Bulletin N° 914
"The Tin Drum"
1979
https://123movieslib.com/watch-movie/the-tin-drum-die-blechtromme-ghw3/watching.html
(2h22min)
Based on the 1959 novel, Die Blechtrommel,
by Günter Grass, the first book of Grass's Danziger Trilogie .
This 1979 film adaptation won both the Palme d'Or, in the same year, and the
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film the following year.
In Volker Schlöndorff's
award-winning adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass' allegorical novel,
David Bennent plays Oskar, the young son of a German
rural family, circa 1925. On his third birthday, Oskar receives a shiny new tin
drum. At this point, rather than mature into one of the miserable specimens of
grown-up humanity that he sees around him, he vows never to get any older or
any bigger. Whenever the world around him becomes too much to bear, the boy
begins to hammer on his drum; should anyone try to take the toy away from him,
he emits an ear-piercing scream that literally shatters glass.
Subject: Capitalist Crimes against Humanity and the Coming
Storm of Retribution.
Bastille Day 2020
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
Periodically in capitalist development the emergence of authoritarian behavior is noticeable, and it comes sometimes so abruptly as to cause significant discomfort for many people. This social alienation can be judged only if there is a standard of measurement, and strong feelings of resentment emerge if apprehension and fear are not evoked in massive doses to obliterate the critical capacity of a once healthy population. Authoritarian injunctions quickly replace tentative suggestions as the social currency, thereby suffocating any independent initiative and will to participate meaningfully in decision-making processes at the local level, where we all live and work.
Looking back in history one can easily note that this paradigm of domination/subordination, reflected in class-stratified relationships, has not changed a great deal over the centuries. While material conditions have certainly evolved, including a general advance in life expectancies, the fundamental pattern of class domination remains constant throughout history and is apparent to anyone interested in observing life as it unfolds before his/her eyes.
Polk's first focuse on the historic use of language in establishing imperialist domination is instructive.
So central is language to identity, particularly
a homegrown language like Arabic, that many commentators belief the essential
characteristic of being Arab is not religion or ethnicity but having Arabic as
one’s native language. And because the Quran is written in Arabic and is taught
in the religious schools throughout much of Africa and Asia and parts of
Europe, Arabic is considered necessary to understand Islam.
Consequently, we should not be surprised
to find that when the Northern powers set out to conquer and control the Muslim
South, they saw Arabic as a sort of defensive wall. It encircled nations and
untied generations. The Chinese, Russian, British, and French imperialists each
tried to suppress it and to replace it with their own languages. Unintentionally
they taught the natives that language could also be used defensively.
Observing that natives
held defensively to their language, imperialists came to see that language
could be as powerful a means of domination as armies. In the areas they
dominated, the French sought to replace Arabic with French. So effective was
this policy that the Algerian government that emerged from the French-Algerian
war in 1962 was said to have contained only one cabinet minister who was fluent
in Arabic. To find one’s way around Damascus, even a native had to know French,
as all the street signs were written in it. And since laws and regulations were
published in French, a native needed French to get any job above the level of a
street sweeper.
The British, in their attempt to solidify
the rule over India, commissioned the English historian and parliamentarian
Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1835 to replace the several popular Indian
languages and the Arabic and Persian used for literature, religion and government
with English. His aim was not cultural – although he famously remarked that ‘a
single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature
of India and Arabia’ – but rather to create ‘a class of persons Indian in blood
and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in
morals and in intellect.’
In short, language was the ‘soft power’ of
imperialism. It could not completely replace military power, but it was far
cheaper to employ, was difficult to oppose since it was applied to the very
young, had a long-lasting effect, and was seen to be a benefit to those seeking
employment. Even today, the members of the Indian ruling class strive, perhaps
unconsciously, to fulfill Macaulay’s vision.
The same model was taken up half a century
later by the British rulers of Egypt. After invading Egypt in 1882, the British
reconstituted government schools and ordered that classes be taught in English.
If a child wanted to be educated outside the village religious schools, he or
she had to learn English. This program continued until just before the First
World War. One of the few triumphs claimed by the Egyptian statesman Saad Zaghlul, who led his people
toward independence, was getting the British to allow the Egyptians to teach
their children in their own language;
To
most outsiders, language seems like a week tool for imperialists, with none of
the glamour of marching armies. I confess that when I began my studies I did
not appreciate how tenaciously people will rally to the defense of their native
language. From the high ground of English I thought that what mattered was an
idea or opinion, regardless of the language used to articulate it. I neglected
the medium in favor of the message. What I did not fully understand was that it
was not just abstract ideas but also the means of communication that influenced
their application to politics. This was borne out to me in a 1952 conference of
prominent intellectuals from a few Arab nations. Each participant felt more
able to express his opinions in the language of the state that had dominated
his country and in which he had studied. Thus the Iraqi participant lapsed into
English, which he had learned in Oxford, while the Syrians and Lebanese
reverted to the French they had acquired at the Sorbonne.
Listening to their conversations, I began
to realize that nationalism, a prime topic of the meeting, was not a single
concept called by analogous words in different languages but a sort of ‘root’
given different meanings by the nuances of history and culture. The conference
delegates had trouble precisely understanding one another in their ‘native’
dialects. I believe we all share heir dilemma when we seek precisely to
understand what people are saying in other languages. It is made much more
difficult when governments seek to use langue as a weapon, as the British and
French and later the Russians and the Chinese did.
In dealing with the Chinese-dominated
Turkish-speaking peoples of Central Asia, Chiang Kai-shek went even further than
the British and French imperialists. Following revolts in 1933 by the Kazakh
peoples and the proclamations of 1944 by the Uyghurs
of the short-lived East Turkish Republic, Chiang decreed that there were no
such people as the Turks, even though the Chinese had a name for them, Chantou. He said that they were just part of the
‘greater Chinese race.’ He tried to force Turkish speakers to give up tier
native language and lean Chinese. Chiang’s successor in the People’s Republic
of China still employed his policy: they are linguistically ‘denationalizing’
the Uyghur people.
At the same time as Chiang was suppressing
the Uyghurs? Joseph Stalin was tightening the
linguistic screws on the Asian peoples who had been conquered by the tsars. The
better to dominate them, the Soviet Union divided what had been the common
written language (Ottoman Turkish) ‘horizontally’ by converting all written materials
from the traditional (Arabic-based) script first to Latin in 1926-1927 and then
to Cyrillic in 1936. The emerging generation of the 1930s thus could not read
materials from its own literary and political past.
The Soviets also divide the language ‘vertically’: they abandoned the traditional
written forms of
words and wrote each dialect phonetically, as it was spoken, in the new scripts.
The new scripts greatly increased the difficulty of communication among the Central
Asians: Uzbeks could no longer read what the Tajiks or
Chechens wrote. Within a generation, the only means of communication among them
was through Russian.
When linguistic divide and rule was insufficient,
Stalin pushed the Tatars of the Crimea toward cultural (and physical)
extinction. During the Great Terror, in the 1930s, the Russians tried to wipe
out distinct cultures in Central Asia. Then, during the Second World War, they
deported more than two hundred thousand Tartars from Crimea and renamed all
towns, rivers, and districts in Russian. To complete the erasure of Tatar
culture, they destroyed Tatar manuscripts and even ripped out of the ground
gravestones inscribed in Ottoman script.
Both the peoples of the South who would preserve
their culture, their identity, and their independence and those of the North
who sought to dominate them realized the centrality of language. To understand
that struggle, therefore, the first step is linguistic.
The second step is to understand the broader reach of culture.
The people who composed the classical poetry
that embodied the Arabic language were nomads, a lifestyle made necessary by
the region’s lack of dependable water supplies. Their adaptation to their harsh
environment is celebrated in their poetry, which for them was often a saga of
heroism. For the region’s townspeople, however, Bedouin heroism translated into
dry-land piracy. The Bedouin raided or levied protection money on towns and
extracted tolls on interurban traffic, but the settled population needed the
Bedouin to carry their produce across the deserts to supply them with animal
products. The balance of their needs and fears was always delicate and would be
drastically changed by the arrival of Islam. (pp.6-9)
In the second chapter, titled “Mohammed the Messenger and His Message,” Professor Polk describes the rise of Islam and its relationship to the culture of nomads.
The main nation-building activity
was Mohammad’s delivery of what he and his followers believed was God’s
message. Islam ‘fits’ the tribal societies that his followers would encounter
from the Atlantic to the frontier of China, and the Muslims community was
itself cast as a sort of tribe. The mores of the effective units of tribes, the
clans (qawms), were Islam’s organizational
principles (usul). Members of the religious
community were to consider one another brothers (ikhwan)
and to behave as such. Tribal peoples found it familiar.
They also found Islam easy to join. A
convert need only affirm belief that here is only one God, deny any sharing (shirk)
of his majesty with other gods, and affirm that Muhammad was his messenger to
be accepted as a member of the community. A believer should say, ‘There is no
god but The God and Muhammad is the Messenger of The
God’ (La ilaha illa
Allah wa Muhammad Rasul
Allah). Beyond this fundamental credo, Islam was open to great diversity.
