Soviet WWII propaganda revised to hail detained Belarus opposition figure Maria Kolesnikova
By Seana Davis & Naira Davlashyan • last updated: 10/09/2020

The artist tells Euronews that her work "has to help and support people" through protests in Belarus. - Copyright INSTAGRAM @ania_redko_


One month on from Belarus' disputed election result, the opposition movement remains active on the streets and online.

Despite a series of internet outages, citizens have grown accustomed to using social media, such as the popular app Telegram, to communicate and source information.


And through these channels, a number of photos and graphics have been widely shared, becoming symbols of the protests movement.

One digital illustration on Instagram by artist Anna Redko has received nearly 10,000 likes since it was uploaded on Tuesday.

The artwork shows Maria Kolesnikova - a leading figure of the Belarusian opposition movement - in the design of a famous Soviet WWII poster.

In 1941, artist Irakli Toidze designed a poster entitled "Motherland Is Calling!" as wartime propaganda to encourage conscription.

It showed a woman dressed in red, flanked by the rifles, and holding a letter of conscription, which encouraged citizens to sign up for the war effort.

  

Irakli Toidze's "Motherland Is Calling!" posterCleared

Anna Redko's design shows Kolesnikova, similarly dressed in red, surrounded by white flowers, which have been used by women in Belarus as a symbol of solidarity during demonstrations.

Kolesnikova is also pictured holding a ripped passport in her right hand, in a piece entitled "The Motherland is calling you, Maria".

https://www.instagram.com/p/CE4MKVCJiPT/?utm_source=ig_embed

ania_redko_

"The Motherland Calls"

# Belarus2020

digital illustration

Anna Redko

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# zhyvebelarus @kalesnikava #art #digitalillustration #mywork

“Kolesnikova tore her passport so that she was not allowed to enter the territory of Ukraine, a source told Interfax-Ukraine.

“It was a forcible removal from her native country. Maria Kolesnikova could not be taken out of Belarus, because this brave woman took measures to prevent her movement across the border,” said Gerashchenko, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.

6d

On Monday, her opposition colleagues claimed that Kolesnikova had torn her passport at the border with Ukraine to avoid being pushed out of Belarus.

They described her as a "hero" and the Deputy Interior Minister of Ukraine has also labelled Kolesnikova as a "brave woman".

Online users have noted the move of ripping up her passport as ironically become a symbol of patriotism, and has thrust Kolesnikova to the forefront of opposition feeling in Belarus.

A large projection of Anna Redko's artwork has also appeared on the wall of a high-rise residential building in Belarus' capital, Minsk.

Speaking to Euronews, Redko said her work had become a symbol of support for citizens.

"Now in Belarus, a lot of very important events are happening... everybody who is worried about what's going on, they want to support the people of Belarus, support people, and support justice.

"I'm painting especially to be with people and to show the situation from a different angle - the artist's angle."

"I do believe that art has to help and support people."

Click on the player above to watch Seana Davis' report.

BELARUS UPDATES
Any Putin intervention in Belarus will meet 'huge pushback', says analyst 

By Euronews • last updated: 14/09/2020 - 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko at public ceremony, in the village of Khoroshevo, Russia, 30, 2020 - Copyright Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko is flying to Sochi on Monday for a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

It comes after the sixth consecutive weekend of unrest in Belarus - with thousands of protesters demanding Lukashenko's resignation in Minsk, amid vote fraud allegations and hundreds of detentions.

The Belarusian leader hinted in an interview last week that should current protests in Belarus "succeed" in destabilising the political power, Russia would "come next", while Putin himself previously asserted he would be ready to deploy forces to Belarus to prevent the situation from spinning "out control".

According to Katsiaryna Shmatsina, a political Analyst at Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies, Putin is aware that the current unrest in Belarus could have a domino effect on Russia.

Lukashenko goes to Russia: What the meeting of 'brothers' could mean for Belarus' future

"Putin himself understands that [... ] Belarus might set an example of a success story against authoritarian leadership", Shmatsina to Euronews' Good Morning Europe.

That however would not be enough to guarantee the efficacy of a Russian intervention, she explained.


"Russia has not so much support inside the Belarusian society, in terms of integration or some kind of annexation, or joining Russia."

"In this time when the Belarusian society is having this high momentum of protest potential, should Putin interfere in a sort of aggressive way, he would meet a huge pushback".
Nevertheless, Putin is prepared, according to Shmatsina, to seize the opportunity of this meeting to capitalize on Belarus' political unrest and keep Belarus "in its orbit for geopolitical interest".

