Bulletin N° 968
Naked Lunch
https://archive.org/details/116584811078
by Williams Burroughs
(1:55:08)
Naked Lunch is a 1991 science fiction drama film co-written and
directed by David Cronenberg and starring Peter
Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, and Roy Scheider. It is
an adaptation of William S. Burroughs' 1959 novel of the same name, and an
international co-production of Canada, Britain and Japan.
+
The film was released on 27 December 1991 in the United States, and 24
April 1992 in the United Kingdom by 20th Century Fox. It received positive
reviews from critics, but was a box office bomb, garnering only $2.6 million
out of a $17–18 million budget due to a limited release. It won numerous honours, including the National Society of Film Critics
Award for Best Director and seven Genie Awards, notably Best Motion Picture.
Naked Lunch has since become a cult film, acclaimed for its surrealistic visual
and thematic elements.
+
William S.
Burroughs Reads From Naked Lunch
(5:47)
Published in 1959, Williams S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch ranks with
other mid-twentieth century books like Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and the works
of Jean Genet as literature that sharply divided both critical and legal
opinion in arguments over style and in questions of obscenity. Among its
disturbing and subversive characters is the sociopathic surgeon Dr. Benway, who inspired the medical horrors of J.G.
Ballard and was inspired in turn by Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Benway provides
some of the more satirical moments in the book, as you can hear in the section
below, which Burroughs reads straight with his distinctive nasally Midwestern
twang. A short film of
the scene (sadly unembeddable), called “Dr. Benway Operates,” has Burroughs himself playing the doctor,
in a dramatization that looks like low rent farce as directed by John Waters.
Subject: Blue Pill/Red Pill and the Horrors within the Capitalist Machine.
April 20, 2021
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
We truly live in a period of transparency, when the
traditional hypocritical mediation of elected politicians has receded, and the voice
of the corporate ruling class has taken almost complete control of state governance,
exposing the plutocrats for what they really are: spoiled children seeking to conduct
experiments that will ruin us and wreck our planet.
I came to the study of history via comparative literature and
political science. I’ve never had cause to regret this intellectual voyage.
Recently, I walked past a local book exchange in my
neighborhood and picked up a copy of H. D. Lawrence’s novel, The Plumed Serpent (1926), the famous psychological study of European
encounters with indigenous Mexican culture, following the fall of Porfirio Díaz in1911, and
the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920.
In the three scenes below selected
from Lawrence’s story, readers will discover how the artistic imagination can
expose enigmas within us and enrich our
understanding of the human condition for a deeper historical appreciation of society
and the role we play. The global historical context, of course, remains that of
capitalism.
1)
The Bull-Fight.
The story opens in Mexico City at the start of the last
bull-fight of the season. Four foreigners meet at a ticket office to buy
tickets to the event. Kate an Irish woman, graduate of Oxford, was with her
American friend Owen, a socialist “who preferred to sit among the crowd.”
Neither had seen a bull-fight before and neither spoke much Spanish. They were
joined by a young American named Villiers, who spoke Spanish and helped them
purchase their tickets. He accompanied them to the stadium in a Ford taxi,
accompanied by a Polish acquaintance Owen introduced to Kate.
The
taxi drew up in a side street under the big iron scaffolding of the stadium. In
the gutters, rather lousy men were selling pulque
and sweets, cakes, fruit, and greasy food. Crazy motorcars rushed up and
hobbled away. Little soldiers in washed-out cotton uniforms, pinky drab, hung
around an entrance. Above all loomed the network iron frame
of the huge, ugly stadium.
Kate
felt she was going to prison. But Owen excitedly surged to the entrance that
corresponded to his ticket. In the depths of him, he too didn’t want to go. But
he was a born American, and if anything was on show, he had to see it. That was
‘Life.’(p.12)
Their seats were only three tiers from the arena, guaranteeing
a close inspection of what they were about to see. Lawrence describes the scene
in unforgettable terms:
There was no glamour, not charm. A few commonplace
people in an expanse of concrete were the elect, and below four grotesque and
effeminate-looking fellows in tight, ornate clothes were the heroes. With their
rather fat posteriors and their squiffs of pigtails
and their clean-shaven faces, they looked like eunuchs, or women in tight
pants, these precious toreadors.
The last of Kate’s illusions concerning
bull-fights came down with a flop. These were the darlings of the mob! These
were the gallant toreadors! Gallant? Just about as gallant as assistants in a butcher’s shop. Lady-killers? Ugh!
There was an Ah! of
satisfaction from the mob. Into the ring suddenly rushed a smallish, dun-coloured bull with long flourishing horns. He ran out,
blindly, as if from the dark, probably thinking that now he was free. Then he
stopped short, seeing he was not free, but surrounded in an unknown way. He was
utterly at a loss.
A
toreador came forward and switched out a pink cloak like a fan not far from the
bull’s nose. The bull gave a playful little prance, neat and pretty, and
charged mildly on the cloak. The toreador swished the cloak over the animal’s
head, and the neat little bull trotted on round the ring, looking for a way to
get out.
Seeing the wooden barrier around the arena,
finding he was able to look over it, he thought he might as well take the leap.
So over he went into the corridor or passage-way which circled the ring, and in
which stood the servants of the arena.
Just
as nimbly, these servants vaulted over the barrier into the arena, that was now
bull-less.
The bull in the gangway trotted
inquiringly round till he came to an opening on to the arena again. So back he
trotted into the ring.
And back into the gangway vaulted the
servants, where they stood again to look on.
The bull trotted waveringly and somewhat
irritated. The toreadors waved their cloaks at him, and he swerved on. Till his
vague course took him to where one of the horsemen with lances sat motionless
on his horse.
