Bulletin N° 1167
“Paul vs. James and the Birth of Christianity”
https://off-guardian.org/2025/04/20/watch-paul-vs-james-the-birth-of-christianity/
from The History Channel Archive
(50 minutes)
This highly interesting film documentary from the days before the History Channel was nothing but staged reality shows, This film discusses the men who inherited Jesus’ followers after his death, the conflict between them and how it shaped the fledgling Christian Church.
and
“The Name of the Rose”
https://www.bilibili.tv/en/video/4788780189357568
directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, and based on the 1980 novel of the same title by Umberto Eco
(2:10:26)
This work is a historical murder mystery set in an Italian monastery in the year 1327, and an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies, and literary theory. It was translated into English by William Weaver in 1983.
In 1327, Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and his assistant Adso of Melk arrive at a Benedictine abbey in Northern Italy to attend a theological disputation. The abbey is being used as neutral ground in a dispute between Pope John XXII and the Franciscans over the question of apostolic poverty. The monks of the abbey have recently been shaken by the suspicious death of one of their brothers, Adelmo of Otranto, and the abbot asks William (a former inquisitor) to investigate the incident. During his inquiries, William has a debate with one of the oldest monks in the abbey, Jorge of Burgos, about the permissibility of laughter, which Jorge regards as a threat to God's established order.
Subject : “Hope, and not 'hopium,' is found in the details of our daily lives guided by historical knowledge.”
Grenoble, France
April 26, 2025
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
Our readings in medieval European history started with the so-called “Dark Ages,” which followed the sack of Rome by the Goths (410 A.D.) leading to the subsequent disintegration of the Roman Empire. The culture of the early Middle Ages, stretching from the 6th century to the beginning of the 11th century, included the influence of ancient biblical scripture and classical Greek and Roman literature, as well as early Christian writings under Roman rule, leading to Monastic missionary work across Europe, followed by the early medieval renaissance associated with the rise of Charlemagne and the temporary creation of the Carolingian Empire (768-814).
From the first part of this period, we presented the writing of the Anglo-Saxon monk, the Venerable Bede (673-735); now we will examine the origins of monasticism and the early medieval Christian efforts at achieving European cultural hegemony prior to Charlemagne’s ardent attempt to reestablish empire in Europe.
In about the year 269, an eighteen-year-old boy named Antony, a Christian raised in Egypt, entered a church. This entrance symbolically marks the beginning of Christian monasticism. The story is told in the famous life of Saint Antony (251-356) written by Saint Anthanasius (c.296-373):
"He went into the church pondering these things, and just then it happened that the Gospel was being read, and he heard the Lord saying to the rich man, ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.’ It was as if by God’s design he held the saints in his recollection, and as if the passage were read on his account. Immediately Antony went out from the Lord’s house and gave to the townspeople the possessions he had from his forebears."
Soon Antony went to live in the desert, and although he returned to ‘the world’ several times later in his life, he continued to live in solitude for the rest of his life…. He lived alone in the desert most of that time, praying and supporting himself through manual labor. In his own lifetime he became famous for his holiness, and men came in large numbers to live near him in imitation. … [T]his ascetic movement flourished after the end of Christian persecution, when Christianity became a favored religion. People now could become Christians who were less than devoted to it, consequently, many saw the kind of commitment that Antony made as a way of demonstrating the depth of their devotion now that martyrdom was no longer literally possible. Antony came to a similar understanding of his own live….
. . .
Throughout the Middle Ages people continued to regard the monastic vocation as a particularly high calling because of its imitation through asceticism of the martyrs of the church, and the documents of early monasticism were therefore treated with special reverence throughout the Middle Ages. Antony brought to Christian, and especially monastic, imagery the concept of life as an inward journey:
"But do not be afraid to hear about virtue, and do not be a stranger to the term. For it is not distant from us, nor does it stand external to us, but its realization lies in us, and the task is easy if only we shall will it. Now the Greeks leave home and traverse the sea in order to gain an education, but there is no need for us to go abroad on account of the Kingdom of heaven, nor to cross the sea for virtue. For the Lord has told us before, the Kingdom of god is within you. All virtue needs, then, is our willing, since it is in us, and arises from us."
Antony was not a scholar. He understood the need to read, of course, because the word of God was contained in the Bible. Yet Antony saw that God ‘wrote’ another book as well:
"A certain philosopher asked St. Antony: ‘Father, how can you be so happy when you are deprived of the consolation of books?’ Antony replied: ‘My book, O philosopher, is the nature of created things, and any time I want to read the words of God, the book is before me."
This passage, closely related to the movement from visible to invisible expressed in Romans 1:19-20, describes the attitude toward nature that is dominant in Europe until the thirteenth century, and continues to be important long after that time. Although Antony was not a philosopher, his wisdom was said to exceed that of the great scholars of Alexandria.(W.R. Cook and R.B. Herzman, The Medieval World View, 1983, pp.166-168)
The Rule of St. Benedict.
In the sixth century there was a man who was to become the most important influence on Western monasticism from his own time till the present. His name is Saint Benedict of Nursia (480-547); his Rule, which was written for his own monks at Monte Cassino in southern Italy, eventually spread all over Latin Christendom. Benedict’s life was told by Gregory the Great in Book 2 of his Dialogues. One of the most important saint’s lives of the early Middle Ages, Gregory’s life of Benedict was itself one of the most important reasons for the spread of the Rule. What follows is Gregory’s description of one of Benedict’s temptations after he gave up study in Rome to become a hermit:
"A greater temptation of the flesh that he had ever experienced overtook the holy man. For the evil spirit brought back before his mind’s eye a certain woman whom he had once seen. So intensely did the Tempter inflame his mind by the sight of that woman that he could hardly control his passion. He was overcome by sensuality, and almost considered leaving his solitary retreat. Then suddenly God graciously looked upon him and he returned to himself. Since he saw that thickets of nettles and thorn bushes were growing nearby, he stripped off his garments and flung himself naked upon those stinging thorns and burning nettles. He rolled about there for a long time, and came out with his whole body wounded by them. So through the wound of the skin he drew out from his body the wound of the mind by changing his lust to pain. Although he burned painfully on the outside, he had put out the forbidden flame within."
After a rather unsuccessful attempt to reform a monastery that had asked for his help and an unsuccessful attempt to return to the solitary life of a hermit, Benedict tore down a pagan shrine and in its place founded a new monastery at Monte Cassino. There Benedict combined older monastic sources with his practical and commonsense approach the cenobitic life to create the Benedictine Rule. In the preface he states the monk’s and the monastery’s prime purpose:
"And so we are going to establish a school for the service of the Lord. In founding it we hope to introduce nothing harsh or burdensome. But if certain strictness results from the dictates of equity for the amendment of vices or the preservation of charity, do not be a once dismayed and fly from the way to salvation, whose entrance cannot but be narrow. For as we advice in the religious life and in faith, our hearts expand and we run the way of God’s commandments with unspeakable sweetness of love. Thus, never departing from His school, but preserving in the monastery according to His teaching until death, we may by patience share in the sufferings of Christ and deserve to have a share also in His kingdom."
The Rule called for a strong abbot in the monastery, almost unlimited in his powers and answerable only to God. However, the abbot could not act completely on his own:
"Whenever any important business has to be done in the monastery, let the Abbot call together the whole community and state the matter to be acted upon. Then, having heard the brethren’s advice, let him turn the matter over in his own mind and do what he shall judge to be most dependent. The reason we have said that all should be called for counsel is that the Lord often reveals to the younger what is best."
The monks were to take vows of poverty (though the community could own property corporately, no individual could own anything), obedience (to the abbot), chastity, stability (a monk was to live and die in the monastery and not leave except on monastic business), and conversion of manners (a monk was to strive continually for spiritual improvement). The Principal activities of the monk were to pray and work, in Latin, ora et labora. Through the Rule of St. Benedict, manual labor was given a dignity it never had in Roman times. An elaborate schedule of services for prayer, called offices, was established in the Rule, beginning with vigils at about 2:30 A.M. and ending with compline at 6:30 or 7:00 P.M. In between were lauds, prime, tierce, sext, none, and vespers. At times when offices were not being said, the monks remained busy because
"Idleness is the enemy of the soul. Therefore the brethren should be occupied at certain times in manual labor, and again at fixed hours in sacred reading. To that end we think that the times for each may be prescribed as follows.
"From Easter until the Calends of October, when they come out from Prime in the morning let them labor at whatever is necessary until about the fourth hour, and from the fourth hour until about the sixth let them apply themselves to reading. After the sixth hour, having left the table, let them rest on their beds in perfect silence; or if anyone may perhaps want to read let him read to himself in such a way as not to disturb anyone else. Let None be said rather early, at the middle of the eighth hour, and let them again do what work has to be done until Vespers.
"And if the circumstances of the place or their poverty should require that they themselves do the work of gathering the harvest, let them not be discontented; for then are they truly monks when they live by the labor of their hands, as did out Fathers and the Apostles. Let all things be done with moderation, however, for the sake of the faint-hearted."
A monk’s day alternated between times of communal prayer, manual labor, and rest. The interweaving of these was a way to see all activities as God-centered and thus as a kind of prayer. Furthermore, the monastic day conformed to nature. The office of vigils, sung at night, had the theme of waiting for the Lord. The office of lauds, at daybreak, celebrated the coming of the Lord, symbolized by the light. The office of vespers, coming at the end of the working day as the sun was setting, was an office of Thanksgiving.
Study was not a main element of the monk’s life for Benedict, although each monk was expected to be literate and had an obligation to read an entire book during Lent. Monte Cassino was first and foremost a place to win salvation rather than a place to advance knowledge of the world.
One of the necessary conditions for living the prescribed life of prayer was silence:
"Therefore, since the spirit of silence is so important, permission to speak should rarely be granted even to perfect disciples, even though it be for good, holy, edifying conversation; for it is written, ‘In much speaking you will not escape sin,’ and in another place, ‘Death and life are in the power of the tongue.’
"But as for coarse jests and idle words or words that move to laughter, these we condemn everywhere with a perpetual ban, and for such conversation we do not permit a disciple to open his mouth."
Food, drink, shelter, and clothing were all provided for the monk, at the discretion of the abbot, but Benedict certainly intended a minimum of food and plain clothing:
"We think it sufficient for the daily dinner, whether at the sixth or the ninth hour, that every table have two cooked dishes, on account of individual infirmities, so that he who for some reason cannot eat the one may make his meal of the other. Therefore let two cooked dishes suffice for all the brethren; and if any fruit or fresh vegetable are available, let a third dish be added.
"But if it happens that the work was heavier, it shall lie within the Abbot’s discretion and power, should it be expedient, to add something to the fare. Above all things, however, over-indulgence must be avoided and a monk must never be overtaken by indigestion; for there is nothing so opposed to the Christian character as over-indulgence, according to Our Lord’s words, ‘See to it that your hearts be not burdened with over-indulgence.’
". . . We believe that a hemina of wine a day is sufficient for each. But those to whom God gives the strength to abstain should know that they will receive a special reward.
"If the circumstances of the place, or the work, or the heat of summer require a greater measure, the Superior shall use his judgment in the matter, taking care always that there be not occasion for surfeit or drunkenness. We read, it is true, that wine is by no means a drink of monks; but since the monks of our day cannot be persuaded of his let us at least agree to drink sparingly and not to satiety, because ‘wine makes even the wise fall away. . . . .
"We believe, however, that in ordinary places the following dress is sufficient for each monk: a tunic, a cowl(thick and wooly for winter, thin and worn for summer), a scapular for work, stockings and shoes to cover the feet.
"The monks should not complain about the color or the coarseness of any of these things, but be content with what can be found in the district where they live and can be purchased cheaply. . . . .
"And in order that this vice of private ownership may be cut out by the roots, the Abbot should provide all the necessary articles: cowl, tunic, stockings, shoes, girdle, knife, pen, needle, handkerchief, tablets; that all pretext of need may be taken away."
