Category Archives: Economics

Resisting Genetically Mutilated Food & the Eco-Modern Nightmare: Together, ‘Just You and Me’  

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By Colin Todhunter

Source: OffGuardian

This image is symbolic of everything that is wrong with modern society.

A gas leak from Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal in 1984 resulted in around 560,000 injured (respiratory problems, eye irritation, etc.), 4,000 severely disabled and 20,000 dead.

Not only that, but the pesticides produced at the factory and the model of farming promoted has caused well-documented misery for farmers, harm to soil, water sources and the health of the population and a radical transformation of social relations in rural communities. And these issues apply not only to India but also to other countries.

That old advertising brochure dating from around the early 1960s encapsulates the arrogance of billionaires and their companies that think they are the hand of God, that they are the truth and the science, and that we should all be in awe of the technology they produce.

Facilitated by the likes of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they uproot highly productive traditional agriculture, saying it is deficient. They poison the soil, the food, the waterways and people. But that’s not enough. They pirate, own and genetically engineer the seeds. The chemicals and engineering do not result in more or better food. Quite the opposite. Diets have become narrower, and the nutritional content of many food items has progressively diminished (see McCance and Widdowson’s the Mineral Depletion of Foods). Moreover, food secure regions have become food insecure.

But it goes beyond this.

Consider the amount of killer-chemicals that the likes of Union Carbide’s promised techno-utopian consumer society (Union Carbide produced numerous other similar brochures to the one presented above, promoting the role of science and technology across all sectors) has gifted to humanity in everyday products from shampoos to toys, pans, packaging, sofas and tins.

It is notable that glyphosate, the world’s most used agricultural herbicide, began life as an industrial chelator of minerals in metal pipes to prevent blockages and deterioration. It now ensures mineral depletion/nutrient deficiencies in the human body. Glyphosate affects human soil – the gut microbiome – which directly feeds the major organs. Little wonder we witness a proliferation of illness and disease.

But forget about what has become modernism’s spiralling public health crisis – don’t forget to take that money-spinning experimental booster jab because, remember, they said that they really care about you and your health.

Meanwhile, bioscience parks across the world expand and promise an even more marvellous techno-dystopia than the one already created. They are working on injecting you with nanotechnology to ‘cure’ you of all the diseases that the modernist type of thinking, products and technology created in the first place – or on manipulating your DNA-physiology to hook you up to the internet (of things). The patents are there – this is not speculation.

And as these bioscience parks expand, their success is measured in annual turnover, profits and ‘growth’. They want more and more ‘talent’ to study life sciences and health subjects and to take up positions at the biotech companies. And they call for more public subsidies to facilitate this. More kids to study science so that they can be swept up into the ideology and practices of the self-sustaining paradigm of modern society.

Of course, ‘sustainability’ is the mantra. Sustainability in terms of fake-green, net-zero ideology but, more importantly, sustainable growth and profit.

Meanwhile, across the world, most notably in the Netherlands, these parks demand more land. More land for expansion and more land to house ‘global talent’ to be attracted to work. That means displacing farmers under the notion that they are the major emitters of ‘greenhouse gases’, which, in the Netherlands at least, they are clearly not. Look towards other sectors or even the US military if you require a prime example of a major polluter. But that’s not up for discussion, not least because military-related firms are often intertwined with the much-valued bioscience-business ‘ecosystems’ promoted.

And once the farmers have gone and the farmland is concreted over under the concept (in the Netherlands) of a Tristate City, do not worry – your ‘food’ will be created in a lab courtesy of biosynthetic, nanotechnological, biopharmaceutical, genetically engineered microbes and formulas created at the local bioscience park.

Any carbon-related pollution created by these labs will supposedly be ‘offset’ by a fraudulent carbon credit trading Ponzi scheme – part of which will mean buying up acres in some poor country to plant trees on the land of the newly dispossessed.

This brave new ecomodernism is to be overseen by supranational bodies like the UN and the WHO. National uniparty politicians will not be engaged in policy formation. They will be upholders of the elite-determined status quo – junior ‘stakeholders’ and technocratic overseers of an algorithm/AI-run system, ensuring any necessary tweaks are made.

Of course, not everything that happens under the banner of bioscience should be dismissed out of hand, but science is increasingly the preserve of an increasingly integrated global elite who have created the problems that they now rollout the ‘solutions’ for. It is a highly profitable growth industry – under the banner of ‘innovation’, cleaning up the mess you created.

But the disturbing trend is that the ‘science’ and the technology shall not be questioned. A wealthy financial-digital-corporate elite funds this science, determines what should be studied, how it should be studied and how the findings are disseminated and how the technology produced is to be used.

As we saw with the COVID event, this elite has the power to shut down genuine debate, prevent scrutiny of ‘the science’ and to smear and censor world-renowned scientists and others who even questioned the narrative. And it also pulls the strings of nation states so much so that former New Zealand PM Jacinda Arden said that her government is ‘the truth’. The marriage of science and politics in an Orwellian dystopia.

The prevailing thinking is that the problems of illness, hunger, malnutrition, unemployment, pollution, resource usage and so on are all to be solved down at the bioscience park by what farmer/author Chris Smaje says through technical innovation and further integration into private markets which are structured systematically by centralised power in favour of the wealthy.

The ecomodernist ideology we see embedded within the mindsets of those lobbying for more resources, land and funding have nothing much to say about how humanity got ill, infertile, poor, dispossessed, colonised, depressed, unemployed or marginalised in the first place. Driven by public funding, career progression and profit, they remain blinkered and push ahead with an ideology whose ‘solutions’ only produce more problems that call for more ‘innovation’ and more money.

At the same time, any genuine solutions are too often dismissed as being driven by ideology and ignorance that will lead us all to ruin. A classic case of projection.

