Retired child and adolescent psychiatrist and American expatriate in New Zealand. In 2002, I made the difficult decision to close my 25-year Seattle practice after 15 years of covert FBI harassment. I describe the unrelenting phone harassment, illegal break-ins and six attempts on my life in my 2010 book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.
The First Intermediate Period (2181-2040), following the collapse of the Fifth Dynasty, was Egypt’s dark ages, characterized by the collapse of government (and record keeping) and anarchy.
The third century BC Egyptian priest Manetho wrote about the First Intermediate Period in his book Aegypteakia. It was written in Greek (Egypt was under Greek control) and based on temple records.
In describing the extreme instability, Aegypteakia makes reference to “70 kings in 70 days.” Brier believes there were likely simultaneous kings in isolated regions of Egypt. The capitol moved south during the First Intermediate Period to Herakeopolis (named by the Greeks after the goddess Hera).** Nothing is known of the Sixth and Seventh Dynasty that ruled during this period.
Other useful information available comes from a fictional work entitled Lamentations of Khakheperraseneb from the late First Intermediate Period. It contains a fable describing a dispute between a suicidal man and his “ba.”* When the ba threatens to desert the man (which will prevent him from being reurrected) if he suicides, the man laments the absence of justice in society, with brothers killing each other, foreign “bowmen” invading Egypt and common slave girls wearing gold, lapis and cornelian necklaces (in violation of the divine order).
Other sections of the Lamentations decry the loss of traditional class hierarchy:
that no one sails north to Byblo (Lebanon) for pine trees (used in construction and furniture)
that all is in ruin
that the have-nots have
that people are robbing tombs
that wearers of fine linen are beaten with sticks
that maid servants are rude and noble ladies are treated like maid servants
that the grand no longer rule the land
that what was made is unmade
that the Nile has dried up and one crosses it on foot
that desert flocks (belonging to Bedouin nomads) drink from the Nile**
that you are saluting the one who should salute you
that people live in the graveyard
that beggars and slaves thrive
*One aspect of the Egyptian soul, comparable to the modern concept of personality. The “ba” was frequently depicted as a person’s head on the animal body they most resembled.
**Egyptians both hated and feared the desert and Bedouins, who they viewed as barbarians.
Sammy Sheik as Gitmo inmate Gamel Sadek, who was sold in a U.S. bounty program and tortured for ten years. [Source: pr.com]
By Jeremy Kuzmarov
Gamel Sadek was living a quiet life as a school teacher in Kandahar in March 2002 when his life was suddenly shattered.
While eating lunch one day with his wife and sons, two Afghan police came to his door and arrested him, taking him to a CIA black site at Bagram Air Base and then to Guantánamo Bay prison in occupied Cuban territory where he was tortured for the next ten years.
The U.S. government alleged that Sadek, an Egyptian who had fought with the mujahadin in the 1980s, was a member of al-Qaeda involved in planning the 9/11 attacks, though never developed any proof of this.
In reality, Sadek was sold out by his neighbor, who was paid a $5,000 bounty by U.S. soldiers under a program initiated by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Sadek’s story is spotlighted in the film, I Am Gitmo, written and directed by Philippe Diaz, which won a best actor award at the 2023 Marbella International Film Festival in Spain and the Special Jury Award at the Socially Relevant Film Festival in New York.
Though Sadek is not real, his is the story of the overwhelming majority of Guantánamo Bay inmates. Eighty-six percent of them were sold to American troops in a bounty program modeled after the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, which resulted in the torture and deaths of tens of thousands of civilians.[1]
Since 2002, 775 men have been detained at Guantánamo Bay, though only eight have been convicted of any crimes, with four of those convictions reversed.
Some 37 prisoners currently remain incarcerated in Guantánamo under these conditions. President Joe Biden has not only kept the facility open but provided funding for its upgrade even though he promised to close it when he campaigned for the presidency.
[…]
Diaz said that he was inspired to make I Am Gitmo after he read the book Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, which was made into a feature film starring Jodi Foster called The Mauritanian. Diaz said that he almost fell from his chair reading the film’s script because it had only about two minutes depicting torture when Ould Slahi wrote about being tortured in vivid detail over nearly 300 pages.
Also in the film, Ould Slahi’s interrogator cracked jokes with him, and presented what Diaz called “the trope of the white hero” in which Foster, who plays his lawyer, saves the day by rescuing him from captivity. At the end, Ould Slahi is depicted making a lot of money off his book and living well, as if there is a happy ending to the story.
