Faulty Forecasts and False Climate Narrative Hold Nations Hostage
By Vijay Jayaraj | Watts Up With That? | July 15, 2020
The United States is the only major Western country that is not part of the Paris climate agreement, which seeks to restrict and reduce fossil fuel consumption across the world. But the country is not immune from the impacts of the restrictive energy policies the agreement imposes on its trade partners. One of those is my own country, India.
India imports large amounts of coal, oil, and natural gas from the U.S., mostly to generate affordable power for its electric grid. That grid must grow rapidly to meet the needs of over 1.3 billion people. Over 300 million of them—comparable to the whole U.S. population—currently have no electricity. But they need it desperately for their health and their escape from severe poverty.
The justification for reducing fossil fuel use is the claim that climate change will create havoc in the future unless we reduce our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. But this claim is not as black and white as the mainstream media and politicians make it out to be.
In fact, data on temperature suggest that the claim is exaggerated and tends be informed by incorrect interpretations from faulty models.
The Never-Ending Problem with Models
The Paris climate agreement and other major climate recommendations from the United Nations are strictly based on the guidelines provided by Assessment reports produced by a climate wing known as the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC uses forecast data processed by a large set of computer climate models to arrive at the policy recommendations in its assessment reports.
Among them are forecasts from the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project (CMIP). CMIP consists of 100 distinct climate models, run by leading modelling groups across the world. Their predictions drive the IPCC’s reports. In 2013, the IPCC fifth assessment report (AR5) featured climate models from CMIP5 (fifth generation).
But the forecasts from these models proved wrong. They exaggerated the temperature trend and differed markedly from temperature data derived from ground-based thermometers; sensors on weather balloons aircraft, ships, and buoys; satellite remote sensing; and “reanalyses”—the latter integrating the input of many different data sources.
Yet, political appointees in charge of determining climate and energy policy around the world used these forecasts to justify international climate agreements like the Paris agreement. And they do no stop with that.
The upcoming IPCC sixth assessment report (AR6), forecast for release in 2021, features forecasts from CMIP6. But the CMIP6 models are turning out to be no better than CMIP5 models. In fact, CMIP6 they’re worse!
Senior climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer has observed that the “CMIP6 models are showing 50 percent more net surface warming from 1979 up to April 2020 (+1.08 degree Celsius) than actual observations from the ground (+0.72 degree Celsius).”
Beyond doubt, comparing both CMIP5 and CMIP6 forecasts to official HadCRUT temperature data sets reveals a very old story: models are always way off the mark, and—suspiciously—always in the same direction, namely, upward, in predicting real-world temperatures.
So, not only were we lied to about the climate, we are going to be misled again by the next IPCC assessment report. And with more extreme false forecasts, there will be calls for more restrictive energy policies.
It is quite astonishing how the unelected politicians at the UN can convince and persuade global leaders to adopt climate policies that are based on unscientific conclusions from faulty models.
The mainstream media have also played their part. Public perception on climate change has been heavily influenced by biased coverage on the climate issue, with no major attention to the huge discrepancies between the model forecasts and real-world observations.
It is not clear how much faultier the projections will become by the time the new assessment report is finally released. But one thing is clear: energy sectors across the globe are being held hostage by pseudo-scientific interpretations from the United Nations’ flagship climate wing.
Vijay Jayaraj (M.Sc., Environmental Science, University of East Anglia, England), is a Research Contributor for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation living in New Delhi, India.
How to Bring Liberty and Justice to Blacks (and Everyone Else)
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF |July 17, 2020
If you want to get a glimpse of what it’s like to be black in the context of the war on drugs, just consider what has happened to Sean Worsley, a black Iraq War veteran who suffered a traumatic brain injury as well as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Worsley lives in Arizona, a state that permits medical marijuana, which Worsley has been taking for years to alleviate his condition. He had a state-issued card entitling him to take marijuana for medicinal purposes.
As detailed in an article in the Washington Post, Worsley and his wife decided to visit relatives in the state of Mississippi. They made a big mistake traveling through the state of Alabama, where they stopped at a gas station. While filling his car with gas, the Worsleys were playing their car music loudly, which attracted the attention of a local cop. The Worsleys quickly granted his request to turn down the music.
At that point though the cop said he smelled marijuana. Not realizing that his medical marijuana card wasn’t good in Alabama, Worlsely innocently gave the cop permission to search his vehicle. Worsely explained that his marijuana was to treat his disabilities and showed the cop his Arizona medical marijuana card.
The cop explained that the card wasn’t valid in Alabama and proceeded to arrest Worsely. First time possession of marijuana is normally treated as a misdemeanor, but there is an exception: If the arresting officer thinks that the substance is for more than just personal use, he can charge as a felony, which is what happened here. Worsley has now been hit with a 5-year sentence in the Alabama state penitentiary.
Of course, none of this necessarily means that what happened here was motivated by racial bigotry in the state of Alabama. It’s entirely possible that that police officer and the sentencing judge were just enforcing the state’s drug laws and that they would have done the same thing to a white person.
But all the more reason for just ending the drug war itself. That’s not only a key to liberty and justice for blacks. It’s a key to liberty and justice for everyone.
Inconclusive investigations and psychological trauma cultivate Israel’s impunity
![Palestinian protesters hold banners to show solidarity with the martyr Iyad Hallaq a disabled Palestinian man who was shot dead by Israeli police in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on 2 June 2020 [Abedalrahman Hassan/ApaImages]](https://i2.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Eyad-Hallaq.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1)
Protesters hold banners in solidarity with the martyr Iyad Hallaq an autistic Palestinian man shot dead by Israeli police in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on 2 June 2020 [Abedalrahman Hassan/ApaImages]
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | July 16, 2020
In May, Israeli security forces killed Eyad Al-Hallaq, a 32-year-old Palestinian man with special needs, on suspicion that he had a weapon. He was on his way to the special school in Jerusalem which he attended, when he was chased by Israeli security forces, cornered and shot, despite being accompanied by his teacher who repeatedly called out to the aggressors that he was autistic. No weapon was discovered on Hallaq after this unwarranted extrajudicial killing.
Less than two months after Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz issued a perfunctory, patronising apology in which he stated, “I am sure this subject will be investigated swiftly and conclusions will be reached,” recent reports attest to how rapidly Israel invokes its own impunity to cover up its crimes.
Eyad Al-Hallaq was killed in a heavily securitised area in Jerusalem’s Old City; security cameras monitoring the indigenous population are everywhere. However, Israel’s Justice Ministry has confirmed that there is no CCTV footage of the killing. It went on to assert that, despite the presence of cameras where the shooting took place, the cameras “were not connected at the relevant time and didn’t document” the incident.