As I have written previously, current hegemonic policies prioritise urbanisation, global markets, long supply chains, commodified corporate knowledge, highly processed food and market dependency at the expense of rural communities, independent enterprises and smallholder farms, local markets, short supply chains, indigenous knowledge, diverse agroecological cropping, nutrient-dense diets and food sovereignty.

And this has led us to where we are now.

Trade and agriculture policy specialist Devinder Sharma once said that we need family farms not family doctors. Imagine the reduction in illnesses and all manner of conditions. Imagine thriving local communities centred on smallholder production, nutrient-dense food and healthy people. Instead, we get sprawling bioscience parks centred on economic globalisation, sickness and the manipulation of food and human bodies.

Although a few thousand immensely powerful people are hellbent on marching humanity towards a dystopian ecomodernist future, we can, in finishing, take some inspiration from the words of John Seymour (1912-2004), a pioneer of the self-sufficiency movement.

Seymour was described as a one-man rebellion against modernism by writer and ecologist Herbert Girardet. But as a farmer himself, Seymour regarded himself a ‘crank peasant’ and offered solutions in terms of localism, small-scale economics, a return to the land and organic agriculture.

In a call to action, he stated:

The tiny amount you and I can do is hardly likely to bring the huge worldwide moloch of plundering industry down? Well, if you and I don’t do it, it will not be done, and the Age of Plunder will terminate in the Age of Chaos. We have to do it – just the two of us – just you and me. There is no ‘them’ – there is nobody else. Just you and me. On our infirm shoulders we must take up this heavy burden now… Tomorrow will be too late.”

The Government Slaughter in Lahaina: Maui Revisited!

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By Gary D. Barnett

Source: GaryDBarnett.com

“Whoever lays his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and tyrant, and I declare him my enemy.”

~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

We are in the midst of a heinous crime in what is falsely referred to as the ‘American’ State of Hawaii, so vile and evil, that it should sicken all who have any remote possibility of exhibiting mental acquaintance with truth, compassion, or empathy. The State’s attack on the people of Maui was in my studied opinion, premeditated, brutal, murderous beyond explanation, and targeted to achieve a preconceived agenda which was the total destruction of Lahaina by extreme property devastation and mass death of much of the local population. This was necessary in the mind of the State in order to steal the land and rebuild based on the World Economic Forum and U.N. plan for captured cities, as evidenced by the evil piece of garbage governor, Josh Green, who immediately claimed he wanted to acquire by theft the purposely destroyed land and property for the State, while smoldering embers still burned, and bodies had not been found.

Today, I went to the ten top mainstream news sites searching all news stories, and did not find a single story about the Lahaina fires, except one showing the slimy Biden sleeping while at a meeting with Maui victims; this after offering these victims $700 per family after they had lost everything, including many of their family members. In other words, this story has been purposely scrubbed from view, not different than what happened after the intentional chemical fire devastated East Palestine, Ohio, and left that town and many others with deadly pollutants. A tall black fence was actually built around the town of Lahaina, at taxpayer cost of course, and a no fly zone order was given to hide the gruesome murder scene from any view and scrutiny.

What is insanely troubling about the reporting concerning this horrific crime in Maui by all mainstream outlets, and even many alternative sites, is that most continue to call this a ‘wild fire,’ while the evidence of such nonsense does not exist. The anomalies and reactions to this so-called ‘natural’ event, are staggering beyond recognition, and reek of the stench of total corruption at the highest levels. This was a land grab of epoch proportion, but it was much worse than that, as high death counts were pursued by the State thugs, as they locked the residents of Lahaina inside the rings of deadly fire likely caused by directed energy and microwave attacks; creating fires that were strategically targeted, with heat that was in some cases double that of any wild fire. This was clearly evident given the melting of aluminum and steel, and also the melting of automobile windshields which requires heat at or above 2,500 degrees. Cars were melted where no evidence of a fire was even present, and the scene looked eerily similar, almost exact, as to what happened in New York on September 11, 2001. This is not coincidental, it is apparent, and telling of a pre-planned slaughter and mass destruction.

The fires in Maui that were said to have been caused ‘naturally,’ a brazen lie, were almost identical to the fires in Paradise, California as well; fires that were targeted, burning homes to white ash without burning trees or plastic, and in areas desired by the State criminals for rebuilding so-called “smart cities.” In Lahaina, homes of the very rich were magically spared, as were certain state buildings, grand hotels, and other areas of State favor. But the homes and families of the local residents were attacked head on, with absolutely no regard for the lives or property of these innocent people. The ‘crime’ supposedly committed, as seen by the State, was not bowing down, and giving up their homes and lives voluntarily, so a direct false flag action of slaughter and murder was created to complete the State’s agenda of land theft. To hell with the people and their property was the private battle cry of these State politicians and their murderous enforcers called police.

No sirens were turned on even though there were 80 active sirens on Maui. All water was turned off so fires could not be fought. Wi-fi was turned off, as was most all electric power. Roads out were closed, and police roadblocks were manned to forcibly keep all the residents inside the fire perimeter, causing purposeful mass death. Schools were shut down, so that children were home alone when these intentional fires raged through Lahaina, and many burned to death without help from any State service. The real numbers of deaths are still being hidden as far as I can tell. In addition. before and after the fire, speculators were attempting to buy these properties, and while bodies were still unfound, the government announced its intentions to buy up this land. None of these are coincidences, but the State and its complicit media would have you believe that all of these, and many, many, more impossibilities are all coincidental. How could anyone with two brain cells to rub together, buy into the propagandized narratives being presented by the evil State?

