trying to hide the truth and compromise the evidence available to Serbia. We have never hidden our cooperation with the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office,” said the Serbian MP.
The Republic of Albania, for example, knows a lot about KLA crimes, not only against Serbs, but also against Albanians. Drecun’s Working Group has made available the data that the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office was interested in, and if there are lawsuits, they will be verified and accepted as evidence in court.
“We will present all the documentation at our disposal, and I will present a lot of things to the entire international public through the Working Group, because we will launch an international campaign to show the extent of the criminal activities of the terrorist KLA,” Drecun announced.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić was due to meet Kosovo leader Hashim Thaçi in June for a historic meeting at the White House at the behest of US envoy for Kosovo-Serbia negotiations, Richard Grenell. However, this meeting ended before it could even begin as Thaçi became indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity for actions he allegedly undertook during the Kosovo War.
Thaçi in 1993 became a prominent member of the “Kosovo Liberation Army” (KLA) and became responsible for the finances and armaments of the terrorist organization. The KLA financed its activities by turning Kosovo into a drug smuggling hub to distribute heroin and cocaine throughout Europe.
A 2008 report by German intelligence service BND accuses Thaçi of having deep involvement in organized crime, saying that “The key players (including Thaçi) are intimately involved in inter-linkages between politics, business, and organised crime structures in Kosovo,” and that Thaçi is leading a “criminal network operating throughout Kosovo.” The charges laid against him by the prosecutor’s office in the Hague include murder, enforced disappearance of persons, persecution, and torture. He has also been accused of organ harvesting and drug trafficking by other reports and institutions.
Thaçi has not been found guilty yet, but it is well established that the KLA engaged in such activities under the watchful eye of NATO who were satisfied to allow such a prevalence of criminality to occur in order to weaken Serbia, which especially in this period, was extremely pro-Russia. However, by ignoring such illicit activities, Kosovo has become a cemented crime hub of Europe that is now difficult to control as Western Europe continues to be flooded with narcotics and human trafficking.
Although the Working Group has ambitions to broadcast internationally the crimes of the KLA, it is likely that their finding will be ignored by the Western press. This is not only to cover their own embarrassment for supporting a drug trafficking terrorist organization, but also because Yugoslavia has already been dismantled and Kosovo is no longer a top priority for the West, even when considering the recent Belgrade-Pristina economic deal made in the US just days ago.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst .
Scientific evidence reveals there has been no climate effect regards California’s wildfires! None! The data below proves it beyond all doubt. There is no denying that warmer temperatures can cause drier fuels and promote larger fires. But that fact is being misapplied to all wildfires. About 70% of California’s 2020 burnt areas have been in grasslands and dead grass is so dry by the end of California’s annual summer drought that dead grasses are totally insensitive to any added warmth from climate change. Dead grasses only require a few hours of warm dry conditions to become highly flammable. It’s fire weather not climate change that is critical. Furthermore, the century trends in local temperatures where California’s biggest fires have occurred reveal no connection to climate change. In most cases the local maximum temperatures have been cooler now than during the 1930s. Those cooler temperatures should reduce the fire danger. Newsom is either ignoring or distorting the scientific evidence, is totally stupid, or is a dishonest demagogue.
Maximum temperatures are typically used by fire indexes to issue red flag warnings because it is the heat of midday that has the greatest drying effect. Minimum temperatures are often low enough to drop below the dewpoint at which time fuel moisture increases. So averaging minimum and maximum temperatures is inappropriate. In addition, referencing a higher global average temperature is meaningless. Only localmaximumtemperatures determine the dryness of surface fuels during every fire. As in Park and Abatzoglou 2019, the months of March through October are averaged to determine maximum temperatures during California’s dry season.
1) The August 2013 Rim Fire centered around Yosemite National Park, was California’s 5th largest fire.
2) The November 2018 Camp Fire was California’s deadliest fire destroying the town of Paradise. It was also its 16th largest fire.
3) The 2018 Mendocino Complex Fire was California’s largest fire (since 1932 excluding 2020) .