This lacks even a shard of credibility, yet it is not unusual in Israel, which goes to great lengths to safeguard its own institutions and uniformed criminals from scrutiny and prosecution. The Hallaq family is now left with no recourse for justice, because Israel has created its own travesty of justice that is concerned solely with manufacturing impunity for those responsible for the 32-year-old’s death. The investigation is close to reaching a conclusion, according to a Haaretz report, and there is no doubt that the bereaved family will be left to face a multitude of questions on its own, with the additional psychological trauma of knowing that the exact circumstances of their son’s murder are unresolved and the perpetrators still roam free. In Israel’s typical style, it will be an inconclusive end to a concluded investigation. The family’s lawyer, meanwhile, is requesting an in-depth investigation because there is a “very strong suspicion” that the police are concealing evidence in this case.
This is not the first time that Israel has refused to release evidence that would provide both context and corroboration. A case that springs to mind is that of Ibrahim Abu Thurayyah, a double amputee killed by a shot to the head in December 2017 during the Great Return March protests in the Gaza Strip. Israeli investigations concluded there was no evidence that one of its snipers had directly targeted Thurayyah while he was in his wheelchair.
Concealing evidence is a clear indication of culpability. For Israel, however, the practice is dissociative and is reflective of how colonial violence against Palestinians sustains itself. There is no need to deny culpability if action is taken to prevent any discussion of the crime. Indeed, in this case it is easier for Israeli government officials to exploit the victim and the grieving family, since the evidence of the events leading up to Eyad Al-Hallaq’s killing has been eliminated.
For the Hallaq family, as it was for other families whose relatives have been murdered by Israeli occupation forces, the killing and subsequent cover-up is a personal rupture. Politically, Israel is replicating the impunity generated since the Nakba on a different scale, relying upon separate episodes of inflicted trauma to prevent a collective Palestinian narrative from emerging as a unified front against its colonial violence.
Biden will seek to extend the narrative that Israel is being ‘singled out’
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | July 16, 2020
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden may try to sustain the fable that he is an alternative to current US President Donald Trump, but for the Palestinians a Biden presidency will most probably normalise the human rights violations that have attracted wider endorsement as a result of US support for Israel. Any political differences from those promoted by the Trump administration that Biden might have will definitely not include a reversal of the Zionist colonial project.
Indeed, US support for Israel, according to Biden, is a “longstanding, moral commitment”. The former vice president has also criticised the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) for “singling out Israel”, a slogan made popular during Nikki Haley’s stint as US Ambassador to the UN, and he will almost certainly stick to it. According to his foreign policy adviser, Tony Blinken, Biden “opposes any effort to delegitimise or unfairly single out Israel, whether it’s at the United Nations or through the BDS movement.”
While it is worth pointing out the blindingly obvious yet again that there is no anti-Israel bias at an international level whatsoever, the “singling out Israel” narrative will undoubtedly resonate further given that Trump has embarked on a series of unilateral political decisions that legitimise Israel’s colonial violence and normalises its actions within the international community. Without a reversal of Trump’s decisions, however, a pro-Israel stance from [would-be] President Biden would inevitably increase the likelihood of the international community widening the scope of Israel’s ability to act with total impunity.
The concept of “singling out Israel” is unfounded and has nothing to do with advocacy and activism for Palestine at an international level. Time and again, these actions have met with definite limitations, due to the international community’s complicity in Israel’s colonial project. Activism for Palestine is recognised as a right in terms of free speech and human rights, but these criteria will not be sustained politically at an international level to any meaningful degree, and definitely not enough to change the pro-Israel bias at the UN. The international body is, bizarrely, content to sit back and watch as its own resolutions are treated with contempt and broken routinely by the Zionist state.
As annexation remains pending, the US-Israeli propaganda regarding “anti-Israel” allegations might take a different turn. The international community has played along with the distorted scenario that pits the deal of the century against the two-state compromise. If Biden is elected president and fails to reverse Trump’s decisions or take harsh actions against Israel if it goes ahead and formalises its colonisation of additional Palestinian territory, any opposition from the international community will continue to be framed as being “anti-Israel” and, in the current twisted logic of colonialism, “anti-Semitic”.
However, since 2019 the UN has been more vocal about blaming Palestinians for any Israeli violations. If the narrative that Israel is being singled out is allowed a platform at a time when Palestinians are being rendered invisible at an international level, Palestine risks further oblivion.
However, Israel is not at all concerned about Palestinians gaining a recognised platform, because the fake narrative that it has promoted with help from the US only seeks to extend its impunity. It knows that regardless of whether the periodic international criticism of Israel continues or not, Palestinians are not gaining any additional attention that can alter their political standing. This is what Biden is vying for. As long as the focus remains on Israel, the rogue state will be given every opportunity to normalise its human rights violations and colonisation at an international level.
Why is Surrogacy Illegal in Most of the World?
By Mirah Riben | Dissident Voice | July 11, 2020
The longing, desire and biological drive of many human beings to fulfill the imperative to be fruitful, to procreate and to become parents, is real and painful when unachievable. This has led to an increase of assisted reproductive technology (ART) and surrogacy, despite ethical and legal concerns.
Preface
The infertility and surrogacy multi-billion-dollar industries, those who benefit from it, and others, too often attempt to out-shout any criticism of surrogacy by conflating surrogacy with LGBTQ+ rights and labeling all opposition to surrogacy as homophobic.
Yet, the LGBTQ+ community includes those who are opposed to surrogacy and anonymous designer contract conception, aka assisted reproductive technology (ART).
Opposition to surrogacy has nothing to do with the sexual preference, sexual orientation, gender identification or marital status of those who use anonymous gamete and/or hire a surrogate.
It is contractual anonymous conception and surrogacy which is at question, regardless of who contracts for such services.
Anderson Cooper is the latest celebrity to have a child via surrogacy. He joins 35 gay, straight, married and single celebs such as Tyra Banks, Michael Jackson, Mariska Hargitay, Elton John, Andy Cohen, Katy Segal as well as Kim Kardashian and Kanye West who had two of their four children born via surrogate, and Sarah Jessica Parker who has surrogate twins.
Hollywood and the public marvel at each new arrival often with no mention of how the child came to be. While some have made grand public announcements and a few celebs have openly expressed gratitude to the surrogate, there seems to be an unspoken “don’t ask” etiquette in interviews about the new baby, leaving an almost unnatural silence in place of usual chatter such as: “Who does the baby look like, his mother or father?”
