CEIMSA/Bulletin 1103: The monetization of life and death - Are the Ruling Class and their ‘Useful Idiots’ aiming to kill us all? Some say yes; some say no; some say nothing!

This week we're up on the hill of Montmartre, as we put the focus on a little-known, yet defining chapter of French history: the Paris Commune. Walking around the picturesque area today, there’s little trace of the chaotic and deadly scenes that played out here just 150 years ago: a brutal civil war that came hot on the heels of a deadly Prussian siege. We look back at the Paris Commune and explore its legacy today. We also hear from historian Ludivine Bantigny.

Subject : The monetization of life and death - Are the Ruling Class and their ‘Useful Idiots’ aiming to kill us all? Some say, yes; some say, no; some say nothing!

Grenoble

May 16, 2023

Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,

We are approaching the end of the 152^nd anniversary of the 72-days of the Paris Commune (March 18 – May 28, 1871), which ended with the notorious massacre of between 30,000 and 40,000 revolutionaries in the last seven days, known throughout the world as “Bloody Week.”

In this Bulletin we conclude our presentation of Thorstein Veblen’s study of the history of industrial arts, the book we introduced and developed in Ceimsa Bulletin N°s 1098 and 1101). Beginning in Neolithic times and passing through Early Modern European history, Veblen takes us on a long tour of the work experience in Europe extending into the third quarter of the 18^th century, the conventional date of the “Industrial Revolution,” which, according to this author, "is spoken of as the era of the factory system, of large scale industry, as the age of capitalism or of free competition, or again as an era of credit economy. But as seen from the point of view of technology, and more specifically from that of workmanship as it underlies the technological system, it is best characterised as the era of the machine industry, or of the machine process."(p.299)

Here in his last chapter on this subject, Veblen continues to focus on the process of workmanship and the “contamination” that this experience imposes on the general culture of the community and on society at large.

Early in Chapter 4, which is titled “The Machine Industry,” Veblen looks back at the pre-machine era of industry and compares it to experiences in modern mechanized society.

… in these more primitive industrial systems – as also in the better days of handicraft – the workman is forever in instant control of his tools and materials; the movements made use of in the work are essentially of the nature of manipulation, in which the workman adroitly coerces the materials into shapes and relations that will answer his purpose, and in which also nothing (typically) takes place beyond the manual reach of the workman as extended by tools which his hands make use of.

Under these conditions it is a matter of relatively slight effect whether the workman does or does not rate the objects which he uses as tools and materials in quasi-personal terms or imputes to them a degree of self-direction, since they are at no point allowed to escape his manual reach and are by direct communication of his force, dexterity and judgment coerced into the forms, motions and spatial dispositions aimed at by him. His imputing some bias, bent, initiative or spiritual force or infirmity to brute matter will doubtless incapacitate him by so much for efficiently designing processes and uses for the available material facts; his creative imagination proceeds on mistaken premises and goes wrong in so far; and so this anthropomorphic interpretation must always count as a material drawback to technological mastery of the available resources and in some degree retard the possible advance in the industrial arts. But within the premises given by the industrial arts as they stand, he may still do effective work as a mechanic skilled in the manual operations prescribed by the given state of the arts. For in the mechanic industries of all these other and more archaic industrial systems the workman does the work; it may be by use of tools, and even by help of more or less extended processes in which natural forces of growth, fermentation, decay, and the like, play a material part; but the decisive fact remains that the motions and operations of such manual industry take effect at his hands and by way of his muscular force and manual reach. Where natural processes, as those of growth, fermentation or combustion, are drawn into the routine of industry, they lie, as natural processes, beyond his discretionary control; at the most he puts them in train and lets them run, with some hedging and shifting as they go on, to bring them to bear in such a way as shall suit his ends; he takes his precautions with them and then he takes the chance of their coming to the desired issue. They are not, and as he sees the work and its conditions they need not be, within his control in any- thing like the fashion in which he controls his tools and the materials employed in his manual operations; they work well or ill, and what comes of it is in some degree a matter of his fortune of success or failure, such as comes to the man who has done his best under Providence. In case of a striking outcome for good or ill from the operation of such natural processes the devout craftsman is inclined to rate it as the act of God; very much as does the devout husbandman who depends on rain rather than on irrigation. It is the part of the wise workman in such a case to take what comes, without elation or repining, in so far as these factors of success and failure are not comprised in his presumed workmanlike proficiency.(pp.304-306)

Changes accompanying the evolution from craftsmanship to the machine industry were pervasive throughout society.

The matter lies differently in the machine industry. The mechanical processes here engaged are calculable, measurable, and contain no mysterious element of providential ambiguity. In proportion as they work to the best effect, they are capable of theoretical statement, not merely approachable by rule of thumb. The designing engineer takes his measures on the basis of ascertained quantitative fact. He knows the forces employed, and, indeed, he can employ only such as he knows and only so far as he knows them; and he arranges for the processes that are to do the work, with only such calculable margin of error as is due to the ascertained aver- age infirmity of the available materials. He deals with forces and effects standardised in the same opaque terms. He will be proficient in his craft in much the same degree in which he is master of the matter-of-fact logic involved in mechanical processes of pressure, velocity, displacement and the like; not in proportion as he can adroitly impart to the available materials the workmanlike turn of his own manual force and dexterity, nor in the degree in which he may be able shrewdly to guess the run of the season or the variations of temperature and moisture that condition the effectual serviceability of natural processes in handicraft.

The share of the operative workman in the machine industry is (typically) that of an attendant, an assistant, whose duty it is to keep pace with the machine process and to help out with workmanlike manipulation at points where the machine process engaged is incomplete.¹

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¹ In a general way, the relation in which the skilled workman in the

large industries stands to the machine process is analogous to that in which the primitive herdsman, shepherd or dairymaid stand to the domestic animals under their care, rather than to the relation of the craftsman to his tools. It is a work of attendance, furtherance and skilled interference rather than a forceful and dexterous use of an implement.

His work supplements the machine process, rather than makes use of it. On the contrary the machine process makes use of the workman. The ideal mechanical contrivance in this technological system is the automatic machine. Perfection in the machine technology is attained in the degree in which the given process can dispense with manual labour; whereas perfection in the handicraft system means perfection of manual workmanship. It is the part of the workman to know the working of the mechanism with which he is associated and to adapt his movements with mechanical accuracy to its requirement. This demands a degree of intelligence, and much of this work calls for a good deal of special training besides; so that it is still true that the workman is useful somewhat in proportion as he is skilled in the occupation to which the machine industry calls him. In the new era the stress falls rather more decidedly on general intelligence and information, as contrasted with detail mastery of the minutiae of a trade; so that familiarity with the commonplace technological knowledge of the time is rather more imperative a requirement under the machine technology than under that of handicraft. At the same time this common stock of techno- logical information is greatly larger in the current state of the industrial arts; so much larger in volume, and at the same time so much more exacting in point of accuracy and detail, that this commonplace information that is requisite to any of the skilled occupations can no longer be acquired in the mere workday routine of industry, but is to be had only at the cost of deliberate application and with the help of schools.

On this head, as regards the requirements of industry in the way of general information on the part of the skilled workmen, the contrast is sufficiently marked, e. g. between Elizabethan times and the Victorian age. At the earlier period illiteracy was no obstacle to adequate training in the skilled trades. In the seventeenth century Thomas Mun includes among the peculiar and extraordinary acquirements necessary to eminent success in commerce, matters that are now easily comprised in the ordinary common-school instruction; and in so doing he plainly shows that these acquirements were over and above what was usual or would be thought useful for the common man. Even Adam Smith, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, shrewd observer as he was, does not include any degree of schooling or any similar pursuit of general information among the requisites essential to the efficiency of skilled labour. Even at that date it appears still to have been true that the commonplace information and the general training necessary to a mastery of any one of the crafts lay within so narrow a range that what was needful could all be acquired by hearsay and as an incident to the discipline of apprenticeship. Within a century after the first inception of the machine industry illiteracy had come to be a serious handicap to any skilled mechanic; the range of commonplace information that must habitually be drawn on in the skilled trades had widened to such an extent, and comprised so large a volume of recondite facts, that the ability to read came to have an industrial value; the higher proficiency in any branch of the mechanic arts presumed such an acquaintance with fact and theory as could neither be gained nor maintained without habitual recourse to printed matter. And this line of requirements has been constantly increasing in volume and urgency, as well as in the range of employments to which the demand applies, until it has become a commonplace that no one can now hope to compete for proficiency in the skilled occupations without such schooling as will carry him very appreciably beyond the three R's that made up the complement of necessary learning for the common man half a century ago.

It follows as a consequence of these large and increasing requirements enforced by the machine technology that the period of preliminary training is necessarily longer, and the schooling demanded for general preparation grows unremittingly more exacting. So that, apart from all question of humanitarian sentiment or of popular fitness for democratic citizenship, it has become a matter of economic expediency, simply as a proposition in technological efficiency at large, to enforce the exemption of children from industrial employment until a later date and to extend their effective school age appreciably beyond what would once have been sufficient to meet all the commonplace requirements of skilled workmanship.²

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²It follows also, among other secondary consequences, that the effective Industrial life of the skilled workman will, in order to the best average effect, begin at an appreciably more advanced age, and will therefore be shortened by that much. The period of preparation becomes more protracted, more exacting and more costly, and the effective life cycle of the workman grows shorter. Although it does not, perhaps, belong in precisely this connection, it may not be out of place to recall that the increasingly exacting requirements of the machine industry, particularly in the way of accurate, alert and facile conformity to the requirements of the machine process, interrupt the industrial life of the skilled workman at an earlier point in the course of senile decay. So that the industrial life-cycle of the workman is shortened both at its beginning and at its dose, at the same time that the commonplace preparation for work grows more costly and exacting.

Child labour, which once may, industrially speaking, have been an economical method of consuming the available human material, is no longer compatible with the highest industrial efficiency, even apart from any question of hardship or deterioration incident to an excessive or abusive recourse to child labour; it is incompatible with the community's material interests. Therefore the business community — the body of businessmen at large— for whose behoof the industries of the country are carried on, have a direct interest not only in extending the age of exemption from industrial employment but also in procuring an adequate schooling of the incoming generation of workmen. The business community is evidently coming to appreciate this state of the case, at least in some degree, as is evidenced by their inclination to favour instruction in the ''practical" branches in the public schools, at the public expense, as well as by the wide-reaching movement that aims to equip private and state schools that shall prepare the youth for work In the various lines of industrial employment.

The knowledge so required as a general and common- place equipment requisite for the pursuit of these modem skilled occupations is of the general nature of applied mechanics, in which the essence of the undertaking is a ready apprehension of opaque facts, in passably exact quantitative terms. This class of knowledge presumes a certain intellectual or spiritual attitude on the part of the workman, such an attitude and animus as will readily apprehend and appreciate matter of fact and will guard against the suffusion of this knowledge with putative animistic or anthropomorphic subtleties, quasi-personal interpretations of the observed phenomena and of their relations to one another. The norm of systematisation is that given by the logic of the machine process, and the scope of it is that inculcated by statistical computation and the principle of material cause and effect.

In some degree the routine of the machine industry necessarily induces such an animus in its employees, since such is the scope and method of its own working; and the closer and more exacting the application to work of this kind, the more thorough-going should be the effects of its discipline. But this routine and its discipline extend beyond the mechanical occupations as such, so as in great part to determine the habits of all members of the modem community. This proposition holds true more broadly for the current state of the industrial arts than any similar statement would hold, e. g., for the handicraft system. The ordinary routine of life is more widely and pervasively determined by the machine industry and by machine-like industrial processes today, and this determination is at the same time more rigorous, than any analogous effect that was had under the handicraft system. Within the effective bounds of modem Christendom no one can wholly escape or in any sensible degree deflect the sweep of the machine's routine.

Modem life goes by clockwork. So much so that no modem household can dispense with a mechanical time- piece; which may be more or less accurate, it is true, but which commonly marks the passage of time with a degree of exactness that would have seemed divertingly supererogatory to the common man of the high tide of handicraft. Latterly the time so indicated, it should be called to mind, is "standard time," standardised to coincide over wide areas and to vary only by large and standard units. It brings the routine of life to a nicely uniform schedule of hours throughout a population which exceeds by many fold the size of those communities that once got along contentedly enough without such an expedient under the regime of handicraft. In this matter the demands of the machine have even brought on a revision of the time schedule imposed by the mechanism of the heavenly bodies, so that not only "solar time” but even the "mean solar time" that once was considered to be a sufficient improvement on the ways of Nature, has been superseded by the schedule imposed by the railway system.

The discipline of the timepiece is sufficiently characteristic of the discipline exercised by the machine process at large in modem life, and as a cultural factor, as a factor in shaping the habits of thought of the modem peoples, it is itself moreover a fact of the first importance. Of the standardisation of the time schedule just spoken of, the earlier, the adoption of "mean solar time,” was due immediately to the exigencies of the machine process as such, which would not tolerate the seasonal fluctuations of " apparent " solar time. This epithet "apparent,” by the way, carries a suggestion that the time schedule so designated is less true to the actualities of the case than the one which superseded it. And so it is if the actualities to which regard is had are those of the machine process; whereas the contrary is true if the actualities that are to decide are those of the seasons, as they were under the earlier dispensation. "Standard time" has gone into effect primarily through the necessities of railway communication, - itself a dominant item in the mechanical routine of life; but it is only in a less degree a requirement of the other activities that go to make up the traffic of modem life. The railway is one of the larger mechanical contrivances of the machine age, and its exigencies in this respect are typical of what holds true at large. Communication of whatever kind, as well as the supply of other necessaries, is standardised in terms of time, space, quantity, frequency, and indeed in all measurable dimensions; and the "consumer," as the denizens of these machine-made communities are called, is required to conform to this network of standardisations in his demand and uses of them, on pain of "getting left" To "get left" is a colloquialism of the machine era and describes the commonest form of privation under the regime of the machine process. It is already a timeworn colloquialism, inasmuch as it is now already some time since the ubiquitous routine of the machine process first impressed on the common man the sinister eventuality covered by the phrase.

The relation in which the consumer, the common man, stands to the mechanical routine of life at large is of much the same nature as that in which the modem skilled workman stands to that detail machine process into which he is dovetailed in the industrial system. To take effectual advantage of what is offered as the wheels of routine go round, in the way of work and play, livelihood and recreation, he must know by facile habituation what is going on and how and in what quantities and at what price and where and when, and for the best effect he must adapt his movements with skilled exactitude and a cool mechanical insight to the nicely balanced moving equilibrium of the mechanical processes engaged. To live - not to say at ease - under the exigencies of this machine-made routine requires a measure of consistent training in the mechanical apprehension of things. The mere mechanics of conformity to the schedule of living implies a degree of trained insight and a facile strategy in all manner of quantitive adjustments and adaptations, particularly at the larger centres of population, where the routine is more comprehensive and elaborate.

And here and now, as always and everywhere, invention is the mother of necessity. The complex of technological ways and means grows by increments that come into the scheme by way of improvements, innovations, expedients designed to facilitate, abridge or enhance the work to be done. Any such innovation that fits workably into the technological scheme, and that in any appreciable degree accelerates the pace of that scheme at any point, will presently make its way into general and imperative use, regardless of whether its net ulterior effect is an increase or a diminution of material comfort or industrial efficiency. Such is particularly the case under the current pecuniary scheme of life if the new expedient lends itself to the service of competitive gain or competitive spending; its general adoption then peremptorily takes effect on pain of damage and discomfort to all those who fail to strike the new pace. Each new expedient added to and incorporated in the system offers not only a new means of keeping up with the run of things at an accelerated pace, but also a new chance of getting left out of the running.

The point is well seen, e. g., in the current competitive armaments, where equipment is subject to constant depreciation and obsolescence, not through decline or decay, but by virtue of new improvements. So also in the increase and acceleration of advertising that has been going on during the past quarter of a century, due to increased facilities and improved methods in printing, paper-making, and the other industrial arts that contribute to the appliances of publicity.

It is of course not hereby intended to imply that these modem inventions meet no wants but such as they themselves create. It is beyond dispute that such mechanical contrivances, for instance, as the telephone, the typewriter, and the automobile are not only great and creditable technological achievements, but they are also of substantial service. At the same time it is at least doubtful if these inventions have not wasted more effort and substance than they have saved, — that they are to be credited with an appreciable net loss. They are designed to facilitate travel and communication, and such is doubtless their first and obvious effect. But the net result of their introduction need by no means be the same. Their chief use is in the service of business, not of industry, and their great further use is in the furtherance, or rather the acceleration, of obligatory social amenities. As contrivances for the expedition of traffic both in business and in social intercourse their use is chiefly, almost wholly, of a competitive nature; and in the competitive equipment and maneuvers of business and of gentility the same broad principle will be found to apply as applies to competitive armaments and improvements in the technology of warfare. Any technological advantage gained by one competitor forthwith becomes a necessity to all the rest, on pain of defeat. The typewriter is, no doubt, a good and serviceable contrivance for the expedition of a voluminous correspondence, but there is also no reasonable doubt but its introduction has appreciably more than doubled the volume of correspondence necessary to carry on a given volume of business, or that it has quadrupled the necessary cost of such correspondence. And the expedition of correspondence by stenographer and typewriter has at the same time become obligatory on all business firms, on pain of losing caste and so of losing the confidence of their correspondents. Of the telephone much the same is to be said, with the addition that its use involves a very appreciable nervous strain and its ubiquitous presence conduces to an unremitting nervous tension and unrest wherever it goes. The largest secure result of these various modem contrivances designed to facilitate and abridge travel and communication appears to be an increase of the volume of traffic per unit of outcome, acceleration of the pace and heightening of the tension at which the traffic is carried on, and a consequent in- crease of nervous disorders and shortening of the effective working life of those engaged in this traffic. But in these matters invention is the mother of necessity, and within the scope of these contrivances for facilitating and abridging labour there is no alternative, and life is not offered on any other terms.³

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³ On the other hand the aphorism often cited, that "Necessity is the Mother of Invention," appears to be nothing better than a fragment of uncritical rationalism. It offers a rationalised, ex post facto account of changes that take place, and reflects that ancient preconception by help of which the spokesmen of edification were enabled to interpret all change as an improvement due to the achievement of some definitely foreknown end. It appears also to be consistently untrue, except so far as "invention" is to be taken as a euphemistic synonym for "prevarication." Doubtless, the felt need of ways and means has brought on many changes in technology, but doubtless also the ulterior consequences of any one of the greater mechanical inventions have in the main been neither foreseen nor intended in the designing of them. The more serious consequences, especially such as have an institutional bearing, have been enforced by the inventions rather than designed by the inventors.

Other kinds of routine, standardised and elaborate, have been or still are in force, besides this machine-like process of living as carried on under modem technological conditions; and one and another of these will at times rise to a degree of exigence quite comparable with that of the machine process. But these others are of a different character in that their demands are not enforced by sanctions of an unmediated mechanical kind; they do not fall on the delinquent with a direct mechanical impact, and the penalties of non-conformity are of a conventional nature. So, e. g., the punctilios of religious observance may come to a very rigid routine, to be observed on pain of sufficiently grave consequences; but in so far as these eventual (eschatological) consequences are statable in terms of material incidence (of fire, sulphur, or the like) the mechanically trained modem consumer will incline to hold that they are of a putative character only. So, again, in the matter of fashion and decorum the schedule of observances may be sufficiently rigorous, but here too failure to articulate with the sweep of a punctilious routine with all the sure and firm touch of the expert is not checked with an immediate disastrous impact of mechanical shock. Conformity in the technological respect with the routine of living under other technological systems than that of the machine process had also something of this character of conventional prescription; and the discipline exercised by the routine of living in these more archaic technological eras was also something more in the nature of a training m conventional expedients. The resulting growth of habits of thought in such a community should then also differ in a similar way from what comes in sight in the present.

Both in its incidence on the workman and on the members of the community at large, therefore, the training given by this current state of the industrial arts is a training in the impersonal, quantitative apprehension and appreciation of things, and it tends strongly to inhibit and discredit all imputation of spiritual traits to the facts of observation. It is a training in matter-of- fact; more specifically it is a training in the logic of the machine process. Its outcome should obviously be an unqualified materialistic and mechanical animus in all orders of society, most pronounced in the working classes, since they are most immediately and consistently ex- posed to the discipline of the machine process. But such an animus as best comports with the logic of the machine process does not, it appears, for good or ill, best comport with the native strain of human nature in those peoples that are subject to its discipline. In all the various peoples of Christendom there is a visible straining against the drift of the machine's teaching, rising at time and in given classes of the population to the pitch of revulsion.

It is apparently among the moderately well-to-do, the half-idle classes, that such a revulsion chiefly has its way; leading now and again to fantastic, archaising cults and beliefs and to make-believe credence in occult insights and powers. At the same time, and with the like tincture of affectation and make-believe, there runs through much of the community a feeling of maladjustment and discomfort, that seeks a remedy in a "return to Nature" in one way or another; some sort of a return to "the simple life," which shall in some fashion afford an escape from the unending "grind" of living from day to day by the machine method and shall so put behind us for a season the burdensome futilities by help of which alone life can be carried on under the routine of the machine process.

