Afghan people are seen inside a house after U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Aug. 29, 2021. A U.S. drone strike destroyed a vehicle carrying “multiple suicide bombers” from Afghanistan’s Islamic State affiliate on Sunday before they could attack the ongoing military evacuation at Kabul’s international airport, American officials said. (AP Photo/Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi)
America’s last days in Afghanistan offered a sickening display of all that was wrong with the $2.3-trillion, 20-year failed attempt by a blundering, self-congratulatory but decaying empire to have its way in a place it neither really cared about at all, nor understood in the least.
First there was a catastrophic but predictable attack on US and Taliban troops as well as desperate civilians trying to escape the ruins and chaos of the country the US occupier was leaving behind to the victorious Taliban. One or more IS-K terrorists wearing exploding vests filled with shrapnel, possibly backed by other IS fighters firing automatic weapons, were reportedly joined by panicked US Marines confused about who the attacking enemy was. The explosion and ensuing fire-fight ended up slaughtering 170 or more Afghans (civilians and Taliban fighters) and 13 US service mena and women (12 Marines and one Navy medic) and badly wounding many more.
That terrorist attack was followed by a drone rocket revenge attack ordered by President and Commander in Chief Joe Biden . It was an attack which by all accounts went spectacularly and horrifically awry, killing not an IS-K terror plotter as initially claimed by the Pentagon, but a family of 10 including a US interpreter, all of whom — both three adults and seven children including a child of only 2 — had been given papers allowing them to get on one of the US evacuation flights at the Kabul Airport, but they had been unable to get through all the various checkpoints to accomplish that.
There were fabricated reports of secondary explosions used to suggest that the van that was struck had been carrying terrorists wearing explosive belts, which were completely untrue according to US and other foreign reporters who went to the scene. There were also reports of secondary explosions in an adjacent building, which were also false and self-serving to those in Washington trying to deny the disastrous error.
The two incidents provided a graphic illustration of why the US lost its longest war. First of all, terrorism has never been diminished in Afghanistan because of the US invasion and occupation of that country. Not only did the Taliban adept some of the strategies of resistance fighters against US occupation, such as in Iraq, turning to IED explosions and car bombs, but new terror groups like the Islamic State moved into the chaotic scene, attacking both US and Taliban forces. The latest attack at the airport was one of the largest of the war in terms of the number of victims.
Meanwhile, the errant missile slaughter of an entire family of pro-American would be immigrants by a US drone missile was proof positive of what critics of US drone warfare have been saying for years: Drones, often piloted by pilots halfway around the world in Nevada and Pennsylvania (near me) are a grotesquely deadly form of warfare that kills vastly more innocent people than the actual targets that it seeks to kill. Often the reason is mistaken coordinates or even flight-controller errors, but just as often it is a problem of bad intelligence, frequently caused by US “assets” in country providing deliberately wrong targeting information either to sabotage US efforts and increase opposition to the US occupiers, or simply to settle scores with an asset’s own rival.
A lack of transparency and honesty by the Pentagon and the White House through four presidencies has made things worse. Information about civilian deaths are since the beginning of this war in 2001 has been withheld, and when it is impossible to deny — for example when as has happened all too many times in this war, a wedding processing is blown up when it is confused with a group of enemy forces on the move — the number of innocents murdered is low-balled.
Biden did what George Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump couldn’t do: he has finally ended the war on Afghanistan by the US. He made a mess about it by dragging out the process by seven months when he could have negotiated an armistice and brought the troops home immediately upon taking he office. The Taliban would have been happy to accept a peaceful return to power and the US could have negotiated a peaceful exit for both US troops and Afghans wanting to leave. Instead, Biden ended up being a fourth president at war in Afghanistan, with blood on his own hands, and the US ended up losing a fighting war — badly.
Meanwhile, the war may be over for US troops, but it isn’t over for Afghanistan. The US violence and destruction of that long-suffering country has left it confronting a bloody civil war now as factions and tribal regions vie for power. As well, Biden has said that the US will still feel free — despite the blatant illegality of such actions under international law — to bomb and send in armed drones to attack targets by air in Afghanistan, just as the US did in the last days of the US military’s retreat. US soldiers will still be fighting, but instead facing bullets and IEDs in Afghanistan they’ll be sitting in air-conditioned pods on US military bases using video-game-like air-conditioned pods to control death-bringing, rocket-armed drones.
America itself will also still be in a state of war, as Congress continues to leave in place the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). That war authorization, approved by Congress on September 18, 2001, after no hearings or debate to launch the illegal war on Afghanistan, was also used to launch the so-called War on Terror. The latter has been an amorphous, borderless “war” that legal shills working for the government like former US Assistant Attorney General John Yoo have successfully claimed includes, until rescinded, the entire territory of the United States within its Constitution and Bill of Rights-shredding “battlefield.” It has given presidents, in the view of the Supreme Court, dictatorial powers undreamt of by the Constitution’s authors, permitted indefinite incarceration without charge or trial, warrantless government eavesdropping, extra-judicial government murder and kidnapping, and the jailing of whistleblowers and journalists in violation of US laws designed to defend such people and their actions.
Biden has done nothing to put an end to the continuing air war against Afghanistan or to the War on Terror.
There will be no ticker-tape parade for veterans of the Afghanistan War or the War on Terror. It will likely be erased from US history to the extent that the US government and the duopoly War Party and their complicit mass media can do it. Just as vastly bloodier Vietnam and Korean Wars have been white-washed into family-friendly noble if unsuccessful efforts to “defend freedom,” the Afghanistan War will be remembered, if it is remembered at all, as an attempt to punish the attackers of 9/11 (never mind that no Afghani or Taliban fighter ever attacked the US, on 9/11 or anytime during the last two decades of US war on Afghanistan). The rest of those sordid two decades will be whitewashed away.
We shouldn’t let that happen.
Instead we should remember the slaughtered family of Zemari Ahmadi, who paid with their lives so that President Biden could “look tough” in the face of critics at home blasting his botched decision to pull US forces out of Afghanistan.
A scene of panic at Kabul airport as former CIA collaborators try to escape the revenge of the Afghan people.
In covering the fall of Kabul, the Western media are mindlessly repeating seven lies of Western propaganda. By misrepresenting the history of Afghanistan, they mask the crimes committed in that country and make it impossible to foresee the fate that Washington has written for it. And if the Taliban were not the most wicked…
French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Joe Biden addressed their nation on the capture of Kabul by the Taliban on August 15, 2021.
