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Ukraine Stays with the West But Russia Is Winning and Has the Receipts

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By Margaret Kimberley

Source: Black Agenda Report

A delegation of African leaders travelled to Ukraine and Russia to help broker peace. But the collective west insists on prolonging the conflict.

The war in Ukraine grinds on and the Ukrainian army is being destroyed by Russia with great loss of life. One would think that Ukraine would be grateful for any and all peace efforts, but it is being used as a proxy by the United States and its NATO allies, the collective west. The seeds of this catastrophe began long before Russia’s special military operation. The European Union and NATO nations brought anti-Russian right-wing forces to power in 2014 in a coup against the elected Ukrainian president. If not for them there would be no war at all.

Their degree of culpability became clear recently when a delegation of African leaders traveled to Ukraine and Russia as part of a peacemaking initiative. The party included heads of state of Senegal, Egypt, Zambia, Comoros, Uganda, Republic of Congo, and South Africa. Comoros President Azali Assoumani is the current chair of the African Union. The group was greeted in Kiev by air raid sirens used to create the appearance that a Russian missile attack was underway. President Zelensky was barely polite, thanking South African president Cyril Ramaphosa and others for coming but letting them know that everything was Russia’s fault and that he had no interest whatsoever in peace talks. 

Not only is Ukraine a de facto U.S. colony which lives and dies by Washington’s whims, but it is also a deeply racist country. Much of its population is still attached to Nazi ideology and the politics of World War II collaborator Stephan Bandera. 

Nazi salutes, swastikas and other insignias are common there. So much so that the New York Times recently felt obliged to wonder in feigned innocence why these symbols are worn openly. The simple and obvious answer is that Ukraine is full of Nazis. Any likelihood that the same people would listen to Africans were indeed slim. 

Ukraine was joined in racial superiority theater by Poland. Media and security staff accompanying the presidents were delayed there and the delegation had to travel without them. When the manufactured drama was no longer needed the delegation arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia and met with president Vladimir Putin who had a surprise of his own. 

Putin listened politely to the 10-point plan and then interrupted with a surprise of his own. He not only reminded them the conflict began in 2014 but pointed out that Russia has been ready for peace ever since Turkey brokered negotiations with Ukraine in April 2022. Ukraine was on the verge of signing an agreement until its collective west friends, the US and UK in particular, scuttled the plan. 

The Treaty on Permanent Neutrality and Guarantees of Security of Ukraine offered security guarantees for Ukraine in exchange for a commitment to remain neutral, meaning that NATO membership would be off the table. Putin pointed out that as soon as Russian forces left Kiev the agreement was thrown into “the dustbin.” Just as in the case of the Minsk Agreements, the collective west offered treachery instead of peace.

The African leaders have their own self-interest which sent them to Russia. Their nations’ supplies of grain and fertilizer have been disrupted by the western sanctions and restrictions on trade with Russia. Earlier agreements on this trade have worked against Africans, as Putin pointed out, “These European neo-colonial powers, technically the US, have once again deceived the international community and the Africa countries in need: 31.7 million tonnes were exported and only three percent reached Africa’s needy countries. Is this not deception?”

It is all to the good that the international community works together to end this war, but the west is only interested in escalating and Ukraine pays the price. The collective west excels in creating propaganda and bullying its allies. The rest of the world is working to escape U.S. and NATO domination as Ukrainians die in large numbers.

Ukraine’s love of Nazi symbolism reveals why that country is content to turn its population into cannon fodder. Meanwhile western insistence on escalation brings the entire world to the brink. Yet there is still no honest discussion about how the war began, or how the Nordstream pipeline exploded. Russia is still painted as the villain and the people of this country go into another presidential election year in the dark.

Russia is not just winning on the battlefield. Nation after nation has declared an intention to use currencies other than the dollar for trade or to join the BRICS. But the collective west cannot accept defeat. The threat they represent to the world cannot be underestimated.

‘Us vs. Them’ Thinking Is Hardwired—But Consciousness Can Overpower It

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By Joe Martino

Source: The Pulse

Are we hardwired to categorize each other into ‘Us vs Them?’ Simply put, yes. But this hardwiring is remarkably easy to break. It’s time we equip ourselves with the knowledge and tools to do so.

Why? Well, anything from powerful governments to mainstream and alternative media is consistently trying to divide us by focusing aggressively on our differences. When we know how these mechanisms work and focus our consciousness in an effective way, these attempts to divide fail.

First a quick story.

When we first launched our membership I hired marketing teams to help. They would always tell me “in the sales messaging we need to create an ‘Us vs Them dynamic’ in order to get people to buy.” I resisted.

I felt like that wasn’t necessary and also contrary to our mission of unifying people to create a better world. But, the marketers were right. When we would A/B test sales messaging without ‘Us vs Them’ compared to sales messaging with it, the ‘Us vs Them’ messaging always won.

I have to admit this made me a bit sad. Was I thinking too idealistically about human beings? Maybe. But I always asked ‘Why doesn’t Us vs Them messaging work on me?” Before you suggest I’m naive and think “of course the messaging works on you,” read to the end of this piece. You’ll see how simply it is for this messaging not to work on anyone should they choose.

Neuroscience suggests that this Us vs Them biological trait developed thousands of years ago. As you might imagine, it had much to do with survival in much different times than we live in today.

It essentially states that human beings are primed to make very basic and categorical Us vs Them judgments. In fact, your brain is processing these Us vs Them differences in a twentieth of a second. These noticed differences are your classically promoted artificial constructs of: ethnicity, gender, skin color, age, socioeconomic class, and even something like sports team preference.

(I say artificial because social constructs tell us we should focus on these as differences. We don’t actually have to see them as differences as we are ALL one species. Other animals do not engage their Us vs Them biology within their species – only we do – and it’s a taught behaviour.)

All of this is enhanced by a multi-purposed hormone in our brain called Oxytocin.

Oxytocin has been shown to be a wonderful hormone for connecting and bonding with others that we know in our communities, ‘Us’. It’s often referred to as the love hormone or connection hormone. It essentially heightens meaningful connections with our in-group.

But on the flip side, studies have shown that when it comes to people who we see as strangers (Them), oxytocin creates a decrease in cooperation and increases envy when people are struggling. Further, it pushes one to gloat when they are ‘winning.’ In fact, there are many ways in which oxytocin is linked to dividing ourselves from ‘Them’ and keeping it that way.

In short, oxytocin enhances this Us vs Them divide. But, while this sounds like we may be doomed for division and judgment of others forever, what has also been shown is that these almost instantaneous judgements we make can be manipulated incredibly easily. And that’s without bringing in a little bit of conscious awareness and presence.

Studies have shown that when you expose people to others who look different from them, the ‘Us’ wiring often turns on when people look similar, and the ‘Them’ wiring turns on when people look different. This showed an implicit judgment based on ethnicity.

Yet when those same people were exposed to people who looked the same and different from them but were now wearing baseball hats with team logos, things changed. Suddenly the participants brains indicated that Us and Them had nothing to do with ethnicity anymore, it was about which team they supported.

A tiny change created an instantaneous manipulation of who is Us vs Them. I wrote about a similar phenomenon in a recent piece called Racism Plummeted When People Were Told Aliens Exist. This showed that when humans were told aliens existed, the Us became humans, and the Them became aliens. Suddenly people were nicer to each other and more accepting of differences.

The point? It doesn’t take much to for us to see each other as one, we just have to focus our consciousness a bit.

Consciousness Is Everything

There is much gained in our well being and in society when we become more self-aware, reflective and present. It moves unconscious and often automatic behaviour into a lens where we can ask: why do we do this?

Further, an increase in the above mentioned traits can lead to something as simple as stopping ourselves before we do something destructive out of anger. We can then pause for a short period, reflect, and respond.

The more we move from automatic, unconscious and reactive ways of living to present, reflective and conscious ways of living, the more harmony surrounds our lives.

What I’m saying can bring up similarities to new-agey, online influencer judgments that the ‘conscious’ are more than the ‘unconscious,’ this is not at all what I’m saying here. And I will expand in a moment.

First, I trust it’s clear that we can be manipulated into different Us vs Them dichotomies very easily. Studies exploring implicit bias also show that when we are exposed to different people regularly, we become less judgemental towards their differences.

Even still, we can build self awareness around how WE play into these divides in order to diffuse them.

For example, during COVID government leaders like Justin Trudeau sowed division in Canada by making unvaccinated Canadians less than. He did this by calling them names and characterizing them in ways that would cause the general population to dislike them.

“They [the unvaccinated] don’t believe in science/progress and are very often misogynistic and racist. It’s a very small group of people, but that doesn’t shy away from the fact that they take up some space.”Justin Trudeau

He combined this rhetoric with un-contextualized and false data around vaccination status in Canada to strengthen his propaganda.

Note, I’m not focusing on Trudeau here because I’m “a Poilievre fan” or anything. In fact, I don’t feel our current structure of politics is healthy nor serving us as people. I’m simply illustrating the ways in which our society has become ‘lost’ in division. Getting out of it requires us to take a close examination of what is happening so we can choose a different path.

In contrast, some unvaccinated people around the world began to refer to themselves as ‘pure bloods’ because they were not vaccinated. This led to memes, hateful rhetoric, and actions like avoiding and separating themselves from their vaccinated friends and families. Instead of attempting to understand why some became vaccinated, it was often simply seen as ‘the vaccinated are sheep.’

Once again we see division, in/out groups, and greater than/less than beliefs.