Instantly, in a pang of alarm, Kate
noticed that the horse was thickly blindfolded with a black cloth. Yes, and so
was the horse on which sat the other picador.
The bull trotted suspiciously up –to the
motionless horse bearing the rider with a long pole; a lean old horse that
would never move till Doomsday, unless someone shoved it.
O shades of Don Quixote! Oh four Spanish
horsemen of the Apocalypse ! This was surely one
of them.
The picador pulled his
feeble horse round slowly to face the bull, and slowly he leaned forward and
shoved his lance-point into the bull’s shoulder. The bull, as if the horse were
great wasp that had stung him deep, suddenly lowered his head in a jerk of
surprise and lifted his horns straight up into the horse’s abdomen. And without
more ado, over went the horse and rider, like a tottering monument upset.
The rider scrambled
from under the horse and went running away with his lance. The old horse, in
complete dazed amazement, struggled to rise as if overcome with dumb
incomprehension. And the bull, with a red place on his shoulder welling a trickle of dark blood, stood looking around in
equally hopeless amazement.
But the wound was
hurting. He saw the queer sight of the horse half reared from the ground,
trying to get to his feet And he smell blood and bowels.
So rather vaguely, as
if not quite knowing what he ought to do, the bull once more lowered his head
and pushed his sharp flourishing horns in the horse's belly, working them up
and down inside there with a sort of vague satisfaction.
Kate had never been
taken so completely by surprise in all her life. She had still cherished some
idea of a gallant show. And before she knew where she was, she was watching a
bull whose shoulders trickle blood gorging his horns up and down inside the
belly of a prostrate and feebly plunging old horse.
The shack almost
overpowered her. She had come for a gallant show. This she had paid to see.
Human cowardice and beastliness, a smell of blood, a nauseous whiff of bursten bowels! She turned her face away.
When she looked again
it was to see the horse feebly and dazedly walking out of the ring, with a
great ball of its own entrails hanging out of its abdomen and swinging reddish
against its own legs as it automatically moved.
And once more,
the shock of amazement almost made her lose consciousness. She heard the
confused small applause of amusement from the mob. And the Pole, to whom Owen
had introduced her, leaned over and said to her, in horrible English:
‘Now, Miss Leslie, you
are seeing Life! Now you will have something to write about in your letters to
England.’
She looked at his
unwholesome face in complete repulsion and wished Owen would not introduce her
to such sordid individuals.
She looked at Owen. His
nose had a sharp look, like a little boy who may make himself sick but who is
watching at the shambles with all his eyes, knowing it is forbidden.
Villiers, the younger
generation, looked intense and abstract, getting the sensation. He would not
even feel sick. He was just getting the thrill of it, without emotion, coldly
and scientifically, but very intent.
And Kate felt a real
pang of hatred against this Americanism which is coldly and unscrupulously
sensational.
‘Why doesn't the horse
move? Why doesn't it run away from the bull?’ she asked in repelled amazement
of Owen.
Owen cleared his
throat.
‘Didn't you see it was
blindfolded,’ he said.
‘But can't it smell the
bull?’ she asked.
‘Apparently
not. - They bring the old wrecks here to finish them off. - I know it's awful
but it's part of the game.’
How Kate hated phrases
like ‘part of the game.’ What do they mean, anyhow! She felt utterly humiliated
crushed by a sense of human indecency, cowardice of two-legged humanity. In
this ‘brave’ show she felt nothing but reeking cowardice. Her breeding and her
natural pride we're outraged.
The ring servants had
cleared away the mess spread new sand. The toreadors were playing with the
bull, unfurling their foolish cloaks at arm's length. And the animal, with the
red sore running on his shoulder, foolishly capered and ran from one rag to the
other, here and there.
For the first time, a
bull seemed to her a fool. She had always been afraid of bulls, fear tempered
with reverence of the great Mithraic beast. And now
she saw how stupid he was, in spite of his long horns and his massive maleness.
Blindly and stupidly he ran at the rag, each time, and the toreadors skipped
like fat-hipped girls showing off. Probably it needed skill and courage, but it
looked silly.
Blindly and foolishly
the bull ran ducking its horns each time at the rag, just because the rag
fluttered.
‘Run at the men
idiot,’ said Kate aloud, in her overwrought impatience. ‘Run at the men, not at
the cloaks.’
‘They never do, isn’t
it curious!’ replied Villiers, with a cool scientific interest. ‘They say no
toreador or will face a cow because a cow always goes for him instead of the
cloak. If a bull did that, there’d be no bull-fights. Imagine it!’
She was bored now. The
nimbleness and the skipping tricks of the toreadors bored her. Even when one of
the banderilleros reared himself on tiptoe, his plump
posterior much in evidence, and from his erectness pushed two razor sharp darts
with frills at the top into the bull’s shoulder, neatly and smartly, Kate felt no
admiration. One of the darts fell out, anyway, and the bull ran on with the
other swinging and waggling in another bleeding place.
The bull now wanted to
get away, really. He leapt the fence again, quickly, into the attendant’s
gangway. The attendants vaulted over into the arena. The bull trotted in the
corridor, then nicely leaped back. The attendants
vaulted once more into the court corridor. The bull trotted around the arena,
ignoring the toreadors, and leaped once more into the gangway. Over vaulted the attendants.
Kate was beginning to
be amused, now that the mongrel men were skipping for safety.
The bull was in the
ring again running from cloak to cloak foolishly. A banderillero
was getting ready with two more darts. But at first another picador put nobly
forward on his blindfolded old horse. The bull ignored this little lot, too,
and trotted away again, as if all the time looking for something, excitedly
looking for something. He stood still and excitedly pawed the ground, as if he
wanted something. A toreador advanced and swung a cloak. Up pranced the bull,
tail in air, and with a prancing bound charged - upon the rag, of course. The
toreador skipped around with a ladylike skip, then tripped to another point.