All this uneasy revulsion may not be taken at its face value; there is doubtless a variable but fairly large element of affectation that comes to expression in all this talk about the simple life; but when all due abatement has been allowed there remains a substantial residue of unaffected protest. The pitch and volume of this pro- test against "artificial" and "futile" ways of life is greatest in the advanced industrial countries, and it has been growing greater concomitantly with the advance of the machine era. What is perhaps more significant of actualities than these well-bred professions of discomfort and discontent is the "vacation," being a more tangible phenomenon and statable in quantitative terms. The custom of "taking a vacation" has been on the increase for some time, and the avowed need of a yearly or seasonal holiday greatly exceeds the practice of it in nearly all callings. This growing recourse to vacations should be passably conclusive evidence to the effect that neither the manner of life enforced by the machine system, nor the occupations of those who are in dose contact with this technology and its due habits of thought, can be "natural" to the common run of civilised mankind.

According to accepted theories of heredity civilised mankind should by native endowment be best fit to live under conditions of a moderately advanced savagery, such as the machine technology will not permit.⁴ Neither in the physical conditions which it imposes, therefore, nor in the habitual ways of observation and reasoning which it requires in the work to be done, is the machine age adapted to the current native endowment of the race. And these various movements of unrest and revulsion are evidence, for as much as they are worth, that such is the case.

Not least convincing is the fact that a considerable proportion of those who are held unremittingly to the service of the machine process "break down," fall into premature decay. Physically and spiritually these modern peoples are better adapted to life under conditions radically different from those imposed by this modem technology.⁵ All of which goes to show, what is the point here in question, that however exacting and how- ever pervasive the discipline of the machine process may be, it can not, after all, achieve its perfect work in the way of habituation in the population of Christendom as it stands. The limit of tolerance native to the race, physically and spiritually, is short of that unmitigated materialism and unremitting mechanical routine to which the machine technology incontinently drives.

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⁴ Cf., however, what has been said above (pp. 21-23) of the variability and adaptability of a hybrid population and the possible selective establishment of a hybrid type more suitable to current conditions of life than any one of the racial stocks out of which the hybrid population is made up.

⁵ So, e, g,, the modem technology has, directly and indirectly, brought on the growth of large cities and industrial towns, as well as an increasing density of population at large. This modem state of the industrial arts is a creation of the European community of nations, with the blond- hybrid populations leading. The population of these countries is drifting into these machine-made cities and towns, and this drift affects the blond- hybrids in a more pronounced degree than any other similarly distinguishable element in the population. At the same time the birth-rate is lower and the death-rate higher in these modem urban communities than in the open country, in spite of the fact that more attention is given to preventive sanitation in the urban than in the rural communities, and it is in the urban communities that medical attendance is most available at the same time that its most efficient practitioners congregate there. This accelerated death-rate strikes the blond-hybrids of the towns in an eminent degree; and infant mortality in the towns, particularly, runs at such a figure as to be viewed with the liveliest apprehension. In its summary effects on the viability of the modem peoples this modem technology appears to be as untoward as would their removal to an un- suitable climate. Indeed the hygienic measures that are taken or advocated as a remedy for these machine-made conditions of urban life are of much the same character and require much the same degree of meticulous attention to details that are required to preserve the life of Europeans under the precarious climatic conditions of the low latitudes. So that, for these Europeans at least, the hygienic situation created by their own technology has much of that character of a comprehensive cUnic that attaches to the British occupation of India or the later European occupation of West Africa or the Philippines.

For anything like a comprehensive view of the effects which the machine technology has had on the scope and method of knowledge in modem times it is necessary to turn back to its beginnings. Historically the machine age succeeds the era of handicraft, but the two overlap very extensively. So much so that while the era of the machine technology is commonly held to have set in something like a century and a half ago it is still too early to assert that the industrial system has cleared itself of the remnants of handicraft or that the habits of thought suitable to the days of handicraft are no longer decisive in the current legal and popular apprehension of industrial relations. The discipline of the machine process has not yet had time, nor has it had a dear field. The best that can be looked for, therefore, in the way of habits of thought conforming to the ways and means of the machine process should be something of a progressive approximation; and the considerations recited in the last few paragraphs should leave it doubtful whether anything more than an imperfect approximation to the logic of the machine process can be achieved, through any length of training, by the peoples among whom the greatest advance in that direction has already been made.

The material sciences early show the bias of the machine technology, as is fairly to be expected, since these sciences stand in a peculiarly dose relation to the technological side of industry, — almost a relation of affiliation. At no earlier period has the correlation between science and technology been so dose. And the response in respect of the scope and method of these sciences to any notable advance in technology has been sufficiently striking. As has already been indicated above, modem science at large takes to the use of statistical methods and precise mechanical measurements, and in this matter scientific inquiry has grown continually more confident and more meticulous at the same time that this mechanistic procedure is continually being applied more extensively as the technological advance goes forward. How far this statistical mechanistic bias of modem inquiry is to be set down to the account of the drift of technology toward mechanical engineering, and how far it may be due to an ever increasing familiarity with conceptions of accountancy enforced by the price system and the time schedule in daily life, may be left an open question. The main fact remains, that in much the same degree as niceties of calculation have come to dominate current technological methods and devices the like insistence on extreme niceties of mechanical measurement and statistical accuracy has also become imperative in scientific inquiry; until it may fairly be said that such meticulous scrutiny of quantitative relations as would have seemed foolish in the early days of the machine era has become the chief characteristic of scientific inquiry today.⁶ It is of course not overlooked that in this matter of quantitative scruple the relation between cur- rent technology and the sciences is a relation of mutual give and take; but this fact can scarcely be urged as an objection to the view that these two lines of expression of the modem habit of mind are closely bound together, since it is precisely such a bond of continuity between the two that is here spoken for.

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⁶ The statisticians of a hundred shears ago, e. g,, were content to work in round percentages where the latterday successors are doubtfully content with three-place decimals

As shown in the foregoing chapter, in the course of the transition to modem times and modem ways of thinking the principle of efficient cause gradually re- placed that of sufficient reason as the final ground of certitude in conclusions of a theoretical nature. This shifting of the metaphysical footing of knowledge from a subjective ground to an objective one first and most unreservedly affects the material sciences, as it should if it is at all to be construed as an outcome of the discipline exercised by the then current technology of handicraft. But the like effect is presently^ though tardily, had in other lines of systematic knowledge that lie farther from the immediate incidence of technology and secular traffic. So that by the time of the industrial revolution the like mechanistic animus had come to pervade even the philosophical and theological speculations current in those communalities that were most intimately and unreservedly touched by the discipline of craftsmanship and the petty trade.⁷

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⁷ An eminently illustrative instance of the mechanistic bias in the moral sciences b afforded by the hedonistic conceptions of the early nineteenth century; and the deistic theology of that period and earlier is no less characteristic a syrmptom of the same animus.

Cf. also, for a view running to a conclusion opposed to that spoken for above, H. Bergson, Creative Evolution (translation by Arthur Mitchell, New York, 191 1), ch. i, especially pp. 16-23; where the mechanistic conception is construed as an instinctive metaphysical norm and contrasted with the deliverances of reason and experience, which are then held to inculcate an anthropomorphic interpretation of the same facts.

By this time, — the latter part of the eighteenth century, — the material sciences (overtly) admit no principle of systematisation within their own jurisdiction other than that of efficient cause. But at that date the concept of causation still has much of the content given it by the technology of handicraft. The efficient cause is still conceived after an individualistic fashion; without grave exaggeration it might even be said that the concept of cause as currently employed in the scientific speculations of that time had something of a quasi-personal complexion. The inquiry habitually looked to some one efficient cause, engaged as creatively dominant in the case and working to its end under conditioning circumstances that might greatly affect the outcome but that were not felt (or avowed) to enter into the case with the same aggressive thrust of causality that belonged to the efficient cause proper. The "contributory circum stances" were conceived rather extrinsically as accessory to the event; "accessory before the fact," perhaps, but none the less accessory. And scientific research took the form of an inquiry into the causal nexus between an antecedent (a cause or complex of causes) and its outcome in an event. The inquiry looked to the beginning and end of an episode of activity, the outcome of which would be a finished product, somewhat after the fashion in which a finished piece of work leaves the craftsman's hands. The craftsman is the agency productively engaged in the case, while his tools and materials are accessories to his force and skill, and the finished goods leave his hands as an end achieved; and so an episode of creative efficiency is rounded off.

From an early period in the machine era a new attitude toward questions of causation comes in evidence in scientific inquiry. The obvious change is perhaps the larger scale on which the sequence of cause and effect is conceived. It is no longer predominantly a question of episodes of causal efficiency, detached and rounded off. Such detail episodes still continue to occupy the routine of investigation; necessarily so, since these empirical sciences proceed step by step in the determination of the phenomena with which they are occupied. But in an increasing degree these detached phenomena are sought to be worked into a theoretical structure of larger scope, and this larger structure of theory falls into shape as a self-determining sequence of cumulative change. The same concept of process that rules in the machine technology invades the speculations of the scientists and results in theories of cumulative sequence, in which the point of departure as well as the objective end of the sequence of causation gradually come to have less and less of a determinative significance for the course of the inquiry and for its results. In theoretical speculations based on the data of the empirical sciences, interest and attention come progressively to centre on this process of cumulative causation, so that the interest in the productive efficiency of consummation ceases gradually to be of decisive moment in the formulations of theory; which comes in this way to be an account of an unfolding process rather than a checking up of individual effects against individual causes. What once were ultimate questions have in modem science become ulterior questions and have lost their preferential place in the inquiry. Neither the seat of efficient initiative, that would be presumed to give this unfolding process of cumulative change its content and direction, nor its eventual goal, wherein it would be presumed to come to rest when the initial impulse has spent itself and its end has been compassed, — neither of these ultimates holds the attention or guides the inquiry of modem science.

It is only gradually, concomitant with the gradual maturing of the machine technology, that the systematisation of knowledge in scientific theory has come by common consent to converge on formulations of a genetic process of cumulative change. This science of the machine age is “evolutionary” in a peculiarly impersonal, indeed in a mechanistic sense of the term. In the consummate form, as it stands at the transition to the twentieth century, this evolutionary conception of genetic process is, at least ideally, void of all teleological dements and of all personality — except as personality may be concessively admitted as a by-product of the mechanistic sweep of the blind motions of brute matter. Neither the name nor the notion of a genetic evolution is peculiar to the machine age; but this current, impersonal, unteleological, mechanistic conception of an evolutionary process is peculiar to the late modem fashion of apprehending things.

It goes without saying that this mechanistic conception of process has worked clear of personation and teleological bias only gradually, by insensible decay and progressive elimination of those preconceptions of personal force and teleological fitness that ruled all theoretical knowledge in the days when the principle of sufficient reason held over that of efficient cause; and it should likewise be a matter of course that this shift to the mechanistic footing is by no means yet complete, that scientific inquiry is not yet clear of all contamination with animistic, anthropomorphic, or teleological elements; since the change is of the nature of habit, which takes time, and since the discipline of modem life to which the mechanistic habit of mind is traceable is by no means wholly consistent or unqualified in its mechanistic drift. Yet so far has the habituation to mechanistic ways of thinking taken effect, and so comprehensive and thorough has the discipline of the mar chine process been, that a mechanistic, unteleological notion of evolution is today a commonplace preconception both with scientists and laymen; whereas a hundred years ago such a conceit had intimately touched the imagination of but very few, if any; among the scientific adepts of the new era.

To what effect Lucretius and his like in classical antiquity, e. g., may have speculated and tried to speak in these premises is by no means easy to make out; nor does it concern the present inquiry, since no vital connection or continuity of habit is traceable between their achievements in this respect and the theoretical preconceptions of modem science or of the machine technology. In the course of modem times conceptions of an evolutionary sequence of creation or of genesis come up with increasing frequency, and from an early period in the machine age these conceptions take on more and more of a mechanistic character, but it is not until Darwin that such a genetic process of evolution is conceived in terms of blind mechanical forces alone, without the help of imputed teleological bias or personalised initiative. It may perhaps be an open question whether the Darwinian conception of evolution is in no degree contaminated with teleological fancies, but however that may be it remains true that a purely mechanistic conception of a genetic process in nature had found no lodgment in scientific theory up to the middle of the nineteenth century. With varying success this conception has since been assimilated by the adepts of all the material sciences, and it may even be said to stand as a tacitly postulated commonplace underlying all modem scientific theory, whether in the material or the social sciences. It is accepted by common consent as a matter of course, al- though doubtless much antique detail at variance with it stands over both in the theoretical formulations of the adepts and in popular thought, and must continue to stand over until the course of habituation may conceivably in time enforce the sole competency of this mechanistic conception as the definitive norm of systematic knowledge. Whether such an eventuality is to overtake the scope and method of knowledge in Western civilisation should apparently be a question of how protracted, consistent, unmitigated, and how far congruous with their native bent the discipline of the machine process may prove in the further history of these peoples.

As has been shown above, in its beginnings the machine technology took over the working concepts of handicraft, and it has gradually shifted from the ground of manual operation so afforded to the ground of impersonal mechanical process; but this shifting of base in respect of the elementary technological preconceptions has not hitherto been complete, much of the personal attitude of craftsmanship toward mechanical forces and structures being still visible in the work of modem technologists. In like manner, and concomitant with the transition to the machine industry, there has gone forward a like shifting in respect of the point of view and the elementary preconceptions of science. This has taken effect most largely and gone farthest in the material sciences, as should be expected from the close connection that subsists between these sciences and the technology of the machine industry; but here again the elimination of craftsmanlike conceptions has hitherto not been complete. And, what is more instructive as to the part played by technological discipline in the growth of science, the character of this change in scientific scope, method and preconceptions is somewhat obviously such as would be given by habituation to the working of the machine process. Where later scientific inquiry has departed from or overpassed the limitations imposed by the habits of thought peculiar to craftsmanship the movement has taken the direction enforced by the machine technology.

So, e. g., while the elements made use of by the ma- chine technology, and characteristic of its work, are conceptions of mass, velocity, pressure, stress, vibration, displacement, and the like, these elements are made use of only under the rule that action in any of these bearings takes effect only by impact, by contact directly or through a continuum. The mathematical computations and elucidations that are one main instrumentality employed by the technologist do not and can not include this underlying postulate of contact, since it is an assumption extraneous to those magnitudes of quantity in terms of which this technology does its work. How far this preconception that action can take place only by con- tact is to be rated as an elementary concept carried over from handicraft, where it is obviously at home and fundamental in all work of manipulation, may perhaps be an idle question. In any case the machine technology is at one with craftsmanship on this head, even though there are many features in modem industrial processes that do not involve action by contact in any such obvious fashion as to suggest its necessary assumption, as, e. g., in processes involving the use of light, heat or electricity. Yet it remains true that, by and large, the technology of the machine process is a technology of action by contact; and, apparently under stress of this wide though not necessarily universal application of the principle, the trained technologist does not rest con tent until he has in some tenable fashion construed any apparent exception as a special instance under the rule.

So also in modem scientific inquiry. The conceptual elements with which the scientist is content to work are precisely those that have commended themselves as competent in their technological use. Since action by contact is, on the whole, the working principle in the ma- chine process, it is also accepted as the prime postulate in the formulation of all exact knowledge of impersonal facts. There is, of course, no inclination here to criticise or take exception to this characteristic habit of thought that pervades modem scientific inquiry. It has done good service, and to this generation, trained in the inexorably efficient ways of the machine process, the fact that it works is conclusive of its truth. Yet the further fact is not to be overlooked that adherence to this principle is not due to unsophisticated observation simply. It is a principle, a habit of thought, not a fact of simple observation. Doubtless it is a fact of observation, direct and unambiguous, in respect of our own manual operations; and doubtless also it is a matter of such ready inference in respect of many external phenomena as to do duty as a fact of observation in good faith; but doubt- less also there are many of these external phenomena that have to be somewhat painstakingly construed to bring them under the rule. Conceivably, even if such a habit of thought had not been handed down from the experience of handicraft it might have been induced by the discipline of the machine process, and might even have been ingrained in men exposed to this discipline in sufficiently rigorous fashion to serve as a prime postulate of scientific inquiry; the machine process doubtless bears out such a principle in the main, and very rigorously. But in point of historical fact it is quite unnecessary to suppose this principle of action by contact to be a product de novo of the discipline of the machine, since it is older than the advent of the machine industry and is also quite consonant with the habits of work enforced by the technology of handicraft, more so indeed than with the technology of the machine industry. It appears fairly indubitable that this principle is a legacy taken over from the experience of life in the days of craftsmanship. And it may even be an open question whether the machine technology would not today be of an appreciably different complexion if it had, as it conceivably might have, developed without the hard and fast limitations imposed by this postulate. Doubtless, scientific inquiry, and the theoretical formulations reached by such inquiry, would differ somewhat notably from what they currently are if the scientists had gone to their work without such a postulate, or holding it in a qualified sense, as a principle of limited scope, as applying only within a limited range of phenomena, only so far as empirical evidence might enforce it in detail.

If, as seems at least presumably true, this principle of action by contact owes its origin to habits induced by manipulation, it will be seen to be of an anthropomorphic derivation. And if it further owes its acceptance as a principle universally applicable to material phenomena to the protracted discipline of life under the technology of handicraft, its universality must also take rank as an anthropomorphic imputation enforced by long habit. It is of the nature of habit, and moreover of workmanlike habit. Casting back into the past history of civilisation and into the contemporary lower cultures, it will appear that the principle (habit of thought) in question is prevalent everywhere and presumably through all human time; as it should be if it is traceable to so ubiquitous an experience as manipulation. But it will also appear that, except within the bounds, in time and space, of the high tide of craftsmanship and the machine technology, this principle does not arrogate to itself universal mandatory authority in the domain of external phenomena. Not only are the tenets of magic and theology at variance with the proposition that action can take place only by mechanical contact; but in the naive thinking of commonplace humanity outside this machine-made Western civilisation, action at a distance is patently neither imbecile nor incomprehensible as a familiar trait of external objects in their everyday behaviour.

Nor is it by any means a grateful work of spontaneous predilection, all this mechanistic mutilation of objective reality into mere inert dimensions and resistance to pressure; as witness the widely prevalent revulsion, chronic or intermittent, against its acceptance as a final term of knowledge. Laymen seek respite in the fog of occult and esoteric faiths and cults, and so fall back on the will to believe things of which the senses transmit no evidence; while the learned and studious are, by stress of the same “aching void,” drawn into speculative tenets of ostensible knowledge that purport to go nearer to the heart of reality, and that elude all mechanistic proof or disproof. This revulsion against thinking in uncoloured mechanistic terms alone runs suggestively parallel with that other revulsion, already spoken of, against the geometrically adjusted routine of conduct imposed on modem life by the machine process; the two are in great part coincident, or concomitant, both in point of the class of persons affected by each and in point of the uncertain measure of finality attending the move so made in either case. Neither the manner of life imposed by the machine process, nor the manner of thought inculcated by habituation to its logic, will fall in with the free movement of the human spirit, born, as it is, to fit the conditions of savage life. So there comes an irrepressible — in a sense, congenital — recrudescence of magic, occult science, telepathy, spiritualism, vitalism, pragmatism.⁸

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⁸ Of all these latterday revulsionary schemes of surcease from the void and irritation of the mechanistic conception, that spoken for by M. H. Bergson is doubtless the most felicitous, at the same time that it is, in its elements, the most engagingly naive. Apart from, and without prejudice to, the (doubtless very substantial) merits of this system of speculative tenets, the vogue which it has achieved appears to be due in good part to its consonance with this archaic bent of civilised human nature, already spoken of. The immanent, or rather intrinsically dominant, creative bent inherent in matter and not objectively distinguishable from it, is sufficiently suggestive of that praeter-mechanical efficacy that seems so easy of comprehension to many of the peoples on the lower levels of culture, and that affords the substantial ground of magical practices and finds untroubled expression in the more naive of their theoretical speculations. It would be a work of extreme difficulty, e. g., to set up a consistently tenable distinction between M. Bergson's élan de la vie, on the one hand, and the mana of the Melanesians (Cf. Codrington, The Melanesians, esp. ch. vii and xii), the wakonda of the Sioux (Cf. A. C. Fletcher and F. la Flesche, "The Omaha Tribe," Bureau of Ethnology, Report xxvii (1905-1906), esp. pp. 597-599), or even the hamingia of Scandinavian paganism, on the other hand.

In fact, the point of departure and support for M. Bergson's speculations appears to be nothing else than a projection, into objective reality, of the same human trait that has here been spoken of as the instinct of workmanship; this norm of initiative and efficiency which so is imposed on objective facts being then worked out with great subtlety and sym- pathetic insight, to make a comprehensive, cosmological scheme. The like projection of workmanlike initiative and efficiency, and its imputation to objective reality, both at large — as with M. Bergson — and in concrete detail, with more or less of personalisation, is one of the main, though frequently misunderstood, factors in the cosmologies that do duty as a body of science and philosophy among savages and the lower barbarians.