In both cases we are seeing the destruction and damage that can occur when we allow our flimsy biological traits around Us vs Them to be fed and upheld by faulty information and propaganda.

What is also important to note is that our ‘authoritative’ institutions of government and mainstream media will often be guilty of this destructive behaviour which deeply normalizes it amongst the masses.

That said, we are not doomed. Consciousness is everything. By that I mean, the quality of our consciousness. The ways in which we slow down, reflect, and become more present in everyday life becomes an antidote to propaganda feeding Us vs Them.

This is why we have the section at the top of our articles to “Pause and set your pulse.” To cultivate more presence and self awareness, check out a couple of the pieces of content I list at the bottom of this piece.

Let’s go deeper. Perhaps why I have felt Us vs Them messaging does not work on me stems from: what happens when we have experiences that lead us to feel we are all one and interconnected with everything? I have had these experiences many times in my life. I experienced them through meditation, breath work, and even randomly.

Thrust into what can be best described as ‘sensing the nature of our reality,’ when you have these transcendental experiences you do not see yourself as all that separate from everything else. Sure, you are YOU, and you know you are an individual, but you also have a knowing of the connection and sameness you share with everything.

What happens if we nurture and hold that knowing in our consciousness and allow it to form our worldview? Does our sense of Us vs Them get triggered as easily? I don’t think so. But that’s my experience.

This direct experience has led me to believe that a shift in our consciousness can be one of the most powerful tools in changing the way we see each other and ultimately re-design our society – because it has to happen.

Albert Einstein had some thoughts on this as well:

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe’ —a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”Albert Einstein

A task indeed, but one that is very possible with the right practice and focus.

Education Is Key Too

Why are things the way they are? We have to explore content that seeks to answer these questions. Instead of using social media for fast memes, 15 second videos, and short out of context video clips, deepen your knowledge. Consume less, but spend MORE time on each thing you consume.

Buying into this fast and distracting culture of information consumption is only furthering the problems we have. Social media algorithms are rigged to build an echo chamber around you and to give you ‘truth’ that confirms your existing bias’. This is not real education.

As for the biological trait itself, why can’t we focus our attention on our human similarities instead of our differences? We can. But culturally we have learned not to because somewhere along the lines it’s what we chose to obsess over.

Perhaps because powerful people glean more power by dividing masses. Perhaps because our current economic systems thrive off division, competition, and having various classes. Either way, we’re making this all up as we go. It doesn’t have to be like this.

For those who might think “this is our biology. We will always do best in small groups of the same type of people,” this doesn’t appear to be true. Studies have shown that diversity trumps ability. Diversity significantly enhances the level of innovation in organizations around the world.

Groups of only ‘like-minds’ become echo chambers and our efficiency and innovation suffers. Yet another reason we must learn to love, respect and communicate with one another.

(Note: here I’m pointing to the uncovering our potential as humans and having that be our driver. Not productivity and innovation tied to making more money and having a ‘bullish market economy’)

The Takeaway

The key is that consciousness can overcome a flimsy biological trait that produces Us vs Them thinking within us. We can engage experience and education that connects us to our similarities, adopts a consciousness of interconnection and a shared stewardship of our planet and people.

Everything from ‘woke ideology’ constantly obsessing over our differences, to political news commentary always inviting people to ‘dislike the other side’ is contributing to a worse direction for humanity. Don’t just sit there and blame it though, simply choose to engage differently. Improve how you use social media. Consume less content but go deeper.

Consciousness is the power here. Why can’t we extend our worldview of who we are into oneness and a deeper connectedness? Why must we fight to shut off our wonder and hold to petty differences?

Einstein and Freud’s ‘Why War?’ Revisited: Why Anti-War Efforts Go Nowhere

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By Robert J. Burrowes

In 1932, Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein exchanged letters, later published under the title ‘Why War?’ See ‘Why War? An exchange of letters between Freud and Einstein’.

However, whatever insight these two giants of an earlier era brought to our understanding of war, the reality is that a great deal has been learned since they corresponded.

Nevertheless, since the emergence of an identifiable, organized anti-war movement during World War I which has grown to include a diverse range of activists and organizations from across the political spectrum, as well as peace and conflict resolution scholars from various disciplines, there is little evidence that this movement, or any of the many organizations within it, has been learning from its failures by systematically undertaking or commissioning further research to understand the phenomenon of war more completely and then devising a strategy to end it based on that learning.

Hence, during its existence for more than 100 years, the organized anti-war movement – and the subsequently developed peace movement with its broader agenda – has had minimal impact in preventing or halting particular military conflicts, including wars, and zero impact in ending war generally, as the record testifies.

And so, even today, war continues in several countries in West Asia (the Middle East), Africa, elsewhere and, more recently, in Ukraine with the antiwar movement again demonstrating its ineffectiveness and, in the case of Ukraine, failing to comprehend the deeper agenda behind what is taking place in that country. See ‘The War in Ukraine: Understanding and Resisting the Global Elite’s Deeper Agenda’.

Of course, while an utterly inadequate analysis of what, fundamentally, is driving war is the critical foundation of the anti-war movement’s problems, it is still just one of the substantial range of problems it faces, some of which derive from this flawed analysis but others which a better analysis would expose. These include, for example, an understanding of why the fear of most of those within the anti-war movement is preventing the movement from mustering the commitment and courage that will be necessary if we are to undertake the many actions necessary to end war. In essence, fear makes most participants in the movement happy to complain about war but not take action themselves (or take action that has zero or minimal impact).

As Daniel Berrigan noted in his 1969 book No Bars to Manhood: ‘the waging of war, by its nature, is total – but the waging of peace, by our own cowardice, is partial.’

This cowardice means that a large proportion of the anti-war movement contents itself with a range of powerless measures – usually extending no further than signing petitions, issuing lameduck ideologically-oriented statements, writing articles, organizing conferences, issuing calls for negotiations or appeals to politicians – all invariably devoid of emotional and geopolitical reality as well as realistic measures to avert/halt the latest war.

This might include advocacy of measures, such as those developed under the guise of international humanitarian law, in relation to ‘outlawing war’ or outlawing particular weapons systems, despite the obvious observation that these legal constraints are routinely violated with impunity by any military power, starting with the United States, or non-state actor that is unconstrained by questions of legality.

Beyond this, ‘action’, when it is taken, is usually confined to conducting (notoriously ineffective) street protests or employing other tactics devoid of strategic impact in the context (of ending war). As former US Secretary of State Alexander Haig once noted about a massive anti-war demonstration: ‘Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes.’ See Alexander Haig. As a four-star general, Haig, not regarded as the most intelligent Secretary of State in US history, certainly understood that tactical choice is a question of strategy. Most activists have no idea.

So if we are to end war as a phenomenon in human affairs, or even meaningfully attempt to prevent or end a particular war, we need to do a number of things. Most fundamentally, we must start with a sound understanding of what causes violence to begin with because war does not emerge from a vacuum. War, when all is considered, is just another manifestation of violence, like everything from violence against women to economic exploitation to environmental destruction.

And if we are not able or willing to investigate and understand what is causing violence, and address this fundamental cause as part of our strategy, then our other efforts to end the manifestations of violence, including war, must all be in vain. Again, as the record readily testifies.

What Causes Violence?

So what is the cause of violence? Here is what 41 years (1966-2007) of concerted effort taught me.

Perpetrators of violence learn their craft in childhood. If you inflict violence on a child, they learn to inflict violence on others. The political leaders who decide to wage war, the military leaders who plan and conduct it, as well as the soldiers, sailors and aircraft personnel who fight war each suffered violence as a child. The terrorist suffered violence as a child. The neo-Nazi suffered violence as a child. The individual who inflicts violence on his (or her) partner suffered violence as a child. The corporate executive who exploits working class people and/or those who live in Africa, Asia or Central/South America suffered violence as a child. The racist or religious bigot suffered violence as a child. The individual who perpetrates violence in the home, in the schoolyard or on the street suffered violence as a child. The individual who overconsumes, or even consumes certain products and/or otherwise destroys the biosphere, suffered violence as a child.

So let me illustrate this point, in a very simplified way, by briefly explaining the parenting experience of a neo-Nazi. This individual has been terrorized by their parents and/or other significant adults in their life into projecting their fear onto particular groups of human beings and into believing that violence is a morally correct and superior way of dealing with these ‘different’ people. But for a much fuller and more nuanced explanation of this point, see the sections headed ‘The Emotional Profile of Archetype Perpetrators of Violence’ and ‘The Spectrum of the Violent Personality’ in ‘Why Violence?’

If we want to end violence in all of its manifestations, structural and otherwise, locally and globally, then we must finally end our longest and greatest war: the adult war on children. And here is an additional incentive: if we do not tackle the fundamental cause of violence, then our combined and unrelenting efforts to tackle all of its other symptoms must ultimately fail. And extinction at our own hand – by nuclear war or other means – is inevitable.

How can I claim that violence against children is the fundamental cause of all other violence? Consider this. There is universal acceptance that behaviour is shaped by childhood experience. If it was not, we would not put such effort into education and other efforts to ‘socialize’ children to ‘fit into’ their society. And this is why many psychologists have argued that exposure to war toys and violent video games shapes attitudes and behaviours in relation to violence.

