The Road from Serfdom

December 20, 2022

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By Batiushka

Introduction: The Pathology

Just like Zionist Jews (and, as we have often said before, far from all Jews are Zionists), the Western elite suffers from a pathological superiority complex, which maintains that it has the right to play at God. Thus, the Western elite belittles Christ-God, proclaiming itself to be the Vicar of God, that is, the Substitute for God, on earth. As such, it resembles Judaism and even Islam, which also proclaim that they are unique Civilisations. However, they have not developed the practical technology of violence. Of Israelite origin, this complex has a theological name and a millennial history of self-justification, the details of which I will not bother readers with here. This ‘Holy and Roman’ Imperial complex was from the outset an ideology which says that the Western elite are the Chosen People and all their crimes are therefore justified. ‘Gott mit uns’ (‘God with us’), as the German Army used to proclaim or, more recently, as George Bush stated: ‘I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, ‘George, go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan. And I did. And then God would tell me George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq. And I did’. (1)

Cowboys and Indians

The Scottish-American historian, Niall Campbell Ferguson (yes, he would have to be a ‘cursed’ Campbell – ask a Scotsman what that means) is one of their most eloquent contemporary spokesmen, for whom the West is Best and the Rest is Messed (2). This pathology, because that is what it is, has become hereditary narcissism among a large portion, though not all, of Western people. These narcissists call the Non-West ‘backward’, ‘underdeveloped’, ‘evil’ and ‘primitive’. This is because they have not yet ‘advanced’ to the depths of Western barbarism. The problem is that such Westerners view the world through the lens of cowboy films, quite appropriately called ‘Westerns’. In these there are white hats and black hats, good and bad, in other words, the West and the Rest. And the Rest are ‘Red Indians’, ‘natives’, ‘savages’ and must be scalped (the practice spread by Western settlers) and ‘cleared’ like wild animals or else sent to ‘reservations’ in deserts or on some other worthless land, so that ‘progress’ can take place and the natural resources of their stolen lands can be ‘developed’ for ‘civilised’ people to profit by.

However, the reality is that it is the Cowboys, not the Indians, who have caused all the planet’s major problems, from industrial exploitation to ecological catastrophe, from nuclear weapons to ‘World Wars’, or rather perhaps, to the World War. Let us recall that the cannibalism of the First World War was caused by the 1914 assassination by an atheist, employed by a masonic organisation, of a righteous couple who wanted to correct some terrible injustices. And it was that promised correction that brought them death (3). In turn, the Second World War was caused by the unjust outcome of that assassination, the outcome that had taken place in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles in 1919. (What more appropriate place for narcissists than to look at one another in a Hall of Mirrors?) As for the Third World War, it began in Kiev in 2014, on the centenary of the First World War. Perhaps then we should more correctly call this Third World War, World War I, Part III. All this cannibalism is taking place because we have yet to undo the injustices that both caused and then ensued from World War I, Parts I and II.

The gaslighting elite claims that their Western Values (Anti-Values?) are the only ones that are ‘Universal’ and they preach ‘Human Rights’, ‘Freedom and Democracy’. Once weaponised, as they are, these self-proclaimed ‘Values’ mean that the Western world has every right to humiliate, destroy and deny (‘cancel’, as they say nowadays) and conquer, exploit and colonise all others, all Non-Western Civilisations. The latter range from Orthodox Christian to Jewish, from Muslim to Hindu, from Aztec to Zimbabwean, from Amazonian to Cahokian, from Buddhist to Confucian Civilisation. Any resistance to Western ‘Values’ must be crushed by organised violence, whether by arms, ‘sanctions’, or propaganda, whether in the eleventh century or in the twenty-first century, as is happening at this very moment in the Ukraine. Russia, having naively swallowed the Western delusion for over 300 years, both in its equally delusional Capitalist and Communist forms – it is exactly the same destructive materialism – has finally stood up to the delusional Western lie. This is a millennial turning-point in world history unfolding before us.

The Road From Serfdom

Today, the whole free (= Non-Western) world is looking on and anxiously watching, basically supportive of Russia, but not too visibly – just in case this millennial transformation goes wrong. Fundamentally, the free world knows that if Russia loses, then the cause of freedom and sovereignty in the world is finished, independent China India are finished. Then the Klaus Schwab-style nightmare of the World Dictatorship of Serfs, ceases to be fantasy and is put into practice. There will be no further point in human life and so the world will end in the Apocalypse. Alternatively, others proclaim another, equally catastrophic scenario. This is that the West will not back down in its war in the Ukraine and therefore will make the future nuclear through a false flag nuclear incident in the Ukraine, which it will pin on Russia, like Flight MH17. But the cold and hungry of the West do not want nuclear war and even if some of the elite are so crazy as to want it, not all. Crazy elitists could be replaced. As for the journalists who have continually lied to date, they would simply say that they had previously only reported what they had been told to report.

In other words, a nuclear war is not an inevitable scenario. In any case, how can Russia lose? We all believe that Russia will win, because treasonous regime change in Russia is not going to happen as it did in February 1917, and that was the only reason why, fully armed and ready for victory, Russia lost then (4). Even the arms merchants behind NATO are fearful of any official involvement or of the war spreading and Russia itself is careful to avoid any spread of war to a NATO country. They only want to fill their pockets, not the Apocalypse. It is precisely the loss of the war by the West that could provide the solution to the Western problem. The solution to reverse the situation in the West has to be radical because, as we have said, the Western delusion is millennial, the delusion lies at its very roots (5). Warnings have been given for centuries but nobody has ever listened. It is rather like a child who you tell not to play with matches, but who still insists on playing with matches to see what will happen if he lights a match and then sets fire to the whole house. And that is what has happened. The whole Western house is now on fire in an act of suicide.

The solution is regime change in the EU and the US/UK, that is, the changing of the elites. Now, all the Western countries of the world are run by elites with their many hangers-on. The elites provide bipartisan dictatorships. The ironic fact that it actually dares call these dictatorships, by the rich on behalf of the rich, ‘liberal democracies’ is irrelevant. I doubt if any regime change will come through some sort of armed uprising and I would not encourage that either. Rather governments – together with their fantastical, anti-Russian rhetoric – will collapse through the weight of their own lies, injustices and corruption, of protests, strikes and bankruptcies, of cold, poverty and hunger among people who have never been so cold, poor and hungry before. In other words, Western regimes will collapse under pressure from the grassroots, because they are so rotten on the inside. Which will collapse first, the EU or the US/UK, Eurosodom or Gomerica? We suspect the Eurozionists of the EU because those countries are bearing the brunt of their own elites’ suicide bid on the orders of the US/UK elite, and there are already splits among them.

Conclusion: When Death Has Perished, Hell is Overthrown

It is only the collapse of European countries in their narcissistic form that could allow Europeans to become real Europeans once more. Cold, poverty and hunger could destroy the illusions of the richer half (the poorer half has never really had them) that Europe is made up of superior beings with a right to global domination and that humanity is not in reality all in the same boat (6). Only then could Europeans understand that Europe’s only meaning is as a small part of the Afro-Eurasian landmass and that it has no Divine right to plunder everything outside, or even inside, their tip of the North-Western peninsula of that landmass. We are talking about Europe returning to its geographical and historical roots, and that is literally radical. The richer half of the Western world, the part that flew Ukrainian flags, not the poorer half, has been so sucked into its own self-delusion that it can only change once it has faced death. Only a visit to the doors of death can soften their proud hearts. Death, the enemy of life, looms. But so does Life after Death for those who do not want hell, where the devil keeps the laws. That is the Road from Serfdom.

17 December 2022

Notes:

1. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/civilization-west-and-rest/about/

2. For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/8c7xri/did_george_w_bush_really_say_god_told_me_to/

3. The to-be-assassinated Germanic Franz-Ferdinand, married to a Slav in a marriage of love, consulted carefully about the future of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and offered its oppressed peoples a measure of justice. For this the opposition slandered him as ‘insane’. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trialism_in_Austria-Hungary

4. As even Churchill said on 5 November 1919: ‘The Bolsheviks robbed Russia at one stroke of two most precious things, peace and victory—the victory that was within her grasp and the peace which was her dearest desire’.

5. As St John the Baptist said: ‘And now also the axe is laid to the root of the trees: therefore every tree which does not produce good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire’ (Matthew 3:10).

6. The Indian Presidency of the G20 and its summit in New Delhi on September 9-10 2023, has as its slogan: ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’. This is what Russia is about, but not the West, which wants unceasing destruction, disunity and a future of unceasing war and division.

PALESTINIANS ARE NATIVE AMERICANS: IT’S TIME TO CORRECT THE LANGUAGE OF HISTORY

NOVEMBER 16TH, 2022

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By Ramzy Baroud

At a recent Istanbul conference that brought many Palestinian scholars and activists together to discuss the search for a common narrative on Palestine, a Palestinian member of the audience declared at the end of a brief, but fiery intervention, ‘we are not red Indians’.

The reference was a relatively old one. It was attributed to former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during an interview in his office in Ramallah where he was forcefully confined and surrounded, two years earlier, by the Israeli military that had re-invaded the populous Palestinian city. In the interview, the head of the PLO and president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) said that, despite Israel’s attempt at eradicating the Palestinian people, they remain steadfast. Israel had “failed to wipe us out,” Arafat said, adding, “we are not red Indians.”

Though Arafat’s intention was not to degrade or insult Native American communities, the statement, often taken out of context, hardly reflects the deep solidarity between Palestinians and national liberation struggles, including indigenous struggles around the world. Ironically, Arafat, more than any Palestinian leader, has forged ties with numerous communities in the Global South and in fact all over the world. A generation of activists had linked Arafat to their initial awareness, then involvement in Palestine solidarity movements.

What surprised me is that the comment on Palestinians not being ‘red Indians’ in Istanbul was quoted repeatedly and, occasionally, solicited applause from the audience, which only stopped when the convener of the conference, a well-regarded Palestinian professor, declared frustratingly, “they are neither ‘red’ nor Indian.” Indeed, they are not. Actually, they are the natural allies of the Palestinian people, like numerous indigenous communities, who have actively supported the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

The seemingly simple incident or poor choice of words, however, represents a much greater challenge facing Palestinians as they attempt to reanimate a new discourse on Palestinian liberation that is no longer hostage to the self-serving language of the PA elites in Ramallah.

For several years, a new generation of Palestinians has been fighting on two different fronts: against Israel’s military occupation and apartheid, on the one hand, and PA repression on the other. For this generation to succeed in reclaiming the struggle for justice, they must also reclaim a unifying discourse, not only to reconnect their own fragmented communities throughout historic Palestine, but also re-establish solidarity lines of communication across the globe.

I say ‘re-establish’, because Palestine was a common denominator among many national and indigenous struggles in the Global South. This was not a random outcome. Throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s, fierce wars of liberation were fought across continents, leading in most cases to the defeat of traditional colonial powers and, in some cases like Cuba, Vietnam and Algeria, to true decolonization. With Palestine being a compounded case of western imperialism and Zionist settler colonialism, the Palestinian cause was embraced by numerous national struggles. It was, and remains, a most raw example of western supported ethnic cleansing, genocide, apartheid, hypocrisy but also inspiring indigenous resistance.

PLO factions, intellectuals and activists were known and respected worldwide as ambassadors to the Palestinian cause. Three years following his assassination by the Israeli Mossad in a Beirut car bombing, Palestinian novelist Ghassan Kanafani was awarded posthumously the Annual Lotus Prize for Literature by the Union of Asian and African Writers as a delineation of the common struggle between peoples of both continents. Not only has Palestine served as a physical connection between Asia and Africa, it has also served as an intellectual and solidarity connection.

Arab countries, which also fought their own painful but heroic national liberation wars, played a major role in the centrality of Palestine in the political discourses of African and Asian countries. Many non-Arab countries supported collective Arab causes, especially Palestine, at the United Nations, pushed for the isolation of Israel, backed Arab boycotts and even hosted PLO offices and fighters. When Arab governments began changing their political priorities, these nations, sadly but unsurprisingly, followed suit.

The massive geopolitical changes after the Cold War, in favor of the US-led Western camp, profoundly and negatively impacted Palestine’s relations with the Arab and the rest of the world. It also divided the Palestinians, localizing the Palestinian struggle in a process that seemed to be determined mostly by Israel alone. Gaza was placed under a permanent siege, the West Bank was splintered by numerous illegal Jewish settlements and military checkpoints, Jerusalem was swallowed whole and Palestinians in Israel became victims of a police state that defined itself primarily on racial grounds.

Abandoned by the world and their own leadership, oppressed by Israel and bewildered by remarkable events beyond their control, some Palestinians turned against one another. This was the age of factionalism. However, Palestinian factionalism is bigger than Fatah and Hamas, Ramallah and Gaza. Equally dangerous to the self-serving politics are the numerous provisional discourses that it espoused, neither governed by any collective strategy or an inclusive national narrative.

When the PLO was ousted from Lebanon following the Israeli invasion and deadly war, the nature of the Palestinian struggle transformed. Headquartered in Tunisia, the PLO was no longer able to present itself as a leader of a liberation movement in any practical sense. The Oslo Accords of 1993 resulted from this political exile and subsequent marginalization. It also accentuated an existing trend where an actual war of liberation turned into a corporate form of liberation, hunger for funds, false status and, worse, a negotiated surrender.

This much is now familiar and acknowledged by many Palestinians. Less discussed, however, is that nearly forty years of this process left Palestinians with a different political discourse than that which existed for decades prior to Oslo.

Undoubtedly, Palestinians are aware of the need for a new liberated language. This is not an easy task, nor is it a randomly generated process. The indoctrination that resulted from the Oslo culture, the factional language, the provincial political discourse of various Palestinian communities, left Palestinians with limited tools through which to express the priorities of the new era. Unity is not a political document. Neither is international solidarity. It is a process that is shaped by a language which should be spoken collectively, relentlessly and boldly. In this new language, Palestinians are Native Americans, not in their supposed propensity to be ‘wiped out’, but in their pride, resilience and continued quest for equality and justice.

Goodbye, Trafalgar Square: Celebrating Freedom in Europe

August 16, 2022

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A Look Forward to 2035 by Batiushka

England

Following the 2034 collapse of Britain and the popular overthrow of its millennial Establishment after nearly two decades of political turmoil, England moves ahead. Last week international arrest warrants were issued by the new People’s Government for the detention of the elderly war criminals Blair (Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq), Cameron (Libya, Syria and the Yemen) and Johnson (the Ukraine), who are all believed to be in hiding, cowering from justice somewhere in Florida, where they are now being hunted down.

As regards internal changes to the English Capital, just today the following changes have been announced by the People’s Government in London, the Capital of England, part of its programme of ‘Re-Englanding England’, also known as ‘Debritainisation’.

England Square

Today, exactly two hundred years after ‘Trafalgar Square’ in London was given the name of an Arabic-named Cape in Spain, the Square is to be renamed ‘England Square’. The statue of Nelson on its column is to be replaced by a statue of the effective founder of England, King Alfred the Great, known as ‘England’s Darling’, ‘The Truthteller’ and ‘The Lawgiver’. It will then be known as ‘Alfred’s Column’. A spokesman for the People’s Government said that it in no way wished to denigrate Nelson, whose tactical genius and personal bravery are undoubted, but Demilitarisation is an inherent part of Debritainisation. The statue will be removed to the English Museum, formerly called ‘The British Museum’. This has plenty of empty space, since so many of its artefacts, looted from around the world by British imperialists mainly since the eighteenth-century, have been returned to their countries of origin.