I fully realize, especially considering the nearly complete lack of any ability to think critically by the masses, that what I am presenting here will be ignored by a very large swath of the population. The long-term dumbing down of individuals, and the now digitally-manipulated population, has embraced indifference to such an extent, as to have escaped all reality. In fact, common sense, logic, and reason appear to be nearly non-existent generally speaking. It is much easier for the collective herd to believe the State narratives than to do the work necessary to ferret out fact and truth. Unfortunately, the ruling class understands this weak and apathetic trait that seems to have captured the very large percentage of dead men walking among us. How much more obvious corruption, lies, and murder at the hands of the State will have to take place before any majority comes to terms with the reality that this world is ending in favor of mass slavery and depopulation? Will the flock ever fight back?

The forced annexation of Hawaii, the staged Pearl Harbor attack, the world wars, Operation Northwoods, MK Ultra, the Cuban missile crisis, the JFK assassination, Operation Gladio, U.S. aggressive invasion after invasion, Desert Storm, 9/11, the Patriot Act, the War of Terror, the fake ‘covid pandemic,’ bogus ‘climate change, intentional chemical spills, and weather geo-engineering; these just a few of the major false flag events, and government terror operations that have taken place. Now there are deliberately set fires in Canada, all over the U.S., Hawaii, Australia, Turkey, Greece, China, and many other areas, and the sheep continue to hide their proverbial heads in the sand.

Everything happening is planned, and being done intentionally in order to achieve a particular agenda. This has been outlined, discussed openly, warned about, written about in policy journals at the WEF, WHO, U.N., and most everywhere else I might add. The big picture has been discussed for decades, and the agenda being sought is a one-world governing order, where the ‘elite’ rule all, and the rest of us are slaves of the State. This agenda is as clear as day, so why cannot the lowly collective herd see that the way to achieve this evil goal is for the State to destroy the current system in favor of a system that will allow the control of everyone? Each planned event, whether fire, weather, war, geo-engineering, bio-weapon production and use, fake ‘viruses,’ and every so-called emergency, are staged only to create fear and panic through economic devastation, property theft, (land grabs) monetary and transaction digitization, mass surveillance, and total censorship.

Will the blind ever see, will the deaf ever hear, will the dumb ever speak, or will the bulk of this dependent and lazy population, simply sit back locked inside their cell phones and ‘social media’ absurdity, waiting for the end of times?

No one should forget or ignore what happened, and is happening in Maui. Your neighborhood could be next, and what chance will you have given the advanced weapon systems being used against us by the military industrial complex, and its controllers? The government controls nothing, as all politicians and their enforcers are fully controlled themselves, and act on orders from the real ruling class. Denounce them, abandon them and eliminate them, so that the real rulers will have no cover!

“I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don’t believe anything the government tells me. Nothing. Zero.”

~ George Carlin

We’re Living in a Neofeudal Bubble

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

If you listen to conventional economists, everything’s rosy: thanks to the expansion of alt-energy like wind and solar, energy is getting cheaper, batteries will power the new global economy, we’re getting smarter — just look at the rising number of advanced college degrees, wages are finally growing, inflation is trending down, household balance sheets and corporate profits are strong, debt loads are not an issue yet and GDP is rising.

All this happy news is backed by statistics, of course, but there’s one little problem: all the conventional cheerleaders are living in a bubble of like-minded elites who are insulated from the neofeudal realities of life in the real world.

Outside the bubble of wealthy, protected elites that generate the statistics and the “news,” the global economy is completely, totally neofeudal–and so is the American economy. What does neofeudal mean? It refers to a two-tiered socio-economic system in which an aristocracy owns the vast majority of the wealth and collects the lion’s share of the income, and uses this financial dominance to buy political and narrative dominance.

In a neofeudal arrangement, the machinery of governance protects and enforces elite dominance. Cartels and monopolies have free rein to price-fix and exploit, tax revenues flow freely to cartels, elite organizations such as family trusts get tax breaks, and so on.

In other words, “the market” is rigged and the government maintains the status quo.

Toiling away to enrich the aristocratic owners of capital are the serfs and peasants, who own a tiny shred of income-producing capital. Their primary assets–the family home and vehicles–are actually income streams for the wealthy who collect the mortgage and auto-loan interest paid by the serfs.

The core dynamic in neofeudalism is the already-wealthy increase their share of the wealth, and everyone else sees their meager share diminish. As the charts below show, the vast majority of financial gains generated by the US economy flow to the top 0.1% of households. The top 1%’s share has risen by 40% while the bottom 50%’s share of the wealth has slipped to 3%–essentially signal noise.

Social mobility is limited to the occasional serf clawing their way into the technocrat class, the top 5% who slavishly serve the interests of the financial aristocracy. This class lives in a self-contained, protected bubble: an echo chamber of privilege, residential enclaves, jetting around the world, and so on: everything’s great because we’re doing great.

Life is good in the bubble because there’s no homeless encampment a block away, there’s plenty of money coming in and our wealth–401Ks, inherited bonds and rental property, university pensions, corporate stock options, and so on–increases smartly, year after year and decade after decade.

The Wealthy Are Not Like You and Me–Our Terminally Stratified Society (8/3/23)

That all this wealth expansion is the result of unprecedented central bank intervention is left unsaid. As noted above, the role of the state and central bank is to maintain the status quo of the already-wealthy increasing their share of the national wealth and income, and loading more (very profitable) debt on the serfs. (See student loan debt chart below.)

Outside the technocrats’ privileged bubble, wages’ share of the economy have been stripmined by the aristocracy for 45 years. Oh dear; could this be why I’m having such trouble finding low-wage reliable “help”?

While wages inch up, costs of shelter, utilities, debt, vehicles, public transport, childcare and other essentials soar. Please glance at the chart of wages and rents below. This is neofeudalism in a nutshell. Wages have flatlined (or fallen when measured in purchasing power) while rent has steadily increased, eating away at the serfs’ disposable income.