But it is far more complex than this and, strange though it may seem, it is not just the ‘visible’ violence (such as hitting, screaming at and sexually abusing) that we normally label ‘violence’ that causes the main damage, although this is extremely damaging. The largest component of damage arises from the ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence that we adults unconsciously inflict on children during the ordinary course of the day. Tragically, the bulk of this violence occurs in the family home and at school. See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

So what is ‘invisible’ violence? It is the ‘little things’ we do every day, partly because we are just ‘too busy’. For example, when we do not allow time to listen to, and value, a child’s thoughts and feelings, the child learns to not listen to themSelf thus destroying their internal communication system. When we do not let a child say what they want (or ignore them when they do), the child develops communication and behavioral dysfunctionalities as they keep trying to meet their own needs (which, as a basic survival strategy, they are genetically programmed to do).

When we blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie to, bribe, blackmail, moralize with and/or judge a child, we both undermine their sense of Self-worth and teach them to blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie, bribe, blackmail, moralize and/or judge.

The fundamental outcome of being bombarded throughout their childhood by this ‘invisible’ violence is that the child is utterly overwhelmed by feelings of fear, pain, anger and sadness (among many others). However, mothers, fathers, teachers, religious figures and other adults also actively interfere with the expression of these feelings and the behavioral responses that are naturally generated by them and it is this ‘utterly invisible’ violence that explains why the dysfunctional behavioral outcomes actually occur.

For example, by ignoring a child when they express their feelings, by comforting, reassuring or distracting a child when they express their feelings, by laughing at or ridiculing their feelings, by terrorizing a child into not expressing their feelings (for example, by screaming at them when they cry or get angry), and/or by violently controlling a behavior that is generated by their feelings (for example, by hitting them, restraining them or locking them into a room), the child has no choice but to unconsciously suppress their awareness of these feelings.

However, once a child has been terrorized into suppressing their awareness of their feelings (rather than being allowed to have their feelings and to act on them) the child has also unconsciously suppressed their awareness of the reality that caused these feelings. This has many outcomes that are disastrous for the individual, for society and for nature because the individual will now easily suppress their awareness of the feelings that would tell them how to act most functionally in any given circumstance and they will progressively acquire a phenomenal variety of dysfunctional behaviors, including some that are violent towards themself, others and/or the Earth.

From the above, it should also now be apparent that punishment should never be used. ‘Punishment’, of course, is simply one of the words we use to obscure our awareness of the fact that we are using violence. Violence, even when we label it ‘punishment’, scares children and adults alike and cannot elicit a functional behavioural response. See ‘Punishment is Violent and Counterproductive’ and ‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’.

If someone behaves dysfunctionally, they need to be listened to, deeply, so that they can start to become consciously aware of the feelings (which will always include fear and, often, terror) that drove the dysfunctional behaviour in the first place. They then need to feel and express these feelings (including any anger) in a safe way. Only then will behavioural change in the direction of functionality be possible. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

‘But these adult behaviors you have described don’t seem that bad. Can the outcome be as disastrous as you claim?’ you might ask. The problem is that there are hundreds of these ‘ordinary’, everyday behaviors that destroy the Selfhood of the child. It is ‘death by a thousand cuts’ and most children simply do not survive as Self-aware individuals. And why do we do this? As mentioned above, we do it so that each child will fit into our model of ‘the perfect citizen’: that is, obedient and hardworking student, reliable and pliant employee/soldier, and submissive law-abiding citizen (that is, one who pays their taxes, including those for war, and votes and/or lobbies politicians rather than acting powerfully themSelf).

The bottom line is simple: As parents, teachers, religious figures and adults generally, we want the child to be obedient to our commands, and not powerfully able to act in accord with their own Self-will. And we achieve this outcome by terrorizing the child into doing what we want rather than nurturing the child’s innate capacity to listen, deeply, to themSelf in order to follow their own will.

Moreover, once we destroy the Selfhood of a child, it has many flow-on effects. For example, once you terrorize a child into accepting certain information about themSelf, other people and the state of the world – with the bulk of this information mediated by elite agents including education systems, the entertainment industry and the corporate media – the child becomes unconsciously fearful of dealing with new information, especially if this information is contradictory to what they have been terrorized into believing. As a result, the child will unconsciously dismiss new information, no matter how truthful, out of hand.

In short, the child has been terrorized in such a way that they are no longer capable of learning (or their learning capacity is seriously diminished by excluding any information that is not a simple extension of what they already ‘know’). If you imagine any of the bigots you know, you are imagining someone who is utterly terrified. But it’s not just the bigots; virtually all people are affected in this manner making them incapable of responding adequately to new (or even important) information. This is one explanation why some people are ‘climate deniers’, most people do nothing in response to the climate catastrophe and even those people who do take action usually do so ineffectively. See ‘The Global Climate Movement is Failing: Why?’

But the same can be said for those working to end war – see ‘The War to End War 100 Years On: An Evaluation and Reorientation of our Resistance to War’ – end the nuclear weapons race or engage in other struggles, including liberation struggles, that are vital parts of the global struggle to create a more peaceful, just and sustainable human culture. See ‘Why Activists Fail’.

And to briefly put this issue in the current global context, the vast bulk of the human population, including most of those individuals whom society would regard as ‘highly intelligent’, has been readily terrorized into believing that they are threatened by a pathogenic virus (labeled ‘SARS-CoV-2’) when there is no documented, scientific proof that such an entity as a pathogenic virus even exists – see ‘Dismantling the Virus Theory – The “measles virus” as an example’ and What Really Makes You Ill? Why everything you thought you knew about disease is wrong – and certainly no documented scientific proof that a virus labeled SARS-CoV-2 exists. See ‘COVID-19: The virus does not exist – it is confirmed!’ and ‘Statement On Virus Isolation (SOVI)’. And for an account of researcher Christine Massey’s fruitless search over the course of more than a year to find evidence of an isolated virus, via Freedom of Information requests to health/science institutions all over the world, see ‘177 health/science institutions globally all failed to cite even 1 record of “SARS-COV-2” purification, by anyone, anywhere, ever’.

Despite this, the vast bulk of the human population has been terrorized into accepting a series of medical intrusions (including lockdowns, PCR tests, mask-wearing and gene-altering injectables) when, in fact, there is no documented, scientific proof that (assuming there was a ‘pathogenic virus’) lockdowns, PCR tests, mask-wearing or ‘vaccines’ even ‘work’ and/or extensive documentation of their harm. See, for example, ‘And How Are the Children? Lockdowns, Massive Fear, Deaths from Suicides and Drug Abuse’, ‘The WHO Confirms that the Covid-19 PCR Test is Flawed: Estimates of “Positive Cases” are Meaningless. The Lockdown Has No Scientific Basis’, ‘Conclusion Regarding Masks: They Do Not Work’, ‘Masks “don’t work,” are damaging health and are being used to control population: Doctors panel’, ‘The Truth about the Covid-19 Vaccine’, ‘A Final Warning to Humanity’, ‘COVID Shots to “Decimate World Population,” Warns Dr. Bhakdi’ and ‘20 Facts about Vaccination Your Doctor Forgot To Tell You’.

And because the fear generated by the elite-driven ‘virus’/injectable narrative has been so debilitating and thus engendered a high level of obedience by the population at large, it is a rare individual who has investigated both the shortcomings in this narrative and the horrific agenda that this narrative is concealing, let alone identified a powerful strategy to resist it. See ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’.

So, to return to the focus of this article, let me briefly reiterate this vital point: The essence of what human beings call ‘socialization’ is the process by which each child is terrorized in such a way that they are no longer capable of learning or their learning capacity is seriously diminished. The multifaceted violence inflicted throughout childhood and adolescence ensures that the adult who emerges is suppressing awareness of an enormous amount of fear, pain, sadness and anger (among many other feelings) and must live in delusion to remain unaware of these suppressed feelings. This ensures that, as part of their delusion, the individual develops a strong sense that what they are doing already is functional and working (no matter how dysfunctional and ineffective it may actually be) while not investigating the existence of evidence that might contradict their delusion and/or unconsciously suppressing awareness of any evidence they come across that does contradict it. They do this because, unconsciously, people learn to identify obedience with ‘functional and working’ (because they do not get punished for being obedient). See ‘Why Violence?’, ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’, ‘Do We Want School or Education?’, ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’ and ‘Human Intelligence or Human Awareness?’

Just one critically important outcome of this terrorization process is that a significant proportion of the human population is effectively insane, and this certainly includes the Global Elite and those primary elite agents on which it relies to generate and maintain wars. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.

Another critically important outcome of this terrorization process is that the international conflict resolution architecture – which is essentially a legal framework – does not take emotional factors into account. Hence it is not capable of resolving conflicts in any meaningful way. This is why negotiations often go nowhere, particularly in a timeframe that would avert adverse outcomes. And why ‘agreements’ that are reached are utterly superficial. The fundamental drivers of the conflict – invariably including suppressed terror, self-hatred and anger which are often unconsciously projected at the other party – are never addressed and will continue to manifest as violence in various forms, even if military violence is ended in a particular context. See ‘Challenges for Resolving Complex Conflicts’.

So if we want a powerfully effective anti-war movement (or peace movement, environmental movement, social justice movement….) then we need Self-aware individuals who can think, plan and act powerfully as part of strategically-oriented organizations to achieve ambitious longer-term goals. Such as ending the institution of war.

Anything less will fail. Again, as the record demonstrates.

So What Can We Do?

Ending war is possible. But it will take a courageous, sophisticated, strategic effort, given how deeply violence is embedded into the human ‘socialization’ process which makes war just one of the many approved violent behaviours in which adults are expected and encouraged to participate, beginning with paying taxes to finance it.

So while it is possible to end war, this won’t be happening any time soon.