At the same time the four lions around the base of Alfred’s Column will also be sent to the English Museum as part of the policy of Demilitarisation, that is, as part of the policy of the removal of aggressive symbols of imperialist militarism. They will be replaced by four female figures, personifying Motherhood, Peace, Justice and Freedom. The four plinths for statues on England Square, at present occupied by three statues (the fourth plinth is empty) of the German King George IV and the imperialist militarists, Napier and Havelock, are also to be sent to the English Museum. They will be replaced by statues of literary and social geniuses of English history, known as ‘The Four Williams’: William Langland (1332-1386), William Shakespeare (1564-1616), William Blake (1757-1827) and William Cobbett (1763-1835).

As readers may know, Langland wrote a visionary English-language poem and allegory called ‘Piers Plowman’, in which he denounced the corruption of the medieval Catholic Church and praised the simple faith of the people. As for Shakespeare, he was the most brilliant poet of the English language and a very perceptive psychologist, who described in detail the good and bad in human nature and their motivations. Blake was the visionary poet and artist who opposed the appalling exploitation of his age and wrote the new English National Anthem, ‘Jerusalem’, in which he denounced the ‘dark, satanic mills’ of the so-called ‘Industrial Revolution’, that is, of the mass exploitation of industrial workers. Cobbett was a politician who struggled for social justice and wrote against the collectivisation, or privatisation, that is, just plain theft, of the common land in England, euphemistically called the ‘Enclosures’. He constantly campaigned against corruption and poverty and in favour of rural prosperity and freedom.

As for the busts of the three imperialist Admirals, Jellicoe, Beatty and Cunningham, in England Square, they are also to be sent to the English Museum and be replaced by busts of three well-known poets: a soldier (Wilfred Owen), a merchant sailor (John Masefield) and an airman, John Gillespie Magee (author of ‘High Flight’). They are in memory of the sacrifices of ordinary men, ‘the lions led by donkeys’, in the imperialist wars of the British past. The statue of Charles I on the south side of England Square, usurped and then beheaded by a clique of grasping merchants, will be retained. However, the statues in front of the National Gallery, of the Scottish King James II and of the slave-owning colonist George Washington, will be sent to the English Museum and be replaced by statues of the two Patronal Saints of England, St George and St Edmund.

The Square of the Peoples

Meanwhile, there will also be changes to the statues outside ‘Parliament’, renamed ‘The House of the People’ since the abolition of the House of Lords, to that in the Guildhall, and to the twelve statues in Parliament Square, now renamed ‘The Square of the Peoples’. Outside the House of the People, the statue of Cromwell is to be replaced by a statue of an Irish peasant, at least 200,000 (10% of the population) of whom the brutal thug Cromwell had massacred. In the Guildhall the statue of Thatcher is to be replaced by the statue of a Yorkshire coal-miner. Both old statues are to be taken to the English Museum to protect them from vandalism.

In The Square of the Peoples, nine of the present twelve statues are also to be removed. These are, in anti-clockwise order: the statue of Churchill, replaced by that of an English child orphaned by bombing in the Second World War; that of David Lloyd George by an injured World War One Welsh soldier; that of the South African Prime Minister Smuts by a Boer woman from a British concentration camp during the Boer War; that of the British Imperialist Prime Minister Palmerston by that of a Russian peasant-soldier from the British invasion of Russia (the so-called ‘Crimean War’); that of the British Imperialist Prime Minister Smith-Stanley (the Earl of Derby) by that of a Chinese woman suffering in the so-called, British-caused ‘Opium War’ (Genocide of China); that of the British Imperialist Prime Minister Disraeli by that of a Bulgarian peasant-woman, oppressed by the Ottomans whom Disraeli immorally supported; that of the British Imperialist Prime Minister Peel by that of a starving Irishwoman from the Irish Potato Famine; that of the British Imperialist Prime Minister Canning by that of a Scottish crofter, removed by force from his land which was stolen from him in the so-called ‘Highland Clearances’; that of Lincoln by that of a Tasmanian Aborigene, representing the treatment of North, Central and South American Natives, Australian Aborigenes, genocided Tasmanians and Maori, all as a result of British ‘colonisation’ (land-theft). The statues of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Millicent Fawcett will remain as symbols of the striving for freedom of Africans, Indians and of women, who were freed from Victorian oppression and the deprivation of rights.

Europe

The new English People’s Government, elected by over 85% of the electorate according to the new proportional democracy, is keen to depose the old tyrants and celebrate the victims of tyranny. It has come to our knowledge that parallel events are about to occur not only in newly-reunited Ireland and newly-independent Scotland and Wales, but also in the newly-freed countries of the former EU. This follows last month’s sacking of the EU headquarters in the Berlaymont building in Brussels. Everywhere in Western Europe the flags of freedom are beginning to flutter defiantly.

In Paris the Arc de Triomphe in Paris is to be renamed ‘L’Arc du Peuple’ (‘The People’s Arch’) and Napoleon’s bloody battles are to be removed from it. Rome, Brussels, Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Lisbon – all are reviewing names of streets, statues and monuments. As for the English Government, it has already joined the new Confederation of Free European Nations (CFEN), a loose structure which will meet in various European Capitals. It was originally suggested by the paternal Russian government and has been formed to replace the old centralised EU and its unelected bureaucrats and tyrants.

15 August 2035

Breaking News:

It has just been announced that Antony Blair has been captured by the Free American Police after being found hiding in a hole in the ground near a farmhouse outside Miami. Blair was shown in a photograph with a full beard and hair longer than in his familiar appearance. He was described by police officials as being in good health despite his 82 years. The details of his double trial, which is to take place in Belgrade and then in Baghdad, have not yet been determined. The local police call their prisoner ‘Vic’, which stands for ‘Very Important Criminal’. Officials said that Blair whined to them after his arrest: ‘I am innocent, I did not do anything, I was only following orders from the White House’.

Pro-Ukrainian, but Anti-Nazi

June 17, 2022

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By Batiushka

I have noticed that there are a few reviewers of the Special Operation in the Ukraine who seem to support it only because they are racist, anti-Ukrainian. Let it be made clear that this is not the case of the overwhelming majority of its supporters. And it is certainly not the case of the vast majority of the Russian forces involved in the Operation. For example, if you watch videos of captured or active Ukrainian troops, they virtually all express themselves only in Russian. True, the former Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, did make some ambiguous remarks about certain Ukrainians, but he was not referring to all Ukrainians, as we explain below.

The fact is that Russians and Ukrainians are ethnically one, they are brothers and sisters, all East Slavs and also virtually all Orthodox Christians by culture. This is particularly why Russian forces are doing their utmost not to harm civilians or damage civilian infrastructure. That is why when Kiev troops are killed in action, Russians refer to them not as ‘Ukrainians’, but as ‘nationalists’, who are those to whom Dmitry Medvedev was referring in his remarks that the nationalists are ‘bastards and scum’. The Ukrainians are not the enemy, the enemy is the puppet regime in Kiev, its NATO string-pullers and its brainwashed nationalist/Nazi supporters.

President Putin explained from the very outset and very clearly that the US-created puppet regime in Kiev, with its Nazi/NATO/Zionist backers, is an Anti-Russia. It does not represent the mass of the Ukrainian people, so many of whom have close family in Russia, or now live in Russia, or are married to Russians, or who only speak Russian and not Ukrainian, or who are Russian by culture. The Kiev regime represents only the corrupted elite who choose its politicians and the brainwashed who supported them. We, on the other hand, are pro-Ukrainian, precisely because we are anti-Nazi/anti-NATO/anti-Zionist. We are pro-Ukrainian, life-affirming, not life-denying. We affirm Ukrainian families, not the Nazi-imposed LGBT. Similarly, we are pro-American, but anti-American elite. We want the American people and soul to be liberated from their brainwashing elite.

In the same way Russian soldiers in the First World War were not anti-German, but anti-Kaiser, and in the Second World War were not anti-German, but anti-Nazi. Accounts from the First War tell how Russian soldiers who had wounded advancing German troops in self-defence would crawl out of their trenches at risk to their own lives to pick the wounded up and carry them back for medical care. Many eyewitnesses from the Second War used to tell us how captured German soldiers were given crusts of bread by Russians, who themselves were virtually starving. On the Western side we can something similar portrayed in the well-known novel by Erich Maria Remarque, ‘Im Westen Nichts Neues’, ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’, or in poems by the English soldier Siegfried Sassoon.

We are very far from the racist mocking of other races by, for example, white US soldiers, who called their enemies ‘savages’, ‘redskins’ (the very word ‘redskin’ denotes the essential superficiality of the Nazi obsession with skin colour as a defining trait), ‘niggers’, ‘chinks’, ‘dagos’, ‘nips’, ‘gooks’ or mocked them as subhuman (a translation of the Nazi ‘Untermensch’), or monkeys. Who can forget how only a few years ago the American Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld, called the French ‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys’, had French champagne poured into the New York sewers and launched a ‘Cancel France’ campaign. All this merely displays the utter ignorance and primitive arrogance of the users of such words.

‘Cancel everyone who does not agree with us’, or in the words of the remarkably limited Bush Junior: ‘You are either are with us or against us’. It reminds us that some of the first WASPS to arrive in North America were people who were so intolerant that they could no longer live in England side by side with others who had different views. So they chose to emigrate. Later they proved their intolerance by engaging in witch-hunts and burning innocent women to death. And most of them took part in the genocide of the native people whose land they had stolen and used black slaves. And this intolerance is what their descendants are still displaying today on their Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. ‘We cancel and exclude you and your account because you refuse to agree with us and our ‘superior’ (= Nazi) ‘intelligence’ (= stupidity).

The problem has never been one of Ukrainians. The problem has always been that of the spiritual disease of Nazism. And that is what it is – a spiritual disease. Once the soul of the Ukraine has been liberated from this disease, in other words, once it has been denazified, a New Ukraine will be born. It may well take the form of a Protectorate centred around Kiev and speak a mixture of Ukrainian with Russian and Surzhyk (Ukrainian Russian). It will have secure borders and its people will be patriotic Ukrainians, not in some racist way that denigrates others, but in a positive way that respects others. Once freed of parasitic oligarchs and corruption, the naturally rich New Ukraine could have a brilliant future and take a positive part in the Concert of the Nations.

Once it has been understood that there is no problem with the Ukraine or Ukrainians, but only with Nazism, there may take place other Special Operations in other parts of the world. China may soon launch an Operation in Taiwan to free the ethnic Chinese there from the Nazism of its US-appointed elite. As for Russia, it has not yet finished the job in the Ukraine, where the task is constantly being extended because the Nazi West keeps sending long-range missiles and artillery to Kiev. As long as these weapons are in use, firing on Donetsk or anywhere else in liberated territory, the war will be extended and continue. Russia may physically have to liberate the whole country, mobilising more forces beyond the small expeditionary force it originally sent.

And then if Western aggression continues, it may have to launch other operations in Moldova and the Baltics in order to liberate those peoples too from NATO Nazism, from their corrupt US-appointed elites and EU exploitation. It may have to rebuild them, so that their peoples, economic refugees from corruption living now in Western Europe, can gratefully come home. Beyond that, as regards Western Europe in general, it too will surely one day find itself liberated one way or another from transatlantic tyranny and threats, safe under the Russian security and nuclear umbrella. Someone must defend Western Europe from the threats which for the moment are still coming from outside Afro-Eurasia, which is 86% of the world. Only Russia can do that. Russian troops once liberated Berlin and Paris. Will it have to happen again and maybe this time be extended to include Rome, Madrid and London?

The Special Operation has never been only about the Ukraine. It has always been a proxy conflict on the territory claimed by the Kiev regime. In reality, it is an Operation to defeat Global Nazism – euphemistically called ‘Globalism’. This means defeating Nazism militarily, by destroying the Western-created Kiev regime forces and all the extra NATO weapons foolishly sent to the Ukraine; territorially, by liberating lands and peoples from the Nazi yoke; economically, by creating an alliance of friends among the huge populations of the new G8, of Russia, China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, Turkey, Mexico, approaching 50% of the world’s population. This is called to replace the old, tired, narrow, US-manipulated G7, which represents scarcely 10% of the world’s population. And even the new G8 may yet be doubled to become a G16 to include other vital large countries, like Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Egypt, Vietnam and DR Congo. This would include 60% of the world’s population.

The great task before us is to rebalance the world to take account of its real peoples. As an example of the need to rebalance, over a century ago the Russian Prime Minister Count Piotr Stolypin, speaking of Tsar Nicholas’ ‘Great Asian Programme’ and its partial sabotage by the Western Powers through their Japanese puppet, said the following: ‘Our eagle is a legacy of New Rome…a two-headed eagle. Of course, our eagle is strong and powerful, but if you cut off one of our eagle’s heads, the one facing east, you will not turn him into a one-headed eagle facing west: It will only make him bleed to death’. However, NATO/Nazism has been doing precisely the opposite, trying to remake Russia in its own provincial image and so bleed it to death by cutting off one of its heads.

This is not going to happen, whatever the illusions that were fostered within the West during the treacherous Yeltsin regime in the distant and disastrous 1990s. We have moved on a generation, we are now well into the 21^st century. Russia is now a restored Eurasian Superpower, its double-headed eagle looking East and West, and the Eurasian Heartland, with 70% of the world’s population and so many living ancient civilisations, is the present and the future of the whole world. Russia’s task is to bring the Non-Russian part of Europe, in the Western part of the European Peninsula, back into the Eurasian orbit, liberating that Western Peninsula from its colonial vassal status to the USA, denazifying and demilitarising it too.

For eight long years Western countries, dominated by the Nazi ideology of the ‘The West is Best’, together with US-backed separatists in Kiev, have been terrorising and murdering thousands of Ukrainians in the war in the Donbass. They have taunted the largest nation in the world, the Russian bear. For 23 years before that, they humiliated the Russian bear. Did they really think they could continue doing this to the restored bicontinental Superpower, with its profound cultural tradition and vast natural resources, without which Europe cannot live? It is so very sad to see how irresponsible Western leaders grasp so little of the consequences of their actions. Have they never heard the word ‘boomerang’?

At great cost Russia’s highly-professional, world-class-equipped and brilliantly-trained armies already liberated and saved Europe from forms of Nazism twice in the past, in 1814 and in 1945. This is the third time that the West has poked the bear. As soon as possible, you Western politicians had better stop sending lethal NATO arms to Nazis in the Ukraine, sue for peace and grant all that the Russian Federation and the Non-Nazi population of the Ukraine wishes. We are pro-Ukrainian, but we are anti-Nazi. You have been warned.

السعودية: تكفير وإرهاب من

الخميس 6 يناير 2022

قِيَم العزّة والكرامة والثقة في الله هي القواسم المشتركة بين الزعيمين جمال عبدالناصر والسيد حسن نصرالله

 شوقي عواضة

لم يكن نشوء الكيان السّعودي أقلّ دمويّةً وإرهابيّةً من قيام أميركا التي قامت على أنقاض الهنود الحمر ولا أقلّ إجراماً من نشوء الكيان الصّهيوني الذي قام على أجساد الفلسطينيين، بل كان أكثر إرهاباً وإجراماً وقتلاً وتمثيلاً وتنكيلاً بالبشر. وما يميّزه عن الكيانين الأميركي «والإسرائيلي» يجعله أكثر خطورةً على الأمّة حيث أنّ آل سعود المنحدرين من أصلٍ يهوديٍّ يعود لجدّهم مردخاي بن ابراهام بن موشي الدونمي من يهود الدونمة وفق ما أثبته الكاتب الشّهيد ناصر السعيد في كتابه «تاريخ آل سعود». وعليه فإنّ هؤلاء اليهود الذين أسّسوا الكيان السّعودي بدعمٍ بريطاني تكمن خطورته في الحقائق التّاريخية الآتية:

أولا ـ تبنّيهم للهوية العربيّة وهم يهود في الأصل واتخاذ الإسلام ستاراً للحكم وقيام كيانهم الوظيفي والحليف للكيان الصّهيوني.

ُثانياـ اغتصابهم لشبه الجزيرة العربيّة بدعم بريطانيا التي دعمت قيام الكيان الصّهيوني الذي اغتصب فلسطين.