1.- THE AFGHAN WAR IS NOT A RESPONSE TO 9/11, IT WAS PLANNED BEFORE THE ATTACKS
According to these two politicians, the sole purpose of the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was to “pursue those who attacked us on September 11, 2001, and to ensure that al-Qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base for further attacks. » [1]
Joseph Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister of the Third Reich, is said to have said that “A lie repeated ten times remains a lie; repeated ten thousand times, it becomes the truth.” But the facts are stubborn and, whatever Mr Macron and Mr Biden may think, the 2001 war was decided in mid-July 2001, when the Berlin negotiations between the United States and the United Kingdom on the one hand and the Taliban, not the Afghan government, on the other failed. Pakistan and Russia were observers at these secret talks. The Taliban delegation entered Germany in violation of the UN Security Council’s travel ban. After the failure of these negotiations, Pakistani Foreign Minister Naiz Naik returned to his country and sounded the alarm. Pakistan then looked for new allies. It offered China a gateway to the Indian Ocean (what we see today with the ’Silk Road’). The United States and the United Kingdom began to amass their troops in the area: 40,000 men in Egypt and almost the entire British fleet in the Arabian Sea. It was only after this arrangement was put in place that the attacks of September 11th took place.
2. AL-QAEDA IS NOT A THREAT FOR THE ANGLO-SAXONS, BUT AN INSTRUMENT
According to President Biden: “Our mission to reduce the terrorist threat of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and to kill Osama bin Laden has been a success.
However, it was the director of France’s foreign secret services, Alexandres de Marenches, who proposed to his US counterpart within the framework of the Pinay Circle [2] to provoke a Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in order to trap them there [3]. President Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzeziński, sought out anti-communist billionaire Osama Bin Laden in Beirut and asked him to lead Arab mercenaries in a terrorist campaign against the Afghan communist government [4]. Bin Laden was in Beirut to meet with former Lebanese President Camille Chamoun, a member of the World Anti-Communist League [5]. Washington chose Bin Laden for two reasons: First, he was a member of a secret society, the Muslim Brotherhood, which allowed him to recruit fighters; second, he was one of the heirs to the largest construction company in the Arab world. As such, he had the men and know-how to turn the underground rivers of the Hindu Kush into military communication routes.
Later, the same Osama bin Laden served as a military adviser to the Bosnian president, Alija Izetbegović, in 1992-94. His fighters followed him there. They abandoned the name “Mujahideen” for the “Arab Legion”. His camp was visited by Russian commandos, who were taken prisoner there. However, before they were arrested, they had time to search his command room and found that all the military documents were written in English and not in Arabic. [6]
Later still, Osama Bin Laden used his fighters for one-off operations. He solicited them by choosing them according to his needs from his “roster”, in Arabic “Al-Qaeda” (القاعدة).
It is therefore indisputable that Osama Bin Laden was for many years an agent of the United States. However, the latter claim that he turned against them, which nothing, absolutely nothing, proves. In any case, Osama bin Laden was seriously ill. He needed daily care in a sterile room. He was therefore taken care of in the American hospital in Dubai in July 2001, as revealed by Le Figaro [7]. This information was denied by the said hospital, but was confirmed to me by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyane (the current President of the United Arab Emirates) who assured me that he had visited him there in the presence of the local CIA chief of staff. Finally, Osama bin Laden was treated at the military hospital in Rawalpindi (Pakistan) [8] where he died in December 2001. His funeral took place in Afghanistan, attended by two representatives of the British MI6 who wrote a report on the matter.
Also indisputably opposing the theory that Osama bin Laden had turned against his CIA employers was the fact that until 1999 – i.e. after the attacks attributed to him against the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and the US embassies in Nairobi (Kenya) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) – he had a public relations office in London. It was from this office that he launched his Call to Jihad against Jews and Crusaders.
The fact that for ten years we have heard and seen recordings of people claiming to be Osama Bin Laden only deceives those who want to believe: the Swiss experts of the Dalle Molle Institute of Perceptive Artificial Intelligence, which at the time was used by the big banks in sensitive cases, were formal. These recordings are forgeries (including the one released by the Pentagon in which he claims responsibility for the 9/11 attacks) and do not correspond to the real Bin Laden. If facial and voice recognition was a speciality at the time, it is now a common technique. You can check for yourself with software that is available everywhere.
After Bin Laden’s death, Ayman al-Zawahiri became the emir of Al Qaeda. He still holds this position. The latter – who had supervised the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat – lived for several years after 2001 in the US embassy in Baku (Azerbaijan). [9] He was, at least in that period, the only person who could be considered a terrorist. He was, at least during this period, protected by the US Marines. His current whereabouts are unknown, but there is no reason to believe that he is no longer under US protection.
3- THE US DOES NOT FOCUS ON “COUNTER-TERRORISM”, BUT FUNDS AND ARMS TERRORISM
President Biden explained at length, during his speech on the fall of Kabul, that the United States was not there to build states, but only to fight terrorism.
The phrase ’fight against terrorism’ has been repeated for twenty years, but that does not make it more meaningful. Terrorism is not a flesh-and-blood opponent. It is a method of combat. All the world’s armies can use it in certain circumstances. During the Cold War, the two blocs used it extensively against each other.
Since President George W. Bush (the son) declared the ’war on terror’ (i.e. the ’war on war’), the use of this military technique has been increasing. Westerners first think of attacks in a few large cities, but the worst has been achieved with the creation of small terrorist states in the wider Middle East up to the sinister ’Islamic State of the Levant’ (Daesh) and now the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans and Syrians initially believed the US narrative of events, but they are under no illusion. After 20 years of war, they have understood that the United States does not want to do any good. Washington does not fight terrorism, but creates, finances and arms groups that practice terrorism.
4- THE TALIBAN DID NOT FIGHT A WAR, THEY TOOK WHAT THE US GAVE THEM
Presidents Macron and Biden are playing dumb about the Taliban’s “takeover of Kabul”. According to them, “Afghan political leaders have given up and fled the country. The Afghan army has collapsed, sometimes without even trying to fight. But how did they flee, if not with Western military aircraft? And the Afghan army did not “sometimes seek to fight”, it was the other way round: it only “sometimes” sought to fight. The Afghan borders were among the most secure in the world. US soldiers recorded everyone’s identity with electronic means, including iris recognition.
The Afghan army consisted of 300,000 men – more than the French armies – who were very well trained by the US, France and others. It was over-equipped with sophisticated equipment. All its infantry had body armour and night vision systems. It had a very capable air force. In contrast, the Taliban has no more than 100,000 men, which is three times less. They are hooligans in sandals and armed with Kalashnikovs. They had no air force – they suddenly have one today with trained pilots from who knows where -. If there had been fighting, they would have been defeated for sure.
The regime change was decided under President Donald Trump. It was to take place on May 1st. But President Joe Biden changed that timetable to change history. He used the delay to set up military bases in the neighbouring countries and send at least 10,000 mercenaries. He has mobilised the Turkish army, which is already present in the country, but which no one is talking about. The latter has already recruited at least 2,000 jihadists living in Idleb (Syria) and continues to hire them.