Benedict wrote this Rule only for Monte Cassino, never envisioning the founding of an order. However, the cult of Benedict spread rapidly; and the Rule became the norm of monastic life in England and was firmly established in Germany and Gaul in the eighth century. In the ninth century the Rule became universal in Latin Christendom, making it the most important document in the history of Western monasticism. There were two primary reasons for its success. One was the popularity of the cult of Saint Benedict largely due to the writings of Pope Gregory the Great. Second was the genius of the Rule itself. It provided a stable structure with a strong abbot, and it provided a synthesis of the older desert tradition with a new moderation. The combination of moderation and strictness in Benedict’s attitude toward the monks drinking wine, quoted above, is a good example of this synthesis.
Although the Rule became the constitution of hundreds, indeed thousands, of monasteries for both men and women, like all constitutions it had to be interpreted and adapted to conditions quite different from sixth century Italy. In two obvious examples, it was clear that the clothing regulations would not be adequate for a cold climate, and in some parts of northern Europe, wine was nonexistent. Thus, in the spirit of the Rule itself, different customs developed throughout Western Europe within the context of Benedictine monasticism. Some of the customaries from the tenth and eleventh centuries survive, but it is clear that the establishment of a pluralism within the tradition began as soon as the Rule spread form Monte Cassino.
Although in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries new monastic orders were formed that did not live under the Rule, it did continue to be the fundamental law in hundreds of Benedictine houses (black monks) and Cistercian houses (white monks, a reform of the Benedictines established in 1098). Men and women in all walks of life in the Middle Ages knew the basic tenets of the Rule; thus there were many allusions to it in medieval literature. One immediately thinks of the Monk in the General Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, who takes the tenets of the Rule and systematically turns them upside down.
Despite the overwhelming importance of Benedict for Western monasticism, his was not the only influence. Were one to ask nonmedievalists to describe a medieval monk, they would probably picture a scholar-scribe seated at his workbench preserving the texts of classical antiquity. That would be right in part; yet neither the desert fathers nor Benedict envisioned the monk primarily as a scholar. Such an emphasis on scholarship was the work of monks like Cassiodorus (c.485-580), who established two monasteries at Vivarium where monks attempted to combine pagan and Christian learning. Scholarly zeal in the monastic tradition also comes from another source, the Irish monasticism.
Although monks were people who removed themselves from the mainstream of medieval society, monasticism, paradoxically, permeated that society. Because of their value to the monastic vocation, both classical and early Christian writings were preserved in monasteries; the earliest surviving manuscripts of both were copied by monks. It was in the monasteries of early medieval Europe that the first fully Christian culture developed –that is, in a monastic setting all was subordinated to the search for God and the achievement of salvation. With the brief exception of the reign of Charlemagne, monastic schools had a virtual monopoly on education until the middle of the twelfth century. Finally, many men who either were themselves monks or who were educated in monasteries served secular rulers, became bishops, or even were elected pope, thus bringing monastic culture out of the cloister and into the world.(pp.171-178)
The Medieval World View.
Certain concerns certainly dominated the Middle Ages, as authors William Cook and Ronald Herzman conclude that:
the centrality of the Bible, not only as a spiritual guide, but as a guide to subjects far removed from religion; the substantial continuity with the ancient world; the fusion of Christian and classical cultures, and their interaction with that of the Germans; the importance of the Church in its institutional and spiritual roles under the leadership of the papacy. In all the developments between the time of the ancient world and 1300 . . . these elements remain constant, supporting the presupposition . . . that it is not wrong to speak of a medieval world view. But what happens next? Certainly events occurred in the fourteenth century that significantly altered the course of European history; The Avignon papacy, followed by a forty-year papal schism; the arrival of the bubonic plague, which probably reduced the population of Europe by a third; the Hundred Years War. Without in any way denying the importance of these events and their permanent impact on the course of Western civilization, it is nonetheless important to point out that they did not change the institutions and values that [of] . . . the medieval world view. For example, the Hundred Years War was fought in large part because of the English kings’ involvement in French politics, an involvement that dates back to 1066. And although the methods of warfare were considerably different form earlier centuries, the ideals of warfare were those established in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Fourteenth century also produced figures of permanent genius –Dante, Chaucer, Giotto, and William of Ockham, to name four obvious examples. Dante and Chaucer, at the beginning and end of the century respectively, were both artists deeply engaged in the political and intellectual currents of their time, but they were also artists with an extraordinary ability to harness the intellectual energy of previous centuries and make it their own .
. . .
Everyone agrees . . . that the Middle Ages is over. And if it did not end in the fourteenth century, it had to have ended sometime. A case can be made that what changed in the fourteenth century was the rate of change and this might be a contributing factor to the end of the Middle Ages. In the fifteenth century, one begins to find writers who consciously reject the culture that had been developing since the fall of the Roman Empire, and who consequently attempted to recreate the culture of the ancient world freed from ‘barbarian accretions;’ The Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century sought out the ‘true Christianity’ that existed before the development of medieval instructions and distortions. The sixteenth century saw the discovery and exploration of the New World and Asia. The danger in looking toward all this change and its implied rejection of certain elements of the medieval world view is that it encourages us to forget how much continuity still existed with the medieval tradition. Neither Petrarch (1304-1374) nor Luther (1483-1546) is understandable outside the Augustinian tradition; there were English Protestant Thomists in the sixteenth century; many of the missionaries to the New World took their inspiration from Francis of Assisi and their theory of conversion form Gregory the Great.
More significant than the break with the medieval past during the Renaissance is the one caused by the scientific revolution beginning with Copernicus (1473-1543), for it is the scientific world view and its attendant technological progress which most decisively separates us from the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, it is important to remind ourselves that although the world view of the Middle Ages did indeed break down, many of its individual elements have been integrated into our own civilization. . . . [W]e are continuing to learn the extent to which our civilization is perched on the shoulders of the Middle Ages.(pp.317-319)
The study of history is motivated by learning from mistakes made in the past. The past, like the present, is largely governed by inequalities and the subsequent abuse of power. How to avoid the ruinous effects of such injustices is embedded in the principle of self-government, in the absence of which we have seen benevolence transform into despotism and tyranny.
The 26+ items below are essays and articles taken from the critical Anglophone social media, in which we find myriads of contradictions and paradoxes which serve to expose the real forces that are playing us against one another and against our true self-interests for a better life. We can look in the present for the seedlings of a future “society of equals” made possible by the creation of a rational political economy governed democratically, with the assistance of useful technology and the ethics of sincere goodwill; in short a “win-win” gamble instead of the “sum-zero” game of eventual suicide.
Sincerely,
Francis McCollum Feeley
___
Professeur honoraire
de l'Université Grenoble-Alpes
Ancien Directeur de
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
___________
a.
“Who is Pope Francis? Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’”
by Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Argentina’s “Dirty War”
Millions of Catholics are mourning the passing of Pope Francis I.
After having courageously pronounced his last words Buona Pasqua (Happy Easter) on Easter Sunday, he blessed the crowd of thousands of people from his balcony.
A powerful message was read on his behalf:
“There can be no peace without freedom of religion,
freedom of thought,
freedom of expression and respect for the views of others,”
From the inception of his Vatican mandate in March 2013, Pope Francis I has been portrayed by the international community as a left leaning champion of “Liberation Theology” committed to World peace and global poverty alleviation.
But there is “More than Meets the Eye”.
Prior to his election by the papal conclave, the role of Jorge Maria Bergoglio in Argentina’s “Dirty War” was known and documented.
It was known to the US State Department. It must have been known to one or more of the 115 “Cardinal Electors” of the Papal Conclave which convened at the Sistine Chapel on March 12, 2013.
Needless to say, both the Catholic Hierarchy as well as the international community turned a blind eye.
And the media with some exceptions has over the years remained silent.
Who Was Jorge Mario Bergoglio before he became Pope?
Jorge Mario Bergoglio not only supported the military dictatorship, he also played a direct and complicit role in the “Dirty War” (la ramat sucia”) in liaison with the military Junta headed by General Jorge Videla, leading to the arrest, imprisonment, torture and disappearance of progressive Catholic priests and laymen who were opposed to Argentina’s military rule.
“While the two priests Francisco Jalics y Orlando Yorio, kidnapped by the death squads in May 1976 were released five months later. After having been tortured, six other people associated within their parish kidnapped as part of the same operation were “disappeared” (desaparecidos).”
In a bitter irony, the two priests sent to the torture chamber were committed to the Theology of Liberation against which Bergoglio at the time was firmly opposed.
Lest we forget, shortly after his investiture in March 2013, Pope Francis was described by the British media of having brought “Liberation Theology into the Vatican”, in the footsteps of Francis of Assisi.
That was a nonsensical statement (“fake news”): In 1976, Bergoglio’s intent (in liaison with the military junta led by General Jorge Videla) was to crush Liberation Theology.
In 2005, human rights lawyer Myriam Bregman filed a criminal suit against Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, accusing him of conspiring with the military junta in the 1976 kidnapping of two Jesuit priests.
Several years later, the survivors of the “Dirty War” openly accused Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of complicity in the kidnapping of priests Francisco Jalics y Orlando Yorio as well six members of their parish (who were “disappeared”), (El Mundo, 8 November 2010) . . . .
+
“Breaking the Silence, the Catholic Church in Argentina and the ‘Dirty War’”
Pope Francis with Leader of military junta General Jorge Videla
by Horacio Verbitsky
Argentina between 1976 and 1983 was wracked by a “dirty war” in which successive military regimes hunted down, tortured and “disappeared” tens of thousands of citizens. The process had begun when Argentina’s already febrile politics started to split open in the mid-1970s. The military seized power in a coup from Isabelita Peron’s government, in the wake of an armed insurgency by Montoneros guerrillas.
The dictatorship that followed consigned thousands of Argentineans into military detention. Most were tortured; a few were released, many were eventually murdered. These “disappeared” numbered in all around 30,000.
In 1979, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission visited Argentina and inspected the most notorious detention centre, the Navy Mechanical School in Buenos Aires. They found no prisoners. As Horacio Verbitsky reveals in this extract from his extraordinary book, the prisoners had been dispersed, some of them to El Silencio, an island property that had belonged to an official of the Catholic archbishop of Buenos Aires.
The Catholic church’s complicity in torture and murder in Argentina should be no surprise; it had, after all, long precedents in extreme doctrines that came to Argentina (and elsewhere in Latin America) from the far right in France. But many details of Horacio Verbitsky’s account are revelatory, and his researches are a vital contribution to continuing efforts in Argentina to reach a full historical, legal and moral accounting for the violations of the “dirty war” years.
The River
“Transfer” was a word the prisoners feared, a word they all wanted to banish from their thoughts.
There were three weeks to the end of winter. The nights were still cold, but the sunshine brought a feeling of warmth returning, a good sign after all the hard months. They had been told they would be away until the end of the month. Some of them had told their families they would not be able to call or see them for several weeks. They had never been outside the Navy Mechanical School as a group before, and this novelty was disturbing. In the attic and basement of the officers’ mess that they were leaving, they had had enough time to get close. The links between them were recent but intense, cemented by the extreme situation they had shared, the outcome of which was still unclear.
Horacio Verbitsky’s new book “The Silence” has been longlisted for the 2005 Ulysses award for literary reportage
This time they were not called out by name and they were not lined up in the white-tiled corridor leading to the sickroom where they had been vaccinated. When the last of them climbed on board the bus, the officers’ mess was left empty to make room for a refurbishment. The aim was to deceive the members of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, who were arriving with makeshift but accurate drawings of the installations.
The bathroom was to be completely altered, a marble worktop, stainless-steel sinks and a wall-to-wall mirror were to be fitted to make the place look less forbidding. Partitions were to be knocked down, and the metal rings in the floor removed. The staircase between the basement and the attic was to be closed off.