ثالثا ـ قيام الكيان السّعودي على الغزوات وارتكاب المذابح والمجازر بحقّ القبائل العربيّة كما حصل في فلسطين من غزواتٍ ومذابحَ على يد عصابات الهاغاناه وشتيرن وغيرها.

رابعا ـ ضرب واستهداف كلّ عناصر القوّة في الأمّة لا سيما تيّارات المقاومة وتشتيتها وتحويل مسار الصّراع مع الكيان الصّهيوني إلى صراعاتٍ وحروبٍ داخل الأمة.

عبر التاريخ أثبت الكيان السعودي بكلّ ملوكه وحكّامه الذين توالوا على الحكم هذه الحقائق. فالسعوديّة التي استدرجت الرئيس جمال عبد النّاصر للحرب في اليمن لم تكن مهمّتها سوى إشغال الرئيس المصري عن استكمال المواجهة مع العدو الصّهيوني

وثائق الدور السعودي في حرب يونيو

فقد كشفت وثائق للمخابرات الأميركيّة والبريطانيّة و»الإسرائيليّة» نشرت مؤخّراً عن حقائق هامّة تتعلّق بدورٍ خطيرٍ قام به الملك فيصل بالتنسيق مع أميركا قبل حرب 1967 للتآمر على عبد النّاصر وهزيمته، وكشفت عن اتصالاتٍ سرّيةٍ أجراها السعوديون بالإسرائيليين بهدف دعمهم مباشرة أو من خلال واشنطن لضرب عبد الناصر وتحجيم دوره القومي، وفرض الهزيمة المعنويّة عليه بعد الهزيمة العسكريّة عام 1967 وهو ما جرى فعلياً…

كذلك الأمر اليوم أعادت السّعودية نفس السيناريو من خلال ما يسمّى بالرّبيع العربي لاستنزاف سورية قلعة المقاومة وحصنها وإشغال المقاومة بعد انتصاري 2000 و2006 ومحاولة تفتيت قدراتها لكنّها فشلت وأسقط مشروعها، ومحاولة استعادة العراق من محور المقاومة، والسّيطرة على اليمن الذي أذلّ طواغيت آل سعود وحلفائهم. لم تتغيّر مسلكية آل سعود منذ نشوء كيانهم الوظيفي حتى اليوم وهذا ليس تحليلاً ولا توقعاً بل وقائع تاريخيّة موثّقة عبّر عنها الزّعيم الراحل :جمال عبد النّاصر في محطاتٍ كثيرةٍ. فمن خطاب له في الثالث والعشرين من كانون الأول/ ديسمبر عام 1962 قال

سقط لنا 136 ضابطاً وعسكريّاً جزمة كلّ واحد منهم أشرف من تاج الملك سعود والملك حسين

وفي الثّاني والعشرين من تموز/ يوليو من العام نفسه كشف عبد الناصر عن التّعاون بين الاستعمار والنظام السّعودي قائلاً «لاحظنا في السنة الأخيرة تعاوناً مطلقاً بين الرجعية العربيّة وقوى الاستعمار ويوجد تعاونٌ وتضامنٌ بينهم في العمل ضدّ القومية العربيّة وقوى الثّورة والتّحرر العربي. صفقات السّلاح التي تستهدف العرب ولا تستهدف عدو العرب».

أمّا عن قضية فلسطين وآل سعود فكان للزعيم عبد الناصر رأي يقول

«أنا لا أتصوّر بأيّ حال من الأحوال أن المملكة السعودية تستطيع أن تحارب في فلسطين وفيها قاعدة أميركية وفيها قاعدة بريطانيّة.

لم تكن مواقف الرئيس جمال عبد الناصر حينها طائفيّةً ولا مذهبيةً ولا عشائريةً أو عنصريّةً وهو العربي الذي عمّد عروبته بالدّم، وهو المسلم الذي تقدّم لمقاومة المحتلّ الصهيوني لأرض فلسطين، وهو السني الذي ثار في وجه الظالمين والمستبدّين وفي مقدمتهم آل سعود.

تلك المواقف لم تكن إلا تعبيراً عن واقعٍ وحقيقة دامغة كشفت دور آل سعود ومؤامراتهم على الأمّة. وما قاله الأمين العام لحزب الله السيّد حسن نصر الله في خطابه الأخير في ذكرى الشّهيدين قاسم سليماني وأبي مهدي المهندس هو نفس الحقيقة التي عبّر عنها الرئيس عبد الناصر منذ أكثر من خمسين عاماً، ولا يزال نفس الكيان يتآمر على الأمة ولكي لا يعطي البعض صبغةً طائفيةً أو مذهبيّة لكلام السّيد نصر الله نقول لهم راجعوا مواقف الرّئيس عبد الناصر التي ردّ عليها آل سعود بتكفيره في الثالث والعشرين من كانون الأول/ ديسمبر من عام 1962 حيث نشرت صحيفة «عكاظ» السّعودية على صفحتها الأولى وبالخط العريض فتوى لفقهاء البلاط الملكي تقول (جمال عبد الناصر كافر بالإجماع) عنوان يختصر عقليّة الكيان السّعودي وحكّامه المستعربين الذين لم ولن يتغيّروا. اليوم يكفّرون الشّرفاء ويتهمونهم بالإرهاب وكلّ ذلك لن يغيّر من حقيقة تقول بأنّ الكيان السعودي الذي قام على المذابح والقتل هو أصل الإرهاب وليس أقلّ خطورة من إرهاب العدو الصّهيوني، وأنّ الوهابيّة التي غزت بدواعشها دمشق وبغداد لا تقلّ عدوانية عن عصابات الهاغاناه وشتيرن، وان شيوخ الوهابيّة هم كفقهاء التلمود، وأنّ كيانكم السرطاني سيزول كما سيزول الكيان الصّهيوني والآتي من الأيام سيُنبّئ بذلك.

Native lands dispossession

October 11, 2021

Is Afghanistan the First Domino to Fall?

August 22, 2021

Tim Kirby

It certainly looks like a domino that has been put in position poised to fall waiting for others to take their places in the line.

With America withdrawing from Afghanistan abruptly after some 20 years, one big question is being discussed throughout the strategic sphere by those both in big institutions and laying on their couches – is the American loss in Afghanistan the first domino to fall in the eventual collapse of the Global Hegemon? After all, Afghanistan is the “graveyard of empires” probably because it is an expression that sounds nice and because the Soviets fell apart a few years after losing to the locals. So this must be the “beginning of the end” right?

Well, we should never be so quick as to jump onto narrow narratives without looking at the big picture. Side-by-side images of the Americans and their allies fleeing Vietnam and Afghanistan by helicopter are flooding Facebook, posted by those in the Alternative Media who take great joy in any loss by the 21st century’s “Evil Empire” but they seem to forget that just a few decades after losing in Vietnam the United States won the Cold War and took dominance over the planet.

Image: Strategic meme-of-the-year material for 2021.

No single event no matter how photogenic it is, is not going to be a sign of the grand demise of the “Sole Hyperpower”. It really took from the beginning of WWI till the end of WWII for the British to truly fall apart as a geopolitical force. The Soviet Union fell much quicker, but it is very widely believed that Perestroika (or the The Reykjavik Summit) was the real first white flag that devolved into the breakup of the union years later. The Roman Empire was a vastly slower burn than either of these two modern behemoths.

This means we should not be debating if Afghanistan is the first “domino” to fall, but instead we should really take a look at what the rest of the dominos falling would look like. At this point we can surely put together a rough picture of what the next tiles to fall would look like, i.e. what other major failures/events would really be signs of the Monopolar World meeting its demise? The following are a few humble offerings as to what these dominos could be…

Abandoning the Maidan Regime in the Ukraine

The unexpected surrender and soon to be total fall of Kabul has certainly resonated in another city that starts with the letter K. If Washington is finding it necessary to abandon a twenty-year Nation-Building project that they have invested vast sums of money and manpower into, that means that back-burner Kiev could be cut loose in the near future, putting the fate of the region in the hands of the Russians.

Image: We all know who secures Ukrainian “independence”.

The Maidan has been a major roadblock for Russia. As Brzeziński wrote, “It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire” and Washington has done an absolutely fantastic job of turning the region into an “anti-Russia” as Putin recently called it.

If the Maidan project were to be abandoned, it would become another quite massive domino. Washington giving up on Kiev, resulting in that current political entity probably being divided up, mostly going to Moscow, would symbolize either the USA’s inability to stop the rise of the Russians or their begrudging acceptance of it.

Taiwan, Hong Kong and/or South Korea

The Trump-era State Department Democracy storm that was inflicted on Hong Kong has seemed to fade away, but a total abandonment of the thorns in the side of the Chinese Dragon would also result in another domino being placed into position.

Image: Not State Department = No Professional Protest Organizers in China.

Bailing on Hong Kong activists or failing to maintain Taiwan’s independence would certainly present a strong sign of weakness and inability from the standpoint of Washington. Furthermore, although China has never had a passionate love for the North Koreans, having South Korea as essentially an American beachhead right next door has been a cause of concern for decades for Beijing. The South Korean economy on paper looks amazing and their cities dazzle with progress but what would be the effects of Ameria giving up on them? Is South Korea able to stand as a great nation, or is it really only successful thanks to the American umbrella? The answer to that would reveal itself within two weeks of an America-free Korean Peninsula.

Simply put, if Washington gives up on Hong Kong, Taiwan and/or South Korea it is another sign of the end for sure as China would be more or less rid of these weak points that have been exploited against it for decades.

A Loss of Control Over the “Bigs”

Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Agro and so on, have dutifully served Washington’s interests despite their theoretically international nature. But we should never forget that large for-profit entities are quite “whoreish” and will serve whichever master they need to. If Washington cannot control the Bigs as it used to, this would be another domino.

To a small extent this is happening in Hollywood where the Chinese market’s (and its official and unofficial) demands are having a major impact. But if it comes to a point that Hollywood is only making a chunk of the world’s blockbusters rather than nearly all of them it would be the end of the total unobstructed Soft Power dominance of this American institution. Or even worse, if Hollywood can be bought out from under America then a new global narrative could be spun quite quickly.

If the Hegemon fades, the leadership of the Bigs will feel increasing pressure from the Russians, Chinese and Arabs to give up the whole “gay thing” and portray these societies in a positive light whether through bribery or threats of force. Apple may be “designed in California” but if need be they would surely bail for greener pastures rather than living a life of poverty loyal to a failed America.

Mexico, Lakotastan and African-America

The United States has done a fantastic job of fostering independence movements within its rivals while making diverse masses “American” at home. However, as with the Soviets and the British, waves of breakaway republics and successful secessionist movements would be a very big domino indeed.

The Soviets tried to create an African workers uprising in America in the 60’s and failed miserably, but BLM could get out of control, or in the case of a dying USA, could become used by foreign powers. An Afro-American Maidan would certainly be another sign of doom.

The rise of an independent Native-American state like the Lakota Indians’ lands would be yet another tile being stood into place, opening the door for further break-away attempts.

When the Mexicans lost the Mexican-American war they lost the chance to become the dominant power on the continent. Few remember, but the destiny of this New World was not just given to the Americans wrapped in a box. If the Mexicans had won the war they would be the ones with access to the Atlantic (via the Gulf of Mexico) and the Pacific simultaneously, not Washington. It would have been very possible for them to secure the entire West Coast. A Mexico that would begin to take action as an independent actor would certainly be another sign of serious trouble for Washington. Thus far, on the North American continent “there can be only one” but perhaps that isn’t necessarily going to always remain the same “one”.

The death of the Dollar or collapse of the Federal Reserve

If the dollar were to collapse, or there were serious problems at the Federal Reserve, as have been predicted for many years due to insane national debt, this would of course be the biggest domino of all. The West has been able to accumulate bafflingly massive debt with no consequences because of the dominance of Washington. It is very hard to call in a debt from the toughest kid school surrounded by his henchmen. But when the big bully stops growing, and loses his buddies, all of a sudden getting your $5 back with a few whacks from a baseball bat becomes viable.

Image: If you are powerful enough no one can call in your debts.

No one can call in the debt of a Global Hegemon, but Regional Powers have to balance their checkbook. A decrease in power could lead to the national debt prophecy coming true in our lifetimes which would be probably the largest domino of all.

In conclusion

Is Afghanistan “the first domino to fall” in the death of the American Empire? This cannot be proven, but it certainly looks like a domino that has been put in position poised to fall waiting for others to take their places in the line. Other major defeats would be required to say for sure that this “New American Century” is over, not even making it to the one-fourth mark. It is really the other potential signs of the end that are of most concern not squabbling over Afghanistan’s domino status. So the big question is, if Washington is losing its Monopolar World Order, then where will be the next grand retreats?

So what if the Ottomans shaped the modern world?

May 15, 2021

Erdogan is mesmerized by Calilph Selim but, unlike Machiavelli, he doesn’t fear him; he wants to emulate him

By Pepe Escobar posted with permission and first posted at the Asia Times

Once upon a time in Anatolia, in the late 13^th century a Turkic principality – one of many shaped in the wake of the Mongol invasion of the 1240s – consigned the Seljuk Turks to the past and emerged as the Ottoman emirate. It was named after its founder, Osman I.

By the middle of the 15^th century, the time of the game-changing conquest of Constantinople by Sultan Mehmet II, the expanding Ottoman empire had absorbed virtually all its neighboring Turkic emirates.

And by the start of the 16^th century, what sprang up was a multi-religious and multi-ethnic empire that – pragmatic and tolerant – ruled for four centuries over the Balkans, Anatolia and Southwest Asia.

Talk about a major historical riddle: How did a small principality in the western fringe of what used to be known as Asia Minor turn into what could arguably be defined as Islam’s most important empire? The key to unlocking the riddle may be offered by Sultan Selim I.

God’s Shadow, which in its original English edition (Faber & Faber) is subtitled The Ottoman Sultan Who Shaped the Modern World, may reveal that author Alan Mikhail, chair of the Department of History at Yale, is uniquely qualified to argue the case.

Mehmet II, who with his endless obsession and cunning extinguished the Byzantine empire on the fateful May 29, 1453, when he was only 21, was a larger-than-life figure for peoples of the Mediterranean, the Balkans and Asia Minor.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Left) during an April 17, 2017, visit to the tomb of Yavuz Sultan Selim, a sultan of the former Ottoman Empire 1512-1520, in Istanbul, a day after Erdogan’s victory in a national referendum. Photo : AFP / Yasin Bulbul / Turkish Presidential Press Office

He bridged Europe and Asia. He refashioned Constantinople, renamed Istanbul, into the capital of the sprawling empire. He lorded over the silk roads from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The Fatih (“Conqueror”) assumed mythical proportions east and west – and even branded himself Caesar, heir to Byzantine emperors.

Mehmet II conquered the Balkans in the 1460s, finished off with Genoese trading colonies in Crimea and imposed vassalage over the Crimean Tatar Khanate in 1478. That meant, in practice, turning the Black Sea into a virtual Ottoman lake.

Author Mikhail stresses right at the start that the Ottoman Empire was the most powerful state on earth – more powerful than the Ming dynasty, not to mention the Safavids – for quite some time. It was the largest empire in the Mediterranean since ancient Rome and “the most enduring” in the history of Islam.

Then he sets the crux of the – explosive – thesis he will develop in detail: “It was the Ottoman monopoly of trade routes with the East, combined with their military prowess on land and on sea, that pushed Spain and Portugal out of the Mediterranean, forcing merchants and sailors from these 15th-century kingdoms to become global explorers as they risked treacherous voyages across oceans and around continents – all to avoid the Ottomans.”

This thesis will be extremely unpalatable to a hegemonic (at least for the past 150 years) West, now confronted with its turbulent decline. Mikhail does his best to show how, “from China to Mexico, the Ottoman empire shaped the known world at the turn of the 16^th century.”