Traditional surrogacy, prior to the Baby M Case involved inseminating a woman with sperm – often, but not always – of the contractual father-to-be. Since 1986 when Mary Beth Whitehead battled for custody of her daughter Sarah (known as Baby M), the mega-billion-dollar fertility industry devised a way to avoid mothers fighting for custody of “their” child by creating “gestational surrogacy”- the current norm – that involves a carrier being implanted with a third-party’s fertilized egg, and incubating the unrelated fetus. The child is thus unrelated to the gestational carrier, greatly limiting custody claims.
For many, perhaps most, choosing to have a child by any means is a cause for celebration. Touting reproductive choice, freedom, and justice proponents argue any child who is wanted and loved is a thing of joy and everyone choosing to be a parent should be admired and supported, regardless of how parenthood is achieved, including the use of anonymous gamete and surrogacy as a reproductive “right.”
A Right?
Clearly all have a right to access to reproductive care and services. However, the fact is that no “right” or entitlement to have a child or be a parent exists. And certainly, there is no right to buy sperm or eggs or the use of a woman’s womb.
Feminists are divided on surrogacy, as they have long been with prostitution, with some arguing for women’s autonomy, legalization and regulation, and others concerned about exploitation and commodification. Yet, many woman’s organizations, intellectuals, pro-life groups, politicians, scientists and citizens from different cultural backgrounds and countries call for the universal elimination of surrogacy, paid or unpaid.
Feminists do not take an opposing position on surrogacy easily, inasmuch as many women – alone or with a partner – are consumers of surrogacy services. It is thus all the more notable that women’s rights scholars such as Phyllis Chesler and Gloria Steinem opposed a NY bill (which passed in May, 2020) to legalize paid surrogacy saying it “turns women’s bodies into commodities and is coercive to poor women given the sizable payments it can bring.”
Gary Powell, a UK conservative political activist and longstanding advocate for gay and lesbian equality, writes,
As gay people, we cannot insist on the right to carry out practices that harm the rights of others. Rather than being an LGBT rights issue, surrogacy is a women’s rights issue and a children’s rights issue; and like the sale of human organs, it is not an activity that should be promoted or indeed permitted.
A Choice?
Defenders of surrogacy see it as a reproductive choice from a vast array of menu items ranging from IVF to adoption. However, these options are not available equally to all, but only to those who can afford them.
There are also legal restrictions as to what methodologies of obtaining a child are acceptable or not and even punishable. An “anything goes” ideology for becoming a parent does not include kidnapping, for instance, even if the child is loved and well-cared for, such as in cases like that of Carlina White and Kamiyah Mobley each of whom was kidnapped as an infant and raised as the child of their abductor for two decades.
And let us be clear: The word “donation” in regard to egg, sperm and womb is a euphemism intended to illicit a more altruistic tone to these purchases. Gametes – egg and sperm are commodities being bought and sold most often via a third-party broker. While it is argued that payment is for services not the commodity itself, such “services” are seldom given without compensation. It is coercion and exploitation of the poor that prevents the sale of human organs and yet laws in all locals have not yet included a similar ban on gametes and wombs.
Anna Kerr, founder and Principal Solicitor of Feminist Legal Clinic Inc., Sydney, AU addresses the heart of the issue in regard to how much a of choice surrogacy is for the surrogates:
… how often are these ‘choices’ being made under financial duress or in a context of social coercion? … Can we assume that women are truly acting of their own volition when in many cases their lives are so susceptible to the control of others? Or should we be skeptical of claims of ‘free choice’ and ‘consent’ in contexts that so clearly … smack of abuse and shameless exploitation?
Desire, Love and Affluence
There is a belief that those who are eager to add to their families in a very intentional manner do so out of love and will be good parents. We also need to question the premise that being able to provide a child more material “advantages” – music or tennis lessons, private schools – makes for a happier, more well-adjusted child than those raised by less affluent biological parent or parents.
More importantly, the vetting of prospective adopters has missed adopters who physically, emotionally and sexually abuse, abandon, and even kill, children they sought out, paid high fees for, and were entrusted with. Those who contract for surrogate births undergo no home studies. They are screened only by their ability to pay. At least one surrogate baby was placed with a man convicted of a sex crime.
Another common American ethos is that people “deserve” or are entitled to that which they can afford, a dangerous argument that would justify – even condone? – wealthy deviants who partake in sex tourism to countries with legalized prostitution and unknowingly purchase services trafficked of sex workers as young as twelve.
Payment
Those in favor of surrogacy point out that women voluntarily “choose” to be surrogates and are paid. However, compensation for time and labor does not necessarily make a transaction free of exploitation.
India, once the go-to epicenter for commercial surrogate births, was forced to ban international surrogacy in 2018 as a result of a multiple concerns, according to the website Surrogate.com, including:
… unethical treatment, poor living conditions and exploitation. To keep up with demand from international intended parents, Indian surrogacy agencies effectively ran ‘baby factories,’ where Indian women were forced to live until they gave birth to the intended parents’ babies — with usually no assistance for the family they had left behind while pregnant.
In addition, the surrogates in India only received a fraction of the expenses that intended parents paid the surrogacy agency — only $4,000 to $5,000 for compensation. With agencies charging more than double that in total, surrogates were commonly exploited . . .
Drawn into surrogacy by poverty and lack of education, many stayed as a result of being shunned within their communities and because one round of surrogacy is not a sustainable income “effectively became ‘baby-making machines’ year after year.”
Domestically, the exploitation is more covert and insidious. Surrogate websites, such as West Coast Surrogacy, paint this rosy picture to solicit surrogates using another euphemism, “gift” though gifts are not paid for by recipients:
It takes a special person to become a surrogate mother. The gift that surrogates provide is both remarkable and generous …
It goes on to speak of “the feeling of joy you experience as a surrogate …”
Those who become a surrogate mother (also known as a gestational carrier) provide a gift of unparalleled compassion for couples and individuals experiencing infertility or who are LGBT.
Most surrogates say their motivation is altruistic to help individuals or couples who want desperately to be parents and can’t, but they also report needing the money and universally agree that the financial “compensation” was a major factor. According to Surrogate.com the average “base pay” for surrogacy is $25,000 with additional payments for expenses such as medical, clothing and travel. At West Coast Surrogacy “experienced” surrogates can be compensated as much as $60,000, in part because California’s liberal surrogacy laws attract clients from all over the world.
Exploitation
Surrogacy is an extension of a long history of low-paid female service workers such as housekeepers, nannies and nursery school aids who toil for the more well-to-do.