Outside the cities of the great caliphates, the mainly rural subjects and the
inhabitants of the lesser states – the Afghans, Malays, Filipinos, and others –
retained the patterns of their traditional lives but with mixtures and
emendations brought about by Islam. Often the formal, textual elements of Islam
sat lightly on the converts’ shoulders: Bedouin tribesmen continued to deal
with one another according to their pre-Islamic customs. Afghan Pashtuns similarly followed their own pre-Islamic code, the
Pashtunwali, and their legal system, the Ravaj, so that, for example, their women did not property even
from their husbands, as they should according to Islamic law, and vengeance
–Pashto: badal) was mandatory even against
fellow Muslims, although it is specifically forbidden in the Quran (4/92-93).
Marriage terms, dietary rules, and patterns of dress varied widely. Mongol converts to Islam continued to be guided by the Mongol law
code, the Yassa. In India and Sumatra,
converts brought Hindu practices into Islam, while in Africa animistic customs
continued to be practiced under Islam.
Other customs were a product of changing
circumstances. A prime and today much-discussed example is the veiling of
women. Veiling was probably not practiced in the time of Muhammad and is
nowhere specifically ordered in the Quran. The operative verse (24/31) orders believing
women to cover their breasts and not to flaunt their ‘body ornaments’ (zinat). The veiling of faces was common in Christian
Byzantium at the time of the Arab invasion and was likely adopted from the
Christians by freeborn, upper-class Arab women. In Christian Portugal it was
common in the sixteenth century. In medieval India, veiling women and secluding
them (purdah) was an upper-class affectation
probably borrowed by Muslim from the Hindu Rajputs.
Thus, ironically,
the strictest of Muslim fundamentalist habit is probably an innovation (bida) and so is doctrinally ‘illegal.’ It was not
practiced in a number of Muslim societies, including the Kazakhs, Tajiks, and Kirghiz of Central Asia: the Malays and
Javanese of Southeast Asia; the Kurds, Iranians, and most Arabs of the Middle
East; and the Arabs and Berbers of North Africa.
As spelled out in the Quran and acted out
by Muhammad in Madinah, Islam is a worldly religion.
It provides a detailed system of law, social organization, and deportment. It is
authoritative and has few ambiguities. The rules are easy to understand: people
are not to exploit one another, so usury (riba)
is forbidden: Muslims are enjoined to help one another, so everyone must pay a
welfare tax (zakat); all must abide by the law
(Shariah) where explicitly laid out in the
Quran or exemplified by actions and sayings (Hadith)
of the Prophet; Muslims are forbidden to kill one another because they are
brothers; they should perform the pilgrimage, in which Muslims from all over
the world assemble to express their faith, exemplify their unity, and draw
strength from one another; and Muslims are commanded to struggle (perform
jihad) in the cause of God (fi sabili’llah) to create the community (ummah) he ordered. These rules constitute the
Islamic way – or at least the theoretical Islamic way. Over the centuries and
over the vast extent of the Muslim world, these rules were often violated and
not enforced. That failure, as I will show, is one of the major issues brought
forward by fundamentalists, who today seek to ‘return’ to the original Islamic
order.
In his lifetime, in addition to laying out
the legal structure of his community, Muhammad had another urgent task to
perform: he had to protect his new community from the Meccans
and their Bedouin allies, who were threatening to destroy If he did not
succeed, his little community crushed or starved. As a successful merchant in
Mecca, he must have learned firsthand the way Arabian society worked.
Arabian society is usually designated as
‘tribal,’ but tribes were less social units than abstract concepts. A person
might proudly say
that he belonged to such and such a tribe. The Bedouin with whom I traveled in
the Arabian desert in 1970 would say they were members of the Banu Duwasir, but the Banu Duwasir, who numbered in the
thousands, could seldom if ever have come together, few places had enough water
to sustain such a large gathering. A tribe was only an abstract ‘nation.’ In
the practical affairs of daily life, it had no way to control its subdivisions
or be controlled by any institution or person. Rather, it was composed of
smaller groups of kindred we call clans.
The clan was almost certainly the earliest
form of society. It existed among ‘social’ animals and typified all the human
groups we know about. For hundreds of thousands of years, all of our ancestors
were clansmen or clanswomen. They lived in groups, usually numbering fewer than
a hundred people, who camped together, moved together and share their produce
from hunting, gathering, or herding. They usually had a general idea of their
territory and were intent on persevering it and maintaining access to a source
of water such as a well or a spring. They were descendants of a single
patriarch and his wife or wives so they were brothers, half brothers, or at
least cousins. These basic ties were further augmented as the male members of
the clan usually married some nearby, and usually related, woman. Sometimes,
they were joined by migrants from other clans. Initially, such an immigrant did
not become a fellow clan member but was regarded as a ‘protected stranger’ (jar).
As we shall see, this relationship became crucial as Muslim society evolved. (pp.15-18)
In the third chapter, “The Great Days of the Caliphates,” William Polk describes the flourishing success of Islam from the second half of the 8th century until the 15th century.
The contrast to the rest of Europe was
stunning. Few in Europe could read, and those few were holed up in monasteries.
The secular inhabitants who could read probably did it at the level of today’s
primary school pupils. Few of the ‘signers’ of the Magna Carta,
for instance, could have written more than their names, if that, and probably
none of them could have read the document itself.
. . .
Meanwhile, the Abbasids had found their flourishing state, their
caliphate, in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and built a series
of great palace cites – the most famous, Baghdad, was founded twelve years
after Abu Mulsim’s revolution in 762 – from which to
rule an empire that extended from the Mediterranean to the Indus River and from
the tip of Arabia to the Chinese borer. Known to Europeans and Americans mainly
through the fanciful tales of The Arabian Nights but to the people of
the global South as the brilliant flowering of their civilization, the
societies of medieval Islamic caliphates were, Muslims thought, the world as
contemporary civilized people wanted it to be.
Between the two caliphates on opposite
ends of the Mediterranean, al-Andalus in the West and
al-Abbasid in the East, a third caliphate, that of the Fatimids,
established itself in Egypt in the tenth century. Like the other two (and also
like the Islamic State today), it based its claim to legitimacy on its
relationship to Muhammad, deriving its title for Muhammad’s daughter Fatima.
What distinguished the Fatimid Empire most clearly from the other two was that
it was the first Shiah Muslim caliphate and that it
owned much to its early support by the Berbers of Africa rather than the Arabs
of Asia. Shiism had spread alongside Sunnism far and wide, and the Berger stood head to head or
often sword to sword with the Arab.
Along with Ta’ng
China, these three states were the greatest centers of civilization during the
long Dark Ages of Europe, and their apogee marks the high point of Islamic
civilization. It is an idealized memory of this period that galvanizes the pride
and hope of modern Muslims. When European settlements were little more than
rustic villages, Baghdad, Cairo, Cordoba, and Seville were beacons of light in
a dark world. Over the following centuries, this light would spread to Shanghai,
Deli, Bukhara, Samarqand, Nishapur, Heart, Isfahan,
Shiraz, Konya, Istanbul, Palermo, Fez, and Timbuktu. When few Europeans could
read, these cities had libraries, schools, and literary societies. Baghdad even
had a flourishing book publishing industry that used (and manufactured) for the
first time outside China that great invention, paper.
Everywhere they went, Muslims established
what they called ‘the realm of peace’ (Dar al-Salam) with a degree of
respect for culture and even religious diversity unimagined in Christian
Europe. Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and people of other religions and
races lived side by side, in a congruence that contrasted with the often
violent and always threatening apartheid of Europeans. While Europeans moved
relatively freely among Muslims, establishing trading posts that at times
amounted to virtual colonies in Muslin lands, Muslim travelers almost never
dared venture into Europe outside Muslim Spain. Jews in Europe were consigned
to ghettoes and were periodically driven out even from ‘enlightened’ university
towns as they were in 1071 from Cambridge, but they moved in relative freedom
in Cairo and Fez. The great medieval travelers, Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta, could both journey
safely to China, India, or Egypt, but only Marco Polo was safe in Venice.
Since the time of Muhammad, who made a treaty
with the non-Muslim community of Madinah, Islam had
evolved a pattern for regulating the lives of non-Muslims. Jews and Christians
lived as protected communities (dhimmis).
Except in military affairs, each community was allowed to live according to its
own customs, arrange for its own community services, maintain its own religious
institutions and govern itself. It apportioned taxes internally as it saw fit,
provided it collected what the state demanded of it, and its headman, usually a
community-chosen religious figure, represented it to the leaders of the Muslim
community.
The practice was partly shaped by
geography and history. At the advent of Islam, Christian Byzantium and the
Zoroastrian Sasanian empire
were the established world powers. As the Islamic caliphate expanded, conquering
much of the Byzantine Empire and all of the Sasanian
Persian empire, it acquired resident Christian,
Zoroastrian, and Jewish communities. Whole communities of
Hindus were also eventually incorporated into Muslim states. Except in
the heat of warfare, the Islamic states customarily left these people free to
practice their religions, wear their distinctive dress, speak their own
languages, enforce their own laws and customs, and govern themselves under
their own authorities. The system was far from perfect, but Christians and Jews
generally lived securely in communities within Muslim states, whereas Jews were
always at risk and often persecuted, occasionally driven away, or even
slaughtered in Christian states. Where they were dominant, Christians were safer,
but even slight doctrinal difference often resulted in brutal persecutions or
massacres of the ‘heretics.’ Indeed, the prototype of the later Crusades was
the Catholic Church-inspired French attack on the Cathar
Christians who lived in southwestern France. It was also there that the
Inquisition got its start.