Obviously ideological, military and economic competition with the Spanish and Italian states – and then Russia, China and other Islamic states – was no holds barred. Still, Mikhail relishes showing how Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Montezuma, Luther, Tamerlan – one and all “calibrated their actions and defined their very existence in reaction to the reach and grasp of Ottoman power.”

Christopher Columbus taking leave of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon before setting out on his first voyage to the New World, August 8, 1492. Photo: AFP / Ann Ronan Picture Library

Geoeconomic superpower

It takes a lot of balls for a historian employed by an elite American university to offer a self-described “revolutionary” narrative on the role of Islam and the Ottomans in shaping not only the Old World, but also the New World. Mikhail is fully aware of how this will come as “a bitter pill for many in the West.”

Exit Muslims as the “terrorist.” Exit “the rise of the West.” Enter the Ottomans as a civilizing power. Mikhail is adamant: The practice “since the Industrial Revolution and the so-called glories of the 19^th century” of stretching European primacy back to Columbus “is a historical absurdity.” The Ottoman empire “struck fear into the world for centuries before it earned its derogatory 19th-century sobriquet, ‘the sick man of Europe.’”

The fact is that, for all its setbacks, the Ottoman Empire – in over 600 years of history – remained the hegemon in the Middle East and one of the most important states in Europe, Africa and Asia until World War I. From 1453 up to the 19^th century, the Ottomans remained “at the center of global politics, economics and war.”

Just imagine. Ottoman armies ruled over vast swaths of Europe, Africa and Asia; the most crucial Silk and non-Silk trade corridors; key city hubs along the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. They ruled over Damascus, Istanbul, Cairo, Jerusalem, Mecca and Medina. That’s a long way from their humble beginnings as sheepherders in desolate trails across Central Asia.

And then there’s the ultimate badass: Sultan Selim.

Mikhail spends a great deal of his narrative carefully setting the stage for the eruption of the quintessentially Machiavellian Selim, even before he became Sultan in 1512. Still in Trabzon, in the Black Sea, as provincial governor, consolidating the imperial forces in the East, by 1492 Selim was fully aware how the alliance between Istanbul and Cairo conditioned European trade in what US neo-cons not long ago called the “Greater Middle East.”

The Ottomans and the Mamluks – whom Selim would later destroy as Sultan – controlled all access to the East from the Mediterranean. This geoeconomic fact by itself destroys the fable of European ascendancy during the Renaissance and the much-lauded “Age of Exploration”; it was all about Ottoman control of trade and commerce.

If anyone in Europe wanted to trade with China and India, they would have to adjust to the Ottoman’s “my way or the highway.” The Venetians tried, and it didn’t work. Genoese Columbus went full highway. Mikhail relishes nothing more than showing how the voyages of Columbus, in so many ways, “were a response to the power of the Ottomans.” They were “the political force that shaped Columbus and his generation more than any other.”

Things get positively heavy metal when Columbus is depicted as a Christian jihadi, as “he used the notion of a global civilizational war between Christendom and Islam to push his case for the Atlantic voyage.” Queen Isabella ended up buying it.

And then it all went downhill, in a literally bloody way, as “the vocabulary of war with Islam became the language of the Spanish conquest in the Americas.” The West conveniently forgets that all indigenous peoples were required (Mikhail’s own italics) to acknowledge that the Catholic Church was the universal power and that their own belief systems were absolutely inferior.

From Selim to Erdogan

Machiavelli was a huge fan of the Ottomans, whom he admired and feared. He was particularly impressed by Selim’s strategic acumen, always prevailing over nearly impossible odds. Machiavelli finished The Prince in the exact same year – 1513 – when Selim eliminated his half-brothers to finally secure the Sultanate, which he had conquered in 1512.

Selim started with a bang – with no less than an economic blockade against the Safavids, outlawing the export of Persian silk from the Ottoman empire. (That trade had been how the Iranians reached the Eastern Mediterranean and the lucrative European markets.

Selim casually hanging out with crocodiles in Egypt. Photo: Miniature included in the book

Selim casually hanging out with crocodiles in Egypt. Photo: Miniature included in the book

Selim’s victory over the Safavids in the Battle of Chaldiran was intertwined with something immensely eventful; the Portuguese capture of ultra-strategic Hormuz in 1515. That was the first European possession in the Persian Gulf. And what a prize: The Portuguese would now have control over shipping to and from the Persian Gulf, as well as a key hub linking to their new colonies on India’s west coast.

After the battle between Christians and Muslims crossed the Atlantic, the stage was set for the next chapter: Ottomans and Portuguese fighting for global power in the Indian Ocean.

Selim was on a roll. First he took Syria – incorporating legendary Damascus and Aleppo. Then he smashed the Mamluks – and that meant not only Cairo but also Jerusalem, Mecca, Medina and even Yemen, with its strategic access to the Indian Ocean and infinite possibilities for Ottoman commerce, starting with a monopoly on the silk trade.

The Selim Sultanate lasted only 8 years, from 1512 to 1520 – with geopolitical tectonic plates moving non-stop. Luther plunged Christianity into a religious civil war. The Ottomans controlled more territory around the Mediterranean than any other power. The European imperial drive hit the Indian Ocean. And then there was the ultimate theological challenge presented by the ultimate Other: Native Americans, north and south. They could not possibly be part of “God’s creation.”

When he died in 1520, Selim – sultan and also caliph – thought that being the ruler of the world’s largest empire was a given. He was, indeed, “God’s shadow on Earth.”

By the end of the last chapter in the book, “American Selim,” Mikhail again tackles the most burning question: why (his italics) Columbus had to cross the Atlantic. In a nutshell: “Hoping for an alliance with the Grand Khan of the East, he aimed to retake Jerusalem and destroy Islam; more prosaically, his voyages promised an end-run around the trade monopolies of the Ottomans and the Mamluks.”

After Columbus arrived in the Americas, Europeans inevitably filtered their experiences “through the lens of their wars with Muslims” and engaged “in a new version of their very old Crusades, a new kind of Catholic jihad.” Nevertheless, “Islam would continue to forge the histories of both Europe and the New World and the relationship between the two.”

After so much drama, Mikhail and the book’s editors still manage to present an outstanding image in the next before the last page: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ceremoniously staring at Selim’s tomb in Istanbul in 2017, after winning a constitutional referendum that expanded his powers enormously.

Like Machiavelli, Erdogan is mesmerized by Selim. But, unlike Machiavelli, he does not fear him; he wants to emulate him. What – weaponized – imperial dreams still lurk in the mind of the neo-Ottoman sultan?

Biden Calls the “Killer”

Source

THE SAKER • APRIL 13, 2021 

The big news of the day is that Biden decided to call Putin. Here is how the Russians reported this:

At the initiative of the American side, a telephone conversation took place between President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and President of the United States of America Joseph Biden. The current state of Russian-American relations and some relevant aspects of the international agenda were discussed in detail. Joseph Biden confirmed his earlier invitation to the Russian President to take part in the Climate Summit, which will be held via videoconference on April 22-23. Both sides expressed their readiness to continue the dialogue on the most important areas of ensuring global security, which would meet the interests of not only Russia and the United States, but also the entire world community. Moreover, Joseph Biden expressed interest in normalizing the state of affairs on the bilateral track and establishing stable and predictable cooperation on such pressing issues as ensuring strategic stability and arms control, the Iranian nuclear program, the situation in Afghanistan, and global climate change. In this context, the US President proposed to consider the possibility of holding a personal summit meeting in the foreseeable future. During the exchange of views on the internal Ukrainian crisis, Vladimir Putin outlined approaches to a political settlement based on the Minsk Package of Measures. It was agreed to give instructions to the relevant departments to work out the issues raised during the telephone conversation.

This is t he US version:

President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. spoke today with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. They discussed a number of regional and global issues, including the intent of the United States and Russia to pursue a strategic stability dialogue on a range of arms control and emerging security issues, building on the extension of the New START Treaty. President Biden also made clear that the United States will act firmly in defense of its national interests in response to Russia’s actions, such as cyber intrusions and election interference. President Biden emphasized the United States’ unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The President voiced our concerns over the sudden Russian military build-up in occupied Crimea and on Ukraine’s borders, and called on Russia to de-escalate tensions. President Biden reaffirmed his goal of building a stable and predictable relationship with Russia consistent with U.S. interests, and proposed a summit meeting in a third country in the coming months to discuss the full range of issues facing the United States and Russia.

Why the difference in tone? Because the Russians don’t believe in loud statements before a negotiation and, unlike “Biden”, they are not insecure in their legitimacy (both the legitimacy of their policies and the legitimacy of their government). As for Biden, he just produces the exact same type of hot air which the Trump administration became so infamous for. I can tell you what most Russians think when they hear this. They think: “sure looks to me like the old man is desperately trying to encourage himself!”. I totally concur.

This being said, there is also some very premature triumphalism in Russia. A lot of “hurray patriots” are saying “Biden caved in first”. Their arguments go something like this:

According to Defense Minister Shoigu, the US/NATO have about 40,000 soldiers along the Russian border (ostensibly as an exercise) and about 15,000 weapons systems. In response to that threat, Russia deployed 2 Armies and 3 Airborne Divisions along her western border. That is something of the size of 200,000 soldiers. The US Americans saw this and understood that the Russian “fist” could smash them. This is why Biden caved in.

Well, I am not at all so sure that “Biden” caved in or “blinked first”. Why?

1. “In the coming months” is too late to defuse the current risks of war. They might meet in the upcoming climate conference on April 22-23. But that is the wrong format.
2. The first rule of military analysis is “don’t look at intentions, but look at capabilities”. This is even more true for “declared intentions”. And what are we reading into “Biden’s” supposed intentions? “Pursue a strategic security dialog” is the best I can find, and I am really not impressed.
3. Let’s assume that they meet before a full-scale war breaks out, and so what? Did Trump not meet with Kim Jong-un – did that do any good?

Last Sunday, Margarita Simonian, the head of Russia Today, said something very interesting on a Russian TV show (I paraphrase and summarize here):

We will never be able to reach a real agreement (to coexist) with the USA. Why? This is a country built on violence from Day 1. This is a country stuck with several ideological doctrines, including the Doctrine of Discovery to the Doctrine of Manifest Destiny. All these doctrines say the same thing: “we have the right to do whatever we want and we have the right to rule over everybody else. This land was ours, but those Indian SOBs had the arrogance to live there. So we will massacre them all and then create a beautiful feast when we will celebrate that they taught us what to eat (Thanksgiving Day). This was true not only in the 17th century. I remind you of the year 1831 when we already had the Decembrist revolt while the USA was engaged in a massive ethnic cleansing operation (the Trail of Tears) under the personal supervision of

President Andrew Jackson (a Democrat, by the way!) who deported 5 Indian tribes which were settled, had their own schools and many were Christianized. He deported them to Oklahoma using methods which resulted in thousands of deaths (one tribe lost ¼ of her people. My family was deported by Stalin (we were Armenians) and I can tell you that the methods used by Stalin during his deportations were a “gentle ballet” compared to what the “democractic United States” did.

We will never reach an agreement with them because we cannot agree to collapse. We will never reach an agreement with them because we cannot agree to become paupers. We will never reach an agreement with them because we cannot agree to give up our nuclear weapons. We will never reach an agreement with them because we cannot agree to forsake all our national interests and we cannot agree to only do that which they tell us to do (including to the detriment of our own interests). We will never reach an agreement with them because we will never agree to forget our history and we won’t agree to have our next generations consider themselves as a totally different nation. We will never reach an agreement with them because we will never agree to any of that, and they will never accept anything less! (emphasis added).

Frankly, I can only agree. From the First Crusade on, the core value and even identity of the political West (in its various manifestations) has always been imperialism. This is true of the Latin Papacy as much as it is true about Hitler’s National Socialism, and it is still true for today’s main ideology of the United States. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. We can call these various manifestations of the united messianic West by many names (today I call it “Zone A”), but this changes nothing to its essence, nature and behavior: the pretextes (ideologies) change, the policies stay the same.

This is why I have been saying that Russia and the AngloZionist Empire are locked in an existential war from which only one party will walk away and the other one will be either destroyed (Russia by the USA) or profoundly change (due to the internal dialectical contradictions of capitalism and the unsustainable nature of the US society today).

And don’t assume that it is “only” Simonian who is “seeing the light”. The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Riabkov, made the following statement about the USA:

“They talk about a high price, but they never mention it. What they have done so far, we have, firstly, studied well, and secondly, we have adapted. We do not believe that such terminology is generally applicable: price, payment, and so on. We simply defend our interests and the interests of our citizens, the Russian-speaking population, and we will continue to protect them”. “The question is what conclusions are drawn from this situation in Kiev and from Kiev’s patrons. These conclusions do not set up a positive mood, these threats only strengthen us in the belief that we are on the right course: the United States is our enemy, doing everything to undermine Russia’s position in the international arena, we do not see other elements in their approach to us. These are our conclusions”.

Pretty clear, no?

Years, even decades, of non-stop US threats against Russia have (finally!) achieved their full effect: the illusions which many Russians had for centuries about their western neighbors have almost completely disappeared from the Russian society and the Russian consciousness. What is left is a firm determination to survive, to live, to do whatever it takes to prevent the Empire from “assimilating” Russia.

Russians now also clearly see another truism of western policies. I would express it as so: it really does not matter whom Russia fights – it maybe even be Satan in person (and in many ways it is, let those with ears…), the West will always, always side with our enemy, even if it is Satan in person (again, let those with ears…). Let me just give you one example which says it all:

The USA claims that it was al-Qaeda which did 9/11. Fine. A high-school physics can prove the opposite, but fine. Yet that self-same USA totally backed “al-Qaeda” (all the various denominations and aliases included) in both Chechnia and Syria (and in Serbia too, I would add). And they are still at it.

Another example? Sure.

The West always supported the worst, most violent, rulers in Russia. Conversely, the very best rulers in Russian history are vilified, slandered and despised in the West, and they are, of course, described as obscurantist tyrants, even when compared to the western leaders of the same time period they look like saints (which some of them literally are!).

Want to try one more? Okay.

Let’s look at religion. In the history of relations between Russia and the West, we see something interesting: it does not matter which branch of western Christianity (Latin or Reformed) is in power, the rulers of the West will always side against their putative “Christian brothers”, even if that means siding with non-Christians! Not much has changed between the 15th century, the Crimean War and today: the West always created an ad-hoc “ecumenical coalition” to try to finally conquer Russia.

The bottom line is this: Simonian is 100% correct. The West’s “program for Russia” has not changed and it remains the same: Russia must vanish. Nothing else is acceptable for our western neighbors.

So where do we go from here?

Frankly, I don’t know. I don’t think anybody does. But I can express my hopes.

I hope that the current Russian stance (we are willing to take on the combined might of the USA+NATO+EU and “why would we want a world without Russia?”) to overcome the West’s delusional narcissism (We are almighty! Nobody can stop us! We will crush you!) and get enough folks back in touch with the “real reality” (as many were during the Cold War). Next, I really hope that the Empire will not unleash the Ukronazis in the Donbass (yes, hope dies last, and I have to admit that I currently don’t see how the Ukies could deescalate). I hope that the people of the EU will liberate themselves from their current colonial status, and that they will regain at least a modicum of real sovereignty. Lastly, I hope that the US society will defeat the Woke-freaks currently in power and that the USA will become a powerful, but normal, country (like so many empires have done it before). The slogan “we want our country back” has my total sympathy. But that is a lot of hope, I know.

Now for a pessimistic shot of realism.

First, Biden, the man, not the collective “Biden”, is in no shape to negotiate with anybody. Neither is his Harris. At best, he can do what microbrains like John Kerry or Josep Borrell did: meet with their counterparts, declare A, then fly back home and immediately proclaim non-A.