4) In the October 2017 wine country fires, the Tubbs Fire was the 4th deadliest. It only burned 37,000 acres but high winds drove embers into the dwellings of the heavily populated outskirts of Santa Rosa.
Governor Newsom ignores the data to disgustingly hijacking the tragedy of California’s fires to push is climate change agenda. But he is not alone. There are climate scientists pushing catastrophes by ignoring the local maximum temperature trends. Bad analyses promote bad policies and obscure what needs to be done regards fuel management and creating defensible spaces in fire prone California. Newsom must focus on fuel management and fire suppression. As fire ecologist Thomas Swetnam echoed the experts’ growing consensus against fire suppression wrote, “The paradox of fire management in conifer forests is that, if in the short term we are effective at reducing fire occurrence below a certain level, then sooner or later catastrophically destructive wildfires will occur. Even the most efficient and technologically advanced firefighting efforts can only forestall this inevitable result.”
Further information about California’s wildfires are
A lie told a thousand times becomes the truth. In reading countless articles from the Atlantic Council press outlets (NYT, WaPo, VICE News, et al), we take for granted that modern Russia is a right-wing regime controlled by an authoritarian personality bent on total domination. As a result, the debate then gets framed on why or whether its right for leftists to attack it as such, since this is used to further justify collective punishment (sanctions) against a whole people.
What escapes us is why creating propaganda that will result in collective punishment is in any way the business of self-declared leftists in the first place. Historically, it hadn’t been, which raises big questions about who is really controlling the narrative and providing career paths and publishing opportunities for those who posture on the radical, even ‘anarchist’ left. We all know what happened to the self-imploded reputation of the Trotskyist Christopher Hitchens, that war-criminal scoundrel who offered some kind of left-cover for the crown’s imperial pretensions in Iraq. Millions died in part as a direct product of his work. Those who didn’t attend his funeral will tell you why.
Adding insult to injury is the fact that Russia is a social democracy, a fact erased from the collective understanding as a result of the insidious psychological operation being carried out on western audiences and Russians alike.
The End of Globalization: Unipolar Panic at the Rise of Multipolarity
The broader geopolitical problem for unipolar trans-Atlanticism is that much of the rest of the world has nearly caught up to the U.S. The unipolar moment is over, and multipolarity has arrived. This is a growing success and a great achievement for the people of Asia, Latin America, the Middle-East, and Sub-Saharan Africa. All wars and coups the U.S. has engaged in since the end of WWII were aimed at suppressing this multipolar eventuality. And yet multipolarity, as explained through the Atlantic Council and its imperial leftist scribes, is deceitfully presented as a neo-fascist threat to the people of the world, and one promoted uniquely by Russia. This would come as a surprise to the BRICS countries, and all those in their peripheries. It would defy the logic of Mercosur and the Sucre that these were established by sovereign state in Latin America at great cost, through the decades of surviving Washington Consensus dictatorships and the rule of U.S. Steel and the United Fruit Company, only to hand it to Moscow for now particular reason.
And yet this stands at the heart of vilifying Russia’s social democracy.
That multipolarity is a ‘Russian project’ is truly the most incoherent and chauvinistic geopolitical conspiracy theory in modern times, reminiscent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Narcissist Gaslighting
The rampant xenophobia that is allowed in the toxic Atlanticist press will no doubt be the subject of debate when those individuals soon lose their careers and livelihoods, because being a talentless hack makes one highly expendable. And this border-line racism and national chauvinism against a whole people and their representative government is increasingly being aired in broad daylight.
No, the waters won’t part, up will not become down, and the elites promoting a soft-power war on Russia won’t be overthrown. But their replaceable media-minions, who become too much of a liability with all the bad PR, will certainly be disappeared and erased.
We can set aside that Russophobic hate scribbling performed concertedly appears like an Operation Mockingbird psy-op, and yes, we can even ignore that over forty years ago the Church Commission revealed that the legacy newspapers have the international sections and editorials of their publications reviewed, approved, and even directly written by CIA agents and assets.
