Bulletin
N° 869
Missing
https://ww2.putlockertv.to/watch/missing.nr8yj
(2 h)
The 1982 film by Costa Gavras on the Coup d'état in Chile in 1973
Subject : The Capitalist Conspiracy, Part 5: The Finance Industry & Population Control.
December 2, 2019
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
In Chapter 5 of his book, Tragedy
and Hope 101: The Illusion of Justice, Freedom and Democracy (2014), Joseph Plummer addresses what he believes to be “the main
problem and the main solution” of the contemporary political economy of neoliberalism. He concludes that, “. . . there isn’t anything particularly complicated about
how to free ourselves from financial and political servitude. In a nutshell, it
boils down to this: the Network’s empire is built entirely on stolen financial
power and manufactured consent.”
Our objective is to undermine both of these, one mind and one dollar at a time, until the Network can no longer defend itself in any meaningful way.(p.108)
Although slavery was abolished .
. . many of the poor were reduced to peonage by contracting debts . . . binding
themselves and their heirs to work for their creditors until the debt was paid.
Such debt could never be paid in many cases, because the rate at which it was
reduced was left to the creditor and could rarely be questioned by the
illiterate debtor.(cited on p.92)
Plummer goes on to justify his reason for explaining how the “debt-money system” works:
Since most people dislike being ripped off and exploited, it’s
reasonable to assume that the only reason the masses tolerate this debt-money
system is because they do not understand how it works. . . . [T]his chapter
will attempt to end the financial illiteracy that the Network absolutely depends
on. (p.93)
He begins with the question, “What is Money?”; but quickly revises it to a better question: “What does money do?”
In the simplest terms, money
enables us to purchase products and services from other people. Using this
basic description, we might go on to say money can be anything that is widely
accepted as payment for products and services. Having defined money in this
way, it will be easer to explain the different forms
of money and why some are far more honest than others. But first, let’s quickly
touch on what existed before money – “barter.”(p.94)
He briefly describes the exchange of products and services in the pre-monetary system, and then introduces the “commodity money,” where a product (such as corn) took on a value that “exceeded its consumption value” and was widely used for its “exchange value” as a form of currency. Metal became a popular commodity money – first iron, copper and tin; then eventually gold and silver coins became standard items of exchange for goods and services around the world.
Both commodity money and
barter share a couple of desirable attributes. The fist attribute is
transparency. If I was to trade my goat for some of your corn, I’ll have to
bring my goat and you’ll have to being some corn. The odds of either of us
walking away with something else in our pockets, like a cricket, are pretty
slim. Likewise, if I offer to buy something from you with a Gold Eagle (US gold
coin), I must hand over a Gold Eagle. There is little chance that you will be
duped into accepting a far less valuable Silver Eagle as payment for your item.
The second desirable
attribute is the intrinsic value of the items traded. There are significant
natural barriers that limit the production of commodities and, as such, there
intrinsic value is transferred to anyone who acquires them. The person who
acquires corn does not have to grow and harvest the corn himself; the person
who earns a gold coin does not have to dig the gold out of the ground, fashion it into a coin, and convince
others of its authenticity. Nobody can simply create gold, corn or a goat with
the flick of a pen. For this reason, these items will always posses the intrinsic
value of (the labor and the other costs that produced them.
These two attributes
(transparency and intrinsic value) made it reasonably difficult to defraud
people in trade because it isn’t easy to convince somebody that you’ve paid
them with a goat when, in fact, you’ve handed them a cricket. But just as barter
led to the invention of commodity money, and commodity money eventually
devolved into metal coins made form gold and silver, the inconveniences
of gold and silver coins eventually led to the creation of a new form of money.
And with it, the ability to easily defraud people (the ability to crate money
with ‘the flick of a pen’) was born.(pp.96-97)
. . .
Few realize that money comes
in many different forms. A basic list would include commodity money, receipt
money, fractional money, fiat money, and debt money. . . . Some of these forms of money are far
easier to abuse than others, with the last one on the list (debt money) being
the worst. Debt money is actually designed to enslave those who use it. No
surprise than that debt money is what the Network has chosen to crate and
spread to all corners of the globe.(p.92)
After giving succinct descriptions of the various forms of money, Plummer focuses on the particularly odious features of "debt money."
Take
the inherently fraudulent characteristics of the goldsmith’s factional money
system, add in the greater fraud and force of pure fiat, top it off with
the mechanism designed to generate inescapable debt, and presto: you’ve got the
most sophisticated monetary-enslavement system ever devised by man. And, wouldn’t
you know, you also have all the components that make up our current monetary system.
Unlike a normal fiat money
system (where the ruling class simply crates its own worthless paper money, spends
it into the economy, and demands that everyone accept it), our ruling class has
devised something much more powerful. Rather than spend money into our
economy, they loan money into our economy. This enables the Network to
steal purchasing power form us twice: once when they create new money, and
again as they collect interest on the entire money supply.
Worst of all, by creating
money and putting it into circulation only when a loan is made, and then
destroying that same money (removing it from circulation) when the loan
is repaid, the Network has designed the perfect debt trap. Any meaningful
attempt to escape this debt rap, by paying down debt, will trigger an automatic
‘correction mechanism’ that guarantees failure. The chain of events is
perfectly predictable: as the nation repays its
banking debts (and refuses to take out new loans), the economy’s debt-based
money supply will shrink. This will cause disruptions in the economy; initially
the disruptions will be minor, but they will inevitably become intolerable if
new money isn’t injected via new loans. (Imagine the consequences of a 10
percent reduction in the nation’s money supply . . . now imagine a 40 percent
reduction, a 60 percent reduction, or an 80 percent reduction.)
Theoretically, if new loans
are not issued to reverse the automatic ‘correction mechanism’ that the Network
has built into the system, and if all available funds continue to be applied toward
extinguishing Network-created debt, then the debt-based money supply must
eventually fall to zero.
Robert
Hemphill was the credit manager of the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta.