It is important to remember that during the war against the Soviets, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was already a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and the leader of a militia, the Millî Görüş (the one that today opens mosques in Germany and France). It was in this double capacity that he came to kneel before Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Afghan leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and future Prime Minister. Hekmatyar subsequently pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda, which did not prevent him from running in the 2019 Afghan presidential election under US protection.
The allies began repatriating their nationals several months ago. They thought they would have time before September 11th, or at worst before midnight on August 30th. But Washington decided otherwise by choosing August 15th, the date of India’s bank holidays. This was a warning to New Delhi, which does not appreciate the fact that President Ghani’s Pashtuns are being replaced by those of Emir Akhundzada, even though they support other ethnic groups.
The scenes of panic we saw at Kabul airports reminded us of those in Saigon during the US defeat in Vietnam. It is indeed quite the same. The Afghans clinging to the aircraft are not mostly translators from Western embassies, but agents of “Operation Omega” set up under President Obama [10] . They are members of the Khost Protection Force (KPF) and the National Directorate of Security (NDS), counter-insurgency auxiliaries, like the Vietnamese of “Operation Phoenix”. They were responsible for torturing and killing Afghans opposed to the foreign occupation. They committed so many crimes that the Taliban were like choirboys [11].
Soon we will see a completely different landscape in Afghanistan.
5. THE US DID NOT LOSE AFGHANISTAN TO CHINA, BUT FORCED CHINESE COMPANIES TO ACCEPT ITS PROTECTION
The US has not lost anything in Afghanistan because it does not want to establish peace there. They don’t care about the one million deaths they have caused there in 20 years. They just want that region to be unstable, that no government can control the exploitation of the natural resources there. They want companies, from whatever developed country, to be able to exploit them only by accepting their protection. This is the Hollywood-popularised scheme of the globalised world, protected by a compound, with special forces going abroad to monitor exploitation sites in wilderness areas.
This strategy was developed by Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense, and Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, who had already computerized the US military. On September 11, 2001, it became the way of thinking of the US military staff. It was popularised by Cebrowski’s deputy, Thomas Barnett, in his book The Pentagon’s New Map [12].
It was this paradigm shift that President Bush called ’War Without End’. By this he meant that the US would forever be fighting terrorism, or rather forever instrumenting terrorist groups to prevent political organisation in these regions.
Yes, Chinese companies are already mining in Afghanistan, but from now on they will have to pay a price to the US or be subjected to terrorist attacks. So what if it’s a racket?
6- WESTERNERS DO NOT DEFEND THE ENLIGHTENMENT AGAINST OBSCURANTISM, BUT RATHER INSTRUMENTALISE IT
The first lady of the United States, Laura Bush, made us all cry by telling us the story of little girls massacred by the Taliban because they dared to wear nail polish. But the truth is quite different.
When President Carter, Zbigniew Brzeziński and Alexandre de Marenches supported the Afghan Islamists in 1978, they were fighting the communists who were opening schools for girls. Because for them the fight against the USSR’s allies came before human rights. Similarly today, President Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken support the Taliban because, for them, controlling access to the natural wealth of the wider Middle East comes before human rights. And they are doing the same in Iraq, Libya and Syria.
The US has not only supported Islamists in war-torn countries. For example, it put General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, in power in Pakistan to use his country as a rear base for anti-Soviet fighters. He overthrew democracy, hanged President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and re-established Sharia law. President Bhutto’s daughter, Benazir Bhutto, who was Pakistan’s prime minister in the 1990s, was also assassinated by the Taliban.
There is no need to go back over the crimes of the Western counter-insurgency, the panic of their collaborators at Kabul airports is enough.
If Islamism and secularism have been used to manipulate the Afghans and to smoke out the West, political life in Afghanistan is not based on these concepts, but first and foremost on ethnic divisions. There are about fifteen of them, the largest of which, the Pashtuns, are also strongly represented in Pakistan. It is still a tribal country and not yet a nation. Other ethnic groups are supported by other countries in the region because they are also present there.
7- FRANCE HAS NOT ALWAYS SUPPORTED US CRIMES IN AFGHANISTAN, BUT ONLY SINCE PRESIDENT SARKOZY
According to President Emmanuel Macron: “President Jacques Chirac, as early as October 2001, decided that France should participate in international action, in solidarity with our American friends and allies who had just suffered a terrible attack on their soil. With a clear objective: to combat a terrorist threat that was directly targeting our territory and that of our allies from Afghanistan, which had become the sanctuary of Islamist terrorism”. [13]
It is a distracting way to erase a characteristic French conflict. In October 2001, President Chirac violently opposed the participation of the French army in the Anglo-Saxon occupation of Afghanistan. He only authorised deployment under UN Security Council Resolution 1386. The French soldiers were indeed under the orders of Nato, but as part of the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF). They were only involved in reconstruction assistance. They did not take prisoners, but eventually arrested fighters and immediately handed them over to the Afghan government. It was President Nicolas Sarkozy who changed this status and made France complicit in the crimes of the United States. It is because of this change that France is currently exfiltrating members of the Khost Protection Force (KPF) and the National Directorate of Security (NDS). And it will probably pay the price.
It seems that those who have taken the Covid-19 experimental injections several months ago are starting to become seriously ill. Chicago’s WGN9 reported that “The Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. and his wife, Jacqueline Jackson have both tested positive for COVID-19 and are hospitalized at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, according to a statement from Rainbow PUSH Coalition.” The report mentioned that he “was vaccinated against Covid-19 in early January.” Jackson is a well-known activist in the US who believed in Big Pharma’s miracle cure against Covid-19 and now he is suffering from the consequences of not doing the research on the dangers of the experimental injections. In an interesting twist to the mainstream media’s reporting on the Covid-19 experimental injections, Bloomberg News headlined with a disturbing title for its readership, ‘The Vaccinated Are Worried and Scientists Don’t Have Answers’ said that the “Anecdotes tell us what the data can’t: Vaccinated people appear to be getting the coronavirus at a surprisingly high rate. But exactly how often isn’t clear, nor is it certain how likely they are to spread the virus to others.” This is what good doctors and scientists from all over the world have been warning us about since the experimental injection was released under Operation Warp Speed. But the mainstream media continues its relentless defense of the medical establishment as it makes the case that the experimental injection offers “powerful protections” against Covid-19 “it is evident vaccination still provides powerful protection against the virus”, then admits that “there’s growing concern that vaccinated people may be more vulnerable to serious illness than previously thought.” All I have to say is wow! The following is an admission that the so-called vaccine is a disaster in the making especially for those who blindly rushed to become Big Pharma’s guinea pigs. A former director from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Dr. Tom Frieden can’t even give a clear answer to any questions for those who were already vaccinated on how they can protect themselves or if they will need a booster shot in the near future:
There’s a dearth of scientific studies with concrete answers, leaving public policy makers and corporate executives to formulate plans based on fragmented information. While some are renewing mask mandates or delaying office reopenings, others cite the lack of clarity to justify staying the course. It can all feel like a mess.