We can leave even alone that these are seemingly managed through a network of seemingly independent news and opinion outlets which nevertheless parrot each other’s talking points on the righteousness of NATO expansionism, the evils of Russia and Putin, and are organized under an Atlantic Council mandate.
What a perfect match, one no doubt made in heaven – to posture as some holier than thou concerned citizen of abuses around the world while in fact doing little more than feeding a crypto-nationalist media ecosystem bent on weapons sales and big ticket contracts for the U.S. military industrial complex. With enough self-delusion or narcissistic supply, they can even imagine that this is not what’s going on. One would imagine that it’s Russia, not the U.S. with 800 bases around the world. This is truly sick gaslighting, and all the well-paid flying monkeys are deployed with the named aim of doing just that.
Follow the Money – Promote Russophobia, Win Prizes
The Atlantic Council related publications which continue these Operation Mockingbird-like methods, have employed a number of ethically compromised imperial left-wing radicals to do the dirty work of gaslighting the American public on the political and socio-economic nature of countries being targeted by the U.S.
We can see from the evidence that the motley crew of imperial leftist Russophobes are those who aspire to be blue-check mark people on twitter and have regular opportunities at Atlantic Council approved publications. They want to be fast-tracked to full tenure in the increasingly partisan humanities and social sciences departments of various colleges and universities, and do the book writing and speaking tour gig. This is a relatively easy formula: virtue signal on domestic wedge issues like gender and race while ignoring class issues that would otherwise cause discomfort for their financiers, simultaneously doubling down on Atlantic Council approved Russophobia using those wedge issues – meanwhile ignoring or obfuscating the larger socioeconomic and geopolitical questions that provide more context and clarity.
After this storm has passed, it will be the subject of many books written by numerous historians, how and why it came to be that in the climate of virtue signaling political correctness, the only approved form of national chauvinism and borderline-racist conspiracy theories was Russophobic in nature. Those who engaged in it, while being creatures of their time and place, will be condemned and marginalized for the xenophobes that they were.
Their method, which is as dangerous to the left as it is misinformative to the public at large, is to use radical left criticisms of countries the U.S. is targeting for regime change and sanctions, even though there are effectively no countries (including most obviously the plutocratic U.S.) that meet their anarchoid standard. But by arbitrarily using an anarchist yard stick to measure the political correctness of some other country, they can issue these leftoid fatwas and make it so appear that Russia is uniquely problematic.
And the personal motivations of egomania aside, we only need to follow the money. And for our purposes today, just a fraction of it. Between George Soros’ Open Societies Foundation and the National Endowment for Democracy’s lucrative grants, The MacArthur Foundation, there are hundreds of millions of dollars being thrown at this soft-power endeavor.
Outside of philanthropy are the huge sums paid to ‘journalists’ and ‘authors’ directly by the billionaire blogs themselves, no doubt doing their part for Operation Mockingbird. You can bet your bottom dollar that the life of a collective-punishment-advocating ‘leftist’ in the employ of empire is neither a difficult nor impoverished one. They may appear homely, bookish, even shabby in their social media presentation, but that is part of the illusion, the veneer. Within the demented aesthetic-sphere of Anglophone left-radicalism, projecting depressiveness is akin to projecting virtue – an odd carryover from Puritanism. But in truth, they are neither hungry nor intellectual. They are well paid actors, and those who believe them have been duped.
Russia is the target of an ongoing campaign to vilify its leadership, with no shortage of tropes and dog whistling that this is an inherent feature of Russian culture itself. Like black-face, comedic ethnic impersonations are all but banned in the public sphere, unless it is of a Russian. The trope is so pervasive that even those trying to speak in the name of decreasing tensions, often frame their commentary in the name of peace by accepting that premise; that Russianness is inherently corrupt, misogynistic, authoritarian, and aggressive.
It is this very premise which must be challenged. The funny thing is, this task isn’t too difficult.
The Elastic Overton Window
By which rubric, by which method, do we compare the reality of a targeted country like Russia to what is possible or even desirable?