That the roots of this speculative scheme of "creative evolution" should reach so far into the background of human culture and draw on sources so dose to the undisciplined prime-movers of human nature, of course, in no degree derogatory to this system of theory; nor does it raise any presumption of unsoundness in the tenets that so are, in the course of elaboration, built up out of this metaphysical postulate. In point of fact, the characterisation here offered places M. Bergson's thesis, and therefore his system, precisely where he has been at pains to explain that he wishes to take his initial position in advocating his view, — at an even break with the mechanistic conception; the merits of which, as contrasted with his own thesis, will then be made to appear in the course of the further argument that is to decide between their rival claims to primacy. In point of formal and provisional legitimation, such an imputation of workmanlike efficacy at large rests on ground precisely even with that on which the mechanistic conception also rests, — viz. imputation by force of metaphysical necessity, that is to say by force of an instinctive impulse. The main theorem of causation, as well as its several mechanistic corollaries, are, in the last resort, putative traits of matter only, not facts of observation; and the like is true — in M. Bergson's argument admittedly so — of the élan de la vie, as well. So far, therefore, as regards the formally determinable antecedent probability of the two rival conceptions, the one is as good as the other; but M. Bergson's argument, running on ground of circumstantial evidence in the main, makes out at least a cogently attractive likelihood that the conception for which he speaks is to be accepted as the more fundamental, underlying the mechanistic conception, conditioning it and on occasion overruling its findings in matters that lie beyond its ascertained competence. Which would come, in a different phrasing, to saying that the imputation of creatively workmanlike efficiency rests on instinctive ground more indefeasibly intrinsic to human nature; presumably in virtue of its embodying the functioning of an instinctive proclivity less sophisticated and narrowed by special habituation, such special habituation, e. g., as that exercised by the technology of handicraft and the machine process in recent times.(pp.306-336)

Veblen concludes this final chapter of his study by emphasizing the inescapable effect labor relations have on the social environment, penetrating every aspect of the daily life of the community.

In its bearing on the growth of institutions the machine technology has yet scarcely had time to make its mark. Such institutional factors as, e. g., the common law are necessarily of slow growth. A system of civil rights is not only a balanced scheme of habitual responses to those stimuli at whose impact they take effect; it is at the same time a scheme which has the sanction of avowed common consent, such as will express itself in rating these institutional elements as facts of immemorial usage or as integrally inherent in the nature of things from the beginning. Such civil institutions take shape as prescriptive custom, and matters of habit which so are supported by broad grounds of authenticity and correlation with other elements of a prescriptive scheme of things will adapt themselves only tardily to any change in the situation or to any new bias in the drift of discipline. What happened in the matter of civil rights under the system of handicraft is an illustration in point. There need be little question but the eighteenth century scheme of Natural Rights was an outcome of the protracted discipline characteristic of the era of handicraft, and an adaptation to the exigencies of daily life under that system.

The scheme of Natural Rights, with its pimples of Natural Liberty and its insistence on individual self- help, was well adapted to the requirements of handicraft and the petty trade, whose spirit it reflects with admirable faithfulness. But it was of slow growth, as any scheme of institutions must be, in the nature of things. So much so that handicraft and the petty trade had been in effectual operation some half-a-dozen centuries, in ever increasing force, before the corresponding system of civil rights and moral obligations made good its pretensions to rule the economic affairs of the com- munity. Indeed, it is only by the latter half of the eighteenth century that the system of Natural Rights came to passable maturity and finally took rank as a secure principle of enlightened common sense; and by that time the handicraft system was giving way to the machine industry. And even then this result was reached only in the most advanced industrial community of Europe, where the discipline of handicraft and trade had had the freest scope to work out its natural bent, with the least hindrance from other dominant interests at variance with its schooling.⁹

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⁹All this, of course, neither ignores nor denies the substantial part which the jus gentium and the jus naturale of the Roman jurists and their commentators have played in the formulation of the system of Natural Rights. In point of pedigree the line of derivation of these legal principles b doubtless substantially as set forth authentically by the jurists who have spent their competent endeavors on that matter. So far as regards the English-speaking communities this pedigree runs back to Locke, and through Locke to the line of jurists and philosophers on whom that great scholar has drawn; while for the promulgation of the like system of principles more at large the names of Grotius, Pufendorf, Althusius doubtless have all the significance commonly assigned them.

So it has come about that while the S3rstem of Natural Rights is an institutional by-product of workmanship under the handicraft system and is adapted to the exigencies of craftsmanship and the petty trade, it never fully took effect in the shaping of institutions until that phase of economic life was substantially past, or until

the new era, of the machine industry and the large business brought on by the new technology, had come to rule the economic situation. So that hitherto the work of the machine industry has been organised and conducted under a code of legal rights and business principles adapted to the state of the industrial arts which the machine industry has displaced. Latterly, it is true, the requirements of the machine technology, in the way of large-scale organisation, continuity of operation, and interstitial balance of the industrial S3rstem, have begun to show themselves so patently at variance with these business principles engendered by the era of handicraft as to throw a shadow of doubt on the adequacy of these "Natural" metaphysics of natural liberty, self-help, free competition, individual initiative, and the like. But, harsh as has been the discrepancy between the received system of economic institutions on the one side and the working of the machine technology on the other, its effect in reshaping current habits of thought in these premises has hitherto come to nothing more definitive than an uneasy conviction that "Something will have to be done about it." Indeed, so far is the machine process from having yet recast the principles of industrial management, as distinct from technological procedure, that the efforts inspired in responsible public officials and public-spirited citizens by this patent discrepancy have hitherto been directed wholly to regulating industry into consonance with the antiquated scheme of business principles, rather than to take thought of how best to conduct industrial affairs and the distribution of livelihood in consonance with the technological requirements of the machine industry.

It is true, among the workmen, and particularly among those skilled workmen who have been trained in the machine technology and are exposed to the full impact of the machine's discipline, uncritical habitual faith in this institutional scheme is beginning to crumble, so far as regards that principle of Natural Rights that vests unlimited discretion in the owner of property, and so far as regards property in the material equipment of industry. But this is about as broad a proposition of such a kind as current facts of opinion and agitation will bear out, and this inchoate break with the received habitual views touching the dues and obligations of discretion in industrial matters is extremely vague and almost wholly negative. Even in those members of the community who are most directly and rigorously exposed to its discipline the machine process has hitherto wrought no such definite bias, no such positive habitual attitude of workmanlike initiative towards the conventions of industrial management as to result in a constructive deviation from the received principles.¹⁰

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¹⁰ Unless the "Syndicalist" movement is to be taken as something sufficiently definite in its principles to make it an exception to the rule.

On the other hand the business principles engendered by the habit of mind that gave rise to the system of Natural Rights has had grave consequences for workmanship under the conditions imposed by the machine industry. As has been shown in some detail in the fore- going chapter, the individualistic organisation of the work, coupled with the personal incidence of the handicraft technology, and the stress thrown on price rating and self-help by the ever increasing recourse to bargain and sale ("free contract") under that system, led in the end to the habitual rating of workmanship in terms of the price it would bring. Then as always workmanlike efficiency commanded the approval of thoughtful men, as being serviceable to the common good and as a substantial manifestation of human excellence; and at the same time, then as ever, efficient work was a source of comfort and complacency to the workman. But under the teaching of the price system efficiency came to be rated in terms of the pecuniary gain.

With the advent of the machine industry this pecuniary rating of efficiency gained a new impetus and brought new consequences for technology as well as for business enterprise. Typically, the machine industry runs on a large scale, as contrasted with handicraft, and it involves a relatively wide and exacting division of labour between workmanship and salesmanship. Under the conditions of large ownership implied in this modem industrial system the workmen no longer have, or can have, the responsibility of the pecuniary management of the industrial concern; on the other hand the same conditions of large ownership and extensive business connections require the businessmen in charge to delegate the immediate oversight of the plant and its techno- logical processes to other hands, and to devote their own energies to the pecuniary management of the concern and its transactions. Hence it follows that as the ma- chine system and the highly specialised business enterprise that goes with it reach a larger scale and a higher degree of elaboration the businessmen in charge are, by training and by progressive limitation of interest, less and less competent to take care of the technological exigencies of the machine system. But at the same

time the discretion in technological matters still rests in their hands by force of their ownership. So that, while the responsibility of technological discretion still rests on them, and cannot be fully delegated to other hands, the exigencies of business enterprise and of the training which it involves will no longer permit them to meet this responsibility in a competent fashion.

The businessmen in control of large industrial enterprises are beginning to appreciate something of their own unfitness to direct or oversee, or even to control, technological matters, and so they have, in a tentative way, taken to employing experts to do the work for them. Such experts are known colloquially as "efficiency engineers" and are presumed to combine the qualifications of technologist and accountant. In point of fact it is as accountants, capable of applying the tests of accountancy in a new field, that these experts commend themselves to the businessmen in control, and the “efficiency” which they look to is an efficiency counted in terms of net pecuniary gain. “Efficiency” in these premises means pecuniary efficiency, and only incidentally or in a subsidiary sense does it mean industrial efficiency, — only in so far as industrial efficiency conduces to the largest net pecuniary gain. All the while the businessmen retain the decisive superior discretion in their own incompetent hands, since all the while the whole matter remains a business proposition. The “staff organisation,” in which vests the superior control of these technological affairs, consistently remains an organisation of worldly wisdom, business enterprise — not of technological proficiency, — a state of things no to be remedied so long as industry is carried on for business profits.

Meantime the workmen of all kinds and grades — labourers, mechanics, operatives, engineers, experts — all imbued with the same pecuniary principles of efficiency, go about their work with more than half an eye to the pecuniary advantage of what they have in hand. The attitude of the trades-unions towards their work and towards the industrial concerns in whose employ their work is done illustrates something of the habitual frame of mind of these men, who are avowed experts in the matter of workmanship.

Latterly many inconveniences have beset the community at large as well as particular sections and classes of the industrial community, due in the main to a consistent adherence to these business principles in the management of industrial affairs. The capitalist-employers, on the one hand, have gone on the full powers with which the modem institution of ownership and its broad implications has vested them; with the result that the public at large, investors, consumers of industrial products, users of "public utility" agencies serving such needs as light, fuel, transportation, communication, amusement, etc, feel very much aggrieved; as do also and more particularly the workmen with whom the capitalist-employers do business on the lines laid down by the authentic business principles involved in the discretionary ownership of the industrial plant and resources. On the other hand the workmen, resting their case on the same common-sense view that the individual is a self-sufficient economic unit who owes nothing to the community at large beyond what he may freely undertake “'for a good and valuable consideration in hand paid,” — the workmen stand likewise on the full powers given them by the current institutions of ownership and contractual discretion, and so work what mischief they can to their employers and to the public at large, always blamelessly within the rules of the game as laid down of old on the pecuniary principles of business discretion, and in the light of such sense as their training has given them with regard to efficiency in the industries that have fallen into their hands. And then the "money power" comes in as a third pecuniarily trained factor, with ever increasing force and incisiveness, to muddle the whole situation mysteriously and irretrievably by looking after their own pecuniary interests in a fashion even more soberly legitimate and authentic, if possible, than the workmen's management of their own affairs.

Of course, all this working at cross purposes is not altogether due to trained incapacity on the part of the several contestants to appreciate the large and general requirements of the industrial situation; perhaps it is not even chiefly due to such inability, but rather to an habitual, and conventionally rightful, disregard of other than pecuniary considerations. It would doubtless appear that a trained inability to apprehend any other than the immediate pecuniary bearing of their manoeuvres accounts for a larger share in the conduct of the business- men who control industrial affairs than it does in that of their workmen, since the habitual employment of the former holds them more rigorously and consistently to the pecuniary valuation of whatever passes under their hands; and the like should be true only in a higher degree of those who have to do exclusively with the financial side of business. The state of the industrial arts requires that these several factors should cooperate intelligently and without reservation, with an eye single to the exigencies of this modem wide-sweeping technological system; but their habitual addiction to pecuniary rather than technological standards and considerations leaves them working at cross purposes. So also their (pecuniary) interests are at cross purposes; and since these interests necessarily rule in any pecuniary culture, they must decide the line of conduct for each of the several factors engaged.

These discrepancies, obstructive tactics and disserviceable practices are commonly deplored and are presumably deplorable, and they doubtless merit extensive discussion on these grounds, but their merits in this bearing do not properly come into consideration here. The matter has been brought in here not with any view of defence, denunciation or remedy, but because it is a matter of grave consequence as regards the training given by business experience to these men in whose hands the current scheme of institutions has placed the technological fortunes of the community. And whether these pecuniary tactics and practices that fill so large a place in the attention and sentiments of this generation come chiefly of a lack of insight into current technological exigencies, or of a deliberate choice of evils enforced by the pecuniary necessities of the case, still their disciplinary value as bearing on the sense of workmanship taken in its larger scope will be much the same in either case. Habituation to bargaining and to the competitive principles of business necessarily brings it about that pecuniary standards of efficiency invade (contaminate) the sense of workmanship; so that work, workmen, equipment and products come to be rated on a scale of money values, which has only a circuitous and often only a putative relation to their workmanlike efficiency or their serviceability. Those occupations and those aptitudes that yield good returns in terms of price are reputed valuable and commendable, — the accepted test of success, and even of serviceability, being the gains acquired. Workmanship comes to be confused with salesmanship, until tact, effrontery and prevarication have come to serve as a standard of efficiency, and unearned gain is accepted as the measure of productiveness.

Efficiency conduces to the common good, and is also a meritorious and commendable trait in the person who exercises it. But under the canons of self-help and pecuniary valuation the test of efficiency in economic matters has come to be, not technological mastery and productive effect, but proficiency in pecuniary management and the acquisition of wealth. Both in his own estimation and in the eyes of his fellows, the man who gains much does well; he is conceived to do well both as a matter of personal efficiency and in point of serviceability to the common good. To “do well” in modem phrase means to engross something appreciably more of the community’s wealth than falls to the common run. But since gains, and hence efficiency, are conceived in terms of price, it follows that the man, workman or businessman, who can induce his fellows to pay him well for his services or his goods is accounted efficient and serviceable; from which it follows that under this canon of pecuniary efficiency men are conceived to serve the common good somewhat in proportion as they are able to induce the community to pay more for their services than they are worth.

The businessman who gains much at little cost, who gets something for nothing, is rated, in his own as well as in his neighbors’ esteem, as a public benefactor indispensable to the community’s welfare, and as contributing to the common good in direct proportion to the amount which he has been able to draw out of the aggregate product. It is perhaps needless to call to mind that of this character are the main facts in the history of all the great fortunes; although the current accounts of their accumulation, being governed by pecuniary standards of efficiency and serviceability, dwell mainly on the services that have inured to the commimity from the traffic with which the great captains have interfered in their quest of gain. The prevalence of salesmanship, that is to say of business enterprise, and the consequent high repute of the salesman-like activities and aptitudes in any community that is organised on a price system, is perhaps the most serious obstacle which the pecuniary culture opposes to the advance in workmanship. It intrudes into the most intimate and secret workings of the human spirit and contaminates the sense of workmanship in its initial move, and sets both the proclivity to efficient work and the penchant for serviceability at cross purposes with the common good.

But under the conditions engendered by the machine technology the scope of this pecuniary standard of workmanship has been greatly enlarged. On the whole, the machine industry calls for a large-scale organisation, increasingly so as time has passed and the machine process has come more fully to dominate the industrial situation. By the same move initiative and discretion have come to vest in those who can claim ownership of the large material equipment so required, and the exercise of such initiative and discretion by these owners is loosely proportioned to the magnitude of their holdings. Smaller owners have the same freedom of initiative and discretion, in point of legal and conventional competency, — such freedom and equality between persons being of the essence of Natural Rights; but in point of practical fact, as determined by technological and business exigencies, there is but small discretion left such smaller holders. Initiative and discretion in modem industrial matters vest in the owners of the industrial plant, or in such moneyed concerns as may stand in an underwriting relation to the owners of the plant; such discretion is exercised through pecuniary transactions; and these pecuniary transactions whereby the conduct of industry is guided and controlled are entered into with a view to gain in terms of price. It is but a slight exaggeration to say that such transactions, which govern the course of industry, are carried out with an eye single to pecuniary gain, — the industrial consequences, and their bearing on the community's welfare, being matters incidental to the transaction of business. In every-day phrase, under the rule of the current technology and business principles, industry is managed by businessmen for business ends, not by technological experts or for the material advantage of the community. And in this control of industrial affairs the smaller businessmen are in great part subject to the discretion of the larger.

By ancient habit, handed down from the days of handicraft and petty trade, this pecuniary management is conventionally conceived to be directed to the production of goods and services, and the businessman is still conventionally rated as a producer and his gains accepted as a measure of his productive efficiency. In conventional speech "producer" means the owner of industrial plant, not the workmen employed nor the mechanical apparatus about which they are employed.¹¹ The "producers," "manufacturers," "captains of industry," whose interests are safeguarded by current legislation and by the guardians of law and order are the businessmen who have a pecuniary interest in industrial affairs; and it is their pecuniary interests that are so safeguarded, in the naive faith that the material interests of the community at large coincide with the opportunities for gain so secured to the businessmen.

_______

¹¹ As late as Adam Smith's time "manufacturer" still retained its etymological value and designated the workman who made the goods. But from about that time, that is to say since the machine process and the business control of industry have thoroughly taken effect, the term no longer has a technological connotation but has taken on a pecuniary (business) signification wholly; so that the term now designates a business- man who stands in none but a pecuniary relation to the processes of industry

It has already been spoken of above that the processes of industry are bound in a comprehensive system of give and take, in such a manner that no considerable fraction of this industrial system functions independently of the rest. The industrial system at large may be conceived as a comprehensive machine process, the several sub- processes of which technologically inosculate and ramify in what may be conceived as a network of elements working in a moving equilibrium, none of which can go on at its full productive efficiency except in duly balanced correlation with all the rest. This characterisation will strictly apply only so far as the machine technology has taken over the various branches of industry, but it ap- plies in a loose though by no means idle fashion also as regards those elements of the industrial system in which the machine technology has not yet become dominant. In so far as the industrial system is of this character it will also hold that the business management of any one branch or line or parcel of industries will have its effect on the rest, primarily and proximately on those other branches or lines with which the given parcel stands in immediate relations of give and take, through the market or more directly through technological correlation, — as, e. g., in the transportation system. Business management which affects a large section of this balanced system will necessarily have a wide-reaching effect on the working of the system at large. Such business control of industry, as has just been remarked above, is exercised with a view to pecuniary gain; but pecuniary gain in these premises comes from changes, and apprehended changes, in the efficiency of the various industrial processes that are touched by such control, rather than from the work-day functioning of the several items of equipment involved. The changes which so bring gain to these larger businessmen may be favourable to the effective working of industry, but they may also be unfavourable; and the opportunities for gain which they afford the larger businessmen may be equally profitable whether the disturbance in question is favourable or unfavourable to industrial efficiency. The gains to be de- rived from such disturbance are proportioned to the magnitude of the disturbance rather than to its industrial productiveness. It should follow, of course, that if the machine technology should come so to dominate the industrial situation as to bind all industry in a rigorously comprehensive balanced process, the material fortunes of the community would come to rest un- reservedly and in all details in the hands of those larger businessmen who hold the final pecuniary discretion.

In qualification of this broad proposition it is to be noted that, while the gains of the superior rank of businessmen accrue in the manner indicated, — by means of disturbances which may indifferently be favourable or unfavourable to industry, — yet in the long run it is necessarily true that the gains which so inure to the pecuniary magnates must be derived from the net product of industry and will in the long run be larger in the aggregate the more productive the community's industry is. What makes business profitable to the businessmen is, after all, their usufruct of the community’s industrial efficiency. In the long run nothing can accrue as income to the pecuniary magnates more than the surplus product of industry above the subsistence of the industrial community at large. But so long as the magnates have not come to a working arrangement on this basis and “pooled their interests” the proposition as formulated above appears to be adequate to the facts, — that the gains of these larger businessmen are a function of the magnitude of the disturbances which they create rather than of their productive effect.

It should also follow, and so far as the above characterisation holds it does follow, that the current pecuniary organisation of industry vests the usufruct of the community's industrial proficiency in the owners of the industrial equipment. Proximately this usufruct of the industrial community's technological knowledge and working capacity vests in the detail owners of the equipment, but only proximately. At the further remove it vests only in the businessmen whose command of large means enables them to create and control those pecuniary conjunctures of industry that bring about changes in the market value and ownership of the equipment.(pp.340-355)

The following 22 + items are articles and essays taken from the Anglophone social media, many of which have begun to question today’s dominant ideology of “population control,” eugenics, and genocide, as the new policy to address a ruling class conundrum of so-called “surplus population,” people around the world who are no longer able to produce profits for the owners of capital.

Sincerely,

Francis McCollum Feeley

___________

Professeur honoraire de l'Université Grenoble-Alpes
Ancien Directeur des Researches
Université de Paris-Nanterre
Director of The Center for the Advanced Study
of American Institutions and Social Movements
(CEIMSA-in-Exile)
The University of California-San Diego
http://www.ceimsa.org

“Population Decline Will Change the World for the Better”

^{Commuters crossing
crowded London Bridge on the way home from work, London, England, UK. Credit:}^{Alex
Segre/Getty Images}

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/population-decline-will-change-the-world-for-the-better/

by Stephanie Feldstein

“A future with fewer people offers increased opportunity and a healthier environment.”