Very pretty!
The bull, in the course
of his trotting and prancing and pawing, had once more come near the picador.
The bold picador shoved forward his ancient steed, leaned
forward and push the point of his lance in the bull’s shoulder. The bull
looked up, irritated and arrested. What the devil !
He saw the horse and
rider. The horse stood with that feeble monumentally of a milk horse, patient
as if between the shafts, waiting while his master delivered the milk. How
strange it must have been to him when the bull, giving a little bound like a
dog, ducked its head and dived its horns upward into its belly, rolling him
over with his rider as one might push over a hat-stand.
The bull looked with
irritable wonder at the incomprehensible medley of horse and rider kicking on
the ground a few yards away from him. He drew near to investigate. The rider
scrambled out and bolted. And the toreadors, running up with their cloaks, drew
off the bull. He went caracoling around,
charging it more silk-lined rags.
Meanwhile an attendant
had got the horse on its feet again, and was leading it totteringly
into the gangway and round to the exit, under the Authorities. The horse
crawled slowly. The bull, running from pink cloak to red cloak, rag to rag, and
never catching anything, was getting excited, impatient of the rag game. He
jumped once more to the gangway and started running, alas, on towards where the
wounded horse was still limping its way to the exit.
Kate knew what was
coming. Before she could look away, the bull had charged on the limping horse
from behind, the attendants had fled, the horse was up-ended absurdly, one of
the bull's horns between his hind legs and deep in his inside. Down went the
horse, collapsing in front, but his rear with still heaved up with the bull’s
horn working vigorously up and down inside him, while he lay on his neck all
twisted. And a huge heap of bowels coming out. And a nauseous stench. And the cries of
pleased amusement among the crowd.
This pretty event took
place on Kate’s side of the ring, and not far from where she sat, below her.
Most of the people were on their feet craning to look down over the edge to
watch the conclusion of this delightful spectacle.
Kate knew if she saw
anymore she would go into hysterics. She was getting beside herself.
She looked swiftly at
Owen, who looked like a guilty boy spellbound.
‘I’m going!’ she said,
rising.
‘Going!’ he cried in
wonder and dismay, his flushed face and his bald flushed forehead a picture,
looking up at her.
But she had already
turned, and was hurrying away towards the mouth of the exit-tunnel
Owen came running after
her, flustered, and drawn in all directions.
‘Really going!’ he said
in chagrin, as she came to the high, vaulted exit-tunnel.
‘I must. I’ve got to
get out,’ she cried. ‘Don't you come.’
‘Really!’ he echoed,
torn all ways.
The scene was creating
a very hostile attitude in the audience. To leave a bull-fight is a national
insult.
‘Don’t come! Really! I
shall take a tram-car,’ she said hurriedly.
‘Really!
Do you think you’ll be alright?’
Perfectly.
You stay. Goodbye! I can't smell anymore of this stink
He turned like Orpheus
looking back into hell, and waving made towards his seat again.(pp.19-24)
2)
The
Campus Art Exposition.
A few days later, Kate was invited to visit a university
campus to see new revolutionary murals on display. She finds herself once again
shocked and disapproves of these cultural expressions. Standing with a student
guide in front of caricatures, she comments: “They are too ugly. They defeat
their own ends.”
‘But they are meant to be ugly,’ said
young Garcia. ‘They must be ugly? No? Because capitalism is ugly, and Mammon is
ugly, and the priest holding his hand to get the money from the poor Indian is
ugly. No?’ He laughed rather unpleasantly.
‘But,’ said Kate, ‘these
caricatures are too intentional. They are like vulgar abuse, not art at
all.’
‘Isn’t that true?’ said Garcia, pointing
to a hideous picture of a fat female in a tight short dress, with hips and
breasts as protuberances, walking over the faces of the poor.
‘That is how they are, no?’
‘Who is like that?’ said Kate. ‘It bores
me. One must keep a certain balance.’
‘Not in Mexico!’ said the young Mexican
brightly, his plump cheeks flushing. ‘In Mexico you can’t keep a balance
because things are so bad. In other countries, yes, perhaps you can remain
balanced, because things are not so bad as they are
here. But here they are so very bad, you can’t be human. You have to be
Mexican. You have to be more Mexican than human, no? You can’t do no other. You have to hate the capitalist, you have to, in
Mexico, or nobody can live. We can’t live. Nobody can live. If you are Mexican
you can’t be human, it is impossible. You have to be a socialist Mexican, or
you have to be a capitalist Mexican, and you hate. What else is there to be
done? We hate the capitalist because he ruins the country and the people. We must
hate him.’
‘But after all,’ said Kate, ‘what about
the twelve million poor – mostly Indians – whom [the populist presidential
candidate] Montes talks about? You can’t make them all rich, whatever you do.
And they don’t understand the very words , capital and
socialism. They are Mexico, really, and nobody ever looks at them, except to
make a casus belli of them.’
‘Humanly, they can’t exist, they are too
ignorant!’ cried Garcia. ‘But when we kill all the capitalists then . . . .’
‘You’ll find somebody killing you?’ said
Kate. ‘No, I don’t like it. You aren’t Mexico. You aren’t even Mexican, really.
You are just half Spaniards full of European ideas, and you care for asserting your
own ideas and nothing else. You have no real bowels of compassion. You are no
good.’
The young man listened with round eyes,
going rather yellow in the face. At the end he lifted his shoulders and spread
his hands in a pseudo-Mediterranean gesture.