Tell me – why would the Russian be interested in this kind of silly circus?

What about the collective “Biden” then? Well, Blinken is definitely smarter that this arrogant imbecile Pompeo, but he sure hates Russia no less. Is that an improvement? Maybe.

I am afraid that this proposed meeting will never happen, I think that the White House sees this as a subtle ruse to try to lower the Russian defenses (both military and political). Won’t happen. It is too late for that.

Could it be that “Biden” is throwing in the towel and seeking some kind of arrangement with Russia. Never say never, but I find this exceedingly unlikely. Why? Because of the centuries long ideological messianic narcissism and sense of impunity of the US rulers: they simply cannot fathom that their “city upon the hill” has been placed in a kind of a “mate in three” situation by a horde of vodka guzzling asian barbarians (just like they can’t fathom how those evil “Commie Chinks” have built an economy vastly superior to theirs).

A famous leader of the “united West” also had a hard time accepting that he, and his putatively “invincible armies”, had been comprehensively defeated by Russian subhumans. Even while he could hear the sound of Soviet cannons in his underground bunker.

Truly, some things never change.

Putin’s answer to Biden

MARCH 19, 2021

Putin’s answer to Biden | The Vineyard of the Saker

Message to the West : Go Pound Sand

by Chris Faure for The Saker Blog

It is fascinating to compare the recent Biden comments to President Putin and Putin’s response, to what is happening in Alaska between the US and China.

It cannot be a coincidence that the messaging from both Russia and China, is the same.  And it is clearly, deal with us on fair terms or Go Pound Sand.

There is a seeming coordination of messaging.  If you consider President Putin’s comments translated in this video, you will hear Putin say with nuance of course, that the US was founded first in an experience of direct genocide on Indian tribes and then they continued with a cruel period of slavery.  He says that to this day these early formative experiences accompany the zeitgeist, both internal and external, of the United States.  Mr.Putin goes further to say that the US is the only country that ever attacked another with nuclear weapons, citing Japan being a non-nuclear state.  He calls it clearly an extermination of a local population that had no military sense.   Mr Putin ends with saying that the US will have to deal with Russia and Russia will only deal in those aspects that have benefit for Russia herself, and the US will have to reckon with it.

This is confirmed this morning with Russia sending a junior diplomat to attend a virtual UN summit with Biden.  https://www.rt.com/russia/518562-un-summit-biden-kremlin-diplomatic-row/

Subtext:  You have no moral standing in the world any longer.  Your history is brutal.  You are still operating in this brutal historical context.  Go pound sand as this will not be allowed any longer.  

From the Chinese side, after Blinken tried the usual litany of US complaints against China (cyber attacks, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Taiwan, and China is threatening global stability), Yang Jiechi for a whole 15 minutes called the US racists at home and warmongers abroad.   He said in front of the Chinese side, the US side is not qualified to speak to China from a position of strength.  He told in no uncertain terms that the US actions harm the interests of the peoples of the two countries as well as world stability and development and “should not be continued.”  The U.S. side made unreasonable accusations, which was not in line with diplomatic protocol, therefore China made the required response.  There is no acceptance of the newly minted ‘rules-based international order’ among the Chinese diplomats.

Subtext:  You should not be allowed to continue with your meddling because you have no more moral standing in the eyes of anyone and your purported ‘strength’ is dissipating in your hypocrisy.

An interesting issue of course, that went mainly under the radar, is that at the moment that the Chinese/US so-called ‘strategic’ discussion started in Alaska, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that Mr Lavrov will be visiting China, specifically their delegates to the Alaska meeting, the Chinese diplomats Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi, a day or two after conclusion of the meetings.

Some time ago The Saker wrote an analysis based on the question:  When Exactly did the AngloZionist empire collapse.  At the time he stated that the moment was with the killing of General Suleimani.

This short sitrep should convince you that the AngloZionist empire is being told in no uncertain terms to get on with pounding sand to dig the imperial grave with evidence that this message is being coordinated.  Shortly after penning this short piece, some commentators are already noticing that the empire is now going to have to deal with ‘sledgehammer diplomacy’.

Compilation – Amerika: who we are!

Are You sure about that Joe?

‘What Binds Us Together’: On What It Means to Support Indigenous Liberation

December 20, 2020

A depiction by the Navajo artist Remy of 16-year-old Fawzi al-Junaidi arrested by Israeli soldiers. (Photo: File)

By Benay Blend

In a recent interview with Michael Arria, Sumaya Awad and Brian Bean discuss their book Palestine: A Socialist Introduction (2020). The collection argues that socialism should be viewed as an important element in the struggle to liberate Palestine.

“What binds us together,” concludes Awad, “is our class politics. The working class together is what will build a new kind of world and a different system. And what that means is standing with the oppressed outside of our borders and with Palestine.”

While class is a clear connection around which to build campaigns, there are other avenues to explore. For example, in “The Liberation of Palestine Represents an Alternative Path for Native Americans,” Nick Estes (Lower Brule Sioux Tribe) describes Palestine as “the moral barometer of Indigenous North America,” thus adding the Indigeneity that Awad touches on to the commonalities that bind activists to the cause of Palestine.

Responding to the controversy that erupted in Santa Fe, New Mexico over a series of pro-Palestinian murals drawn by a local Navajo artist, Elena Ortiz (Ohkay Owingeh) expands on the historical connections between the Indigenous here and in Occupied Palestine.

“The images on that stucco wall,” explains Ortiz, “show the truth of settler colonialism and the effects it has on indigenous people. They were put there to show solidarity with our Palestinian relatives in the face of brutal occupation; to illuminate injustice and shed light on this nation’s complicity in Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people.”

In that vein, she stresses the importance of acknowledging that the founding of the United States was a process that involved displacing and exploiting Indigenous nations that were living on the land prior to European conquest, a process very similar to the establishment, too, of the state of Israel.

Elaborating on the contradictions between Santa Fe’s reputation as a liberal “art center and home to vibrant Native cultures,” Ortiz asks how a Native-installed art exhibit could cause so much controversy. “Because it illuminates a truth that many people do not want to face?” she speculates, or, perhaps, it offends a lot of people?

In reality, those most offended were local Zionists who assumed the role of victim. “Why is Israel singled out as an aggressor when there are many troubled spots in the world?” asked Rabbi Berel Levertov of the Santa Fe Jewish Center-Chabad. “There are many facets to the story and to highlight Israel is just anti-semitic propaganda.”

Preferring a portrayal that depicts “normalization” of relations between the two—a “work of art depicting…Jews and Arabs living in Peace”—Levertov offered up an image very fitting, too, of Santa Fe, a City Different that hides its racism beneath a veneer of faux adobe.

Several months later another controversy arose when Native people and their comrades succeeded in taking down a memorial ostensibly to Union soldiers. As Elena Ortiz explains, those same combatants participated in massacring Native people and removing them from their homelands.

“Under the shadow of that obelisk,” Ortiz asserts, “on Tewa homelands, in a place we call O’gha Po’geh, we still exist,” despite ongoing efforts by some to prove the opposite.

Alan Webber, the liberal mayor of Santa Fe who might seem a likely ally, proposed a belated Cultures, Histories, Art, Reconciliation and Truth committee. Tasked with replacing other controversial monuments with alternate public art, the commission bears resemblance to similar efforts towards “normalizing” Israeli/Palestinian relations.

Indigenous activists know better, specifically that there can be no peace until there is substantive justice. Elena Ortiz, daughter of the late Alphonso Ortiz, an anthropology professor who was my mentor at the University of New Mexico, says that “the city’s mood and dialogue” have exposed much deeper problems.

“Santa Fe, with its pseudo-liberal, left-leaning politics, thinks it’s somehow above” racial tensions that elsewhere have been exposed.

“But when you look at the vitriol that has come out since the obelisk, we’re peeling back this onion and we’re showing the racism that is endemic in Santa Fe. And we’re showing that, hey, Donald Trump doesn’t have anything on Santa Fe and this racism is so systemic.”

A city that bears a liberal façade, but in which racist and anti-Palestinian sentiments have exploded, Santa Fe is a perfect example of the ways in which Indigeneity unites solidarity activists around the cause of liberation, but at the same time exposes that sometimes a wing of the left-liberal camp declines to be on board.

Finally, President-elect Joe Biden’s selection of New Mexico Congressmember Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) as secretary of the interior owes much to Indigenous movements who organized around land back as well as an end to fracking on and around Native land. An historic first, Haaland’s appointment marks a significant turn-around for an agency that for much of the nation’s history played a central role in the dislocation and abuse of all Indigenous tribes.

“That was a very, very important step for the Biden administration,” says Winona LaDuke, executive director of Honor the Earth, rural development economist and Native American activist. “Indian people know how to take care of this land.” ·

According to the Red Nation, Haaland’s nomination is also significant because she hails from a state that ranks fifth in the country for oil and gas production, much of which is on Indigenous land claimed by the federal and state governments. Moreover, the group explains,

“these conditions, and ongoing struggle against them, put NM at the center of the land back movement — in which a first step is returning public lands back to Indigenous people for any kind of sound environmental policy. Because of this context, Haaland’s appointment is significant.”

Because Haaland has taken a position against fracking on public land and has supported Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) legislation, her selection plays out within this context.

“We have yet to see, however, how this will all play out when she becomes secretary of DOI,” concludes the Red Nation statement. “Regardless, movements are pushing in this direction.”

“While there is widespread agreement among Native people that European colonialism and Indigenous genocide is criminal and immoral,” writes Nick Estes, “there are a surprisingly high number of Native politicians, elites, and public figures who don’t extend the same sympathies to Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims.” He continues that the term “anti-Palestinian opportunism” describes “how profitable and career-advancing it is for Indigenous people to align with the Zionist project.”

The future Secretary of the Interior falls into this category. “It’s profound to think about the history of this country’s policies to exterminate Native Americans and the resilience of our ancestors that gave me a place here today,” Haaland said.

Nevertheless, she does not view Palestine in the same light. For example, during her campaign for US Congress, Haaland compared Native Americans getting the right to vote in New Mexico in 1948 to the creation of the state of Israel. Reflecting on this statement, Estes concludes that “Haaland’s opportunism demonstrates that she is anything but an ally to Palestine and more of an opportunist willing to throw Palestinians under the bus when it benefits her political career.”

Recalling a panel in which she participated during the Palestine Writes festival, author and activist Susan Albuhawa explained that “true solidarity has a cost. What is it really worth to the oppressed if it’s easy and cheap and popular? Solidarity matters most when it’s hard, unpopular, and costly.”

Hopefully, in her upcoming appointed position, Haaland will use her platform to point out the ties that bind the Indigenous in this country with their relatives the Palestinians. Both have undergone ethnic cleansing and displacement, parallel experiences that should be called for what it is, crimes against humanity.

Recounting how the Intifada changed the political trajectory of the Palestinian people, Ramzy Baroud explains that “thanks to the Intifada, the Palestinian people have demonstrated their own capacity at challenging Israel without having their own military, challenging the Palestinian leadership by organically generating their own leaders, confronting the Arabs and, in fact, the whole world, regarding their own moral and legal responsibilities towards Palestine and the Palestinian people.”

Perhaps it is this acknowledgment of the need for a grassroots struggle against colonialism that is the tie that binds Indigenous resistance around the world. Commemorating the 2020 election which saw the ouster of Donald Trump, the Red Nation put out the following statement. Regarding what needs to be done, it puts forward the following view on socialism as the tie that binds.

“The battle of ideas against the ideology of greed and individualism, and the need for communal organization are key…Indigenous peoples, peoples of tribal nations, peoples of Maroon communities, peoples of the land have lived before capitalism and against capitalism. They have cultivated relations with each other and the land that do not rely on conquest and surplus but bring abundance and joy and dignity to all. These communal forms should be developed and become schools for freedom. We call these schools for Indigenous socialism. Join us in the struggle to create a better future.”

“To be a socialist you must be a principled champion for Palestine (p. 6),” write Awad and Bean. Their book bears out that certainly, this is true.

– Benay Blend earned her doctorate in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. Her scholarly works include Douglas Vakoch and Sam Mickey, Eds. (2017), “’Neither Homeland Nor Exile are Words’: ‘Situated Knowledge’ in the Works of Palestinian and Native American Writers”. She contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.

Canada, U.S. have ‘selective’ approach toward human rights: lawyer

By Mohammad Mazhari

November 23, 2020 – 10:56

Sari Bashi, a consultant for Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN)

TEHRAN – A human rights lawyer says the U.S. and Canada follow double standards toward human rights, noting that they “support human rights selectively”.

In an interview with the Tehran Times, Sari Bashi, a consultant for Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN), says that U.S. policy in terms of human rights is not consistent. 

“Unfortunately, the United States and Canada support human rights selectively, and the United States, in particular, has not done nearly enough to call out its allies for human rights abuses,” Bashi points out.

Canada and the U.S. accuse other countries of human rights violations while they themselves sell weapons to tyrannical regimes in West Asia, which are used against defenseless people, especially in Yemen. 

Canada claims a global reputation as a human rights defender, while the Ottawa government has a bad record when it comes to the rights of the indigenous peoples. According to reports revealed by the Human Rights Watch, the Natives are deprived of the right to safe drinking water, and police mistreat and abuse indigenous women and girls.

Bashi also says the U.S. is misusing its influence to allow its allies, such as Israel, to commit crimes.

 The following is the text of the interview:

Q: Certain Western states have a bad record in view of human rights, so are these countries entitled to condemn other countries?

  A: I think the fact that all authorities abuse human rights do not disqualify any particular government from raising human rights issues with others. Certainly, the best way to encourage respect for human rights is to lead by example, and every government in the world that has invested more energy in improving in own human rights record could be more credible to criticize other government who may not be; but at the same time I think it is always legitimate to raise the issue of human rights abuses and we should make sure that we are holding our governments accountable to universal standards of human rights as articulated by international instruments.

“We should make sure that we are holding our governments accountable to universal standards of human rights as articulated by international instruments,” the consultant for Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN) says. Q: When it comes to Israeli crimes against Palestinians, why do countries like Canada and the U.S. give full support to Tel-Aviv? How is it possible that Israel wins such support?

A: I think lack of accountability for Israeli violations of human rights and international law against Palestinians reflects a weakness in accountability of the international system.

Unfortunately, the UN Security Council cannot act in the Israel-Palestine case because of the veto power of powerful members, especially the United States, while other mechanisms of accountability such as the International Criminal Court are struggling to have jurisdiction over war crimes committed in Palestine. So we have a lot of work to do in obtaining a stronger mechanism of accountability, and the fact that Israel enjoys such a strong military and financial support from the United States reflects a distorted political system in which the U.S. as a superpower is using its significant influence to allow its allies to commit abuses.

Q: Why is Canada not really concerned about human rights violations when it clinches arms deals with a value of 15 billion dollars with Saudi Arabia? Is it justifiable to say that Canada is not aware that these weapons are used against children and women in Yemen?

A: Canada, like all countries, has a responsibility to ensure that it does not violate human rights or international humanitarian law including in its military deals; so selling weapons to actors who are committing war crimes in Yemen will be a violation of Canada’s obligations and certainly, the Canadian government and the Canadian people have a responsibility to ensure that their foreign policy respects human rights and does not contribute to war crimes. 

Q: Washington has imposed harsh sanctions on Iran that are hampering Iran’s access to medicine. At such a hard time, countries like Canada have been cooperating with Washington in pushing ahead with its unilateral sanctions by refusing to sell humanitarian goods to Iran.  What is your comment?

 A: Unfortunately, the United States and Canada support human rights selectively, and the United States, in particular, has not done nearly enough to call out its allies for human rights abuses. At DAWN, we believe that U.S. policy should be consistent. So the same standard in terms of respecting human rights that are applied towards Iran should also be applied towards Israel and every other country because these are universal standards of how government should treat the people under their control.