Leading OB-GYN Group Took $11 Million From CDC to Push COVID Shots on Pregnant Women, Documents Reveal

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/obgyn-cdc-covid-vaccine-pregnant/?utm_source=luminate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=defender&utm_id=20230511

by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bankrolled the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to the tune of $11 million to promote COVID-19 vaccination as “safe and effective” for pregnant women, according to an investigation published this week by attorney Maggie Thorp.

“Sanctions Are War By Other Means”

https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/sanctions-are-war-by-other-means?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

by James Corbett

Were you aware that nearly one-third of the planet is under economic sanctions of one sort or another?

No? Why not? Even those who don't pay much attention to the nexus between geopolitics and economics are likely to find that to be a shocking statistic. For those who do pay attention to that nexus it's even more shocking because they know that economic sanctions are not just some abstract economic concept. Quite the contrary.

Imposing sanctions on a country is a way of waging war against that country. It's not just that economic embargoes can cripple nations' economies nor that they tend to disproportionately affect innocent civilians. No, the reality is even more stark than that: sanctions kill.

Don't believe me? Let's look at some of the examples of how sanctions have been used throughout history as a tool of warfare.

₊

“American Psychosis - Chris Hedges on the US empire of narcissism and psychopathy”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpU5JtZEST8&feature=youtu.be

with Chris Hedges

(14:43)

Chris Hedges on the US empire of narcissism and psychopathy. Directed by Amanda Zackem http://www.americancanary.org Short film by American Canary. UNM is currently in production of the documentary, Ecosophia featuring Chris Hedges, David Holmgren, Vandana Shiva, Prof. Tim Garrett, Prof. Paul Ehrlich, Prof. William Ophuls and many others. To support the production please consider renting or buying our new documentary, Spiritually Incorrect only available on Films For Action http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/s... an activist feature film of the spiritual /political / environmental kind inspired by Thomas Berry - "The environmental crisis in fundamentally a spiritual crisis".

“How COVID Turned People Into Fascists – Explained By Psychologist!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcloijv9kW8

with Jimmy Dore and Mattias Desmet

(47:31)

The COVID crisis ushered in an episode of “mass psychosis” among the populace where rationality, critical thinking and skepticism flew out the window. As a result of increasing anxiety, loneliness and isolation among the population, COVID arrived at a crucial time to “infect” the masses with a collective hypnosis where the dominant narrative could not be questioned — all this according to University of Ghent professor of psychoanalytic psychotherapy Mattias Desmet.

‘Data Are Unequivocal’: Florida Surgeon General Fires Back at FDA, CDC on COVID Vaccines

https://childrenshealthdhttps://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/joseph-ladapo-cdc-fda-answers-covid-vaccines/?utm_source=luminate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=defender-wk&utm_id=20230514

by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.

Claiming that a “lack of transparency only harms Americans’ faith in science,” Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, M.D., Ph.D., this week once again called on the nation’s top public health officials to “publicly” explain 12 key issues related to the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

“Exposing Fauci’s COVID Cover-Up”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AShhX1B335M&feature=youtu.be

with Matt Kibbe and Rand Paul

(35:02)

In a New York Times interview, Dr. Anthony Fauci claimed that he sleeps just fine, but if he’s at all concerned about the devastating consequences of his actions, he should have a lot of sleepless nights. Matt Kibbe and Sen. Rand Paul discuss the series of terrible decisions Fauci made during his handling of the pandemic and his continued equivocation and evasion under questioning. As ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Paul is demanding answers: Where did the novel coronavirus actually come from? Who funded it? Is gain-of-function research still going on, and could it lead to more man-made viruses being released in the future?

“British empire killed 165 million Indians in 40 years: How colonialism inspired fascism”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob_lIQRAnYM&feature=youtu.be

by Geopolitical Economy Report

A scholarly study found that British colonialism caused approximately 165 million deaths in India from 1880 to 1920, while stealing trillions of dollars of wealth. The global capitalist system was founded on European imperial genocides, which inspired Adolf Hitler and led to fascism.

“Britain denies its colonial crimes from India to China”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImXERL6FOH8

by Vijay Prashad

(8:01)

Monthly Review Press

“THE POLITICS OF GENOCIDE”
http://ceimsa.org/publications/Scholars/2010.3.pdf

by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, February 2010

“Children ‘bear the brunt’ as Israel targets Gaza homes”

https://electronicintifada.net/content/children-bear-brunt-israel-targets-gaza-homes/37711

by Maureen Clare Murphy and Ali Abunimah

Reality Asserts Itself

“Why Didn’t Bush/Cheney Prevent 9/11?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdCAKYYH3Yo

with Paul Jay and John Kiriakou, April 24, 2015

(20:59)

On Reality Asserts Itself, Mr. Kiriakou and Paul Jay discuss the role of the White House in ignoring the CIA’s warning that “something terrible” was coming

===========

“Ukraine’s Big Mistake”

https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/08/ukraines-big-mistake/

by Natylie Baldwin

Renfrey Clarke is an Australian journalist. Throughout the 1990s he reported from Moscow for Green Left Weekly, of Sydney. He is the author of The Catastrophe of Ukrainian Capitalism: How Privatisation Dispossessed & Impoverished the Ukrainian People published by Resistance Books in 2022. Here is my interview with him, earlier this month.

Natylie Baldwin: You point out in the beginning of your book that Ukraine’s economy had significantly declined by 2018 from its position at the end of the Soviet era in 1990. Can you explain what Ukraine’s prospects looked like in 1990? And what did they look like just prior to Russia’s invasion?

Renfrey Clarke: In researching this book I found a 1992 Deutsche Bank study arguing that of all the countries into which the U.S.S.R. had just been divided, it was Ukraine that had the best prospects for success. To most Western observers at the time, that would have seemed indisputable.

Ukraine had been one of the most industrially developed parts of the Soviet Union. It was among the key centres of Soviet metallurgy, of the space industry and of aircraft production. It had some of the world’s richest farmland and its population was well-educated even by Western European standards.

Add in privatisation and the free market, the assumption went, and within a few years Ukraine would be an economic powerhouse, its population enjoying first-world levels of prosperity.

Fast-forward to 2021, the last year before Russia’s “Special Military Operation,” and the picture in Ukraine was fundamentally different. The country had been drastically de-developed, with large, advanced industries (aerospace, car manufacturing, shipbuilding) essentially shut down.

World Bank figures show that in constant dollars, Ukraine’s 2021 Gross Domestic Product was down from the 1990 level by 38 percent. If we use the most charitable measure, per capita GDP at Purchasing Price Parity, the decline was still 21 percent. That last figure compares with a corresponding increase for the world as a whole of 75 percent.

To make some specific international comparisons, in 2021 the per capita GDP of Ukraine was roughly equal to the figures for Paraguay, Guatemala and Indonesia.

What went wrong? Western analysts have tended to focus on the effects of holdovers from the Soviet era, and in more recent times, on the impacts of Russian policies and actions. My book takes these factors up, but it’s obvious to me that much deeper issues are involved.

In my view, the ultimate reasons for Ukraine’s catastrophe lie in the capitalist system itself, and especially, in the economic roles and functions that the “centre” of the developed capitalist world imposes on the system’s less-developed periphery.

Quite simply, for Ukraine to take the “capitalist road” was the wrong choice.

Baldwin: It seems as though Ukraine went through a process similar to that in Russia in the 1990s, when a group of oligarchs emerged to control much of the country’s wealth and assets. Can you describe how that process occurred?

Russia Concludes Investigations on Donbass Genocide

https://www.globalresearch.ca/russia-concludes-investigations-donbass-genocide/5819003

by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

After in-depth investigations, the number of civilian casualties in the Donbass genocide has finally been revealed. A Russian committee was for a long time in charge of ascertaining the precise number of dead and wounded civilians in the conflict, as well as the data of each of the identified victims. The outcome of this process exposes that thousands of civilians were murdered by the Kiev regime, thus confirming all previous reports by local sources.

The Investigative Committee of Russia showed in its final report that more than 5,000 ordinary citizens of Donbass have been killed by the Ukrainian armed forces and their allied neo-Nazi militias since the beginning of hostilities in 2014. In addition to data on the dead, the Committee also observed the number of non-lethal victims and distinguished the exact figure of affected minors among them.

The disclosure of the data was made by the head of the Committee, Aleksandr Bastrykin, during the International Youth Legal Forum, in Saint Petersburg, on May 10th. On the occasion, he also explained in detail the investigation methods used by the committee, saying that the group acted both remotely and on the field, collecting the greatest possible number of evidence and exposing the cases in detail.

“Between 2014 and late April of 2023, more than 5,000 people were killed, including 138 minors. As many as 9,528 civilians, including 444 minors, were wounded (…) First, [we did it] remotely, and then in the territories. We uncover the facts of mass civilian graves (…) They simply find pleasure in killing a civilian – a child, a woman”, the Committee’s head said during the event.

The numbers are really impressive, mainly considering the circumstances in which these civilians died. Although a civil war started in Ukraine in 2014, both parties to the conflict signed ceasefire agreements in Minsk later that year, promising to reach a peaceful resolution to the problem. This obviously never happened, but the intensity of the fighting decreased significantly from the beginning of 2015. From that period onwards, most of the hostilities were unilateral attacks by Kiev’s forces, with Donbass militias insisting on respecting the Minsk Accords and acting defensively.

In other words, Kiev murdered over 5,000 over the course of the years predominantly through one-sided terrorist-like attacks. The regime could not even argue in its favor that the civilian deaths are side effects of combat operations, as most of these deaths seem to have occurred during periods when Kiev attacked the Donbass alone, without real combat situations.

And this Ukrainian practice only intensified after the start of the Russian special military operation. It has been constant practice for the forces of the neo-Nazi regime to attack civilian and demilitarized areas of Donbass with missiles. Schools, hospitals, public markets and other civilian facilities without any military relevance are among the main targets of Ukrainian artillery, even in a situation of open conflict and with numerous Russian military to be targeted. Apparently, for Kiev killing civilians is a kind of “priority”.

There are two reasons for this, one “strategic” and another ideological. The “strategic” factor works in partnership with the mainstream media. Kiev bombs civilian areas in false flag operations, blaming the Russians for the attacks and thus seeking justifications in public opinion to receive more weapons from NATO and continue its war machine. On the other hand, the ideological factor is even stronger and more important: Kiev attacks civilian areas because the regime implemented in 2014 is deeply Russophobic, based on anti-Russian racism and in the Western-sponsored project of “de-Russification” of Ukraine.

Brutal practices such as mass murder, bombing of civilians and other violent attitudes coexist with attempts at cultural genocide. The ban on Russian language, literature and music is an example of how Kiev, encouraged by NATO, tries to remove the Russian element from Ukrainian history and culture. In the same vein is the religious persecution implemented against the Russian Orthodox Church. In fact, all Western-Ukrainian efforts seem to be aimed at absolutely eliminating Russia.

A point that also must be emphasized is that Kiev has throughout these nine years tried to exterminate the people of Donbass also by non-military means. Blocking roads and water, food and energy supply are clear evidence of this. For example, until today access to water, which is a basic right, has not been normalized in Donetsk – and probably will not be until Russian troops gain full control over the entire territory of the oblast. The Ukrainian strategy consists of encircling and “suffocating” the Russian people in every possible way.

Indeed, in addition to all these circumstances, the results of the Investigative Committee make even clearer what was already known: there is an attempt at ethnic cleansing and genocide against Russian citizens in the territory claimed by Ukraine.

“Sowing Seeds of Plunder: A Lose-Lose Situation in Ukraine”

https://off-guardian.org/2023/05/13/sowing-seeds-of-plunder-a-lose-lose-situation-in-ukraine/

by Colin Todhunter

It’s a lose-lose situation for Ukrainians. While they are dying, financial institutions are insidiously supporting the consolidation of farmland by oligarchs and Western financial interests.

So says Frédéric Mousseau, Policy Director of the Oakland Institute, an independent think tank.

Depending on which sources to believe, between 100,000 and 300,000 Ukrainian soldiers (possibly more) have died during the conflict with Russia. That figure, of course, does not include civilian casualties.

But it is not the purpose of this article to explore these issues. Much has already been written on this elsewhere. But billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware has been sent to Ukraine by the NATO countries and hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians have died.

They died in the belief that they were protecting their nation – their land. A land that is among the most fertile in the world.

Professor Olena Borodina of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine says:

Today, thousands of rural boys and girls, farmers, are fighting and dying in the war. They have lost everything. The processes of free land sale and purchase are increasingly liberalised and advertised. This really threatens the rights of Ukrainians to their land, for which they give their lives.”

Borodina is quoted in the February 2023 report by the Oakland Institute War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land, which reveals how oligarchs and financial interests are expanding control over Ukraine’s agricultural land with help and financing from Western financial institutions.

Aid provided to Ukraine in recent years has been tied to a drastic structural adjustment programme requiring the creation of a land market through a law that leads to greater concentration of land in the hands of powerful interests. The programme also includes austerity measures, cuts in social safety nets and the privatisation of key sectors of the economy.

Frédéric Mousseau, co-author of the report, says:

“Despite being at the centre of news cycle and international policy, little attention has gone to the core of the conflict — who controls the agricultural land in the country known as the breadbasket of Europe. [The] Answer to this question is paramount to understanding the major stakes in the war.”

The report shows the total amount of land controlled by oligarchs, corrupt individuals and large agribusinesses is over nine million hectares — exceeding 28% of Ukraine’s arable land (the rest is used by over eight million Ukrainian farmers).

The largest landholders are a mix of Ukrainian oligarchs and foreign interests — mostly European and North American as well as the sovereign fund of Saudi Arabia. A number of large US pension funds, foundations and university endowments are also invested in Ukrainian land through NCH Capital – a US-based private equity fund, which is the fifth largest landholder in the country.

President Zelenskyy put the land reform into law in 2020 against the will of the vast majority of the population who feared it would exacerbate corruption and reinforce control by powerful interests in the agricultural sector.

The Oakland Institute notes that, while large landholders are securing massive financing from Western financial institutions, Ukrainian farmers — essential for ensuring domestic food supply — receive virtually no support. With the land market in place, amid high economic stress and war, this difference of treatment will lead to more land consolidation by large agribusinesses.

Biden family 'got $1 MILLION from ROMANIA' while Joe vowed to clean up corruption

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57545.htm

GOP 'influence-peddling' probe into $10M in foreign cash reveals Hunter set up 15 companies AFTER his dad became VP and lay out how money came from China

· A 'Second Records Memorandum' expands on information the House Oversight Committee received from subpoena returns into Biden family bank docs

· The memo specifically outlines the Biden family's ties to Romanian 'influence peddling' and a web of LLCs created while Biden was vice president

· Hunter Biden and his associates formed 'at least 15' of those companies, after Biden took the office of the vice president in 2009

Republicans are digging in on over $10 million received by Biden family members from foreign actors, including previously undisclosed $1 million in Romanian-linked payments, and a 'web' of 20 companies created while President Joe Biden was vice president and pushing anti-corruption efforts abroad.

On Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Republicans led by Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., released a 'Second Records Memorandum' that expands on information it received from subpoena returns as the committee continues its investigation into the Biden family's business practices.

The memo specifically outlines the Biden family's ties to Romanian 'influence peddling' and a web of LLCs created while Biden was vice president. It also accuses President Biden for a 'lack of transparency' regarding his family's receipt of funds from China, which he has said are 'not true.'

It details the efforts by the family to hide, conceal and confuse sources of money - including more China money, according to a committee aide.

'It is inconceivable that the president did not know it, and the White House refuses to correct the President's statement ... the president is now using the federal government to run interference for his family and his own role in these schemes,' said Comer during a press conference announcing the memo Wednesday.

During Biden's time as vice president, there were 20 companies affiliated with certain Biden family members created intentionally with a 'complicated corporate structure' the memo states.

Hunter Biden and his associates, including Rob Walker, formed 'at least 15' of those companies, after Biden took the office of the vice president in 2009.

Several of those entities including Owasco P.C. - which Hunter owned - Hudson West III, LLC, Robinson Walker, LLC, and Rosemont Seneca Bohai, LLC, accepted funds from foreign companies ranging from $5,000 to $3 million, the committee says.

This specifically is 'evidence of influence peddling and a correlation between Biden family and their business associates' work, allege the Republicans who point to multiple anti-corruption speeches and meetings with Romanian leaders then-Vice President Biden engaged in between 2014 and 2015.

The Romanian transactions outlined in the bank records released by the committee were from Cypriot - a company controlled by Gabriel Popoviciu, who was at the time under investigation for criminal corruption in Romania and later convicted for bribery-related offenses.

Between 2015 and 2017, Robinson Walker, LLC received $3 million from Bladon Enterprises Limited - Popoviciu's Cypriot company - which was then paid out to Biden family members in a total sum of over $1 million.

Bombshell! Biden Family Took MILLION$ From China, Romania & Others!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghtA6B_zRRs

with Jimmy Dore

(12:31)

House Republicans have begun investigating the Biden family’s financial operations around the globe and claim to have unearthed documents revealing highly suspicious dealings that netted Hunter, Joe and company millions of dollars from Romania, China and elsewhere. Were the Bidens trading on their power, influence and connections to enrich themselves? That’s what Republicans appear poised to find out.

“Global North and Global South at War?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFq4QbOUkMo

with David Woo

(11:33)

“Bold gambits on the West Asian chessboard”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57541.htm
by Pepe Escobar

In the Great Power competition, everything is connected: Uncertain negotiations between Russia and NATO over Ukraine may be impacted by Turkiye’s post-election pivot and Syria's return to the Arab League.

West Asia is a region that is currently experiencing a great deal of geopolitical activity. Recent diplomatic efforts, initiated by Russia and overseen by China, secured a long-elusive Iranian and Saudi Arabian rapprochement, while Syria’s return to the Arab League has been welcomed with great fanfare. The diplomatic flurry signals a shift away from the Imperial “Divide and Rule” tactics that have been used for decades to create national, tribal, and sectarian rifts throughout this strategic region.

The proxy war in Syria, backed by the Empire and its terror outfits – including the occupation of resource-rich territories and mass theft of Syrian oil – continues to rage on despite Damascus having gained the upper hand. That advantage, weakened in recent years by a barrage of western economic killer sanctions, is now growing exponentially: the Syrian state was further bolstered by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s recent official visit – pledging to expand bilateral ties – on the eve of Syria’s return to the Arab League.

“Assad must go” – a meme straight out of collective western hubris – in the end, did not go. Imperial threats notwithstanding, those Arab states that had sought to isolate the Syrian president came back to praise him all over again, led by Moscow and Tehran.

Syria is extensively discussed in informed circles in Moscow. There’s a sort of consensus that Russia, now concentrated in the “all or nothing” proxy war against NATO, will not currently be able to impose a Syrian peace solution, but that doesn’t preclude the Saudis, Iranians, and Turks fronting a Russian-led deal.

Had it not been for the aggressive behavior of Straussian neo-cons in the Washington Beltway, a comprehensive multi-territorial peace could have been achieved, including everything from Syria’s sovereignty, to a demilitarized zone in the Russian western borderlands, stability in the Caucasus, and a degree of respect for international law.

However, such a deal is unlikely to materialize, and instead, the situation in West Asia is likely to worsen. This is due in part to the fact that the North Atlantic has already shifted its focus to the South China Sea.

An impossible ‘peace’. . . .

“Catastrophe: The Global Cost of the Ukraine War”

https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/06/catastrophe-the-global-cost-of-the-ukraine-war/

by Carl Conetta

The Russia-Ukraine war has been a disaster for Ukraine, obviously – but also a calamity for the entire world. Ukraine has already suffered levels of death and destruction reminiscent of the height of the Yugoslav wars (1992-1995, 1998-1999) and the worst months of the Iraq War (2003-2011, 2014-2018); It even calls to mind the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.[1] The wealth, tenacity, and exceptional military power of the contestants – Russia, Ukraine, and USA-NATO – have made for a high-intensity war. Although physical destruction has been largely limited to Ukraine, the other effects of the war have not been limited. The impact on life and livelihood outside the combatant countries has been profound. In fact, many more people have died outside Ukraine due to the conflict than inside.

The war’s acute global effect is due partly to the importance of Russia and Ukraine to global agricultural and energy production. Amplifying this, however, is the intentional global economic warfare – sanctions, blockades, embargoes – that has accompanied the fighting. And that is only part of the war’s broader impact.

The conflict and the economic warfare it involves, have driven up food and energy prices worldwide, disrupted world trade, helped stall and reverse post-pandemic economic recovery, and drawn scarce resources away from other humanitarian crises and economic development efforts. The collateral effects of the war mean not only years of additional acute hardship for a billion global citizens and lowered living standards for billions more, but also reduced action on other global threats including climate change and health crises.

“The Nord Stream Explosions: New Revelations About Motive, Means and Opportunity”

https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/09/the-nord-stream-explosions-new-revelations-about-motive-means-and-opportunity/

by James Bamford

As new details emerge about the pipeline blasts, they also prompt questions: What did US intelligence know about the biggest whodunit of the century, when did they know it, and how did they know it?