Anarchist theory is ‘fantastic’ because anything one compares it to will necessarily fall short. It is reminiscent of Trotskyist criticisms of nominally socialist states, or Salafist criticisms of countries already within the Ummah. These societies, by definition, have to fall short because the self-declared ‘revolutionary’ nature of these belief systems must characterize anything short of their unattainable ideal as being a critical failure.
When it comes to assessing the reality of Russia’s cultural and sociopolitical system, the Overton Window of social acceptability is magically moved to the radical end of the anarchist left when Russia is the subject, for the forced result that we find Russia to be double-plus ungood, despite that those penning these pieces come from a country (the U.S.) far to the right on the socioeconomic matters which effect real working people.
The U.S. is Far to the right of Russia? Yes, we’ll explain
The fact that ski mask wearing anarchists are not free to run naked whilst flinging frozen chickens through kindergartens or Easter church services, is presented as evidence that Russia is an authoritarian state. The fact that Russia is a country, with a culture and history it finds worthy of being taught in schools, and with borders, and a standing army (!!) are taken as proof positive that Russia fulfills most of Umberto Eco’s ’14 Signs of Fascism’. And yet until last Tuesday, these were just understood of part of the fabric that makes a UN member-state … a UN member-state.
Every other country on earth has a school curriculum, has laws on public decency, and teaches the country’s narrative in its school system. When every other country is looked at, we are encouraged to see ‘normal’, and we apply a non-anarchist yard stick to measure it up. When it’s Russia, everything is problematized using every epithet from the critical school glossary. It is interesting, but upon close examination not strange, that these writers are able to get away with it. They do after all have the full support of the world’s last unipolar empire behind them.
The job of these writers is to misinform the left, and to turn the politics of class struggle into the politics of xenophobic national rivalry – a quintessential aspect of classical fascism. That they use apparently politically correct talking points couched within the framework of human rights, and terms borrowed from the vocabulary of the new-left is beside the point.
We must look instead at the perennial meta-political essence of that endeavor and not the particular forms it takes based upon the political or linguistic fashions of the day. The fact that we are better informed to understand fascism through the lens of a meta-political essence, points to a very big theoretical problem in the work of both Umberto Eco and Roger Griffin, as their entire composite heuristic explanatory paradigm is challenged in so doing.
It probably escapes people after that barrage of disinformation and national chauvinism parading as left-wing critique, that Russia is a social-democratic society.
It is Russia, not the United States that has universal healthcare and university education, vast public housing and useful programs for the disadvantaged, a multi-party parliamentary democracy, early retirement (60 m, 55 f), nearly two years leave with pay for new mothers. Russia, like any other social democracy also has strong workplace protections against discrimination, a vigorous labor movement (35% union density in a formal workforce of 70 million), and codified rights for ethnic, linguistic and religious groups, and a no-holds barred private/citizen media complex that regularly attacks the country’s leaders and exposes the inevitable corruption that comes with large-scale societies and market systems.
Putin Serves the Russian Oligarchy Poorly – A Question of Democracy
While less-than-honest critics would say that Russia’s social democracy is merely a ‘carry-over’ from Russia’s former Soviet system, it begs the question: why nearly thirty years later, twenty-some of which being under Putin’s ‘right-wing oligarchy’, are these still soundly in place?
We are pressed with a difficult dilemma in the Russophobic narrative: Either Putin is the tyrannical tool of a rapacious oligarchy that has nevertheless failed to destroy Russia’s social democracy in 20 years, or Putin uses his vast powers to maintain its progressive social system against the right-wing oligarchy. In either event, the Swiss cheese that is the imperial left’s Russophobic narrative is evidently pungent.
Putin has been elected – and continues to win elections – for the past two decades. Isn’t this indicative of some large problem in the narrative? This is a question we have to turn on its head: why, in the U.S., have we taken for granted that our elected leaders should expectedly let us down and fail in their mandate with such prejudice that we want to throw them out every four or eight years? Why, in the west, has democracy been defined as dissatisfaction built upon betrayal?
How would a democratic society respond to a government that has, on the balance, solved and continued to solve the problems arising from the collapse of its former authoritarian self? Would they respond by throwing that government out, or by re-electing it?