With the exception of a family member or close friend choosing to carry child for another, all surrogacy contracts involve payment to entice women in need of cash. It is the poor, or those in temporary need, who agree to rent their bodies and sell the end human “product” to those who can afford to buy a human infant. Charis M. Thompson, London School of Economics, writes:
The level of social, political, and economic disenfranchisement of the reproductive labourer is taken to be an indicator of the level of exploitation involved.
Surrogacy involves a contract prepared by the surrogacy businesses or the paying client, known as “intended parent(s).” Because doctors implant multiple embryos to ensure a higher success, surrogacy often produces twins, triplets, and even four or five babies. The contracts thus include stipulations such as “selective reduction” of multiples and termination if it appears the child may not meet the requirements of those paying for it. Such draconian terms led attorney Harold Cassidy to argue that surrogate contracts are “unconscionable” with the terms that are “manifestly unfair or oppressive.”
Surrogates who find themselves unable to comply with such contractual agreements have led to multiple protracted lawsuits and appeals such as the case of Melissa Cook, a 47-year-old California surrogate who became pregnant with triplets. Cook sued the commissioning father – a single 50-year-old Georgia postal worker, who is deaf, mute, and lives with his elderly parents – because he wanted her to abort one of the fetuses. The triplets have remained in the custody of the father as the case has wound through courts and appeals, despite the father’s sister’s claim he is ‘abusing’ the children.
Risks
Gestational surrogacy involves the dehumanization of a woman’s body to become a womb for hire – a handmaid. As human incubators they risk ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome (OHSS), ovarian torsion, ovarian cysts, chronic pelvic pain, premature menopause, loss of fertility, reproductive cancers, blood clots, kidney disease, stroke, and high blood pressure, pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, hyperemesis gravidaru (severe persistent nausea and vomiting), loss of the ability to have future full-term pregnancies, postpartum depression, and, in some cases, death.
In addition, women who are paid to produce and sell their eggs, undergo months of hormone injections prior to the surgical retrieval. Risks include bleeding, infection, ovarian hyperstimulation and damage to the bowel or bladder.
Risks to babies born of anonymous assisted reproductive technologies employed in surrogacy, include: preterm birth, stillbirth, low birth weight, fetal anomalies, and higher blood pressure. Additionally, commercial surrogates agree to detach and dissociate themselves emotionally from any and all maternal hormonal feelings toward the being growing inside them, stoically overriding these natural instincts in order to consider the child they are carrying to be “not theirs.” This detachment causes stress which releases cortisol into the fetal growing brain.
Surrogate-born babies suffer additional emotional trauma resulting from separation at birth, also known as primal wound. Myron A. Hofer, B. Perry et al., Allan N. Schore, James Fallon and others have reported the lifelong neurological damage that results from traumatic depravation of maternal-infant attachment formed in the womb as a biological function. The unborn fetus shows a preferential response to maternal scents and sounds that the newborn expects to continue after birth, preferring the sound and smell of experiences in utero. Using MRI’s, neurologist Schore found that early separation from the gestational caregiver to be the genesis of adult personality disorders involving a person’s ability to trust, bond, learn, and emotionally attach.
Legal/Illegal: Where and Why?
In addition to being exploitative, most countries recognize surrogacy as baby-selling or human trafficking, which is universally illegal.
The US is one of only nine countries that legalizes surrogate pre-birth contracts. It was the first country in the world to recognize parentage created by payment and contract. Since 1985, the United States has become the preferred surrogacy destination for international parents such as British citizens Elton John and David Furnish as well as others from Australia, Canada, Spain, and Germany.
As of April 1, 2020, British taxpayers will be forced to “pay clinical negligence claimants six-figure sums to pursue commercial surrogacy abroad, which is forbidden under UK criminal law.” Additionally, lack of international regulation, can create citizens born to surrogates who are parentlessness and/or statelessness.
Within the U.S. the laws vary state-to-state, however, with some states allowing only unpaid, altruistic or in-family surrogacy while other states ban all surrogacy contracts. Some states ban and penalize the practice and some regulate it one manner or another. It is important to recognize why the vast majority of countries — and many US states — restrict, prohibit or strictly regulate surrogacy or criminalize the practice.
Harold Cassidy who represented Mary Beth Whitehead, mother of Baby M, argued in the case of Melissa Cook that surrogacy reduces women to a “breeding animal or incubator,” and that pretending the surrogate “has absolutely no interest in what happens to the child is a cruel notion to both the mother and the child.”
The Children
Surrogacy intentionally creates motherless children despite society’s “best interest of the child” policies that guide all other aspects of family law. Yet the children produced — who are the entire reason and end goal of surrogacy — are not party to the contractual agreement.
There is nothing socially redeeming about surrogacy as there is with adoption, which purports to “rescue” orphans. It is purely a self-serving act based on a desire to parent and feelings of entitlement to a child. In fact, those who choose surrogacy are choosing not to adopt. Surrogacy is chosen over adoption so as not to have birth parents to deal with and because of the desire to have a child that is genetically connected them (biogenetic bias). Yet, ironically, the child is often denied knowing half of his genetics and blood kin.
The legal necessity for the contracting parents to adopt the surrogate birthed child produces a falsified birth certificate, as do all adoptions (including step-parent adoption) that obliterates all or half of the child’s genetic heritage and lists the paying contactors as the only parents, as if the child were naturally conceived and born to just one person, two men, two women, or the heterosexual couple paying for the transaction. Many posit that the denial of the right to true identity is one of the reasons the US is the only nation that has not ratified the UNCRC – Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Many of the issues children of surrogacy face, such as loss of one or more genetic forebearers, have been well documented by adoptees and designer contract offspring (aka “donor” offspring). For generations, many have searched for their true genetic heritage, medical history and kin, which is understandable given the fact that genealogy is the “second most popular hobby in the U.S. after gardening, and the second most visited category of websites, after pornography” according to ABC News.
In addition to the natural desire to know one’s roots, children created from anonymous gamete deal with unknown familial medical history and the very real dread of unknowingly meeting, dating, even marrying a sibling or other blood kin.
The human products of these contractual, anonymous conceptions are at risk for genealogical bewilderment and will inevitably ask some form of: “Where do babies come from?” Those raised by one or two mothers will undoubtedly question who their father is while those raised by a single dad or two dads will ask: “Who is my mother?” This question could be quite complicated, as noted by Molly Sheahan, graduate student at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family:
… [in] the most routine of surrogate pregnancies or donor conceptions, a child can have as many as six parents: the genetic father, the genetic mother, the surrogate mother, her spouse, and the intended parents.