‘Well! It may be!’ he said, with a certain
jeering flippancy. ‘Perhaps you know everything. Maybe! Foreigners, they
usually know everything about Mexico.’ And he ended on a little crackling
laugh.
‘’I know what I feel!’ said Kate.
‘And now I want a taxi, and I want to go home. I don’t want to see any more
stupid, ugly pictures.(pp.59-60)
3)
The
Transformative Decision to Prolong the Visit to Mexico.
As her friends prepare to return home, Kate debates whether
to remain a while in Mexico to get to know the Indian culture better. The
Mexican culture, per se, she writes off as equivalent to “dirty little boys
maiming flies.”
Owen had to return to the United States, and he asked Kate whether she wanted to stay on in
Mexico.
This put her into a quandary. It was not
an easy country for a woman to be a lone in. And she had been beating her wings
in an effort to get away. She felt like a bird round whose body a snake has
coiled itself. Mexico was the snake.
The curious influence of
the country, pulling one down, pulling one down. She had heard an old American,
who had been forty years in the Republic, saying to Owen: ‘No man who hasn’t a strong
moral backbone should try to settle in Mexico. If he does, he’ll go to pieces,
morally and physically, as I’ve seen hundreds of young American do.’
To pull one down.
It was what the country wanted to do all the time, with a slow, reptilian
insistence, to pull one down. To prevent the spirit from
soaring. To take away the free, soaring sense
of liberty.
‘There is no such thing as liberty,’ she
heard the quiet, deep, dangerous voice of Don Ramón repeating. ‘There is no
such thing as liberty. The greatest liberators are usually slaves of an idea.
The freest people are slaves to convention and public opinion, and more still,
slaves to the industrial machine. There is no such thing as liberty. You only
change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our
master.’
‘But surely that is liberty – for
the mass of people.’
‘They don’t choose. They are tricked into
a new form of servility, no more. They go from bad to worse.’
‘You yourself – aren’t you free?’ she
asked.
‘I?’ he laughed. 'I spent a long time
trying to pretend. I thought I could have my own way. Till I realized that
having my own way meant only running about smelling all the things in the
street, like a dog that will pick up something. Of myself, I have no way. No
man has any way in himself. Every man who goes along a way is led by one of
three things: by an appetite – and I class ambition among appetites; or by an
idea; or by an inspiration.’
‘I used to think my husband was inspired about
Ireland,’ said Kate doubtfully.
‘And now?’
‘Yes! Perhaps he put his wine in old,
rotten bottles that wouldn’t hold it. No! –Liberty is a rotten ole wine-skin.
It won’t hold one’s wine of inspiration or passion anymore,’ she said.
‘And Mexico!’ he said. ‘Mexico is another
Ireland. Ah no, no man can be his own master. If I must serve, I will not serve
an idea, which cracks and leaks like an old wine-skin. I will serve the God
that fives me my manhood. There is no liberty for a man, apart from the god of
his manhood. Free Mexico is a bully, and the old, colonial, ecclesiastical
Mexico was another sort of bully. When man has nothing but his will to
assert – even his good-will – it is always bullying. Bolshevism is one sort of
bullying, capitalism another: and liberty is a change of chains.
‘Then what’s to be done?’ said Kate. ‘Just nothing?’
And with her own will, she wanted nothing
to be done. Let the skies fall!
‘One is driven, at last, back to the far
distance, to look for God,’ said Ramón uneasily.
‘I rather hate this search-for-God
business, and religiosity,’ said Kate.
‘I know!’ he said, with a laugh. ‘I’ve
suffered from would-be-cocksure religion myself.’
‘And you can’t really “find God”!’
she said. ‘It’s a sort of sentimentalism, a creeping back into old, hollow
shells.’
‘No!’ he said slowly. ‘I can’t find God,
in the old sense. I know it’s sentimentalism if I pretend to. But I am
nauseated with humanity and the human will: even with my own will. I have
realized that my will, no matter how intelligent I am, is only another
nuisance on the face of the earth, once I start exerting it; And other people’s
wills are even worse.’
‘Oh!
Isn’t human life horrible!’ she cried. ‘Every human being exerting his will all
the time – over other people, and over himself, and nearly always
self-righteous!’
Ramón made a grimace of repulsion.
‘To me,’ he said, ‘that is just the weariness
of life! For a time, it can be amusing: exerting your own will, and resisting
all the other people’s wills, that they try to put over you. But at a certain
point a nausea sets in a the very middle of me: my soul
is nauseated. My soul is nauseated, and there is nothing but death ahead,
unless I find something else.’
Kate listened in silence. She knew the
road he had gone, but she herself had not yet come to the end of it. As yet she
was still strong in the pride of her own – her very own will.(pp.79-80)
Later Kate reflects on the Indian culture, stoically coexisting
with the Mexican culture. Soul was in the blood, says H.D.
Lawrence; Spirit existed in the air.
She thought again of what Don Ramón had said to her.
‘They pull you down! Mexico pulls you
down, the people pull you down like a great weight! But it may be they pull you
down as the earth’s pull of gravitation does, that you can balance on your
feet. Maybe they draw you down as the earth draws down the roots of a tree, so
that it may be clinched deep in soil. Men are still part of the Tree of Life,
and the roots go down to the center of the earth. Loose leaves, and aeroplanes, blow away on the wind, in what they call
freedom. But the Tree of Life has fixed, deep,
gripping roots.
‘It may be you need to be drawn down,
down, till you send roots into the deep places again. Then you can send up the
sap and the leaves back to the sky, later.