Diaz said that, in reality, most Guantánamo Bay inmates cannot go back to their own countries and are forced to go to “rehabilitation camps” in Saudi Arabia when they committed no crime.
While there are organizations out there calling for the closing of Guantánamo Bay, none is advocating for reparations for the victims of a torture regimen coming from the top of the U.S. government that has scarred victims.
Diaz says that he hopes I Am Gitmo will contribute to such a movement, which would entail the U.S. government being held accountable for the atrocities that it perpetrated.
In contrast to The Mauritanian, I Am Gitmo depicts Guantánamo Bay as the monstrosity that it is. The name of the film comes from a revolt where inmates refused guards’ orders to give their name during a cell count, proclaiming in unison, “I Am Gitmo.”
Diaz makes a point of presenting in graphic detail the torture that Sadek and other inmates experienced, including their being chained to the ceiling and floor, being sexually assaulted, subjected to mock executions, sleep and food deprivation, forced hooding, being buried underground and the water torture method designed to simulate drowning.
Diaz said that he wants the viewer to get a sense of what it was like for people to be tortured. In one memorable scene, the viewer is made to feel the coffin closing as Sadek is being buried.
The strength of Sadek’s character comes to light in a scene when he comes to the defense of an elderly inmate who was beaten by a sadistic guard because he was praying without authorization.
In this scene, Diaz provides commentary on the U.S. military’s contempt for Muslim culture, fanned by demagogic politicians and the media.
Diaz also shows how the U.S. government manufactured evidence against terrorist suspects in order to frame them.
Sadek’s chief interrogator, John Anderson (played by Eric Pierpoint), is given a photo purporting to show Sadek with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1980s; however, the person said to be Sadek had his back facing the camera and cannot actually be identified.
Sadek’s Imam also allegedly confessed to Sadek’s membership in al-Qaeda, though we find out that the confession was induced through torture, and that the tape broadcasting it was garbled so it was not clear what the Imam actually said.
When Sadek is shown media accounts of his case, he is amazed to learn that he was a coordinator of al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan—which he never was.
Diaz suggests that this kind of biased media coverage helps solidify the public impression that Guantánamo Bay prisoners are the “worst of the worst”—as they were consistently called—and deserving of their fate.
I Am Gitmo is a superb film overall with great character development and dialogue. Some of the most stimulating scenes are ones depicting discussions between Sadek’s character and his lawyer (Bob Levin played by Paul Kampf) and chief interrogator, Anderson.
In those discussion, Sadek tells Anderson that Arabs had been victims of Western imperial machinations over centuries and that he was proud to join the mujahadin in the 1980s to fight against the Soviet Union, an atheistic power that had dishonored Muslims.
When Anderson accuses Sadek of being part of the 9/11 plot because he supposedly fought with Osama bin Laden, Sadek tells Anderson that he never knew bin Laden and that most Arabs believe that bin Laden had nothing to do with 9/11.
Rather they believe that al-Qaeda was a CIA creation and that the CIA and Israeli Mossad had planned 9/11 to provide a reason for the U.S. invading the entire Middle East.”
Democrats cheered and waved Ukrainian flags, chanting “Ukraine, Ukraine!” in some pavlovian response to Congress passing a bill that will send (another) $61 billion to Ukraine with no questions asked
[…]
Ukrainian president Zelenskyy was very pleased, personally thinking Speaker Johnson
[…]
Of course he’s pleased… why wouldn’t he be, as who knows where that money will end up?
The issue of corruption was directly raised with Zelensky in a meeting last January in Kiev with CIA Director William Burns.
His message to the Ukrainian president, I was told by an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the meeting, was out of a 1950s mob movie.
The senior generals and government officials in Kiev were angry at what they saw as Zelensky’s greed, so Burns told the Ukrainian president, because “he was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals.”
Burns also presented Zelensky with a list of thirty-five generals and senior officials whose corruption was known to the CIA and others in the American government.
Zelensky responded to the American pressure ten days later by publicly dismissing ten of the most ostentatious officials on the list and doing little else.
“The ten he got rid of were brazenly bragging about the money they had—driving around Kiev in their new Mercedes,” the intelligence official told me.
Zelensky’s half-hearted response and the White House’s lack of concern was seen, the intelligence official added, as another sign of a lack of leadership that is leading to a “total breakdown” of trust between the White House and some elements of the intelligence community.
Hersh went on to note that one estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least; another expert compared the level of corruption in Kiev as approaching that of the Afghan war, “although there will be no professional audit reports emerging from the Ukraine.”