Q: Why have Western countries, especially Canada and the U.S., preferred to turn a blind eye to Khashoggi’s murder while they knew that Mohammed bin Salman was directly responsible for that crime? How could Saudis distract attention away from their crimes and influence human rights bodies in the UN?

A: I think the lack of accountability for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi reflects a weakness in the system of international politics and especially the United States, which is selling Saudi Arabia billions of dollars in the arms trade and providing diplomatic cover that allows the Saudi government to act with impunity. The lack of accountability for Jamal Khashoggi’s murder regarding the role of Mohammad Bin Salman indicates that real change is needed. What is encouraging is that in the United States, there is pressure not just from the American people but also in the American Congress seeking accountability, and I remind that the U.S. Congress has required the federal government to provide information about those responsible for Jamal Khashoggi’s murder in the form of a DNI (Director of National Intelligence) report that was to be published last year. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has ignored that mandate and refused to release the report.  The refusal is the subject of litigation in U.S. courts, and we hope that the incoming administration will follow the law and do what Congress has required, which is to reveal what American intelligence services know about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. 

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Nuking Itself… How Russophobia Led the U.S. to Bomb its Own Citizens

Finian Cunningham October 26, 2020

Generations of countless Americans have been contaminated and sickened by the first-ever atomic bomb test. The Trinity explosion on July 16, 1945, was carried out in the New Mexico desert. Three weeks later, two A-bombs were dropped on Japan, killing up to 200,000 people.

But the number of American victims caused by radiation fallout from the Trinity test is reckoned to be also imponderably high. The American government conducted the explosion in secret, unbeknownst to the population of New Mexico. That was in spite of warnings from Manhattan Project scientists of a high risk to public health from the extreme radiation. Without a warning to the public and because of a cover-up about the event, countless Americans were exposed to carcinogenic radiation.

In a recent interview with Karl Grossman, New Mexican resident Tina Cordova tells how her community has been campaigning for decades to find out the truth behind the Trinity test and to seek reparations from the federal government. Incredibly, there has never been a federal investigation into establishing the human health impact from that atomic test explosion. But Cordova and her community estimate that the number is huge. She is the fourth generation in her family to have suffered from cancer. Countless others tell of high numbers of infant mortality over the decades and other morbidities that stretch across the entire state of New Mexico.

A combination of factors conspired to wreak a heavy toll on the people of New Mexico. It is one of the poorest states in the U.S., with large numbers of native Americans and Latinos. In selecting the test site for the A-bomb, there was a tacit racism among planners in Washington who viewed the area and its population as expendable. By not warning the people of the explosion, local populations were given no chance to take protective measures such as evacuation or avoiding consumption of contaminated water and food produced from the soil. The people were deceived into continuing their livelihoods as normal following the explosion, drinking contaminated water and breathing radioactive air. The New York Times was instrumental in the cover-up, issuing reports that the explosion was due to a conventional munitions incident. It was only after the horrific bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 an 9 that the people of New Mexico realized what had really happened at the Trinity site. Even then they were kept in the dark by Washington stonewalling about the event for decades to come.

Still another factor that maximized the damage on public health was the rush by the American government to weaponize the A-bomb technology. As Karl Grossman points out, the rationale behind the Manhattan Project was said to be to preempt Nazi Germany. But by July 1945, Nazi Germany was defeated and imperial Japan was on its knees. The inescapable implication is that President Harry Truman and the Pentagon wanted to display the new awesome weapon of mass destruction to the Soviet Union in what would be a chilling demarcation of the postwar globe according to American power.

Truman eagerly awaited the news of the Trinity test while attending the Potsdam allies’ conference in Germany along with Britain’s Winston Churchill and the Soviet Union’s Josef Stalin. On receiving news of the successful explosion, Truman immediately adopted a more strident attitude towards Stalin. In that moment, a new Cold War was born.

Thus, it was Russophobia among the American ruling class that rushed the Trinity A-bomb explosion, even though that event would lead to generations of American citizens stricken with fatal diseases from the fallout. In a very real and frightening way, the U.S. rulers took a decision to “nuke” their own people such was their obsession with confronting the Soviet Union.

Subsequent U.S. nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and 60s was conducted in remote areas of Nevada and in the Pacific Ocean. Those tests also took a deadly toll on the environment and local populations on Pacific islands.

But the recklessness and callous conditions of the New Mexico test is unparalleled in the toxic exposure it imposed on unsuspecting populations.

The stone-cold willingness to, in effect, bomb its own citizens by the federal government is a shuddering testimony as to the nefarious lengths the planners in Washington were prepared to go in their obsessive Russophobia.

When we survey the relentless fixation today in Washington and the U.S. political class with blaming Russia for all sorts of alleged malign intent, one can easily discern that this endemic Russophobia among America’s rulers has not waned.

The barbarity of what happened in New Mexico 75 years ago is alive and well. If it can be inflicted without apology on American citizens, then what does that say about the danger to the rest of the world?

Israel And The Emirates Sign The “Abraham Accords”

Written by Thierry MEYSSAN on 25/09/2020

The situation in the Middle East has been blocked since the Oslo Accords signed by Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat in 1993. They were supplemented by the Jericho-Gaza Agreement, which recognizes certain prerogatives of the Palestinian Authority, and the Wadi Araba Agreements, which concluded peace between Israel and Jordan.

At the time, the Israeli government intended to separate definitively from the Palestinians. It was ready to do so by creating a Palestinian pseudo-state, devoid of several attributes of sovereignty, including an independent army and finances. Labour’s Yitzhak Rabin had previously experimented with Bantustans in South Africa, where Israel was advising the apartheid regime. Another experiment took place in Guatemala with a Mayan tribe under General Efraín Ríos Montt.

Yasser Arafat accepted the Oslo Accords to derail the process of the Madrid Conference (1991). Presidents George W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev had tried to impose peace on Israel by removing Arafat from the international scene with the support of Arab leaders.

Despite all this, many commentators believed that the Oslo Accords could bring peace.

In any case, 27 years later, nothing positive has limited the suffering of the Palestinian people, but the state of Israel has been gradually transformed from within. Today this country is divided into two antagonistic camps, as evidenced by its government, the only one in the world to have two Prime Ministers at the same time. On the one hand the partisans of British colonialism behind the first Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanhyahu, on the other hand the partisans of a normalization of the country and its relations with its neighbors, behind the second Prime Minister, Benny Gantz. This two-headed system reflects the incompatibility of these two projects. Each camp paralyzes its rival. Only time will come to end the colonial project of conquering Greater Israel from the banks of the Nile to those of the Euphrates, the comet tail of an outdated era.

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States has implemented the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski strategy aimed at adapting the US army to the needs of a new form of capitalism based no longer on the production of goods and services, but on financial engineering. To do this, they began an “endless war” of destruction of state structures throughout the “broader Middle East” without taking into account their friends and enemies. In two decades, the region became cursed for its inhabitants. Afghanistan, then Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen are the theater of wars presented as lasting a few weeks, but which last indefinitely, without perspective.

When Donald Trump was elected president, he promised to put an end to the “endless wars” and to bring US soldiers home. In this spirit, he gave carte blanche to his special adviser and nevertheless son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The fact that President Trump is supported in his country by Zionist Christians and that Jared Kushner is an Orthodox Jew has led many commentators to portray them as friends of Israel. If they do indeed have an electoral interest in letting this be believed, it is not at all their approach to the Middle East. They intend to defend the interests of the American people, and not those of the Israelis, by substituting trade relations for war on the model of President Andrew Jackson (1829-37). Jackson managed to prevent the disappearance of the Indians he had fought as a general, although only the Cherokees signed the agreement he proposed. Today they have become the largest Native American tribe, despite the infamous episode of the “Trail of Tears”.

For three years, Jared Kushner travelled through the region. He was able to see for himself how much fear and hatred had developed there. For 75 years, Israel has persisted in violating all UN resolutions that concern it and continues its slow and inexorable nibbling of Arab territory. The negotiator reached only one conclusion: International Law is powerless because almost no one – with the notable exception of Bush Sr. and Gorbachev – has wanted to really apply it since the partition plan for Palestine in 1947. Because of the inaction of the international community, its application if it were to happen today would add injustice to injustice.

Kushner worked on many hypotheses, including the unification of the Palestinian people around Jordan and the linking of Gaza to Egypt. In June 2019, he presented proposals for the economic development of the Palestinian territories at a conference in Bahrain (the “deal of the century”). Rather than negotiating anything, the idea was to quantify what everyone would gain from peace. In the end, he managed, on September 13, 2020, to get a secret agreement signed in Washington between the United Arab Emirates and Israel. The agreement was formalized two days later, on September 15, in a watered-down version.”

The press in the Emirates does not have the same version of the events as that of Israel. None of them has an interest in expressing itself frankly.

As always, the most important thing is the secret part: Israel was forced to renounce in writing its plans for annexation (including the territories allegedly “offered” by Donald Trump in the “deal of the century” project) and to let Dubai Ports World (known as “DP World”) take over the port of Haifa, from which the Chinese have just been ejected.

This agreement is in line with the ideas of the second Israeli Prime Minister Benny Gantz, but represents a disaster for the camp of the first Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Not having read the secret part of the agreements myself, I do not know if it clearly indicates the renunciation of annexing the Syrian Golan Heights, occupied since 1967, and the Lebanese Shebaa Farms, occupied since 1982. Similarly, I do not know whether compensation is provided for the port of Beirut, since it is clear that its eventual reconstruction would be detrimental both to Israel and to the Emirates’ investments in Haifa. However, the Lebanese President, Michel Aoun, has already publicly evoked a real estate construction project instead of the port of Beirut.

In order to make this treaty acceptable to all parties, it has been named “Abraham Accords”, after the common father of Judaism and Islam. The paternity was attributed, to the great joy of Benny Gantz, to the “outstretched hand” (sic) of Benjamin Netanyahu, his toughest opponent. Finally, Bahrain was associated with it.

This last point aims to mount the new regional role that Washington has granted to the Emirates in replacement of Saudi Arabia. As we announced, it is now Abu Dhabi and no longer Riyadh that represents US interests in the Arab world Other Arab states are invited to follow Bahrain’s example.

The Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, has not had harsh words against the Emirati “betrayal”. He was taken up both by those who remain hostile to peace (the Iranian ayatollahs) and by those who remain committed to the Oslo Accords and the two-state solution. Indeed, by formalizing diplomatic relations between Israel and the new Arab leader, the Emirates, the Abraham Accords turn the page on the Oslo Accords. The palm of hypocrisy goes to the European Union, which persists in defending international law in theory and violating it in practice.

If President Trump is re-elected and Jared Kushner continues his work, the Israeli-Emirati agreements will be remembered as the moment when Israelis and Arabs regained the right to speak to each other, just as the overthrow of the Berlin Wall marked the moment when East Germans regained the right to speak to their relatives in the West. On the contrary, if Joe Biden is elected, Israel’s nibbling of Arab territories and the “endless war” will resume throughout the region.

Relations between Israel and the Emirates had long since stabilized without a peace treaty since there was never a declared war between them. The Emirates have been secretly buying arms from the Jewish state for the past decade. Over time this trade has increased, especially in terms of telephone interceptions and internet surveillance. In addition, an Israeli embassy was already operating under cover of an intelligence agency.

In addition, an Israeli embassy was already operating under cover of a delegation to an obscure UN body in the Emirates. However, the “Abraham Accords” challenge the dominant Arab-Israeli discourse and shake up internal relations in the entire region.

Source: Voltaire Network

American dream, global nightmare

By Keith Harmon Snow

September 10, 2020 – 20:35

For many years I have mistakenly believed that police shootings and killings of blacks and Native Americans in the United States occurred because police officers had made some kind of mistake.

The cops were poorly trained, my conscience argued, they made a mistake, but they can be reformed, they can be better trained. I saw it as a lack of training, a phenomenon that occurred due to some accident of circumstances or a moment of confusion. Now I more clearly see that police in the United States—especially white but not only white police—shoot and kill people of color out of hate.  

It has always been this way.  The modern era of black lives doesn’t matter is no aberration.  How can we speak of the ‘Death of the American Dream’ when for millions of people their reality in the land of the free and home of the brave has revolved around the imperatives of struggling to survive in the shadows of predatory capitalism? The violence grew alongside the great European enlightenment, and then the Conquistadors brought conquest and annihilation to the shores of Turtle Island—what the white man calls ‘America’—and to the Spice Islands and the Kingdoms of Kongo and everywhere they went, and then came the galleons packed with once free African men and women sold into the brutality of plantation slavery.  Life for far too many Americans—north, south, central—has always been more nightmare than a dream. 

Our own citizens marginalized by our own U.S. government are not special in this regard. If we the conscious and caring people of the world open our hearts, minds, and eyes, we bear witness to the most horrible suffering, rampant injustice, unspeakable atrocities, war, and plunder being committed against innocent people everywhere.  One might have to dig tooth and nail to get beyond the unprecedented censorship, somehow defeat the exclusive algorithms of social media and reject the false fact-checkers, but the evidence is irrefutable: The power brokers of the United States of America and its closest corporatized allies—Canada, Europe, Israel, Australia, Japan—constitute a supreme and immediate threat to all life on planet Earth.  Of course, to admit this ugly fact one must confront the demons of disbelief and most people will never do that. The fact-checkers would reject it as false in any case.

I have met people all over the world whose consciousness was falsely informed by the idea of the ‘American Dream’, a pure fantasy that has spread and, like a true virus, infected the minds of people free and unfree all over the world. Take the young Congolese soldier who aspires to serve in the U.S. military.  What is the source of this Dream? How does it proliferate in far-off places and everywhere infect so many minds and, it appears, hearts?

The cognitive dissonance that everywhere prevails is due to the power, reach, and success of the western propaganda system. Hollywood and Netflix films travel the world faster than the speed of light and deepen the shadows that everywhere dim the consciousness of humanity.  Life is becoming more machine than man, more man than woman, more disconnected from itself every day. Transhumanism is the new eugenics. Western consciousness is falsified by powerful elite individuals and their institutions of state power, propaganda, and perception management, including the traditional mass media mainstays (e.g. the New York Times, National Public Radio, Observer, Agence France Press, AP, BBC, Washington Post, Newsweek, etc.) but also the antisocial media of the Facebook, Twitter and Google kind.  What else could explain the cognitive dissonance whereby so many of the world’s people act against their own interests in support of a very real contemporary fascism?  

Language has been so utterly perverted to serve the forces that divide and conquer that it is nearly impossible to convey the truth as I see it: people have been deeply conditioned to believe that which is unbelievable and disbelieve the truth even when it hits them right between the eyes.  You don’t have to be a western news consumer to be sick from eating the corporate propaganda of one flavor or another, and so we have entire populations clamoring to have what we in North America have, but not at all prepared to accept the sacrifices that come with having it, and who—not incidentally —are forced to suffer the indignities that come with not having it so that we can.

Fascism, for example, is not about jackboots and swastikas, though there is plenty of that variety in the world, and particularly in today’s Trumpian dystopia, but rather a matter of the health or illness of the character structure of the individual. Otherwise reasonable and thinking human beings are so quickly lost to a cycle of self-fulfilling hysteria (read: fascism) inculcated in their inner being by the many sociological and psychological operations being conducted against them (read: us) by elite interests, predatory corporations, phantasmagorical ‘entertainment’ industries, think tanks, the mass media, and even the charity complex.  The great American Empire does not limit psychological warfare only to the targeting of its enemies, and torture is a useful tool that the Trumps, Bidens, Trudeaus, Clintons, and Netanyahu’s (sic) will quickly and quietly deploy against anyone who has something important truth to tell or anyone who gets in the way of those who don’t want it told.   