‘And to me, the men in Mexico are like
trees, forests that the white men felled in their coming. But the roots of the
trees are deep and alive and forever sending up new shoots.
‘And each new shoot that comes up
overthrows a Spanish church or an American factory. And soon the dark forests
will rise again, and shake the Spanish buildings from the face of America.
‘All that matters to me are the roots that
reach down beyond all destruction. The roots and the life are there. What else
it needs is the word, for the forest to begin to rise again. And some man among
men must speak the word.’
The strange doom-like sound of the man’s
words! But in spite of the sense of doom on her heart, she would not go away
yet. She would stay longer in Mexico.(pp.87-88)
* * *
Bill Gates is as good a symbol as any powerful corporate
leader to represent the new fascist corporate order. The minor practitioners in
this order might serve on death panels to cull the population and reduce the
surplus to a more manageable size. This has historical precedence in Germany,
when eugenics was practiced preceding the implementation of death camps during
the war.
Making the decision between life and death for hundreds,
then thousands, then millions of helpless people is a process that develops in
stages. By all accounts, it has begun once again. It is a policy that requires
mass collaboration on the part of practitioners and the general population.
The only alternative to collaboration is resistance, which
today would trigger the technology of Artificial Intelligence, turning your
life upside down, which to some people is apparently preferable to living right
side up in a Fascist State.
The Masters of the New Order - people like Gates and Fauci today - justify their experimentations with a spurious
science that suppresses any critical thought.
We are confronted with Adolf Eichmann's choice
: to think, or to decide not to think and just obey.
To resist or to collaborate; history has informed us that there is no third way, and
art has shown us why.
The common ground we share is our
knowledge of the world and our courage to make a difference. It is this that
makes us human.
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.
The “Secret Agenda” of the So-called
Elite and the Covid mRNA Vaccine
https://www.globalresearch.ca/reflections-secret-agenda-elite-role-us-citizens/5709112
by Dr. Rudolf Hänsel
+
Cuomo faces impeachment probe amid new accusations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwXOz_PXRQk
with Trinity Chavez
(4:05)
+
Rep. Jordan and Dr. Fauci clash over when Covid restrictions can be lifted
(6:52)
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the
nation’s leading infectious disease expert, and Rep. Jim Jordan clashed several
times Thursday during a congressional hearing on the end of the coronavirus pandemic, with the Ohio congressman at one
point drawing a sharp rebuke from one of his colleagues as he continued to talk
over others past his speaking time.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases at the NIH and top adviser to President Joe Biden was among
several witnesses who testified before the House Coronavirus
Crisis Subcommittee on ending the pandemic.
The heated exchanges between Fauci
and Jordan emerged as the congressman repeatedly questioned the doctor about
what the threshold or metric would be for when Americans can stop wearing masks
and stop social distancing, framing the issue of dropping the public health
measures as people getting their “liberties and freedom back.”
+
Bill Gates’ Global Agenda and How We Can Resist His War on Life
https://www.globalresearch.ca/bill-gates-global-agenda-how-we-can-resist-war-life/5736577
by Dr. Vandana Shiva
+
How Bill Gates Is Protecting Big Pharma
Profits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVsvJEwNRBo
with Alexander Zaitchik
(8:46)
+
This California County Is Launching A 'Vaccine Passport'...Is Yours
Next?"
with Ron Paul
(34:35)
===========
b.
“Unregistered 161”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5KKR08Id_Y
with James Corbett and Thaddeus Russell
(1:55:29)
Published
April 13, 2021
via The Unregistered
Podcast: I was joined by James Corbett of The Corbett Report, which was just
taken down from Youtube, to discuss open vs. closed
conspiracies, the history of eugenics and other forms of social engineering,
the ideology of scientism, and the world’s deadliest weapon—narrative.
*NOTE: The video of this podcast is only on the Unregistered YouTube
channel at the moment. You can watch it here if you like, but I won’t embed any
YouTube videos here. I understand it will be posted to Thaddeus Russell’s Minds channel shortly. The Odysee embed on the front page is a repost by an unrelated
third party.
===========
c.
How militarism eats the poor and
destroys the planet - The Marc Steiner Show
https://open.spotify.com/episode/276xYBPlQ47cfXbitFr3Gg
with Marc Steiner
(audio, 71:06)
+
Biden's Empty Gesture: Houthis No Longer “Terrorists” but Yemen's Suffering Only
Grows
by Ahmed Abdulkareem
Human rights groups
have warned that levels of famine in Yemen are now among the highest recorded
since 2015, suggesting that suffering in the country has actually grown worse
under the Biden administration.
+
Military Bases Housing Migrant Children Plagued by Serial Sexual Abuse
Claims
by Whitney Webb
The Biden
administration is now housing unaccompanied migrant children on military bases in
Texas and California. Some of these bases have been plagued for years by record
sexual abuse claims, one with the highest in the nation. All of them suffer
from dangerous environmental contamination.
+
Anti-war activist visited by police after posting embarrassing AOC
video
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/04/09/anti-war-activist-police-aoc-video/
by Max Blumenthal
+
“We Must Build A New Party”
with Chris Hedges
(55:01)
+
“The War Machine Reloads”
with RJ Eskow
(43:19)
+
Glenn Greenwald Breaks Second Biggest Corruption Story Of Our Time
with Jimmy Dore
(28:47)
+
On Contact: Securing Democracy with Glenn Greenwald
with Chris Hedges
(25:32)
===========
d.