In the foreword to a book by Irving Fisher, entitled 100% Money, Hemphill said
this (as cited in The
Creature From Jekyll Island on page 188) :
If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and
there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. This is a
staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial banks.
Someone has to borrow every dollar we have. . . . If the banks create ample
synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without
a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the
tragic absurdity of our hopeless situation is almost incredible – but there it
is.(cited by Plummer on p.102-103)
Plummer concludes this section on “Debt Money” with a call to action.
In the meantime, the
illiterate debtors of the world slave away with no idea that the money they
‘owe’ was created out of thin air; it was never earned by the lender.
They have no idea that the system itself was designed to create an
ever-expanding black hole of debt, a system of financial servitude that is
literally inescapable.(p.104)
He continues by citing from his earlier book, Dishonest
Money: Financing the Road to Ruin, page 65 :
Those conspiring to
bring us a ‘world government’ ruled by an ‘intellectual elite and world bankers’
are not playing games. They’ve worked hard to perfect and implement their
strategy of economic conquest. They’ve proven their ability to seize control of
nations large and small (even far-flung empires). They certainly haven’t come
all this way for nothing.(cited on p. 104)
The need to confront this Juggernaut is Plummer’s final emphasis in this chapter of Tragedy and Hope :
There isn’t enough room here
to cover here how inflation, deflation, booms, busts, and bailouts all provide
additional ways for the Network to transfer wealth and power into its own
hands. For now, it’s enough to reiterate the opening claim of this chapter:
money is the root of the Network’s power. For them to dominate ‘all the
habitable portions of the world,’ they absolutely must maintain their
ability to confiscate, create, and control the money that we earn. And since
they will never surrender these monetary weapons willingly, our only choice is
to forcibly disarm them.(pp.104-105)
Many years before Joseph Plummer’s research on this subject, F. William Engdahl wrote, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (1994 & 2012), where he delved into secret histories of the 20th century, and specifically the hidden machinations of central banking, giant oil companies, and U.S./British secret diplomacy. In a chapter entitled, “Running the World Economy in Reverse,” Engdahl wrote:
On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria invaded Israel, igniting what
became known as the ‘Yom Kippur’ war. Contrary to popular impression, the ‘Yom
Kippur’ war was not the simple result of miscalculation, blunder or an Arab
decision to launch a military strike against the state of Israel. The entire
events surrounding outbreak of the October war were secretly orchestrated by
Washington and London, using the powerful diplomatic secret channels developed
by Nixon’s White House National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger.
Kissinger
effectively controlled the Israeli policy response through this intimate
relation with Israel’s Washington ambassador, Simcha Dinitz. As well, Kissinger cultivated channels to
the Egyptian and Syrian side. His method was simply to misrepresent to each
party the critical elements of the other, ensuring the war and its subsequent
Arab oil embargo.
U.S. intelligence reports
including intercepted communications from Arab officials, confirming the
buildup for war, were firmly suppressed by Kissinger, who was by then Nixon’s
intelligence ‘czar.’ The war and its aftermath,
Kissinger’s infamous ‘shuttle diplomacy,’ were scripted in Washington, along
the precise lines of the Bilderberg deliberations of
the previous May in Saltsjoebaden [Sweden], some six
months before outbreak of the war. Arab oil-producing nations were to be the scapegoat
for the coming rage of the world, while the Anglo-American interests responsible,
stood quietly in the background.(p.164)
. . .
But while Kissinger’s 1973
oil shock had a devastating impact on world industrial growth, it had an
enormous befit for certain established interests - the major New York and London banks, and
the Seven Sister oil multinationals of the U.S. and Britain. Exxon replaced
General Motors as the largest American corporation in gross revenues by 1974.
Her sisters were not far behind, including Mobil, Texaco, Chevron and Gulf.
The bulk of OPEC dollar
revenues, Kissinger’s ‘recycled petrodollars,’ was deposited with the leading
banks of London and New York, the banks which dealt in dollars as well as international
oil trade. Chase Manhattan, Citibank, Manufacturers Hanover, Bank of America, Barclays,
Lloyds, Midland Bank, all enjoyed the windfall profits of the oil shock. We
shall later see how they recycled their ‘petro-dollars’ during the 1970s, and
how it set the stage for the great debt crisis of the 1980’s.(p.170)
Engdahl goes on to describe how powerful corporate capitalists came to control social movements in order to redirect them toward innocuous objectives.
Taking the bloom off the ‘nuclear
rose’
One principal concern of the authors of the 400 percent oil price
increase, was how to ensure their drastic action did not drive the world to
accelerate an already strong trend towards construction of a far more efficient
and ultimately less expensive alternative energy source – nuclear electricity
generation.(p.170)
. . .
Clearly, the Anglo-American energy
grip, based on their tight control of the world’s major energy source, petroleum,
was threatened if these quite feasible programs went ahead.
Nuclear energy represented
in the postwar period precisely the same quality of higher technological level,
which oil had been over coal when Lord Fisher and Winston Churchill argued at
the end of the last century for Britain’s navy to convert to oil from coal. The
major difference was that Britain and her cousins in the United States in the 1970’s, held the grip on the world oil supplies. World
nuclear technology threatened to open unbounded energy possibilities,
especially if plans for commercial nuclear fast breeders were realized, as well
as thermonuclear fusion.(p.172)
. . .
As one prominent
anti-nuclear American form the Aspen Institute put their problem, ‘We must take
the bloom off the ‘nuclear rose;’’ And take it off they did.(p.173)
Developing the Anglo-American
green agenda
Beginning [in] the 1970’s,
an awesome propaganda offensive was launched from select Anglo-American
think-tanks and journals, intended to shape the new ‘limits to growth’ agenda,
which would insure the ‘success’ of the dramatic oil shock strategy. The American
oilman present at the May 1973 Saltsjoebaden meeting
of the Bilderberg group, Robert O. Anderson, was a
central figure in the implementation of the ensuing Anglo-American ecology
agenda. It was to become one of the most successful frauds in history.