And it can’t happen until we commit ourselves to eliminating violence against children so that human society creates adults who are psychologically whole and powerfully able to participate in conflict without resorting to violence to ‘resolve’ it.

Nevertheless, in parallel with efforts to eliminate violence against children, those powerful enough can also participate in a comprehensive strategy to end war as explained on the ‘Nonviolent Strategy’ website, starting with this list of ‘Strategic Goals to End War’. This is extrapolated from a book which explained why a strategy of nonviolent defense, understood and implemented by sufficient committed and organized individuals, is strategically superior to any military strategy. See The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach.

Or, if you want to participate in a strategy to end a particular war, such as that in Ukraine, particularly given the possibility of it morphing into a longer term insurgency – see ‘Ukraine And The New Al Qaeda’ – you can read how to do so here: Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

But, as explained above, precisely because of their socialization experience during childhood, most of those who would identify as ‘anti-war’ are simply too frightened to act powerfully in resisting it. Hence, war will continue until we address its root cause: violence against children.

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘ . His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

Ukraine Exposes White Supremacist Foreign Policy

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Image – Carlos Latuff

By Margaret Kimberley

Source: Black Agenda Report

White supremacy is at the heart of US war propaganda. The exhortation to “stand with Ukraine” is no exception to this rule.

By now everyone knows that Ukraine’s flag is blue and yellow. It is impossible to miss as the Empire State Building in New York, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and the Eiffel Tower in Paris have all been bathed in those colors. Nearly every city and town across the United States has followed suit and politicians ranging from local legislators to members of congress shout “Stand with Ukraine!” at every opportunity.

Yet it must be pointed out that those blue and yellow motifs and pleas for solidarity are all about white supremacy. Ukraine is upheld as a bastion of “civilization” which is supposed to put it off limits for war and suffering. The quiet part is now being spoken out loud. We are told that Ukrainians are more deserving of concern because they are Europeans.

Ukraine’s deputy chief prosecutor said as much in a BBC interview. “It is very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed…” He wasn’t alone in his assessment. An NBC reporter was asked why Poland was willing to admit Ukrainians even as it turned away other refugees. “Just to put it bluntly, these are not refugees from Syria, these are refugees from neighboring Ukraine. That, quite frankly, is part of it. These are Christians, they are white, they’re … um… very similar to the people that live in Poland.”

CBS followed suit, “This isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan who has seen conflict rage for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully – city where you wouldn’t expect that or hope that it was going to happen.”

The narrative that only white people deserve peace and security is all the more shameful because the global south suffers from war and privation as a direct result of US/NATO actions. It is NATO that destroyed the nation of Libya, NATO which attempted to do the same in Syria, NATO that occupied Afghanistan, NATO which wages war across African countries with US, French and British troops deployed across the continent. The white world causes suffering and then says that the people of the global south are “uncivilized” with no rights that need to be respected.

A Watson Institute of Brown University study showed that more than 37 million people in North Africa, Western and Central Asia, and the Horn of Africa have been displaced by the US and its allies since 2001. The humanitarian disasters begun years ago are ongoing, as refugees use the Mediterranean and even the US border with Mexico as points of escape. After experiencing wars of aggression these nations are then subjected to punishment as the United States steals Afghanistan’s assets and keeps Syria under the thumb of Caesar Sanctions. These thefts cause more suffering and even death as nations are robbed of the ability to care for their people. Who is civilized and who is not?

Ukraine has been pushed to the forefront of American thought in order to defend the imperialist foreign policy which led to the current conflict with Russia. If the blue eyed nation is suffering it is because of US and NATO arrogance and aggression. Ukraine’s current situation is a direct result of the 2014 coup engineered by the US and its EU partners. An elected president was dispatched and a civil war began that has killed some 14,000 people. Ukraine is a US colony with a puppet government now under military attack. Ukrainians are themselves refugees as they flee to neighboring Poland, Romania, Slovakia and other countries. It is the supposedly advanced, democratic, and supposedly civilized who have created their problems.

Yet once again bare faced racism is evident. African migrants and students in Ukraine were prohibited from boarding trains and buses that could take them to safety. A group of Jamaican students was forced to walk 20 kilometers when they were forced off of a bus enroute to Poland. Africans and Jamaicans live and study all over the world because the US and Europe underdevelop their nations through a variety of means. Yet Ukrainians and Poles didn’t see people in need of help. They determined that the non-blondes were not deserving of assistance.

Ironically, it is the white supremacist underpinnings of US/NATO foreign policy which has created all of Ukraine’s suffering. The need to dominate, to “contain” Russia and its ally China is not playing out the way they had hoped but the Ukrainians be damned. The MinskII agreement which was unanimously approved in the United Nations Security Council was a roadmap to peace. Ukraine should be a neutral nation but that is the exact opposite of what its lords and masters in Washington want. The good faith negotiations that could resolve the crisis are a non-starter because NATO is a very dishonest broker.

The corporate media have joined the state in an extraordinary effort to create war propaganda. They deliberately tug at heartstrings and demand solidarity with Ukraine because the truth is very unpalatable. Instead of standing with Ukraine, Americans should stand with humanity across the world. If they did they would be better able to understand why there are wars in Europe or anywhere else.

The Culture of Vehicular Attacks

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On the Murder of Deona Marie Erickson

By CrimethInc.

On June 13, a driver attacked a demonstration in Minneapolis, killing Deona Marie Erickson. This is the result of years of right-wing efforts to normalize—and even legalize—vehicular attacks. Now the corporate media has ceased to prioritize covering them, paving the way for more killings. In dialogue with our comrades at It’s Going Down and on the ground in Minneapolis, we have prepared the following reflections on the implications of this.

Shortly before midnight on June 13, while demonstrators gathered at Lake Street and Girard Avenue to protest the murder of Winston Smith by sheriff’s deputies and US Marshals, a man named Nicholas Kraus drove his SUV into the crowd at high speed, killing Deona Marie Erickson. One Black anti-fascist militant who was on the ground at the time of the attack reports that it was clear to those present that it was an intentional attack: “You heard his engine from three blocks away.”

According to Unicorn Riot,

“Deona Erickson’s car was parked on the side of the street in a way that would protect the people who were gathering. She was sitting down on the sidewalk about 15 feet from her car moments before the perpetrator smashed directly against her car at a very high speed. Witnesses say she was then hit by her car and sent flying. Street medics on the scene resuscitated her but she later died at the hospital.”

Deona Marie Erickson had two daughters. She worked as a program manager at a center for disabled adults. Today would have been her 32nd birthday. She gave her life to protect those who protest police murder.

Demonstrators detained the driver, Nicholas Kraus. Eyewitnesses dispute police allegations that he was “pulled from his car”; reportedly, police did not respond until after the attack, sending riot police to threaten the crowd before an ambulance could arrive. Under the circumstances, the demonstrators’ response was measured, to say the least.

https://twitter.com/aishaforward10/status/1404509174516625408

The Culture of Vehicular Attacks

Let’s put this attack in context.

Fox News and the Daily Caller circulated a video encouraging their viewers to carry out vehicular attacks against protesters months ahead of the fascist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville at which a self-identified neo-Nazi did exactly that, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 35 people. Afterwards, leaked chats showed other neo-Nazis also planning to use vehicles to attack protesters.

In summer 2020, vehicular attacks surged in response to protests against the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others. Over a dozen people were killed in these and other attacks on the movement.

https://twitter.com/IGD_News/status/1404699241570705408

https://twitter.com/IGD_News/status/1404699241570705408

Today, legislators around the United States are taking steps to criminalize protest activity, introducing a wide range of anti-protest bills. Foremost among them, Oklahoma and Florida lawmakers have passed laws guaranteeing civil and criminal immunity to drivers who hit demonstrators with vehicles, effectively granting vigilantes the right to crash cars into demonstrators. At the same time, Florida has introduced penalties of up to 15 years imprisonment for blocking traffic.

The message is clear enough. In short, lawmakers and police seek to crack down on pedestrians acting collectively to oppose state violence, while extending additional privileges to drivers who act individually to support state violence via their own attacks. The official institutions of the state have failed to leverage enough violence to suppress movements against police violence and white supremacy, so they are deputizing others to do so—a longstanding counterinsurgency strategy reflective of the colonial heritage of the United States.

On a fundamental level, the form of subjectivity that these lawmakers are promoting is what we might call a motorist subjectivity: consumerist, individualized, invested in the smooth functioning of the existing order, and regarding all other possibilities as threats. Structurally speaking, for the motorist, all other human beings—traffic as well as pedestrians—are obstacles, and the only imaginable journeys are dictated by the routes established by the state and the economy. The motorist wants to see the laws enforced on others, on the premise that it will reduce the ways that others might inconvenience him, but he doesn’t want the laws enforced on himself. Conceiving of our society as an entirely mapped world—the way that Google Maps does—in which all means of locomotion, all forms of agency, are individualized according to financial means, the motorist cannot imagine why people would assemble, off road or not, to challenge law enforcement itself.

As shocking as vehicular attacks are when they occur, they are an extension of the society in which they take place. They are anti-social, but they express and intensify the anti-social premises of our day-to-day relations with each other. Motorist versus pedestrian is a classic class opposition in a society in which transportation and mobility are fundamentally racialized. People who were raised on advertisements depicting jeeps off-roading across the suspiciously vacant landscape of the frontier only to find themselves sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the freeway for an hour every day look around for someone to blame, and—as if by design—blame those with even less power than themselves. Road rage.