Inside the technocrat class bubble, everything’s wunnerful. AI will boost profits (all of which flow to the aristocracy, so that’s wunnerful), energy’s getting cheaper and more abundant, and so on.

Oh, wait. Alt-energy only looks cheap because all the full lifetime costs have been ignored (i.e. externalized), and these modest additions to our vast hydrocarbon consumption aren’t actually replacing hydrocarbons, they’re simply adding more energy for us to consume.

Thousands of Old Wind Turbine Blades Pile Up in West Texas

Avangrid agrees to pay $48 million to terminate offshore wind deal

Models Hide the Shortcomings of Wind and Solar

In other words, conventional economists and the other technocrats maintain their privileged bubble by clinging to a delusionally disconnected-from-the-real-world mindset. There’s always a slew of academic papers or think-tank / corporate reports to bolster the inside-the-bubble confidence that everything’s great, because generating positive narratives that leave the neofeudal structure untouched in the primary industry of the technocrat class.

If you want to understand the neofeudal reality, study these charts. There are no rebuttals, there are only sputtering obfuscations: b-b-but the mission to Mars! Taylor Swift raked in a billion bucks! OnlyFans pulled in $5 billion! Stocks are rallying! Everything’s great!

Sure–if your dose of Delusional is high enough. Then you can go back to complaining about air travel delays, finding someone to repair your pool pump and bragging about how well your investments are doing.

Meet the New Normal, Same as the Old Normal: You Are Still the Enemy Within

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By Colin Todhunter

Source: Off-Guardian

Today, we are witnessing the nudging (manipulation) of the population to accept a ‘new normal’ based on a climate emergency narrative, restrictions on movement and travel, programmable digital money, ‘pandemic preparedness’ courtesy of the World Health Organization’s tyrannical pandemic treaty, unaccountable AI and synthetic ‘food’.

Whether it involves a ‘food transition’, an ‘energy transition’, 15-minute cities or some other benign-sounding term, all this is to be determined by a supranational ‘stakeholder’ elite with ordinary people sidelined in the process. An undemocratic agenda designed to place restrictions on individual liberty, marking a dramatic shift towards authoritarianism.

In the 1980s, to help legitimise the deregulation-privatisation neoliberal globalisation agenda, government and media instigated an ideological onslaught, driving home the primacy of ‘free enterprise’, individual rights and responsibility and emphasising a shift away from the role of the state, trade unions and the collective in society.

We are currently seeing another ideological shift: individual rights and freedoms are said to undermine the wider needs of society and the planet – in a stark turnaround – personal freedom is now said to pose a threat to national security, public health or the climate.

As in the 1980s, this messaging is being driven by an economic impulse. This time, the collapsing neoliberal project.

In the UK, poverty is increasing in two-thirds of communities, food banks are now a necessary part of life for millions of people and living standards are plummeting. Indeed, the poorest families are enduring a ‘frightening’ collapse in living standards, resulting in life-changing and life-limiting poverty).

In the US, around 30 million low-income people are on the edge of a ‘hunger cliff’ as a portion of their federal food assistance is taken away. In 2021, it was estimated that one in eight children were going hungry in the US. Small businesses are filing for bankruptcy in the US at a record rate.

The Bank of England’s chief economist, Huw Pill, says that people should ‘accept’ being poorer. This is similar to the response of Rob Kapito, co-founder of the world’s biggest asset management firm, BlackRock. In 2022, the unimaginably rich and entitled Kapito said that a “very entitled” generation of (ordinary working) people who have never had to sacrifice would soon have to face shortages for the first time in their lives.

While business as usual prevails in Kapito’s world of privilege and that of major arms, energy, pharmaceuticals and food companies, whose megarich owners continue to rake in massive profits, Kapito and Pill tell ordinary people to get used to poverty and the ‘new normal’ as if we are ‘all in it together’ – billionaires and working class alike. They conveniently use COVID and the situation in Ukraine as cover for the collapsing neoliberalism.

But this is part of the hegemonic agenda that seeks to ensure that the establishment’s world view is the accepted cultural norm. And anyone who challenges this world view – whether it involves, for instance, questioning climate alarmism, the ‘new normal’, the nature of the economic crisis, the mainstream COVID narrative or the official stance on Ukraine and Russia – is regarded as a spreader of misinformation and the ‘enemy within’.

Although the term ‘enemy within’ was popularised by Margaret Thatcher during the miners’ strike in 1984-85 to describe the striking miners, it is a notion with which that Britain’s rulers have regarded protest movements and uprisings down the centuries. From the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 to the Levellers and Diggers in the 17th century, it is a concept associated with anyone or any group that challenges the existing social order and the interests of the ruling class.

John Ball, a radical priest, addressed the Peasants’ Revolt rebels with the following words:

Good friends, matters cannot go well in England until all things be held in common; when there shall be neither vassals nor lords; when the lords shall be no more masters than ourselves.”

The revolt was suppressed. John Ball was captured and hung, drawn and quartered. Part of the blood-soaked history of the British ruling class.

Later on, the 17th-century Diggers movement wanted to create small, egalitarian rural communities and farm on common land that had been privatised by enclosures.

The 1975 song ‘The world Turned Upside Down’ by Leon Rosselson commemorates the Diggers. His lyrics describe the aims and plight of the movement. In Rosselson’s words, the Diggers were dispossessed via theft and murder but reclaimed what was theirs only to be violently put down.

Little surprise then that, in the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher used the state machinery to defeat the country’s most powerful and trade union and the shock troops of the labour movement, the National Union of Mineworkers – ‘the enemy within’. She needed to do this to open the gates for capital to profit from the subsequent deindustrialisation of much of the UK and the dismantling of large parts of the welfare state.