The bus headed north, parallel to the River Plate. With their casual clothes and sports bags they might have seemed like so many similar groups of light-hearted young men and women out on an excursion. They were well aware of the deceit and disguise.
They cannot have taken more than half an hour to reach the landing-stage. The guards identified the vehicle and let them through. Other prisoners were brought to the same spot by car, blindfolded.
They were put on board a coastguard launch, made of wood like the boats that carry passengers between all the islands, but with the seats removed. They were made to lie on the floor in the midst of bags, crates of food, radio equipment and weapons. The launch headed up the River Tuyú-Paré towards the Chaña-Miní.
Some of the prisoners estimate the journey took little more than half an hour; others, more accurately, say an hour and a half. In the 19th century, the liberal bourgeoisie in Argentina had called this area the Tigre, in honour of the Tigris region in Mesopotamia. Only the people who live on the islands of the delta can distinguish all the 350 rivers, streams and channels into which they are divided. A century and a half ago, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento described the shape of these islands as “the most capricious imaginable”, an area where “the surface is an illusion: not everything is land that appears to be so, and there is no way of knowing beforehand what is of any use.”
There was nothing out of the ordinary about the dock they tied up at; nor about the house, which they walked towards across worn wooden planks and a muddy path. The building must have been around eighty years old. It was the same as many others in the Paraná delta, with a pitched corrugated iron roof, floors, walls and partitions made of wood, and raised on stilts to protect it from the frequent floods. The eight large rooms must have covered an area of a little less than 200 square metres. Radio equipment was set up in one of the rooms. There was an electric generator and lots of tools. A gas water-heater supplied the bathroom and the kitchen, and there were four water tanks for drinking water.
A stand of poplars, another of willows, and a third of birches filled the cultivated part of the island. The rest needed clearing. A dense screen of thorn bushes grew wild everywhere, making it impossible to penetrate more than 500 metres inland from the river.
Another, smaller group made the same journey in the cold of early morning. They were frightened rather than excited. Handcuffed and blindfolded, some of them were taken in a large van, others were put into a lorry with a thick green canvas awning. When they reached the landing-stage, they heard the barking of dogs and the rattle of weapons. They were put into an open launch and covered with a canvas. If any of them moved they were beaten.
These prisoners were put into a second building, smaller and rougher than the first. Its external walls were made of corrugated iron, and the gap between them and the wooden stilts had been filled in to accommodate them. Each night one or two of them were taken to the big house for a bath, along dark earthen paths, their way lit by torches. Despite the primitiveness of the conditions, these prisoners were happy that they were left on their own in this house, where the guards refused to sleep. This was the first time they were able to talk freely to each other, and thanks to this, they discovered that one of them was missing.
The last prisoner to arrive was “The Old Lady”, so called because she was 52 years old. Unlike the others, she was brought on her own. When she reached the island she read on the wooden sign that it was called El Silencio.
This was where the last men and women kidnapped by the Navy Mechanics School Task Force spent a month in September 1979.
The Catholic City
Cardinal Antonio Caggiano and his secretary Bishop Emilio Grasselli worked together in the two decades when Argentina’s defining tragedy was prepared. The cardinal played an important role in those preparations.
Elements of the Catholic church elsewhere had long taken an interest in “counter-terrorism”. In 1958, an advance party of La Cité Catholique arrived in Argentina. This was an offshoot of the French Catholic monarchist movement known as L’Action Française, created by in 1889 by Charles Maurras, the brilliant French philosopher and later apologist for Fascism. La Cité Catholique brought a doctrine of counter-revolutionary warfare and torture, justified as part of Thomist dogmatism.
Jean Ousset, Maurras’s private secretary, established La Cité Catholique in 1946. The idea originated in the French armed forces. In his book Le Marxisme-leninisme, Ousset states that this enemy can only be successfully combated by a “profound faith, an unlimited obedience to the Holy Father, and a thorough knowledge of the Church’s doctrines”.
Charles Lacheroy, a member of La Cité Catholique, was the first person to reflect on the ideological and technical reasons behind the defeat of the French colonial army in Indochina in 1954. Another member, Roger Trinquier, ramatize on the use of torture in Modern Warfare, a bible for its followers.
Another of Ousset’s recruits was the chief French expert in psychological warfare – Colonel Jean Gardes. Between them they developed a new concept, that of subversion. This conceived a protean, quintessential enemy who, rather than being defined by his actions, was seen as a force trying to subvert Christian order, natural law, or the Creator’s plan. For this reason, Ousset states that “the revolutionary apparatus is ideological before it is political, and political before it is military”. This explains the wide range of enemies he sought to define.
When the torture that French paratroopers used in Algeria during the bloody war of 1954-62 aroused protests and debate, French military chaplains calmed the officers’ troubled consciences. One of them, Louis Delarue, wrote a text that was distributed to all units:
“If, in the general interest, the law allows a murderer to be killed, why should it be seen as monstrous to submit a delinquent who has been ramatizes as such and is therefore liable to be put to death, to an interrogation which might be painful, but whose only object is, thanks to the revelations he may make about his accomplices and leaders, to protect the innocent? Exceptional circumstances call for exceptional measures”.
As success in the Algerian war gradually slipped away from the crusaders, Ousset decided to create branches of La Cité Catholique in other parts of the world. The first of these was in Buenos Aires in 1958. Its members had been part of the clandestine Organisation of a Secret Army (OAS), which brought terror to Paris itself and attempted to assassinate General Charles de Gaulle, whom they accused of treason for withdrawing French forces from Algeria and thus facilitating its independence from French rule.
Charles de Gaulle succeeded in destroying the OAS and had several of his former military colleagues shot. The OAS chaplain, Georges Grasset, ramatize the flight of many members of the ramatizesn along a route which led from Paris to Madrid and finally to Buenos Aires. Grasset himself arrived in 1962 to take charge of the Argentine branch.
Horacio Verbitsky is a leading Argentinean investigative journalist. He was given an International Press Freedom Award by the Committee to Protect Journalists in 2001. Among his books are The Flight: Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior (New Press, 2005) and The Silence: from Paulo VI to Bergoglio, the secret links between the Church and the Navy Mechanics School (Buenos Aires, Editorial Sudamericana, 2005), which uncovers the assistance and protection that the Catholic Church gave to Argentina’s brutal military dictatorship.
Another founder of the OAS describes Grasset as “a true soldier-monk, a virulent anti-communist, who became the spiritual guide of the OAS. Thanks to him and the Cité Catholique network, of which he was one of the mainstays, several of the OAS leaders managed to find refuge abroad, particularly in Argentina”.
Jean Gardes reached Argentina in 1963. Forty years later, his daughter Florence showed the French journalist Marie-Monique Robin the notes her father had made. They show that, in March 1963, a naval lieutenant commander called Roussillon offered Gardes a deal: he would arrange Argentine government protection so that Gardes could settle in Neuquén; in exchange, he would deliver a series of lectures in the Navy Mechanics School on the counter-subversive techniques developed in France’s colonial wars.
Gardes, who soon established a small factory making paté de foie in Neuquén, did not ask to be paid or to have a fixed post, but only wanted to be an adviser. Gardes’ notes, as conserved by his daughter, coincide with those of the file on naval officer Federico Lucas Roussillon.
In 1955, the then Lieutenant Roussillon took part in the Catholic nationalist movement led by Eduardo Lonardi, which overthrew President Juan Domingo Perón. One of Lonardi’s general staff was Major Juan Francisco Guevara, who proposed that the password the conspirators should use should be: “God is Just”. By 1963 Roussillon was a member of the Naval Intelligence Service; he retired with the rank of captain in 1979, as Cardinal Caggiano was approaching the end of his life.
Soon after Gardes met Roussillon, the cadets at the Navy Mechanics School were also introduced to the world of counter-revolutionary warfare. In one of their courses they were shown the film The Battle of Algiers, an Italian-Algerian co-production made by the communist director Gillo Pontecorvo with the intention of exposing the methods used in Algeria by the French colonial army.
The film was subsequently used in counter-insurgency classes in Argentina and the United States to teach those same methods. The naval chaplain introduced the film and added a commentary from the religious point of view. Thirty-five years later, two of the cadets described the experience to Marie-Monique Robin:
Did the chaplain justify the methods used in The Battle of Algiers?
Anibal Acosta: Absolutely.
Including torture?
Julio César Urien: Yes. Torture was seen not as a moral problem but as a weapon.
Anibal Acosta: Part of the Catholic hierarchy supported this kind of practice. They showed us that film to prepare us for a kind of war very different from the regular war we had entered the Navy School for. They were preparing us for police missions against the civilian population, who became our new enemy.
The first edition of Le Marxisme-leninisme to be published outside France appeared in Buenos Aires on 6 February 1961, translated and annotated by Juan Francisco Guevara (now a colonel) and with a prologue written by Cardinal Caggiano, who thanks the “men of La ciudad catolica of Argentina” for publishing Ousset’s book.
Marxism, continues Caggiano, is born of the negation of Christ and his Church, “put into practice by the Revolution”. He affirms that Ousset’s book is a training tool for the “fight to the death” to which “all the peoples of the western world, America and those in Asia who are still resisting, are in grave, imminent danger of falling victim”.
According to Caggiano, it is necessary to “prepare for the decisive battle” even though the enemies have not yet “taken up arms”. As often happens in a continent that imports ideas, the doctrine of annihilation preceded that of the revolutionary uprising. In order to reinforce his idea of a holy war, Caggiano compared this vigil to the one that preceded the 1571 battle of Lepanto “to save Europe from domination by the Turk”. The book includes a list of the papal bulls condemning communism; they were the cross which kept Satan at bay.
In October 1961, Caggiano and the then president of Argentina, Arturo Frondizi inaugurated the first course on counter-revolutionary warfare in the Higher Military College. One of the tasks set in the course was to explain this quotation from the bishop of Verden, Dietrick von Nieken in 1411:
“When the existence of the Church is threatened, it is no longer bound by the commandments of morality. When unity is the aim, all means are justified: deceit, treachery, violence, usury, prison and death. Because order serves the good of the community, and the individual has to be sacrificed for the common good.”
Among the advisers for this course were the French colonels Robert Bentresque and Jean Nougues; among its instructors were priests such as Victorio Bonamín, whom Caggiano had chosen as his associate in the military vicariate general. At the start of the course, the director of the Higher Military College explained that it would be dealing with a new kind of warfare “which we could call ‘internal warfare’”, to be fought “without concern for the means, or scruples, or ethical principles”.
This warfare knew no boundaries. Among the enemies were demagoguery, immorality, vices of all kinds, and low passions, all of which were employed “through the dialectic of communist action” in order to create “confusion and contradictions”. Caggiano, who attended the ceremony at Frondizi’s right hand, gave his blessing and invoked God’s aid so that the military might “discover the true path to defend the peace of our nations”. As usual, Grasselli was at his side. A few months later, Frondizi was overthrown, accused of being too tolerant towards communism.
The Island . . . .
.========
b.
‘Gaza should be wiped out! Gaza
Should be wiped out!’”
by Celia Farber
+
“Israel’s Torture & Rape of Palestinian Prisoners Defended by Knesset Members, Far-Right Mobs”
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/1/israel_gaza_palestinian_prisoners_torture
by Democracy Now!
(43:22)
Unrest continues to brew in Israel after a right-wing mob including members of the Knesset broke into two Israeli military bases in an effort to prevent Israeli military police from detaining nine soldiers who were under investigation for gang raping a Palestinian prisoner at the notorious Sde Teiman facility. +972 Magazine's Oren Ziv, who was at one of the bases reporting on the events, says that the support of Israeli political leaders, including some members of the Knesset who participated in the riots, and the apathy of the military police all indicate that those protesting against the soldiers' charges are “the face of the state,” expressing what are “mainstream” views in Israeli society. We also speak to Diana Buttu, a Palestinian human rights attorney who has interviewed some of the torture victims and says the extent of their abuse is “appalling.” She calls Sde Teiman a “concentration camp” that the entirety of Israeli society and the international community are “complicit” in.