Right-wing online chatter in Minneapolis ahead of the attack that took Deona Marie Erickson’s life.

In this context, the chant “Whose streets? Our streets!” asserts another form of life, another way of relating to each other and conceiving of what our lives could be. Rather than framing vehicular attacks as aberrations from an otherwise peaceful social order—to be addressed, for example, by more policing—we have to understand them as one of the ugliest manifestations of a social structure that is fundamentally racist and anti-human, which can only be addressed via new forms of togetherness.

Honoring those whose lives have been taken by police and pro-police vigilantes is a first step towards this, and it is important that people have been doing this through shared presence in particular physical spaces. The internet—the information superhighway—tends to reinforce the motorist mentality of abstract competition and hostility. One of the most basic steps we can take towards creating a new social fabric on egalitarian terms is to encounter each other in person in ways that affirm the specificity of place.

This gives us more perspective on the ongoing efforts of city officials to evict the autonomous zone at the site where George Floyd was murdered, in order to open it up for “the free passage of traffic.” Rhetoric about “culture wars” is usually used to evoke a conflict between those on the fringe of the left and right, but here, we see centrist officials forcibly imposing a particular model for what our lives, relationships, and forms of grieving should be, even as they purport to be neutral.

Far-Right Murderers and Centrist Beneficiaries

Nicholas Kraus, a man with a history of domestic violence and abuse, is representative of the sort of dysfunctional, alienated men that far-right provocateurs aim to weaponize to carry out stochastic attacks on social movements.

This is effectively a watered-down version of the same strategy that ISIS has used in the Mideast in territories it does not control: taking advantage of the desperation, prejudice, and mental health issues of an entitled but disenfranchised population, the far right aims to disrupt popular mobilizations through consistent but deniable terror attacks. Their goal is to raise the risks of public organizing to such an extent that it becomes hard for movements to maintain momentum, in order to support state repression while opening up space for fascist groups to recruit and mobilize. In Turkey, this approach helped the despotic government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to crush what had been powerful social movements. The ultimate beneficiaries of this are not just far-right politicians, but also centrist capitalists who do not wish to see fundamental changes that could threaten their power.

Vigilante attacks are also advantageous for the city officials who would like to present themselves as “neutral” while suppressing the protest movements against the murders that the police they oversee regularly carry out. Vigilante attacks enable these officials to change the subject from the violence of the institutions they represent back to the question of how to “maintain order.”

“Some of these people with the megaphones, I guess their role is to get people riled up and get them in a space and march them around and educate them and tell them what their next big plans are and who they’re backing politics-wise and things like that.

“I like community, organic—no microphones, no megaphones, like right now. It’s about fifty people—but fifty people got Lake and Hennepin shut down right now, you know what I’m saying? We’re moving and grooving right now. As opposed to two or three hundred people holding signs, marching around, and then feeling accomplished, patting themselves on the back and then leaving—ain’t shit get shut down really. Police don’t even monitor the marches no more. No change will come from that.”

-Anonymous Black anti-fascist militant in Minneapolis, evening of June 15, 2021

But Who’s Paying Attention?

“You protested because it was trendy and ‘everyone was doing it.’ I protest because people are out here dying!”
-Deona Marie Erickson, June 10
In 2021, many liberals and progressives have left the streets, relying on the Biden administration to roll back the policies of the Trump administration. Consequently, the murder of Deona Marie Erickson has attracted considerably less attention than it might have just last year. This withdrawal from social struggles creates the conditions for more attacks like this to take place.
This reminds us of the situation before the murder of Heather Heyer made world news, when the far right carried out a series of murders around the United States without drawing the attention of corporate media. Corporate media outlets were only forced to cover the events in Charlottesville because it was not possible to sweep under the rug the fact that a thousand fascists had gathered in one place and killed a white woman. Because the events took news editors—though not anti-fascists—by surprise, they were not prepared to spin the story according to the preferences of their corporate backers; so for a week, fairly honest coverage of the threat represented by the far right suddenly appeared in a variety of news outlets. Subsequently, although this coverage was tempered by efforts to demonize anti-fascists, centrist media outlets continued to report on far-right attacks in order to associate them with the agenda of Donald Trump’s administration.
But now that centrists can’t leverage Deona Marie’s death against Trump, they are prepared to treat it as simply another sad facet of American life, to sweep it under the rug once more.
This coincides with widespread emotional numbness arising from several years of constant tragedies. The COVID-19 pandemic has already accustomed many people to thinking of human life as expendable. Last weekend saw multiple mass shootings across several states. Poverty has reached the highest levels since the beginning of the pandemic. These are the forces that drive desperate people to adopt far-right politics wherever there are no models for a collective pursuit of liberation, creating a feedback loop that will generate more and more tragedies.
“We keep us safe.” “We protect us.” These slogans spread far and wide in the course of the movements that burst onto the world stage in Ferguson, Missouri because it has become eminently apparent that no one else is going to protect us. Deona Marie died doing her best to keep her companions safe—to open up a space in which people can come to know each other on different terms, as part of a community premised on shared consideration for all human beings, not individualized capitalist competition. We should do the same, so that everyone like her, and like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Winston Smith—might live. We should do the same, because the alternative means isolation, means eventually being treated as expendable ourselves.
“If the fascists would have run over Deona Marie and we would have not been holding space, not erected the barricades that the city just tried to tear down, then Deona Marie’s voice would be in vain. We’ve got to be out here. That fascist wins—that fascist who drove his car right here, he wins. ‘Oh, I got them off the street. They’re gone now. My fellow white supremacists can enjoy Lake Street now, because I got them fuckers off the street,’ you know what I’m saying?
“We’re out here stronger now. We have to be.”
-Anonymous Black anti-fascist militant in Minneapolis, June 15, 2021

https://twitter.com/TigerWorku/status/1404329351211016192

“Concerning Deona Marie”

From an internationalist anarchist woman in Rojava:
From half a world away, I hear about this sacrifice, this martyrdom. I use the words sacrifice and martyrdom and not the word “tragedy” because I am hearing about a woman comrade who chose to defend her community, and there are few things more beautiful and free in this world than that choice. She thought beyond herself, felt beyond her own personal safety, to defend those who struggled together side by side with her for freedom.
When a life is given and taken in struggle, it’s not an easy thing for those of us left to continue. It would dishonest for me to say this is not something heavy, but we do not have to let the weight of it become a burden—this weight can give us strength and power, and with it, we can continue her struggle.
Every martyr is another reason to continue, another example to hold ourselves up to. For every woman whose life they take, for every comrade, for every person who stands up to defend their community, whose light they try to extinguish, we can make sure that a hundred rise up in their place. The time when we could be separated on the basis of race, class and gender is coming to an end. When we sacrifice for each other in this way, as comrades, as people who share a freedom struggle, the methods of our enemies turn to dust.
This is the time for us to defend our communities like Deona did. Anything else, and we won’t have risen to her standard. Her choice to defend was a sacred act of love—let us all be led by it.
Revolutionary greetings, respect, and love from Rojava.

If the goal of those who seek to encourage vigilante attacks is to discourage movements based in direct action, this dovetails with the goals of city officials who seek to use the Non-Profit Industrial Complex to buy off a layer of activists to oppose and undermine effective strategies from within the movement. In that regard, one of the most important ways to prevent the attackers from achieving their goals is to preserve the horizontal, grassroots structure of movements against police, while continuing to emphasize systemic forms of white supremacist violence alongside vigilante attacks.

Israel, the Big Lie

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Smoke rises following Israeli airstrikes on a building in Gaza City, Thursday, May 13, 2021. Weary Palestinians are somberly marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, as Hamas and Israel traded more rockets and airstrikes and Jewish-Arab violence raged across Israel. [AP Photo/Hatem Moussa]

Israel is not exercising “the right to defend itself” in the occupied Palestinian territories. It is carrying out mass murder, aided and abetted by the U.S.

By Chris Hedges

Source: ScheerPost

Nearly all the words and phrases used by the Democrats, Republicans and the talking heads on the media to describe the unrest inside Israel and the heaviest Israeli assault against the Palestinians since the 2014 attacks on Gaza, which lasted 51 days and killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, including 551 children, are a lie.  Israel, by employing its military machine against an occupied population that does not have mechanized units, an air force, navy, missiles, heavy artillery and command-and-control, not to mention a U.S. commitment to provide a $38 billion defense aid package for Israel over the next decade, is not exercising “the right to defend itself.” It is carrying out mass murder. It is a war crime. 

Israel has made it clear it is ready to destroy and kill as wantonly now as it was in 2014. Israel’s defense minister Benny Gantz, who was the chief of staff during the murderous assault on Gaza in 2014, has vowed that if Hamas “does not stop the violence, the strike of 2021 will be harder and more painful than that of 2014.” The current attacks have already targeted several residential high rises including buildings that housed over a dozen local and international press agencies, government buildings, roads, public facilities, agricultural lands, two schools and a mosque.

I spent seven years in the Middle East as a correspondent, four of them as The New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief. I am an Arabic speaker. I lived for weeks at a time in Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison where over two million Palestinians exist on the edge of starvation, struggle to find clean water and endure constant Israeli terror. I have been in Gaza when it was pounded with Israeli artillery and air strikes. I have watched mothers and fathers, wailing in grief, cradling the bloodied bodies of their sons and daughters. I know the crimes of the occupation—the food shortages caused by the Israeli blockade, the stifling overcrowding, the contaminated water, the lack of health services, the near constant electrical outages due to the Israeli targeting of power plants, the crippling poverty, the endemic unemployment, the fear and the despair. I have witnessed the carnage. 