“We have to be humble about what we do know and what we don’t know,” said Tom Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the head of the nonprofit Resolve to Save Lives. “There are a few things we can say definitively. One is that this is a hard question to address.”
Absent clear public health messaging, vaccinated people are left confused about how to protect themselves. Just how vulnerable they are is a key variable not just for public health officials trying to figure out, say, when booster shots might be needed, but also to inform decisions about whether to roll back reopenings amid a new wave of the virus. On a smaller scale, the unknowns have left music lovers unsure if it’s OK to see a concert and prompted a fresh round of hang-wringing among parents pondering what school is going to look like
Mass confusion is coming soon as more people who have already taken the experimental injection are becoming sick. The authors of the article, Kristen V. Brown and Rebecca Torrence add several case studies of “breakthrough infections” that makes understanding the after-effects of the experimental injections a bit more confusing:
In lieu of answers, what has emerged is a host of case studies providing somewhat different pictures of breakthrough infections. Variables including when the surveys were conducted, whether the delta variant was present, how much of the population was vaccinated and even what the weather was like at the time make it hard to compare results and suss out patterns. It’s difficult to know which data might ultimately carry more heft.
“It’s quite clear that we have more breakthroughs now,” said Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco. “We all know someone who has had one. But we don’t have great clinical data”
The article does mention the Fourth of July celebrations in the beach town of Provincetown, Massachusetts where both the vaccinated and unvaccinated partied and found that “three-fourths of the 469 new infections occurred were among the vaccinated people”:
Authors of a CDC case study saidthis might mean that they were just as likely to transmit Covid-19 as the unvaccinated. Even so, they cautioned, as more people are vaccinated, it’s natural that they would also account for a larger share of Covid-19 infections and this one study was not sufficient to draw any conclusions. The incident prompted the CDC to reverse a recommendation it had issued just a few weeks earlier and once again urge the vaccinated to mask up in certain settings
Here is where they use Israel’s research that suggests that the experimental injections wane after several months:
Researchout of Israel seems to back the idea that protection from severe disease wanes in the months after inoculation, and more recently, that breakthrough cases may eventually lead to an uptick in hospitalizations. The information is preliminary and severe breakthrough cases are still rare, but it bolsters the case that some people will need booster shots in coming months.
Case studies and data from some states in the U.S. have similarly shown an increase in breakthrough cases over time. But with the delta variant also on the rise, it’s difficult to tell whether waning immunity to any type of coronavirus infection is to blame, or if the vaccinations are particularly ineffective against the delta variant. It could be both, of course. Changing behavior among vaccinated people could be a factor, too, as they return to social gatherings and travel and dining indoors
In typical propaganda fashion, the Bloomberg authors basically blame the unvaccinated for the uptick in breakthrough cases:
All that said, some facts are well established at this point. Vaccinated people infected with the virus are much less likely to need to go to the hospital, much less likely to need intubation and much less likely to die from the illness. There’s no doubt that vaccines provide significant protection. But a large proportion of the nation — almost 30% of U.S. adults — have not been vaccinated, a fact that has conspired with the highly contagious delta variant to push the country into a new wave of outbreaks
Well, the Reverend Jesse Jackson may disagree with that statement now since he and his wife are hospitalized with a new round of Covid-19 delta variant despite the fact that he allowed the medical establishment to convince him that new MRNA experimental injections would protect him and his family. Bloomberg’s article ends with a clear indication that the doctors and scientists that promoted the vaccine and in most cases, are in the pockets of Big Pharma such as Dr. Tom Frieden do not know what is going on:
For the time being, there are simply more questions than answers. Are breakthrough infections ticking up because of the delta variant, waning immunity or a return to normal life? Are vaccinated people more vulnerable to severe illness than previously thought? Just how common are breakthrough infections? It’s anyone’s guess.
“It is generally the case that we have to make public health decisions based on imperfect data,” Frieden said. “But there is just a lot we don’t know”
However, there are numerous good doctors and scientists who have not sold their souls to the devil that have sounded the alarm about the dangers associated with the experimental injections such as Doctors for Covid Ethicswho wrote an urgent open letter to the European Medicines Agency in March 2021. Here is what they said:
As physicians and scientists, we are supportive in principle of the use of new medical interventions which are appropriately developed and deployed, having obtained informed consent from the patient. This stance encompasses vaccines in the same way as therapeutics.
We note that a wide range of side effects is being reported following vaccination of previously healthy younger individuals with the gene-based COVID-19 vaccines. Moreover, there have been numerous media reports from around the world of care homes being struck by COVID-19 within days of vaccination of residents. While we recognise that these occurrences might, every one of them, have been unfortunate coincidences, we are concerned that there has been and there continues to be inadequate scrutiny of the possible causes of illness or death under these circumstances, and especially so in the absence of post-mortems examinations.
In particular, we question whether cardinal issues regarding the safety of the vaccines were adequately addressed prior to their approval by the European Medicines Agency (EMA)
The warnings were loud and clear from the start, but Big Pharma, the mainstream media and the rest of the political establishment ignored those who predicted the consequences from their so-called “vaccines” because they wanted to control the narrative and the profits associated with it. There is just too much too loose for the establishment since the real agenda is not to make the world a healthy place for humanity, but to rule the entire planet through coercive measures and it is called medical tyranny.
When two great minds come to similar conclusions about the current global push to vaccinate everyone with the COVID experimental vaccines, we should pay close attention. Both highly experienced scientists have a totally negative view of the vaccination effort. Worse than being ineffective, they point to negative health outcomes for the global population. These two truth-telling acclaimed medical researchers make Fauci look as inept, deceitful and dangerous as he is.
The point made in this article is not only has Fauci pushed the wrong potentially disastrous pandemic solution, he has blocked the right one.
Much of what the two virologists say is very technical in nature. This article simplifies their controversial messages without losing their essential meanings. The public needs to understand their warnings that refute all the propaganda pushing vaccines from government and public health agencies as well as big media.
Warning: Keep reading and you may become depressed.
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Dr. Luc Montagnier
First considered is the thinking of Dr. Luc Montagnier, a French virologist and recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). He has a doctorate in medicine. But there is a lot more to conclude he is a great expert: He has received more than 20 major awards, including the French National Order of Merit and the Légion d’honneur. He is a recipient of the Lasker Award, the Scheele Award, the Louis-Jeantet Prize for medicine , the Gairdner Award the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, King Faisal International Prize (known as the Arab Nobel Prize), and the Prince of Asturias Award.
He has worked hard to expose the dangers of the COVID-19 vaccines, still experimental but sadly may soon be fully approved. The vaccines don’t stop the virus, argues the prominent virologist, they do the opposite — they “feed the virus,” and facilitate its development into stronger and more transmittable variants. These new virus variants will be more resistant to vaccination and may cause more health implications than their “original” versions.