Over the centuries, many Christians and
Jews converted to Islam. That Islam forcibly converted them is amyth; actually, the <Islamic states preferred that the
conquered peoples remain non-Muslim because that sttus
required them to pay an extra tax in lieu of military service. In practice,
Muslim rulers and Muslims in general often fell short of what the religion
proclaimed, but historically, Islam has been the most tolerant of the three
religions.
Even short of warfare, Christianity has
been generally intolerant and violent in its relationship with both Jews and
Muslims. Christians forced European Jews into ghettos, made them wear
distinctive dress, and behaved toward them like the Mafia toward shopkeepers.
They forced the resident Jews to pay what amounted to protection money. They
also humiliated them, raised mobs to attack them, and often drove them away.
Meanwhile, within Islam, diverse sects, orders , and schools proliferated. As with Catholicism and Protestantism,
the division in Islam between Sunnism and Shiism would both create great social tensions and promote
the spread of religion because people with different cultural and ethnic o(orientations
would find one or the other version compatible with their existing political,
social, and economic order. As in Protestantism, in Shiism
subsidiary or at least related cults would also flourish, so that distinct
national groups could find dogmas to express their separate identities. We see
this tendency today in the diversity of groups – Druze, Ismailis,
Alawis, and others – who have found niches in Islam.
Ethically;, the
Muslim community – the single ummah that was the
ideal of Islam – was never established. The very success of Islam as a warring
society made impossible the achievement of Islam as a homogeneous society. We
see this in the division between bedouin and city
dwellers, in the Sunni-Shii split, in the division of
the three great caliphates, and in the ethnic separation of Arab, Berber,
Iranian, Turk, and others.(pp.32-35)
The Muslim policy of religious toleration ran into a exception, however, in India in the 11th century.
What really astonished the Arab and
Persian Muslim traders was Hinduism. Hinduism is the very antithesis of Islam.
Whereas Islam makes an absolute proclamation of monotheism, Hinduism is
polytheistic. It portrays its multiple gods as idols, whereas, . . . followers of Islam ‘congregat[ed] for prayer at fixed
intervals, in a rectangular building which contained no idols.’ The Quran
clearly spells out how polytheist idol worshiper are
to be dealt with: they must be forced to convert, and if they refuse, they are
to be killed. Early in the eleventh century, when Hindus refused to give up
their gods, Muslims, particularly recently converted Turks and Afghans, killed
thousands of them and destroyed their temples.
Even in those early days, it was becoming
clear that the sword is not effective against religious belief or political ideas.
Military ‘solutions’ kill a lot of people but rarely win wars. Even more rarely
do they solve the problems at which they were aimed. Few rulers in history have
absorbed this lesson, but one of the wiser contemporary rulers then did. Mahmud,
the ruler of the Afghan city-state of Ghazni, soon
realized that Muslims would have to coexist with Hindus if they were to stay in
India. His strategy cost nothing : he simply pretended
to be unaware that the Hindus were polytheists and worshiped statues. He
‘awarded’ them the status of Christians and Jews as though they too were a ‘People
of the Book [the Old Testament],’ This decision
created an acceptable degree of peace in India for hundreds of years. (p.46)
The “great days of the caliphates” came to an end in the 15th century when “The North Moves South,” the title of chapter 5 of Polk’s book.
Until the fifteenth century, the
Muslim world was composed of some of the world’s richest and most advanced
societies. The Mughal Empire alone at least matched
China and far surpassed Europe in the production of wealth. Iran boasted a
literary and artistic standard that was the exemplar in Asia. The Ottoman
Empire controlled an area about the size of Europe and did so both relatively
economically and with a degree of tolerance unknown in Europe. Islam sat
lightly but firmly on the Crimean Tatars and on the peoples of Southeast Asia
and the Philippines.
Rural people in the Muslim world as a
whole closely resembled their European counterpart. French peasants lived in
villages as African and Asian peasants did and worked surrounding fields with
simple plows pulled by draft animals or by hand; their standard of living, at
least in food consumption, was probably about the same. Both were largely
illiterate and both were organized in religiously based traditions.
However, there were two significant
differences in the European and Afro-Asian experiences. The first was a result
of the shortage of water; much of the population of North Africa and of West
and Central Asia lived in widely separated villages that often depended in part
on transhumance or were nomadic. European villages ,
who had access to rivers, were able to tap ground water, and were fed by relatively
heavy rain, were more densely placed and more fixed. There were essentially no European
nomads. Second, in urban life, these proportions were reversed. Cities in the
Muslim world were far larger than in Europe. Constantinople (later known as
Istanbul), Isfahan, and several Indian cities had reached a million people,
whereas European cities were still small. Only Venice and Milan had two hundred
thousand inhabitants. Parisians numbered about seventy thousand,
and the population of London was about half that size. Seville had about
thirty-five thousand and Lisbon perhaps twenty-five thousand residents. Urban
people made up only about one in twenty Europeans in the sixteenth century;
nineteen in twenty were peasant farmers or serfs. Muslim Asia was not quite the
reverse, but it was considerably more urban than Christian Europe.
Size
mattered. Several of the Muslim societies, led by Mughal
India, developed coherent, nation-wide systems of distribution unmatched in
Europe. In the manufacture and distribution of textiles, Mughal
India had already in the sixteenth century crated a pattern of economic life
that was moving slowly toward something like the eighteenth-century European
Industrial Revolution. Then, rather suddenly, the North began to change, while
the South did not.(pp.50-51)
The military and economic domination of the South by the northern imperialist nations moved rapidly and has left lasting scars.
It has been estimated that in the middle
of the eighteenth century India produced about a quarter of the world’s wealth,
while Britain produce less than 3 percent. Then the Industrial Revolution began
a major transformation, indeed a reversal of the terms of trade between the
North and the South. Local manufacture in the south was driven out and replaced
by European goods and services. As Shashi Tharoor has written, ‘Britain’s rise for 200 years was
financed by the depredation in India. . . . Britain’s Industrial Revolution was
built on the destruction of India’s thriving manufacturing industries. . . .
The British destruction of textile competition from India led to the first great
deindustrialization of the modern world . . . master weavers became beggars.’
Whereas India had supplied colorful cloth to England, it and most of the South
now bought cloth form England and paid for it mainly with raw materials. All
over the South a revolution in tastes and styles quickly followed. The
French-manufactured fez replace the locally made turban; Yemen coffee beans
gave way to coffee imported from French colonies; the Kashmiri shawl, the mark
of a gentleman, went out of style. Even the bedouin’s
head cloths were woven in Birmingham. In the one year of 1833 an estimated ten
thousand men –perhaps 20 percent of the skilled workforce – were forced into
idleness in Damascus and Aleppo. Traditional trade routes were abandoned or
reversed/ By 1854 French and British steamers had, in the words of a British
consul, ‘annihilated the local carrying trade,’ and the last camel caravan went
from Baghdad to Damascus in 1857.
These changes caused a dramatic fall in
the standard of living and health of the naïve populations. In India, William Digby wrote that nineteenth-century peasant got only about
half as much to eat as their grandfathers and even less than their
great-grandfathers. Even the leading English strategist of Imperialism, Thomas
Babington Macaulay, comments that ‘thirty millions of human beings were reduced
to the extremity of wretchedness.’
What happened economically was extended
and formalized militarily. When the Egyptians struck out on their own to create
a modern industrial sector, the British intervened militarily to suppress it.
In India, Britain first conquered Bengal
and then set about destroying the great Mughal
Empire. When the Indians revolted in 1857, the British killed hundreds of
thousands of villagers, murdered the entire ruling family, and then
incorporated the Mughal Empire into the British
Empire. Already intent on blocking Russian expansion, the British then pushed
toward Central Asia and the Middle East. They fought Afghan Muslims along the
Northwest Frontier for generations; took over and ruled Egypt; defeated the Muslim
revivalist movement, the Mahdiyah, in the Sudan; established
hegemony in the Persian Gulf, dominated Iran; and ultimately acquired control
over what became Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine.
. . .
For the Italians in Libya, war was no
game; it became genocide. Benito Mussolini, as leader of the Fascist Party and Il Duce, tried in nearly twenty years of counterinsurgency
to wipe our the Islamic revival movement, the Sanusiyah, and killed two-thirds of the population. Other
colonial campaigns were just as ugly.