Abbie Goldberg, Professor of Psychology, Clark University is one of many adoption professionals who now strongly recommend full, honest disclosure of a child’s origin story by the time they reach adolescence. Children born via surrogacy or other anonymous reproductive techniques who are told the truth have to deal with the anonymity and the monetary factors of their conception. Others who are raised by heterosexual married couples, and may or may not be related to their social father, are often not told.
One young man, conceived via traditional surrogacy, expresses very poignantly how he feels about it:
How do you think we feel about being created specifically to be given away? … I don’t care why my parents or my mother did this. It looks to me like I was bought and sold. You can dress it up with as many pretty words as you want. You can wrap it up in a silk freaking scarf. You can pretend these are not your children. You can say it is a gift or you donated your egg to the IM. But the fact is that someone has contracted you to make a child, give up your parental rights and hand over your flesh and blood child. I don’t care if you think I am not your child, what about what I think! . . . When you exchange something for money it is called a commodity. Babies are not commodities. Babies are human beings. How do you think this makes us feel to know that there was money exchanged for us?
Reproductive businesses flourish while these ethical questions are still being debated:
- Do all reproductive choices equally protect the rights of the human being conceived or the women being utilized for eggs or womb?
- Do the alleged “rights” of would-be parents override the rights of the human being created as they grow into adults?
- Where is the line between third-party anonymous designer contractual conceptions and eugenics when egg and/or sperm sales are contingent on the physical and intellectual attributes of the “donor”/seller with college campuses and medical schools specifically targeted for sperm and egg “donors?”
- Is it fair to continue to intentionally, and some might say selfishly, creating motherless children?
- Why do we bemoan fatherlessness among minorities and in inner-cities and applaud the creation of motherless babies by the wealthy?
Kerr very accurately foresees surrogacy and other reproductive technologies creating “an Atwoodian dystopia that should provide the basis for litigation well into the future. … international human rights provisions, do not adequately recognise and protect the natural and fundamental bond between a mother and the child she carries and must urgently be strengthened to prevent further development of a culture in which women’s reproductive capacities are commandeered and their offspring traded as mere commodities by wealthy men [and women].”1
- For additional information see:Surrogacy as the Sale of Children
Surrogacy and the Politics of Commodification
Surrogacy: Ethical and Legal Issues
The ethics of surrogacy
Surrogacy: Why the world needs rules for ‘selling’ babies
Fundamental and legal problems for surrogate motherhood
Global Perspective, All surrogacy is exploitation – the world should follow Sweden’s ban
Inputs on gestational surrogacy for the OHCHR Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children
Handmaids for Hire: Should Commercial Surrogacy be Legalized In NYS? Surrogacy Has Now Become A Way of Slicing and Dicing Biological Motherhood into Three Parts.
Surrogacy: Why the world needs rules for ‘selling’ babies
Eggsploitation, documentary
The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network (CBC)
“All Ways of Family Building are NOT Equal and do Not Protect Child’s Rights.”
Designer Conception: Interview with Zave Fors, a product of designer conception discussing his feelings about it [↩]
Mirah is author of two internationally acclaimed books, more than 200 published articles, and cited in twenty professional journals having been researching, writing and speaking about American and global child adoption, restoration of adoptee rights, as well as contract anonymous conception and surrogacy since 1980. More at her website.
Israel detains two Hamas officials in the occupied West Bank
![The national and Islamic forces and factions in Gaza, including Hamas and Fatah, reach an agreement on a unified national plan of action to confront the US' 'deal of the century' and Israel's annexation plans on June 28, 2020 [Mohammad Asad / Middle East Monitor]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/6Z8A2999-scaled-e1593443758857.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1)
Factions, including Hamas and Fatah, reach agreement on a unified national plan of action to confront the ‘deal of the century’ and Israel’s annexation plans on June 28, 2020 [Mohammad Asad / MEMO]
MEMO | July 10, 2020
The Israeli occupation forces detained two officials of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, on Thursday during raids in the occupied West Bank. According to Anadolu, eyewitnesses said that soldiers raided properties in Ramallah and Al-Bireh.
Clashes erupted between dozens of Palestinian youths and the troops who arrested Jamal Al-Tawil from Al-Bireh, and Hussein Abu Kweik from Beitunia in Ramallah. The soldiers are said to have used live ammunition and rubber bullets, as well as sound bombs and tear gas against the demonstrators.
Hamas condemned the arrests. “This was a miserable and failed attempt to stop our resistance to all Israeli projects intended to liquidate Palestinian cause, especially the colonial annexation plan,” said spokesman Hazem Kassem. “The arrest of these officials is an effort to block the path of joint national action to challenge the occupation’s plans.”
Kassem added that, despite the arrests, “Hamas will continue our struggle against the [Israeli] occupation and its projects, and we will continue to develop the path of unity with all sections of our people to reach a strategy of joint struggle to confront the annexation plan.”
Arrest and detention campaigns are common in the occupied West Bank. Israel claims that those detained are “wanted” by its security services.
READ: Israel fears meetings between senior Fatah and Hamas representatives
YouTube censors video about daily life for Palestinians
If Americans Knew | July 8, 2020
YouTube does not want American high school students to know the truth about the Israeli occupation of Palestine.YouTube is censoring an eight-minute video entitled “Daily Life in Occupied Palestine.” The video, produced by If Americans Knew, contains video clips of Israeli actions against Palestinian men, women, and children, both Muslim and Christian. It also provides statistical and historical information about the Israeli-Palestinian issue. The US gives Israel over $10 million per day.
YouTube first removed the video claiming that it “violates YouTube guidelines.” When this claim was appealed, reviewers at the company admitted that it “does not violate YouTube guidelines.”
YouTube restored the video, but is prohibiting high school students from viewing it, and discouraging adults from watching it.
When people click on the video, they see a black screen with the unusually dire warning: “The following content has been identified by the YouTube community as inappropriate or offensive to some audiences. Viewer discretion is advised.”
This has caused a significant reduction of views.
If Americans Knew has appealed these actions, writing to YouTube that the video—
“hasn’t been identified by ‘the YouTube Community’ as offensive; the information it contains has been labeled offensive by Israel partisans – that’s very different.
“We went to great lengths to censor all scenes of blood and gore, and even profane language. The purpose of this video is to educate the public about the ongoing situation in Israel-Palestine.”
In point of fact, the video is entirely within the range of footage shown on nightly TV. The only viewers for whom this is “offensive” are the Israel apologists whose lobby enables the violence it contains.
High school students study U.S. History, World History, and Government. They will soon be voters. Many are politically active and volunteer in diverse political campaigns. They regularly see movies filled with violence. There are laws in at least 12 states mandating that schools teach about the Nazi holocaust, an extremely violent episode in European history.