And the result?

A hollowed-out, debt-bloated economy, the destruction of the social fabric of entire communities and the great financial Ponzi scheme – the ‘miracle’ of deregulated finance – that now teeters on the brink of collapse, leading the likes of Kapito and Pill to tell the public to get ready to become poor.

And now, in 2023, the latest version of the ‘enemy within’ disseminates ‘misinformation’ – anything that challenges the official state-corporate narrative. So, this time, one goal is to have a fully controlled (censored) internet.

For instance, US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) recently awarded Accrete a contract for Argus to detect disinformation threats from social media. Argus is AI software that analyses social media data to predict emergent narratives and generate intelligence reports at a speed and scale to help neutralise viral disinformation threats.

Accrete AI is a leading dual-use enterprise AI company. It deployed its AI Argus software for open-source threat detection with the US Department of Defense in 2022.

In a recent press release, Prashant Bhuyan, founder and CEO of Accrete, boasts:

Social media is widely recognised as an unregulated environment where adversaries routinely exploit reasoning vulnerabilities and manipulate behaviour through the intentional spread of disinformation. USSOCOM is at the tip of the spear in recognising the critical need to identify and analytically predict social media narratives at an embryonic stage before those narratives evolve and gain traction. Accrete is proud to support USSOCOM’s mission.”

‍This is about predicting wrong think on social media. But control over the internet is just part of a wider programme of establishment domination, surveillance and dealing with protest and dissent.

The recent online article ‘How the Government Weaponizes Surveillance to Silence Its Critics’ notes that, on any given day, the average person in the US is monitored, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways.

The authors of the article ask us to consider some of the ways the US government is weaponizing its surveillance technologies to flag citizens as a threat to national security, whether or not they have done anything wrong – from flagging citizens as a danger based on their feelings, phone and movements to their spending activities, social media activities, political views and correspondence.

The elite has determined that the existential threat is you. The article ‘Costs of War: Peterloo’, written by UK Veterans for Peace member Aly Renwick, details the history of the brutal suppression of protesters by Britain’s rulers. He also strips away any notion that some may have of a benign, present-day ruling elite with democratic leanings. The leopard has not changed its spots.

As we saw during COVID, the thinking is that hard-won rights must be curtailed, freedom of association is reckless, free thinking is dangerous, dissent is to be stamped on, impartial science is a threat and free speech is deadly. Government is ‘the truth’, Fauci (or some similar figure) is ‘the science’ and censorship is for your own good.

None of this was justified. It only begins to make sense if we regard the COVID restrictions in terms of trying to deal with an economic crisis by closing down the global economy under cover of a public health crisis (see the online articles ‘What Was Covid Really About? Triggering a Multi-Trillion Dollar Global Debt Crisis’ and ‘Italy 2020: Inside Covid’s Ground Zero’ which outline how COVID policies can be explained by economic factors not health concerns).

The economic crisis is making many people poorer, so they must be controlled, monitored and subjugated.

The transitions mentioned at the start of this article along with the surveillance agenda (together known as the ‘Great Reset’) are being accelerated at this time of economic crisis when countless millions across the West are being impoverished. The collapsing financial system is resulting in an interrelated global debt, inflation and ‘austerity’ crisis and the biggest transfer of wealth to the rich in history.

As a result, the powers that be fear that the masses might once again pick up their pitchforks and revolt. They are adamant that the peasants must know their place.

But the flame of protest and dissent from centuries past still inspires and burns bright. So, with that in mind, let’s finish with Leon Rosselson’s lyrics in reference to the Diggers movement (Billy Bragg’s version of the song can be found on YouTube):

In sixteen forty-nine
To St. George’s Hill
A ragged band they called the Diggers
Came to show the people’s will
They defied the landlords
They defied the laws
They were the dispossessed reclaiming what was theirs

We come in peace they said
To dig and sow
We come to work the lands in common
And to make the waste grounds grow
This earth divided
We will makе whole
So it will be
A common treasury for all

Thе sin of property
We do disdain
No man has any right to buy and sell
The earth for private gain
By theft and murder
They took the land
Now everywhere the walls
Spring up at their command

They make the laws
To chain us well
The clergy dazzle us with heaven
Or they damn us into hell
We will not worship
The God they serve
The God of greed who feed the rich
While poor man starve

We work we eat together
We need no swords
We will not bow to masters
Or pay rent to the lords
We are free men
Though we are poor
You Diggers all stand up for glory
Stand up now

From the men of property
The orders came
They sent the hired men and troopers
To wipe out the Diggers’ claim
Tear down their cottages
Destroy their corn
They were dispersed
Only the vision lingers on

You poor take courage
You rich take care
The earth was made a common treasury
For everyone to share
All things in common
All people one
We come in peace
The order came to cut them down
We come in peace
The order came to cut them down

The Third World Revolt vs American Greatness

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By Christopher Roach

Source: Covert Geopolitics

Although losing a war and taking a blow to prestige can be a painful process, the American people’s interests require the dismantling of the American empire.

Back in my high-school debating days, policy debate teams frequently concluded their arguments with an extreme and somewhat absurd parade of horribles. This was a testament to their intelligence and creativity, plus being dead wrong carried few consequences. Through convoluted chains of logic, they argued that some small change in environmental or trade policy would lead to nuclear war or America’s domination by the “global south.”

Even then, this all struck me as ridiculous. How could the Third World, with its periodic famines and coups, ever threaten the United States? Back then we were fully dominant over the entire world after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.

A lot has changed.

The Birth of the Nonaligned Movement

During the Cold War, the various nations on the periphery acted, in some ways, as judges of the two competing systems. While the United States and Soviet Union were accused of manipulating the Third World for selfish reasons, the manipulation went both ways. Being coy, Third World leaders often managed to squeeze real benefits, like infrastructure projects, discounted military equipment, and other forms of aid by siding with one side or the other.