+
“‘The Israeli Dream’: The Criminal Roadmap Towards ‘Greater Israel’?”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-israeli-dream-the-criminal-roadmap-towards-greater-israel/5391839
by Felicity Arbuthnot
Ethnic Cleansing Planned in the Middle East? History, Legality Ignored
[We repost this important article by Felicity Arbuthnot, first published by Global Research in 2014.]
The concept of a “Greater Israel” according to the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl, is a Jewish State stretching “’From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.’
Rabbi Fischmann, of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, stated to the UN Special Committee on 9th July 1947 that:
The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon’”, wrote Michel Chossudovsky. (1)
Thus “from the Nile to the Euphrates.” Herzl’s detailed thesis was written in 1904.
.
READ MORE: Criminal Investigations Still Needed for Architects of US Invasion of Iraq.
Quoted in the same article is Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya on The Yinon Plan (1982)
“a continuation of Britain’s colonial design in the Middle East”:
“(The Yinon plan) is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding Arab states into smaller and weaker states.
“Israeli strategists viewed Iraq as their biggest strategic challenge from an Arab state. This is why Iraq was outlined as the centerpiece to the balkanization of the Middle East and the Arab World. In Iraq, on the basis of the concepts of the Yinon Plan, Israeli strategists have called for the division of Iraq into a Kurdish state and two Arab states, one for Shiite Muslims and the other for Sunni Muslims. The first step towards establishing this was a war between Iraq and Iran, which the Yinon Plan discusses.”
At the time Yinon wrote, the eight year, Western driven Iran-Iraq war was into its second year – with another six grinding years of loss, tragedy and heartbreak, valleys of widows, orphans, maimed, on both sides of their common border. The toll on life and health was compared to World War 1. Iraq of course, in an historic error, had virtually been fighting a proxy war for an American regime, even then obsessed with Islam, which, in Iran they had decided was the wrong sort of Islam. What the faith of a nation thousands of miles away had to do with Capitol Hill, remains a mystery.
The day after that devastating war ended, the US replaced Iraq over the then USSR as the country which was the biggest threat to America. A devastated, war torn nation of, at the time, just under seventeen million people. (2)
Then came the dispute with Kuwait over alleged oil theft and Dinar destabilizing with the then US Ambassador April Glaspie personally giving Saddam Hussein the green light to invade should he choose. The subsequent nation paralyzing UN embargo followed, then the 2003 decimation and occupation – another orchestrated downward spiral – and tragedy and now open talk of what has been planned for decades, the break up of Iraq.
“Mission accomplished” for both the US with its long planned redrawing of the Middle East and North Africa – and Israel, through whose friendship with the Iraqi Kurdish autocracy, was set to become pretty well a partner in an autonomous, independent Iraqi Kurdistan. Dream come true, from “the Nile to the Euphrates”, the final fruition of near seventy years of manipulation and aggression for domination of the entire region.
The all is also the vision of the super hawk, dreamer of destruction of nations, Lt Colonel Ralph Peters since the early 1990s. Here is his 2006 version (3.) Peters is a man whose vision of eternal war is seemingly an eternal wet dream. Here, again, for anyone unaware of the Colonel, is a repeat of that dream (US Army War College Quarterly, Summer 1997):
“There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts … around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. (US armed forces will keep) the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.
“We have entered an age of constant conflict.”
Peters would make some of history’s most megalomaniacal expansionists look like gift offering peaceniks. His cartographic monument to arrogance: “The New Map of the Middle East Project”, of geographical restructure in far away places of which he gave less than a damn, was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006.
========
c.
Video: “Trump’s ‘Global Economic Warfare’. Triggers Worldwide Stock Market Collapse”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-trumps-global-economic-warfare/5883616
by Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Drago Bosnic
Inside information and Foreknowledge of Presidential Statements and Actions? The imposition of tariffs.
In what way is the Trump presidency and his financial partners involved in the collapse of stock markets Worldwide.
Major financial actors, using the insrumnts of speculative trade, have the ability to fiddle and rig market movements to their advantage. There is no such thing as a “Free Market”. These tools of manipulation have become an integral part of the financial architecture; they are embedded in the system.
There are several instruments including futures, put options, index funds, derivatives, naked short selling, etc. used to make billions of dollars when the stock market crumbles. The more it falls, the greater the gains. Those who make it fall are speculating on its decline.”
The stock exchange has been transformed into a multi billion dollar Gambling Casino.
The market is heavily manipulated. The driving force behind the meltdown is speculative trade. The system of “private regulation” serves the interests of the speculators.
+
“A Global Financial Crisis: Alex Krainer on Ukraine, BlackRock, and Economic Warfare”
https://www.bitchute.com/video/mz7Loddj0jY
by Samui Real, July 2024
(1:13:15)
Financial expert, Geopolitical Analysist and Author exposes the not so hidden agendas shaping our economic future.
+
“Meet Mark Carney, Globalist Insider”
https://corbettreport.com/meet-mark-carney-globalist-insider/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
with James Corbett
(1:26:49)
Mark Carney portrays himself as the ultimate political outsider, but this is a lie. From Goldman Sachs to the Bank of Canada to the Bank of England to Chatham House and Bilderberg, Carney is the ultimate globalist insider. Today on The Corbett Report, James goes elbows up on the globalist golden boy.
+
“The history of ‘running government like a business’”
https://mailchi.mp/historynewsnetwork/the-history-of-running-government-like-a-business?e=aa01485af9
by History News Network
One of the challenging debates, for economists and policymakers as much as historians, is about how to define efficiency. One of its most standard applications to policy and law is cost-benefit analysis — or sometimes, benefit-cost analysis — which, to put it simply, calculates efficiency by measuring if gains exceed losses. Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency”
is a recent example of this kind of business logic applied to government. If efficiency implies solely gains, or in DOGE’s claims, savings outnumbering expenses, then the recent projection by the IRS that DOGE may actually cost the government half a trillion dollars in tax revenues seems to undermine the premise of the task force — if it is in fact about the calculus of inputs and outputs.But in political history, efficiency is a symbol and a value claim far more often than it is the actual answer to a math problem. (The math problem question itself is flummoxed by the fact that revenues and expenses simply do not work for a monetary sovereign government the way they work for a private business or a household bank account.) The persuasiveness of a household checking account (or even small business checking account) metaphor for a government budget is politically appealing and has been used more and more widely since the 1970s to advocate for policies like a “Balanced Budget Amendment” that the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has shown would likely exacerbate recessions and lead to much shorter periods of economic growth. It also provides a defensible alibi for more unpopular ideological movements and attacks on the most vulnerable.
A fundamental problem with applying a model like cost-benefit analysis that relies on clear, calculable inputs and outputs to measure results from complex, long-term government programs is a function of time and historicity. A famous case of this problem playing out in the private sector was the exploding Ford Pinto scandal of the 1970s (in which the company’s internal estimates of burn deaths counted as “savings” because they relied on skipping a very minor design repair). After years of post-accident litigation and large damage awards for victims had been factored in, the “efficiency” of not adjusting the Pinto’s instruments before market turned out to cost far more money over time than the initial expense of the adjustment would have entailed. The effects of lost lives or horrific injuries are grimly visible in the aftermath of a policy or regulatory failure, but it’s much harder to persuade the public to see the concrete value of accidents avoidedand pollution not inhaled thanks to safety regulations.
It’s harder still to calculate the actual return over the course of a human lifetime — in terms of social contributions, consumer spending, taxes, community joy, and much more — of SNAP funds providing adequate nutrition to one family with a young child, as feminist economists might argue. Or to calculate the cost, decades later, of failure to implement anti-pollution laws, in terms of suffering, health care costs, lost productivity, premium increases, and more. Efficiency is a profoundly ahistorical ideal, as it almost always relies on a deeply partial and often very flawed “snapshot in time” calculus for the purposes of expedient political results.
+
“Ronald Reagan on Tariffs”
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Mj6N-WBPrVw
by Pitchfork Economics
(1:55)
+
“Trump’s tariffs hurt the US much more than China – Economist Michael Hudson explains”
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/04/21/trump-tariffs-us-china-michael-hudson/
with Michael Hudson and Ben Norton
(58:49)
Donald Trump’s tariffs are benefiting rich elites at the expense of the majority of the population, argues economist Michael Hudson. He explains how the US trade war on China is isolating the United States and encouraging countries to seek alternatives. Ben Norton hosts the interview.
+
“The EU Tries to Defend its Global Censorship Machine”
https://reclaimthenet.org/eu-tech-crackdown-dsa-dma-von-der-leyen-meta-x-tiktok
by Didi Rankovic
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has fired another shot across the bows of major US social media companies – such as X, Meta, and Apple – but also China’s TikTok, stating that the bloc would proceed with enforcing its online rules, “without fear.”
Among those rules are the Digital Services Act (DSA) – long regarded by critics as a censorship law – as well as the AI Act and the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
The reason the EU would feel any fear to begin with – prompting Von der Leyen to offer assurances that investigations against the tech companies will continue to be pursued – is the position the Trump administration has taken.
And it is that these EU’s rules represent tools of censorship that also stand in the way of innovation in Europe.
In a statement to Politico, Von der Leyen claims that the EU applies the rules “fairly, proportionally, and without bias,” adding, “We don’t care where a company’s from and who’s running it. We care about protecting people.”
But the treatment of X (and to a lesser degree Meta) compared to others under investigation, seems to tell a different story. Elon Musk’s association with the US administration has resulted in various forms of pressure and vilification of himself and X in the EU, which is reportedly ready to fine Musk’s company with one billion euros.
X is accused of non-compliance with the DSA, for not censoring content the EU finds to be “disinformation,” “harmful,” or “unlawful.”
Meanwhile, many other companies are investigated for alleged breaches of the DMA and are looking at fines that are significantly lower.
Observers interpret this to demonstrate political bias – despite Von der Leyen taking the trouble to declare that cannot possibly be the case. But the impression to the contrary is further amplified by the fact Meta could get a treatment similar to X.
And that comes after Mark Zuckerberg first publicly admitted that the previous US administration (the one heavily preferred to the current one in Brussels) pressured Meta to censor via third parties like “fact-checkers.”
This ultimately led to the giant dropping its “fact-checking” program in the US – still to the chagrin of the EU.
Also sitting at odds with declarations about the “fair and unbiased” approach to everyone is the recently announced Democracy Shield initiative, allegedly needed to counter “disinformation,” with X and Meta mentioned by name.
+
“EU isolation and escalation”
https://www.youtube.com/live/KTRpysGKNks?si=0ZpFjyPMWJb2VX4I
by The Duran, with Christine Anderson
(1:46:51)
========
d.
“Lord Robert Skidelsky: Europe Is Trapped by Its Own Propaganda in Ukraine”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtDydebAs8k&si=7DciMajk-hIDl8C7
with Glenn Diesen
(24:57)
Robert Skidelsky is a member of the British House of Lords, Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University, and the author of a prize-winning three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes. He began his political career in the Labour party, was a founding member of the Social Democratic Party, and served as the Conservative Party’s spokesman for Treasury affairs in the House of Lords until he was sacked for his opposition to NATO’s 1999 bombing of Kosovo. Since 2001, he has sat in the House of Lords as an independent.
+
“The Enemy From Within”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/enemy-within-scott-ritter/5883647
by Scott Ritter
As America moves to bring an end to a conflict in Ukraine we helped precipitate, it needs to guard against opponents of this new policy trajectory who will seek to disrupt its new role as peacemaker and/or extract vengeance on the United States for betraying their cause. Perhaps the greatest threat to the United States in this regard is the enemy within—the Ukrainian-American diaspora whose loyalty to the odious ideology of Stepan Bandera transcends everything—including the land which they currently call home.