Montagnier refers to the mass vaccine program as an “unacceptable mistake” and are a “scientific error as well as a medical error.” His assertion is that “The history books will show that…it is the vaccination that is creating the variants.” In other words: “There are antibodies, created by the vaccine,” forcing the virus to “find another solution” or die. “This is where the variants are created. It is the variants that “are a production and result from the vaccination.” Stop and think about these thoughts. Have you heard a better explanation of variant creation? I doubt it.
He is talking about the mutation and strengthening of the virus from a phenomenon known as Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE). ADE is a mechanism that increases the ability of a virus to enter cells and cause a worsening of the disease.
Data from around the world confirms ADE occurs in SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, says Montagnier. “You see it in each country, it’s the same: the curve of vaccination is followed by the curve of deaths.” Sounds like what we are now hearing more about, namely escalating breakthrough infections that kill some people. And this spiral into disaster may have no end.
In a November 2020 documentary he emphasized harmful and irrational mask mandates as well as lockdowns, quarantines, abuses of government overreach, and supported use of effective COVID treatments such as hydroxychloroquine. The film was banned by YouTube and most other mainstream outlets. At that time Fauci had succeeded in blocking wide use of the cheap generic based treatments for COVID and pursued the wait for the vaccine strategy.
Montagnier has been a vocal critic of the mass vaccination campaign. In a letter to the President and Judges of the Supreme Court of the State of Israel, which unrolled the world’s speediest and the most massive vaccination campaign, Montagnier argued for its suspension. He said: “I would like to summarize the potential dangers of these vaccines in a mass vaccination policy.” Here they are:
1. Short-term side effects: these are not the normal local reactions found for any vaccination, but serious reactions involve the life of the recipient such as anaphylactic shock linked to a component of the vaccine mixture, or severe allergies or an autoimmune reaction up to cell aplasia. In this group we should include a number of lethal blood problems involving clots and loss of platelets that cause strokes, brain bleeds and other impacts.
Lack of vaccine protection:
2.1 In induced antibodies do not neutralize a viral infection, but on the contrary facilitate it depending on the recipient. The latter may have already been exposed to the virus asymptomatically. Naturally induced antibodies may compete with the antibodies induced by the vaccine.
2.2 The production of antibodies induced by vaccination in a population highly exposed to the virus will lead to the selection of variants resistant to these antibodies. These variants can be more virulent or more transmissible. This is what we are seeing now. An endless virus-vaccine race that will always turn to the advantage for the virus.
Long-term effects: Contrary to the claims of the manufacturers of messenger RNA vaccines, there is a risk of integration of viral RNA into the human genome. Our cells have the ability to reverse transcriptase from RNA into DNA. Although this is a rare event, its passage through the DNA of germ cells and its transmission to future generations cannot be excluded.
His bottom line: “Faced with an unpredictable future, it is better to abstain.” But most people will find it extremely difficult to resist all the coercion and vaccine mandates.
Back in April 2020, before all the talk of variants and before the rollout of the experimental vaccines, Montagnier urged people to refuse vaccines against COVID-19 when they become available. His main point should always be remembered: “instead of preventing the infection, they [would] accelerate infection.” Today, the newly occurring variants of SARS-CoV-2 that affect vaccinated people prove his thesis. With his scientific thinking, mass vaccination may cause a new, more deadly wave of pandemic infection.
As to the much talked about and hope for herd immunity, he has said: “the vaccines Pfizer, Moderna, Astra Zeneca do not prevent the transmission of the virus person-to-person and the vaccinated are just as transmissive as the unvaccinated. Therefore the hope of a ‘collective immunity’ by an increase in the number of vaccinated is totally futile.”
On the positive side, he advocated this: “The early treatment of infection with ivermectin and bacterial antibiotic because there is a bacterial cofactor that amplifies the effects of the virus. “
Dr. Vanden Bossche
The stark views of Montagnier have been shared by the esteemed Belgium virologist Dr. Vanden Bossche. He too has considerable credentials that make his views worth consideration. He has PhD degree in Virology from the University of Hohenheim, Germany. He held faculty appointments at universities in Belgium and Germany. He was at the German Center for Infection Research in Cologne as Head of the Vaccine Development Office. He has been in the private sector at several vaccine companies (GSK Biologicals, Novartis Vaccines, Solvay Biologicals) where he worked on vaccine R&D as well as vaccine development. He also worked with the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) in Geneva as Senior Ebola Program Manager.
His views have been analyzed in a recent article. He too has loudly called for a halt to mass-vaccination programs. He believes that if the jabs are not halted, they could lead to the evolution of stronger and stronger variants of the virus until a “supervirus” takes hold and wipes out huge numbers of people.
This is his bold view:
“Given the huge amount of immune escape that will be provoked by mass vaccination campaigns and flanking containment measures, it is difficult to imagine how human interventions would not cause the COVID-19 pandemic to turn into an incredible disaster for global and individual health.”
Here is an essential element of his thinking. Pretty much everything being done in the pandemic doesn’t guarantee elimination of the virus. What is happening is selective viral ‘immune escape’ where viruses continue to be shed from those who are infected [both vaccinated and nonvaccinated] because neutralizing antibodies fail to prevent replication and elimination of the virus.
The evolutionary selection pressure on the virus through ‘immune escape,’ creates ever more virulent strains of the virus that have a competitive advantage over other variants and will increasingly have the potential to break through the antibody defenses. Defenses provided by the vaccine induced immune system. This is ‘vaccine resistance.’ What happens is that vaccine makers keep trying to outsmart variants, but fail. So, they keep pushing boosters and yearly vaccine shots. This is the more is better approach. This is aided by suppression of many negative facts about the vaccines by big media.
A frightening forecast by Bossche is that the worst of the pandemic is still to come. Hard to believe considering all the bad news propaganda about cases, hospitalizations and deaths. But he thinks we are now experiencing the calm before the ultimate storm. Imagine a new wave of infection far worse than anything we’ve seen so far is how Bossche thinks.
How does this happen? There will be more mutants or variants to which the adaptive immune system from vaccine shots provides little resistance. At the same time there will be decreased innate or natural immune effectiveness. Unless people take a number of steps to boost their natural immunity.
Bossche consistently points to a lack of evidence that the existing global, mass vaccination program that has been mounted while there is still significant infection around, is unprecedented and there is no scientific evidence that this will work. This is why he is largely ignored.
He stresses that historic vaccination programs have always emphasized the importance of vaccinating populations prophylactically in the absence of infection pressure.
He also argues that if different types of vaccine were used that provided sterilizing immunity i.e., that prevented immune escape and killed all viruses in those vaccinated, the situation would be entirely different. Most people do not understand that the current experimental vaccines do not actually kill the virus; and that both the vaccinated and nonvaccinated shed the virus. These vaccines do not stop viral transmission. And all the contagion control measures simply to not work effectively enough to stop wide spread of the virus in its various forms.