But, remember, the first rule of sending money to corrupt Ukraine is… you don’t talk about how corrupt Ukraine is (or you get impeached).
‘There is only a means, the resistance of the Boers to break; namely the toughest oppression. In other words, we need to kill the parents, so that the children have respect for us.’ ~ Winston Churchill, Journalist, Morning Post.*
The British Empire was at war with the Transvaal and the Free State, and it was slowly winning. Most women across the empire believed the war was just and necessary. That was, after all, what they had been taught to think by media. But one of them was different.
One woman among millions read the news reports and scratched her head. And frowned when the dots did not connect. When she heard that Boer civilians were being treated inhumanely, she was the only one who would not let others soothe her conscience and do her thinking for her. She bought a ticket for South Africa and set sail to investigate in person.
What she discovered defied description. She had believed that there was just one concentration camp. Instead, she found there were 45. They were comprised of captured civilians who had been herded behind barbed wire fences to make the country uninhabitable for the commandos in the field. Old men, women and children. She had been told that they were refugees, which the Crown was taking care of for humanitarian reasons. The concentration camps were for their own safety. That is what they told her. But that’s not remotely what she saw.
Instead, she discovered that the people in these camps were dying at an unbelievable rate – dying of disease, malnutrition, exposure to the elements and neglect. They were being abused and humiliated, the meat rations that they were given were often rotten or came from animals that had died of disease and exposure. Already entire families had died out. And every day some processions lead to cemeteries where the dead were being buried faster than coffins could be made.
She was utterly shocked, and for a while did not know what she could do. But she knew she had to at least try to do something.
In 1901 Emily Hobhouse was a nobody. She was just one more nameless Englishwoman. Young, unmarried and insignificant. Her father was dead and her family wasn’t rich or influential. What could she possibly have done? She seemed powerless.
Or was she…? Emily Hobhouse did not see it entirely that way. After she had visited the death camps, she returned to England – armed to the brim with statistics, testimonials, records of interviews, and photographs. And when they refused to listen, she went to press. That’s when the fireworks began.
The Julian Assange of her time, when she presented the truth to the British public, the knowledge was sensational. The opposition howled that the military authorities were using ‘methods of barbarism’ to conduct their war.
Her embarrassing revelations shook parliament to its foundations and made the powerful men who had instigated the war scurry to deny, cover and dismiss the facts. And yet, no matter how they tried, the young Englishwoman from nowhere had uncorked a storm that refused to go away.
Suddenly the obscure young woman became famous. And threatening. Armed with no sword except truth, she had become a weapon more dangerous than anything her country’s enemies possessed.
They responded predictably, by fighting back with denials and character assassination. They slated her as a traitor, called her disloyal, and a colluder with her country’s enemies. But still, some rubbed their chins thoughtfully and said, ‘I wonder….’
Not surprisingly, Emily Hobhouse did not win this round, but curiously, she also did not lose. Perhaps one could say that she had achieved at least a draw. Or maybe something more, for after her revelations, the Fawcett Commission was established – and tasked to report to parliament on conditions in the British concentration camps.
As the investigators set sail, the powers in control scurried to hide, obfuscate and camouflage the dreadful conditions as best they could. But even after all the sanitizing, the report of the Fawcett Commission was damning when it was released. It has blemished and embarrassed the records of civilized warfare for a hundred years, and continues to do so to this day.
Yet, something enormously good did come from it. After the revelations had been made, a significant amount of reform was grudgingly introduced. It was still very, very far from adequate, and people kept dying like flies. But the death rate did drop sharply, and living conditions did improve enough to allow at least a chance of possibly surviving the confinement until the end of the war.
Upon the high plains, hollow-eyed families huddled beneath frost and snow in their canvas tents and realized that now at least, some of them would live as God had ordained.
At Emily Hobhouse’s next trip to South Africa, the military authorities denied her entry and repatriated her back to England. They had had enough of ‘that damned Englishwoman’ as they referred to her. But she had set a course of events in motion that would continue even in her absence.
Unfortunately, her intervention had come too late for many, though. In the end, between 27,000 – 29,000 white women and children died in the camps. A frightful percentage of a small population. Of the women and children in black concentration camps, no meaningful records were kept and their losses can only be guessed at. Emily was not even able to get to them. Historians seem to think the number must have been the same, or greater.
[…]
*NOTE: Boer concentration camp deaths totaled 28,000, of whom 22,074 were children under 16 years of age.