Anderson and his Atlantic
Richfield Oil Co. funneled millions of dollars through their Atlantic Richfield
Foundation into select organizations to target nuclear energy. One of the prime
beneficiaries of Anderson’s largesse was a group called Friends of the Earth,
which was organized at this time with a $200,000 grant from Anderson. One of
the earliest targets of Anderson’s Friends of the Earth was to finance an
assault on the German nuclear industry, through such anti-nuclear actions as
the anti-Brockdorf demonstrations in 1976, led by Friends
of the Earth leader Holger Strohm.
Friends of the Earth French director was the Paris partner of the Rockefeller
family law firm, Coudert Brothers, one Brice LaLonde, who in 1089 became Mitterand’s
Environmental Minister. It was Friends of the Earth which was used to block a
major Japan-Australia uranium supply agreement. In November 1974 Japanese Prime
Minister Tanaka came to Canberra to meet Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. The two made a commitment potentially worth
billions of dollars, for Australia to supply Japan’s needs for future uranium
ore and enter a joint project to develop uranium enrichment technology. British
uranium mining giant, Rio Tinto Zinc, secretly deployed Friends of the Earth in
Australia to mobilize opposition to the pending Japanese agreement, resulting
some months later in the fall of Whitlam’s government. Friends of the Earth had
‘friends’ in very high places in London and Washington.
But Robert O. Anderson’s
major vehicle to spread the new ‘limits to growth’ ideology among American and European
establishment circles was his Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. With Anderson
as Chairman, the Atlantic Richfield head Thornton Bradshaw as vice-chairman,
the Aspen Institute was a major financial conduit in the early 1970’s for
creation of the establishment’s new anti-nuclear agenda.
Among the better-known
trustees of Aspen at this time were World Bank President and the man who ran
the Vietnam War, Robert S. McNamara. Lord Bullock of Oxford University and
Richard Gardner, an anglophile American economist who later was U.S. Ambassador
to Italy and Wall Street bank, Russell Peterson of Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb
Inc., were among the carefully selected trustees of Aspen at this time, as were
EXXON board member Jack G. Clarke, Gulf Oil’s Jerry McAfee, Mobil Oil director
George C. McGhee, the former State Department official who was present in 1954
at the founding meeting of the Bilderberg group.
Involved with Anderson’s Aspen as well from this early period, was Hamburg’s De
Zeit publisher Marion Countess Doenhoff, as well as former Chase Manhattan Bank chairman
and High Commissioner to Germany, John J. McCloy.
Robert O. Anderson brought
in Joseph Slater form McGeorge Bundy’s Ford
Foundation to serve as Aspen’s president. It was indeed a close-knit family in
the Anglo-American establishment of the early 1970’s. The initial project
Slater launched at Aspen was the preparation for an international
organizational offensive against industrial growth and especially nuclear
energy, using the auspices (and the money) of the United Nations. Slater
secured support of Sweden’s UN Ambassador Sverker Aastrom, who steered through the UN a proposal, over
strenuous objections from developing countries, for an international conference
on the environment.(pp.173-175)
. . .
Indicative of this financial
establishment’s overwhelming influence in the American and British media, is
the fact that during this period, no public outcry was launched to investigate
the probable conflict of interest involved in Robert O. Anderson’s
well-financed anti-nuclear offensive, and the fact that his Atlantic Richfield
Oil Co. as one of the major beneficiaries from the 1974 price increase of oil.
Anderson’s ARCO had invested tens of millions of dollars into high-risk oil
infrastructure in Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay and Britain North Sea, together with
Exxon, British Petroleum, Shell and other Severn Sisters.
Has the 1974 oil stock not
raised the market price of oil to $11.65/barrel or thereabouts, Anderson’s, as
well as British Petroleum and Exxon and the other’s investments in the North
Sea and Alaska would have brought financial ruin. To ensure a friendly pres voice
in Britain, Anderson at this time purchased ownership of the London Observer.
Virtually no one asked if Anderson and his influential friends might have known
in advance that Kissinger would create the conditions for a 400 percent oil
price rise.
Not to leave any zero
growth stone unturned, Robert O. Anderson also
contributed significant funds to a project initiated by the Rockefeller family
at the Rockefeller’s estate at Bellagio, Italy with Aurelio Peccei
and Alexander King. This Club of Rome, and the U.S. Association of
the Club of Rome, in 1972 gave widespread publicity to their publication of
a scientifically fraudulent computer simulation, prepared by Dennis Meadows and
Jay Forrester, titled, ‘Limits to Growth.’ Adding modern computer graphics to
the discredited essay of Malthus, Meadows and Forrester insisted that the world
would soon perish for lack of adequate energy, food and other resources. As did
Malthus, they chose to ignore the impact of technological progress on improving
the human condition. Their message was one of unmitigated gloom and cultural
pessimism.
One of the most targeted
countries for this new Anglo-American anti-nuclear offensive in this time was
Germany. While France’s nuclear
program
was equally if not more ambitious, Germany was deemed an area where Anglo-American
intelligence assets had greater likelihood of success given their history in
the postwar occupation of the Federal Republic.
Almost as soon as the ink had dried on the Schmidt government‘s 1975 nuclear development
program, an offensive was launched.
A key operative in this new
project was to be a young woman whose mother was German and stepfather American
and who had lived in the U.S. until 1970, working for U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey,
among other things. Petra K. Kelly had developed close ties in her U.S. year’s
to one of the principle new Anglo-American anti- nuclear organizations created
by McGeorge Bundy’s Ford Foundation , the Natural
Renounces Defense Council. The Natural resources Defense Council included
Barbara Ward (Lady Jackson) and Laurence Rockefeller among its board at the
time. In Germany, Kelly began organizing legal assaults against construction of
the German nuclear program during the mid-1970’s, resulting in costly delays
and eventual large cuts in the entire German nuclear plan.(p.176-177)
“Population control becomes US
‘national security’
In 1798 an obscure English clergyman, professor of political economy in
the employ of the British East India Company’s East India College at Halleybury, was given instant fame by his English sponsors
for his ‘Essay on the Principle of Population.’ The essay itself was a
scientific fraud, plagiarized largely from a Venetian attack on the positive
population theory of American Benjamin Franklin.