From: National Security Archive
[mailto:nsarchiv@gwu.edu]
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2021
Subject: CIA Assassination Plot Targeted Cuba's Raul Castro
As Castro Retires on 60th Anniversary of the Bay of Pigs, National
Security Archive Posts Declassified Top Secret CIA Cables, Reports from
1960. Agency Officials Willing to Pay Over $10,000 For
‘Fatal Accident’. Another Assassination Plot against Fidel Castro Was Part
of Bay of Pigs Invasion Strategy
|
From: CovertAction
Magazine [mailto:info@CovertActionMagazine.com]
Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2021
Subject: Colombia: An Ideal U.S. Client-State in the Western Hemisphere
(27:28)
+
Millionaire
Banker and Former Coca Cola Director With Ties to Far-Right Wing Opus Dei
Catholic Sect Defeats Socialist Candidate in Ecuador
https://mailchi.mp/covertactionmagazine.com/breaking-news-from-covertaction-magazine-11190422?e=361aa6282e
by Ron
Ridenour
Dirty
Tricks in Race Pay Off
===========
e.
The 2020-21
Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression,
Global Coup d'État and the “Great Reset”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-2020-worldwide-corona-crisis-destroying-civil-society-engineered-economic-depression-global-coup-detat-and-the-great-reset/5730652
by Prof
Michel Chossudovsky
+
The WHO
Confirms that the Covid-19 PCR Test is Flawed: Estimates of "Positive
Cases" are Meaningless. The Lockdown Has No Scientific Basis
https://www.globalresearch.ca/nucleic-acid-testing-technologies-use-polymerase-chain-reaction-pcr-detection-sars-cov-2/5739959
by Prof
Michel Chossudovsky
+
The Coronavirus Vaccine: The Real Danger is “Agenda ID2020”.
Vaccination as a Platform for "Digital Identity"
https://www.globalresearch.ca/coronavirus-causes-effects-real-danger-agenda-id2020/5706153
by Peter
Koenig
+
“The Great
Reset” Is Here: Follow the Money. “Insane Lockdown” of the Global Economy, “The
Green Agenda”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/great-reset-follow-money/5740424
by F. William Engdahl
+
In Quest of
a Multipolar Economic World Order with Michael
Hudson and Pepe Escobar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecElFWphOAE
Henry George School of Social
Science
(2:03:08) |
f.
Google is poisoning its reputation
with AI researchers
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/13/22370158/google-ai-ethics-timnit-gebru-margaret-mitchell-firing-reputation
by James Vincent
+
“Class
Struggle” Is a Fundamental Core of Capitalism
with Richard
Wolff
+
“No, Education Still Won’t Solve
Poverty”
an interview with Cristina Groeger
===========
g.
Amazon waged
a brutal
anti-union campaign
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/04/amazon-bessemer-union-drive-vote-nlrb
by Alex N. Press
Amazon has
secured a majority of “no” votes from workers at BHM1, the company’s Bessemer,
Alabama warehouse, on the question of unionizing with the Retail, Wholesale and
Department Store Union (RWDSU).
Some may be surprised that the vote broke so strongly in Amazon’s favor. After
all, isn’t Amazon a notoriously unpleasant place to work? Isn’t this the
company that just had a news cycle devoted to how many of their workers pee in
bottles?
It’s not so simple. As Rebecca Givan, a labor studies
professor at Rutgers University, told Vice, NLRB elections “are not a
reflection of whether workers want a voice on the job, but rather show the
imbalance of labor law and resources in favor of employers.”
In the United States, every step of the unionization process is stacked against
workers. It is a miracle that anyone ever unionizes...
+
Will Worse
Side Effects for Moderna's Vaccine Boost Pfizer's
Fortunes?
https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/04/13/will-worse-side-effects-for-modernas-vaccine-boost/
by Keith Speights
+
What’s Not Being Said About the Pfizer Coronavirus
Vaccine:
“Human Guinea Pigs”?
https://www.globalresearch.ca/what-not-said-pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine/5729461
by F. William Engdahl
+
DNA/RNA
Vaccines: “Can They Alter Our Own Genetic Codes”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/why-i-wont-take-johnson-johnson-vaccine-scientist-perspective/5742576
by Dr. Ken Biegeleisen
===========
h.
Cyberattack slams Iran's nuclear program — Israel to blame?
with Alex Mihailovich
(7:05)
+
Ten Years Ago: The US-NATO-Israel
Sponsored Al Qaeda Insurgency in Syria. Who Was Behind the 2011 "Protest
Movement"?
https://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-who-is-behind-the-protest-movement-fabricating-a-pretext-for-a-us-nato-humanitarian-intervention/24591
by Prof Michel Chossudovsky
(first published May 3, 2011)
+
Just Like in
the US, Policing in Israel is Rooted in Racist Violence
https://www.mintpressnews.com/policing-israel-rooted-racist-haganah-violence/276671/
by Jessica Buxbaum
+
Zionist
racism gains speed after another Israeli election
https://www.mintpressnews.com/safely-past-another-election-israel-turns-back-policy-de-arabization/276626/
by Miko Peled
===========
i.
“Wipe the Soviet Union Off
the Map”, 204 Atomic Bombs against 66 Major Cities, US Nuclear Attack against
USSR Planned During World War II”
When America
and the Soviet Union Were Allies
https://www.globalresearch.ca/wipe-the-ussr-off-the-map-204-atomic-bombs-against-major-cities-us-nuclear-attack-against-soviet-union-planned-prior-to-end-of-world-war-ii/5616601
by Prof Michel Chossudovsky
(first published November 4, 2017)
Nuclear war
threatens the future of humanity. We are no longer dealing with
a hypothetical scenario. The threat of World War III is real.
US-NATO
weapons of mass destruction are portrayed as instruments of peace. Mini-nukes
are said to be “harmless to the surrounding civilian population”. Since the
George W. Bush administration, pre-emptive nuclear war has been portrayed
as a “humanitarian undertaking”.