I also have listened from Gaza to the lies emanating from Jerusalem and Washington. Israel’s indiscriminate use of modern, industrial weapons to kill thousands of innocents, wound thousands more and make tens of thousands of families homeless is not a war: It is state-sponsored terror.  And, while I oppose the indiscriminate firing of rockets by Palestinians into Israel, as I oppose suicide bombings, seeing them also as war crimes, I am acutely aware of a huge disparity between the industrial violence carried out by Israel against innocent Palestinians and the minimal acts of violence capable of being waged by groups such as Hamas.

The false equivalency between Israeli and Palestinian violence was echoed during the war I covered in Bosnia.  Those of us in the besieged city of Sarajevo were pounded daily with hundreds of heavy shells and rockets from the surrounding Serbs. We were targeted by sniper fire. The city suffered a few dozen dead and wounded each day. The government forces inside the city fired back with light mortars and small arms fire. Supporters of the Serbs seized on any casualties caused by Bosnian government forces to play the same dirty game, although well over 90 percent of the killings in Bosnia were the fault of the Serbs, as is also true regarding Israel.  

The second and perhaps most important parallel is that the Serbs, like the Israelis, were the principal violators of international law. Israel is in breach of more than 30 U.N. Security Council resolutions. It is in breach of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that defines collective punishment of a civilian population as a war crime. It is in violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention for settling over half a million Jewish Israelis on occupied Palestinian land and for the ethnic cleansing of at least 750,000 Palestinians when the Israeli state was founded and another 300,000 after Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank were occupied following the 1967 war. Its annexation of East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights violates international law, as does its building of a security barrier in the West Bank that annexes Palestinian land into Israel. It is in violation of U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 that states that Palestinian “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.” 

This is the truth.  Any other starting point for the discussion of what is taking place between Israel and the Palestinians is a lie.

Israel’s once vibrant peace movement and political left, which condemned and protested against the Israeli occupation when I lived in Jerusalem, is moribund. The right-wing Netanyahu government, despite its rhetoric about fighting terrorism, has built an alliance with the repressive regime in Saudi Arabia, which also views Iran as an enemy.  Saudi Arabia, a country that  produced 15 of the 19 hijackers in the September 11 attacks, is reputed to be the most prolific sponsor of international Islamist terrorism, allegedly supporting Salafist jihadism, the basis of al-Qaeda, and groups such as the Afghanistan Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Al-Nusra Front.  

Saudi Arabia and Israel worked closely together to back the 2013 military coup in Egypt, led by General Adbul Fattah el Sisi. Sisi overthrew a democratically elected government. He has imprisoned tens of thousands of government critics, including journalists and human rights defenders, on politically motivated charges.  The Sisi regime collaborates with Israel by keeping its common border with Gaza closed to Palestinians, trapping them in the Gaza strip, one of the most densely populated places on earth. Israel’s cynicism and hypocrisy, especially when it wraps itself in the mantle of protecting democracy and fighting terrorism, is of epic proportions. 

Those who are not Jewish in Israel are either second class citizens or live under brutal military occupation. Israel is not, and never has been, the exclusive homeland of the Jewish people.  From the 7th century until 1948, when Jewish colonial settlers used violence and ethnic cleansing to create the state of Israel, Palestine was overwhelmingly Muslim. It was never empty land.  The Jews in Palestine were traditionally a tiny minority. The United States is not an honest broker for peace but has funded, enabled and defended Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.  Israel is not defending the rule of law.  Israel is not a democracy.  It is an apartheid state. 

That the lie of Israel continues to be embraced by the ruling elites–there is no daylight between statements in defense of Israeli war crimes by Nancy Pelosi and Ted Cruz–and used as a foundation for any discussion of Israel is a testament to the corrupting power of money, in this case that of the Israel lobby, and the bankruptcy of a political system of legalized bribery that has surrendered its autonomy and its principles to its major donors. It is also a stunning example of how colonial settler projects, and this is true in the United States, always carry out cultural genocide so they can exist in a suspended state of myth and historical amnesia to legitimize themselves. 

The Israel lobby has shamelessly used its immense political clout to demand that Americans take de facto loyalty oaths to Israel. The passage by 35 state legislatures of Israel lobby-backed legislation requiring their workers and contractors, under threat of dismissal, to sign a pro-Israel oath and promise not to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is a mockery of our Constitutional right of free speech. Israel has lobbied the U.S. State Department to redefine anti-Semitism under a three-point test known as the Three Ds: the making of statements that “demonize” Israel; statements that apply “double standards” for Israel; statements that “delegitimize” the state of Israel. This definition of anti-Semitism is being pushed by the Israel lobby in state legislatures and on college campuses. The Israel lobby spies in the United States, often at the direction of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, on those who speak up for the rights of Palestinians. It wages public smear campaigns and blacklists defenders of Palestinian rights–including the Jewish historian Norman Finkelstein; U.N. Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Territories, Richard Falk, also Jewish; and university students, many of them Jewish, in organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine.  

The Israel lobby has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to manipulate U.S. elections, far beyond anything alleged to have been carried out by Russia, China or any other country.  The heavy-handed interference by Israel in the American political system, which includes operatives and donors bundling together hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions in every U.S. congressional district to bankroll compliant candidates, is documented in the Al-Jazeera four-part series “The Lobby.” Israel managed to block “The Lobby” from being broadcast. In the film, a pirated copy that is available on the website Electronic Intifada, the leaders of the Israel lobby are repeatedly captured on a reporter’s hidden camera explaining how they, backed by the intelligence services within Israel, attack and silence American critics and use massive cash donations to buy politicians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secured the unconstitutional invitation by then-House Speaker John Boehner to address Congress in 2015 to denounce President Barack Obama’s Iranian nuclear agreement.  Netanyahu’s open defiance of Obama and alliance with the Republican Party, however, did not stop Obama in 2014 from authorizing a 10-year $38 billion military aid package to Israel, a sad commentary on how captive American politics is to Israeli interests.  

The investment by Israel and its backers is worth it, especially when you consider that the U.S. has also spent over $ 6 trillion during the last 20 years fighting futile wars that Israel and its lobby pushed for in the Middle East.  These wars are the greatest strategic debacle in American history, accelerating the decline of the American empire, bankrupting the nation at a time of economic stagnation and mounting poverty, and turning huge parts of the globe against us. They serve Israel’s interests, not ours.   

The longer the mendacious Israeli narrative is embraced, the more empowered become the racists, bigots, conspiracy theorists and far-right hate groups inside and outside Israel.  This steady shift to the far right in Israel has fostered an alliance between Israel and the Christian right, many of whom are anti-Semites. The more Israel and the Israel lobby level the charge of anti-Semitism against those who speak up for Palestinian rights, as they did against British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, the more they embolden the real anti-Semites. 

Racism, including anti-Semitism, is dangerous.  It is not only bad for the Jews.  It is bad for everyone.  It empowers the dark forces of ethnic and religious hatred on the extremes.  Netanyahu’s racist government has built alliances with far-right leaders in Hungary, India, and Brazil, and was closely allied with Donald Trump. Racists and ethnic chauvinists, as I saw in the wars in the former Yugoslavia, feed off of each other.  They divide societies into polarized, antagonistic camps that only speak in the language of violence.  The radical jihadists need Israel to justify their violence, just as Israel needs the radical jihadists to justify its violence.  These extremists are ideological twins.  

This polarization fosters a fearful, militarized society.  It permits the ruling elites in Israel, as in the United States, to dismantle civil liberties in the name of national security.  Israel runs training programs for militarized police, including from the United States.  It is a global player in the multibillion-dollar drone industry, competing against China and the United States.

It oversees hundreds of cybersurveillance startups whose espionage innovations, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, have been utilized abroad “to locate and detain human rights activists, persecute members of the LGBT community, silence citizens critical of their governments, and even fabricate cases of blasphemy against Islam in Muslim countries that don’t maintain formal relations with Israel.” 

Israel, like the United States, has been poisoned by the psychosis of permanent war. One million Israelis, many of them among the most enlightened and educated, have left the country. Its most courageous human rights campaigners, intellectuals and journalists—Israeli and Palestinian—endure constant government surveillance, arbitrary arrests and vicious government-run smear campaigns. Mobs and vigilantes, including thugs from right-wing youth groups such as Im Tirtzu, physically assault dissidents, Palestinians, Israeli Arabs and African immigrants in the slums of Tel Aviv. These Jewish extremists have targeted Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, demanding their expulsion. They are supported by an array of anti-Arab groups including the Otzma Yehudit Party, the ideological descendant of the outlawed Kach party, the Lehava movement, which calls for all Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories to be expelled to surrounding Arab states, and La Familia, far-right soccer hooligans. Lehava in Hebrew means “flame” and is the acronym for “Prevention of Assimilation in the Holy Land.” Mobs of these Jewish fanatics parade through Palestinian neighborhoods, including in occupied East Jerusalem, protected by Israeli police, shouting to the Palestinians who live there “Death to the Arabs,” which is also a popular chant at Israeli soccer matches.

Israel has pushed through a series of discriminatory laws against non-Jews that echo the racist Nuremberg Laws that disenfranchised Jews in Nazi Germany. The Communities Acceptance Law, for example, permits “small, exclusively Jewish towns planted across Israel’s Galilee region to formally reject applicants for residency on the grounds of ‘suitability to the community’s fundamental outlook.” Israel’s educational system, starting in primary school, uses the Holocaust to portray Jews as eternal victims.  This victimhood is an indoctrination machine used to justify racism, Islamophobia, religious chauvinism and the deification of the Israeli military. 