The Venetian attack on
Franklin’s essay had been written by Giammaria Ortes in 1774. Malthus’s adaptation of Ortes’
‘theory’ was refined with a facade of mathematical legitimacy which he called
the ‘law of geometric progression,’ which held that human populations invariably
expanded geometrically, while the means of subsistence were arithmetically
limited or linear. The flaw in Malthus’ argument, as demonstrated irrefutably
by the spectacular growth of civilization, technology and agriculture productivity
since 1798, was Mathus’ deliberate ignoring of the
contribution of advances in science and technology to dramatically improve such
factors as crop yields, labor productivity and such.
By the mid-1970’s, indicative
of the effectiveness of the new propaganda onslaught form the Anglo-American establishment,
American government officials were openly boasting in public press conferences
that they were committed ‘neo-Malthusians,’ something for which they would have
been laughed out of office a mere decade or so earlier. But nowhere did the new
embrace of British Malthusian economics in the United States show itself more
brutally than in Kissinger’s National Security Council.
On April 24, 1974, in the
midst of the oil crisis, White House National Security adviser, Henry Alfred
Kissinger, issued a National Security Council Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200),
on the subject of ‘Implications of Worldwide population Growth for U.S.
Security and Overseas Interests.’ It was directed to all cabinet secretaries,
the military Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as the CIA and other key agencies.
On October 16, 1975, on Kissinger’s urging, President Gerald Ford issued a
memorandum confirming the need for ‘U.S. leadership in world population
matters,’ based on the contents of the classified NSSM 200 document.
The document made Malthusianism, for the first time in American history, an
explicit item of security policy of the government of the United States. More bitter the irony, was the fact that it was initiated by
a German-born Jew. Even during the Nazi years, government officials in Germany
were more guarded about officially espousing such goals.
NSSM 200 argued that
population expansion in select developing countries which also contain key
strategic resources necessary to the U.S. economy,
posed potential U.S. ‘national security threats.’ The study warned that under
pressure from an expanding domestic population, countries with needed raw
materials will tend to demand better prices and higher terms of trade for their
exports to the United States. In this context, the NSSM 200 identified a target
list of 13 countries singled out as ‘strategic targets’ for U.S. efforts at
population control. This list, drawn up in 1974, no doubt, as with all other
major decisions of Kissinger, also involving close consultation with the
British Foreign Office, is instructive.
Kissinger explicitly stated
in the memorandum, ‘how much more efficient expenditures for population control
might be than (would be funds for) raising production through direct
investments of additional irrigation and power projects and factories.’ British
19th century Imperialism could have expressed it no better. By the
middle 1970’s the government of the United States, with this secret policy
declaration, had committed itself to an agenda which would contribute to its
own economic demise as well as untold famine, misery and unnecessary death
throughout the developing sector. The 13 target countries named by Kissinger’s
study were Brazil, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria, Mexico,
Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Turkey, Ethiopia and Colombia.(pp.177-179)
The 14 + items below present discussions and interpretations of current events, the context of which - the political and economic relationships within the system of financial corporate hegemony - is presented in the books we have introduced above. The force of these current events will inevitably change our lives, for better or for worse. To escape the trap of alienation, we should be mindful of any room for maneuver that might present itself and we should make the most of it to take greater control of our lives by influencing the collective context in which we live at any moment. Today, as we see social movements being taken over by corporate interests - thereby being “hollowed out” and losing their substance and their initial purpose which was originally guided by popular control – it is incumbent upon all of us to remain skeptical of motivations and to challenge publically the corrupting influence of corporate, for-profit interests, based on labor exploitation and cynical methods of population control.
Sincerely,
Francis Feeley
---
Professeur honoraire de l'Université Grenoble-Alpes
Ancien Directeur des
Researches
Université de Paris-Nanterre
Director of The Center for the Advanced Study
of American Institutions and Social Movements
(CEIMSA-in-Exile)
http://www.ceimsa.org/
The University of California-San Diego
a.
Huge public,
corporate and household debt looks like the ‘new normal’ for the global economy
– until the next crisis
by Anthony
Rowley
+
The World's
Shrinking Population
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYZPTaV-RcQ&feature=youtu.be
with Darrel
Bricker and John Ibbitson co-authors of, "Empty
Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline"
Dire predictions about an impending
overpopulation crisis have loomed large in the human imagination for centuries.
Darrel Bricker and John Ibbitson co-authors of,
"Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline," say these
predictions have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, the global population is on
the decline. They join The Agenda to discuss a shrinking planet and the myriad
challenges it poses.
+
The awful
truth re: Bill Gates and eugenics
http://markcrispinmiller.com/2019/01/the-awful-truth-re-bill-gates-and-eugenics/
by Mark Crispin Miller
+
Depopulation
Crisis – When Numbers Don’t Add Up, You’ve been
Cheated
by Jean Perier
+
A former
"poster child" for Indira Gandhi's
"population control" speaks out on what they're doing to Greta
Thunberg
from Ajay Goyal
+
"Recession
Watch: Fed Rate Cuts Indicate Unhealthy Economy"
with Larry King
===========
b.
Open Letter From Sixty Doctors:
Medical doctors
seriously concerned "Mr Assange
could die in prison"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52622.htm
Open letter to the UK home
secretary about the plight of the WikiLeaks’ publisher
in London’s Belmarsh prison
+
Pilger: The Lies About Assange Must Stop Now
https://21stcenturywire.com/2019/11/25/pilger-the-lies-about-assange-must-stop-now/
by John Pilger
Newspapers and other media in the United States, Britain and Australia
have recently declared a passion for freedom of speech, especially their right to publish
freely. They are worried by the “Assange
effect”.
It is as if the struggle of truth-tellers like Julian Assange
and Chelsea Manning is now a warning to them: that the thugs who dragged Assange
out of the Ecuadorean embassy in April may one day come for them.