Here is his big picture view: “There is only one single thing at stake right now and that is the survival of our human race, frankly speaking.”
But there are more strong words recently said by Bossche to pay attention to:
“every person out there who is ‘partially’ or ‘fully’ vaccinated is a walking disease incubation system that puts everyone else at risk of contracting a deadly, vaccine-caused ‘variant’ that could kill them. The ‘vaccinated’ are walking murderers spreading disease to others. Getting injected for the Fauci Flu is not only foolish; it is also a form of murder in that unvaccinated people are now at risk of contracting the deadly diseases being manufactured inside the bodies of the vaccinated. If Trump had never introduced the vaccine in the first place, the pandemic would have long ago fizzled out. Since his vaccines continue to be pushed … however, the ‘Delta’ variant is spreading like wildfire, soon to be followed by other ‘variants’ as we enter the fall season.”
This too is a very strong view. The “mass vaccination program is…unable to generate herd immunity.” If true, there is little hope of seeing the COVID pandemic ending.
What is the solution? Bossche has identified the needed alternative to the current massive vaccine effort. It is this; “This first critical step can only be achieved by calling an immediate halt to the mass vaccination program and replacing it by widespread use of antiviral chemoprophylactics while dedicating massive public health resources to scaling early multidrug treatments of Covid-19 disease.” This is referring to the early home/outpatient treatment protocols based on cheap, safe and fully approved generics like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine; these also work as preventatives. Pandemic Blunder provides much data and advice on using this treatment approach. So, both virologists support use of what Fauci has blocked.
These action recommendations were also made by Bossche “Provide – at no cost – early multidrug treatment to all patients in need. Roll out campaigns to promote healthy diets and lifestyle.” In other words, people need to take actions to boost their natural immunity, this should include vitamins and supplements, including this cocktail: vitamin C, vitamin D, zine and quercetin.
Conclusions
Take a moment to consider that Patrick Wood on the Bannon show on August 21 concluded that all the available data from the US and Europe shows some 100,000 people have died from the COVID experimental vaccines. I agree with that assessment. And by the time you read this FDA may have given full approval to the Pfizer vaccine.
After considering what these two experts have said it is appropriate to criticize what current government officials say, namely blame the unvaccinated for the surges in COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths. The major alternative to this thinking is that it is the vaccinated people who are creating pandemic problems, including the variants. The strong conclusion is that the current vaccines are ineffective, nonprotective and dangerous.
What is needed is an entirely new approach to COVID vaccines. Perhaps there are companies working on this. This would threaten the trillion-dollar business of the current vaccine makers.
If the people, agencies and institutions with all the power listening to these two very smart people they would devote all their energies to using alternatives to the current vaccines. We have them. Notably, the treatment protocols that so many great doctors have created and used to help their patients.
Many other physicians and medical researchers have called for a halt to the current vaccine bonanza for big drug companies. In the meantime, on a daily basis for all those willing to look at the facts, it is clearer and clearer that the experimental vaccines are not effective. It is insanity to keep doing or expanding what is not working. That is the insane world we are now experiencing even as more and people die from breakthrough infections, blood problems and other bad vaccine health impacts.
Perhaps the ugly truth about the vaccines will be widely revealed only when there are massive, widespread deaths despite all the shots and jabs. That will be too late to change pandemic management from money-driven stupidity to life-saving, medically moral actions.
Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn, author of Pandemic Blunder and many articles on the pandemic, worked on health issues for decades. As a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he directed a medical research program between the colleges of engineering and medicine. As a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association, he directed major studies on health-related subjects; he testified at over 50 U.S. Senate and House hearings and authored hundreds of articles and op-ed articles in major newspapers. He has served as an executive volunteer at a major hospital for more than 10 years. He is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and America’s Frontline Doctors and has been a long-time contributor to the sites of Kettle Moraine.
It took America 15 years to airlift its whipped, arrogant ass out of Vietnam; in Afghanistan it took 20. All the young men and women our diseased, criminal “leaders” doomed to be killed, mangled, or commit suicide in or after those fake, bullshit “wars” were, in effect, shit-canned by them like rotten meat. Trillions that should have educated, inspired, and nurtured them were wasted and stolen by our rabid, raping Capitalist War Machine.
After 20 years of blustering, pious deception, colluded in by the hillbilly ninnies laughingly referred to as our government, led by four despicable Presidents—as contemptible a set of moral and spiritual monsters as could be dredged up from the foetid latrines of history—this hideous charade can be seen for what it was: a brazen scam to engorge our Death Merchants with blood money.
The coprophagous Corporate Press and its petting zoo of hired political porn stars rage against ersatz villains in this Bozo pratfall of America’s Potemkin regime, imported, installed and bankrolled by this unraveling empire in its last pathetic shot at a grotesque simulation of world hegemony.
One is in awe at the spectacle of the blackguard war pimps who stampeded this simple-minded, helpless country into these exercises in folk murder, pointing fingers and anathematizing anyone but themselves, disgusting human sepsis that they are. The only indisputable truth about the Afghan debacle is that the U.S. War Machine and its wholly-owned Congress and Press, hyped fear and outrage at 9/11 to spin the mythical GWOT and two decades of limitless profiteering using the brutal destruction of a poor, defenseless country as a weapons-testing experiment.
Whether that country could be dominated and pacified, much less remade, had no relevance in their calculus. Outcomes in their pretend “wars” mean nothing: what matters is that the Federal money spigot be jammed wide open and massive profits from their death devices never end. Schopenhauer nailed the war industry a century ago: “Created by the wars that required it, the machine now creates the wars it requires”. Under American assault, Afghanistan and its people who survive, have suffered a devastation of historic proportions, comparable to massacres The Empire inflicted on Cuba and the Philippines in its early days. Nothing can ever alter this villainy, another bloody stain smeared on our long, rabid history. Curiously, though, in a twist of historical irony, The Empire has undoubtedly wounded itself more grievously than it did Afghanistan.
The fact is that after a long chain of blundering, idiotic policy trainwrecks and staggeringly stupid military humiliations—all acts of blatant piracy for the War Machine—The Empire, far from cementing its hold on its craven lapdogs, Britain, Australia, and NATO, is now regarded by the world as an unhinged, imbecile giant without brains, ethics, honor, or even any sense of self-preservation. Nations, universally, stare at us with the kind of bated-breath foreboding that would be felt watching an untethered lunatic venture across Zambesi Gorge on a tightrope.
When the sheer, brute madness and psychotic hubris of a tyrannical regime deceives its people into mortal peril, as the U.S. government has, the inevitable end is overthrow or implosion. Empires fall from their fatal morbid pathology, without exception.