In Java, when the natives tried to reassert
their independence, the Dutch killed about three hundred thousand ‘rebels’
between 1835 and 1840; they similarly suppressed tens of thousands of Sumatran
‘rebels’ between 1873 and 1914. In Algeria, after the bitter fifteen-year war
that began in 1830, the French stole all the farmlands, razed hundreds of
villages, massacred untold numbers of natives, and imposed an apartheid regime
on the survivors. In Central Asia, the Russians and Chinese impoverished or
drove away previously thriving populations, while in their bitter war in the
Caucasus, recounted by Leo Tolstoy, the Russians virtually wiped out whole
societies and drove into exile perhaps a million Circassians.
‘Subduing the natives” was a brutal affair
that reached its nadir in the Congo, where roughly one in ten inhabitants was a
Muslim. Between 1884 and 1904 the Belgians are estimated to have killed at
least twice as many natives as the Nazis killed Jews and Roma –some ten to
fifteen million people. They also engaged in systematic rape, cut off the hands
or feet of unproductive natives, and stripped the Congo of raw materials. In a
less dramatic but more destructive move, the British crated ‘what one can only
call the British Colonial Holocaust, [in which,] thanks to economic policies
ruthlessly enforce by Britain, between 30 and 35 million Indians needlessly
died of starvation . . . [while] millions of tones of wheat were exported from
India to Britain even as famine raged.’ When some Englishmen of conscience objected
and mounted relief operations of their own, the British government threatened
them with imprisonment.
The White
Man’s Burden
. . .
The European thrusts into the Muslim world
were nearly continuous. Except in the Philippines, these were not American
wars, but the American role in the slave trade that brought millions of
Africans to the Western Hemisphere is now being reevaluated. No one knows much
about the enslaved peoples of Africa, but certainly a significant portion of them
were Muslims. And in the Philippines, in half a century of war against the Muslims,
Stephen Kinzer has written, America joined the
already established imperial powers.
Hardly a conversation passes almost
anywhere in Africa or Asia without reference to northern imperialism. As one
young man who had studied business at an American university put it to me, ‘The
bottom line is that no Muslim ever tried to enslave or slaughter your people.
You might think of the attack on the World Trade Center, 9/11, as a
counterattack. It was terrible and most of us are ashamed of it, but just
remember – it killed about 25 hundred people whereas imperialists killed at
least 25 million of our relatives and tried to destroy our way of life and our religion.
Do you care about that?’(pp.61-65)
The essays and articles below should assist in correcting this distortion and offer us much to think about and to discuss with one another.
Sincerely,
Francis 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.
Interview
1562 – James Corbett Tackles Event 201, The Great
Reset, and the End of Humanity
with James Corbett joins Ernie Hancock
(58 :18)
+
Every American Should Watch Abby Martin's
Afghanistan War Exposed: An Imperial Conspiracy
by
Abby Martin
(36 :08)
+
Fahrenheit 11/9
http://www.documentarymania.com/playerf.php?title=Fahrenheit%2011/9
by
Michael Moore
(2:05:30)
+
From: Medea Benjamin,
CODEPINK [mailto:info@codepink.org]
Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2020
Subject: Israel just bombed Iran. How can we stop a war?
Last Thursday, Israel bombed Iran. Not only did they attack Iran, but they targeted and hit the Natanz nuclear facility located about 200 miles outside of Tehran. It doesn’t get more dangerous than this. Iran could retaliate at any moment and Netanyahu could achieve his goal of dragging the U.S. into another disastrous Middle East war. Act now. Tell the Senate to support Sen. Tom Udall’s amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) affirming that Trump may NOT take the U.S. to war with Iran without Congressional approval. Tomorrow, Wednesday, July 8th at 1:00 PM ET (10 AM Pacific) we will be hosting a webinar discussion with researcher and analyst Sina Toossi of the National Iranian-American Council. Sina and Medea will discuss the situation of Israel attacking Iran right now: why now, what are they trying to accomplish, what’s at risk, and what can we do to deescalate the situation and prevent war. RSVP right now! The explosion
at the Natanz nuclear facility was the third
incident of its kind in Iran recently. There was also an explosion near the
Iranian Parchin military site in northeast Tehran
and a fire at a Tehran medical clinic that killed 19 people. A Middle Eastern
intelligence official told the New York Times that Israel was behind the Natanz attack — Israel has not denied it — and it is
possible that Israel was behind the two other recent explosions as well. Iran
says that they have and will soon release the details of what happened at Natanz, but one thing already seems to be clear: despite
the COVID-19 pandemic raging throughout the world, Israel seems hell-bent on
war. Trump (and other U.S. presidents before him) have sent Israel the message that if they go to war — even a war that they outright provoke — the massive U.S. war machine will back them. “If we think for a minute that the Trump administration isn’t ready and willing to go to war, think again,” Senator Udall stated upon introducing his amendment. On June 30, 2020, Brian Hook, the Trump administration’s Special Representative for Iran, affirmed that “The military option is always on the table.” “With this kind of continuing saber-rattling,” Udall said, “We must send a clear message to the president and his administration that initiating war against Iran is beyond the powers this president or any president holds.” The Trump administration doesn’t actually have the sole power to go to war. In 1973 Congress passed The War Powers Act to limit the Executive branch’s power to drag the U.S. into an armed conflict. The War Powers Act states that a president can only commit the U.S. military to action abroad through a congressional declaration of war or "a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." Without the promise of U.S. military support, Netanyahu may think again about starting a war with Iran. Send a message right now to your Senators telling them to VOTE YES to include, in the 2021 NDAA, Tom Udall’s amendment to invoke the 1973 War Powers Act to prevent an unconstitutional U.S. war with Iran and join us tomorrow, July 8, at 1 PM ET for a discussion with NIAC’s Sina Toossi. Towards peace and diplomacy, |
|
|
|
+
“US Prepares For War, Not For COVID-19”
with
Richard Wolff
(8:35)
+
The American Economy in Four Words: Neofeudal Extortion, Decline, Collapse
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55323.htm
by Charles Hugh Smith
+
Poem
“The Black Plague”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsHU9CKr3vs&feature=youtu.be
-1967-
by
Eric Burdon & The Animals
(6:00)
with
the black plague lyrics @
+
17 Contradictions and the End of Capitalism by David
Harvey – A Review
by Radical Review and Mad Blender
(52:55)
===========
b.
“2008 & 2020: The Combination That Changed
Capitalism Forever”
with Yanis Varoufakis
(1:05:08)
+
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Friday, July 10, 2020
Subject: [MCM] The war on cash is actually a war on free humanity
Here,
first, is a piece by Catherine Austin Fitts from
three years ago, about a
troubling
story Aaron Russo told on InfoWars eleven
years before. Fitts' piece
is a fitting preface to
"Here's What No Cash Actually Means," which came out
yesterday.
These
are no mere paranoid ramblings. Check out this breathless item from the
Business
section of last Sunday's New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/business/cashless-transactions.html
The
full interview with Russo, all of it worth watching, is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NitNAcKgujY
MCM
The War On Cash: Aaron Russo
Explains Why the Rockefellers Want People Microchipped
By
Catherine Austin Fitts
Aaron
Russo was a great man. He was a talented, successful movie producer turned
freedom fighter. He had the heart of a lion and a bountiful love of humanity, I
considered him a friend. So did many people seeking to understand how we best
ensure human freedom. Before he died, he gave an
interview to Alex Jones in which he describes a conversation he had with a
member of the Rockefeller family . He was told that the end game is to have people microchipped for complete control.
If
Aaron says this conversation happened – then it did.
Before
you embrace the idea of a cashless society, you need to appreciate that all
digital money is a step to a greater goal – one that will destroy human
freedom. If you think surveillance capitalism is unpleasant now, wait until the
big banks and the intelligence agencies have the power to turn off your ability
to transact or access your funds if they don’t like something you thought or
said this morning in the “privacy” of your own home.
The
war on cash is a war on humanity – don’t let it happen. While we are at it, it
is time to outlaw private banks' monopoly to create currency. If this is
where they want to go, it is time for their monopoly to go.
Here's What No Cash Actually Means
Wednesday,
July 08, 202
https://www.atmia.com/news/heres-what-no-cash-actually-means/13542/
A
cashless society means no cash. Zero. It doesn’t mean
mostly cashless and you can still use a ‘wee bit of cash here & there’.
Cashless means fully digital, fully traceable, fully controlled. I think those
who support a cashless society aren’t fully aware of what they are asking for.
A cashless society means:
*
If you are struggling with your mortgage on a particular month, you can’t do an
odd job to get you through.
*
Your child can’t go & help the local farmer to earn a bit of summer cash.
*
No more cash slipped into the hands of a child as a good luck charm or from
their grandparent when going on holidays.
*
No more money in birthday cards.
*
No more piggy banks for your child to collect pocket money & to learn about
the value of earning.
*
No more cash for a rainy day fund or for that something special you have been
putting £20 a week away for.
*
No more nixers on the side because your wages barely
cover the bills or put food on the table.
*
No more charity collections.
*
No more selling bits & pieces from your home that you no longer want/need
for a bit of cash in return.
*
No more cash gifts from relatives or loved ones.
What
a cashless society does guarantee:
*
Banks have full control of every single penny you own.
*
Every transaction you make is recorded.
*
All your movements & actions are traceable.