A common refrain was echoed by the Guardian last week. The extradition of Assange, said the paper, “is not a question of how
wise Mr. Assange is, still less how likable. It’s not
about his character, nor his judgement. It’s a matter
of press freedom and the public’s right to know.”
What the Guardian is
trying to do is separate Assange from his landmark
achievements, which have both profited the Guardian and exposed its own vulnerability, along
with its propensity to suck up to rapacious power and smear those who reveal its
double standards.
The poison that has fueled the persecution of Julian Assange
is not as obvious in this editorial as it usually is; there is no fiction about
Assange smearing faeces on
embassy walls or being awful to his cat.
Instead, the weasel references to “character” and “judgement”
and “likeability” perpetuate an epic smear which is now almost a decade
old. Nils Melzer, the United Nations Rapporteur
on Torture, used a more apt description. “There has been,” he wrote, “a
relentless and unrestrained campaign of public mobbing.” He explains
mobbing as “an endless stream of humiliating, debasing and threatening
statements in the press”. This “collection ridicule” amounts to torture and
could lead to Assange’s death.
Having witnessed much of what Melzer describes ,
I can vouch for the truth of his words. If Julian Assange
were to succumb to the cruelties heaped upon him, week after week, month after
month, year upon year, as doctors warn, newspapers like the Guardian will share the
responsibility.
A few days ago, the Sydney
Morning Herald’s man in London, Nick Miller, wrote a lazy, specious
piece headlined, “Assange has not been vindicated, he
has merely outwaited justice.” He was
referring to Sweden’s abandonment of the so-called Assange
investigation.
Miller’s report is not untypical for its omissions and distortions while
masquerading as a tribune of women’s rights. There is no original work, no real
inquiry: just smear.
There is nothing on the documented behaviour of
a clutch of Swedish zealots who hi jacked the “allegations” of sexual
misconduct against Assange and made a mockery of
Swedish law and that society’s vaunted decency.
He makes no mention that in 2013, the Swedish prosecutor tried to abandon
the case and emailed the Crown Prosecution Service in London to say it would no
longer pursue a European Arrest Warrant, to which she received the reply:
“Don’t you dare!!!” (Thanks to Stefania Maurizi of La
Repubblica)
Other emails show the CPS discouraging the Swedes from coming to London
to interview Assange – which was common practice –
thus blocking progress that might have set him free in 2011.
There was never an indictment. There were never charges. There was never
a serious attempt to put “allegations” to Assange and
question him – behaviour that the Swedish Court of
Appeal ruled to be negligent and the General Secretary of the Swedish Bar
Association has since condemned.
Both the women involved said there was no rape. Critical
written evidence of their text messages was wilfully
withheld from Assange’s lawyers, clearly because it
undermined the “allegations”.
One of the women was so shocked that Assange
was arrested, she accused the police of railroading
her and changing her witness statement. The chief prosecutor, Eva Finne, dismissed the “suspicion of any crime.”
The Sydney Morning Herald man
omits how an ambitious and compromised politician, Claes
Borgstrom, emerged from behind the liberal facade
of Swedish politics and effectively seized and revived the case.
Borgstrom enlisted a former political collaborator, Marianne Ny, as the new prosecutor. Ny
refused to guarantee that Assange would not be sent
on to the United States if he was extradited to Sweden, even though, as The Independent reported, “informal discussions have already taken place between the US
and Swedish officials over the possibility of the WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange being delivered into American
custody, according to diplomatic sources.” This was an open secret in
Stockholm. That libertarian Sweden had a dark, documented past of rendering
people into the hands of the CIA was not news.
The silence was broken in 2016 when the United Nations Working Party on
Arbitrary Detention, a body that decides whether governments are meeting their
human rights obligations, ruled that Julian Assange
was unlawfully detained by Britain and called on the British government to set
him free.
Both the governments of Britain and Sweden had taken part in the UN’s
investigation, and agreed to abide by its ruling, which carried the weight of
international law. The British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, stood up in
Parliament and abused the UN panel.
The Swedish case was a fraud from the moment the police secretly and
illegally contacted a Stockholm tabloid and ignited the hysteria that was to
consume Assange. WikiLeaks’
revelations of America’s war crimes had shamed the hand-maidens of power and
its vested interests, who called themselves journalists; and for this, the unclubbable Assange would never
be forgiven.
It was now open season. Assange’s media
tormenters cut and pasted each other’s lies and vituperative abuse. “He really
is the most massive turd,” wrote the Guardian columnist Suzanne
Moore. The received wisdom was that he had been charged, which was never true.
In my career, reporting from places of extreme upheaval and suffering and
criminality, I have never known anything like it.
In Assange’s homeland,
Australia, this “mobbing” reached an apogee. So eager was the
Australian government to deliver its citizen to the United States that the prime
minister in 2013, Julia Gillard, wanted to take away his passport and charge
him with a crime – until it was pointed out to her that Assange
had committed no crime and she had no right to take away his citizenship.
Julia Gillard, according to the website Honest History, holds the record
for the most sycophantic speech ever made to the US Congress. Australia, said
she to applause, was America’s “great mate”. The great mate colluded with
America in its hunt for an Australian whose crime was journalism. His right to
protection and proper assistance was denied.
When Assange’s lawyer, Gareth Peirce, and I met
two Australian consular officials in London, we were shocked that all they knew
about the case “is what we read in the papers”.
This abandonment by Australia was a principal reason for the granting of
political asylum by Ecuador. As an Australian, I found this especially shaming.
When asked about Assange recently, the current
Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, said, “He should face the music”.
This kind of thuggery, bereft of any respect for
truth and rights and the principles and law, is why the mostly Murdoch
controlled press in Australia is now worried about its own future, as the Guardian is worried,
and The New York Times is worried. Their
concern has a name: “the Assange precedent.”
They know that what happens to Assange can
happen to them. The basic rights and justice denied him can be denied to them.