Given the lying and fact twisting that have routinely been part and parcel of accounts of what is occurring in the Middle East, the past several weeks have nevertheless been shocking in terms of how an abysmally low standard of truth can be reduced even farther. Looking at developments objectively, one comes up with a series of facts. First of all, Israel was not at war with either Syria or Iran during the first weeks in April. Iran had never attacked Israel prior to that point and Syria last fought Israel in 1973, over fifty years ago.
Israel, however, has regularly been assassinating Iranian officials and scientists and it has been frequently been bombing Syria since 2017, increasing the pace to weekly and sometimes even daily attacks over the past six months paralleling the Gaza fighting. A particularly devastating attack took place on March 29th when the Israeli military launched massive strikes against a weapons storage depot in Syria’s northern province of Aleppo which killed at least 40 people, most of them Syrian soldiers. The air strikes produced a series of explosions that also killed six Lebanese Hezbollah fighters.
But three days later on April 1st a very damaging and unprovoked attack was directed against the Iranian Embassy’s Consulate General, which was located in an upscale neighborhood in Damascus, Syria’s capital. The building was completely destroyed by missiles fired from F-35 fighter planes that had crossed over the Syrian border from Israel, killing Iranian diplomats as well as Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Zahedi’s deputy, General Haji Rahimi, and also Brigadier General Hossein Amirollah, the chief of general staff for the al-Quds force in Syria and Lebanon. Syria subsequently confirmed that a total of 13 people were killed in the attack, including six Syrians and a Lebanese Hezbollah militiaman. Both Iran and Hezbollah vowed revenge.
Attacking a diplomatic mission is considered a major war crime according to the Vienna Convention, but there was no condemnation of the incident coming from the US and the usual suspects in Western Europe. Instead of doing what was right by pressuring Israel to stop attacking its neighbors and thereby possibly preventing a major war in the Middle East, President Joe Biden repeated his pledge that the United States would regard as “ironclad” its commitment to guarantee Israel’s security if Iran were to strike back. This guaranteed to Israel that any action taken by it would be supported by Washington. The Biden Administration also predictably voted against a Russian and Chinese drafted UN Security Council resolution to condemn the Israeli attack on the Iranian Consulate, which was a clear violation of international law and an act of war committed by Israel. The US reportedly cast its veto vote “no” after “Diplomats said the US told council colleagues that many of the facts of what happened on Monday in Damascus remained unclear.” What was actually unclear was the fog that generally surrounds the Biden foreign policy and national security team since it was pretty transparent who was the aggressor in terms of means, motive and outcome.
When Iran did retaliate on April 13th, it carried out a carefully calibrated moderate strike against military targets intended to do damage but not cause a large number of casualties. It reportedly hit several airbases from which the Israeli fighter bombers had begun their attack on Damascus as well as an Israeli Air Force intelligence center in the formerly Syrian Golan Heights. No one was killed in spite of the 300 estimated drones and missiles that were launched, most being intercepted by Israel and its allies. But the attack nevertheless sent a message from Tehran that next time it could be much worse, both immediate in timing and “considerably more severe” than its response on Saturday night had been. Iran also claims that it attempted to prevent an escalation by warning the US about their plans, which would be passed on to Israel, that a “controlled” retaliation was coming. The Pentagon denied that it had been told anything, which may mean that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was asleep at his desk once again.
Not content with the outcome, Israel inevitably struck back on Friday, hitting a major airbase near Isfahan, and, to make sure no one was missed, targets in both Iraq and Syria. Iranian military sources advise however that the loud explosions heard by local residents were Iranian air defenses shooting at some flying objects, presumably drones. Per the New York Times and other accommodating media, the strike was a warning that Israel could penetrate Iranian airspace and not intended to do serious damage. The Pentagon was apparently informed shortly before the Israeli action. Iran’s counter-counter retaliation is now pending, but it is clear that Netanyahu will not be deterred by electoral considerations in the United States to stay his hand in his own counter-counter response.
And how does the United States fit into the story? The White House response to the Iranian attack on Israeli territory was inevitably completely unlike the previous uncritical response to Israel’s Consulate General attack, namely condemnation of Iran and the repetition of the usual tripe about “Israel has a right to defend itself” and the sanctity of the “ironclad” defense arrangement. Biden also attempted to cover himself against political blowback due to his licking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s shoes in the upcoming November election by making it known that he had spoken with and advised Netanyahu, recommending not carrying out a reprisal of the reprisal, which Washington would be unable to support as it could/would lead to major escalation. Netanyahu, not fearing Biden’s displeasure, blew the advice off and he and his war cabinet made clear that they were working on a response as well as setting a timetable for invading Rafah in south Gaza, which Biden had also recommended against.