*
Access to your money can be blocked at the click of a button when/if banks need
‘clarification’ from you which will take about 3 weeks, a thousand questions
answered & five thousand passwords.
*
You will have no choice but to declare & be taxed on every pound in your
possession.
*
The government WILL decide what you can & cannot purchase.
*
If your transactions are deemed in any way questionable, by those who create
the questions, your money will be frozen, ‘for your own good’.
+
THE TRUTH ABOUT MONEY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzfbcmzMlBY&feature=youtu.be
with David
Icke
(8:15)
+
California Bill to Establish Nation's Second Public
Bank Applauded as 'Historic Challenge to Wall Street Domination'
by
Jake Johnson
===========
c.
A letter to Joe Biden: Stop your blind support for
Israel
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55321.htm
by Medea Benjamin and Ariel Gold
+
Is
Israel’s West Bank ‘annexation’ really an invasion?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHFn5JNZEac&feature=youtu.be
with George Galloway
(7:17)
+
Did Irish
minister distort truth over Israel's settlement imports?
by Ciaran Tierney
+
Oppose
apartheid, not just annexation
https://electronicintifada.net/content/oppose-apartheid-not-just-annexation/30596
by Chance Charley
+
“Israel will pretend that illegal annexation is a
compromise”
with Norman
Finkelstein
+
Israel's annexation plan for occupied
West Bank
+
Home demolitions spike ahead of
annexation
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/home-demolitions-spike-ahead-annexation
by Maureen
Clare Murphy
+
Palestinian Scholar Noura
Erakat: Israeli Forces Killed My Cousin on His
Sister’s Wedding Day
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/6/24/noura_erakat
with Noura Erakat, Palestinian American human rights attorney and
legal scholar
(16:46)
+
Ahmed Erekat,
Nephew of Top Palestinian Official, Shot by Israeli Forces at Checkpoint and
Left to Die
===========
d.
The UN has found that the US killing of Qassem Soleimani broke
international law. It’s right, but nothing will happen
as a result
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55322.htm
by
Scott Ritter
+
Les parallèles entre Minneapolis et Jérusalem sont loin
d’être superficiels
https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/opinion-fr/george-floyd-palestine-police-israel-occupation
par
Jonathan Cook
English version
Parallels
between Minneapolis and Jerusalem are more than skin deep
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2020-06-11/parallels-minneapolis-jerusalem-police/
by Jonathan Cook
+
From: Richard Greeman
Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2020
Subject: Soulèvements contre la
brutalité policière raciste aux Etats-Unis!
Voici six
semaines que l’explosion de soulèvements contre le racisme et la brutalité
policière systématique continue à flamber aux États-Unis. Loin de s’éteindre,
ce mouvement, provoqué par l’assassinat policier de George Floyd le 25 mai à
Minneapolis, s’enracine et s'étend dans les moindres petites villes sous la
bannière de « Black Lives Matter »
A diffuser!
+
America’s Policing Budget
Has Nearly Tripled to $115 Billion
https://twitter.com/i/events/1268555867416416258
+
What does community control of police look like?
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/07/06/what-does-community-control-of-police-look-like/
by Anya Parampil
(32:42)
===========
e.
“Beware of Right Deviations That Have Emerged from
the
Three-Headed Crisis of US Imperialism”
by Danny
Haiphong
+
https://www.corbettreport.com/mp4/filter-corbett.mp4
with
James Corbett joins Matt Asher on The Filter
podcast
(54:27)
===========
f.
Watch Dr. Cornel
West on Useful Idiots
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrKwTVW4iS0
with Katie Halper, Matt Taibbi, and Cornel
West
(1:06:00)
Dr. Cornel West joins the show for a wide-ranging
conversation about his new podcast The Tightrope, what went wrong for Bernie’s
campaign and why he had endorsed Sanders again in 2020, and the tactical
efficacy of violent vs. nonviolent protesting.
+
Watch Noam Chomsky On The
Real News Network
with
Mark Steiner and Noam Chomsky
(39:25)
+
Why the Bill Gates global health empire promises
more empire and less public health
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/07/08/bill-gates-global-health-policy/
by
Jeremy Loffredo and Michele Greenstein
+
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Thursday, July 09, 2020
Subject: [MCM] On the vast web woven by Bill
Gates, the most dangerous philanthropist in modern history.
Stop him
before he kills still more.
MCM
From Dr.
Gary Kohls:
“Duty
to Warn”
Bill Gates —
The Most Dangerous Philanthropist in Modern History?
(And He’s
Calling the Shots on the COVID Pandemic and Lock-down)
Analysis
by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked - April
21, 2020 (3044 words)
STORY AT-A-GLANCE:
Bill Gates’
answers to the problems of the world are consistently focused on building
corporate profits through toxic means, be it chemical agriculture and GMOs, or
pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines
Gates has used “charity” as a way to gain tremendous political power
The true beneficiaries of Gates' philanthropic endeavors tend to be
those who are already rich beyond comprehension, including Gates’ own
charitable foundation
Over the past 20 years, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given
close to $250 million in charitable grants to companies in which the foundation
holds corporate stocks and bonds, yet it gets tax breaks for the charitable
donations it makes money from
Vaccines are
one of Gates’ mainstay “solutions” to most diseases. Gates has gone on record
saying the U.S. needs disease surveillance and a national tracking system that
could involve vaccine records embedded in our bodies
“The Gates Foundation is
giving money to companies that it owns stocks in and will benefit financially
from.”
“Companies that have
received “donations” that in turn made money for the Gates Foundation include
Merck, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Vodafone, Sanofi,
Ericsson, LG, Medtronic, Teva and "numerous
startups."
"We don't want to have
a lot of recovered people … we're trying — through the shut-down in the United
States — to not get to 1% of the population infected ... I believe we will be
able to avoid that with having this economic pain." – Bill Gates
“Life will not go back to
normal until we have the ability to vaccinate the entire global population
against COVID-19.” – Bill Gates
“Far
from being a force for good, Gates appears to have chosen to use his wealth and
intellect to further a distasteful social control plan to benefit his own
nefarious agendas.”
While
philanthropy is considered noble, some philanthropists appear to be doing far
more harm than good with their donated millions. Bill Gates, who cofounded
Microsoft in 1975, is perhaps one of the most dangerous philanthropists in
modern history, having poured billions of dollars into global health
initiatives that stand on shaky scientific and moral ground.
Gates’
answers to the problems of the world are consistently focused on building
corporate profits through highly toxic methods, be it chemical agriculture and
GMOs (genetically-modified organism), or pharmaceutical drugs and
vaccines. Rarely, if ever, do we find Gates promoting clean living or
inexpensive holistic health strategies.
Gates Donates Billions to Private Companies
and Vaccine Start-ups.
A
March 17, 2020, article in The Nation titled, "Bill Gates' Charity
Paradox," details "the moral hazards surrounding the Gates
Foundation's $50 billion charitable enterprise, whose sprawling activities over
the last two decades have been subject to remarkably little government
oversight or public scrutiny."
As
noted in this article, Gates discovered an easy way to gain political power —
"one that allows unelected billionaires to shape public policy" —
namely charity. Gates has described his charity strategy as "catalytic
philanthropy," one in which the "tools of capitalism" are
leveraged to benefit the poor.
The
only problem is that the true beneficiaries of Gates' philanthropic endeavors
tend to be those who are already rich beyond comprehension, including Gates'
own charitable foundation. The poor, on the other hand, end up with costly
solutions like patented GMO seeds and vaccines that in some instances have
done far more harm than good. (For a few examples, see the following references.)
The Nation reports:
"Through
an investigation of more than 19,000 charitable grants the Gates Foundation has
made over the last two decades, The Nation has uncovered close to $2
billion in tax-deductible charitable donations to private companies … which are
tasked with developing new drugs, improving sanitation in the developing world,
developing financial products for Muslim consumers, and spreading the good news
about this work.
“The
Gates Foundation even gave $2 million to Participant Media to promote Davis
Guggenheim's previous documentary film 'Waiting for Superman,' which pushes one
of the foundation's signature charity efforts, charter schools — privately
managed public schools. This charitable donation is a small part of the $250
million the foundation has given to media companies and other groups to
influence the news.
”It's
been a quite unprecedented development, the amount that the Gates Foundation is
gifting to corporations … I find that flabbergasting, frankly,' says Linsey McGoey, a professor of
sociology at the University of Essex and author of the book 'No Such Thing as a
Free Gift.'
“They've
created one of the most problematic precedents in the history of foundation
giving by essentially opening the door for corporations to see themselves as
deserving charity claimants at a time when corporate profits are at an all-time
high.'"
Companies
that have received large donations from the Gates Foundation include
GlaxoSmithKline, Unilever, IBM, Vodafone, Scholastic Inc. and NBC Universal
Media.
Those Calling the Shots Stand to Gain the
Most.
In
the video above, Spiro Skouras reviews how the global COVID-19 pandemic being
used to snatch freedom and liberty away from us, and the role Gates is playing
in the process.
"We
have been encouraged to sacrifice our liberty for a false sense of security,
being conditioned more and more each day to rely on the state for protection
and now many of us find ourselves relying on the state to pay our
bills," Skouras says.