It is deeply inappropriate for YouTube to prevent American students from viewing a factual video about one of the most urgent issues in today’s world, and about a country that receives more US tax money than any other.
It is similarly inappropriate for YouTube to work to discourage adults from viewing the video and thus learning about what our money to Israel funds.
While YouTube, a Google subsidiary, is a private company, its dominance of the video hosting market confers certain responsibilities of fairness on it.
We ask that people who oppose censorship and believe that Americans need to learn facts about this urgent issue tell YouTube to remove its prohibition against students viewing the video, and remove its damaging warning screen.
Please sign this petition and share it widely.
Please also share our blog post of the video and our Facebook post of it as widely as possible.
‘Pattern’ of Abuse by Colombian Soldiers Raises Questions Over US’ Continued Funding for Forces
Sputnik – July 7, 2020
The rapes of two young, Indigenous girls by soldiers in rural Colombia have shed light on the role that the US plays in expanding and training the Colombian military, two activists told Sputnik.
Nathalie Hrizi, an educator, a political activist and the editor of Breaking the Chains, told Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear on Tuesday that the sexual assaults of the two minors highlight a continued pattern of abuse at the hands of Colombian service members.
“Essentially, these two rapes have raised attention to what is a pattern in Colombia and a pattern associated with the human rights abuses and violations of the Colombian military,” Hrizi told show host Nicole Roussell.
“And so there have been protests … really, the Indengenous community are those that have been organizing.”
One of the assaults involved an 11-year-old girl from Colombia’s Embera tribe and has since seen seven soldiers from an army garrison in western Colombia arrested after admitting to the minor’s abduction and rape.
The second case was revealed in recent weeks by the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation, a Colombian think tank, which detailed the September 2019 abduction and repeated rape of a 15-year-old from the country’s Nukak Maku tribe. Both assaults have led to widespread protests across Colombia.
Speaking to Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear on Tuesday, Hrizi explained that the Embera tribe is located in an autonomous territory near a military station.
“That rape has been really, in the eyes of the public, connected to another rape that happened in September to another Indigenous girl in a different area. She’s a 15-year-old girl in the Guaviare area,” Hrizi explained.
“On September 8, soldiers abducted her, and they kept her for five days … they raped her and denied her food and water … that has not really received any real widespread acknowledgment until more recently because of the way the Colombian military is organized,” Hrizi added.
Since 2016, at least 118 members of the Colombian army have been investigated over accusations that they sexually abused minors, Colombian General Eduardo Zapateiro revealed on July 1, Reuters reported. The Colombian army, which has battled for decades against leftist guerilla forces, as well as criminal gangs formed by former members of right-wing paramilitary groups, has long been accused of human rights violations.
It’s important to note “the power of this Indigenous protest movement and the really important ways in which that movement is drawing connections between violence against women and broader abuses of power, whether at the hands of the military, police, rich people or otherwise, and that very much includes the role of the US in expanding and training the Colombian military,” Hannah Dickinson, an associate professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and an organizer with the Geneva Women’s Assembly, told Sputnik.
According to a report by Defense News, the US military has helped train Colombia’s soldiers for decades, despite widespread condemnation of human rights abuses by the Colombian military.
“In 1999, the US aid to Colombia jumped from $3 billion to $7.5 billion, and civic and human rights organizations in Colombia have been documenting cases of sexual violence against Indigenous women for the past 12 years,” Dickinson explained.
The PA is a willing accomplice in the international subjugation of Palestine
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | July 7, 2020
From seemingly defiant rhetoric to the expected capitulation, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has offered nothing in terms of a unified Palestinian stance against US President Donald Trump’s deal of the century. Going back to a compromised international community, ready to negotiate additional losses for Palestinians which will ultimately fail to prevent Israel’s annexation of their land, is not a counter-proposal, as the PA wishes us to believe. A more honest approach would have been a clear statement that the PA’s role is dependent upon donor funding and hence only capable of delivering upon compromised political agendas.
In a call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday, Abbas announced his willingness to restart negotiations based upon UN resolutions and the Middle East Quartet demands. In light of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to postpone — not abandon — the annexation of large swathes of the occupied West Bank, the two-state paradigm will once again be touted as “the only solution”. The reality is that the only solution is to dismantle the Zionist colonial enterprise in its entirety.
While it was expected that Abbas would renege on his rhetorical threats, his approach towards the international community, which also appeases Israel, confirms the political game that pitted the two-state hypothesis against the deal of the century; in other words, the international community against Trump. This was a shallow, despicable manoeuvre that ties Palestinian politics perpetually to international demands, because the PA functions as a security apparatus for Israel and a hierarchy presiding over a symbolically recognised, yet non-existent, state.
With Abbas’s decision, Israel boosts its upper hand. The settler-colonial entity considers itself above international law and, in fact, holds it in contempt. Diplomatic negotiations, therefore, present no obstacle to its annexation plans. It is highly likely that if annexation takes place, the international community will take its time but will, inevitably, normalise the violation of international law, while setting the scene to negotiate a non-existent two-state travesty, this being nothing less than legitimising the deal of the century.
International donors fund the illusion of Palestinian state building; they also fund the PA’s security coordination with Israel because, ultimately, the PA does not relish the possibility of Palestinians rising up against the imposed status quo which elevates its status, albeit only within the parameters decided upon by the international community and Israel. Abbas also knows that stopping security coordination will contribute to a complete collapse of its institutions.
As for international opposition to Israel’s annexation, which is already weak and not intended to seek a confrontation with the Zionist state, a scenario can unfold in which not even the most cosmetic of stances opposing annexation will be followed through. The international community’s diplomacy, after all, is based entirely upon the two-state compromise. Abbas may have no choice indeed, unless he is ready to base his politics upon Palestinian demands, which would trigger a complete change in terms of diplomacy.
However, the PA’s repeated excuse that the Palestinian cause has been marginalised by the international community only tells one part of the story. The PA has supported this marginalisation, but it just prefers not to speak about its role in altering the Palestinian political demands of land and refugees’ legitimate right of return, into a global project supporting Israel’s colonial demands. It is a willing accomplice in the international subjugation of the Palestinians.
“Woke” America is More Asleep to Injustice Than Ever
By Tony Cartalucci – New Eastern Outlook – 06.07.2020
To drive home just how superficial and empty recent protests in America are and how little besides further division and destruction will become of them – take the fate of two fictional characters recently put in the spotlight by baying activists – PepsiCo’s “Aunt Jemima” breakfast food brand and Mars Incorporated’s “Uncle Ben’s” rice products.
Both came into the crosshairs of “woke” America. Both fictional characters will now no longer be used.