During the Cold War, the nations of the Third World were wary of being compelled to take sides, risking conflicts orthogonal to their own interests and sacrificing their sovereignty through excessive dependence on a patron. This is why the nonaligned movement gained power, with India in particular at the forefront, where it was joined by interested Middle Eastern, African, and Latin American nations.

These nations, which had gained sovereignty only very recently from their colonial masters, were understandably touchy about their independence. They did not want to exchange a formal colonial structure for an informal one.

When the Cold War ended, the United States remained the sole superpower for some time, but, rather than achieving worldwide assent, this instead fueled envy, fear, and resentment. No longer able to chart their own path, every nation became subordinate on some level to American power.

Aggressive Idealism Fuels Anti-Americanism

At the height of its military power, starting during the Clinton presidency, American leaders began to embrace an aggressive “idealism” that set out to change the character, values, and customs of other countries. Purely “humanitarian” interventions like Kosovo and Somalia became common.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, this idealism meant feminism and democracy. In Eastern Europe, it meant the promotion of gay rights and secularism, alienating the conservative and religious people who once idealized the United States. In Latin America, idealism demanded capitalism and loosened trade restrictions.

The invocation of “Freedom” and “Democracy,” while it sounds noble and idealistic to our ears, began to sound like a threat to nations who were out of step with the West’s ruling classes. Unilateral American military intervention in such diverse places as Panama, Iraq, Serbia, Syria, and Libya made nations on the sidelines wary that they could be next.

Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa—the so-called BRICS—do not have much in common. They have diverse economic and political systems, distinct languages, very different histories, and members appeared on both sides of Cold War alliances. But they share a common orientation to American power:  our aspirations to maintain “sole superpower” status threatens their national power and independence.  Perceiving this as a zero-sum game, they seek to pivot world attention, prosperity, and power away from the United States and its Western European allies.

Among these American competitors, China and Russia stand out most of all. Through their de facto alliance, they now dominate the Eurasian landmass. Their industrial capacity has revealed significant advantages in a war of attrition. And, finally, with their history as former American enemies, they have a habitual and strong resistance to American interference with their destinies.

While Russia and China’s conduct is easily understood, the growing and diverse anti-American coalition, along with these other nations’ willingness to accept Russian and Chinese leadership, needs explanation.  The heart of the matter is sovereignty. American demands and desires currently constrain each of the BRICS nations and the many smaller nations of the Third World, whether it is in energy, central banking, sanctions, trade, or even domestic policies on issues like feminism and gay rights.

The proposed “multipolar world” has a lot of momentum because it does not require submission to a particular Chinese or Russian model for internal governance. Russia and China are mostly agnostic about internal affairs, unlike the “idealistic” United States. Rather, the alternative promotes a more organic (and potentially chaotic) distribution of power from the current system.

Finally, neither Russia nor China could displace the United States. Thus, at most, they can usher in a world of “multipolarity,” where all countries will be less constrained, and larger countries like them have, at most, regional strength.

Ukraine War Now Existential for the American Empire

The current war in Ukraine is bringing a lot of things to a head. The United States and Europe imagined the rest of the world would view the conflict as a morality play: a big, powerful bully dominating its innocent and unassuming neighbor. This, indeed, is how most leaders and many people in the West perceive events.

But this has been a tough sell in the Third World, which is the chief reason sanctions have faced resistance. While Russia is bigger than Ukraine, Ukraine is big relative to its separatist eastern provinces, with whom it has had a conflict since 2014. Since most developing nations began as anti-colonial movements for national liberation, Ukraine’s attempts to forcibly reintegrate the East does not look so different from the types of struggles Brazil and India had during their independence movements.

Moreover, with Ukraine aligned so closely with the West—using NATO tanks, NATO mercenaries, and NATO money to prosecute its defense—much of the world does not perceive a bully pushing around its stalwart neighbor, but rather an American bully using its Ukrainian lackey for realpolitik designs against Russia. This is a particularly popular view in China, of course. But, judging from editorials and open source comments, it is also widely held in places like Africa and India, where many people view Russia in a positive light because of its opposition to the United States.

Until now, American power rested on actual American superiority in economics, military power, and cultural influence.  The United States soundly defeated Iraq in the first Gulf War, emerged from the Cold War intact and wealthy, and soon proceeded to project power with great skill in the early days of the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. But since that time, we have departed Afghanistan and Iraq without a victory. In parallel, we spread chaos in Libya and Syria, failing to conclude regime change operations in the latter.

American military prowess is no longer undisputed or inevitable, undermining the broader claim of America as the “sole superpower.” This was all avoidable, but having overextended itself, the visible evidence of American decline is now confirmed. This is what happens when a nation is ruled by disloyal, short-sighted, and foolish people.

To state the obvious, losing wars is never good for an empire. The Ottoman and Russian empires dissolved under the stresses of the First World War. While part of the victorious allies, World War II cemented the subordinate status of France and the United Kingdom, and their empires fell apart after the war. Finally, and most recently, the Soviet Union broke apart after its costly and controversial campaign in Afghanistan.

Russia’s attempts to assert power in its near-abroad fueled America’s interest in the current Ukraine War.  The theory was that we would pursue our interests on the cheap, prevent challenges to American hegemony, with the added benefit that Ukrainians would be doing the dying. Because of our military and economic superiority, supporters claimed the war would kill Russians, weaken their military, and destabilize Putin’s hold on power.

Proponents of the war did not really consider what would happen in the reverse case. What if not Russia, but the United States found itself strained economically, losing critical and hard-to-replace weapons in a war of attrition, visibly demonstrating its impotence and weakness on the world stage? Wouldn’t the same dire consequences intended for Russia now happen to us?