"Some
are beginning to see that there may be more to the official story than what we
are led to believe. The very few may have seen this coming and are waiting for
the next phase of what very well could be another step closer to global
governance.
“The
exact same individuals and government agencies, in addition to global
institutions who stand to benefit the most, are the
ones calling the shots."
Gates,
surely, fits the description of someone who is both calling the shots and
stands to gain handsomely from the COVID-19 pandemic. How? First, by investing
in the same industries he's giving charitable donations to and, second, by
promoting a global public health agenda that benefits the companies he's
invested in and supports.
How Gates' Foundation Benefits from Its Own
Donations.
For
example, in 2014, a Mastercard affiliate, MasterCard
Labs for Financial Inclusion, received a $19 million donation "to
'increase usage of digital financial products by poor adults' in Kenya,"
The
Nation reports, adding:
"The
credit card giant had already articulated its keen business interest in
cultivating new clients from the developing world's 2.5 billion unbanked
people, McGoey says, so why did it need a wealthy
philanthropist to subsidize its work? And why are Bill and Melinda Gates
getting a tax break for this donation?"
Indeed,
those are sensible questions that need serious review. The Mastercard
donation also appears to have benefited the Gates Foundation, making an
investigation into Gates' "philanthropy" all the more necessary.
As
explained by The Nation, at the time of that donation, the Gates Foundation had
"substantial financial investments in Mastercard
through its holdings in Warren
Buffett's investment company, Berkshire Hathaway."
That's
not the only questionable donation on record. The Nation found "close to
$250 million in charitable grants from the Gates Foundation to companies in
which the foundation holds corporate stocks and bonds."
In
other words, the Gates Foundation is giving money to companies that it owns
stocks in and will benefit financially from.
As
a result, the Foundation and Gates himself continue to increase their wealth.
Part of this growth in wealth also appears to be due to the tax breaks given
for charitable donations. In short, it's a perfect money-shuffling scheme that
limits taxes while maximizing income generation.
Companies
that have received donations that in turn made money for the Gates Foundation
include Merck, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Vodafone, Sanofi,
Ericsson, LG, Medtronic, Teva and "numerous
startups," The Nation writes, adding:
"A
foundation giving a charitable grant to a company that it partly owns — and
stands to benefit from financially — would seem like an obvious conflict of
interest …
“Tax
scholars like Ray Madoff, a law professor at Boston
College, indicate that multibillionaires see tax savings of at least 40 percent
— which, for Bill Gates, would amount to $14 billion …
“Madoff, like many tax experts, stresses that these billions
of dollars in tax savings have to be seen as a public subsidy — money that
otherwise would have gone to the U.S. Treasury to help build bridges, do
medical research, or close the funding gap at the IRS …
“If Bill
and Melinda Gates don't pay their full freight in taxes, the public has to make
up the difference or simply live in a world where governments do less and less
(educating, vaccinating, and researching) and super-rich philanthropists do
more and more.
“I
think people often confuse what wealthy people are doing on their own dime and
what [they're] doing on our dime, and that's one of the big problems about this
debate,' Madoff notes.
“People
say, 'It's the rich person's money [to spend as they wish].' But when they get
significant tax benefits, it's also our money. And so that's why we need to
have rules about how they spend our money.'"
Take Action — Demand an
Investigation.
If
donating to for-profit companies sounds oddly illegal to you, you'd be right.
Gates is a tax evader for doing so — he's simply getting away with it. The
nonprofit foundation is a disguise to avoid taxes while funding the research
arms of for-profit organizations that his foundation is invested in.
In
reality, Bill and Melinda Gates should be given federal prison sentences, and
while not directly spelled out, I believe that's really the point of The
Nation's article. Using nonprofit money to advance research for companies
you're invested in is illegal.
Gates is
a staunch and longtime defender of the drug industry, and his intent to further
the pharmaceutical agenda can clearly be seen in the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Gates' COVID-19 Plan —
Vaccinate Global Population.
As
reported by Forbes, The Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation has committed $100 million to fight the global COVID-19 outbreak. As
much as $20 million will reportedly go to agencies such as the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization to be used for
front-line detection, containment and treatment efforts.
Another
$20 million is earmarked for at-risk populations in Africa and South Asia while
the remaining $60 million is to be used for vaccine development, diagnostics
and other treatments.
Vaccines
are clearly one of Gates' mainstay "solutions" to most diseases.
Gates has gone on record saying the U.S. needs disease surveillance and a national
tracking system that could involve vaccine records embedded on our bodies
(such as invisible ink quantum dot tattoos described in a Science Translational
Medicine paper.)
In
fact, he's stated that life will not go back to normal until we have the
ability to vaccinate the entire global population against COVID-19. Dr. Anthony
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has echoed this exact sentiment as well, as if
they're reading the same cue card. (Note that Dr Fauci
is one of 5 members of the Executive Council of the Gates Foundation.)
It
would not surprise me if they were, seeing how the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation collaborates with both the NIAID and WHO "to increase
coordination across the international vaccine community and create a Global
Vaccine Action Plan."
Fauci is on Gate's Leadership Council board charged with
developing this vaccine action plan, as is WHO's former director general Dr.
Margaret Chan. As explained in a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation press
release:
"The
Global Vaccine Action Plan will enable greater coordination across all
stakeholder groups — national governments, multilateral organizations, civil
society, the private sector and philanthropic organizations — and will identify
critical policy, resource, and other gaps that must be addressed to realize the
life-saving potential of vaccines."
Gates
influence over global health policies has been criticized for years, yet
nothing has been done to limit it. If anything, his power has only grown, and warnings that his corporate interests may undermine public health
policy now appears to have come true. As reported by Politico in 2017:
"Some
billionaires are satisfied with buying themselves an island. Bill Gates got a
United Nations health agency in Geneva. Over the past decade, the world's
richest man has become the World Health Organization's second biggest donor,
second only to the United States and just above the United Kingdom …
“The
Gates Foundation has pumped more than $2.4 billion into the WHO since 2000
… This largesse gives him outsized influence over its agenda … The result,
say his critics, is that Gates' priorities have become the WHO's …
“Some
health advocates fear that because the Gates Foundation's money comes from investments
in big business, it could serve as a Trojan horse for corporate interests to
undermine WHO's role in setting standards and shaping health policies."
Vaccinate
or Become a Social Outcast?
According
to statements made by Gates, societal and financial normalcy may never return
to those who refuse vaccination, as the digital vaccination certificate Gates
is pushing for might ultimately be required to go about your day-to-day life
and business.
An
April 4, 2020, article by Off-Guardian comments on Gates' March 24, 2020,
interview with Chris Anderson, the curator of TED (which runs TED Talks) above:
"Shockingly,
Gates … suggests people be made to have a digital ID showing their vaccination
status, and that people without this 'digital immunity proof' would not be
allowed to travel. Such an approach would mean very big money for vaccine
producers."
Again,
vaccine producers stand to make enormous amounts of money from any given
pandemic, pandemic, and the Gates
Foundation is both funding and making investment profits from vaccine makers.
Is it any wonder then that Gates is trying to indoctrinate people into thinking
there are no other answers? When asked by Anderson about the economic
ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gates says:
"It
is really tragic that the economic effects of this are very dramatic ... But …
bringing the economy back … that's more of a reversible thing than bringing
people back to life. So, we're going to take the pain in the economic
dimension, huge pain, in order to minimize the pain in disease and death
dimension."
As noted by Off-Guardian, Gates' statement:
"…
goes directly against the imperative to balance the benefits and costs of the
screening, testing and treatment measures for each ailment — as successfully
promulgated for years by, for example, the Choosing Wisely campaign — to
provide the maximum benefit to individual patients and society as a whole. Even
more importantly … there may be dramatically more deaths from the economic
breakdown than from COVID-19 itself …
“Millions
could potentially die from suicide, drug abuse, lack of medical coverage or
treatment, poverty and lack of food access, on top of other predictable social,
medical and public-health problems stemming from the response to
COVID-19."
Gates Explains Economic
Shutdown.
At
33:45 in the interview, Gates goes on to reveal what appears to be a stunning
insider’s insight into the current economic shutdown:
“We
don’t want to have a lot of recovered people … To be clear, we’re trying —
through the shut-down in the United States — to not get to 1% of the population
infected ... I believe we will be able to avoid that with having this economic
pain.”
In
other words, if we are to believe Gates, we’re sacrificing the financial
stability and sanity of hundreds of millions of Americans in order to prevent
the infection rate from hitting 1% of the population.
Keep
in mind, the death rate for COVID-19 now appears to be on par with seasonal
influenza, according to Fauci,22 so
the vast majority of those infected end up recovering after mild illness, and
have antibodies that should provide them with long-lasting immunity. Clearly,
if you want to make money from a vaccine, you don’t want people to develop
immunity naturally, and this is precisely what Gates is admitting to. As noted
by Off-Guardian:
“Gates
and his colleagues far prefer to create a vast, hugely expensive, new system of
manufacturing and selling billions of test kits, and in parallel very quickly
developing and selling billions of antivirals and
vaccines.