In May 1940, 805 delegates from 168 different Ukrainian-American communities met in Washington, DC to form the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, or UKKA. Three of these organizations—the Ukrainian National Association, the Providence Association of Ukrainian Catholics in America, and the Ukrainian National Aid Association in America—had previously come together in 1922 to form the United Ukrainian Organizations in America (Obiednannia Ukrainskykh Orhanizatsii v Amerytsi, or OUO). Over the years, the OUO had been very active, raising around $250,000 dollars to help Ukrainian organizations in Western Europe and in Western Ukraine, and to protest the Polish “Pacification in Eastern Galicia” that took place from September-November 1932, and the famine in Soviet Ukraine which occurred in1932–3.
READ MORE: Perfidious Albion. Scott Ritter
Click here to read the full article on Scott Ritter’s Substack.
+
“Walking Away from the Ukraine War & Restoring Strategic Clarity”
https://www.bitchute.com/video/oKYpOydfP7Hc
with Glenn Diesen and Col. Douglas Macgregor
(42:32)
========
e.
“Sabby Sabs: How far will they go?”
With Sabrina Salvati and Max Blumenthal
(1:04:10)
Max Blumenthal discusses the Zionist regime’s genocidal rampage on the Sabby Sabs podcast.
========
f.
“Reiner Fuellmich Article Was De-Published, Will Come Back—Here Is Why”
https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/reiner-fuellmich-article-was-de-published
by Celia Farber, 10 hrs ago, April 11
I got a phone call from Daisy Papp, and she suggested I take the article down.
+
“Why Dr. Reiner Fuellmich’s Case Matters”
https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/why-dr-reiner-fuellmichs-case-matters
by Celia Farber, 11 hrs ago, April 11
+
https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/reiner-fuellmich-update-on-zoom-right
by Celia Farber, Apr 8
Dear All,
Daisy Papp (please see below) and Ana Garner will speak to us on Tuesday 8 April 2025 at 8 pm London time.
Medical Doctors for Covid Ethics International invites you to a Zoom meeting on Tuesday 8 April 2025 at 20.00 (8 pm) London time, 15.00 (3 pm) New York time, 12 noon Los Angeles time, 03.00 (3 am) (Wednesday) Borneo time, 05.00 (5 am) (Wednesday) Sydney time, 07.00 (7 am) (Wednesday) Auckland time.
Please see the invitation below. Here is the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9352118786?pwd=UlowWHpKdmVDeU1Hb1g0N3RpZDdqQT09
PLEASE NOTE: Recordings of these meetings are posted on the Rumble channel within 48 hours of the live event: https://rumble.com/user/cbkovess
+
“Reiner Fuellmich Sentenced To 3 Years and 9 Months Minus 13 Months For Time Served”
by Celia Farber
+
“The Sentencing Of Reiner Fuellmich Was Entirely Predictable. I Make A Case Here Against Despair Or Despondency”
by Celia Farber
The Most Shocking Document Release Of The Last 100 years
Dec 5, 2021 •
=======
g.
“An Open Letter To Jay Bhattacharya, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and J.D. Vance”
by CJ Hopkins
April 12, 2025
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya
J.D. Vance
MAGA Headquarters
Washington DC
America (Made Great Again)
Dear Bobby, Jay, and Vice President Vance,
First, thank you all for your attention to my legal case here in Germany, where I am being prosecuted for using the cover art of one of my books to criticize the German authorities’ Covid measures during 2020-2023. You are all aware of the details of my case, as are my regular readers, so I won’t reiterate all that here. (For readers who are not familiar with my case, see, e.g., my 2023 talk with Robert Kennedy Jr., or my 2024 talk with Jay Bhattacharya, or other interviews and press coverage about it.)
On March 8, Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian student activist was arrested in New York by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents acting on orders from the US State Department and transported to a detention center in Louisiana. The Trump administration is trying to revoke Khalil’s permanent-resident status and deport him.
Mahmoud Khalil has not been charged with any criminal offense. The administration (of which you are all members) is detaining him and trying to deport him based on the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which provides that “aliens” in the USA can be deported if the secretary of state believes their presence has or might have negative consequences for US foreign policy.
Yesterday, an immigration court in Louisiana ruled that Khalil can be deported based solely on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s claim that his continued presence poses an “adverse foreign policy consequence.”
There is, in principle, no difference between Khalil’s case and my case. We are both being punished for political speech. We are both “aliens” living in foreign countries with permanent-residency status. According to the German authorities, my political speech poses just as much of a negative consequence to Germany as Khalil’s speech does to the USA. (In fact, I have been charged with a crime, whereas Khalil has not.)
The German authorities are instrumentalizing the law in order to punish me, and to send a message by making an example of me. The Trump administration is doing the same with the Khalil case. The only difference between our cases is the nature of our political speech.
========
h.
“Lei’s Real Talk: China’s Population Is “Somewhere Between 300 and 400 Million”
by Forbidden News
RUSSIAN STUDY: CHINA’S 2018 POPULATION WAS BETWEEN 500-800M, BASED ON 1945 POPULATION OF 490M, PRIOR TO GREAT CHINESE FAMINE, CULTURAL REVOLUTION, ONE CHILD POLICY – MINUS 400-500M FROM COVID
According to Lei’s Real Talk, the CCP’s claim that China’s population is 1.4 billion is a lie.
Lei says the country’s population is drastically declining, due to the “Demographic Cliff” caused by an aging population after decades of the CCP’s “One Child” policy, plus her estimated 400-500 million COVID deaths since the end of 2019, which she says the CCP is covering-up.
On March 12, Lei said she believed China’s actual population was somewhere below 900,000,000, noting four key pieces of evidence:
· Empty streets and markets
· A drastic disparity between birth and death rates
· GROK-3’s estimate of the real COVID death toll
· 5% of people aged 35–44 have died
+
“Is China a Communist or a Capitalist Country?”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/china-towards-capitalist-restoration-michel-chossudovsky/5745990
by Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 15, 2024
In 1981-82, based at the University of Hong Kong, Centre for Asian Studies (CAS), I started my research on the process of capitalist restoration in China. I took a crash course in Mandarin at the HKU Language School as well as in Taiwan. This research –which extended over a period of 4 years– included fieldwork in several regions of China (1981-83) ramatiz on economic and social reforms, analysis of the defunct People’s Commune (abolished in 1983) and the development of privately owned capitalist industry including the cheap labor export economy.
I started reviewing Chinese economic history including the structures of the factory system prior to 1949, the development of the treaty ports established in the wake of the Opium wars (1842) and came to the realization that what was being reinstated in terms of the special economic zones, the open door policy had been influenced by the history of the treaty ports, which granted extraterritorial rights to Britain, France, Germany, the US, Russia and Japan.
+
“‘It’s Not Socialism’: China is a Capitalist Cheap Labour Economy, Based on Exceedingly Low Wages”
by Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 22, 2025
Introduction
Most analysts and historians fail to understand that starting in the early 1980s, China had become a full fledged capitalist country. There are powerful US business interests including Big Pharma, major hi-tech companies, banking institutions which are firmly entrenched inside China. The size of the private sector is overwhelming. See below
The United States has faithful “allies” within China’s business establishment as well as among academics, scientists, medical doctors who tend to be “pro-American”.
China’s Academy of Sciences (中国科学院), China’s business schools (e.g. Beijing, Dalian, Guangzhou) going back to the early 1980s have ties with Ivy League institutions. Many of them have joint MBA programs, e.g. Shanghai’s Fudan University School of Management with MIT. Stanford has a campus in China as well an agreement with Beijing University, etc.
Another example is Tsinghua University’s School of Journalism’s graduate program which is funded by Bloomberg together with several Wall Street banking institutions.
The interests of powerful Chinese business groups (specifically within the pharmaceutical industry) including China’s billionaires (Forbes List 2022, Forbes New Billionaires) are represented at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership.
Ironically, these US-China “business alliances” are in starch contrast to the ongoing US-NATO threats directed against the People’s Republic of China, not to mention the various US sponsored acts of destabilization of China’s national economy.
Needless to say there are deep divisions within the CCP leadership.
China and the Geopolitical Chessboard
While China currently plays an important and positive balancing role on the geopolitical chessboard, it is not a “socialist” Nation State.
It is important that people on the Left who describe China as a socialist country take cognizance of the oppressive nature of China’s cheap labour export economy, established in the late 1970s at the outset of the post-Mao Era, in liaison with their US trading and Wall Street investment partners.
Currently, more than one third of the PRC’s labour force are seasonal rural migrant workers who are used as cheap labour in China’s flourishing low wage export economy.
This process of internal migrant labor unfolded with the abolition of the People’s Commune in the 1983 Constitution, which was conducive to the demise of communal ownership coupled with the privatization of agricultural land.
SEE: A look at China’s economy in Q1 of 2025
========
i.
“The Truth About 9/11”
by Forbidden News
This is a
vitally-important interview by Redacted News' Clayton Morris of former
Pennsylvania Congressman Curt
Weldon, who served for 20 years, until he was forced-out in 2006.
A former
Fire Chief, Congressman Weldon was Vice-Chair of the Armed
Services Committee and the House
Homeland Security Committee. Weldon was also the co-chair of the Duma-Congress Study Group, the official inter-parliamentary
relationship between the United States and Russia.
He claims
that 20 years ago, all sides were onboard for peace and for normalizing
relations with Russia – except for those who were pulling the strings behind
the Bushes, the Clintons and the Obamas – many of
whom he says were among the 51 Intelligence Community officials who recently
had their Security Clearances pulled by President Trump.
A seasoned
politician, Weldon refuses to get baited into making any statements that could
ever be construed as "conspiracy theory" but he calls this group
"Scumbags in Intelligence who use it for their own personal gain" and
who don't care how many millions of people they kill and impoverish in the
process.
SEE VIDEO: "The
TRUTH About 9/11 and What Really Happened" - Pub. April 14, 2025 by
ForbiddenKnowledgeTV.net.
+
“A Financial Coup: How the Deep State Is Using Manufactured Crises to Seize Power”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/deep-state-using-manufactured-crises-seize-power/5884055
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead
“This is economic sabotage. Whether through malice or incompetence or, more likely, both Trump is isolating the United States on the world stage, tanking the markets, worsening inflation, and burdening working families with the cost of his 18th-century cosplay. These aren’t policies. They’re performance art. And the rest of us are footing the bill.”—Oregon’s Bay Area (blog post)
What we’re witnessing is the calculated use of emergency powers to concentrate power in the hands of the president, enrich the Deep State, and dismantle what remains of economic and constitutional safeguards.
Nearly 250 years after our nation’s founders rebelled over abused property rights, Americans are once again being subjected to taxation without any real representation, all the while the government continues to do whatever it likes—levy taxes, rack up debt, spend outrageously and irresponsibly—with little concern for the plight of its citizens.
Nothing has changed for the better with Donald Trump. Indeed, it’s getting worse by the day.
Having inherited one of the strongest economies in the world, President Trump—whose credentials as a businessman include multiple failed business ventures, bankruptcies, and a mountain of debt and unpaid bills—has managed to singlehandedly torch the economy with his misguided tariffs and self-serving schemes, which are being carried out without any oversight or checks from Congress.
Yet it is Congress, not the president, that holds the authority to control government spending.
This is spelled out in the Appropriations Clause, found in Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution, which establishes a rule of law about how the monies paid to the government by the taxpayers are to be governed, and in the Taxing and Spending Clause of Article I, Section 8, Clause 1. In a nutshell, Congress is in charge of accounting for those funds and authorizing how those funds are spent (or not spent).
The founders intended this regulatory power, referred to as the “power of the purse” (to determine what funds can be spent and what funds can be withheld) to serve as a potent check on any government agency that exceeds its authority, especially the executive branch.
As law professor Zachary Price observes,
“Given how strong this check is, it may not be surprising that presidents have sought ways to get around it.”
Woven throughout the history of the United States are examples of this constant power struggle.