The White House completed its groveling to Netanyahu by vetoing a UN Security Council resolution on April 18th that would have advocated full UN membership status for the state of Palestine, demonstrating that kicking the Palestinians is always a good way to maintain Israeli favor! The vote was 12 (including France, Japan and South Korea) in favor, two abstentions (the shameless United Kingdom and, surprisingly, Switzerland) and an American veto. The US insisted that elevation of Palestine’s diplomatic status can only be obtained after negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield absurdly raised another objection: “Right now, the Palestinians don’t have control over a significant portion of what is supposed to be their state. It’s being controlled by a terrorist organization.” She was referring to Hamas but the comment actually more correctly is applicable to Israel. In any event, a leaked White House memo had previously revealed that Biden opposes full UN membership and statehood for the Palestinians without Israel’s approval, which, of course, will not be forthcoming.
So we have Israel as the aggressor against two countries that were not declared enemies and had not attacked the Jewish state in any way in many, many years. But when Israel attacked them, committing a major war crime Joe Biden and company preferred to sit on their hands and mumble, saving their vituperation for when Iran staged a deliberately mild counter-attack as a warning. That is called hypocrisy, to turn things on their head to provide the answer that one wants to see and it applies equally to Biden accusing the Russians of “illegal occupation” in Ukraine while Israel’s theft of Syria’s Golan Heights and ongoing seizure of the West Bank goes unchallenged by Washington. And the pushback against Iran is unlikely to diminish very soon as the Jewish controlled US Congress also has the bit between its teeth to demonstrate how much it loves Israel. Congressman Steve Scalise, GOP House Majority Leader, has announced that “In light of Iran’s unjustified attack on Israel, the House will move from its previously announced legislative schedule next week to instead consider legislation that supports our ally Israel and holds Iran and its terrorist proxies accountable. The House of Representatives stands strongly with Israel, and there must be consequences for this unprovoked attack.” Over at the Senate Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas is advocating punishing Iran by beating on its possible friends in the US, physically attacking folks who are demonstrating in support of the Palestinians. Cotton said that the “pro-Hamas criminals” should be confronted by angry citizens who “take matters into [their] own hands” and confront the offenders, endorsing the use of force against peaceful demonstrators.
But there is also the back story behind why Israel likely attacked the Iranians in Syria in the first place. I and a number of other observers immediately after the Israeli attack assumed that the Jewish state had staged a deliberate over-the-top provocation to draw Washington into its wars. Just as in the case of the October 7th Gaza attack by Hamas, which Israel had full knowledge of and let happen, Netanyahu sought to create a situation in which it would goad Iran into being forced to retaliate to force an “ironclad” Biden to protect its “ally” by taking on Iran directly.
Why did Israel do it beyond the obvious desire to destroy Iran just like it is destroying the Palestinians? It was done because Israel has likely become aware that it is viewed as the world’s greatest pariah state due to its genocide in Gaza, to include the recent horrific killing of hundreds of Palestinians in the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza as well as the targeted assassination of seven employees of a charity that was bringing in food to those starving due to Israel’s blocking the entry of relief supplies. And also because Israel is actually not winning its war against Hamas, it needed to shift the narrative to something different. That would be using its time-honored technique of making itself once again the “victim” in confronting a powerful new enemy, Iran, which would make the problem of bad public relations with the world over Gaza be in part mitigated.
A shift in the story would also presumably bring with it the expected help from the United States and its European allies to do the hard work in killing Iranians. And the trick seems to have worked, predictably. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain has been recently facing demands to cut off arms shipments to Israel because of the devastating death toll in Gaza, but on the following Monday, he was able to salute the British warplanes that had shot down some Iranian drones sent by Iran to attack Israel. It was a telling example of how Israel has been able to scramble the equation in the Middle East. Faced with a intensively publicized barrage of Iranian missiles, Britain, the United States, France and others rushed to help the Israelis who had in fact started the conflict. The United States is also currently planning on increasing the pressure on Iran through a series of tough new sanctions being prepared by Treasury Secretary Janice Yellen, saying “Treasury will not hesitate to work with our allies to use our sanctions authority to continue disrupting the Iranian regime’s malign and destabilizing activity.” Yellen notably did nothing when Israel committed a major war crime in its attack on the Iranian Consulate General in Damascus, nor has she supported sanctions over the Israeli Gaza genocide. She is, of course, Jewish. More aid for the Jewish state is also still waiting for a congressional vote to approve the $14 billion currently in the pipeline, with Washington Reportclaiming that this year’s total US aid to Netanyahu will likely exceed $25 billion “in direct costs related to its fervent support for Israel.”