They have been warned. All of us have been warned.
Whenever I see Julian in the grim, surreal world of Belmarsh
prison, I am reminded of the responsibility of those of us who defend him.
There are universal principles at stake in this case. He himself is fond of
saying: “It’s not me. It’s far wider.”
But at the heart of this remarkable struggle – and it is, above all, a
struggle – is one human being whose character, I repeat character, has
demonstrated the most astonishing courage. I salute him.
This
is an edited version of an address John Pilger gave
at the launch in London of In Defense of Julian Assange,
an anthology published by Or Books, New York.
See
also: www.dontextraditeassange.com
+
"Julian Assange Case: Abby
Martin, Snowden, Chomsky, Jill Stein, Varoufakis, Horvat & Richter Respond"
+
Australian PM rejects Pamela Anderson’s appeal that his government defend Assange
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/27/morr-n27.html
by Oscar Grenfell
+
In Defense of Julian Assange
edited by TARIQ ALI and MARGARET KUNSTLER
+
Appeal to
Archbishop of Canterbury to Support Release of Julian Assange
– Consortiumnews
+
‘We’re
working for the dark side’: Spanish firm accused of spying on Assange by German broadcaster boasted of US intelligence
ties
+
‘Psychologically
Tortured’ Assange Victim of British ‘Rogue State’,
London Conference Hears –
The
following are remarks given at a conference on Thursday night at St. Pancras Church in London by some of Assange’s
biggest defenders, including journalist and filmmaker John Pilger,
former British diplomat Craig Murray, the UN special rapporteur
on torture, Nils Melzer, clinical psychologist Lissa
Johnson, former Ecuadorian diplomat Fidel Narvaez, Lisa Longstaff,
spokesperson for Women Against Rape and historian Mark Curtis. The video
presentations are a production of Gordon Dimmack, and
are republished here with his permission.
+
US abuses
justice systems to target its enemies, like it did with Huawei
– Assange’s father
https://www.rt.com/news/474773-assange-father-huawei-cfo/
+
Visiting Britain’s Political Prisoner
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/29/john-pilger-visiting-britains-political-prisoner/
by
John Pilger
+
Groundswell
of support for WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/30/pers-n30.html
by Oscar
Grenfell
===========
c.
Richard
Wolff On Reaganomics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omNlCFYS4tA
+
Capitalism Is a Blessing
https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/briefing-room/capitalism-blessing
with Richard
Wolff
+
Fascism & Anti-Fascism: A Decolonial Perspective
https://onkwehonwerising.wordpress.com/2017/02/11/fascism-anti-fascism-a-decolonial-perspective/
by Rowland
“Ena͞emaehkiw” Keshena Robinson
+
"Abby
Martin & Richard Wolff Discuss Socialism in 2019"
+
Slavoj Zizek: Will the global Left
allow right-wing nationalists to take control of society's discontent?
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/474473-left-protests-communism-nationalists-zizek/
===========
d.
The Antisemitic Card
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52631.htm
by Finian Cunningham
It is a ludicrous situation when anyone
criticizing Israeli state violations against Palestinians or neighboring
countries is then instantly discredited as being “antisemitic”.
We see this in Britain and the United States
all the time. Congresswomen like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib have been denounced
for being “anti-Jewish”, including by President Trump, simply because they
protested Israeli policy of occupying Palestinian lands or for having
a malign influence on US foreign policy.
In Britain, Labour
leader Jeremy Corbyn and his party have once again
this week been vilified as “antisemitic” in prominent
news media.
The reality is that Corbyn is neither
racist or anti-Jewish. The specious allegation stems from him and
sections of Labour being vehemently critical of
Israel and its conduct towards Palestinians.
If elected in the general election next
month, Labour says it will cut military trade with
Israel and move to officially recognize a Palestinian state.
This conflation of valid criticism of the
Israeli state with being “anti-Jew” is a cynical distortion which is wielded to
give Israel impunity from international law. It plays on moral blackmail of
critics by equating the historical persecution of Jews and in particular the
Nazi holocaust with the sanctity of the modern Israeli state.
That distortion is exposed by many Jews
themselves who have spoken out in the US and in Britain to defend the right of
people to criticize Israeli policies. They understand the vital distinction
between the Israeli state and the much wider existence of Jewishness.
They understand that to be opposed to Israeli state practices is in no way to
mean animus towards Jews in general.
+
Smeared by
‘Israel lobby’? Dutch cartoonist scoffs after being branded ‘Nazi sympathizer’
over Netanyahu caricature
+
Bolivia restores relations with Israel
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52632.htm
i24NEWS - AFP
Morales cut off relations with Israel in
2008 after an Israeli attack on occupied Gaza. He also classified Israel as a
terrorist nation.
+
Reversing Pro-Palestinian Stance of Evo Morales, Bolivia's Coup Government Moves to Restore
Ties With Israel
by
Jake Johnson
Morales cut off diplomatic ties with Israel over its deadly 2009 assault on the occupied Gaza Strip and called for top Israeli officials to be charged with genocide.
===========
e.
Omidyar’s Intercept Teams Up with
War-Propaganda Firm Bellingcat
by
Whitney Webb
Despite
promoting itself as an “independent” and open-source investigation site, Bellingcat has received a significant portion of its
funding from Google, which is also one of the most powerful U.S. military
contractors and whose rise to prominence was directly aided by the CIA.
+
America Is
Never Going Back to Normal
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/america-is-never-going-back-to-normal/
by Tom Engelhardt
+
"Chris
Hedges & Abby Martin: No Way Out Through Elections"
+
Deep State
Coup D’Etat: Subverting the U.S. Presidency from JFK
to Trump
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52616.htm
with Michael Welch, Mark Robinowitz,
and Prof Peter Dale Scott
===========
f.
Bolivian
Coup Plotters Were Trained by US Military and Served as Attaches in FBI Police
Programs
by Jeb Sprague
+
Pompeo congratulates Bolivia for expelling Cuban doctors
https://oncubanews.com/en/cuba-usa/pompeo-congratulates-bolivia-for-expelling-cuban-doctors/amp
===========
g.