The example of toxic pharmaceutical injections (so-called ‘vaccines’) being served on unwitting dark-skinned populations quickly comes to mind, followed immediately by the clamoring for telecom microchip implants that will fundamentally dehumanize humanity.  It’s astonishing that more people don’t see how easily we have been fooled; that they don’t —for example—stand up and tell the elite powers-that-be to stick their toxic injections up their assets. Even if they did, the response is obvious: beat the people up, imprison them, torture them into submission, and stick it to them.

The stellar contemporary example of selling oneself out for the dictates of predatory capitalism is the COVID-19 conspiracy.  The world is overcome by a systematically manufactured fear and it has left people everywhere jumping at shadows, even their own.  One more example would be the conspiracy of 9-11 that for so many years now has informed and driven the great American hatred of all things Islam and all people Islamic and has provided a convenient cover story to justify the permanent warfare economies of the Zionist Anglo-American Empire, and the wars that they feed on. Alas, Islam has no corner on the market of American hate: with the COVID-19(84) scare the North American public has descended into a hysterical xenophobic fear and hatred of all things Chinese.  It doesn’t matter that Bill Gates and his satanic conspirators orchestrated their premeditated profiteering by first moving their pharmaceutical interests offshore to some far-off place called Wuhan.  Fear is the most valuable currency wielded by the people that pretend to be our ‘leaders’.

The disconnect between what is real and what is virtual is nowhere so starkly obvious, and sometimes horrible, and universally beautiful, as it is when you exit technological ‘civilization’—the matrix of indoctrination and conditioning that revolves around the bombardment of the senses with constant advertising and infotainment and subliminal seduction—and enter what westerners have been conditioned to see as the ‘uncivilized’ world comprised of rural Africa, Asia, Latin America or West Asia.

Indeed, the entire juggernaut of capitalism and its ‘achievements’—if global dominance, pollution, disease, trafficking in women and children, war crimes and genocide count as achievements, which for the psychopaths in power, they do—and the global onslaught of the multinational corporation is based on the expropriation of raw materials from all over the earth and the perpetual re-supply and re-stimulation of the ‘global’ economy for the production of unnecessary and unwanted products peddled by unnecessary and unwanted corporations to justify unnecessary and unwanted ecological destruction.

The pace of our modern world makes it impossible for people to navigate the facts or fictions about events and policies that define our reality. Global surveillance, data collection, and social engineering are no longer the exclusive haunts of the spooks at the CIA, MI-6, or MOSSAD. Now everyone is at risk of becoming the unwitting pushers of propaganda that would be nauseating to a truly awakened consciousness.  It seems people are so hopelessly lost that they will without question choose to sacrifice their children to save their own bodies.  And so, what do we have? We have an Empire of otherwise good people blindly doing everything wrong and convinced they are the greatest saints in the universe.  They follow the pied pipers of propaganda condoning the most egregious crimes committed in the name of the great state’s red white and blue, atrocities the likes of which they cannot even imagine and committed by the dirtiest spymasters and covert operatives. 

We may indeed be at the end of an era, but this has nothing to do with the monumental fraud of the upcoming U.S. national elections. True, these may cause the great Satanical Empire to pause, but only so much as one white supremacist war-mongering philanderer might be substituted for another.  And there is the great hope for so many people of the world, it seems: they believe that all that needs to be done is swap one delusional white savior for another, and truth and justice will be restored to the world. Nothing can be further from the truth. There is no such thing as the lesser of two evils.  The American dream is not so much dead as it is adrift on a dark and stormy sea. 

This does not mean that the end is near, although in global environmental terms I personally believe it is.  The corpse may yet be revealed.  Who can say for sure?  The evidence suggests that positive feedback loops have been set in motion and the climate is spiraling out of control.  Thus, it is only a matter of time for all of us. There is a bigger picture, but North Americans and Brits and Israelis are wholly incapable of seeing it.  

I often say: “If you are reading the New York Times you are contributing to your own mental illness.”  This is no joke: I am completely serious. (Substitute any other mainstay of the western corporate-prostituted media and the statement still applies.)  My sincerity comes after foolishly dedicating years of my life to researching world events, investigating the corruption of the Empire, juxtaposing these with the realities I have seen and experienced, and comparing them to the propaganda produced by our so-called democratic society.  These are advertising delivery mechanisms meant to manipulate public opinion and manufacture consent while simultaneously making someone a lot of money.  The reaction by consumers of western propaganda to my thesis is generally hysterical.  The smarter ones are certain that they are immune to the dirty tricks of the propaganda pundits, and so they reject the thesis outright, and with great disdain, if not laughter, but only after lecturing me about their clairvoyance (and my ignorance).  The more intellectual the consumer of this propaganda, the more arrogant the certainty of their immunity to it.  

These intellectuals couldn’t be more wrong.  Miseducated by the best colleges, they are like academics living in their own little worlds, debating amongst themselves, or like the politicians that inhabit the wasteland of private profit and perfidious power we call the U.S. ‘Congress’.  Do you think they have ever read such great works as the Upanishads? The Abbasids?  The Conceptions of Nature and Methods Used for Its Study by the Ikhwan al Safa, al-Biruni, and Ibn Sina?  The Koran?

The American dream lives on in many good people, and that is because we hold out a flicker of hope that someday of reckoning might be near, that a deeper consciousness will take hold, that enough people will stand up to the evil—in all its ugly cowardly petty manifestations—and together with good people of all nations and colors and faiths the world over we will usher in a new paradigm that is grounded in wisdom and love.   

Keith Harmon Snow is the 2009 Regent’s Lecturer in Law & Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara, recognized for over a decade of work on war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.  A photojournalist and war correspondent, he is a three-time Project Censored award-winner.

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It Is the Century of Falling Racism Statues…And White Supremacy

Source

By Elham Hashemi

George Floyd’s brutal killing was like a stone thrown into the pond, causing a non-stop ripple effect. For the first time in modern history, people across the United States and Europe sound their disgust and unease towards the racist policies carried out by the US administration and the systems across the Western part of the world.

It started with protests and riots, and so far has not come to an end. One interesting scene is how the streets began to fill up with people despite police violence and statues started to fall down; these are not any statues but are in fact statues of racism and white supremacy.

In the United States, more than a dozen statues have been toppled, including several Confederate figures. To begin with, a few statues of Christopher Columbus who is depicted as “THE hero” began to fall down. Rarely do educational texts or reports refer to Columbus’s true image.

Bartolemé de las Casas, who was said to have known Columbus in person, decried the brutality in his “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies in 1552”. He described how Columbus and the conquistadors disfigured Native slaves and fed them alive to dogs.

 A statue of Christopher Columbus was beheaded in Boston. A Columbus statue was also destroyed and dragged into a lake earlier in the week in Richmond, Virginia. After the figure was removed from its pedestal by protesters using several ropes in Richmond, a sign that reads, “Columbus represents genocide” was placed on the spray-painted foundation that once held the statue. In Camden, a New Jersey city near Philadelphia, protestors took down a statue of Christopher Columbus, joining others across the country.

A 10-foot bronze sculpture of Columbus was also toppled in Minnesota after a group of protests tied ropes around the neck of the statue and yanked it from its pedestal.

Theodor Roosevelt’s statue at NY museum of natural history was reported to be removed soon for its symbolism of the Native American man and the African man who stands beside him.

In Belgium’s Antwerp, thousands of protesters marching for Black Lives Matter filled the streets and demanded the removal of statues of King Léopold II, a brutal colonial ruler. The Belgian king statue who brutalized Congo was burned and ultimately removed.

It was the statue of King Léopold; infamous for genocide with his orchestration of mass violence against the people in the Congo, a large portion of which he considered his personal territory for cultivating and exporting rubber and ivory.

In Britain, a statue of the 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston was toppled by protesters and dumped into the very same waters of the Bristol Harbor that launched slave ships centuries ago.

Protesters have also made threats against statues of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the architect of colonial policies that lead to the mass starvation of some four million Indians, the torture of Kenyans, and was in favor of using poisoned gas against “uncivilized” tribes.

Shamelessly, the British government sealed Churchill’s statue inside a protective steel barrier ahead of the massive London race protest which Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed has been “hijacked” by extremists. In this context, it is not surprising to hear the racist language of Johnson and his claims that the protests are hijacked.

At the University of Oxford, protesters have stepped up their longtime push to remove a statue of Rhodes, the Victorian imperialist who served as prime minister of the Cape Colony in southern Africa. He made a fortune from gold and diamonds on the backs of miners who labored in brutal conditions.

Also in London, the statue of 18th Century slave trader Robert Milligan has been pulled down from outside the Museum of London Docklands after campaigners vowed to protest every day until it was removed.

New Zealand’s fourth-largest city removed a bronze statue of the British naval officer Capt. John Hamilton after a Maori tribe asked for the statue to be taken down and one Maori elder threatened to tear it down himself. The city of Hamilton said it was clear the statue of the man accused of killing indigenous Maori people in the 1860s would be vandalized.

The statues and monuments that have long honored racist figures are being boxed up, beheaded and sprayed in paint. It is not only because black lives matter, it is because the racist and white supremacist discrimination cannot be tolerated any longer. The New York Times reported that in dozens more cities across the US, statues that still stand have been marked with graffiti, challenged anew with petitions and protests, or scheduled for removal.

Among these statues, a “living statue” named Donald Trump must also be removed in order to preserve human dignity and freedom and end racism. White supremacists and other hateful actors attack immigrants, communities of color, and religious minorities with impunity — all under the Trump administration’s watch.

Tragedies during the Trump time have taken place across the US, targeting African Americans, immigrants and minorities, and these were encouraged by the same force of white supremacy. White supremacists including president Trump and his loyalists deploy disruptive rhetoric and enact racist policies like the Muslim Ban, family separation, attempts silence voters of color. At the end of the day, policies of violence and hate produce acts of violence and hate. The people of America, Europe and the world are rising in face of imperialism and white supremacy, it is no longer a time when the US administration can manipulate the free people of the world.

هل قطار الشرّ الأمريكي قابل للإيقاف

نضال حمد – رئيس تحرير موقع الصفصاف

تابعت مشاهدة الاحتجاجات في الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية على اثر قيام شرطي عنصري أبيض بقتل شاب ( زنجي) خنقاً. فتذكرت أحداث فيلم (غير قابل للإيقاف) التي تتحدث عن قطار مسرع خرج عن السيطرة، في حين يحاول بطلا الفيلم فرانك بارنز (دنزل واشنطن) و ويل كولسون (كريس باين) إيقافه. بعد مغامرة شاقة يستطيع البطلان (الزنجي) و(الأبيض) إيقافه بنجاح.

 لقد عالجت السينما الأمريكية قضية العنصرية والرق والتمييز في عديد من أفلامها الشهيرة والتي تعد بعضها من روائع السينما ونالت شهرة واسعة، لكن على ما يبدو انها لم تساعد السياسيين في أمريكا على التخلص من العنصرية والتمييز والجشع الرأسمالي الامبريالي. وبمناسبة الحديث عن الافلام المذكورة يمكن ذكر الأحداث الشهيرة في أمريكا التي اندلعت على اثر ادعاء زوجين في  16 تموز 1949 إنهما تعرّضا لهجوم من قبل أربعة شبان من أصل إفريقي في غروفلاند. حيث اسفر الهجوم بحسب ادعائهم عن اغتصاب الفتاة نورما بادجيت التي كانت آنذاك تبلغ من العمر 17 عاماً. كان حادثا مروعا ومن أكثر الحوادث الدامية بين (البيض) و(السود). تم تعذيب أحد المتهمين( الزنوج) حتى الموت ووجدت في جسده اثار 400 رصاصة. بعد 70 عاماً تمت تبرئة المتهمين وأفادت المحكمة أن كل ما نسب إليهم من تهم كان باطلاً. كما تبين أن القصة برمتها كانت قضية عنصرية، من تأليف قائد شرطة المدينة ويليس ماكال، الذي كان من أشد العنصريين.

 تنص المادة الأولى من الإعلان العالمي لحقوق الإنسان على أن “جميع الناس يولدون أحرارًا ومتساوين في الكرامة والحقوق”. منذ 1949 بدأ العالم الاحتفال في 2 ديسمبر بـ”اليوم العالمي لإلغاء الرق”، الذي يهدف إلى القضاء على كل أشكال الرق والعنصرية، حيث أقرته اتفاقية الأمم المتحدة. لكن قطار الاستعباد والاستعمار الأمريكي والغربي استمر بأساليب أخرى حديثة ومتطورة.

 بعد انتهاء فترة الرئيس الأمريكي الافريقي الأصل بارك أوباما انتخبت أمريكا رئيسا عنصريا وتاجرا جشعا يدعى دونالد ترامب. لا يخفي عنصريته وعجرفته حتى ضد حلفاء الولايات المتحدة. إذ يتعامل معهم بعقلية التاجر البلطجي وزعيم المافيا. لغاية الآن يرفض توجيه خطاب للشعب الأمريكي حول الأحداث العاصفة التي تدور في المدن الأمريكية. لقد دمر المتظاهرون نصبا تذكارية عديدة منها لجورج واشنطن مؤسس أمريكا ولكرستوفر كولومبس مكتشف أمريكا. وكلاهما عنصريين دمويين ساهما في ابادة الهنود الحمر سكان البلد الأصليين.

عرفت أمريكا أبشع أنواع الرق والعبودية في التاريخ البشري الحديث، فبعد ابادة السكان الأصليين الهنود تم استعباد (السود). حيث جُلب الأفارقة لاستعبادهم بشكل همجي لا مثيل له.  سيبقى هذا العمل الاجرامي اللاانساني وصمة عار تقبح وجه أمريكا حتى الأبد..

إن اظهار الأمر وكأن هناك  مساواة فعلاً بين السكان في الولايات المتحدة لا ينطلي على أحد. إذ لازالت هناك فوارق كبيرة بين الجانبين في كل مجالات الحياة. حتى أن وباء كورنا حصد الكثير من (السود) بسبب الاهمال وانعدام الرعاية من قبل الدولة. كما يدل التعامل العنصري للشرطة الأمريكية مع (السود) على مر السنين وحتى حادثة قتل جورج فلوريد مؤخراً على استعداد النظام الرأسمالي العنصري لقتلهم بكافة الأساليب وبدون الشعور بالذنب أو الرجوع للعدالة وللقوانين.

 ليس أسهل من أن يكذب الانسان حين يصف الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية بحامية وضامنة العدالة والديمقراطية والسلام في العالم. تلك الكذبة وجدت لها مكانة كبيرة وسط شعوب أوروبا الشرقية بالذات، حيث كانت تحكم أنظمة حكم شمولية، ساهمت في تكريه الشعوب تلك بالشيوعية والاشتراكية وفي انجرارها وراء الدعاية الامبريالية والرأسمالي. يبدو أن تلك الشعوب ستنتظر طويلا حتى تعرف أن نظام الارهاب والعنصرية الأمريكي أسوأ بكثير من النظام الشمولي الذي قمعها سواء عبر منع الناس من التملك والحركة وحتى اقتناء أبسط الأشياء مثل جواز السفر والسيارة.

 على كل حال موضوعنا الآن عن العنصرية والاستعباد والتمييز والظلم في أمريكا، حيث منذ تأسيس الامبراطورية الأمريكية على عظام وفوق جماجم سكانها الأصليين من الهنود الحمر، الذين أبيدت غالبيتهم العظمى أما بالأوبئة أو رميا بالرصاص من الرشاشات الثقيلة. كل تلك المذابح وعمليات الإبادة تمت على أيدي الغزاة والمستعمرين البيض القادمين من أوروبا وممالكها آنذاك للعثور على أرض الميعاد، لكنها الأرض التي لم تكن لهم ولم يفكر شعبها يوما ما بميعاد مع الغزاة المجرمين حيث كانت  ابادته ونهايته. ميعاد مع الإرهابي والسفاح الأول كولومبوس وصولا الى جورج واشنطن وتباعا حتى يومنا هذا حيث يحكم رئيس عنصري وشخص استعلائي، تاجر رأسمالي اسمه ترامب، يعادي البشرية والحضارة العالمية.