If there is evidence that Moscow plans a march across Europe, Americans deserve to see it, congresswoman says.
US intelligence agencies should provide proof of the Russian expansionism they claim justifies a new $61 billion war chest for Ukraine, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) has insisted. The “proxy war” they are funding will inevitably end in defeat for Kiev, she claimed.
Speaking on Monday in an interview with former White House aide Steve Bannon, Greene pushed back against claims that Russian forces will take Poland and continue “marching across Europe” if they are allowed to defeat Ukraine.
She noted that US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) only agreed to the $61 billion Ukraine aid bill, which was approved on Saturday, after hearing intelligence briefings hyping the Russian threat.
“If the American people are going to have to pay for it, then show us this proof that was shown to Mike Johnson in the SCIF [sensitive compartment information facility],” Greene said. “Why is this classified information? If this is a real threat to all of Europe, if this is a threat to America and our national security, then roll out the presentation.”
The second-term lawmaker said Johnson received no such classified briefings on the US border crisis, which poses a real threat to the American people. “They don’t care about that,” she said. “They care about continuing the business model built on blood and murder and war in foreign countries, the business model that continues funding the military-industrial complex in order, supposedly, to create American jobs and build up the American economy.”
Greene reiterated her call to oust Johnson as speaker, saying Republican voters are so disgusted about the Ukraine bill that the party will lose control of the House in this year’s election if the current leadership remains in place. The White House’s emergency funding request for Kiev had been stalled since last fall because a majority of Republicans opposed it. Republican lawmakers voted against the legislation by a 112-101 margin on Saturday, but Johnson overrode his own party by allowing a vote and winning passage with unanimous Democrat support.
Johnson won praise from the Washington media for his reversal on Ukraine aid – CNN even likened him to Winston Churchill – while Greene came under attack for criticizing him. The New York Post put a picture of Greene on its Sunday cover with a Soviet ushanka superimposed on her head and a caption saying, “Nyet, Moscow Marjorie.”
Greene insisted that congressional Republicans can’t win in the November election without the support of ‘America First’ voters. She added that sending more aid to Ukraine will only cause more bloodshed without changing the outcome of the conflict.
“This just continues the war maybe a few more months, maybe to the end of the summer,” Greene said. “It doesn’t guarantee a Ukrainian victory because everyone knows they’re going to lose eventually. It just is a matter of when. But it does guarantee that more Ukrainian men will be slaughtered on the battlefield.”
When future historians go searching for the final nail in the US coffin, they may well settle on the date April 20, 2024.
On that day Congress passed legislation to fund two and a half wars, hand what’s left of our privacy over to the CIA and NSA, and give the US president the power to shut down whatever part of the Internet he disagrees with.
The nearly $100 billion grossly misnamed “National Security Supplemental” guarantees that Ukrainians will continue to die in that country’s unwinnable war with Russia, that Palestinian civilians will continue to be slaughtered in Gaza with US weapons, and that the neocons will continue to push us toward a war with China.
It was a total victory for the war party.
The huge spending bill is all about politics for Biden, yet so many Republicans simply went along with it. The last thing the people running Biden’s White House want to see as a close election approaches are ads blaming Biden for “losing Ukraine.”
The US and its allies have already sent over $300 billion to Ukraine and the country is still losing its war with Russia. Nobody believes another $60 billion will pull a victory from the jaws of defeat. But this additional money is meant to keep up appearances until November at the expense of Americans who are forced to pay for it and Ukrainians who are forced to die for it.
Speaker Johnson could not have passed these monstrosities without the full support of House Democrats, as the majority of Republicans voted against more money for Ukraine. So in the worst example of “bipartisanship,” Johnson reached across the aisle, stiffed the Republican majority that elected him Speaker, and pushed through a massive gift to the warfare/(corporate) welfare state.
After the House voted to send another $60 billion to notoriously corrupt Ukraine, Members waved Ukrainian flags on the House Floor and chanted “Ukraine, Ukraine.” While I find it distasteful and disgusting, in some way it seemed fitting. After all, they may as well chant the name of a foreign country because they certainly don’t care about this country!
Along with sending $100 billion that we don’t have to fund more overseas war, Speaker Johnson threw in another version of the Tik Tok ban, which gives Joe Biden and future presidents the power to shut down websites at will by simply declaring them to be “foreign adversary controlled.”