It might appear like a huge victory for “woke” America.
CNN in their article, “The Aunt Jemima brand, acknowledging its racist past, will be retired,” would claim:
Quaker Oats is retiring the more than 130-year-old Aunt Jemima brand and logo, acknowledging its origins are based on a racial stereotype.
“As we work to make progress toward racial equality through several initiatives, we also must take a hard look at our portfolio of brands and ensure they reflect our values and meet our consumers’ expectations,” the Pepsi-owned company said in a statement provided to CNN Business.
And the London Guardian in their article, “Uncle Ben’s rice firm to scrap brand image of black farmer,” would claim:
The rice company Uncle Ben’s is to scrap the image of a black farmer the brand has used since the 1940s and could change its name, as companies react to growing concerns over racial bias and injustice.
The parent company, Mars, said Uncle Ben was a fictional character whose name was first used in 1946 as a reference to an African American Texan rice farmer.
While there is no doubt that both fictional characters represented stereotypes and are rooted in America’s racist past – “woke” America’s belief that somehow this was a priority or some form of victory begs belief. So does the fact that those opposed to expanding mobs and their “cancel culture” have crafted the most anemic counterpoints.
Some claim that the fictional characters were either inspired or portrayed by real African Americans who profited from the branding.
What neither side mentioned was the very real abuses both companies are guilty of – abuses that are both inhumane and rooted in extraordinary, inexcusable, and thus far utterly unaddressed racism.
PepsiCo and Mars Sponsor/Profit From Slavery and Mass Murder
Both “woke” America as well as those trying to form opposition to it have entirely missed the fact that PepsiCo and Mars Inc. – two multi-billion dollar businesses – are literally engaged in modern day slavery to create their products while sponsoring policy think-tanks that have engineered wars targeting African nations, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands and open-air slave markets where black people – today – are sold into bondage.
This would seem to be a much greater transgression against black people than their crude depictions in company branding and demands much more serious action than merely adjusting marketing strategies – such as demanding boards of directors to resign or full-spectrum, permanent boycotts for these businesses and their many subsidiaries and brands.
Unfortunately for “woke” America, fictional characters are a priority taken head-on all while activists blissfully munch on chocolate bars made by cocoa harvested by African slave labor and sip on drinks made by a corporation which sponsors US wars abroad in which blacks are mass murdered and enslaved.
Your Mars Inc. Chocolate Comes from Slave Labor
If you enjoy chocolate snacks like 3 Musketeers, Snickers, Mars, and Milky Way bars, the chocolate you ate most likely came from a developing nation with dismal working conditions and in many cases, child and slave labor.
Mars Inc. along with Nestle, Hersey, and many other chocolate companies, source cocoa from Africa and especially the nations of Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana.
A Washington Post article published just last year titled, “Cocoa’s child laborers,” would note:
Mars, Nestlé and Hershey pledged nearly two decades ago to stop using cocoa harvested by children. Yet much of the chocolate you buy still starts with child labor.
The article elaborated, noting:
About two-thirds of the world’s cocoa supply comes from West Africa where, according to a 2015 U.S. Labor Department report, more than 2 million children were engaged in dangerous labor in cocoa-growing regions.
When asked this spring, representatives of some of the biggest and best-known brands — Hershey, Mars and Nestlé — could not guarantee that any of their chocolates were produced without child labor.
Black children used as labor and under conditions and for wages bordering slavery to produce cocoa Mars Inc. knowingly uses in its products – and makes billions of dollars off of – seems like a much bigger issue than what is undoubtedly offensive labelling practiced by Mars Inc. through its “Uncle Ben’s” brand.
Indicative of the carefully controlled nature of ongoing protests is how the Washington Post has reported on Mars Inc.’s genuinely offensive, even criminal predation on black labor in Africa in the past as well as Mars Inc.’s offensive branding more recently, but failed to link the two in its most recent reporting – thus artfully avoiding a genuinely “woke” readership and any genuine damage real protests and boycotts would have on Mars Inc. and other corporations whose interests Washington Post regularly serves as a voice for.
Big-Biz like PepsiCo and Mars Inc. are an Affront to All
Mars Inc. – alongside PepsiCo, Nestle, and Hersey – was also involved in funding anti-labelling campaigns to prevent legislation from passing that would force food manufacturers to inform consumers their products contained genetically modified organisms (GMO).
Corporations spending money to hide dangerous ingredients from consumers endangers everyone’s health – black and white, left and right.
Mars Inc., PepsiCo, and others defend such campaigning, claiming that such legislation would be “costly” – as would ensuring all of their ingredients are ethically procured and free of child and/or slave labor.
Yet Mars Inc., PepsiCo, and others are multi-billion dollar businesses. The Mars family which owns Mars Inc. consists mostly of family members who are billionaires – not mere millionaires – but billionaires.
Their daily “concerns” include ensuring their sprawling 82,000 acre ranches have enough water and that they receive the most lenient penalties when crashing their Porsche SUV’s into vans carrying families.
Mars Inc. and other multi-billion dollar businesses can afford to do better, simply at the cost of being slightly less well-off billionaires or perhaps even being demoted to millionaires – yet they simply and deliberately choose to profit off the backs of poorly informed consumers at home and exploited/enslaved labor abroad.
If what Mars Inc. and PepsiCo contributed to was only limited to cultivating ignorant consumers at home and using slave labor abroad it would be bad enough. And if America’s “woke revolution” was serious about justice, Mars Inc. and PepsiCo would be on the chopping block for much more than their crude, racist marketing, and would have more demanded of them.
But that is not all Mars Inc. and PepsiCo are contributing to.
Sponsoring Warmongering and Mass Murder in Africa (and everywhere else)
Both PepsiCo and Mars Inc. are sponsors of policy think tanks like the Brookings Institution whose “scholars” and “fellows” churn out the blueprints for US wars which are then rubber stamped by the US Congress and sold to the public by the corporate media.
Brooking Institution’s 2019 annual report (PDF) lists both companies – PepsiCo and Mars Inc. – as sponsors as were both companies in 2011 (PDF).
Brookings and its corporate-sponsored staff worked diligently in 2011 to help sell the US military intervention in the North African nation of Libya. It was a key institution involved in creating and spreading the notion of “R2P” or the “responsibility to protect” used as flimsy cover for a long-planned US desire to effect regime change in Libya.
As early as February 2011, the Brookings Institution published articles and papers like, “United States Must Take Lead on Libya,” in which Brookings “Senior Fellows” – funded by the likes of PepsiCo and Mars Inc. – made the nascent calls for US military intervention that would eventually lead to the US arming militants openly and carrying out air strikes across the nation.