While one can
conceptualize the loss of life and destruction resulting from present-day wars
including Iraq, Syria and Yemen, it is impossible to fully comprehend the
devastation which might result from a Third World War, using “new technologies”
and advanced weapons, until it occurs and becomes a reality. The
US administration has endorsed nuclear war in the name of world peace.
“Making the world safer” is the justification for launching a military
operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust.
The following
article first published in 2017 questions the history of the Cold War.
US nuclear
threats directed against Russia predate the Cold War. They were first formulated at the height of World War II under the
Manhattan Project when the US and the Soviet Union were allies.
The secret
plan to bomb 66 Soviet cities was released in mid-September 1945, two weeks
after the formal surrender of Japan.
Had the US
decided NOT to develop nuclear weapons for use against the Soviet Union, the
nuclear arms race would not have taken place.
Neither The
Soviet Union nor the People’s Republic of China would have developed nuclear
capabilities as a means of “Deterrence” agains the US
which had already formulated plans to annihilate the Soviet Union.
Flash Forward
to 2021:
President Joe
Biden does not have the foggiest idea as
to the consequences of nuclear war.
Massive
amounts of money have been allocated by the Joe
Biden Administration to feed the weapons industry including the
Pentagons’ 1.3 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program first
launched under Obama, is ongoing under the Biden administration.
Humanity is
at a dangerous crossroads. Nuclear war has become a multi-billion dollar
undertaking, which fills the pockets of US defense contractors. What is at
stake is the outright “privatization of nuclear war”.
+
Joe Biden and
the Pentagon's "Ides of March 2021": Best Month to Go to War?
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-pentagons-ides-of-march-best-month-to-go-to-war-2/5670257
by Prof Michel Chossudovsky
===========
j.
Towards A Police State in Germany? Live Video of Police Raid into Home of
Dr. Andreas Noak
by Global Research News
+
Implanted
"Vaccine Package" ID: Germany's Parliament Has Ratified GAVI's
Digital "Agenda ID2020"
https://www.globalresearch.ca/implanted-vaccine-package-id-germanys-parliament-has-ratified-gavis-digital-agenda-id2020/5736277
by Peter Koenig
===========
k.
Bill Gates
Partners With DARPA & Department of Defense For New DNA Nanotech COVID19 Vaccine!
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2020/05/press/bill-gates-partners-with-darpa-department-of-defense-for-new-dna-nanotech-covid19-vaccine-2/
with Whitney Webb and Ryan Christian
(34:20)
+
“Bill Gates
is in my bloodstream!” - Mick Jagger releases
pandemic-themed solo track
(3:46)
+
Sweden Axes Gates's Mad Global Warming Scheme
https://www.globalresearch.ca/sweden-axes-gatess-mad-global-warming-scheme/5742546
by F. William Engdahl
===========
l.
“On Trauma to
Transformation"
with Chris Hedges
(33:43)
+
"Former Employee BLASTS
"Democracy Now" For Pushing Establishment Propaganda"
with Jimmy Dore
and Aaron Maté
(19:44)
+
Intercept Reporter CAUGHT Falsely
Accusing Jimmy Dore Of Lying
with Jimmy Dore
(28:45)
===========
m.
How Bellingcat launders national security state talking points into the press
https://www.mintpressnews.com/bellingcat-intelligence-agencies-launders-talking-points-media/276603/
by Alan Macleod
For a self-proclaimed citizen journalism outfit, an alarming number of Bellingcat’s staff and contributors come from highly suspect backgrounds, including high-level positions in military and intelligence agencies.
In the past month alone, Bellingcat has been described as “an intelligence the people” (ABC Australia), a “transparent” and “innovative” (New Yorker) n the past month alone, Bellhas been described as “an intelligence agency for the people” (ABC Australia), a “transparent” and “innovative” (New Yorker) “independent news collective,” “transforming investigative journalism” (Big Think), and an unequivocal “force for good” (South China Morning Post).
Outside of a few alternative news sites, it is very hard to hear a negative word against Bellingcat, such is the gushing praise for the outlet founded in 2014.
This is troubling because the evidence compiled in this investigation suggests Bellingcat is far from independent and neutral.
In fact, Bellingcat is funded by Western governments, staffed with former military and state intelligence officers, repeats official narratives against enemy states, and serves as a key part in what could be called a “spook to Bellingcat to corporate media propaganda pipeline,” presenting Western government narratives as independent research.
Learn the backgrounds of some Bellingcat contributors and the reality behind the outlet's talking points
===========
n.
From: Jim O'Brien via H-PAD
Note: "Truth, Dissent & the Legacy of Daniel Ellsberg," a virtual national conference commemorating the
release of the Pentagon Papers 50 years ago, will take place Friday and
Saturday April 30 and May 1, sponsored by the History Department of the
University of Massachusetts Amherst. The speakers list is extraordinary, including Ellsberg himself as well as Edward
Snowden, John Dean, Frances FitzGerald, Elizabeth Holtzman,
and many others. The conference is "Free, Online, and Open to All."
Links to
Recent Articles of Interest
By William
Astore, TomDispatch.com, posted April 8
On the
revival of traditional Cold War thinking in US military planning. The author,
a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, taught history for fifteen years at
military and civilian schools.
"'The Most Dangerous Man' Turns 90 - Peter Kuznick on Daniel Ellsberg" Transcribed interview with Peter Kuznick, theAnalysis.news, posted April 8.
"On the significance of Daniel Ellsberg's decades
of fighting against US military policies starting with his release of the
Pentagon Papers 50 years ago. Peter Kuznick teaches
history at American University, where he is director of the Nuclear Studies
Institute.