Indeed, they would. Luckily, actual American security does not depend on the continuation of America’s dominance of the globe, nor does American prosperity. Indeed, our prosperity has declined as the requirements of the military industrial complex and the behemoth welfare state devalue our currency and impoverish taxpayers. Further, our aspirations to maintain sole superpower status has endangered us by fueling anti-Americanism, while encouraging significant moral compromise at home.

Although losing a war and taking a blow to prestige can be a painful process, the American people’s interests require the dismantling of the American empire. Our current course risks manifesting the dire and once-implausible scenarios popular on the high school debate circuit. It is time to change course.

ECOWAS Fiery Talk Towards Niger Loses Its Edge After Biden Talks With Its President

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Biden’s little chat with Tinubu says a lot about the realities of what is going to happen and what can happen on the ground.

By Martin Jay

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

Three interesting facets of news over Niger appear to be doing the rounds. Firstly, that a terrorist group in Nigeria has openly appealed to the Nigerian President – who also happens to be the ECOWAS leader – to avoid at all costs a military intervention in Niger; secondly, that Joe Biden took the initiative to meet the same gentleman Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the corridors of the United Nations, hinting that huge amounts of U.S. investment could be directed towards Nigeria if Tinubu played ball; and thirdly, that just recently, the stakes were raised in Niger when its junta announced that it had invited the armies of both Mali and Burkina Faso onto its soil to help defend themselves against an “intervention” which ECOWAS has threatened was on the cards only days earlier.

But Biden’s little chat with Tinubu says a lot about the realities of what is going to happen and what can happen on the ground as clearly his administration does not want another proxy war between East and West on its hands before the re-election run up next year. The question of whether the U.S. would support ECOWAS militarily has been answered by Biden’s bribe to the Nigerian president. It’s not going to happen.

Tinubu, who is certainly the man at the centre of events, gives the impression in interviews that he is under great pressure from ECOWAS members to intervene, but he is the one cooling tempers and looking for a diplomatic solution. And yet, his comments to the press seem to have been written by the U.S. state department such is the proximity of his office and the U.S. administration – debunking the myth of how much ECOWAS is influenced by France (given that the majority of the countries are former French colonies). The Nigerian president’s role as ECOWAS chief is under the spotlight.

What does he really want? Are his objectives focussed more on Nigeria rather than the bloc?

Joe Biden’s offer of a fresh injection of investment from U.S. firms hasn’t seemed to hit the mark. It seems that Tinubu is after even faster and even easier cash.

Tinubu said that African democracies are “currently under assault by anti-democratic forces within and outside the continent”, which is really state department jargon for “the Russians are coming”.

He then called on the “American-backed development finance and multilateral institutions, which were designed to support war-torn Europe after World War II, to adopt a swift and comprehensive reform to meet the developmental requirements of young democracies in Africa”.

The translation isn’t too cryptic. Can the U.S. intervene and, also, while they’re at it, pump our central bank full of never-never-pay soft loans from IMF and World bank? Cheers!

Neither Biden nor Tinubu though seem to be bothered about the possibility of a fourth francophone African country falling into the hands of Mother Russia. Mali and Burkina Faso, who both can be assumed to be vassals of Russia have shown great solidarity with Niger which has lost no time kicking the French out and becoming a major pain in the arse for western elites who are confused about the events and want to oversimplify the nuances. “We lost Niger to the Russians” may be the well worn cliché although the facts on the ground and more complicated. There certainly seems in Niger to be an endearment towards the new junta’s government but Russia’s role so far is unclear.

About the only thing that Putin and Biden agree on is they don’t want a war in Niger.

It’s easy to forget though that Niger was a key player in ECOWAS and that many of its members placed great importance on Niger’s front line assault on Islamic groups in the region – which, if given more freedoms, could cause havoc right across West Africa but in particular in neighbouring Nigeria.

For the moment though, the so-called pressure from ECOWAS is unlikely to manifest itself beyond chest beating. ECOWAS members may have the hunger for intervention but they don’t have the guts for a war, which neither the U.S. or Russia will bankroll, so sobriety is likely to take over the narrative in the coming days. The war in Ukraine, the abysmal foreign policy blunders of Biden, the deluded arrogance of Macron and the emergence of BRICS have all contributed to the current crisis in Africa as the old relationship with the West is put to the test, with disastrous consequences. The only thing left of Obama’s “soft power” idea he conjured up in 2015 after his humiliation in Syria is a suitcase full of cash for a corrupt West African leader to share with his cabal. Pretty pathetic.

From Burkina Faso to Niger to Gabon, Western Hegemony Dying in Africa

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By Harun Elbinawi

Source: Covert Geopolitics

Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 was undeniably one of the biggest evil summits in modern history. Greedy and racist European colonialists sat down in the German city and divided Africans as if they were sharing bread on a breakfast table.

The conference was organized by Otto von Bismarck, the first chancellor of Germany at the request of King Leopold II of Belgium, the Western genocidal barbarian that murdered more than 10 million innocent Africans in Congo.

Most Africans are not even aware of this genocide in Congo perpetrated by the Belgium colonialists because it is not in our history books written by the white colonialists.

European colonialism in Africa lasted more than a century with only the ancient Kingdom of Ethiopia spared because they defeated the Italian colonialists on the battlefield.

Trillions and trillions of dollars were stolen from Africa, millions of Africans were murdered by the European colonialists and Africans were massively brainwashed that they had no history before European colonialism.

The wave of ‘independence’ in Africa from the 1950s and 1960s did not represent true independence. What actually happened was that colonialism was cleverly replaced with neocolonialism by the genocidal imperialist barbarians of the West.