Washington,
the Cesspool of the World, Will Never Rat on Itself
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52624.htm
by Paul Craig
Roberts
Former US Attorney Joe diGenova
predicts that US Justice (sic) Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s
report on the Obama regime’s FISA court violations and US Attorney John
Durham’s criminal investigation of the Russiagate
hoax perpetrated by the CIA, FBI, Democratic National Committee, and presstitute media will be “very bad for people in the Obama
administration. . . . it’s going to be devastating . .
. it’s going to ruin careers.”
For the sake of accountable government, I
hope that Mr. diGenova is
right. But I have my doubts. Cabinet departments and government agencies are
not very good at investigating themselves. Attorney General Barr’s job is to protect
his department. He knows, and will be often told, that to bring indictments
against Justice Department officials would discredit the Justice Department in
the public’s mind. It would affect the attitude of juries toward DOJ
prosecutions. John Durham knows the same thing. He also knows that he will
create a hostile environment for himself if he indicts DOJ officials and that
when he joins a law firm to capitalize on his experience as a US Attorney, he
will not receive the usual favors when he represents clients against DOJ
charges. Horowitz knows that his job is to coverup or
minimize any illegalities in order to protect the Department of Justice from
scandals.
In Washington coverups
are the rule, and the DOJ coverup might already have
begun. One sign of a coverup is to announce a future
release date of the report. This has now occurred with Horowitz’s report on the
FISA violations. The purpose of such announcements is to allow the report to be
discredited in advance and to be old news by the time it appears.
Another sign of a coverup
is the use of leaks to shift the focus from high level officials to lowly
underlings, and this has happened with the Horowitz report, which has leaked
that a low level FBI attorney is under criminal investigation for allegedly
falsifying a document related to the surveillance of former Trump campaign
official Carter Page in 2016. According to the leak, the FBI attorney has
acknowledged that he did alter the document. In other words, it seems we are
being prepared for a false story that the plot against Trump originated in
lower levels and not with CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Deputy Attorney
General Rod Rosenstein, and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and the rest.
This is the way the coverups of the US torture
prison, Abu Ghraib, in Iraq was handled and the My
Lai massacre in Vietnam. Only the underlings take the hit as if they were in
charge acting on their own, independently of their superiors.
Another sign that a coverup
is in place is Attorney General Barr’s assurance that Jeffrey Epstein killed
himself and that evidence to the contrary is just a series of coincidences
that, misunderstood, resulted in a conspiracy theory. Caitlin
Johnstone gives this short shrift
Barr claims to have personally reviewed
security footage that no one entered the area where Epstein was imprisoned.
Previously we were told that the security cameras were not turned on, so what
security footage did Barr review? Can the rest of us see the “evidence”?
Barr also in his pronouncement evaded the
remarks of the Chief Medical Examiner, who stated clearly that the damage to
Epstein’s neck is not consistent with suicide but is associated with strangulation.
There was no reason whatsoever for Epstein
to kill himself. He had so much dirt on the Western political elite that he
could not be given his day in open court. So he was murdered. The question is, why was he picked up and murdered? Was he using the
pedophile information to exact blackmail payments from those he had provided
with underage sex? Is it possible for an elite society to be more corrupt than
the Western elite society is? How can the West survive when its elites are
corrupt beyond comprehension?
That Epstein did not kill himself is
completely obvious, so when AG William Barr covers up Epstein’s murder, this is
an indication that he will cover up the military/security complex/DNC/presstitute coup against President Trump.
From what I know of Washington, I am certain
that Washington, the cesspool of the world, will never rat on itself.
+
Epstein Tapes? Sordid Case Takes A Bizarre
Turn After Mystery 'Hacker' Emerges
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52641.htm
by Tyler Durden
===========
h.
American Exceptionalism Driving World to War – John Pilger
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52630.htm
by Finian Cunningham
Australian-born John Pilger
has worked for over five decades as a reporter and documentary film-maker
covering wars and conflicts all over the world. In the following interview, the
award-winning journalist says the world is arguably at a more perilous
geopolitical juncture than even during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 at the
height of the Cold War. This is because American “exceptionalism”
– which, he points out, mirrors that of Nazi Germany – has developed into a
hyper-rogue phase. The relentless denigration of Russia by American and Western
media show that there are few red lines left to restrain aggression towards
Moscow, as there were, at least, during the past Cold War. Russia and China’s
refusal to bow down to Washington’s dictate is infuriating the would-be
American hegemon and its desire for zero-sum world
domination.
John Pilger also
gives his wide-ranging views on the systematic deterioration of Western
mainstream journalism which has come to function as a nakedly propaganda matrix
for power and corporate profit. He further condemns the ongoing persecution and
torture of fellow-Australian publisher Julian Assange
who is being held in a maximum-security British prison commonly used for
holding mass murderers and convicted terrorists. Assange
is being persecuted for telling the truth and for exposing huge crimes by the
US and Britain, says Pilger. It is a grim warning of
a covert war that is being conducted against independent journalism and free
speech, and, more ominously, indicative of a slide towards police-state fascism
in so-called Western democracies.
INTERVIEW:
Question:
In your documentary film,
The Coming War on China (2016), you assess that the United States is on a
strategic collision path with China for control of Asia-Pacific. Do you still
see the threat of war looming between these two powers?
John
Pilger: The threat of war may not be
immediate, but we know or should know that events can change fast: a chain of
incidents and missteps can ignite a war which can spread unpredictably. The
calculations are not in dispute: an “enemy” has barely 12 minutes to decide
whether and where to order a nuclear retaliation.
Question:
Recently, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused
China of being “truly hostile to America’s interests”. What in your view is
motivating US concerns about China?