There are many parallels between the deformities that grip Israel and the deformities that grip the United States.  The two countries are moving at warp speed towards a 21rst century fascism, cloaked in religious language, which will revoke what remains of our civil liberties and snuff out our anemic democracies.  The failure of the United States to stand up for the rule of law, to demand that the Palestinians, powerless and friendless, even in the Arab world, be granted basic human rights mirrors the abandonment of the vulnerable within our own society.  We are headed, I fear, down the road Israel is heading down.  It will be devastating for the Palestinians.  It will be devastating for us. And all resistance, as the Palestinians courageously show us, will only come from the street.    

Dystopia Isn’t Sci-Fi—for Me, It’s the American Reality

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Cadwell Turnbull is a contributing author of The Dystopia Triptych. Photograph: Broad Reach Publishing

By Cadwell Turnbull

Source: Wired

Imagine a city where a group of people have managed against all odds to carve out prosperity for themselves, at least for a little while. These people used to be owned by other people. Now, they are permitted freedom, but only so much, subject to the whims of the once-masters.

Prosperity is a dangerous thing for the oppressed. It is a dry hot day in a forest bound to catch fire. And so, eventually, there is spark. A teenage boy assaults a teenage girl of the once-master class in an elevator, or so the story is told. Truth doesn’t matter here. A story is enough. The once-masters want justice, which means all the once-slaves must be punished. Men, women, and children are dragged from their homes and shot, their stores and houses bombed or burned. The exact number of dead will remain uncertain, the story buried for so long that people will watch it in a television show almost a century later and mistake the dramatization of the event for pure fiction.

Imagine another city where the once-slaves are told they are getting treatment for a devastating illness, when they are in fact receiving a placebo. Imagine four decades of this lie, the originally infected passing on this disease to their spouses, their children, so that the once-masters can study the long-term effects of the disease on people they don’t consider fully human.

Imagine these cities are part of a great nation. The once-slaves are tired of their second-class citizenship so they begin a movement for justice and equity. This movement is met with a violent backlash. The once-slaves are attacked by dogs, blasted by hoses. Their churches are burned, their institutions subject to random acts of retaliation by the once-masters. Their activists are monitored. Their leaders are jailed or assassinated. There are victories, but even after the successes, once-slaves are shot down in the street for minor offenses or looking “suspicious.” Their neighborhoods are over-policed. Their children are denied quality education. Many of them are sent to prison, where they work for pennies or for nothing. But it isn’t called slavery. It is treated as coincidence that this forced labor disproportionately affects the oppressed class, the once-slaves.

These are the makings of dystopian fictions, and yet many in America don’t need to imagine them. It is their reality. However, most Americans would not call America a dystopia.

If the edges are filed off, the names of places and events changed, a few injustices amplified, Americans can pretend the sorts of things that happen in dystopias don’t happen in their backyards. They can call it fiction, create enough distance to make themselves comfortable with their country’s own sins. But this doesn’t change the fact that the American experience is dystopian for many marginalized people. And like in any dystopia, real or imagined, it is up to all Americans to recognize this storyline, imagine a better society outside of the current reality, and then work toward it. Otherwise, America consents to a normal that is grotesque.

I read my first dystopia in high school. As a teenager, 1984 terrified the hell out of me. I didn’t read it as a warning, but as a mirror to my own experience. I identified with the protagonist Winston Smith’s feeling that something was deeply wrong with his society and the overwhelming sense of helplessness that followed. In college, I read my first utopia. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin, in every sense, was an antidote to that despair I felt when reading 1984.

And then, many years later, I read “The Day Before the Revolution,” the prequel short story to The Dispossessed, and found in it the practical application of the novel’s revolutionary ideas. The story is beautifully quiet. It follows Odo, the founder of the radical movement at the heart of The Dispossessed, as she goes through her day and remembers important moments in her political and personal journey. Le Guin prefaced “The Day Before the Revolution” with a brief definition of the Odonian belief system: “Odonianism is anarchism … its principal and moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories.”

To be clear, the Odonians are not perfect. They are resistant to change and have allowed other forms of institutional privilege to develop and calcify in their society. But, because they believe in their utopia and have lived their lives in accordance with that belief, they’ve managed to build a reasonably just and equitable society

And this is where, in life just as in science fiction, a distinction must be made. A just and equitable society is not the same as a perfect one. I’d argue that everyone would benefit if we defined utopia as a move toward justice and equity, and not just the state of perfection. But in America, especially in discussions about social justice, “just” and “perfect” are treated as synonymous objectives. And because perfect is never attainable, justice, too, becomes out of reach. Under this framing, injustice becomes normal, oppression is realistic, and any move towards justice and equity must come from struggle. A disturbing unspoken belief is born from this framing, that marginalized people will never receive full humanity because a just society is not possible. By failing to recognize the dystopia, and dismissing the possibility of a utopia, America has resigned itself to its current, dark narrative.

As a result, in America, universal social welfare is too costly and politically unfeasible, while trillion-dollar corporate bailouts and endless wars go unquestioned. Police and prison reform are aimed towards harm reduction for marginalized communities, instead of daring to imagine a society where these institutions are mostly unnecessary. In American discourse, a society can’t take care of all its citizens or remedy the causes of crime.

In a society where injustice is normalized, justice becomes a goal that can only be achieved through sacrifice—tragedy becomes currency, a thing to be used, not prevented. It takes decades of confirmed police brutality before America considers even the most minor reforms. This is not by accident. Black and brown bodies have been the fuel used to drive this society towards slightly lesser states of injustice since the very beginning. The oppressed have always paid the price for progress.

And yet, Americans have never shown this kind of defeatism when it comes to technological advancements. When this nation decided to go to the moon, it was framed in terms of “How do we get there?” not “Is this possible?” And no one ever said, “This rocket may only get half-way to the moon, but first many must die.”

Americans once oblivious to the dystopia are waking up. That’s good. But the price of waking up should be considered, and the lives sacrificed to incrementalism must be mourned. It is easy for a pragmatist to ask for incremental change when the current reality favors them. But pragmatism hits differently when it is forced at gunpoint. Every loss on the way to justice is a collective sin, because it was decided that the road must be long and the oppressed must struggle for every inch.

Do not normalize the losses happening right now because of the gains. Assume where America has always been is a tragedy. What is done in hell isn’t romantic; sacrificing bodies to dystopia isn’t beautiful. As I write this, people protesting brutality are dying at the hands of law enforcement. No one should pay for progress with their life. And it isn’t naive to believe every member of society should have a healthy, empowering, and fulfilling time on earth. The ones that have suffered deserve nothing less than faith in that possibility. This moment may provide a way out of dystopia, but there has to be a collective reckoning with the dystopian aspects of American society as well as the cruel price of progress repeatedly placed on the backs of the oppressed. Through solidarity there is a way out of these bitter realities, but the way there must be just if the destination is to be just.

In science fiction there is a notion that the universe is filled with possible worlds just waiting for humanity to come settle. It has some of its more troubling roots in manifest destiny, but also in hope, and the idea that better worlds are possible. But what if this corner of Earth could be that imagined place? Imagine a better world right here, instead of elsewhere. The price is in going all the way, doing all the work, believing all the work can be done. That’s the only way to get to the moon. Human beings have to believe it exists.

America’s Death March

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By Chris Hedges

Source: Mint Press News

The terminal decline of the United States will not be solved by elections. The political rot and depravity will continue to eat away at the soul of the nation, spawning what anthropologists call crisis cults — movements led by demagogues that prey on an unbearable psychological and financial distress. These crisis cults, already well established among followers of the Christian Right and Donald Trump, peddle magical thinking and an infantilism that promises — in exchange for all autonomy — prosperity, a return to a mythical past, order and security. The dark yearnings among the white working class for vengeance and moral renewal through violence, the unchecked greed and corruption of the corporate oligarchs and billionaires who manage our failed democracy, which has already instituted wholesale government surveillance and revoked most civil liberties, are part of the twisted pathologies that infect all civilizations sputtering towards oblivion. I witnessed the deaths of other nations during the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and later in the former Yugoslavia. I have smelled this stench before.

The removal of Trump from office will only exacerbate the lust for racist violence he incites and the intoxicating elixir of white nationalism. The ruling elites, who first built a mafia economy and then built a mafia state, will continue under Biden, as they did under Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, to wantonly pillage and loot. The militarized police will not stop their lethal rampages in poor neighborhoods. The endless wars will not end. The bloated military budget will not be reduced. The world’s largest prison population will remain a stain upon the country. The manufacturing jobs shipped overseas will not return and the social inequality will grow. The for-profit health care system will gouge the public and price millions more out of the health care system. The language of hate and bigotry will be normalized as the primary form of communication. Internal enemies, including Muslims, immigrants and dissidents, will be defamed and attacked. The hypermasculinity that compensates for feelings of impotence will intensify. It will direct its venom towards women and all who fail to conform to rigid male stereotypes, especially artists, LGBTQ people and intellectuals. Lies, conspiracy theories, trivia and fake news — what Hannah Arendt called “nihilistic relativism” — will still dominate the airwaves and social media, mocking verifiable fact and truth. The ecocide, which presages the extinction of the human species and most other life forms, will barrel unabated towards its apocalyptic conclusion.

“We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us seeing it,” Pascal wrote.