“And
then, when the virus comes back again a few months later and most of the
population is unexposed and therefore vulnerable, selling billions more test
kits and medical interventions.”
Gates Leads Medical Tyranny
Agenda.
The
short video above summarizes some of the points I've touched on in this article
so far and reviews how the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation influences public health policy at the very highest levels
through a vast web of personal and organizational interconnections.
Gates
has a history of "predicting" global pandemics with vast numbers of
deaths,24 and
with his call for a tracking system to keep tabs on infected/noninfected and vaccinated/unvaccinated individuals, he's
ensuring an unimaginably profitable future for the vaccine makers he supports
and makes money from via his Foundation investments.
In
an April 9, 2020, Children's Health Defense article, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
further details Gates' vaccine agenda. As noted by Kennedy:
"Vaccines,
for Bill Gates, are a strategic philanthropy that feed his many vaccine-related
businesses (including Microsoft's ambition to control a global vaccination
ID enterprise26) and give him
dictatorial control of global health policy."
The
vaccination ID enterprise Kennedy mentions refers to a program called ID2020,
launched in 2019, which is designed to "leverage immunization as an
opportunity to establish digital identity."
This
digital identity system is said to carry "far-reaching implications for
individuals' access to services and livelihoods," so to think that Gates'
call for implantable COVID-19 vaccine certificates would be limited to that
alone would likely be a grave mistake.
It's
not so far-fetched to imagine a future in which your vaccine certificate simply
replaces personal identifications such as your driver's license, state ID card,
Social Security card and passport.
Far
from being a force for good, Gates appears to have chosen to use his wealth and
intellect to further a distasteful social control plan to benefit his own
nefarious agendas, and people all over the world are finally starting to see
his true colors.
===========
g.
From: Mark Crispin
Miller
Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2020
Subject: [MCM] 46
doctors and other experts claim COVID-19 global death rate is 0.01%, and NOT
the 3.4% imagined by the WHO
CoronaWhistle-Blower
http://coronawhistleblower.org/
+
COVID-19 mutates:
Two strains detected
with
Rick Sanchez
(25:53)
+
Aerosols, Droplets, Fomites:
What We Know About Transmission
Of COVID-19
https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=887919633
by Pien Huang
+
Are we being lied to about how coronavirus
is spread?
https://www.patreon.com/posts/38846883
by
Levi Quackenboss
+
LancetGate: “Scientific
Corona Lies” and Big Pharma Corruption. Hydroxychloroquine versus Gilead’s Remdesivir
by
Prof Michel Chossudovsky
===========
h.
Stanford Says COVID Death Rate ‘Almost
ZERO’ For Those Under 40 & Israeli PreCrime Used On Americans
with Ryan Christian
(2:38:48)
===========
i.
Glenn Greenwald breaks down new 'bogus' charges
against
Julian Assange
with
Glenn Greenwald
(10:34)
+
ASSANGE EXTRADITION: Assange
Hit With New Superseding Indictment Broadening
Computer Intrusion Charges
by
Joe Lauria
+
Collateral Murder video & US Military cover up
with
Chris Hedges
===========
j.
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Thursday, July 09, 2020
Subject: [MCM] The "science" of COVID-19 has been a
catastrophic fraud
An
admirably clear and thorough critique of the pseudo-science deployed to
crash our world. Those who funded it, and those who cooked it up,
must be held accountable.
Please
share this far and wide.
MCM
Post
navigation
Politics Influences the Science of COVID-19
by Josh Mitteldorf
Aging
Matters
Posted
on July 8, 2020
https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2020/07/08/politics-influences-the-science-of-covid-19/
Many
of us are still shell-shocked by the changes in our lives that have been
imposed this spring. We’re reacting to each unexpected event as it comes. But
to anyone who has stepped back to make sense of this web of contradictory
messages that pour out of our newsfeeds, it is clear that the government
agencies and corporate news media are slanting their message toward fear. I am
particularly concerned when they do this at the expense of honesty. This is a
moment for the scientific community to be engaging in spirited dialog among
diverse voices. Only with open debatei can we hope to
shed light to guide the momentous public policy decisions that are being made,
directing our culture and global economy into unexplored territory. But instead
of robust debate, what I see is a monolithic message, and censorship of the few
brave scientists who dissent from that message. I’m ashamed to say that the
scientific community has been part of the problem.
I’m
writing here about two issues:
Numbers
reported by CDC have been gamed to make it appear that America is in the second
wave of a pandemic. Instead of reporting COVID deaths, they began reported
COVID cases. Then they conflated recovered individuals (who test positive
for antibodies) with current cases (who test positive for the active virus). No
wonder numbers are rising!
(2)
A new report featured prominently in Nature purports to show that
lockdowns have stemmed the spread of the virus and have saved lives. The
article is by the same team whose flawed models produced apocalyptic
predictions last March that justified lockdowns in Europe and the US. The new
computer model assumes from the start that the number of COVID deaths would
have expanded exponentially from their March levels, and that social distancing
is the only factor responsible for lower death rates. That is, it
assumes exactly what it purports to prove. Where is accountability? Why is this
perspective promoted in the world’s most prestigious journal, while reasonable
doubts are swept aside?
Part One—CDC reporting
The
global death rate from COVID-19 is down to about 4,000 per day. It is not even
among the top ten causes. COVID is lower than traffic deaths, lower than
diarrhea. Even compared to other respiratory infections, COVID is now a
minority.
+
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2020
Subject: [MCM] “Treat COVID-19 patients early, with HCQ/zinc/AZT, and they'll
do fine: Texas doc who's treated 75 cases—all now alive and well—tells us some
urgent truths” (MUST-SEE)
We
don't need more lockdowns, or masks, or—God forbid—that dubious vaccine. The
proper therapy is cheap, and quick, if you treat COVID-19 patients well before they
get so sick they wind up in the hospital, where they may well be doomed.
https://www.facebook.com/michling/videos/10217734783429108
MCM
+
To Abolish the Medical industrial Complex
https://www.blackagendareport.com/abolish-medical-industrial-complex
by Gwendolyn Wallace
===========
k.
“This Uprising Is Unprecedented In US History”
with Michael
Brooks and Noam Chomsky
(11:27)
+
Coronavirus – The Aftermath. A Coming Mega-Depression...
https://www.globalresearch.ca/corona-aftermath/5708875
by
Peter Koenig
+
Billionaires make bank in pandemic while
homelessness spikes in LA
with Richard
Wolff
(5:00)
+
The Deep Corruption of Gov't
Stimulus Programs
with
Richard Wolff
(6:55)
+
How the Fed Serves Capitalism
with
Richard Wolff
(10:45)
===========
l.
France-Turkey
tensions mount after NATO naval incident
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nato-france-turkey-analysis-idUSKBN2481K5
by John Irish and Robin Emmott
+
US war drive against China accelerates
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55315.htm
by Peter Symonds
+
Socialism in
Venezuela
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZTpSU4syLU&feature=youtu.be
with
Richard Wolff
===========
m.
Project Venezuela: Right-Wing Activists Push
Wikipedia to Blacklist MintPress, other Alternative
Media
by Alan
Macleod
+
The Trust Project: Big Media and Silicon Valley's Weaponized Algorithms Silence Dissent
by Whitney
Webb
+
American Exceptionalism Is
on the Ropes and the End of the Petrodollar Is Nigh
by
Raul Diego
+
Birth Of An Insurgency: The
US-Israeli “Secret Deal” To Manipulate Protests In Iran
by
Whitney Webb
+
Israel's attacks on Iran's nuclear sites
signal a new phase of conflict
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55320.htm
by Richard Silverstein
+
The White Helmets’ Underground “Hospitals” in
Syria’s Idlib
https://www.mintpressnews.com/white-helmets-hospitals-idlib-syria/259111/
by Vanessa Beeley
+
How Victims of
the US’ “Maximum Pressure” Campaign Are Coping with Coronavirus
https://www.mintpressnews.com/author/vanessa-beeley/
by Vanessa Beeley
===========
n.
From:
Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Thursday, July 09, 2020
Subject: [MCM] Voldemort is coming after J.K.
Rowling; and Twitter evidently works for him.
I
meant to send this out back when it ran a few weeks back. So here it is,
belatedly; and, attached,
you'll also find a fresh pro-Rowling tweet that no
one can retweet
for forward.
This
rampant censorship by Big Tech, along with what now calls itself
"the left," is indefensible, and far more dangerous than
the coronavirus
(another issue that it's risky to discuss forthrightly). It
used to be the right
that called for
censorship (remember Ari Fleischer, Dubya's reptilian
press secretary, saying, "People should watch what they," soon
after 9/11?), and liberals who deplored it. It's been noted often, and
correctly, that it's now liberals and "progressives" who believe in
"free speech" only for themselves, as loyal members of the Outer
Party.
MCM
p.s.