“War for Profit: A Very Short History”

^{THE ARMS
PRODUCTION IN BRITAIN IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR}^{Women workers operate copper turning machines at the
Royal Shell Factory (3), Woolwich, London, May 1918. Lewis, George P.
(Photographer), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons}

https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/09/war-for-profit-a-very-short-history/

by Brad Wolf

As they did over a century ago ahead of World War I, the Merchants of Death thrive behind a veil of duplicity and slick media campaigns.

“Poland Should Leave the American Sector Now!”

https://www.globalresearch.ca/poland-should-leave-american-sector-now/5819057

by Konrad Rękas

American domination over Poland should be analysed on several levels. First, there is direct political and administrative control and this is not only about the sphere of intergovernmental and interallied arrangements. Working in the regional council years ago, I was surprised to learn that the American Embassy conducts regular briefings and teleconferences with the provincial governors, i.e. regional government representatives (in the rank corresponding to a deputy minister in the Polish system). Lower functionaries of the American diplomatic mission in Poland receive reports and issue direct orders to high- and middle-level Polish officials, managing straight on local matters, including elements of transport system, airports and highways construction, border crossing management, and of course public order and security. For Poles, such a positioning of a foreign Embassy, completely openly and officially above the structures of the state, evokes an unambiguous association with the period of the collapse of the Polish state in the 18th Century, when similar practices were typical for the ambassadors of the Russian, Prussian and Austrian empires. Even during Soviet period, control was more discreet and less ostentatious.

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“The Army We Don't See”

https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/11/the-army-we-dont-see/

by Andrea Mazzarino

The Private Soldiers Who Fight in America’s Name.

1982 SPECIAL REPORT: “THE CIA/NAZI CONNECTION”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXFLYOHCGdw

by Hezakya Newz

(26:38)

“Honest and idealist … enjoys good food and wine … unprejudiced mind …”

That’s how a 1952 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) assessment described Nazi ideologue Emil Augsburg, an officer at the infamous Wannsee Institute, the SS think tank involved in planning the Final Solution. Augsburg’s SS unit performed “special duties,” a euphemism for exterminating Jews and other “undesirables” during the Second World War. Although he was wanted in Poland for war crimes, Augsburg managed to ingratiate himself with the U.S. CIA, which employed him in the late 1940s as an expert on Soviet affairs. Recently released CIA records indicate that Augsburg was among a rogue’s gallery of Nazi war criminals recruited by U.S. intelligence agencies shortly after Germany surrendered to the Allies. Pried loose by Congress, which passed the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act three years ago, a long-hidden trove of once-classified CIA documents confirms one of the worst-kept secrets of the cold war–the CIA’s use of an extensive Nazi spy network to wage a clandestine campaign against the Soviet Union.

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“Ecuador & Assange: The Back Story”

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/05/13/watch-cn-live-ecuador-assange-the-back-story/

with Elizabeth Vos, Joe Lauria, and Carlos Poveda

Carlos Poveda, Julian Assange’s lawyer in Ecuador, speaks to CN Live! to discuss Ecuador’s decision to grant Assange asylum; the C.I.A. spying in the embassy in London; Assange’s arrest and his lawsuit against the Ecuadorian government.

Brazilian President Lula da Silva Calls for Freedom For Julian Assange

https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/08/brazilian-president-lula-da-silva-calls-for-freedom-for-julian-assange/

by Common Dreams Staff

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva has called for freedom for Julian Assange and denounced the lack of concerted efforts to free the journalist.

Lula spoke to a group of reporters in London Saturday while in town to attend the coronation of King Charles III.

Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has spent four years in Britain’s Belmarsh Prison while fighting extradition to the United States.

“It is an embarrassment that a journalist who denounced trickery by one state against another is arrested, condemned to die in jail and we do nothing to free him. It’s a crazy thing,” Lula told reporters. “We talk about freedom of expression; the guy is in prison because he denounced wrongdoing. And the press doesn’t do anything in defense of this journalist. I can’t understand it.”

Media Monopolies and Prosecution of Assange Drive Drop in US Press Freedom Rank

https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/09/media-monopolies-and-prosecution-of-assange-drive-drop-in-us-press-freedom-rank/

by Mark Taylor-Canfield

CODEPINK cofounder Medea Benjamin interrupted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a Washington Post-sponsored World Press Freedom Day event on May 3, taking the stage where a Post journalist was interviewing Blinken. Benjamin demanded that the U.S. and United Kingdom free imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

A group of men in suits, presumably Secret Service agents, immediately charged onto the stage and forcibly removed Benjamin and another activist who joined her. Blinken, however, failed to address either Assange’s persecution or the U.S.’s continued decline in press freedom after the disruption.

Assange faces extradition to the U.S. on Espionage Act charges for his role in publishing secret U.S. military documents, even though he collaborated with several major newspapers, including The New Year Times, in exposing corruption and deception by U.S. government officials.

Benjamin’s protest took place shortly after Reporters Without Borders released the new World Press Freedom Index at the gathering in a short video presentation, revealing that the U.S. dropped in its ranking from 42nd in 2022, to 45th this year. The drop continues the U.S.’s steady fall in its ranking since at least 2002, when it was ranked 17th in the world in terms of press freedom.

Worldwide, at least seven media workers have been killed and 568 are currently being detained or imprisoned this year. Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists report that 2023 is on track to become the worst year for reporters amid the rise of authoritarian regimes and democratic backsliding on press freedom protections. The United Nations celebrated the 30-year anniversary of its designation of May 3 as World Press Freedom Day.

Matt Taibbi: Report on the Censorship-Industrial Complex: The Top 50 Organizations to Know

^{Illustration by
mrmooremedia.com}

https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/11/matt-taibbi-report-on-the-censorship-industrial-complex-the-top-50-organizations-to-know/

by Susan Schmidt, Andrew Lowenthal, Tom Wyatt, Techno Fog, Matt Orfalea, Matt Taibbi and The Hunt for Tom Clancy

“The Twitter Files: The Censorship Industrial Complex”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDVKR5uVPmM

with Matt Taibbi

(1:01:56)

“The ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex’: Report Names Top 50 Groups Working to Censor Americans”

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/censorship-industrial-complex-americans/?utm_source=luminate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=defender&utm_id=20230512

by W. Aaron Vandiver

Journalist Matt Taibbi’s Racket News on Wednesday published a comprehensive report on the top 50 organizations engaged in censorship of so-called “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

“Journalists-on-Journalists Crime”

https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/06/patrick-lawrence-journalists-on-journalists-crime/

by Patrick Lawrence

I’ve read a lot of smear since Fox News dismissed Tucker Carlson as its premier evening news presenter late last month. How could I not? It was everywhere, and more fecal matter is being flung Carlson’s way as we speak. My favorite in this line so far comes from The American Prospect. “Farewell to a Neo–Nazi Blowhard” was the head on its piece last week. Carlson, you see, is a “neofascist,” TAP wants us to know.

What hollow hyperbole. How few are the level heads in mainstream media these days. How cavalierly do our liberal media debase the English language. How difficult it is to take journalists seriously as they attack another journalist because his views do not match theirs.

What can we learn from all the unhinged denunciations we read daily? What do they tell us about the predicaments of independent minds in journalism—and no matter what you think of Carlson, he has one—and by extension independent journalism altogether?

In my read, independent media are in a state of siege that has escalated markedly of late. Although he worked for a corporate-owned cable network, I take Carlson’s fate as symptomatic of an intensifying attack on any media that deviate from the national security state’s ever more rigorously enforced orthodoxies.

The past week brings grim news of the determination of political elites and deeply insecure mainstream media to stifle dissent in wall-to-wall fashion. It is time to pay close attention. This is more now than the grousing of a few independent journalists such as your columnist. Everything up to how we live and think is at stake.

===========

“Head of Russia's Space Agency Drops Bombshell Claim: Did America Fake the Moon Landing?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT7Mxl9U8sY&feature=youtu.be

with Clayton and Natali Morris

(12:00)

Did the U.S. really land on the moon? A former astronaut throws some serious shade on that possibility and he's got some compelling evidence.

Drugged-Up and Ready to Kill

https://www.globalresearch.ca/drugged-up-ready-kill/5819075

by Mike Whitney

“Psychiatric treatment and psychiatric drugs are the common denominator of the growing number of shootings and other acts of violence, which are soaring right along with the soaring prescribing of psych drugs.”

See also: Killers on Psych Drugs

Here’s a question that every American should be able to answer: What percentage of the killers—that have carried out mass shootings across the United States—were on powerful psychiatric medications?

· a—1%

· b—25%

· c—50%

· d—75% or more

Why don’t we know the answer to this question? Doesn’t the United States have more mass shootings than any country in the world?

· Yes, it does.

And aren’t these shootings the source of great suffering and anxiety?

· Yes, they are.

And don’t most people genuinely want to know why these lone gunman feel compelled to kill innocent people?

· Yes, they do.

Then, why don’t we know? Why—after more than two decades of these bloody incidents—do we still not have a definitive, thoroughly-researched answer to this one simple question: How many of these mentally-disturbed killers were on dangerous psychiatric medications?

Instead, the media pursues a line of inquiry that fails to reveal anything even remotely conclusive about the gunman’s actions. If “white supremacy” or “Nazi ideology” impacted the killer’s decision to go on a deadly shooting spree in Texas, then why didn’t he target a black community center or a Jewish synagogue? Wouldn’t that have been more consistent with his alleged ideology?

Yes, it would have been, which suggests that his alleged ideology is a symptom of his fragile mental condition not the primary factor driving his behavior. The reason these people go on crazed killing sprees is because they are ‘damaged goods’ not because they are ideologues. There’s a big difference.

So, why does the media keep harping on this silly the idea that the killer’s behavior was effected by his feelings about “white supremacy” or “Nazi ideology”? It’s ridiculous, after all, the killer was not white himself nor were his victims racially targeted. They were merely random passersby strolling through a shopping mall. In other words, there is no evidence to support the case that is being made by the media. But—here’s the thing—the media doesn’t care about evidence because their real goal is to advance a political agenda aimed at linking violent fanatical behavior to race-based uber-nationalism. What they are trying to do, is make a subliminal connection between the erratic behavior of a ruthless killer and the sincerely-felt patriotism of many Trump supporters. The media has been hammering away at this same theme for over six years culminating in the January 6 fraud. This is just the latest iteration of the same tedious political psy-ops.

If the journalists were serious about investigating this latest bloody incident, they’d try to find out whether the killer had been on the FBI’s radar before the onslaught took place. (as so many mass killers have been in the past.) Was he? Was Mauricio Garcia on the list of potential “domestic terrorists” compiled by the FBI?

We’ll probably never know, because that would expose the inner workings of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency which would undoubtedly cause considerable embarassment. So, the FBI is going to circle the wagons and make sure that never happens, which means that a good portion of the truth about this event will probably remain concealed forever. Even worse, we can expect that the media will continue to push their wacky theory that Garcia was a “non-white white supremacist” regardless of the fact that the claim makes no sense at all. Here’s how analyst Michael Tracey sarcastically summed it up:

If a non-white person is a “white supremacist,” does that mean he believes in his own innate racial inferiority? @mtracey

Leave it to Tracey to expose the imbecility of a meme that defies reason but to which the media clings like the Holy Grail. It’s actually shocking that anyone can take this type of verbal hucksterism seriously when, in fact, the whole “non-white white supremacist” thing is one of the most absurd concoctions of all time. It’s pure gibberish.

So, where should we look for answers? Where can we find rational explanations for these sporadic acts of violence?

There’s only one place we can look; at the mental state of the person who committed the crime. That’s where we have to start. If we want to understand what drives a man to kill random people in a school or shopping mall, we need to know something about the psychology of the perpetrator. Fortunately, volumes have been written on this subject by respected professionals who have researched the topic, studied the data, and drawn their own informed conclusions. Take a look:

Close to 17% of Americans are taking psychiatric drugs with side effects such as acting aggressively, being angry, or violent and acting on dangerous impulses...

Psychotropic drugs are hardly helping when their side-effects include worsening depression, new or worsening anxiety, agitation or restlessness, panic attacks, new or worsening irritability, acting aggressively, being angry, or violent, acting on dangerous impulses, an extreme increase in activity and talking (mania), and other unusual changes in behavior or mood.

“Rather than helping the individual, psychotropics alienate, and push them into more and more potentially dangerous behavior,” states the president of the Florida chapter of CCHR, Diane Stein.

This situation was so egregious that in 2004, the Federal Drug Administration issued a “black-box” label warning indicating that the use of certain antidepressants to treat major depressive disorder in adolescents may increase the risk of suicide, homicide, and other acts of violence.

A study entitled Prescription Drugs Associated with Reports of Violence Towards Others… declared … In the 69-month reporting period we identified 484 evaluable drugs that accounted for 780,169 serious adverse event reports of all kinds…. The violence cases included 387 reports of homicide, 404 physical assaults, 27 cases indicating physical abuse, 896 homicidal ideation reports, and 223 cases described as violence-related symptoms.” “Psychiatric Drugs and Side Effects – The Unseen Hand Behind Violence in America“, Citizens Commission on Human Rights

These are the victims of the Texas Mall Shooting

Cop City Protesters Face Felonies for Flyering as Police Repress Student Sit-Ins

https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/09/cop-city-protesters-face-felonies-for-flyering-as-police-repress-student-sit-ins/

by Candice Bernd

Truthout obtained Cop City’s certificate of insurance as activists and students target the project’s investors.

An attorney for three activists opposed to a planned $72.8 million police training center that opponents have dubbed “Cop City” tells Truthout her clients are facing felony charges of intimidation of an officer and misdemeanor stalking after two of them placed flyers on mailboxes in Bartow County, Georgia, a neighborhood about 40 miles from Atlanta. The charges carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

If built, Cop City would be one of the largest police training facilities in the country, featuring a helicopter landing base, an area for explosives training, and an entire mock city for officers to game out tactics to suppress protests and uprisings. The compound is already being built in Atlanta’s South River Forest, where opponents, known as “Forest Defenders,” previously camped for more than a year to blockade construction.

Defense attorney Lyra Foster said her clients were held for four nights in solitary confinement at Bartow County Jail after their arrest at a gas station outside the town of Cartersville on April 28. All three arrestees were denied bond by a magistrate judge on May 1 even though none of the defendants has a criminal history or face any allegation of violence.

Foster told Truthout the activists drove once through the neighborhood and that two of them carefully placed flyers on numerous mailboxes without exiting their vehicle or approaching any residents. They purposefully placed flyers on the mailboxes, as opposed to inside them, because they thought opening mailboxes was potentially illegal, she said.

===========

‘Collateral damage’ is an insult to Gaza's dead

https://electronicintifada.net/content/collateral-damage-insult-gazas-dead/37746

by Majed Abusalama

Ceasefire ends five days of Gaza escalation

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/ceasefire-ends-five-days-gaza-escalation

by Tamara Nassar

Israel stares failure in the face, again

https://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-stares-failure-face-again/37756

by Maureen Clare Murphy and Ali Abunimah

Palestine in Pictures: April 2023

https://electronicintifada.net/content/palestine-pictures-april-2023/37661

by The Electronic Intifada

“New government Israël has one advantage, its unequivocal message: this is apartheid!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6WJZKUfKOA

with Ilan Pappé, December 31, 2022

(14:28)

“According to Jewish Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, author of seminal books a.o. 'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestina', 'Ten myhts about Israel', 'The idea of Israel', the new government led by Benjamin Netanyahu has one major advantage. I has a clear and unequivocal message: this is apartheid.”

· 00:00 - Introduction

· 03:09 - No change, just more of the same violence

· 05:56 - Easier to persuade more people that this is apartheid 08:07 - Civil society will become more active

· 08:59 - What will Jewish diaspora do?

· 10:20 - What about the Arab regimes?

· 11:55 - Only one asset remains: brute force

· 13:16 - Final remarks

This government has ditched all pretense of a moral ground and goes for brute violence. History tells us that such regimes perish. Always. The question is when. In historical terms that can mean anything between tomorrow and 50 years. Let's see, you never know.

“Automated Apartheid”: How Israel Uses Facial Recognition to Track Palestinians & Control Movement

https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/06/automated-apartheid-how-israel-uses-facial-recognition-to-track-palestinians-control-movement/

with Amy Goodman

(33:53)

Israel Is Using a Vast Network of Biometric Cameras to Terrorize Palestinians

https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/06/israel-is-using-a-vast-network-of-biometric-cameras-to-terrorize-palestinians/

by Marjorie Cohen

The facial recognition surveillance system violates Palestinians’ human rights to freedom of movement and privacy.

“Stuck in Israel's stranglehold”

https://electronicintifada.net/content/stuck-israels-stranglehold/37691

by Omar Karmi

Talk World Radio: James Bamford on Israelgate and Nordstream

https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/09/talk-world-radio-james-bamford-on-israelgate-and-nordstream/

with David Swanson and James Bamford

(30:35)

“Why a 'Two-State Solution' in Israel/Palestine doesn't work”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahr_9XP8LxU

with Marc Steiner, Nathan J. Brown, and Shibley Telhami

(audio, 32:12)

One Year After the Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, Canada Must Hold Israeli Officials Accountable

https://www.globalresearch.ca/one-year-after-killing-shireen-abu-akleh-canada-must-hold-israeli-officials-accountable/5819052

by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East

On the one-year anniversary of the killing of veteran Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is demanding that the Canadian government hold Israeli officials accountable for her death. Unfortunately, Canada has abandoned its initial calls for accountability and for an investigation into her death, despite overwhelming evidence indicating that Abu Akleh was deliberately killed by Israeli forces while visible as a member of the press. CJPME urges Canada to renew its call for accountability now that Israeli forces are unquestionably responsible for this crime, and to put its support behind an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“There is undeniable evidence proving that Israeli forces deliberately killed Shireen Abu Akleh, yet Canada seems to have lost all interest,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. “One year has passed since the tragic incident and Canada has yet to condemn Israeli officials for this crime or take any action to hold them accountable,” added Bueckert.

Shortly following the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly tweeted:

“Canada calls for a thorough investigation into the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh. We must ensure that rights of journalists are upheld globally and that they are free and safe to bring their work to light.”

The following week, Parliamentary Secretary Rob Oliphant told Parliament that

“Canada has called for a thorough investigation into this killing, such that people will have confidence in its findings.”

Despite this, Canada has stopped talking about the issue and has not supported efforts by the International Federation of Journalists and Al-Jazeera to bring the case before the ICC. Similarly, at least 17 Canadian members of parliament had called for an investigation into the killing of Abu Akleh, but most have ignored the reports which found Israel responsible.

CJPME notes that multiple investigations by international human rights organizations, including a joint report by Forensic Architecture and Al-Haq, have concluded that Israeli soldiers targeted Abu Akleh “deliberately and explicitly,” and found that there were no Palestinian gunmen or crossfire in the area – completely debunking Israel’s claims that the killing could have been an accident. In addition, similar investigations by CNN, Bellingcat, the Washington Post and the Associated Press all indicated that Abu Akleh was targeted by Israeli forces on purpose. In fact, Israeli military officials have openly admitted that there was a “high probability” that Israeli soldiers targeted Abu Akleh yet declined to open a criminal investigation. Further, then-Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid reaffirmed that he would “not allow” any soldier to be prosecuted. Yesterday, the Committee to Protect Journalists released a report revealing that at least 20 journalists have been killed by Israeli forces in the last 22 years, and concluded that this pattern “constitutes a grave threat to press freedom.”

===========

Blood and Treasure: United States Budgetary Costs and Human Costs of 20 Years of War in Iraq and Syria, 2003-2023

https://www.globalresearch.ca/blood-treasure-united-states-budgetary-costs-human-costs-20-years-war-iraq-syria-2003-2023-2/5819022

by Prof. Neta C. Crawford

This paper examines the total costs of the war in Iraq and Syria, which are expected to exceed half a million human lives and $2.89 trillion. This budgetary figure includes costs to date, estimated at about $1.79 trillion, and the costs of veterans’ care through 2050. Since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, between 550,000-580,000 people have been killed in Iraq and Syria — the current locations of the United States’ Operation Inherent Resolve — and several times as many may have died due to indirect causes such as preventable diseases. More than 7 million people from Iraq and Syria are currently refugees, and nearly 8 million people are internally displaced in the two countries.

See also: US Escalation to the East

===========

Executive CONFRONTS Warren Buffett & Bill Gates Over Epstein

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHa0Z98hDNg&t=16s

with Jimmy Dore

(11:56)

The recent Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in Omaha took a decidedly surprising turn when Peter Flaherty, Chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, used his time at the microphone to accuse Bill Gates of sexual crimes against minors in regards to his ongoing relationship with late “financier” Jeffrey Epstein. For his trouble Flaherty was forcibly removed from the arena.