When an entire people is aroused and mobilized against its its tyrants, elites, or aristocrats, there is blood in the streets. In the French Revolution, mass rage exploded in indiscriminate murder of the nobility. Such raging mayhem is not even conceivable to us now, and never was. Even the rising of Americans in rebellion against their ruling Capitalist War Machine is unimaginable. We are stupefied by propaganda into blind, autonomic obedience. Disaster, when it comes, will be horribly mishandled, as all else has been, by our Capitalist criminals and their political whores.
And yet, even given their dull passivity and refusal to face their reality, it amazes Americans tolerate living under this ridiculous, contemptible gang of baldfaced liars, dimwit conmen, and black-hearted slugs: McConnell and Pelosi, Schumer and McCarthy, Mancin and Cruz, and their vomitus ilk. Sure, money buys the commercials that are all the deeply stupid absorb, but even the densest must smell the decayed mummies behind the masks.
These odious moral thugs, who sold America on vengeful, phony “wars”, now join their chorus of shameless flacks, grasping wildly at any alibi for their cowardice and folly. They bayed for revenge and blood, dodging their duty to check the imbecile, Bush, Jr., and his psychically twisted Igor, Cheney, cheered shape-shifting bullshitter Obama, subhuman Trump, and now drub vacuous, impaired Biden for blundering into the only inevitable endgame.
The chaos and dislocation at the end of empires has always been commensurate with their magnitude, reach and duration. The French inflamed Europe; the Spanish and British dislocated the Western financial system; the Nazi and Russian destabilized the world and brought agony and death to hundreds of millions.
The fall of Imperial America, while certain, cannot be predicted as to mode and method. It may come in a series of our floundering, catastrophic military idiocies—though upping the ante against Russia and/or China will put a swift, devastating end to that process—or in a climax of economic spasms leading to flight from the dollar as reserve currency and national bankruptcy. What is certain is that it will be the most cataclysmic disruption the world has ever suffered. Empires, as the terminally ill, cannot self-rescue. They die devoured by their own inherent horrors.
“A house constitutes a body of images that give mankind proofs or illusions of stability.” – Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
There is a vast and growing gulf between the world’s rich and poor. An obscene gulf. If we can read houses, they will confirm this. They offer a visible lesson in social class.
Houses stand before us like books on a shelf waiting to be read, and when the books are missing, as they are for a vast and growing multitude of the homeless exiled wandering ones and those imprisoned, their absence serves to indict the mansion-dwelling wealthy and to a lesser extent those whose homes serve to shield them from the truth of the ill-begotten gains of the wealthy elites who create the world’s suffering through their avarice, lies, and war making.
Many regular people want to say with Edmund in Eugene O’Neill’s play, Long Day’s Journey into Night:
The fog is where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can’t see this house. You’d never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn’t see but a few feet ahead. I didn’t meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is.That’s what I wanted – to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself….Who wants to see life as it is, if they can help it?
Yet the rich don’t hide or give a damn. They flaunt their houses. They know they are crooks and creators of illusions. Their nihilism is revealed in their conspicuous consumption and their predatory behavior; they want everyone else to see it too. So they rub it in their faces. Their wealth is built on the blood and suffering of millions around the world, but this is often hidden knowledge.
For many regular people prefer the fog to the harsh truth. It shields them from intense anger and the realization that the wealthy elites who run the world and control the media lie to them about everything and consider them beneath contempt. That would demand a response commensurate with the propaganda – rebellion. It would impose the moral demand to look squarely at the houses of death with their tiny cells in which the wealthy elites and their henchmen imprison and torture truth tellers like Julian Assange, an innocent man in a living hell; to make connections between wealth and power and the obscene flaunting of the rich elite’s sybaritic lifestyles in houses where every spacious room testifies to their moral depravity.
The recent news of Barack Obama’s vile selfie birthday celebration for his celebrity “friends” at his 29-acre estate and mansion (he has another eight-million-dollar mansion in Washington, D. C.) on Martha’s Vineyard is an egregious recent case in point. If he thinks this nauseating display is proof of his stability and strength – which obviously he does – then he is a deluded fool. But those who carry water for the military-intelligence-media complex are amply rewarded and want to tell the world that this is so. It’s essential for the Show. It must be conspicuous so the plebians learn their lesson.
Obama’s Vineyard mansion stands as an outward sign of his inner disgrace, his soullessness.
Trump’s golden towers and his never-ending self-promotion or the multiple million-dollar mansions of high-tech, sports, and Hollywood’s superstars send the same message.
Take Bill Gates’ sixty-three-million-dollar mansion, Xanadu, named after William Randolph Hearst’s estate in Citizen Kane, that took seven years to build.
Take the house up the hill from where I live in an erstwhile working-class town that sold for one million plus and now is being expanded to double its size with a massive swimming pool that leaves no grass uncovered. Every week, three black window-tinted SUVs arrive with New Jersey plates to join two white expensive sedans to oversee the progress in this small western Massachusetts town where McMansions rise throughout the hills faster than summer’s weeds.
Take the blue dolomite stone Searles Castle with its 60 acres, 40 rooms, and “dungeon” basement down the hill on Main St. that was recently bought by a NYC artist who also owns seven grand estates around the country that he showcases as examples of his fine artistic taste. “All these houses have endless things to do — it’s just mind-boggling,” he has said. The artist, Hunt Slonem, calls himself a “glamorizer,” and his “exotica” paintings, inspired by Andy Warhol’s repetition of soup cans and Marilyn Monroe, hang in galleries, museums, cruise ships, and the houses of film celebrities. Like his showcase houses, his exotica must have endless things to do.
What would Vincent van Gogh say? Perhaps what he wrote to his brother Theo: that the greatest people in painting and literature “have always worked against the grain” and in sympathy with the poor and oppressed. That might seem “mind-boggling” to Slonem.
Such ostentatious displays of wealth and power clearly reveal the delusions of the elites, as if there are no spiritual consequences for living so. Even if they read Tolstoy’s cautionary tale about greed, How Much Land Does A Man Need?, it is doubtful that its truth would register. Like Tolstoy’s protagonist Pahόm, they never have enough. But like Pahόm, the Devil has them in his grip, and like him, they will get their just rewards, a small room, a bit of land to imprison them forever.
His servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for Pahóm to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.
Where does the money for all these estates, not just Slonem’s, come from? Who wants to ask?
Getting to the roots of wealth involves a little digging. Slonem’s castle was originally commissioned in the late 1800s by Mark Hopkins for his wife. Hopkins was one of the founders of the Central Pacific Railroad, which was built by Irish and Chinese immigrants. Labor history is quite illuminating on the ways immigrants have always been treated, in this case “the dregs of Asia” and the Irish dogs. Interestingly enough, the great black scholar and radical, W. E. B. Du Bois, a town native, worked at the castle’s construction site as a young man. No doubt it informed his future work against racism, capitalism, and economic exploitation.