 أمريكا أرض الميعاد” لشعب الله المختار” أي لمن اعتبروا أنفسهم كما اليهود الصهاينة المحتلين في فلسطين شعبا بلا أرض استطاع أن يؤسس وطنا للشعب  المختار. تأسست أمريكا في البدء بالدم والحديد والنار، عبر مجموعات من المجرمين وقطاع الطرق الذين وصلوا الى أرض الهنود الحمر. وبنفس الطريقة تأسس الكيان الصهيوني في فلسطين المحتلة، الذي حظي ولازال يحظى بكل الدعم الأمريكي والغربي. لأنه يمثل قاعدة متقدمة للاستعمار العالمي الرأسمالي الامبريالي في بلادنا. نفس هؤلاء عندما تمكنوا من ابادة الهنود أخذوا يبحثون عن (الزنوج) الأفارقة حيث تمت عمليات اختطافهم من بلدانهم الأصلية وجلبهم للخدمة والعمل كعبيد لدى السادة البيض حيث تم اضطهادهم على مدار سنوات طويلة.

على كل حال الهبة الشعبية الأمريكية ضد الجريمة والعنصرية لن تنجح بدون ايجاد قيادة تمثلها وتعد لها برنامج عمل واضح للتغيير وتحقيق مطالبها والاطاحة بالادارة الأمريكية الحالية، ثم العمل على تغيير النظام الأمريكي الراسمالي الى نظام انساني وديمقراطي حقيقي وغير عنصري.

White Privilege and Racism Debate: a British East European point of view

Source

June 22, 2020

by Nebojša Radić for The Saker Blog

In this country^[1]I am regarded as White and therefore, privileged – it seems.

People in the streets and on television say that Whites should kneel and apologise.

Really?

How come I find myself in this bizarre situation?

How did I get here?

How did a refugee from warn-torn socialist Yugoslavia turned fisherman in the South Pacific become a privileged White male?

Did I miss anything?

Is it something I did?

Something I said?

No, it’s not something I did or said. It has nothing to do with me.

Except that… it has everything to do with me and there is no-one to speak out for me!

So, there you go now, hear my voice.

I was born in Yugoslavia, the most multicultural country in Europe. Through the non-allied movement, it had many links with third-world countries and we used to call Africans: braća crnci, Black Brothers. I grew up in Belgrade listening to African American blues musicians such as BB King, Jimi Hendrix, John Lee Hooker and Blind Lemon Jefferson, playing basketball to better the likes of Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson! It was only in the late 90s that I noticed that the footballer Edson Arantes do Nascimento better known as Pele was black! And I remember watching him play for the first time in Sweden 1970! It took me thirty years or perhaps, ten years of living in an English-speaking country to think of the great football magician in terms of race.

In the early nineties, like many of my countrymen (and women, yes), I fled the war. I found myself in Nelson, New Zealand where a friend of a friend operated a fleet of fishing boats. I learnt the trade and a couple of years later, upon graduation, I could tell ALL the commercial fish species in the South Pacific. Filling the many forms of the New Zealand immigration service and later of the government, I identified as a Pakeha, the Maori term for white people and, apparently, also for a pig. Pakeha or Caucasian, that was the choice I had. At the same time, for most the Yugoslav immigrants in Aotearoa,^[2], I was naš – ours. I was just one of us, ex-Yugoslavs and we all spoke naški – our language. We never bothered (very wisely) to call it Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian or…

Locals struggled to tell us apart the same as we struggled to tell the English from the Dutch or the Maoris from the Pacific Islanders (nota bene: the great rugby player, Jonah Lomu was of Tongan origin, an Islander – not a Maori^[3]).

While in Nelson, down very South, a good friend of mine Kit Carson, a farmer, wood turner and artist taught me an important lesson. We were barbequing some meat near the Tahunanui beach when Max said that as an Irish-born immigrant, Kit wasn’t a real Kiwi. The already well-aged and proud son of Joyce, Beckett, Heaney and a very long line of Celtic storytelling alchemists stood up from his chair with a drink in his mighty rugged hand and roared:

– You were born in this country, Max, but I chose to come here out my own free will. I am much more of a New Zealander than you will ever be!

Thus, spoke Kit Carson, Down Under Below, raising his glass to a thunderous – slaintè!

On the day the New York twin towers fell, I left Aotearoa^[4] and moved to Britain (this country?). I now live in Cambridge, a multi-cultural city with a peculiar town and gown historical (class, racial?) divide.

For the immigration service and the government here, I am White, the other White, mind you. The official government web page lists those options:

One of the home nations^[5] or Irish (Kit Carson!), Gypsy or Irish Traveller (Tyson Fury, the boxer) or any other White background. You can also belong to mixed ethnicities or declare yourself to be Jewish, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese or of any other Asian background. You can be African, Caribbean or of any other Black background. You could be Arab too (Dr Ali Meghji^[6])!^[7]

So, all Europeans are other Whites. Nigel Farage however, the prominent and outspoken British politician, does not complain about his French, Italian or German and not even Greek neighbours. He just does not recommend living next door to a bunch of Romanians!

At the same time, ‘Go home Poles’ graffiti compete with Banksy’s excellent artwork, anti-Russian hyper-hysteria (you don’t really want me to give you any links for this one) and the already metastatic anti-Serbian bias (uh, where shall I start with links…) that I have been exposed to over these 30 years.

Nine in ten of my conversations that started with where are you from originally? and continued with me saying I am from Serbia, ended right there – in embarrassment and silence. A sure sign that my interlocutors were educated on the topic by alphabet soup corporations (CNN, BBC… ESPN, CIA?) rather than history or any other books. While I do not expect people to have read all the novels by the Nobel laureate Ivo Andrić or seen the films of multiple Palme d’Or winner Emir Kusturica, to have ever found themselves trapped in one of the Marina Abramović arty installations, to have understood the principles of Nikola Tesla’s coil and wireless transmission of electricity or even watched Novak Đoković play tennis, it would be nice if they could make a small mental effort to move beyond the “murderous Serbs” stereotype and the likes of Milošević, Karadžić and Mladić.

So, the western political correctness pill may pretend to be covering Muslims, Blacks and Jews but it does not cover the others, with special reference to Eastern Europeans (our subject).

I can inform you, for instance, that there is no such a thing as an East European accent.^[8] Same as there is no such a thing as a Western European accent. The geographical Eastern Europe features languages that belong to different groups : Finno-Ugric, Greek, Romance, Slavic and Albanian among others. Native speakers of these language do not and cannot possibly have the same English accents. Again, is there such a thing as a Jewish, African or Muslim accent?

For instance,

• Talking to a woman wearing a burka you ask leisurely: Oh, is that a Muslim accent that I hear, darling?
• Talking to Shaquille O’Neal during a pick-up basketball game you say: Where does your accent come from? West Africa, perhaps? or,
• Talking to a rabbi who happen to be dressed as a rabbi: Interesting accent that you have – Semitic isn’t it?

(Nota bene: do NOT try any of these techniques at home)

East European is not an ethnicity. East Europeans as a compact group do not exist linguistically, culturally оr religiously and they are no different from Western Europeans in that respect. East European is a prejudiced political, cold war denomination for marginalised white (other) people.

My ancestors fought the Ottoman Turks for centuries not to be enslaved or taken away by the Janissaries. As my name is not Muhammed and I am a Christian, grandad seems to have done well. Now both the descendants and victims of the British Empire slave traders tell me I should apologise. Uh, let me see…

Is racism, as we now know it, not a construct of Western European maritime imperial nations, of genocide, slave trade and slavery?

Where I come from we learnt about these sinister exploits at school. We were told about what happened to the American Indians, the Aborigines, the Mayas and the Incas, the Africans abducted from their ancestral homes, enslaved and shipped to the new brave world. We knew about the East India Company, the British concentration camps in South Africa, Churchill’s racism and crimes, the utter high-tech barbarism visited upon the civilian populations of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden.

This was all common knowledge among people outside the Anglo-Saxon imperial reach.

The British Empire is racist, you now tell me? No kidding.

The American fathers of the exceptional nation were slave owners? Say no more.

The Empire committed atrocities with the ‘excuse’ that their victims we not really human.^[9] If they now, suddenly accepted the humanity of the colonised, exploited and murdered peoples, their minds would blow and disintegrate along with all of their cherished ethical, religious principles and civilised posturing.

But let’s go back to our topic, my Eastern European predicament. I am White, remember? Other White but still – sort of, White! To be better represented, I might want to join forces with the other Asians and the other Africans perhaps? So much for an identity crisis of the Others (capitalised though, mind you)!

I don’t think I am either privileged or responsible for racial tensions. I support human rights and equality and will not kneel or beg for forgiveness.

One day, when I return to the Balkans I may lay down and die of shame for what we allowed to happen to my generation and my country in those mountains. But I will not kneel. Not here, not now, not ever!

So, East Europeans are other Whites. We are not privileged and we often find ourselves at the receiving end of prejudice and intolerance. Do not paint us thus, with the old, stained, black & white brush. There are too many dirty brushes around us already… and so many wonderful colours.

Nebojša Radić is a native of Belgrade, Serbia. He has published fiction, essays and academic work in English (nom de guerre Sam Caxton), Serbian and Italian. He is Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge in the UK. Nebojša has two PhDs, one in Creative Writing from the UEA in Norwich and one in fish chucking form Talley’s Fisheries in Nelson, New Zealand.

Cambridge, UK

1. No-one ever says in Britain, England, the UK… ↑
2. New Zealand is officially bilingual and this is the Maori name. Aotearoa translates as The Land of the Long White Cloud) ↑
3. Advice based on personal experience acquired on the deck of a 15 metre-long fishing trawler at high sea during a storm: never call a Maori an Islander – BIG difference! ↑
4. Maori for New Zealand – The Land of the Long White Cloud. ↑
5. English, Northern Irish, Scottish or Welsh. ↑
6. ↑
7. https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/ethnic-groups ↑
8. My enunciations have been accused many times over of possessing such a dubious quality. ↑
9. “Churchill was a ‘racist’ and comparable to Hitler, says academic.”↑

Guess Which Surrender Monkey Won the Battle Of The Monuments?

Source

June 21, 2020

by Ilana mercer posted by permission for the Saker Blog

Steve Hilton is a Briton who anchors a current-affairs show on Fox News.

Mr. Hilton made the following feeble, snowflake’s case for the removal of the nation’s historically offensive statues:

It’s offensive to our Africa-American neighbors to maintain statues in public places that cause not only offense, but real distress. And it is disrespectful to our native-American neighbors to glorify a man who they see as having committed genocide against their ancestors. None of this is to erase history. Put it all in a museum. Let’s remember it and learn from it.

“What’s wrong with Camp Ulysses Grant,” Hilton further intoned sanctimoniously. He was, presumably, plumping for the renaming of army installations like Fort Bragg, called after a Confederate major general, Braxton Bragg.

Sons of the South—men and women, young and old—see their forebear as having died “in defense of the soil,” and not for slavery. Most Southerners were not slaveholders. All Southerners were sovereigntists, fighting a War for Southern Independence.

Hilton, it goes without saying, is a follower of the State-run Church of Lincoln. To the average TV dingbat, this means that Southern history comes courtesy of the likes of Doris Kearns Goodwin, a Lincoln idolater and the consummate court historian.

“Doris Kearns Goodwin,” explains professor Thomas J. DiLorenzo, the country’s chief Lincoln slayer, “is a museum-quality specimen of a court historian, a pseudo-intellectual who is devoted to pulling the wool over the public’s eyes by portraying even the most immoral, corrupt and sleazy politicians as great, wise, and altruistic men.”

When Doris does the TV circuit, evangelizing for power, she never mentions, say, the close connection between her great Ulysses Grant and Hilton’s “native-American neighbors.”

Yes, Doris, Steve: who exactly exterminated the Plains Indians?

Indian-Americans will likely be hip to the fact that the Republicans, led by General Sherman himself, supervised the genocide of some 60,000 Plains Indians from 1865 to 1890. The Plains Indians endured land dispossession that culminated “in the late 1880s, with the surviving tribes of the West being herded onto reservations,” writes DiLorenzo, in “The Feds versus The Indians.”

Primary sources notwithstanding, to make his case in this tract alone, DiLorenzo galvanizes sources such as L.A. Marshall’s Crimsoned Prairie: The Indian Wars (1972), John F. Marszalek’s Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order (1993) and Sheridan: The Life and War of General Phil Sheridan (1992), by Roy Morris, Jr.

“We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, Sherman wrote to Ulysses S. Grant (commanding general of the federal army) in 1866, ‘even to their extermination, men, women and children.’ The Sioux must ‘feel the superior power of the Government.’ Sherman vowed to remain in the West ‘till the Indians are all killed or taken to a country where they can be watched.’”

“‘During an assault,’ he instructed his troops, ‘the soldiers cannot pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age.’ He chillingly referred to this policy in an 1867 letter to Grant as ‘the final solution to the Indian problem,’ a phrase Hitler invoked some 70 years later.”

Hilton, who believes in the Republican Party’s moral supremacy, can’t be expected to know that, in “eradicating the Indians of the West,” Sherman was delivering good old “veiled corporate welfare” to “a segment of the railroad industry, which heavily bankrolled the Republican party.”

Some things never change.

More so than The Other Worthies mentioned, “our native-American neighbors” have a tendency to harken back to a once-proud history. If they retain any historic memory, then, America’s First Nations should balk at serving on Camp Ulysses Grant, or at Fort William Tecumseh Sherman.

The folks Hilton dubs “our Africa-American neighbors,” on the other hand, are more vested in breaking and burning stuff to get what they want, which is, invariably, other people’s stuff, sometimes called “reparations.”

It follows that Conservatism Inc. usually uses American Indians as its perennial piñata, while generally acceding to the aggressive demands of African-Americans for permanent victim status. It’s to Hilton’s credit that he even mentioned Native-Americans, who have little political clout and even less of an extractive approach to politics.

Given the state of his knowledge, Steve Hilton can’t be expected to be familiar with Lord Acton’s nuanced thinking on the Confederacy. According to another good, English thing, Encyclopedia Britannica, Acton was “the first great modern philosopher of resistance to the state, whether its form be authoritarian, democratic, or socialist.” And this enlightened British thinker favored the Confederacy.

Lord Acton certainly supported, even admired, Robert E. Lee, and saw secession and states’ rights as a check on the sovereign will.

The general, surmised Lord Acton, was fighting to preserve “the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will”: states’ rights and secession.

Lee’s inspired reply to Lord Acton:

… I believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people … are the safeguard to the continuance of a free government … whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.

“Lee,” argues Clyde Wilson, distinguished professor emeritus of history at the University of South Carolina, “was the product of a pre-ideological society, whereas the ‘treason’ shouters [Lincoln and his accomplices] were [modern statists] products of post-French Revolution nationalism. [To them], the Union meant the machinery of the federal government, under the control of their party, to be used for their agenda.”

“But as the Southern poet Allen Tate put it, the original Union was a gentleman’s agreement, not a group of buildings in Washington from which sacred commandments were issued.”

The acolytes of the French Revolution have carried the day, in their nihilistic Jacobinism. Still, for its radicalism, America circa 2020, makes the philosophical descendants of the original Jacobins look positively clingy about their symbols and statues.

President Emmanuel Macron evinced the resolve the Anglo-American surrender monkeys are too feeble to feel, much less display:

Said Macron, “The [French] republic will not erase any trace, or any name, from its history … it will not take down any statue.”

Bravo, Monsieur Macron.

**

Ilana Mercer has been writing a weekly, paleolibertarian column since 1999. She’s the author of Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa (2011) & The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed” (June, 2016). She’s on Twitter, Facebook & Gab. New on YouTube