For instance, Congress used the power of the purse to end the Vietnam War and pull the U.S. military from Lebanon.
Yet while past presidents have sought to expand their authority under the guise of national emergency declarations, Trump simply taken this executive overreach to unprecedented extremes.
Price explains how various presidents from Obama to Biden to Trump have attempted to subvert that same congressional power to press their own agendas, whether by funding the Affordable Care Act, advancing student debt, or as in Trump’s case, by dismantling and defunding agencies funded by Congress.
Executive orders and national emergencies have become a favored tool by which presidents attempt to govern unilaterally. As the Brennan Center reports, presidents have access to 150 such emergency powers, which essentially allow them to become limited dictators with greatly enhanced powers upon declaration of an emergency.
Because the National Emergencies Act does not actually define what constitutes an emergency, presidents have an incredible amount of room to wreak constitutional mischief on the citizenry.
While presidents on both sides of the aisle have abused these powers, Trump is attempting to test the limits of these emergency powers by declaring a national emergency anytime he wants to sidestep Congress and quickly impose his will on the nation.
Trump’s liberal use of emergency powers to sidestep the rule of law underscores the danger they pose to our constitutional system of checks and balances.
========
j.
https ://imahealth.org/protocol/i-prevent-covid-flu-rsv/
A Guide to Preventing COVID-19, Influenza and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV)
While flu and RSV infections were uncommon in 2020 and 2021, a dramatic increase in infections was documented in the fall and early winter of 2022. We have therefore adapted I-PREVENT to include prevention against flu and RSV. It should be noted that the medications in I-PREVENT are inexpensive, safe, and widely available.
This protocol includes a section on how to prevent infection before you’ve been exposed (pre-exposure/long term) as well as how to prevent infection if you have potentially been exposed (post-exposure/acute, short-term).
At the onset of flu-like symptoms please refer to the I-CARE: Early COVID Treatment or I-CARE: RSV and Flu Treatment Protocols.
About this Protocol
Learn about nutritional therapeutics and how they can help with COVID-19.
Read about the safety of vitamins and nutraceuticals in pregnancy.
Search directories of providers and pharmacies.
How to prevent infection before you’ve been exposed . . . .
+
“The Persecution of Dr. Reiner Fuellmich: The biggest judicial scandal ever seen in Germany”
by Robert W Malone MD, MS
Dr. Reiner Fuellmich is known and respected internationally for his work as a consumer defense lawyer and for winning major lawsuits against corporate giants such as Volkswagen, Kühne & Nagel, and Deutsche Bank. He was one of the first individuals to recognize that the COVID measures constituted crimes against humanity and decided, along with three other lawyers, to create the Corona Investigative Committee, which aimed to shed light on the actions of governments, public institutions, and the medical community in the context of the so-called “pandemic.”
Thanks to his brilliant investigative work, and after consulting more than 150 scientists and experts in all fields around the world, as well as numerous whistleblowers (from Pfizer, WHO, CDC, UN), he was able to collect an abundance of evidence of what he calls “the biggest crime ever perpetrated against humanity.”
He was ready to take action.
However, the German secret services, in cooperation with Göttingen public prosecutor Simon Phillip John and Fuellmich’s accusers, had already decided to construct a case against Fuellmich, aimed at stopping him.
He is accused of having embezzled 700,000 euros, but, in truth, he did not. The imminent threat of seizure of the Corona Investigative Committee’s bank accounts by the German government during the fallout of the COVID pandemic, along with the risk of no longer being able to use the funds raised by private donations to carry out their investigative work, Reiner Fuellmich and Viviane Fischer took steps to protect those funds. They purchased 1 million euros worth of gold (current value: 1.8 million euros), and each took out personal loans (700.000 euros to Reiner Fuellmich, and 100.000 euros to Viviane Fischer). Their loan agreements were documented in written, signed contracts.
When the defense demonstrated the erroneousness of the original accusation which asserted that Fuellmich had no authority to take a personal loan without the other committee member’s consent, the judge had to invent a new allegation in order to justify Fuellmich’s continued imprisonment. The judge thus declared that that the loans were “fake”.
Interestingly, the previous Göttingen lead prosecutor Reinicke, who had been asked by the secret services to open an investigation on Fuellmich, had clearly stated that there were no grounds upon which to investigate him and archived the case in June 2022. Merely two and a half months later, a young, inexperienced prosecutor by the name of Simon Phillip John was transferred from Hanover to Göttingen and given the task of doing the dirty work that Reinicke had previously deemed unjustified.
Judge Carsten Schindler and prosecutor John are, without any shadow of a doubt, following someone else’s instructions. Dr. Reiner Fuellmich has been unlawfully held in pre-trial detention in the German maximum-security prison in Rosdorf for 18 months. This, even though the maximum term for pre-trial detention in Germany is 6 months. This, after his having been lured under false pretenses, subsequently abducted in Mexico, and then deported to Germany –without an international arrest warrant NOR a formal extradition order–where he was then arrested and imprisoned.
The circumstances of his illegal arrest and subsequent mistreatment in prison are very concerning.
+
“Reiner Fuellmich Update: Closing Arguments From Katja Woermer, “...At Her Most Passionate And Eloquent.”
by Elsa
OUTTAKES from Elsa’s post, (headline above) quoting a writer I’d not read before, at “Laufpass,” named Kerstin Heusinger, who really brings out the shocking and perverse nature of the Fuellmich “trial.”
Elsa wrote:
. . . .
Here is an outtake from an earlier Laufpass writing, (unclear who the author is) “Magic In The Fuellmich Case,” From December 2024, with details that are simply nauseating:
. . . .
What the devil are they doing over there in Germany, running an S&M parlor out of a prison? (This is me talking.)
I think the sadomasochistic elements in all this have been understated. . . . .
+
“Please Help Me Piss Off the German Thought Police”
by JC Hopkins
I need your help.
I have an opportunity to thoroughly piss off the German Thought Police.
And I need your help to do that.
My latest collection of Consent Factory Essays, Fear and Loathing in the New Normal Reich, will be released next Tuesday, April 29. This will slightly piss off the German Thought Police. But I want to thoroughly piss off the German Thought Police.
As I’m sure you’re aware, the German Thought Police are prosecuting me as a hate criminal because I tweeted the cover artwork of my previous collection of Consent Factory Essays, The Rise of the New Normal Reich, and because I opposed the “Covid measures,” and because I compared them (i.e., the German Thought Police, not the “Covid measures”) to the Nazis.
I documented my Kafkaesque prosecution in several of the essays in this new book, which also features a Foreword by Matt Taibbi, which will also piss off the German Thought Police. But not as much as I want to piss off the German Thought Police. I want to piss them off thoroughly.
And so I’m asking you to help me do that.
You can help me do that by pre-ordering the book this week, or by purchasing your copy on Tuesday, the day of its release. If enough of my readers do that, the various companies and organizations that track and report book sales will take note of that, and the launch of the book will be a success, and it might even garner a bit of press. That will enable me and the Skyhorse Publishing publicity team to make a bit more noise about the book and shine a bit more light on what is going on in Germany.
If that happens, it will thoroughly piss off the German Thought Police.
On top of which, you will have my new book. It’s a rather handsome hardcover book, published by Skyhorse Publishing. The cover artwork is designed by Anthony Freda. Matt Taibbi was kind enough to write the Foreword. In addition to what we thought were the best of my essays from 2022-2024—covering my prosecution, the rise of the Musk Cult, war in Ukraine and Gaza, and sundry other topics, I have also included a big fat juicy introductory essay, as I always do for these essay collections.
Plus, you will have the secret satisfaction of knowing that you helped me thoroughly piss off the German Thought Police, who, it goes without saying, are not going to be happy about this book, which documents their absurd totalitarian behavior in detail.
I’m curious to see whether they can come up with an excuse to ban this one, as they did the previous one. They do not appear to have come up with one yet. The book is available from most of the big German bookstores, i.e., Dussmann, Hugendubel, etc.
And it is available elsewhere in the world from most fine booksellers, i.e., Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Blackwell’s, Indigo, Apple Books, etc. Or you can buy it at your local independent bookshop, assuming you still have one of those.
========
k.
“Bombshell investigation exposes Ecuador gov’t cartel conspiracy”
by The Grayzone, with Oscar León
(31:42)
An investigative report by journalist Andres Duran has placed Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa at in the middle of a system that has seen his violence-plagued country turned into a ramatizes for transnational drug cartels.
The Grayzone’s Oscar Leon speaks to Duran, who had to go into exile to save his own life, and outlines the shocking details of the Ecuadorian state’s collusion with the cartels.
+
“Meet the DC think tanks impoverishing masses of Latin Americans”
by The Grayzone, with John Perry
These top Washington think tanks are lobbying lawmakers for sadistic sanctions on some of the hemisphere’s poorest countries while raking in millions from corporations and arms makers.
Sanctions are a form of hybrid warfare that harms or even kills the target populations at little cost to the country imposing them. In Latin America alone, US sanctions (correctly known as “unilateral coercive measures”) have killed at least 100,000 Venezuelans. The US blockade of Cuba has been so destructive that one in ten Cubans have left the country. Sanctions have similarly deprived Nicaraguans of development aid worth an estimated $3 billion since 2018, hitting projects such as new water supplies for rural areas.
Who formulates these devastating sanctions, covers up their real effects, works with politicians to put them into operation and promotes them in corporate media? In a perverse contrast with the poor communities hit by these policies, those doing the targeting are often well-paid employees of multi-million-dollar think tanks, heavily funded by the US or other Western-aligned governments and in many cases by arms manufacturers.
A study in corruption: top think tank lobbyists and their funders
Chief among these groups is the Wilson Center, which claims to simply provide policymakers with “nonpartisan counsel and insights on global affairs.” Boasting a $40-million budget, a third of which comes from the US government, the organization is headed by the former Administrator of USAID, Amb. Mark Green. . . . .
========
l.
“Patrick Lawrence: Germany in Crisis Part 2: A Short History of Exploding Gas Pipelines”
by Patrick Lawrence
This is the second of four reports on Germany’s various crises, the history that produced them and how Germans, other than the neoliberal elites who now hold power, think about their way forward. Part 1 of this series is here.
POTSDAM—A single, brief phrase always comes to mind when I think of Germany. Whatever may be the specific matter to hand, sooner or later my thoughts go to three words that seem to me — and to many others, given they have survived so long in the discourse — to capture some essence of the nation and its place in the world.
“Germany is Hamlet.” For a long time I attributed this pithy observation to Gordon Craig, among Germany’s great 20th century historians. Craig (Germany, 1866–1945; The Germans) was noted for succinct observations of this kind. He saw Germany as a nation divided in history between its humanist achievements (Goethe et al., Kant et al., Thomas Mann et al.) and its regrettable givenness to varieties of absolute power.
Over time I discovered the true author of this exquisite mot was Ferdinand Freiligrath (1810–1876), a poet and a political radical who dedicated himself and his work to the democracy movement that led to the (failed) Revolution of 1848. Freiligrath compared Germany with Shakespeare’s famously divided character in 1844—this out of frustration with a native conservatism that held Germany back from the great change he saw as the pressing need of his time.
I don’t see that what Freiligrath meant cancels out what Craig meant more than a century later. And I don’t think either characterization of Germany as… what?… as a profoundly ambivalent nation cancels out the meaning the notion acquired, almost inevitably, in the second half of the last century.
Geography proves destiny in Germany’s case, as it does in various others. It faces Westward to the Atlantic world but also Eastward to the Eurasian landmass. Ambiguity has consequently marked the history of its relations in both directions. Otto von Bismarck cultivated sound relations with Russia during his years as chancellor, 1871 to 1890. That was when Germany first became Germany and the celebrated prince was showing the world what Realpolitik was all about. Then came the two world wars and Germany’s disastrous military campaigns, Eastward and Westward alike.