Wealthy urbanites flooded this area after September 11, 2001, and now, in their terror of disease and death, they have bought every house they could find. Their cash-filled pockets overflow with blood-money and few ask why. To suggest that massive wealth is almost always ill-begotten is anathema. But innocence wears many masks, and the Show demands washed hands and no questions asked.
It is rare that one becomes super-wealthy in an honest and ethical way. The ways the rich get money almost without exception lead downward, to paraphrase Thoreau from his essay, “Life Without Principle.”
Since the corona crisis began, investment firms such as the Blackstone Group have been gobbling up vast numbers of houses across the United States as their prices have gone through the roof. The lockdowns – an appropriate prison term – have set millions of regular people back on their heels as the wealthiest have gotten exponentially wealthier. Poverty and starvation have increased around the world. This is not an accident. Despair and depression are widespread.
There is a taboo in life in general and in journalism: Do not ask where people’s money comes from. Thoreau was so advised long ago:
Do not ask how your bread is buttered; it will make you sick…
But the super-wealthy do not get sick. They are sick. For they revel in their depravity and push it in the faces of regular people, many who envy them and wish to become super-rich and powerful themselves. Of course there are the blue bloods whose method is understatement, but it takes many decades to enter their theater of deception. In many ways, these people are worse, for their personae have been crafted over decades of play-acting and public relations so their images are laundered to smell fresh and benevolent. They often wear the mask of philanthropy, while the history of their wealth lies shrouded in an amnestic fog.
Yet soul murder includes suicide, and while the old and new moneyed ones smoothly justify their oppression of the vast majority, many regular people kill the best in themselves by envying the rich.
Years ago, I discovered some documents that showed that one of this country’s most famous philosophers, known for his lofty moral pronouncements, owned a lot of stock in companies that were doing evil things – war making, poisoning and killings huge numbers with chemicals, etc. But his image was one of Mr. Clean, Mr. Good Guy. I suspect this is typical and that there are many such secrets in the basements and attics of the rich.
But let us also ask where the writers and presenters of the mainstream and alternative media get their money. Although “to follow the money” is a truism, few do. If we do, we will learn that money talks and those who take it toe the line, nor do they live in shacks by the side of the road or rent like so many others. They invest with Black Rock and their ilk and have money managers who can increase their wealth while shielding them from the ways that money is made on the backs of the poor and working people. And they lie about people like Assange, Daniel Hale, Reality Winner, Craig Murray, et al., all imprisoned for daring to reveal the depredations of the power elites, the violence at the heart of predatory capitalism.
Yes, houses speak. But few ever speak of where their money comes from. Those that are on the take – which has multiple meanings – always plead innocent. Yes, I can hear you say that I am being too harsh; that there are exceptions. That is obvious. So let’s skip the exceptions and focus on the general principle. There is a Buddhist principle that right livelihood is a core ethic in earning money. Jesus had another way of putting it but was of course in agreement, as were so many others whom people hold in highest esteem.
Thoreau wrote: “If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications.”
The truth is that for most people, work, if they can find it, is drudgery and hard, a matter of survival. The late great Studs Terkel called it hell and rightly said that most jobs are not big enough for people because they crush the soul, they lack meaning. And behind all ledgers of great wealth lie crushed souls. This reality is so obvious and goes by many names, including class warfare, that further commentary would be redundant.
A few years ago, I visited Mark Twain’s house in Hartford, Connecticut. It is advertised as “a house with a heart and a soul.” It is not a house but a mansion, and it was an ostentatious display in Twain’s time. Similar or worse than Obama’s mansion on Martha’s Vineyard today. It has no soul or heart. It was built with Twain’s wife’s family money. Her father was an oil and coal tycoon from upstate New York. Twain reveled in opulent respectability. He lived the life of a Gilded Age tycoon, an American magnate. It is not a pretty story, but the Twain myth says otherwise. Not that he catered to popular tastes to please the crowd and his domineering wife and that he lived in luxury, but that he was a radical critic of the establishment. This is false. For he withheld for the most part the publication of his withering take on American imperialism until after his death. He committed soul murder. But his mansion impressed his neighbors and his humor distracted from his luxurious lifestyle. His house still stands as a cautionary tale for those who will read it.
Baudelaire once said that in palaces “there is no place for intimacy.” This is no doubt why in people’s dreams small, simple houses with a light in the window loom large. Bachelard says, “When we are lost in darkness and see a distant glimmer of light, who does not dream of a thatched cottage or, to go more deeply still into legend, of a hermit’s hut.” For here man and God meet in solitude; here human intimacy is possible. “The hut can receive none of the riches ‘of this world.’ It possesses the felicity of intense poverty; indeed, it is one of the glories of poverty; as destitution increases, it gives access to absolute refuge.”
He is not espousing actual poverty, but the oneiric depths of true desire, the dreams of hope, reconciliation, and simple living that run counter to the amassing of wealth to prove one’s power and majesty. A humble house of truth, not a mansion of lies. This, to borrow the title of William Goyen’s novel, is “the house of breath” where the spirit can live and pseudo-stability gives way to faith, for insecurity is the essence of life.
There is such a hermit’s hut where the light shines. It is the tiny cell in Belmarsh Prison where Julian Assange hangs onto his life by a thread. His witness for truth sends an inspiring message to all those lost in the world’s woods to look to his fate and not turn away. To follow to their sources the money that greases the palms of all the so-called journalists and politicians who want him dead or imprisoned for life, who tell their endless lies, not just about him, but about everything.
The house of propaganda is built on unanimity. When one person says no, the foundation starts to crumble. The houses of the rich dead and crooked souls, erected to project the stability of their bloody illusions, start to crumble into sand when people dissent one by one.
Soon the fog lifts and there is no hiding any more. At the end of the path, you can see the vultures circling overhead as their prey go running out of their mansions in terror.
The brilliantly illuminating Emily @ the Edge of Chaos interweaves Emily Levine’s live performance with animation, appearances by scientists, and animated characters (John Lithgow as Sir Isaac Newton, Lily Tomlin as Ayn Rand, Leonard Nimoy as Sigmund Freud, Richard Lewis as Aristotle, Matt Groening as Aldo Leopold). The film uses physics – which explains how the universe works – to explain our metaphysics – the story of our values, our institutions, our interactions. Using her own experience and a custom blend of insight and humor, provocation and inspiration, personal story and social commentary, Emily takes her audience through its own paradigm shift: from the Fear of Change to the Edge of Chaos.
Emily Levine, like her film, was one-of-a-kind. She was a television writer, a stand-up performer, and an out-of-the box-thinker, whose brilliant TED talks have been seen by millions. She made this film with Wendy Apple, who produced and directed it. Wendy died in 2017 and Emily continued working on the film until she also passed away in 2019.
After the Crash 