By Ari
Fife, OU [University of Oklahoma] Daily, posted April 6
A richly
illustrated article with scholars' commentary on the long history of
suppression and denial of the 1921 massacre of up to 300 Black residents of
Tulsa. The author is a journalism student at the University of Oklahoma.
"The Painful History of the Georgia Voting Law" By Jason Morgan Ward, New York
Times, posted March 31
"The long struggle to block access to the ballot
has always relied on legal maneuvering and political schemes to achieve what
bullets and bombs alone could not." The author teaches history at Emory
University. Among his books is Defending White Democracy:
The Making of a Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics,
1936-1965 (U. of North Carolina Press, 2011).
By Aviva Chomsky,TomDispatch.com, posted March 30
The author teaches history at Salem State University.
Her new book Central America's Forgotten
History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration is due out later this month from Beacon Press.
By Olivia B. Waxman, Time magazine, posted
March 30
A readable, illustrated article that gives voice to many
educators about ways in which Asian-American history is missing or
misrepresented in K-12 education. The author is a Time staff writer.
"America's Longest War Winds Down: No Bang, No Whimper, No
Victory" By Andrew Bacevich, TomDispatch.com, posted March 28
A summing-up of twenty years of the US war in
Afghanistan. The author is a professor emeritus of history and international
relations at Boston University and president of the Quincy Institute for
Responsible Statecraft. His most recent book is The Age of Illusions: How American Squandered It Cold War Victory (Macmillan,
2020).
"Historians for Peace and Democracy Present Free Resources
for History Educators"
By Margaret Power and Kevin Young, History News Network, posted March 28
On the Virtual Speakers Program recently launched by
H-PAD, along with other resources. The authors teach history at the Illinois
Institute of Technology and the University of Massachusetts Amherst,
respectively. Margaret Power is co-chair of H-PAD and Kevin Young a member of
the steering committee.
"Argentina's Military Coup of 1976: What the US Knew"
Edited by Carlos Osorio, National Security Archive,
posted March 23
A set of declassified documents related to US government
knowledge of the plotting behind a military coup that led to seven years of
bloody dictatorship in Argentina. The latest of many "briefing
books" on episodes in US foreign policy from the National Security
Archive at George Washington University.
"Washington's Delusion of Endless World Domination: China
and the U.S. Struggle over Eurasia, the Epicenter of World Power"
By Alfred McCoy, TomDispatch.com,
posted March 21
An overview of strategic moves by China and the US and
the need for cooperation amid climate change.The
author teaches history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his books
include In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise
and Decline of U.S. Global Power (Dispatch Books, 2017).
______________ Thanks to Rusti Eisenberg and
an anonymous reader for suggesting some of the above articles. Suggestions
can be sent to jimobrien48@gmail.com.
|
===========
o.
From: CovertAction
Magazine [mailto:info@CovertActionMagazine.com]
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2021
Subject: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin—Former Member of Raytheon Board of
Directors—Has Awarded Over $2.36 Billion in Contracts to Raytheon
===========
p.
From: Cat McGuire [mailto:cat@catmcguire.com]
Sent: Friday, April 09, 2021
Subject: A Dandelion Manifestation -- Council on Foreign Relations -- April 4,
2021
Alison McDowell and I recently organized a wonderful manifesting
ritual. On Easter Sunday, about 25 of us
in the New York City activist community gathered on Park Avenue in New York
City across the street from the Council on Foreign Relations to do a Revocation
of Consent and a Transmutation of the Council's actions and energy.
In addition to Alison’s brilliant research on the new imprisoning systems
we're being inveigled into, we were inspired by her beautiful, heartfelt Dandelion Manifesto, a
spiritually prescient call for mending and healing.
Watch our Dandelion Manifestation at the Council on Foreign Relations – 30 minutes
Our thanks to Diemiruaya Deniran
for producing this video.
(A longer video made by Cat Watters has a good
segment of Alison speaking from 8:16 to 12:04.)
Coming up May
Day, Alison and I are organizing manifestations at BlackRock,
Bloomberg Philanthropies, and Harlem Children’s Zone. We intend to do manifestations all summer
long targeting Great Reset bastions of oligarchic power and their many
do-gooder proxies.
+
Who Cancel Culture Really Serves
with Chris Hedges
and Julianna Forlano
(23:31)
===========
q.
Addressing
America’s Homelessness and Squalor: What We Could Do If We Cared
https://www.mintpressnews.com/how-housing-authorities-address-americas-homelessness/276696/
by Eleanor Goldfield
The nation’s
homeless could be housed for $10 billion a year, less than the price of one
aircraft carrier.
+
OUTRAGEOUS! Biden Confiscating Homes To Build
Trump's Wall
with Jimmy Dore
(8:30)
r.
Why does the media ignore NATO's eastward
expansion?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKQh237CrEQ
by The Duran
(15:57)
+
A School for
Spooks: The London University Department Churning Out NATO Spies
https://www.mintpressnews.com/school-for-spooks-kings-college-war-studies-churning-out-nato-spies/276736/
by Alan Macleod
Alan Macleod uncovers the deep links between the British security state
and the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, responsible for
training a large number of British, American, and European agents and defense
analysts.
===========
s.
How to Talk About Race
and Class in America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYMlFgd9sug
with Briahna
Gray and Dr. Eddie Glaude Jr.
(32:02)
+
The Unraveling
of the American Empire
https://www.mintpressnews.com/chris-hedges-unraveling-empire-united-states/276752/
by Chris Hedges
US leadership has stumbled from one military debacle to another, a
trajectory mirroring the sad finales of other historical imperial powers.