There's some irony in this op ed
appearing in the Daily Mail, which,
along with Rupert
Murdoch's Times, came after me and other academics
for promoting
irresponsible "conspiracy theories" about Syria, 9/11 and
COVID-19.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/newsfromunderground/mUqhaTN4GDI
ANDREW
DOYLE: “JK Rowling row shows how Britain is in the grip of a frightening new
kind of religion that demands moral purity and permits no dissent.”
By
Andrew Doyle For The Mail On Sunday22:02 27 Jun 2020, updated 09:15 28 Jun 2020
Every
day there seems to be a new entry into the lexicon of social justice to add to
the already burgeoning list that includes ‘no- platforming’,
‘trigger warnings’, ‘hate speech’ and ‘cultural appropriation’. One of the
latest is the barb directed at author J. K. Rowling, who has been accused of being ‘radicalised online’.
This
alarmist phrase – previously associated with jihadi
terrorists – brings to mind all manner of transgressions. Had she joined a
fanatical death-cult, or endorsed a national policy of eugenics, or embedded
subliminal Nazi propaganda into her forthcoming new children’s book?
No.
Rowling’s so-called ‘radicalisation’ is her belief
that there are biological differences between men and women.
===========
o.
A President Who Makes Us Puke—Just Like He Was Hired
To Do
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/07/09/president-trump-puke-altitude-harris-353809
by
John F. Harris
===========
p.
Foundations Fund Phony
'Left' Media Gatekeepers
(Link to the chart of foundations
funding "left" media gatekeepers:)
https://rense.com/1.imagesH/fund.htm
+
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Friday, July 10, 2020
Subject: [MCM] "Why we stay asleep when COVID-19 is trying to wake
us up" (MUST-READ)
A beautiful analysis of why, and how, we must break free
from our abusers.
MCM
Why We Stay Asleep When
Covid-19
Is Trying to Wake Us Up
https://kellybroganmd.com/why-we-stay-asleep-when-covid-19-is-trying-to-wake-us-up/
by Kelly
Brogan, MD, Ali Zeck, Sayer
Ji
There’s
a phrase we all keep hearing: It doesn’t make sense.
We’ve
heard it from citizen journalists, from hospital and police force
whistleblowers, and from otherwise compliant and law abiding self-quarantiners whose personal, lived experience simply isn’t
adding up to what they are being told is happening by mainstream media.
So
what is it that doesn’t make sense?
Is
it:
that
many medical experts have actually downgraded the potential threat of Covid-19
from initial projections by orders of magnitude, including Dr.
Anthony Fauci himself, in a New England Journal of Medicine
report where he wrote that “the overall clinical consequences
of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to a severe seasonal influenza (which
has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) …” yet we are seeing
unprecedented, draconian style control measures being implemented by executive
order?
that there were staged planning events in October 2019 including Urban Outbreak and Event 201, nationwide CDC Quarantine Program job postings from November of 2019, a coronavirus patent
, World Bank pandemic bonds, well in advance of when this pandemic supposedly started, and spontaneously erupted and disseminated globally in a manner that could never be explained through person to person contagion?that doctors are being told to code all
deaths as covid without so much as
the facade of testing when up to 99% of case fatalities are
in individuals with multiple pre-existing conditions, the vast majority of them
elderly?
that
hospitals are supposedly full to the brim with intubated
patients when hospital staff are being laid off or furloughed, and whistleblowers are
speaking to iatrogenic harm and death (including through intubation) being
systematically committed by physicians?
·
that
the plan for “return to normal” is being dictated by an unelected software technocrat who
happens to also fund GMOs (including non-meat synthetic products), 5G, all of
the labs currently working on the vaccine, implantable tracking devices,
and the WHO?
·
that people were
dying en masse from all manner of preventable illnesses ranging from obesity to
hunger to properly prescribed medications with no historical precedent for
governmental intervention around these far deadlier epidemics, but now we are
to believe that the government cares so much about us that it will “keep us
safe” even against our will?
·
that we should
consent to be traced and tracked as law-abiding,
healthy civilians even when convicted felons and many sex offenders are not?
·
that facial
coverings ranging from a scarf to a reused surgical mask with mm pore sizes are
going to “keep out” what we are calling a virus which is nm in diameter? 1
·
that mask-wearing
has been enforced when the Surgeon General, the WHO and even Fauci say to not wear them, and elected
officials congregated on television have never worn them?
·
that Walmart, Target, and Costco are open while small
businesses, parks, and beaches have been shuttered since March 14th, many of
which will remain permanently closed due to the irreversible economic impacts
of the shutdown?
·
that the list of the
virus’s associated symptoms have grown and changed, all the while without
there being unequivocal evidence of the virus’s point-of-origin
in isolation in Wuhan or proof of global contagion?
·
that 5G networks are being
installed during a time of “essential work only” in every major
metropolitan area while we are quarantined in our homes?
·
that the immune
system thrives on diversity of exposure, sunlight, time in nature and in loving
company of others, but we are being told to hide alone, indoors?
·
that 30 million
people in this country alone have suddenly lost their jobs through “essential
business” restrictions, however there happened to be a 1000 page piece of legislation spontaneously
prepared to institute the roll out of a system of government handouts and
cashless currency?
·
that numbers of
cases are determined through testing methods that do not confirm
Covid-19, have tested positive in fruit and
animals, and which the test inventor said should not be used to
identify a specific disease?
===========
q.
En
pleine pandémie, des millions d’Américains privés d’eau potable
https://www.bastamag.net/Etats-Unis-covid-Trump-eau-potable-pollutions-petrole-clean-water-act
par Solani Bourébi
===========
r.
From:
Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Friday, July 10, 2020
Subject: [MCM] Trump pulls millions from the WHO, gives billions to
Gates' GAVI
Too many people on the right, and some few on the real left, have let themselves
be fooled by Orange Julius' pretense that he's opposed to mandatory vaccination.
Thus the right deludes itself just as so many on the left fell for the fake-out by
Barack Obama—and, right now, the fantasy that Bernie's going to move Joe Biden
to the left (which, in fact, will mainly mean a more "diverse" cast of supporting
players, a few more federal pennies for the have-nots—digital pennies, probably
—and, of course, the "Green New Deal," which is another faux-left plutocratic
operation).
It's way past time for both the right and left—or, rather, real conservatives, and
genuine progressives—to snap out of the pipe dream that America's quadrennial
pro wrestling match presents real choices, that either party cares at all about
our lives, regardless of which color, and that the President of the United States
is actually in charge. JFK—"that little Kennedy," as Allen Dulles chucklingly
referred to him a few years after Dallas—was the last one who believed that
he was serving as our Chief Executive, and tried to use his power for peace,
and in the interests of the people. What happened to him made quite clear to
all of his successors—Trump included—that they're really not allowed to
rule, but only star in the ongoing theatricale.
Thus, contrary to my subject line, it isn't really Trump who's pumping money
into GAVI, but, mainly, our never-once-elected medical dictator Tony Fauci—
the Robert Moses of US healthcare.
MCM
Posted on July 7, 2020 AuthorDerrick BrozeComments(6) 905 Views
In mid-May US President Donald Trump announced that the US would be ending their financial support for the World Health Organization (WHO) and COVID-19 relief. The move was lambasted in the mainstream press as an out of touch politician pulling funding from a vital global health organization during the middle of a pandemic. To Trump’s supporters the decision was met with the typical cheering and celebrated as another Trump victory against the “globalists.” To understand what is actually going on we need to examine Donald Trump’s actions, not his tweets or media statements.
Let us start by looking at the funding provided by the US government to the WHO in previous years. The latest numbers from fiscal year 2018 (numbers are not available for 2019-20) show an estimated $281.6 million to the WHO from the US. The records indicate that after the US government, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, are the 2nd and 3rd top financiers of the WHO. The US defunding the WHO actually tightens the technocrats already firm grip on another global institution.
This means when Donald Trump stated the US will no longer fund the WHO, the Gates Foundation and GAVI stepped into the top financial role. Additionally, GAVI was founded by and largely funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000. Either way, Bill Gates is the top donor and will continue to expand his influence and dominance of global health policy. As reported in Part 2 of my Bill Gates investigation, in 2010 the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched the “Decade of Vaccines” and called for a “Global Vaccine Action Plan.” Since that time they have only grown their network and influence on WHO, GAVI and other organizations in order to shape public health policy in a way that reaps profits for the Gates themselves.
While Trump’s supporters viewed the US withdrawal from WHO financing as a win for nationalism or a black eye to the globalists, the truth is a bit more nuanced.
In early June, the Trump administration declared support for GAVI to the tune of a $1.16 billion USD donation. Trump’s support for GAVI came via the first ever virtual Global Vaccine Summit. At this summit GAVI surpassed the goal of $7.4 billion, instead raising $8.8 billion USD and securing commitments from most major nations around the world. GAVI even received a $5 million dollar donation from the Rockefeller Foundation. GAVI stated that the funding will go to “routine immunization programs” and will also help the public-private partnership “play a major role in the rollout of a future Covid-19 vaccine.”
===========
s.
Pentagon Memo
Warns of “Real Possibility” of Second Wave of Covid-19
+
"Ladies
and Gentlemen,
This Is The Plague"
with Michael Moore
and Laurie Garrett
(1:33:46)