John
Pilger: The State Department once declared,
“To seek less than preponderant power would be to opt for defeat.” At the root
of much of humanity’s insecurity is, remarkably, the self-belief and
self-delusion of one nation: the United States. America’s notion of itself is
often difficult for the rest of us to comprehend. From the days of President
Teddy Roosevelt, the “sacred mission” has been to dominate humanity and its
vital resources, if not by intimidation and bribery then by violence. In the
1940s, American “war intellectuals”, such as the diplomat and historian George
F Kennan, described the necessity of American dominance of the “Grand Area”,
which is most of the world, notably Eurasia, and especially China.
Non-Americans were to be cast in “our image”, wrote Kennan; America was the
exemplar. Hollywood has reflected this with striking accuracy.
===========
i.
"Money
trail of Ukraine corruption engulfs Obama White House"
with Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris
+
Krystal Ball rips report saying Obama would intervene
to stop Sanders
The Hill,
with Krystal Ball
===========
j.
From: newsfromunderground@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2019
Subject: [MCM] MUST-SEE video of Dr. Beverly Rubik's lecture on 5G!
From Les Jamieson:
Hi all -- The 5G lecture last week by Dr. Beverly Rubik
to a packed house at Union Theological Seminary was a great success due to her
excellent, highly informative presentation about the science and health risks
of 5G microwave radiation. Watch it now on YouTube. A must-see!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GjA7avRer8
Next, we'll be having a meeting with film, discussion, and most importantly - organizing! I'm hoping people will want to team up on letter writing. In the meantime, I urge everyone to lobby elected officials from NY City Council, NY State Senate, and Congress. Share your concern about 5G, smart meters. Point out that Verizon is advertising "We do 5G right." The truth is, "Verizon can't do 5G right because it's untested for safety of humans, the environment, and all living things which are affected by radio frequencies."
Alternative Cinema - 5G/Smart Meter Series
When: Sat. Dec. 14th, 1 - 4pm
Where: Revelation Gallery, 224 Waverly Place (West Village)
One thing to discuss is how Maui City Council was presented with cease and desist letters to block 5G, and how this can be replicated everywhere. Ideally, these letters should come from lawyers, but if we got hundreds, better yet thousands of people to take this action, we can make an impact. See more here:
http://911tv.blogspot.com/2019/11/maui-county-council-2019-community_13.html
I'm also attaching the report on a court victory against the FCC. This is a very promising development which gives the movement a lot to build on.
Looking forward,
Les Jamieson
+
'A distinctly American phenomenon': Our workforce is
dying faster than any other wealthy country, study shows
by Jorge L. Ortiz
+
2 MILLION AMERICANS DON’T HAVE ACCESS TO RUNNING WATER
AND BASIC PLUMBING
by Meera
Jagannathan
===========
k.
Why are Iraqi protesters targeting Iranian buildings?
by Arwa
Ibrahim
===========
l.
I talked to everybody I could in Syria, That's how you
find out the truth
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52642.htm
by
Robert Fisk
I’ve spent months these past eight years in Syria’s amputated cities.
They are a scar on all our lives – the Russians, the Syrians, the armed
Islamists, the western powers that spent more time trying to destroy Syria than
the Syrian regime.
The bodies buried deep within these
heaps of concrete, the survivors, and those invisibly but forever mentally
wounded have paid the price of our military cruelty and indifference. Many
of those who fled these gaunt cities are now in Europe – or at the bottom of
the Mediterranean. And we don’t even know – or care? – about
the statistics. Did 350,000 die here? Or 450,000? Or 500,000? These figures have all been used, a careless
150,000 separating the first from the last.
Beirut, Mostar,
Sarajevo, Aleppo, Homs, and now Mosul and Raqqa – we are forced to ask ourselves if these sepulchral
ruins are something we have come to regard as natural, something we accept or
have accepted for hundreds of years: that destruction is a natural part of
history.
I hope I don’t believe this. I’ve driven
thousands of miles across Syria, with no minders (they are mostly called
up into the army) and no protection to reach front lines where Syrian
government soldiers, often wounded, have run and crawled through the broken
concrete to show me Isis flags in the next field or broken house.
+
"Syrian
Gas Attack Was Staged Says 2nd Whistleblower At
OPCW"
with Jimmy Dore
===========
m.
China chugs
Saudi oil, drawing MBS into its orbit
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/11/article/china-chugs-saudi-oil-drawing-mbs-into-its-orbit/
by Alison Tahmizian Meuse
+
Henry Kissinger Gets It... US ‘Exceptionalism’
Is Over
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52638.htm
Information Clearing House Editorial
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
made prudent remarks recently when he said the United States is no longer a uni-power and that it must recognize the reality of China
as an equal rival.
The furor over a new law passed by the US
this week regarding Hong Kong and undermining Beijing’s authority underlines
Kissinger’s warning.
If the US cannot find some modus vivendi with China, then the outcome could be a
catastrophic conflict worst than any previous world war, he admonished.
Speaking publicly in New York on November 14, the veteran
diplomat urged the US and China to resolve their ongoing economic tensions
cooperatively and mutually, adding: “It is no longer possible to think that one
side can dominate the other.”
A key remark made by Kissinger was the
following: “So those countries that used to be exceptional and used to be
unique, have to get used to the fact that they have a rival.”
In other words, he is negating the erroneous
consensus held in Washington which asserts that the US is somehow
“exceptional”, a “uni-power” and the “indispensable
nation”. This consensus has grown since the early 1990s after the collapse of
the Soviet Union, when the US viewed itself as the sole super-power. That
morphed into a more virulent ideology of “full-spectrum dominance”. Thence, the
past three decades of unrelenting US criminal wars and regime-change operations
across the planet, throwing the whole world into chaos.
Kissinger’s frank assessment is a breath of
fresh air amid the stale and impossibly arrogant self-regard held by too many
American politicians who view their nation as an unparalleled power which
brooks no other.
The seasoned statesman, who is 96-years-old
and retains an admirable acumen for international politics, ended his remarks
on an optimistic note by saying: “I am confident the leaders on both sides [US
and China] will realize the future of the world depends on the two sides
working out solutions and managing the inevitable difficulties.”
===========
n.