Nick Cave and the Bad Scenes

https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/nick-cave-and-the-bad-scenes-newworldnextweek?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#play

with James Corbett and James Evan Pilato

Kim Iversen BOMBSHELL Revelations (Interview Clip)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx63jhtryD8

with Sabrina Salvati and Kim Iversen

(1:11:39)

Tucker Carlson KNOWS WHAT HAPPENED To Jeffrey Epstein

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQs9CeVnMsU

with Christian Darnton

(16:25)

===========

“Consolidating Control”

analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked

Story at-a-glance

In an interview with Whitney Webb, finance guru Catherine Austin Fitts discusses how central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) will consolidate control of the financial system
Corporate media pushes the idea that you must put all your money with major banks to keep it safe, but this is a dangerous move
The big banks the media are trying to drive consumers to are engaged in criminal activities and allowed to operate above the law
When you have small, local banks and credit unions flourishing, it translates into healthy small businesses and small farms in the community
The most important thing you need to do to prepare financially is get yourself out of the control grid

“Consolidating Control with Catherine Austin Fitts”

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/consolidating-control-with-catherine-austin-fitts/id1551492441?i=1000610025128

with Whitney Webb and Catherine Austin Fitts

(audio, 1:26:27)

The recent U.S. banking crisis is no longer making headlines — but it’s about to enter an even more troubling phase, according to finance guru Catherine Austin Fitts — publisher of The Solari Report.¹

In an interview with Whitney Webb, host of Unlimited Hangout, Fitts discusses how central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) will consolidate control of the financial system — ultimately leading to control of the world population. Webb says:²

“Essentially, it seems that the current calm on the surface has allowed the powers that be, or rather the financial powers that be, to kick the can down the road, giving them time to line things up so they can control and manage the situation once chaos and panic return.

Yet, regardless of if, and when, another crisis rears its head, the aftermath is likely to be seen as an opportunity by the powers that be to roll out or dramatically advance the long-awaited central bank digital currency, or CBDC paradigm.”

A Dangerous Push to Consolidate Banking Deposits

When Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the 16th largest in the U.S.,³ collapsed in March 2023, Fitts believes it was due to a predatory run, a takedown. “It really did look like a combination of short sellers and an engineered run,” she says. “Normally, one of the functions of the central bank is to help a bank in that position. But what we saw, in fact, was lead banks in New York Fed that own and control the New York Fed, engineering the run.”⁴

This highlights the risks inherent even in large banks, where the majority of the problems lie, Fitts says. Yet, the corporate media pushes the idea that you must put all your money with the major banks to keep it safe. “That is very dangerous,” Fitts says.⁵

“There is a real push to consolidate the banking deposits … We saw the pandemic shutdown lots of small business, which really harms the resiliency in the economy. It didn't have to happen … it was Disaster Capitalism. It was economic warfare. And now we're seeing a push to shut down or drain the small banks.

And let me explain. There is nothing more important to the health of local economy than having lots and lots of small banks and credit unions and savings banks. These are a critical component of what creates and builds economy in the local area.”⁶

When you have small, local banks and credit unions flourishing, it translates into healthy small businesses and small farms in the community. Again, we see that building and maintaining your local community connections are key to resilience financially and otherwise. But these local ties are under attack.

Why Every State Needs a Sovereign Bank

The big banks the media are trying to drive consumers too are deemed “too big to fail.” In reality, however, “The big banks are literally being allowed to break the law and get away with it,” Fitts explains … “So, don't let the media scare you out of your good local bank and head into a criminal bank. Don't do that.”⁷

Powerful banks and organizations worldwide enjoy unrestricted privileges and layers of immunity. As investigative journalist Corey Lynn put it:⁸

“Together, the BIS [Bank for International Settlements], Central Banks, UN, OAS [Organization of American States], and the other international organizations and banks enjoying immunities and privileges, are a powerhouse that has the ability to move undetected, behind closed doors, with no transparency or accountability, and move their agendas forward with little to no legal ramifications.

While people go about their days putting their children to bed, sending them off to school, getting themselves to work, and cooking a family dinner, these masterminds are plotting out everyone’s future in a gradual manner that most don’t recognize as the global takeover that it is.”

Meanwhile, in order for globalists to ultimately gain control — via centralized financial transactions, centralized control of food and centralized control of politics — the banking system must be consolidated. Fitts explains:⁹

“If we have 4,000 banks, most of which are community banks and credit unions, savings banks, those banks … along with small businesses and farms, are the bedrock of democracy. And again, and again, we've seen the Fed try to institute policies, and the small bankers rear their head and just start screaming.

They can't do it, politically. So, you know, there's no doubt if you want to go to the tight central control … you've got to kill the small banks.”

One way to stop this is for every state to have a sovereign bank to handle the state’s deposits. “Many states used to have a sovereign bank … for a variety of reasons, they went away,” Fitts says. “Most state and local governments are highly dependent on big out-of-state banks, which is not a healthy situation, politically anyway.”¹⁰

At the Solari Report, Richard Werner wrote a memo about why a sovereign state bank would be great for Tennessee¹¹ — but the principles can be applied across the U.S. It describes how the health of the local economy depends on small financial institutions. Werner explains, in part:¹²

“The goal of SBT [State Bank of Tennessee] is to ensure that the State of Tennessee can better act in the interests of its citizens, better fulfill its constitutional duties, and provide for a resilient and strong economy and financial system.

SBT will not compete with smaller local banks for loan and deposit market shares, but will act to support them in a number of ways, including loan participations and purchases, while mutually benefiting from expanded liquidity in state-level short-term money markets.

Small and medium-sized enterprises account for the vast majority of jobs in Tennessee (as elsewhere) and research has demonstrated that their prosperity and capacity for job creation, innovation, and expansion depends to a significant extent on the availability and capacity of small local banks. Small firms and small banks depend on each other in a symbiotic relationship.”

Fight Back Against Surveillance and Mind Control

In order to gain control of the financial system, the globalists must be careful to hide their true intentions at first — lest people come out with their pitchforks. This involves the rollout of digital passports under the guise of keeping the population healthy and safe. In short, they’re using the health care system as one of their power tools. Fitts says:¹³

“The clever thing they've done is — until they can get total control of transactions — they're using health care as the way to build control. So, they don't have complete control of the financial system, and they don't want to be obvious that it's the financial system, because then everybody's gonna go after the central bankers. So, they've been very clever about using health care to engineer their economic warfare and play their games. It's very clever.”

This is also where you start to see Silicon Valley, Big Tech and the National Security State fused together. “They’re essentially the same thing,” Webb explains,¹⁴ and they’re pushing for wearable technologies, nanotechnologies and other forms of technology that may one day have the ability to modulate your central nervous system — all under the guise of health care and all without informed consent.

“If you can't imagine living your life without the smartphone,” Webb says, “then you've essentially already been enslaved by the system … it's really the carrot to try and herd people into the corral of digital enslavement.”¹⁵ At the Solari Report, Fitts details mind control tactics being used on young people and children, which too much screen time and tech overuse.¹⁶ She adds:¹⁷

“I think the No. 1 obstacle between us and preserving freedom is surveillance and mind control technology. And essentially, there is a real push, including smartphones are a big part of it, to get us to resonate with the cell towers instead of with life, what I would call the divine intelligence.

… I think what they're trying to do is essentially control our electromagnetic body … Some people call it the aura … as well as our intelligence and our ability to share intelligence with others.”

It’s important to be aware of small details in your daily life that ultimately leave you with less power. Take the calculator on your cellphone, for example. Since it’s always right there, you don’t have to do mental math anymore. Soon, your ability to do math problems in your head isn’t as good as it used to be. “And the more of these handy tools and apps on the smartphone, [the more] we become dependent on that for these abilities,” Webb says.¹⁸

How to Prepare Financially

The most important thing you need to do to prepare financially is “get yourself out of the control grid,” Fitts says.¹⁹ She recommends thinking small and spreading your cash around in different places, including outside of the banking and brokerage system. Keep cash on hand in your home, stored in a fireproof safe or two; cash can also be stored in a depository, a local bank and a safe deposit box at a local bank — or all of them.

CBDCs are an integral part of this coming social control system. By removing paper currency and replacing it with CBDCs, your ability to engage in transactions can be turned on and off. To fight back against CBDCs, Fitts recommends using cash as much as possible — and not frequenting shops that don’t accept it.²⁰

While some digitization is OK, an entirely digital system is at risk of being manipulated and controlled by a central power. Fitts recommends minimizing your use of digital systems, including avoiding biometric technology and QR codes. Also, tell everyone you know about the true intention of CBDCs so they can also take action against them.

This includes educating yourself and others to resist propaganda tactics being used by Big Tech to influence public opinion and individual minds. Remember, to make sound choices about your money and anything else, Fitts says, “your mind has to be clear, free and coherent.” So, ditch your cellphone and other Big Tech interference as much as possible in favor of real relationships and local connections.

While this information can feel daunting, the opportunity exists to win this battle, one action and one individual at a time. Share what you’ve learned with your friends and family so they, too, can amass actionable intelligence — another key, Fitts says, that “protects us all from the abyss.”²¹

Sources and References

The Federal Reserve Cartel: A Financial Parasite – Part 4

https://www.globalresearch.ca/federal-reserve-cartel-financial-parasite/5818588

by Dean Henderson, June 19, 2011

United World Federalists founder James Warburg’s father was Paul Warburg, who financed Hitler with help from Brown Brothers Harriman partner Prescott Bush. [1]

Colonel Ely Garrison was a close friend of both President Teddy Roosevelt and President Woodrow Wilson. Garrison wrote in Roosevelt, Wilson and the Federal Reserve, “Paul Warburg was the man who got the Federal Reserve Act together after the Aldrich Plan aroused such nationwide resentment and opposition. The mastermind of both plans was Baron Alfred Rothschild of London.”

The Aldrich Plan was hatched at a secret 1910 meeting at JP Morgan’s private resort on Jekyl Island, SC between Rockefeller, lieutenant Nelson Aldrich and Paul Warburg of the German Warburg banking dynasty. Aldrich, a New York congressman, later married into the Rockefeller family. His son Winthrop Aldrich chaired Chase Manhattan Bank. While the bankers met, Colonel Edward House, another Rockefeller stooge and close confidant of President Woodrow Wilson, was busy convincing Wilson of the importance of a private central bank and the introduction of a national income tax. A member of House’s staff was British MI6 Permindex insider General Julius Klein. [2]

Wilson didn’t need much convincing, since he was beholden to copper magnate Cleveland Dodge, whose namesake Phelps Dodge became one of the biggest mining companies in the world. Dodge bankrolled Wilson’s political career. Wilson even wrote his inaugural speech on Dodge’s yacht. [3]

Wilson was a classmate of both Dodge and Cyrus McCormick at Princeton. Both were directors at Rockefeller’s National City Bank (now Citigroup). Wilson’s main focus was on overcoming public distrust of the bankers, which New York City Mayor John Hylan echoed in 1922 when he argued, “The real menace to our republic is the invisible government which, like a giant octopus, sprawls its slimy length over our city, state and nation. At the head is a small group of banking houses, generally referred to as the international bankers”. [4]

But the Eight Families prevailed. In 1913 the Federal Reserve Bank was born, with Paul Warburg its first Governor. Four years later the US entered World War I, after a secret society known as the Black Hand assassinated Archduke Ferdinand and his Hapsburg wife. The Archduke’s friend Count Czerin later said, “A year before the war he informed me that the Masons had resolved upon his death.”[5]

That same year, Bolsheviks overthrew the Hohehzollern monarchy in Russia with help from Max Warburg and Jacob Schiff, while the Balfour Declaration leading to the creation of Israel was penned to Zionist Second Lord Rothschild.

In the 1920’s Baron Edmund de Rothschild founded the Palestine Economics Commission, while Kuhn Loeb’s Manhattan offices helped Rothschild form a network to smuggle weapons to Zionist death squads bent on seizing Palestinian lands. General Julius Klein oversaw the operation and headed the US Army Counterintelligence Corps, which later produced Henry Kissinger. Klein diverted Marshall Plan aid to Europe to Zionist terror cells in Palestine after WWII, channeling the funds through the Sonneborn Institute, which was controlled by Baltimore chemical magnate Rudolph Sonneborn. His wife Dorothy Schiff is related to the Warburgs. [6]

Monopolies Cause Inflation, While Fed Chairman Powell Blames Workers

https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/08/monopolies-cause-inflation-while-fed-chairman-powell-blames-workers/

by Eve Ottenberg

As American monopolies fix prices higher and higher, the Federal Reserve bizarrely has concluded that employment is to blame for inflation. For months, Fed chairman Jerome Powell has increased interest rates in the hopes of throwing workers out in the street and thus supposedly reducing prices. While I’m sure that corporate, donor-bought congressmembers appreciate his struggles in the class war against the poor and middle class, it’s all a crock.

Prices are high because of corporate collusion. They skyrocketed in the supermarket and at the gas pump three seasons ago due to idiotic western sanctions on Russian energy. Those sanctions backfired. Prices soared in the west, and when they finally sank a bit for energy, everyone expected food prices to drop too. They did not. Instead of holding huge food and energy corporations accountable through antitrust laws, our dear leaders defer to Powell and his insane crusade to crush the poor and the precarious by boosting unemployment.

He is having limited success. That’s because we’re still in a tight labor market, and in such a market, employees call the shots. Not entirely, of course; our corporate-owned government, misnamed democracy, would never tolerate that. But in tight labor markets job seekers have leverage. How much and what other advantages accrue to the poor is the topic of a new book, Moving the Needle, by Katherine Newman and Elisabeth Jacobs. “The labor market is at the heart of our understanding of poverty,” they write, because poverty is a function of persistent joblessness. But “when unemployment dips to a fifty-year low, all kinds of people who had no chance at a conventional job suddenly discover they are in demand.” That is where we are now, and Fed chairman Powell is on a mad quest to reverse it.

Tight labor markets appear periodically. You can’t count on them regularly, but they happen often enough not to be negligible. Their effects are all to the good: not only do formerly incarcerated people get a crack at a job, but so do lots of others with big, years-long lacunae in their resumes. Think drug users and the unemployed destitute. And when the labor market slackens, the tight market benefits endure for many, because people who got a shot at work for the first time ever often can hang onto that employment. At the very least, they’ve given their curriculum vitae a shine.

“The Sadistic GOP’s Debt Limit Ploy vs. the People”

https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/11/ralph-nader-the-sadistic-gops-debt-limit-ploy-vs-the-people/

by Ralph Nader

Congressional history has rarely witnessed such a corrupt, cruel and explicit drive to turn the delegated sovereignty of the people against the citizenry.

Watch “NY Times is wrong on dedollarization: Economist Michael Hudson debunks Paul Krugman's dollar defense”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9qjnl6jcx0&feature=youtu.be

by Geopolitical Economy Report

(36:34)

Watch “4 US banks crash in 2 months: Banking crisis explained by economist Michael Hudson”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImjdVxd09fo&feature=youtu.be

by Geopolitical Economy Report

(43:12)

Economist Michael Hudson joins Ben Norton to discuss the collapse of four US banks in two months, giant JP Morgan Chase taking over First Republic Bank, and how government regulators are in bed with the bankers.

===========

Bono Is Doing Illustrations For The Atlantic Now, Because Everything's Fake And Stupid

https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/07/bono-is-doing-illustrations-for-the-atlantic-now-because-everythings-fake-and-stupid/

by Caitlin Johnstone

So U2 singer Bono is literally just doing illustrations for the imperialist propaganda rag The Atlantic now, because that’s the sort of thing that happens in a dystopian civilization during the death throes of a globe-spanning empire.

A Washington Post article titled “Bono likes to sketch Atlantic covers, so the magazine hired him” reports that “Bono is into Atlantic cover fanfic — so much so that he was invited to illustrate the magazine’s June cover featuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.”

Bono’s latest contribution to the mountain of cringe-inducing Zelensky moments we’ve been seeing for the past year provides a cover image for an article by lifelong war propagandists Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg. The article endorses a Ukrainian offensive to recapture Crimea, which experts largely agree would be the move most likely to trigger a nuclear war in this conflict.

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Big Food Raking in Huge Profits From Price Hikes as US Hunger Persists: Analysis

https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/11/big-food-raking-in-huge-profits-from-price-hikes-as-us-hunger-persists-analysis/

by Jessica Corbett

As the U.S. government on Wednesday released its latest inflation report, the watchdog Accountable.US put out a new analysis detailing how Americans face food insecurity while major food corporations are padding their profits with price hikes.

“Big Food’s staggering increase in earnings shows they did not need to raise prices so high on consumers but did so anyway to maximize record profits,” said Liz Zelnick, director of Economic Security and Corporate Power at Accountable.US, in a statement.

“It’s shameful that Americans are left food insecure and have to skip meals while corporations and their wealthy shareholders enjoy the spoils of supersized profits under unjustified price hikes,” she added. “It’s clear that the food industry will not hold itself accountable. It’s time Congress do more to rein in corporate greed, one of the main factors currently driving up costs for families.”

The Accountable.US report takes aim at General Mills, Kraft Heinz, and Mondelez—three of the top “at home” food companies in the United States based on market capitalization—focusing on January through March, the first quarter of this calendar year.

The ‘Great Zero Carbon’ Conspiracy and the WEF's ‘Great Reset’

https://www.globalresearch.ca/great-zero-carbon-criminal-conspiracy/5736707

by F. William Engdahl

The globalist Davos World Economic Forum is proclaiming the necessity of reaching a worldwide goal of “net zero carbon” by 2050. This for most sounds far in the future and hence largely ignored. Yet transformations underway from Germany to the USA, to countless other economies, are setting the stage for creation of what in the 1970’s was called the New International Economic Order.

In reality it is a blueprint for a global technocratic totalitarian corporativism, one that promises huge unemployment, deindustrialization and economic collapse by design. Consider some background.

Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum (WEF) is currently promoting his favorite theme, the Great Reset of the world economy. The key to it all is understanding what the globalists mean by Net Zero Carbon by 2050.

The EU is leading the race, with a bold plan to become the world’s first “carbon neutral” continent by 2050 and reduce its CO2 emissions by at least 55% by 2030.

In an August, 2020 post on his blog, self-appointed global vaccine czar Bill Gates wrote about the coming crisis in climate:

“As awful as this pandemic is, climate change could be worse… The relatively small decline in emissions this year makes one thing clear: We cannot get to zero emissions simply—or even mostly—by flying and driving less.”

With a virtual monopoly on mainstream media as well as social media, the Global Warming lobby has been able to lead much of the world into assuming that the best for mankind is to eliminate hydrocarbons including petroleum, natural gas, coal and even the “carbon free” nuclear electricity by 2050, that we hopefully might avoid a 1.5 to 2 degree Centigrade rise in average world temperature. There is only one problem with this. It’s cover for a diabolical ulterior agenda.

Origins of ‘Global Warming’ . . .

Supported by Bill Gates, The WHO Plans to Have 10 Years of Pandemics (2020-2030)

https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-the-plan-who-plans-to-have-10-years-of-pandemics-2020-2030-proof-that-the-pandemic-was-planned-with-a-purpose/5782105

by Stop World Control

A group of almost one thousand medical doctors in Germany called ‘Doctors for Information’, which is supported by more than 7,000 professionals including attorneys, scientists, teachers etc., made a shocking statement during a national press conference: (1)

‘The Corona panic is a play. It’s a scam. A swindle. It’s high time we understood that we’re in the midst of a global crime.’

This large group of medical experts publishes a newspaper with circulation of 500,000 copies every week, to alert the public about the misinformation in the mainstream media about the coronavirus.

They also organize mass protests with millions of people throughout Europe.

Hundreds of Spanish medical doctors say the pandemic was created

In Spain, a group of 600 medical doctors called ‘Doctors for Truth’ made a similar statement during a press conference.

See also: The Plan

Davos and the Purloined Letter Conspiracy. Klaus Schwab’s “Global Leaders of Tomorrow”

https://www.globalresearch.ca/davos-purloined-letter-conspiracy/5771003

by F. William Engdahl

The famous short story by Edgar Allen Poe, The Purloined Letter, is apt in describing the agenda of Klaus Schwab, founder some 50 years ago of what is today the globally influential Davos World Economic Forum (WEF)–Hidden in plain sight.

Schwab published a book in 2020 titled The Great Reset, which calls on world leaders to use the “opportunity” of the COVID-19 pandemic to fundamentally reorganize the global economy into a dystopian top-down version of the technocratic UN Agenda 2030.

For those willing to do patient research, Schwab’s WEF reveals an astonishing degree of the current globalist agenda for a technocratic totalitarianism. Even more he has been developing hand-picked cadre to implement this agenda over three decades, with a select global “cadre school” for “future global leaders.”

In effect it is what we might call the Davos Conspiracy, agents promoted around the world to infiltrate top policy circles and push the sinister Davos Reset agenda.

One of the most astonishing features of the COVID pandemic fear hysteria is the degree to which politicians worldwide have followed in lockstep, along with global media and key health figures, to embrace an unprecedented agenda of economic and human destruction in the name of fighting a virus.

It turns out that most all key players all have something in common. They are hand-picked graduates or “alumni” as he calls them, of Klaus Schwab’s Davos cadre school, his annual program called Young Global Leaders and pre-2004 called Global Leaders for Tomorrow.

Since the first group of Davos cadre were selected in 1993, more than 1,400 “future global leaders” have been trained in a highly secret process which is rarely ever mentioned in the bio of Davos graduates. With the patience of a spider weaving a vast web, Klaus Schwab and his wealthy backers at the World Economic Forum have created the most influential network of policy actors in modern history, or perhaps ever.