In the postwar era this ambiguity, this state of “in between,” is best understood not as Germany’s burden but its great gift, and it is with this gift it could have given another to the rest of us—the gift of a bridge between East and West. How different would our world be had post–1945 Germany been left to its fate and, by being truly itself, offered the world what it was singularly able to give.
It is in this context we should understand the arrival of the postwar order in Germany and what befalls the Federal Republic as we speak. Germans were not made for the Cold War and its West–East binaries, destructive as these were to the remarkable release of human aspiration that followed the 1945 victories. Defeated Germany was among Washington’s pivotal clients as it turned against Moscow, so recently its ally, and set out to establish America’s global primacy. This has served Germany and Germans very badly.
The Germany of the immediate postwar years, Konrad Adenauer’s Germany, was a reconstruction project. The new Federal Republic’s first chancellor counted restoring the German economy among his highest priorities. Germany under Adenauer—an anti–Communist, a Europeanist, an early supporter of NATO—was a well-behaved American dependency. But by the early 1960s, the Kennedy years, there was renewed concern in Washington as to West Germany’s eventual place in the Cold War order. And where Germany went the Continent was likely to follow, as the reasoning of the time had it.
This anxiety was not unfounded. A decade after the Iron Curtain divided Germany, in 1949, the Federal Republic was beginning to prosper by way of its Wirtschaftswunder, its “economic miracle” (which was no more a miracle than the postwar Japanese “miracle”). Germans began to look outward. In due course they would gaze eastward to the Soviet Union: It was a nation of manufacturers with a resource economy next door. Europe was looking in the same direction. This was precisely what Washington’s policy cliques had begun to worry about. By this time it was a given among these people that America’s national security interests and the global supply-and-demand of energy were more or less inseparable. We can take the case of Enrico Mattei as a measure of America’s concern.
Mattei was a senior bureaucrat in Rome who, after the defeat in 1945, reorganized the Fascist regime’s petroleum holdings into Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi, the oil company commonly known as ENI. Mattei was ambitious for ENI. And going by the many agreements he negotiated, he seems to have had interesting politics. Among other things, ENI’s contracts awarded three-quarters of profits to the nations that owned reserves—an unprecedented percentage at the time. In 1960 Mattei concluded a large, very significant oil accord with the Soviet Union—again, on terms well beyond the exploitative contracts common among Western oil companies.
This was a daring move, as Mattei plainly understood. He thereupon declared that he had broken, or helped to break, the petroleum monopoly the U.S. had long enjoyed via the famous “Seven Sisters.” Eisenhower’s National Security Council had been attacking Mattei as antithetical to American interests since the late 1950s. And the Soviet agreement appears to have landed as an especially hard blow. Two years after signing it Mattei was killed when his plane crashed during a flight from Sicily to Milan. Subsequent investigations, of which there have been many, have continued for decades. In 1997 La Stampa, the Turin daily, reported that judicial authorities in Rome had concluded that a bomb planted onboard had exploded Mattei’s plane in midair.
Although the Mattei case remains officially unresolved, there is now a plentitude of evidence that he was the victim of an assassination conducted by the CIA in its not-unfamiliar collaboration with the Mafia, possibly with the connivance of French intelligence. “Common knowledge among Europeans,” a German friend told me recently. “We know what happened to Mattei the way you Americans know what happened to Kennedy.”
Stopping just short of absolute certainties, as we must, we can read the Mattei affair as a measure of how sensitive energy ties between Europe and the Soviets were by the mid–Cold War years. The point of trans–Atlantic conflict was clear from the first: Europeans viewed contracts with the Soviet Union simply as business—sound, logical economics; for the Americans they were instruments bearing dangerous geopolitical consequences. And it is on this question the Germans and the Americans have found themselves repeatedly at odds for many decades.
========
m.
“New FDA Chairman’s Bombshell On Autism & Gut Health!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQExLOEYNg8&si=8ZDsbr-9hPlZcGIu
by The Jimmy Dore Show, with Kim Bright
(21:59)
========
n.
“A Cybersecurity Professor Disappeared Amid an FBI Search. His Family Is ‘Determined to Fight’”
https://www.wired.com/story/professor-xiaofeng-wang-update/
by WIRED
The abrupt firing of Xiaofeng Wang and his wife from Indiana University last month shocked the academic community and is stoking fears that Chinese-born scholars are being targeted.
The wife of data privacy professor Xiaofeng Wang, who was fired from his tenured job at Indiana University, Bloomington (IU) the same day the couple’s houses were searched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last month, said on Monday that she believes her family has been unfairly targeted by the US government and is the victim of what she described as “misplaced accusations of academic misconduct.”
“Our family is determined to fight, not only for ourselves, but for the broader research community who would be impacted if this type of allegation goes unchallenged,” Nianli Ma said.
This is the first time Ma has spoken publicly since the FBI searches occurred in late March. She appeared at a webinar hosted by the Asian American Scholar Forum (AASF), a nonprofit group formed in early 2021 to advocate for the rights and recognition of Asian American scholars. Ma worked as a library analyst at the university before she was also abruptly fired from IU days before the FBI searched two of the couple’s homes, The Indiana Daily Student reported.
========
o.
“How The Powerful Captured The Public”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izklfQVWYMA&si=jaJzotpKLbFY8VnD
with Kim Iversen
(12:24)
+
“Israel-Backed Coup Inside Trump’s Pentagon? Hegseth Targeted After Saying ‘No’ to War with Iran”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc153bFmTbQ&si=VXQG0tUCiBa-lgcX
with Kim Iversen
(10:55)
When Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth urged caution against launching a war with Iran, the leaks magically started flowing. First, it was a Signal chat “scandal,” then the media frenzy, and now whispers of replacement. But is this really about some sloppy group texts? Or is the Israeli lobby cleaning house to make room for a war hawk? In this episode, we break down how Hegseth’s anti-war stance put him in the crosshairs — and why the neocons and their allies want him gone.
· Who benefits from the leaks?
· Why is the media suddenly in attack mode?
· And what does this mean for Trump’s foreign policy? Buckle up.
This isn’t just a scandal — it’s a setup.
+
“Seyed Mohammad Marandi: Israel Pressures US Toward War With Iran”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeNpLOvQ-F8
with Glenn Diesen
(26:23)
Seyed Mohammad Marandi is a professor, an analyst and an advisor to Iran's nuclear negotiation team. Prof. Marandi argues that Iran is ready for war, as the US and Israel disagree over attacking Iran.
+
“John Mearsheimer: Trump Between a Rock and a Hard Place with Iran”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBUNYUv27Us
by Deep Dive, with Daniel Davis
(16:55)
Trump's Dilemma:
Trump wants peace but is under pressure due to Iran’s insistence on keeping its uranium enrichment and missile programs.
He faces opposition from hardliners (e.g., Tom Cotton, Israel lobby) who don’t want Iran to keep any nuclear capabilities.
A new deal (like the 2015 JCPOA but stricter) might be necessary, but accepting Iran's enrichment capabilities will provoke backlash.
2. Iran’s Position:
Iran refuses to give up its nuclear infrastructure.
Iranian officials assert they are ready for war and have strong regional alliances (Iraq, Yemen) and growing ties with Russia and China.
They claim robust defense systems and retaliatory capabilities, including missile attacks on Israel and U.S. bases, and potential to disrupt global oil supplies.
3. Military Strike Risks:
A U.S. or Israeli military operation to eliminate Iran’s nuclear facilities would be massive and complex.
Even with advanced weaponry (like 30,000 lb bombs), some facilities (e.g., Fordo) may not be fully destroyed.
At best, a strike would delay Iran’s program 1–3 years and likely push them to actively build nuclear weapons.
4. Escalation Concerns:
A military conflict would likely escalate quickly.
Iranian retaliation could involve attacks on U.S. troops, regional allies, and economic infrastructure.
Body bags and regional instability would increase pressure for further U.S. involvement.
Escalation dynamics are unpredictable and could draw in global powers like Russia and China, who now support Iran more openly.
5. Global Geopolitical Shifts:
Iran’s strengthened ties with Russia and China (e.g., through BRICS) reduce its isolation.
Russian leaders criticize U.S. sanctions and emphasize sovereignty and resistance to Western pressure, aligning with Iran's stance.
Bottom line: Trump is caught between a potential war with Iran (which could spiral out of control) and accepting a new nuclear deal that allows Iran some enrichment capacity, which could provoke intense domestic and foreign criticism.
+
“Israel Is Doing What To Children?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBUNYUv27Us
by Double Down News
(12:27)
==========
p.
“The Push To Break Up Google”
https://reclaimthenet.org/google-antitrust-remedy-trial-doj-breakup-chrome-ai-monopoly
by Reclaim the Net
AI now stands center stage in the DOJ's case, portrayed as the next frontier Google plans to quietly conquer with a monopoly's muscle.
+
“Chinese People Understand The US Better Than Americans”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43EB_tN0KWA
by The Jimmy Dore Show
(12:44)
==========
q.
“ONE HUNDRED DAYS OF CHAOS”
by Seymour Hersh
Like the rest of his presidency, Trump's foreign policy has been a matter of his whims.
President Donald Trump has been in office for ninety-five days, and he has turned Washington and America itself inside out: tariffs, mass arrests and illegal deportations, mass firings of federal employees, a cabinet of sycophants, cowering Republican majorities in the Senate and the House.
But there seemed to be, if not a plan, at least a clear presidential voice on foreign policy. Trump was a self-declared friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and together they would settle the Ukraine War. There were communications between Trump and Putin and talk about possible Trump resorts in Russian-occupied Crimea and Donbass. There was discussion of American investments in Russia’s oil and gas fields and rare earth mines. Despite their hatred of Putin and fear of Russia, the European members of NATO would have no choice but to come along.
A negotiating team was assembled, led by Vice President JD Vance and Army General Keith Kellogg, to head the talks with the Russians. It has not worked out. Putin apparently was not interested in dealing with the Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, although he has continued to meet with various emissaries from Washington.
+
“Judge Napolitano: Trump Pentagon fumbles at home, fails in Yemen”
by The Gray Zone
(30:34)
Max Blumenthal assesses the chaos at the Trump Pentagon under the abysmal leadership of Pete Hegseth, and how it might shape a potential war with Iran. He also discusses his recent interview with a leader of Yemen's Ansarallah, and the failures so far of the US military to achieve any stated objectives against the popular Houthi movement.
==========
r.
“How the International System Works”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9yDXix3268
with Professor John Mearsheimer
(9:14, audio)
In this powerful talk, renowned realist scholar Professor John J. Mearsheimer breaks down the mechanics of the international system through the lens of structural realism. With clarity and depth, he explains how the anarchic nature of global politics shapes the behavior of states, drives great power competition, and often leads to conflict.
Mearsheimer explores the fundamental principles that guide international relations—security, survival, power maximization—and why even well-intentioned states often end up at odds. Whether you're a student of international affairs or simply curious about how global politics really works, this talk offers invaluable insights.
==========
s.
“Crazy Horse and Anti-Colonial Resistance”
It is believed that Crazy Horse placed this signature on a bluff near Ash Creek just before the Battle of Greasy Grass in 1876. The image depicts a snake, representing the enemy or the United States, pursuing a horse with a lightning bolt on its flank, the signature of Crazy Horse.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/04/23/crazy-horse-and-anti-colonial-resistance/
by Nick Estes
This is the first of several posts about Tasunka Witko, reflecting on Joseph Marshall III’s book, The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History. It is the most exemplary biography of Tasunka Witko. The narrative is presented from the perspective of the Lakota people and is derived from the oral histories of Lakota elders.
In recent months, I have focused on reexamining Lakota texts and influential figures who have significantly impacted my perspective. A recent podcast interview with Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa prompted me to revisit one of the most mythologized and often misunderstood leaders of Lakota resistance, Tasunka Witko—commonly referred to as “His Horse Is Crazy” or simply “Crazy Horse.” . . . .
========
t.