Not to be outdone, the US Senate on that same day passed the extension of Section 702 of the FISA Act, which not only allowed the government to continue spying on us without a warrant, but also contained new language massively expanding how they can spy on us.
Many conservative voters are asking what the point of Republican control of the House is if the agenda is determined by Democrats. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is even reported to have bragged to his colleagues about how easily Speaker Johnson gave Democrats everything they wanted and asked for nothing in return.
What is the silver lining in all this bad news? Most Republicans in the House voted against continuing the Ukraine war. That’s a good start. Our ideas are growing, not only across the country but even in the DC swamp. Take courage and don’t give up! Work for peace!
The World Health Organization have just released their latest draft of the amendments to the International Health Regulations, due to be voted on at the World Health Assembly in just over one month’s time. Seemingly due to the public awakening, led by Dr Meryl Nass in conjunction with other courageous doctors and public health professionals, they have watered down the legislation significantly. The legislation is in effect, a business model which intends to continue to profit from ongoing pandemics using fear and control. It seems they may be realising that the people hold some power.
A briefing to follow, and link to the text below. Headlines here:
Massive climb down from the WHO Working Group on almost ALL substantive concerns that we and others have raised over the past 18 months.
The WHO’s recommendations remain non-binding. Article 13A.1 which would have required Member States to follow directives of the WHO as the guiding and coordinating authority for international public health has been dropped entirely.
An egregious proposal which would have erased reference to the primacy of “dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms” has been dropped. This proposal marked a particularly low water-mark, and should never have been suggested.
Provisions that would have allowed the WHO to intervene on the basis of a mere ‘potential’ health emergency have been dropped: a pandemic must now either be happening or likely to happen, but with the safeguard that to activate its IHR powers the WHO must demonstrate that coordinated international action is necessary.
Proposals to construct a global censorship and ‘information control’ operation led by the WHO have been dropped.
A material dampening of the expansionist ambitions of the WHO: provisions which had proposed to expand the scope of the IHRs to include “all risks with a potential to impact public health” (e.g. climate change, food supply) have been deleted. The scope now remains essentially unchanged, focussed on the spread of disease.
Explicit recognition that Member States not the WHO are responsible for implementing these regulations, and bold plans for the WHO to police compliance with all aspects of the IHRs have been materially watered down.
Many other provisions have been diluted, including: surveillance mechanisms that would have given the WHO a mandate to find thousands of potential new pandemic signals; provisions which would have encouraged and favoured digital health passports; provisions requiring forced technology transfers and diversion of national resources. The published document is only an interim draft, to be put before the IHR Working Group during this week’s final negotiations, so it could yet change. That said, on the basis of this draft this is a profound victory for people power over unaccountable technocracy.
This is a redacted version of the deaths in the Citizens Database of New Zealand, as at July 2023.
There are also thousands of reports in the database (not seen in this spreadsheet), from people living with injuries sustained after taking the medical products. This is hardly surprising given the various issues with manufacturing processes alone, such as described by Dr Maria Gutschi and then, following discovery of DNA contamination in both Pfizer and Moderna vials, the Expert Panel at the World Council for Health.
Lynda Wharton talked about why she started this database with journalist Liz Gunn, in January 2022. She is a staunch advocate for the vaccine injured and has a team of qualified volunteers working behind the scenes at The Health Forum NZ. She is censored by state funded media and social media platforms, eg Facebook removed her account with over 60,000 followers including many who were vaccine injured and using the page to find support and connect with each other.
The moment Kissinger’s last breath left his corpse, media commentators lost no time running out the gates, either singing songs of slavish praise about the “great liberal statesman” on one hand or composing devastating critiques of the bloodstained trail of tears Kissinger’s legacy left on the world.
Speaking on Israel’s future in 2012, Kissinger sent shockwaves of confusion through the world when he said, “in 10 years, there will be no more Israel.”
Why would Kissinger, a man who devoted such a major part of his life to the cause of Zionism, believe with certainty that Israel would no longer exist in 10 years? What was supposed to happen under a Hillary Clinton regime that would have resulted in Kissinger’s prediction unfolding in 2022?
Did Kissinger not want the Middle East stability he so often spoke so highly of?
His apparent dual support for Zionist empowerment on one hand and his belief in the impending destruction of Israel on the other is not a glitch in the matrix nor a contradiction in Sir Kissinger’s thinking. Rather, it represents two sides of one bloody program that ultimately involves purging the Holy Land of both Jews and Arabs.