In a 2017 video with David Gergen at Harvard, Schwab boasts of being proud that, “we penetrate the cabinets” with Davos Young Global Leader cadre. Schwab states, “I have to say then I mention names like Mrs Merkel…and so on, they all have been Young Global Leaders of The World Economic Forum. But what we are really proud of now with the young generation like Prime Minister Trudeau, President of Argentina and so on, is that we penetrate the cabinets… It is true in Argentina and it is true in France now…”

Great Reset . . . .

===========

Pakistan Goes to Anarchy and Self-Destruction

https://www.globalresearch.ca/pakistan-goes-anarchy-self-destruction/5818980

by Mahboob A. Khawaja

Truth has its own Language.

The suspicious, paranoid and much hated illegitimate Sharifs, Bhuttos and the Generals are unleashing blind terror against the masses of Pakistan. The unprecedented abduction of Imran Khan, the former PM by the paratroopers from the High Court in Islamabad signals tragic tensions of missing logic and failed systems of political governance and accountability.

Since April 2022, Pakistan has been managed by the Generals whereas civilian Shabaz Sharif –previously indicted for money laundering is just a show piece of follies of shadows. The abduction of Imran Khan from a court of law without any legal justification explains the unimaginative action of egoistic power behind corrupt maniac minds. The Generals funded by foreign Masters are set to make Pakistan a satellite state to be used for all self-destructive purposes as has been the case since Afghanistan was invaded by the US in 2001.

The arrest of Khan will cause serious challenges from the masses and the Generals overwhelmed by their own obsessions of power could stab the body of Pakistan with another Martial Law (NO Law- Law of Jungle) as if Pakistanis were so dehumanized and uncivilized and could move the country closer to self- annihilation.

Pakistan is fast becoming a country governed by foreign dictates and its hired political leaders are well paid and the Generals well fed.

Khan is said to be arrested by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) that a year earlier had Nawaz Sharif, Zardari and Shabaz Sharif and others (currently in the governance) appearing for murders and money laundering cases. Their legal cases were heard in a systematic manner and were granted bail and none were abducted or our common sense insulted.

The Generals have not learned any lessons from the formative history of how they betrayed the nation in 1971 and surrendered to India at Dhaka. They lack the imagination and facts of time and history and are set to repeat the history unless some miracles happen to safeguard the freedom and security of the nation. America and India have strategic alliance, and its focal point is set on enlarging the scope of internal political disruption and moving — in to take control of the Pakistani nuclear arsenals – the end of Pakistan story. Is this what the Generals are collaborating with Shabaz Sharif and the US?

The Generals and Sharif have no Political legitimacy and Credibility . . . .

===========

Assassination Bid on Putin to Provoke Furious Escalation… for Whom?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57538.htm

by Finian Cunningham

The longer the Kiev regime survives, the worse the danger persists for Russia from uncontrolled instability on its border.

Just as the Western public is growing increasingly skeptical of the U.S.-led proxy war against Russia and the insane military and financial aid being pumped to prop up the corrupt Kiev regime, we then see a daring assassination drone attack on the Kremlin.

Russia called it an act of terrorism to kill President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin has also pointed the finger at Washington for authoring the assassination bid as well as the Kiev regime for having a hand in it.

The White House denies any American role in the air raid as does Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Western media are reporting claims that Russia may have carried out a false-flag terror attack on itself to justify ramping up military force in Ukraine. Those claims echo those put out earlier by the West about Russia blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea last September. In both cases, the notion of Russian false-flag attacks seems absurd.

Would Russia really risk making itself look incompetent by staging an audacious aerial raid on the seat of political power in its capital?

Two small unmanned aerial vehicles were apparently brought down over the Kremlin in the early hours of Wednesday. The lightweight devices could hardly have posed a serious threat to kill Putin in his official residence. So, it can be dismissed as a realistic attempt at assassination. The Kremlin said Putin was not even in the building at the time.

===========

“The Writers’ Strike Matters To EVERYONE”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqKE_asP6R0&feature=youtu.be

with Jimmy Dore

(23:41)

We’re entering the second week of the Hollywood writers’ strike, and no progress appears to have been made toward a resolution. But what are the key sticking points and demands made by the writers, and how do they feel the studios are seeking to screw them over?

James Corbett Discusses Human Freedom on RealEyesation

https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/james-corbett-discusses-human-freedom?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

with Alexander Raskovic and James Corbett

(audio, 36:48)

Hollywood Writers Are Striking to Save the Industry From Corporate Destruction

https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/11/hollywood-writers-are-striking-to-save-the-industry-from-corporate-destruction/

by Maximilian Alvarez

Hollywood writers represented by the Writers Guild of America, East, and the Writers Guild of America, West, are on strike for the first time since 2007-08. As Alex Press writes in Jacobin, “The WGA (West and East) called the strike just before midnight on May 1, with its leadership unanimously voting for a work stoppage after six weeks of negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) over a new three-year contract that covers some 11,500 film and television writers. Announcing its decision, the union said that the bargaining table responses of the AMPTP, which consists of Amazon, Apple, Discovery-Warner, Disney, NBC Universal, Netflix, Paramount, and Sony, had ‘been wholly insufficient given the existential crisis writers are facing.’” Even though overall production budgets have risen in the past decade, writer pay has declined, and the rise of streaming services has translated to lower residuals for writers, shorter paid work periods and more precarious employment, etc., with studios even threatening to replace more essential creative labor with AI software.

In this mini-cast, we speak about what led to the writers’ strike, and get an update from the picket line, with Sasha Stewart, a WGA-East council member and Writers Guild Award nominated TV writer, producer, and creator. With a background in improv and sketch comedy, Sasha has written for, among other productions, The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore (Comedy Central) and The Fix with Jimmy Carr (Netflix), and she contributes to McSweeney’s and The New Yorker. She was also the Head Writer on the YA political thriller podcast Daughters of DC (iHeartRadio).

===========

The Omicron Deception

https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/omicron-deception/

with Ryan Cristián

(1:01:56)

===========

Is WHO a Front Organization for the Takeover of U.S. Government?

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/who-takeover-us-government/?utm_source=luminate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=defender-wk&utm_id=20230514

by Michael Nevradakis

Analysts warn that the ratification of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations could strip away sovereignty from nation-states and place public health decision-making power in the hands of the WHO and its director-general.

Sunday Strip: Home Security

https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/sunday-strip-home-security?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

by Robert W Malone MD, MS

In clown world, hope is action, and reality is whatever you are told it is

===========

“A conversation with Gabor Maté and Ilan Pappé”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVT4WY-IzZ4

with Gabor Maté and Ilan Pappé

(1:26:35)

===========

Quelques brèves nouvelles

« Manifestations les jours qui viennent »
Un site où un grand nombre sont répertoriés, je ne les cite pas , mais vous pouvez consulter le lien.
https://38.demosphere.net/

************************************************************

Article qui prône la dépopulation (en anglais, mais des traducteurs en ligne existent)

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/population-decline-will-change-the-world-for-the-better/

********************************************************

13 mai : Journée mondiale de témoignages des effets indesirables des vaccinations covid

(communication de Grelive)

Bonjour à tous,
samedi à partir de 10h et jusqu'à 18h, si c'est accepté, nous serons place Félix Poulat (et pas place Grenette, je m'étais trompé sur la déclaration et l'affiche) pour la journée mondiale d'hommage aux victimes et de témoignages sur les effets indésirables des vaccins covid. On sera plusieurs dizaines de villes, seulement en France, Italie et Espagne, environ 50.pas mal de personnalités nous soutiennent: Christian Perrone, Pierre Kory,

Le RV est à 9h30 à La Vina, 12 place Notre-Dame, pour ceux qui veulent aider à porter les portraits, sinon 10h place Félix Poulat

Soyons nombreux!

Les témoignages:

Cet évènement a vraiment pour but de faire éclater publiquement la vérité, donc nous avons besoin de témoignages.
Si nous en manquons, l'évènement en sera diminué.
Nous avons tous des exemples autour de nous que nous pouvons relater, lire, enregistrer et passer à la sono.
S'il vous plaît, apportez des témoignages, même brefs! Demandez-en! Préparez des interventions brèves et marquantes. des faits et chiffres etc...

Les portraits:

L'alignement horizontal et vertical des portraits, l'espace d'un mètre entre eux, sont très importants: l'effet est beaucoup plus spectaculaire lorsque la série est bien droite, on voir tous les visages à la fois, ça agit visuellement et psychologiquement, comme une architecture, une allée d'arbres ou de colonnes qui frappe la vision, surtout avec le sujet que nous exposons: le regard embrasse tout d'un coup et est retenu, l'information passe beaucoup mieux et pour les photos et les films, c'est beaucoup plus fort.
Même si on parle entre nous, garder les portraits à hauteur de buste, en se relayant, est beaucoup plus marquant. Il ne s'agit pas d'être sinistres et funèbres mais, même si on est habitué à le faire, une certaine solennité est importante car ce qui s'est passé et risque encore de se passer est sérieux et les gens doivent le comprendre. Le silence crée un contraste avec la rue et permet de mieux regarder les portraits. Mais on aura aussi de la musique.
on pourra porter un autocollant avec un V: Vaccins, Victimes, Vérité, Visibilité, Voix, Victoire... On va en faire imprimer.

Espérons que le temps soit avec nous.

La diffusion de l'évènement et des images: l'idée est de faire un #Metoo vaccinal, donc on doit diffuser un maximum avant, pendant et après, partout sur les groupes Telegram, Facebook, YouTube, les médias indépendants et les autres, auxquels on peut écrire, envoyer des photos et des messages.

Tout est parti d'un rassemblement à Brest en octobre dernier lorsqu'une journaliste du Télégramme, quotidien on ne peut plus conventionnel, a écrit un article qui a fait le tour de la francophonie en deux jours et ça a donné la France et maintenant 20 pays du monde.

Il doit y avoir un direct avec une diffusion non-stop organisée par l'Italie et un ancien photo-journaliste de guerre, Maurizio Torti.

Le succès de cet évènement est très important pour la suite de la résistance. C'est la première fois au niveau mondial, après l'évènement en France le 10 décembre, qu'autant de personnes et de pays se coordonnent de la base au sommet. Dans le groupe des organisateurs, tout le monde veut que ce soit le début d'actions coordonnées ciblées et efficaces, un premier pas pour la coordination de beaucoup de pays qui seront de plus en plus nombreux!

Rendez-vous pour tracter et afficher:

- à la Vina mercredi à 12h45 pour Hôpital Nord
- jeudi 15h45 à la Vina pour aller à l'hôpital ou place Félix Poulat (possibilité d'aller à 16h à Félix Poulat)

Des tracts sont disponibles à la Vina.

Merci à vous, pour votre fidélité, soyons nombreux, transmettez partout!
je joins le communiqué de presse validé par les collectifs français et le tract "Des vaccins covid au contrôle total de l'Humain et du Vivant".
L'idée est aussi, le plus intelligemment possible de montrer la direction que nous prenons.

La chaîne Telegram pour les infos internationales:
https://t.me/AdverseEvents_International

https://depeches-citoyennes.fr/2023/04/13-mai-2023-1ere-journee-mondiale-d-hommages-aux-victimes-des-injections.html

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réintégration des soignants suspendus

Ce sera effectif au 15 mai, mais sans rétroactivité.

Voir cet article

https://actu.fr/societe/coronavirus/reintegration-des-soignants-non-vaccines-un-nouveau-combat-est-a-venir_59389604.html

Mais qu'en est-il des autres professions? (pompiers, gendarmes, ...)?

jeudi dernier une proposition de loi qui abroge la loi du 5 août 2021a été adoptée en première lecture à l'Assemblée nationale, grâce à l'union des voix de toutes les opposition. Mais il y a encore du chemin dans le parcours parlementaire.

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ARRÊT DU TRIBUNAL DE TURIN : OBLIGATION ILLÉGITIME DE VACCINATION, CADRE ASL RÉMUNÉRÉ

https://www.byoblu.com/2023/05/08/sentenza-tribunale-torino-obbligo-vaccinale-illegitimo-dirigente-asl-risarcita/

(en italien, passer à un traducteur automatique si besoin)

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Communication Grelive

Bonjour à tous, nous organisons une soirée conférence le mardi 09 mai 2023 au 4, place Henri Chapays à Fontaine à Partir de 18h00.

A 18h00, un micro marché sera mis en place, avec un producteur et marchand de fruits et légumes, un producteur d'huiles essentielles, de confitures et de bien d'autres choses, ainsi qu'avec du pain que nous mettrons en vente pour le collectif.

A 19h00, une conférence sera donnée par Nathanaël Fabin, poète, sur le thème de:

"La nativité communeuse du Christ radical"

Au-delà des interprétations officielles et des réécritures historiques de neutralisations et d'édulcorations politiques et religieuses, pourquoi le message du Christ imprègne tant l'histoire de résistance insurrectionnelle européenne face à la valeur d'échange du capital en mouvement dans ses restructurations extensives, de l'évangélisation des communautés germaniques aux gilets jaunes anti-revendicativistes en passant par les communautés de paroisses et les différentes communes incendiaires de l'ère des révolutions capitalistes contemporaines.

En quoi il nous appelle à dépasser nos provenances personnelles et familiales, pour comprendre le sens de notre conscience malheureuse, qui reproduit l'aliénation marchande dans sa mécanique fétichiste en mouvement.

La question de la divinité et de la sainteté se posera comme mouvement de naturalité première de l'homme de la communauté de l'être face à la communauté de l'avoir comme conséquence dernière d'une réappropriation historique contre tout les ordonnancements aliénatoires en réécriture."

Après la conférence, Grégory donnera un repas, et des boissons et desserts seront à disposition.

Cordialement.

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Sur la "crise" de l'eau (et autre chose)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJHlnAnyylo

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Vidéos du conseil scientifique indépendant (chaque jeudi) archivés ici

https://crowdbunker.com/@CSI

Les synthèses du CSI sont disponibles ici pour les pressés : (mais depuis quelque temps il n'y a pas eu de faites)
https://reinfocovid.fr/syntheses-des-live-du-csi

Derniers Conseils Scientifiques Indépendants

CSI n° 101 20/04/2023

Invité : Vincent PAVAN, mathématicien, enseignant chercheur.

Sujet : L'école depuis Platon à nos jours

Discutant : Dr Marie Grenet, pédiatre, spécialiste du neurodéve

https://crowdbunker.com/v/JzqkE5zf

CSI n° 102 27/04/2023

Invité : Fréderic Boutet

Sujet : Identité Numérique

Discutant : Dr Eric Ménat et Emmanuelle Darles

CSI n°103 04/05/2023

Invité : Christian Vélot

Sujet : Perturbateurs endocriniens

Discutant : Philippe De Chazournes et Carole Fouché

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Autres sources d'information :

Canal Telegram de RSA Grenoble
https://t.me/joinchat/LerguxxOjauEaLQjuz7OGw

Grelive
https://t.me/grelive1

Europeans United Francophones
https://t.me/joinchat/8JW7kBEUExk4Mjdk

REINFO COVID Officiel
https://t.me/reinfocovid_officiel

Anonyme Citoyen

https://t.me/AnonymeCitoyen

Il y en a certainement d'autres. . . . .

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News from Underground by Mark Crispin Miller

“In memory of those who "died suddenly" in the United States and worldwide, May 2-May 8, 2023”

https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/in-memory-of-those-who-died-suddenly-7df?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

by Mark Crispin Miller

Musicians in US (2), Brazil, UK, Finland, Poland, Croatia, Spain, Italy, Ethiopia, Australia; journalists in US (3), Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Poland (3), Russia; cops in US (2), India (2); & more

“How ‘democracy’ is faring in the merry month of May, 2023”

https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/how-democracy-is-faring-in-the-merry?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

by Marc Crispin Miller

Since the triumph of the West in 1991, when Soviet communism bought the farm (so to speak)—and, especially, since COVID—"freedom" in the West is looking ever more like "freedom" in Ukraine

“Hollywood provides (while trying to hide) MORE proof that ‘vaccination’ kills”

https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/hollywood-provides-while-trying-to?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

by Marc Crispin Miller

The stars are also dying in unprecedented numbers (as the machine they work for wants us not to notice)

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YOUNG HEARTS [EP. 37] EXCESS DEATHS (#May 2023)

https://www.bitchute.com/video/DSUK8YY41AcM/

by (WOR) World Orders Review

(14:31)

High School Kids Injured or Permanently Disabled by COVID-19 Vaccines in 2021-2022

https://www.globalresearch.ca/high-school-kids-injured-permanently-disabled-covid-19-vaccines-2021-2022/5819064

by Dr. William Makis

Here are 16 stories

Ex-Pfizer VP Michael Yeadon: Covid Vaxx Push a ‘Supranational Operation’ Intended to ‘Maim and Kill Deliberately’

https://www.globalresearch.ca/ex-pfizer-vp-covid-vax-push-supranational-operation-intended-maim-kill-deliberately/5819018

by Patrick Delaney

‘Multiple obvious toxicities were deliberately built into [the alleged vaccines’] designs, with the result that there would be high expectations of blood clots, autoimmune attacks and cytokine storms all over the body, depending on where it went in a given individual,’ Dr. Michael Yeadon told LifeSiteNews.

Dr. Michael Yeadon,campaign, was a “supranational operation” designed “to injure people, to maim and kill deliberately.”

Yeadon, who spent 32 years working mostly for large pharmaceutical companies, spoke to a reporter from Children’s Health Defense in March while attending a Truth be Told Rally in London.

Reviewing how he came to understand the COVID “pandemic” was something other than what it appeared to be, the pharmacology expert recalled that “when I started noticing former colleagues of mine, including Patrick Vallance, saying things on the television I knew weren’t true — and I knew he knew weren’t true — that’s when the penny dropped for me, probably [in] February 2020.”

Spike Protein Does THIS to Your Gut...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzFhg1tMfus

by EONutrition

(8:25)

In this video I discuss the effects of SPIKE protein on the gut microbiome, and how you might be able to address it. Spike was shown to cause a depletion of Bifidobacterium, which appear to play an important role in maintainig host health.

Find the work of Dr Sabine Hazan here: https://bmjopengastro.bmj.com/content... https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/... https://journals.lww.com/ajg/fulltext... https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/fu...

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The Defender – May 12, 2023

Children’s Health Defense – News & Views

“FBI Contractor Spied on Groups Opposed to Vaccine Mandates + Most Who Tested Positive for COVID but Didn't Have Symptoms Were Not Infectious + More. . .”

http://support.childrenshealthdefense.org/site/MessageViewer?dlv_id=7081&em_id=4383.0

The Defender – May 11, 2023

Children’s Health Defense – News & Views

“$11 Million to Push COVID Shots on Pregnant Women + Florida Surgeon General Fires Back at CDC, FDA + More…”

http://support.childrenshealthdefense.org/site/MessageViewer?dlv_id=7001&em_id=4281.0

The Defender – May 11, 2023

Children’s Health Defense – News & Views

“Is WHO Plotting to Take Over U.S. Government? + Fluoride, Kids, IQ: Time to Publish the Report + More…”

http://support.childrenshealthdefense.org/site/MessageViewer?dlv_id=6921&em_id=4201.0

CHD.TV – May 13, 2023

Children’s Health Defense : Live, Video, Audio

“My Son Was #CaughtUp, Now My Son Is #BrainInjured + Dr. Sucharit Bhadki's Warning to the World + More on CHD.TV”

https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/

International : “A Day to BearWitness” . . . .

The American Sovereignty Declaration

https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/the-american-sovereignty-declaration?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

by Robert W Malone MD, MS

It’s Time for America to Exit the W.H.O.

As a Founding (working) Member of the The Sovereignty Coalition, I am proud of the work we are accomplishing.

The Sovereignty Coalition asks everyone who agrees with us to sign the #ExittheWho petition - the words of which are as follows:

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Friday Funnies – May 12, 2023

“Securing the Homeland”

https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/friday-funnies-securing-the-homeland?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

by Robert W Malone MD, MS

Just relax and learn to love the narrative, comrade

Corbett Report – May 13, 2023

100 Questions! - Questions For Corbett #100

https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/100-questions-questions-for-corbett?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

with James Corbett

Questions For Corbett is celebrating its 10th anniversary! Join James for this 100th Episode Extravaganza where he takes on the task of answering 100 questions from the ever-growing question bag in as entertaining and informative way as possible!

“Plastic Is Everywhere Now, Including Your Brain”

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/microplastic-brain-neurotoxicity-cola/

by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Scientists suspect microplastic contamination in our brains may cause cognitive impairment, neurotoxicity and altered neurotransmitter levels, which can contribute to behavioral changes.