This is not to view Russia through rose-tinted glasses, or to ignore the problems that it has: largely similar problems that face the world in the context of global capitalism. Russia has problems in wealth inequality, as well as too high an incarceration rate – though still one that pales in comparison to the U.S. by nearly half. But our view is offered knowing that such criticisms are so vast in their abundance, and so mandatory in every western publication, that not fixating on these here in no way obstructs audiences from accessing them elsewhere. What we bring is some balance and perspective.
What characterizes Russia’s social democracy are things which the left-most wing of the Democrat Party in the U.S., led by figures like Bernie Sanders, would consider absolute victories to achieve. And yet nevertheless we are confronted with a media barrage that blindsides us with misinformation to the extent that this basic truth is lost upon us. Fortunately, that tide is turning and will turn all the faster as we understand the reality of modern Russia through a sober and honest lens.
C-Span footage of Joe Biden interacting with girls flagged by Twitter for violating their Child Sexual Exploitation Policy after popping up in discussion on the politician’s character.
The dispute on social media saw Texan progressive activist Johnny Graz seeking to make a case that the Democratic presidential nominee should be investigated for sexual assault.
Another commenter, who goes by the name ‘Jake Koenig,’ sought to support Graz’s argument by posting a video compilation of Biden touching various young girls during photo ops at their parents’ congressional swear-in ceremonies in 2015.
However, the commenter was unable to post the official public footage of the proceedings because “Twitter flagged [him] for trying to post images of child molestation.”
Koenig’s claim was easily verifiable, as Twitter does indeed very quickly identify the video as “prohibited” content that “violates [their] Child Sexual Exploitation Policy.” Moreover, the website bans the poster’s account until they’ve deleted the footage.
The infamous footage shows the former vice president touching US legislators’ daughters and granddaughters. At a various points, he appears to be holding some girls in place and closely leaning in to say something in their ears.
The discussion around Biden’s behavior has largely been fueled by a string of accusations by several women that he “inappropriately” touched them. Most notably, back in March, the former senator’s staffer Tara Reid publicly came forward saying he sexually assaulted her back in 1993.
The claims did not attract much media attention, even though they coincided with the rise of the highly publicized ‘MeToo’ movement, self-tasked with bringing powerful men to account for sexual misbehavior against women. The organization’s largest personalities did not seem to be interested in Reid’s case, which led to infighting and accusations of partisanship.
Biden himself denied the allegations, saying that “nothing like this ever, ever happened,” and even added that he doesn’t remember the woman.
At one time, the ‘Arab-Israeli Conflict’ was Arab and Israeli. Over the course of many years, however, it was rebranded. The media is now telling us it is a ‘Hamas-Israeli conflict’.
But what went wrong? Israel simply became too powerful.
The supposedly astounding Israeli victories over the years against Arab armies have emboldened Israel to the extent that it came to view itself, not as a regional superpower, but as a global power as well. Israel, per its own definition, became ‘invincible’.
Such terminology was not a mere scare tactic aimed at breaking the spirit of Palestinians and Arabs alike. Israel believed this.
The ‘Israeli miracle victory’ against Arab armies in 1967 was a watershed moment. Then, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Abba Eban, declared in a speech that “from the podium of the UN, I proclaimed the glorious triumph of the IDF and the redemption of Jerusalem.”
This, in his thinking, could only mean one thing: “Never before has Israel stood more honored and revered by the nations of the world.”
The sentiment in Eban’s words echoed throughout Israel. Even those who doubted their government’s ability to completely prevail over the Arabs, joined the chorus: Israel is unvanquishable.
Little rational discussion took place back then, about the actual reasons why Israel had won, and if that victory would have been possible without Washington’s complete backing and the West’s willingness to support Israel at any cost. … continue
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Gideon Polya is a biochemist, writer, humanitarian activist, and artist. His latest book is US-Imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide (2020).
C-Span footage of Joe Biden interacting with girls flagged by Twitter for violating their Child Sexual Exploitation Policy after popping up in discussion on the politician’s character.
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