“The Next Crisis ‘Bigger than Covid’: Paralysis of Power Supply, Communications, Transportation. The WEF ‘Cyber Attack’ Scenario, ‘Usher In the Great Reset’”
by Prof Michel Chossudovsky
First published on December 15, 2021, Update May 21, 2023, April 8, 2024
“Hell is Empty and the Devils are All Here.”
--William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, 1623
Author’s Introduction and Update
The World Economic Forum (WEF) which represents the Western financial elites, played a key role in the launching of the March 11, 2020 corona lockdown, which was conducive to a Worldwide process of economic and social chaos. It also supported the launching of the Covid-19 vaccine in November 2020, which (amply documented) has been conducive (Worldwide) to an upward trend in mortality and morbidity.
And now they are “promising” us a Crisis which is “Much Worse than Covid”.
Over the last four years, starting in January 2020, “the deliberate triggering of chaos” has become part of a broad and complex agenda:
· the war in Ukraine,
· the hike in energy prices,
· the triggering of bankruptcies,
· the collapse of economic activity,
· widespread poverty, famine and despair.
In recent developments, Washington has endorsed
· Israel’s genocide directed against the People of Palestine,
· An unfolding US-NATO-Israel military agenda against the broader Middle East.
· US Threats against Iran
· US-NATO threats directed against the Russian Federation
· Confrontation directed against China
Cyber-Attacks
The article below ramati on the dangers of Cyber Warfare, which were first announced by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2020
In 2021, the WEF conducted a simulation of Cyber Attacks involving a scenario of Paralysis of the Power Supply, Communications, Transportation, The Internet.
Klaus Schwab intimated in no uncertain terms based on “a simulated scenario” that a cyber-attack:
“Could bring a complete halt to the power supply, transportation, hospital services, our society as a whole …
The COVID-19 crisis would be seen in this respect as a small disturbance in comparison to a major cyberattack.” (emphasis added)
Barack and Michelle Obama’s “Leave the World Behind” Movie: Cyberattack, “Synchronized Chaos”, Collapse, “Civil War”
Another controversial element has recently emerged. Available on Netflix, Hollywood has released “Leave the World Behind” produced by former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, based on the script of Rumaan Alam‘s novel. The film director is Sam Esmail.
“Leave the World Behind” “depicts the unraveling of society in the wake of a surprise attack by an unknown assailant, which “predicts a cyberattack on the U.S. power grid”.
Rumaan Alam’s novel “Leave the World Behind,” was published in October 2020, several month following the fear campaign and the March 11, 2020 Covid-19 “Lockdown”. In an interview with The Guardian: (October 26, 2021) Rumaan Alam says:
“I’d never even heard the word coronavirus prior to February 2020. On a very basic level, the book ramatizes being trapped in at home and not having enough information – and it happened to be published into a reality in which many readers felt that they were trapped in their homes and didn’t have enough information. So it’s a strange resonance. [namely]… the individual relationship to anxiety over the climate, the absurdity of the contemporary moment, our warped relationship to technology. People are thinking and talking about this stuff so it makes sense that there will be books about it.
… The people I’m talking about are the person I am. The day lockdown began, what was the first thing we did? Aside from grocery shopping, everyone I know, myself included, went shopping …
According to Joseph Mercola in a carefully researched review of the “Leave the World Behind” movie:
“Leave the World Behind” depicts the unraveling of society in the wake of a surprise attack by an unknown assailant. Many believe the film, produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, predicts a cyberattack on the U.S. power grid
A cyberattack that will make the COVID pandemic look like a minor inconvenience in comparison to what has been repeatedly “promised” in recent years by World Economic Forum (WEF) founder Klaus Schwab
“Leave the World Behind” doesn’t preach preparedness ideologies or indulge in apocalyptic fantasies. Instead, it offers a glimpse into the potential ramifications of societal breakdowns and the human condition’s capacity for both despair and resilience (See Mercola’s analysis, January 7, 2024, see Schwab quotation above)
Rumaan Alam’s novel depicts the social impacts of a Blackout affecting the entire U.S. East Coast.
There is no concrete evidence at this stage that the producers and director of “Leave the World Behind” were cognizant of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Simulation of a Cyber Attack first conducted in July 2020. The matter requires further investigation.
Video: “Leave the World Behind” . . . .
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News from Underground by Mark Crispin Miller
“Trump may be unwell; Morgan Freeman ‘dying in agony’; Dolly Parton may have ‘months to live’; Kenan Thompson has had heartburn for 2 years; Richie Blackmore had a stroke leaving him with brain damage”
by Mark Crispin Miller
“Multiple nurses get brain tumors in the same hospital unit”; former pop star Bobby Sherman has Stage 4 cancer; rock drummer Tim Cronin has ALS; folkie Dan Maher has heart attack, liver cancer; & more
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“Distressing COVID Vaccine Syndrome Signs to Look Out for – Could You be Suffering and Not Know It?”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/distressing-covid-vaccine-syndrome-signs-look-out/5883794
by Emily Stearn and Emily Joshu
Earlier this week Ivy League scientists revealed key signs of an alarming new condition they believe is linked to mRNA Covid vaccines.
The previously-unknown condition, dubbed post-vaccination syndrome (PVS), can persist years after receiving the shots—made by the likes of Pfizer and Moderna.
According to the researchers, key signs include persistent brain fog, exercise intolerance, insomnia and palpitations—a fluttering or pounding heart.
Numbness, tinnitus or humming in the ears, headaches, dizziness and feeling ‘a burning sensation,’ are other common signs reported by patients.
Some sufferers also show distinct changes in their immune cells and can even have a dormant virus, which causes flu-like symptoms, reactivate, the team from Yale University said.
Many of these symptoms were commonly reported before the pandemic, so there is currently no way to prove if they are actually caused by the vaccine or are unrelated.
The experts, who unveiled the findings of their small study last week, also emphasized the research is ‘still a work in progress’.
However, they said they will keep studying the condition in an effort to bring affected patients ‘better transparency and safer vaccines.’
Brain fog is a term used to describe a range of cognitive problems that impact on daily life, such as memory difficulties, problems finding the right words and feeling overwhelmed by simple everyday tasks.
Click here to read the full article.
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“In memory of those who “died suddenly” in the United States and worldwide, April 7-21, 2025”
by Mark Crispin Miller
TV director Joe Dea; playwright Robert Rosiello Jr.; Sopranos’ Dominic Chianese’s daughter; rockers Drew Zingg (Steely Dan), Joey Rimicci (Jughead’s Revenge); porn star Damien Stone (32); & more
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“Eric Dane has ALS; influencer Sidney Raz has stomach cancer; UK: rocker Mark Richardson has prostate cancer; IN: Tahira writer Kashyap has breast cancer; AU: rocker Rob Hirst has pancreatic cancer”
by Mark Crispin Miller
Jazmine Sullivan—whose mother died of breast cancer in July of 2023—has miscarriage; rocker Scott Shriner’s wife Jillian Lauren has cancer; SP: Prince Ernst of Hanover in ICU for over a week; more
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“Robert Malone: From Dogma to Innovation”
by Maarten Fornerod
“When I was recently in Brussels (European Union Headquarters) for the second “Make Europe Great Again” conference, the journalist Maarten Fornerod asked me for an interview; this is the result of the delightful discussion Maarten, Jill, and I had over lunch at my hotel. Maarten just requested that I cross post this english language version that he posted on his personal substack. Despite the positive outlook and messaging, it seems to have brought out the haters in the comment section, so please feel free to share your thoughts also in the comments section.”
--Dr. Robeert Malone
I travelled to Brussels to meet Robert Malone, who was there for a conference. After the press conference I sat together with Robert and his wife Jill in the hotel restaurant for a casual conversation, an interview for Dutch language magazine De Optimist.
Robert Malone, MD, first made his mark in biological sciences in the late 1980s when he was pioneering the use of mRNA for therapy purposes and suggesting its possible use for vaccines. He moved to medicine and biomedical consultancy, specializing in drug repurposing. In the Corona years he was an outspoken critic of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines based on bioethical principles.
To start off with an optimistic thought: in 100 million years, everything that we see around us, including ourselves, will be compressed to a couple of millimeters in sedimentary stone. Does that worry you?
‘I don’t see that as a negative. Time flows. Things change. I live in the present and celebrate my family, my wife, my life. I’m not seeking immortality. I’m totally comfortable with the fact that I will die and I will become dust.’
Not everyone is comfortable with that…
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“Attack of the CRINK! – New World Next Week”
https://corbettreport.com/nwnw587/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
with James Corbett and James Pilato
(27:10)
Story #1: How a New Axis Called CRINK Is Working Against America:
The West Against the CRINK — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea
https://www.globalresearch.ca/west-china-russia-iran-north-korea/5883674
Speaking of Calling Things By Their Right Name…
https://corbettreport.com/calling-things-by-their-right-name/
Simulation of World War III: Vigilant Shield 07 War Games Scenario (Declassified). The Four Enemies of America are Ruebek, Churya, Irmingham, Nemazee
Ukraine Captures Two Chinese Nationals Fighting for Russia
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2vg1x7g32o
Indian Components Found In Russian Weapons On Battlefield For First Time, Ukraine Says
Trade Wars: You Are Not Prepared
https://corbettreport.com/the-trade-wars-you-are-not-prepared/
Media Monarchy Search: Vigilant Shield
https://mediamonarchy.com/?s=VIGILANT+SHIELD
When Seeing and Hearing Isn’t Believing (Feb. 1, 1999)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/dotmil/arkin020199.htm
Story #2: Tennessee Republican Bill Would Expand Weed Killer Manufacturers’ Legal Immunity . . . .
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“Heys Interviews on REPORTAGE”
https://odysee.com/@HEYSREVIEWS:0?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
with James Corbett
(51:10)
Nicholas Heys of HEYS REVIEWS kicks off his HEYS INTERVIEWS series by interviewing James Corbett about his new book, REPORTAGE: Essays on the New World Order. They discuss James’ literary background and the genesis of the book before getting into some of the specific quotes and essays that James tackles in the book.
HEYS REVIEWS livestreams book read-alongs every Friday. He is currently working his way through Vernon Coleman’s book on Agenda 21, and after that he is going to go through Brzezinski’s Between Two Ages.
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“ONE WEEK AWAY: Understanding Zionism”
https://7q0j7.r.a.d.sendibm1.com/mk/mr/sh/1t6AVsd2XFnIGBpQkfOkP7c2Y0lzQi/9vk4mjqL-Fto
by The People’s Forum
Join the Palestinian Youth Movement and The People’s Forum in a rigorous 6-part study in order to strengthen the movement for Palestine.
From the Nakba of 1948 to the ongoing US-Israeli genocide on Gaza, the brutal reality of Zionism has exposed itself for the world to see. In the face of the global support for Palestinian liberation, Israel has declared its next front of war to be public opinion, allocating $150 million for propaganda efforts to reshape Zionism’s bloody image on the world stage.
In the midst of this battle of ideas, we present “Understanding Zionism: A 6-Part Study for the Palestine Movement” in order to understand the colonial project responsible for the 100+ years of crimes against the Palestinian people. Over the course of 6 sessions, participants will strengthen their comprehension of Zionism: its origins, tendencies, aspirations, foundations, as well as its relationship to imperialism and right-wing forces internationally.
We must equip ourselves with a deep understanding of the very project that seeks to destroy the Palestinian people and those who stand with them.
Watch, share, and boost the video below about the course and the importance of studying in this moment!
Register here: peoplesforum.org/palstudy
· April 29 to May 16 6:30PM - 8:30PM ET
· HYBRID! Participate in-person in New York City at the People’s Forum, or virtually anywhere in the world.
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History News Network
https://mailchi.mp/historynewsnetwork/what-does-history-suggest-about-the-trump-agenda?e=aa01485af9
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Global Research – April 22, 2025
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Global Research – April 23, 2025
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