The massive looting of rich resources in Africa continued under Western puppet leadership. The courageous African leaders who refused to dance to the tune of the European colonialists were eliminated.

This was what happened to African heroes, Patrick Lumumba of Congo and Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso. Congo has all mineral resources except for crude oil.

The uranium used by the US regime to make the atomic bombs unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was mined in Congo.

French greed in Africa

Among the European colonialists, French colonialism was more brutal and exploitative.

France killed more than 1.5 million civilians in Algeria alone. They murdered tens of thousands of civilians in other African countries.

One of the Modus Operandi of the French colonialists was to assemble Islamic scholars in a hall and exterminate all of them. They did this in Algeria, Chad, Mali and Senegal.

And the greed of their neocolonialism is extreme. Even after independence, France is still controlling the wealth of its former colonies in Africa.

The rich resources of French nations are still controlled by France and they continue to pay colonial tax to France.

French goods and services dominate their markets. The domineering presence of France in these countries has been excruciating and devastating for local populations.

Niger Republic does not know the quantity of uranium France was taking from there, which is worst than slavery.

No evil lasts forever

There is a popular saying that “No evil lasts forever”.

France’s neocolonialism in Africa will not last forever. Popular military coups against puppets of France imperialism have started and are gathering momentum.

The recent military coup in the West African state of Niger Republic does not stand in isolation but follows similar upheavals in the neighboring countries of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea in recent years.

Mali is facing insurgency that is backed by Western hegemony. Mali expelled French troops because they were actively aiding the insurgents to justify its military presence in the African country.

Now, on Wednesday, we woke up with the news of another puppet of the Western hegemonic barbarians in Gabon overthrown by the military. Ali Bango inherited the Gabon presidency from his corrupt Father, Omar Bongo.

Early on Wednesday, some military personnel appeared on state TV and announced that they were seizing power and dislodging a family that has ruled the country for 56 years.

The military officers introduced themselves as members of the Committee of Transition and the Restoration of Institutions.

“Today the country is undergoing a severe institutional, political, economic, and social crisis,” the officers said in a statement, dubbing the recent election illegitimate.

“In the name of the Gabonese people … we have decided to defend the peace by putting an end to the current regime.”

Pertinently, Gabon’s former president had 70 bank accounts, 39 apartments, 2 Ferraris, 6 Mercedes Benz cars, 3 Porsches and a Bugatti in France. He ruled for 42 years (from 1967 to 2009). French leaders loved Bongo because he was loyal to them.

His son, Ali Bongo has been the president for 14 years (2009 – 2023). He has just been overthrown in a  coup.

Failure of Western liberal democracy

The fact is that the Western liberal democracy has not only failed in Africa but has failed woefully.

Democracy in Africa has become a tool for the corrupt ruling elites to steal the wealth of their respective countries and transfer it to Western financial institutions while the populations remain in abject poverty and hunger.

Democracy is just another system of government hijacked by the Western hegemonic barbarians, the biggest enemies of the human race. Democracy is now an imperialist tool of Western hegemony in Africa. This is a bitter and undeniable fact.

The people of Gabon will definitely celebrate this military coup as it marks the end of French interference and looting in their country. Another setback for the French leaders.

Africa must rise again

The most noticeable current in Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Niger Republic and Gabon is that the change of governments all have popular support as the people of those countries are tired of France’s imperialism, arrogance and terrorism.

Today France has the 4th largest gold reserves in the world and there is no single gold mine in France.

These gold mines are all in Mali, Niger Republic and other African countries. The France neocolonialism in Africa must end. Its time has come.

When He Was Vice-President, Joe Biden Acted Like Ukraine Was His ‘Own Backyard’: Fired Ukraine Prosecutor

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“Biden was personally engaged in corruption in Ukraine”

By Arjun Singh

Source: Global Research.ca

The former Ukrainian prosecutor who was fired at the insistence of then-Vice President Joe Biden in 2016 after investigating Burisma, claimed that Biden treated Ukraine like his “own backyard,” according to comments made during an interview with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade on Saturday.

Viktor Shokin was fired by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in 2016 after Biden — who was in charge of Ukrainian policy during the Obama administration — gave him an ultimatum, saying that Ukraine would not receive $1 billion dollars in aid until Shokin was dismissed. In an interview with Brian Kilmeade on “One Nation” on Saturday, Shokin claimed that Biden treated Ukraine as if it were his “own backyard.”

“I developed a very firm understanding of the fact that the vice president was only acting in his own interest. He, generally speaking, handled Ukraine like it was his own backyard,” Shokin told Kilmeade. “The office of Poroshenko, the president, was humiliated, but the entire country was humiliated,” Shokin added, describing Biden’s ultimatum that he be dismissed, which Biden publicly boasted about at a Council on Foreign Relations event on Jan. 23, 2018.

“I’m going to be leaving here in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch, he got fired and they put in place someone who was solid,” Biden said at the event.

At the time of Shokin’s firing, his office was investigating Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that had hired Biden’s son, Hunter, to join its board. FBI documents released by Congress in July suggested that Hunter was hired to enable Burisma to utilize his father’s political influence and avoid threats to the company.

Shokin also suggested that Biden was personally engaged in corruption in Ukraine, citing his firing as one instance. “They were being bribed. The fact that Joe Biden gave away $1 billion in U.S. money in exchange for my dismissal, my firing, isn’t that alone a case of corruption?” he said.

“For years, these false claims have been debunked, and no matter how much air time Fox gives them, they will remain false,” said White House spokesperson Iam Sams in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Fox is giving a platform for these lies to a former Ukrainian prosecutor general whose office his own deputy called a hotbed of corruption, drawing demands for reform not only from then-Vice President Biden but also from U.S. diplomats, international partners, and Republican Senators like Ron Johnson.”