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

· Discarded plastics make up 18.5% of landfills and 90% of all trash entering the world’s oceans. Estimates suggest that by 2050, our oceans will contain more plastic than fish by weight. In some ocean waters, plastic already exceeded plankton by a factor of 6-to-1 in 2006

· Recent animal research found plastic particles in mice’s brains just two hours after the animals ingested drinking water containing microplastics

· Scientists suspect microplastic contamination in our brains may cause cognitive impairment, neurotoxicity and altered neurotransmitter levels, which can contribute to behavioral changes

· Similarly, a Chinese study published in January 2022 concluded that inhaled plastic was associated with “obvious neurotoxicity”

· The plastics industry sold consumers on the idea that plastic was recyclable and therefore sustainable even though they knew it was financially unfeasible. Consumers were also deceived by the addition of recycling codes on plastic products. The code makes it seem as though all plastic is recyclable, which isn’t true

We live in a throwaway society, and products intended for short-term consumption are packaged in materials that will survive for centuries. Discarded plastics make up 18.5% of landfills1 and 90% of all trash entering the world’s oceans.2

At the rate we’re going, estimates suggest that by 2050, our oceans will contain more plastic than fish by weight.3 In some ocean waters, plastic already exceeded plankton by a factor of 6-to-1 in 2006.4

The problem with plastic is that it doesn’t biodegrade; it photodegrades, which takes hundreds of years. Researchers estimate a single plastic coffee pod may take up to 500 years, the duration of the Roman Empire.5 Even as it breaks down, it doesn’t completely vanish. Instead, it turns into tiny plastic particles, commonly referred to as “nurdles,” which act like sponges for toxic chemicals.6

These particles are routinely consumed by filter feeders in the ocean, slowly poisoning them and causing blockages. As these filter feeders are consumed by larger creatures, the toxins move up the food chain, ultimately ending up in our own bodies. Plastic chemicals also enter our bodies through other routes, including drinking water.

Plastic in Water Can Enter Your Brain

As reported by The Guardian May 1, 2023:7

“Researchers at the University of Vienna have discovered8,9 particles of plastic in mice’s brains just two hours after the mice ingested drinking water containing plastic. Once in the brain, ‘Plastic particles could increase the risk of inflammation, neurological disorders or even neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s,’ Lukas Kenner, one of the researchers, said in a statement ...

[The] researchers also believe that microplastic contamination in our brains can cause short-term health effects such as cognitive impairment, neurotoxicity and altered neurotransmitter levels, which can contribute to behavioral changes. The team gave mice water laced with particles of polystyrene — a type of plastic that’s common in food packaging such as yogurt cups and Styrofoam takeout containers.

Using computer models to track the dispersion of the plastics, researchers found that nanoplastic particles — which are under 0.001 millimeters and invisible to the naked eye — were able to travel into the mice’s brains via a previously unknown biological ‘transport mechanism.’

Essentially, these tiny plastics are absorbed into cholesterol molecules on the brain membrane surface. Thus stowed away in their little lipid packages, they cross the blood-brain-barrier — a wall of blood vessels and tissue that functions to protect the brain from toxins and other harmful substances.”

You Breathe and Eat Plastic Too

Other studies have demonstrated that inhaled plastic can enter your brain as well. For example, a Chinese study10 published in January 2022 concluded that inhaled plastic was associated with “obvious neurotoxicity.”

More specifically, the plastic nanoparticles reduced function of brain enzymes known to malfunction in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s patients. As such, inhaled plastic may contribute to or exacerbate these conditions.

Your health, including the function of your brain, is also largely dependent on your gut health and the function of your mitochondria, and plastic wreaks havoc there as well.

A January 2023 study11 from Finland found that high doses of microsized polyethylene decreased cell viability and increased production of harmful reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the mitochondria, which is where most of your body’s energy is produced.

How Microplastics Get Into Meat and Milk

In 2022, Dutch scientists confirmed the presence of microplastics in meat, milk and the blood of both farm animals and humans.12,13 In all, nearly 80% of meat and dairy products tested were found to contain microplastics, including 5 in 8 pork samples and 18 in 25 milk samples. As reported by the Plastic Soup Foundation, which commissioned the testing:14

“The possible cause could be the feed of cows and pigs: all 12 samples of feed pellets and shredded feed were found to contain plastic ... Maria Westerbos, director of Plastic Soup Foundation, said, ‘This study raises serious concerns about the contamination of our food chain with microplastics.

It is also clear that farmers are not responsible for this. It seems that at least part of the former food products, including from supermarkets, are processed into livestock feed with packaging and all ...

The European Animal Nutrition Regulation 767/2009 prohibits the addition of ‘packaging and parts of packaging derived from the use of food industry products.’ This regulation should be enforced, according to Plastic Soup Foundation.

However, the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) uses a so-called Reference Point of Action; contamination below 0.15% is tolerated.”

The very idea that food scraps used to make animal feed would be processed with plastic food packaging left on is shocking beyond belief. Who in their right mind would think of doing such a thing? Yet apparently, that is happening, and is common enough that the EU has regulations for it.

Microplastics Found Everywhere

In the study above, 100% of swine and cows had microplastics in their blood.15 In humans, plastic particles have been found in the blood of 77% of people tested.16 The mean concentration of plastic particles in the blood was 1.6 µg/ml.17

Some of the blood samples contained up to three different types of plastic; steel syringe needles and glass tubes were used so no plastic would be introduced to the samples.18 Of the 17 samples in which plastic particles were detected:19

Half contained polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, which is used to make plastic water and soda bottles

One-third contained polystyrene, widely used in food packaging

One-quarter contained polyethylene, which is used to make plastic bags

Previous studies have also detected microsized plastic particles in human feces and placental tissue,20 so we know the plastic is migrating throughout the human body. Disturbingly, infants have up to 10 times more plastic in their feces than adults.

Effects of exposure to microplastics in utero include reduced fetal and placental weight, coronary dysfunction, vascular perturbations, negative reproductive health outcomes and neurological dysfunction.

Animal studies have also confirmed the dispersion and accumulation of plastic inside the body. For example, in one study, pregnant rats were exposed, via the lungs, to 20 nm nanopolystyrene beads. Twenty-four hours later the particles were found in the mother’s lung, heart, spleen and placenta, as well as the liver, lungs, heart, kidney and brain of the fetus.21

Effects of this exposure in utero included reduced fetal and placental weight, coronary dysfunction, vascular perturbations, negative reproductive health outcomes and neurological dysfunction in the offspring. Is there any reason to believe the same won’t be true for human babies?

You Consume More Plastic Than You Realize

According to Australian research,22 the average person consumes about 5 grams of plastic per week — about the amount found in one credit card — so we’re not even talking about minuscule amounts anymore. Clearly, the potential for catastrophic biological consequences for humans is growing with every discarded piece of plastic.

Many plasticizing chemicals are similar in structure to natural hormones such as the female sex hormone estrogen, the male sex hormone androgen and thyroid hormones. As such, they interfere with development, reproduction, neurological functioning, metabolism, satiety, and immune function, and for many of these chemicals, there may be no safe level of exposure.

Bisphenol-A (BPA), for example, is known to disrupt embryonic development and has been linked to heart disease and cancer. Phthalates dysregulate gene expression and can trigger heart disease and cause genital anomalies — especially in baby boys — that may pass down several generations. DEHP is associated with reduced sperm count and multiple organ damage.

DARPA Pushing More Plastic in the Food Supply

As if the situation weren’t dire enough, in September 2020, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Iowa State University and partners a $2.7 million grant to create a process that would make FOOD from plastic and paper waste!23

The intention is to use this to feed the military men and women who have dedicated their lives to defending this country. They believe the ability to turn paper and plastic waste products into consumables could help with short-term “nourishment” and improve military logistics for extended missions.

They estimate the total award could reach $7.8 million before the project ends. Other partners in this project include the University of Delaware, Sandia National Laboratories, and the American Institute of Chemical Engineering (AIChE)/RAPID Institute.

Basically, what they’re trying to do is convert plastic waste into fatty alcohols and fatty acids, while paper waste will be turned into sugar. These base ingredients will then be bioprocessed by single-cell organisms into an, allegedly, edible mass that is rich in protein and vitamins.

In other words, the hope is that microorganisms can convert the endocrine-disrupting chemicals found in plastic into essential vitamins and proteins. I don’t know about you, but this sounds like a beyond terrible idea. DARPA has also awarded Michigan Tech researchers $7.2 million to turn plastic waste into protein powder, again using microorganisms.24

While DARPA is supposedly focusing on turning toxic plastics into “food” for the U.S. military, considering we’re now in an era where synthetic, lab-created meat is valued over regeneratively grown real meat, it’s not farfetched to imagine that the next step will be plastic-derived food for all.

Plastic Recycling Was Always a Fraud

One of the selling points that got the world hooked on plastic was that it could be recycled. As reported by NPR in September 2020:25

“Laura Leebrick, a manager at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in southern Oregon, is standing on the end of its landfill watching an avalanche of plastic trash pour out of a semitrailer ... None of this plastic will be turned into new plastic things. All of it is buried ...

But when Leebrick tried to tell people the truth ... people didn't want to hear it. ‘I remember the first meeting where I actually told a city council that it was costing more to recycle than it was to dispose of the same material as garbage,’ she says, ‘and it was like heresy had been spoken in the room: You're lying. This is gold. We take the time to clean it, take the labels off, separate it and put it here. It's gold. This is valuable.’

But it's not valuable, and it never has been. And what's more, the makers of plastic — the nation's largest oil and gas companies — have known this all along ...

NPR and PBS Frontline spent months digging into internal industry documents and interviewing top former officials. We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn't work — that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled — all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic ...

[T]he industry spent millions telling people to recycle, because, as one former top industry insider told NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn't true ... Documents show industry officials knew this reality about recycling plastic as far back as the 1970s.”

Propaganda Misled Consumers to Accept Plastic

Since the earliest days of recycling, less than 10% of the plastic produced has ever been recycled, but you wouldn’t know that based on what the industry has said due to their highly effective propaganda campaigns based on absolute fraud.

In the late 1980s, the reality of plastic waste was becoming known and the public was expressing concerns about the environmental impact. Legislators were considering bans on the use of plastics. The plastic industry was in turmoil, trying to figure out how to stay in business as plastic was getting a bad rap.

The solution they came up with was, as usual, propaganda. In 1989, the plastics industry launched a $50 million-a-year ad campaign to promote the alleged benefits of plastic.

That same year, the industry also launched several feel-good recycling projects. “It funded sorting machines, recycling centers, nonprofits, even expensive benches outside grocery stores made out of plastic bags,” NPR writes, but by the mid-1990s, all of these projects had failed and been shuttered due to economics.

Recycling was simply too expensive. It’s far cheaper to make new things and bury the old. Over time, public concern mellowed and vanished. According to one trade group official, it seemed “the message that plastic could be recycled was sinking in.” The industry crisis passed.

Recycling Codes Became a Greenwashing Aid

In the early 1990s, the industry started lobbying states to mandate recycling symbols on all plastic products. Environmentalists who supported this plan were under the impression that it would help consumers separate the plastic, thereby making recycling a bit more affordable.

There are hundreds of plastics and they cannot be processed together. Some cannot be recycled at all. The recycling symbols were supposed to make separation easier, but all it did was confuse consumers into thinking that ALL plastic with a symbol could be recycled, thereby making matters worse.

Recyclers ended up with tons of unrecyclable plastics thrown in. Not only did they now have to spend more money on sorting, but getting rid of the unrecyclable plastic also ate into their already negligible profits. While this end result might not have been intentional, the plastics industry certainly was aware that it hurt the recycling industry more than anything.

In a 1993 report, a D.C. lobbying group flatly admitted the codes were being misused. “Companies are using it as a 'green' marketing tool,” the report said. In short, the industry knew the codes printed on the bottom would mislead consumers into thinking all plastic was recyclable, as virtually no one took the time to memorize each code.

Reduce Your Dependency on Plastic

It can be extraordinarily difficult to avoid plastic, considering most food and consumer goods are enshrined in plastic packaging. However, you can certainly minimize your dependency on these products. For example, consider:

Opting for products sold in glass containers rather than plastic whenever possible.

Looking for plastic-free alternatives to common items such as toys and toothbrushes.

Choosing reusable over single-use — This includes nondisposable razors, washable feminine hygiene products for women, cloth diapers, glass bottles for your beverages, cloth grocery bags, handkerchiefs instead of paper tissues, and using an old T-shirt or rags in lieu of paper towels.

Drinking filtered tap water rather than bottled water, and bringing your own refillable bottles when going out.

Buying glass food storage containers rather than plastic ones.

Bringing your own reusable cloth shopping bags.

Bringing your own glass dish for leftovers when eating out.

Skipping the plastic cutlery and using your own silverware when buying take-out.

Sources and References
1 https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/plastics-material-specific-data

2,4,6 http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/oceanography/great-pacific-garbage-patch.htm

3 https://www.weforum.org/press/2016/01/more-plastic-than-fish-in-the-ocean-by-2050-report-offers-blueprint-for-change/

5 https://www.wwf.org.au/news/blogs/the-lifecycle-of-plastics#gs.zbhiz

7 https://archive.ph/TLfyL

8 https://www.mdpi.com/2079-4991/13/8/1404

9 https://interestingengineering.com/science/plastic-food-packaging-brain-ingestion

10 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c04184

11 https://www.news-medical.net/news/20230117/Study-Exposure-to-high-doses-of-micro-sized-polyethylene-has-adverse-effects-on-cells.aspx

12 https://interestingengineering.com/science/microplastics-in-meat-milk-and-blood-of-farm-animals

13,14,15 https://www.plasticsoupfoundation.org/en/2022/07/80-of-cow-and-pig-meat-blood-and-milk-contains-plastic/

16 ,18,19 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/24/microplastics-found-in-human-blood-for-first-time

17,20 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412022001258?via%3Dihub#f0005

21 https://particleandfibretoxicology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12989-020-00385-9

22 https://d2ouvy59p0dg6k.cloudfront.net/downloads/plastic_ingestion_web_spreads.pdf

23 https://www.newswise.com/articles/newly-funded-study-aims-to-convert-paper-and-plastic-wastes-into-food

24 https://www.mtu.edu/news/2020/09/from-plastic-to-protein-powder.html

25 https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled

Noam Chomsky DOCUMENTARY - Politics, Philosophy

“Requiem for the American Dream”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEnv5I8Aq4I

with Noam Chomsky

(1:12:49)

REQUIEM FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM is the definitive discourse with Noam Chomsky, widely regarded as the most important intellectual alive, on the defining characteristic of our time - the deliberate concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a select few. Through interviews filmed over four years, Chomsky unpacks the principles that have brought us to the crossroads of historically unprecedented inequality - tracing a half-century of policies designed to favour the most wealthy at the expense of the majority - while also looking back on his own life of activism and political participation. Profoundly personal and thought-provoking, Chomsky provides penetrating insight into what may well be the lasting legacy of our time - the death of the middle class and swan song of functioning democracy. A potent reminder that power ultimately rests in the hands of the governed, REQUIEM is required viewing for all who maintain hope in a shared stake in the future.

A Better Way - #SolutionsWatch

https://www.corbettreport.com/solutionswatch-betterway/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

with James Corbett

There Is No Escape From Telling

https://edwardcurtin.com/there-is-no-escape-from-telling/

by Edward Curtin

By the lake’s lapping shore above the town and the railroad tracks, my wife and I stopped and marveled, struck stone silent by two dazzling Baltimore Orioles, clawed together as they tumbled, wrestling in the green morning breeze above our heads. They perched upon a branch and sang a morning hymn, an ode to joy and the spring’s morning glory. Their black and orange throats vibrated amid the green quaking aspen’s leaves as the lake’s low lapping sounds lent counterpoint. They were sublime.

I too felt a quake, a shiver down my spine as associations tumbled through my mind. Poems, songs, memories of other early morning walks in spring. Intoxication, elation, the horripilation that accompanies spring’s rising, the sexual excitement. Hope, and the loose feeling of being forever young. No solution to anything, just reverence for existence. Nothing changed, except a few years.

In quickly putting into words what I felt a half-hour ago, I drew on a vast store of personal and cultural memories that came to me with little thought as I was walking home. Words strung together without thinking. You have just read them. I felt impelled to tell them.

Now as I sit and contemplate, I think about culture and what it might mean. In my case, I was gifted by my parents and schools with the love of poetry and art from a young age. I know well that everyone is not so lucky and that, in any case, culture has many meanings. “Culture,” writes Raymond Williams, “is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.” From its original verbal meaning to cultivate the land to high, low, and middlebrow culture onto so many other meanings and conflicts that are often tied up with social class issues. There are cultures and culture.

When I say cultural memories, I mean my memories, no one else’s.

I learned early on that the music of verse, the sound of birds in the trees, the rush of a creek murmuring over rocks, the lilt of words spoken passionately, the placement of a certain blue paint on a canvas, a singer’s voice flying with a tune of joy or sadness, and a instrument’s vibrations were all connected to the reverence I felt as an altar boy tolling the bells and repeating Latin responses, whose full meaning I couldn’t grasp amid the incense and candle smoke: Et introibo ad altare Dei: ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem mea – “And I go to the altar of God, to God who gives joy to my youth.”

It was the sound of the bells that entranced me, and that I was allowed to ring them. To sound in, to participate in the ancient ritual that created a musical enclave from the beyond. I knew then, as I know now, that God has many altars, and that reverence before them and their mysteries is the right refrain. Bob Dylan singing “Ring Those Bells” comes to mind:

Ring them bells, ye heathen
From the city that dreams
Ring them bells from the sanctuaries
’Cross the valleys and streams
For they’re deep and they’re wide
And the world’s on its side
And time is running backwards
And so is the bride

So while it is not necessary to draw on stored cultural memories to appreciate the birds in the trees on nature’s altar on a beautiful spring morning, for me it enriched the experience. You may have heard echoes of Yeats, Van Morrison, and others in my words, but the reality of the world I described would be the same for those who never heard of these artists, who find their inspiration in the terrible beauty of nature and have other associations.

Are we really at home in our interpreted world, a poet once asked? It is a good question. This poet was Rilke, who wrote in the Duino Elegies :

For beauty is nothing/but the beginning of terror/which we are still just able to endure/and we are so awed because it serenely/disdains to annihilate us/Every angel is terrifying/And so I hold myself back and swallow the call note of my dark sobbing/Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?

Whom can we ever turn to in our need?

Everyone carries different associations that come to us when we are not thinking but are only immersed in our experiences. Snatches of trace memories, images, words, sounds, smells, the look of light, etc. that usually occur slightly after the first encounter with natural phenomena. One doesn’t have to know Shakespeare or William Wordsworth to experience nature’s beauty. Nor its terrors. Yet I must admit I am partial to words like these from Wordsworth:

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

But whatever our backgrounds, we are all interpreters of our world and words are our fundamental way of doing so. Words and metaphors that lead us to myth and art, even when its expression is wordless sound or pictures. Words that are often unacknowledged prayers to an unknown God.

For many years I taught what are called the liberal arts. This was an extension of my own education in the classics, philosophy, theology, and sociology, disciplines divided in name only but married in reality to science, literature, history, languages, etc. It is all one study when rightly understood. But our schools and universities have been abandoning this approach for the sterility of numbers and the cold dead hand of technology and digital dementia. For specialization, where professors know nothing outside their limited disciplines. For the study of the parts without any sense of the whole.

A new Dark Age is closing upon us, as Max Weber noted more than a century ago when he described the people who run our societies and educational institutions as “specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”

Students are being denied the rich heritage of words, images, and music that form the basis of Western culture. Without such a repository of cultural wisdom, they are left to draw only on popular cultural sources to interpret the world and their lives. More and more of these sources are anemic, if not degrading. It is not that some are not extraordinarily rich and meaningful, as is evident from those I link to in this essay, but a quick look around should convince any fair-minded person that the pickings are quite slim. We are drowning in cultural garbage that is being pumped out through digital media, primarily so-called smart phones, into young people’s minds and souls. It is poison. And the schools have devolved into protection rackets where students are protected from their own thoughts and ideas that might allow them to think and be thought.

To think, question, and debate have been replaced with censorship and the coddling of young minds. Such censorship, of course, has its counterpart in society at large. Call it propaganda, which is exactly what it is.

If Rilke is right, we will never be at home on this earth, our interpreted world. As a poet and a man of words, he no doubt knew that there is no alternative to interpretation, to ask why, to use words to describe our experiences and to seek meaning as we travel through the mystery of time and existence.

I know, however, for those minutes I stood by the lake in rapt silence as the birds sang and the water lapped, I felt at home.

Home, of course, is a complicated word, for we are time-bound creatures always moving on, travelers who are home one minute and gone the next. Even the word culture derives from an Indo-European root meaning to revolve, tied as it is, as are we, to the idea of a natural cycle, the turning of the seasons. Doesn’t a contemporary artist, Joni Mitchell, tell this beautifully with The Circle Game.

To say we are wayfarers is accurate, always on the way, as my recently departed dear friend Graeme MacQueen, a Buddhist and 9/11 scholar told me, when he laughingly said to me right before he recently died, that the old folk and Christian gospel song, Wayfaring Stranger, was his story too. He was a man of many talents who established the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University in Canada, wrote the important book, The 2001 Anthrax Deception, and much more, even a children’s book.

Graeme did all his work with the awareness that we are temporary sojourners on this earth, and that it is through stories and myths and their associations that come to us unbidden that we can connect life with death, the material and spiritual sides of our natures, in the search for peace. He died at home. I imagine him singing along with the words of the song: “I am a poor wayfaring stranger. . . . I’m goin’ home to see my father/I’m goin’ home, no more to roam/I am just goin’ over Jordan/I am just goin’ over home

And then laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe, just as he did earlier when he told me his doctor’s name was Dr. Sender, as he prepared to hit the road.

There is no escape from telling. Life is sublime.

From his album, On the Road, Van Morrison takes us out with “The Beauty of the Days Gone By”