The worse it gets — and it will get worse as the pandemic hits us in wave after deadly wave with an estimated 300,000 Americans dead by December and possibly 400,000 by January — the more desperate the nation will become. Tens of millions of people will be thrown into destitution, evicted from their homes and abandoned. Social collapse, as Peter Drucker observed in Weimar Germany in the 1930s, brings with it a loss of faith in ruling institutions and ruling ideologies. With no apparent answers or solutions to mounting chaos and catastrophe — and Biden and the Democratic Party have already precluded the kind of New Deal programs and assault on oligarchic power that saved us during the Great Depression — demagogues and charlatans need only denounce all institutions, all politicians, and all political and social conventions while conjuring up hosts of phantom enemies. Drucker saw that Nazism succeeded not because people believed in its fantastic promises, but in spite of them. Nazi absurdities, he pointed out, had been “witnessed by a hostile press, a hostile radio, a hostile cinema, a hostile church, and a hostile government which untiringly pointed out the Nazi lies, the Nazi inconsistency, the unattainability of their promises, and the dangers and folly of their course.” Nobody, he noted, “would have been a Nazi if rational belief in the Nazi promises had been a prerequisite.” The poet, playwright and socialist revolutionary Ernst Toller, who was forced into exile and stripped of his citizenship when the Nazis took power in 1933, wrote much the same in his autobiography: “The people are tired of reason, tired of thought and reflection. They ask, what has reason done in the last few years, what good have insights and knowledge done us.” After Toller committed suicide in 1939, W.H. Auden in his poem “In Memory of Ernst Toller” wrote:

We are lived by powers we pretend to understand:
They arrange our loves; it is they who direct at the end
The enemy bullet, the sickness, or even our hand.

The poor, the vulnerable, those who are not white or not Christian, those who are undocumented or who do not mindlessly repeat the cant of a perverted Christian nationalism, will be offered up in a crisis to the god of death, a familiar form of human sacrifice that plagues sick societies. Once these enemies are purged from the nation, we are promised, America will recover its lost glory, except that once one enemy is obliterated another takes its place. Crisis cults require a steady escalation of conflict. This is what made the war in the former Yugoslavia inevitable. Once one stage of conflict reaches a crescendo it loses its efficacy. It must be replaced by ever more brutal and deadly confrontations. The intoxication and addiction to greater and greater levels of violence to purge the society of evil led to genocide in Germany and the former Yugoslavia. We are not immune. It is what Ernst Jünger called a “feast of death.”

These crisis cults are, as Drucker understood, irrational and schizophrenic. They have no coherent ideology. They turn morality upside down. They appeal exclusively to emotions. Burlesque and celebrity culture become politics. Depravity becomes morality. Atrocities and murder become heroism. Crime and fraud become justice. Greed and nepotism become civic virtues. What these cults stand for today, they condemn tomorrow. At the height of the reign of terror on May 6, 1794 during the French Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre announced that the Committee for Public Safety now recognized the existence of God. The French revolutionaries, fanatical atheists who had desecrated churches and confiscated church property, murdered hundreds of priests and forced another 30,000 into exile, instantly reversed themselves to send to the guillotine those who disparaged religion. In the end, exhausted by the moral confusion and internal contradictions, these crisis cults yearn for self-annihilation.

The French sociologist Emile Durkheim in his classic book “On Suicide” found that when social bonds are shattered, when a population no longer feels it has a place or meaning in a society, personal and collective acts of self-destruction proliferate. Societies are held together by a web of social bonds that give individuals a sense of being part of a collective and engaged in a project larger than the self. This collective expresses itself through rituals, such as elections and democratic participation or an appeal to patriotism, and shared national beliefs. The bonds provide meaning, a sense of purpose, status and dignity. They offer psychological protection from impending mortality and the meaninglessness that comes with being isolated and alone. The breaking of these bonds plunges individuals into deep psychological distress. Durkheim called this state of hopelessness and despair anomie, which he defined as “ruleless-ness.”

Ruleless-ness means the norms that govern a society and create a sense of organic solidarity no longer function. The belief, for example, that if we work hard, obey the law and get a good education we can achieve stable employment, social status and mobility along with financial security becomes a lie. The old rules, imperfect and often untrue for poor people of color, nevertheless were not a complete fiction in the United States. They offered some Americans — especially those from the white working and middle class — modest social and economic advancement. The disintegration of these bonds has unleashed a widespread malaise Durkheim would have recognized. The self-destructive pathologies that plague the United States — opioid addiction, gambling, suicide, sexual sadism, hate groups and mass shootings — are products of this anomie. So is our political dysfunction. My book, “America: The Farewell Tour,” is an examination of these pathologies and the widespread anomie that defines American society.

The economic structures, even before the pandemic, were reconfigured to mock faith in a meritocracy and the belief that hard work leads to a productive and valued role in society. American productivity, as The New York Times pointed out, has increased 77 percent since 1973 but hourly pay has grown only 12 percent. If the federal minimum wage was attached to productivity, the newspaper wrote, it would be more than $20 an hour now, not $7.25. Some 41.7 million workers, a third of the workforce, earn less than $12 an hour, and most of them do not have access to employer-sponsored health insurance. A decade after the 2008 financial meltdown, the Times wrote, the average middle class family’s net worth is more than $40,000 below what it was in 2007. The net worth of black families is down 40 percent, and for Latino families the figure has dropped 46 percent. Some four million evictions are filed each year. One in four tenant households spends about half its pretax income on rent. Each night some 200,000 people sleep in their cars, on streets or under bridges. And these stark figures represent the good times Biden and the Democratic Party leaders promise to restore. Now, with real unemployment probably close to 20 percent — the official figure of 10 percent excludes those furloughed or those who have stopped looking for work — some 40 million people are at risk of being evicted by the end of the year. An estimated 27 million people are expected to lose their health insurance. Banks are stockpiling reserves of cash to cope with the expected wave of bankruptcies and defaults on mortgages, student loans, car loans, personal loans and credit card debt. The ruleless-ness and anomie that defines the lives of tens of millions of Americans was orchestrated by the two ruling parties in the service of a corporate oligarchy. If we do not address this anomie, if we do not restore the social bonds shattered by predatory corporate capitalism, the decay will accelerate.
This dark human pathology is as old as civilization itself, repeated in varying forms in the twilight of ancient Greece and Rome, the finale of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, revolutionary France, the Weimar Republic and the former Yugoslavia.

The social inequality that characterizes all states and civilizations seized by a tiny and corrupt cabal — in our case corporate — leads to an inchoate desire by huge segments of the population to destroy. The ethnic nationalists Slobodan Milošević, Franjo Tudjman, Radovan Karadžić and Alija Izetbegović in the former Yugoslavia assumed power in a similar period of economic chaos and political stagnation. Yugoslavs by 1991 were suffering from widespread unemployment and had seen their real incomes reduced by half from what they had been a generation before. These nationalist demagogues sanctified their followers as righteous victims stalked by an array of elusive enemies. They spoke in the language of vengeance and violence, leading, as it always does, to actual violence. They trafficked in historical myth, deifying the past exploits of their race or ethnicity in a perverse kind of ancestor worship, a mechanism to give to those who suffered from anomie, who had lost their identity, dignity and self-worth, a new, glorious identity as part of a master race. When I walked through Montgomery, Alabama, a city where half of the population is African-American, with the civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson a few years ago, he pointed out the numerous Confederate memorials, noting that most had been put up in the last decade. “This,” I told him, “is exactly what happened in Yugoslavia.”

A hyper-nationalism always infects a dying civilization. It feeds the collective self-worship. This hyper-nationalism celebrates the supposedly unique virtues of the race or the national group. It strips all who are outside the closed circle of worth and humanity. The world instantly becomes understandable, a black and white tableau of them and us. These tragic moments in history see people fall into collective insanity. They suspend thought, especially self-critical thought. None of this is going away in November, in fact it will get worse.

Joe Biden, a shallow, political hack devoid of fixed beliefs or intellectual depth, is an expression of the nostalgia of a ruling class that yearns to return to the pantomime of democracy. They want to restore the decorum and civic religion that makes the presidency a form of monarchy and sacralizes the organs of state power. Donald Trump’s vulgarity and ineptitude is an embarrassment to the architects of empire. He has ripped back the veil that covered our failed democracy. But no matter how hard the elites try this veil cannot be restored. The mask is off. The façade is gone. Biden cannot bring it back.

Political, economic and social dysfunction define the American empire. Our staggering inability to contain the pandemic, which now infects over 5 million Americans, and the failure to cope with the economic fallout the pandemic has caused, has exposed the American capitalist model as bankrupt. It has freed the world, dominated by the United States for seven decades, to look at other social and political systems that serve the common good rather than corporate greed. The diminished stature of the United States, even among our European allies, brings with it the hope for new forms of government and new forms of power.

It is up to us to abolish the American kleptocracy. It is up to us to mount sustained acts of mass civil disobedience to bring down the empire. It poisons the world as it poisons us. If we mobilize to build an open society, we hold out the possibility of beating back these crisis cults as well as slowing and disrupting the march towards ecocide. This requires us to acknowledge, like those protesting in the streets of Beirut, that our kleptocracy, like Lebanon’s, is incapable of being salvaged. The American system of inverted totalitarianism, as the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin called it, must be eradicated if we are to wrest back our democracy and save ourselves from mass extinction. We need to echo the chants by the crowds in Lebanon calling for the wholesale removal of its ruling class — kulyan-yani-kulyan — everyone means everyone.