Indeed, the US armed militants in eastern Libya – a hotbed for racism and extremism and the epicenters of Al Qaeda in the country – as well as provided roving bands of armed gangs air support as they swept the nation.
When Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was violently swept from power later that year, the estimated 2.5 million Africans from across the continent he took in, providing housing and living wages to, found themselves being hunted by US-backed militants.
To explain the blatant and explosive racism that predictably swept Libya in the wake of the US-backed war, articles like the CS Monitor’s “How Qaddafi helped fuel fury toward Africans in Libya,” would claim:
Many experts – and African migrant workers themselves – say the animosity stems from anti-African racism found throughout the Arab world. But some say the anger has been made much worse by Mr. Qaddafi’s moves to buy the loyalty of black Libyans from the south of the country as well as his decades-long efforts to build Africa-wide patronage networks at great cost to the country’s Arab majority.
In other words – the CS Monitor and the Western “experts” it cited claim Qaddafi “fueled fury toward Africans” by merely spending resources to help them. It is an oblique attempt to justify the racism-driven genocide US-backed militants carried out during their “victory lap” in Libya.
Black Africans living in Libya were either driven out of the country, across the Mediterranean and into Europe to face hardship and racism there or either mass murdered in Libya or rounded up and enslaved.
The Western media – partners with institutions like Brookings – denied this at first – or attempted to excuse it like the CS Monitor – but eventually covered the fallout US military intervention in Libya and its long-planned regime change agenda triggered.
Reuters in their article, “African workers live in fear after Gaddafi overthrow,” would admit:
Tens of thousands of foreign workers have fled Libya since the armed revolt against Gaddafi’s 42-year-rule began in February, with Africans afraid they have become targets for fighters who accuse them of being mercenaries for Gaddafi.
This antipathy appears to have spread to all Africans, leaving them vulnerable to attacks, robbery and other abuse by the gun-toting, mostly young, fighters who ousted Gaddafi.
Identity cards of nationals from Chad, Niger, Mali, Sudan and other African states have been found on the bodies of gunmen who anti-Gaddafi fighters say were paid to confront them.
The BBC in its article, “Libya migrant ‘slave market’ footage sparks outrage,” would admit:
Migrants trying to reach Europe have spoken of being held by smugglers and forced to work for little or no money.
The footage released by CNN appears to show youths from Niger and other sub-Saharan countries being sold to buyers for about $400 (£300) at undisclosed locations in Libya.
While these media sources covered the fallout of the 2011 US military intervention, they were careful not to link the fallout directly to the intervention.
The US war against Libya was a humanitarian catastrophe deliberately engineered by Western think tanks funded by big-business like PepsiCo, Mars Inc., and many others, rubber stamped by politicians in Washington – both Democrat and Republican – and eagerly sold to the public by the corporate media.
And even as recently as 2016, Brookings “Senior Fellow” Shadi Hamid in a piece published on Brookings’ site titled, “Everyone says the Libya intervention was a failure. They’re wrong,” would remain insistent in defending the US-led war and the decimated, racist, and dysfunctional Libya left in its wake.
He argues that if the US didn’t intervene, Qaddafi would have successfully eliminated the racist extremists in eastern Libya and particularly in Benghazi who would eventually carry out genocide against Libya’s black population. Hamid simply omits any mention of this or who actually was based in Benghazi and instead refers to them merely as “protesters.”
Thus, PepsiCo and Mars Inc. – alongside oil corporations and weapons manufacturers – are funding an institution that not only engineers and eagerly promotes wars, they fund an institution that is utterly unapologetic about the calamity these wars cause – including wars like in Libya ending tragically for 2.5 million black Africans.
“Woke” America needs to be conscious enough to recognize the true injustice underpinning American society. It is very likely that as protesters in America and online around the globe rail against “Aunt Jemima” and “Uncle Ben’s” many activists are eagerly enjoying many of the other products produced by and profiting PepsiCo and Mars Inc. – oblivious to the fact that the ingredients are procured through child and slave labor in Africa and the profits are directed into promoting wars that leave blacks abroad dead, displaced, or enslaved. And as long as this is the case, nothing of any genuine substance will ever change in America or across the wider Western World.
If real justice is what Americans – all Americans – want, they need to truly wake up to this fact first.
Ayotzinapa Case: Attorney General Orders Capture of 46 Public Officials
teleSUR | July 1, 2020
Mexico’s Attorney General Alejandro Gertz issued 46 arrest warrants against municipal officials for their participation in the disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa, the State of Guerrero, on September 26, 2014.
“The Attorney General’s Office imputes to 46 officials from various Guerrero municipalities the crimes of forced disappearance and organized crime,” local outlet La Jornada reported and explained that the Office of the Attorney General had neither investigated nor prosecuted certain events when this case’s proceedings were carried out between 2014 and 2018.
Gertz also ordered the capture of the former director of the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC), Tomas Zeron, who was in charge of this case during President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration (2012-2018).
According to local outlets, however, he reportedly fled to Canada in March, escaping accusations of torture, disappearance of people, and obstruction of justice against him.
Zeron “already has an arrest warrant and an Interpol red card, for his international location and his extradition,” Gertz said.
Federal authorities are also seeking Carlos Arrieta, Michoacan’s former Security undersecretary, and Julio Contreras, a former member of the Ministerial Police.
During the Peña Nieto administration, Mexican authorities claimed that the criminal group Guerreros Unidos murdered the 43 missing students and cremated them in a garbage dump.
This version of events was known as “the historical truth”, a phrase that the former Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam used to describe the investigations’ conclusion.
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The Crusades – colliding narratives
Ashes of Pompeii | June 13, 2026
They say history is written by the victors, but the Crusades offer an interesting historical contrast: a two-century collision that produced not one history, but two parallel, irreconcilable realities. The dates and the battles are identical in both accounts, but the moral axis is entirely flipped.
In the traditional Western narrative, the Crusades are framed as a heroic, if tragic, epic. The First Crusade is a pious pilgrimage; the knights are romanticized figures of chivalry in shining armor, bravely holding the line in a hostile, exotic land. The eventual loss of the Holy Land is mourned as the “fall of Outremer,” a tragic retreat of European civilization. In this telling, the East is often reduced to a passive backdrop, its inhabitants viewed through a lens of mystique or backwardness, mere obstacles to a divine mandate.
But cross the Mediterranean, and the exact same timeline reads like a chronicle of foreign invasion and eventual, hard-won restoration against the barbarous northerners. The dates do not change, but the adjectives do. Here is the history as it is remembered in the Levant… continue
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