Since Kissinger’s 2012 opinion provided such an important, ironic crack in the machinery of oligarchism, I’d like to take a moment to invite you to join me as we peek through this crack into a story that may take us as far back as Babylon…
‘Greater Israel’ as a British Imperial Project
In 1914, the man who later became Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizman, stated:
“Should Palestine fall within the British sphere of influence, and should Britain encourage a Jewish settlement there, as a British dependency, we could have in 20 to 30 years a million Jews there-perhaps more; they would. . . form a very effective guard for the Suez/Canal.”
These words indicated a deeply underappreciated value that leading Jewish Zionists had for the British empire’s plans for global control over a century ago; these Zionists believed the empire could further their own plans for a Jewish state. Lord Shaftesbury’s Zionist project was launched in 1839, the British Empire created the Palestinian Exploration Fund in 1865, and the founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, joined the cause of convincing the world’s Jews to live in the desert, but the role of British intelligence’s hidden hand in shaping the state of Israel, as well as international fascism more broadly, is often ignored. [1]
It wasn’t ignored by Sir Winston Churchill, then Lord of the British Admiralty during WWI. He wrote forcefully about the international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world on one hand, but he also spoke proudly of Zionism, saying in 1917: “If, as it may well happen, there should be created in our own lifetime by the banks of the Jordan a Jewish state under the protection of the British crown … [it] would be especially in harmony with the truest interests of the British Empire.”
Additionally, Leo Amery was a close collaborator of pro-fascist Zionist leader Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky during the former’s management of British Mandate Palestine (1925-1929) and co-founder of the Jewish Legion, which Jabotinsky went on to control. More than a Zionist, Amery was a believer in Cecil Rhodes’ vision for “a Church of the British Empire.”
Amery stated of his peculiar religion: “The Empire is not external to any of the British nation. It is something like the Kingdom of Heaven within ourselves.” (Take note that the term “Kingdom of Heaven” was the name of the Templar Kingdom of Jerusalem, which will play a larger role in this story).
After leading the passage of anti-Jewish immigration laws in England in 1905 that prevented persecuted Russian Jews from coming to the UK, Balfour wrote in 1919 that Zionism would “mitigate the age-long miseries created for Western civilization by the presence in its midst of a Body which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or to absorb.”
Balfour saw the creation of Israel as one stone that could kill two birds by 1) providing an excuse to purge the Jews from Europe and 2) creating a perfect weapon for destabilization in the geopolitical pivot of Halford Mackinder’s Heartland and the cross-section of all major civilizational forces on the earth.
Caption: The Silk Road trade routes of the Han Dynasty were revived again under the Tang Dynasty and have historically played a major role in disrupting systems of global empire by encouraging trade, cooperation, and understanding around diverse cultures (in opposition to the Crusader agenda that has promoted ‘clash of civilizations’ ideologies).
In his book Der Judenstat, Theodor Herzl openly admitted this when he said:
“We should, there, form a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism. We should, as a neutral state, remain in contact with all Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence.”
Herzl was clear that like his British Imperial (and typically antisemitic pro-fascist sponsors), he envisioned Israel’s borders to extend “from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.”
A woman cast her vote in the National Popular Consultation, April 21, 2024 | Photo: teleSUR
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“Venezuela won in this electoral party,” CNE spokesperson Arellano pointed out.
On Sunday the 2024 National Popular Consultation concluded with a massive participation of citizens throughout Venezuelan territory.
Carried out through over 15,000 voting centers, this democratic process allowed residents to decide on 4,500 development projects that the Venezuelan government will finance and the communities will execute.
Carolina Arellano, the spokesperson for the National Electoral Commission (CNE), stated that the approved projects will begin to be implemented starting next week.
“Venezuela won in this electoral party,” the Bolivarian official said, shortly before the end of election day.
#Venezuela | The Venezuelan people went out to vote this Sunday in the consultation on communal projects. Communities exercising democracy for collective benefit pic.twitter.com/0rLYWW3vmm
The 2024 National Popular Consultation was preceded by a process of activation of grassroots organizations which allowed some 27,000 development projects to be discussed and proposed throughout the national territory.
During election day, over 49,000 communal councils and 1,300,000 popular spokespersons were active, participating in audits and collaborating in the scrutiny. Some 158 international observers also participated.
Arellano congratulated the communal councils for their organizational work and the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) for the delivery of the electoral material.
#Venezuela | The massive participation of Venezuelans in this day demonstrates the commitment to democracy and the willingness to work together for the common good. The exercise of participatory democracy is essential to build a more just and inclusive society. pic.twitter.com/5N6dCS41L8
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The Most Revolutionary Act 