Lukashenko goes to Russia: What the meeting of 'brothers' could mean for Belarus' future

David Walsh • last updated: 14/09/2020 - 
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, left, greets Russian President Vladimir Putin - Copyright Tatyana Zenkovich/Associated PressThe writing may be on the wall for Belarusian opposition activists when the country's embattled president Alexander Lukashenko meets with Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart who he recently referred to as his "elder brother", in Sochi on Monday.

Riven by protests since the contentious presidential election on August 9, in which Lukashenko claimed a dubious landslide victory after nearly 30 years in power, the Eastern European country is facing an uncertain future.

Lukashenko's attempts to suppress protests and strikes in the wake of the election have so far only served to bolster opposition to his regime, forcing his hand to look to the Kremlin for support.

Could the meeting between these cautious allies help cement his grip on power in Belarus and finally take the wind out of the sails of those pushing for what opposition figurehead Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has called a "democratic revolution"?


Pivot to the East

Traditionally, Lukashenko has navigated a tight course between the East and West, adjusting his heading tactically to sail closer to one or the other in order to leverage their support for his own benefit.

In the 23 years since he signed an agreement with Russia to integrate Belarus into a fiscal, political and economic union with its larger neighbour, Lukashenko has resisted attempts to fully acquiesce to Russian influence.


With instability rocking the current Belarusian regime to its foundations, Putin could finally have his chance to force Lukashenko to commit to the terms of the 1997 agreement and bring the country fully into Russia's orbit.

"This does present Putin with his best opportunity to pressure Lukashenko, as the latter is weak domestically and has also lost support from the West, so he cannot manoeuvre as he used to," Katia Glod, a Belarusian analyst and non-resident fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), told Euronews.
A man waves a Russian national flag as supporters of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko rally in a square in Minsk, Belarus.Sergei Grits/Associated Press

"At the same time, I don't think that he (Lukashenko would be pushed into signing any significant treaties at this moment.

"The pressure from the Kremlin would be too obvious, whilst the Kremlin would like to play its cards quietly.

"This would trigger bigger protests in Belarus as the Kremlin's goal is to suppress them, and as Lukashenko is viewed as illegitimate domestically and in the West, his signature on any agreement would be questionable."

Putin, buoyed by a muted international response to Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, has become more confident in his foreign policy endeavours, including supporting pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine's Donbas region and intervening in the Syrian war.

"I don't think that the Kremlin will make a direct intervention, akin to the one in Crimea," says Glod. "It looks like a soft, creeping intervention that is already taking place, with the aim fo eventually controlling Lukashenka and the Belarusian government politically and economically but leaving the borders officially intact."

Belarus as a satellite state

If Lukashenko secures assurances from Putin and Russian support to quash opposition to his rule, it would be significant in shaping Belarus' future, not least by keeping him in power for the foreseeable future.

"If Lukashenko stays in power, the country may become, in the longer term, similar to Transnistria or Abkhazia - fully dependent economically or politically on Russia," says Glod. "The people of Belarus would not like this of course, and would be protesting, but here we are in unchartered territory."

Having broken away from Moldova and Georgia respectively, the two former Soviet entities Glod mentioned are nominally independent (albeit not recognised by the international community) but operate in Russia's military, political and economic spheres as de facto satellite states.

Even amongst Lukashenko's supporters, surrendering Belarus' independence in this way would be an unpalatable development. As Glod contends, there may still be a way forward that recognises Belarus' links to both East and West, so long as the opposition is successful in ousting Lukashenko's regime and avoiding a Russian puppet government.

"If the new government was chosen by the people of Belarus — in contrast to the Kremlin's engineered transition, whereby it will likely put someone very controllable by and amenable to Russia — it would keep the economic ties with Russia (40 per cent of Belarusian exports go to Russia), but would also try to expand the economic and political cooperation with the West," Glod says
Economic bonds hard to break

"If the new government were democratic, the relations with the West would improve tremendously, with the loans and investment flowing in too. The new government would likely try to strike a balance between the two powers, but, compared with the current very low base of cooperation with the West, it would be a very tangible improvement of ties."

Given its shared history as a Soviet republic and continuing reliance on Russia economically as the largest market for its export goods, any future government will need to follow Lukashenko's lead and strike a balance between East and West for the country to prosper. In effect, Russian influence is unlikely to fade in the near future if the spectre of Lukashenko's rule is finally exercised.

"The new government would, however, be very cautious about joining NATO not to upset Russia — so militarily Belarus would probably still keep its ties with Russia," says Glod.

"Economically, as Belarus is part of Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union, it would not be able to have a DFTA (free trade agreement) with the EU now or in the near future, but that should not be ruled out in a more distant future."

_CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this story we wrote that the meeting will take place in Moscow, which was incorrect, it is in fact taking place at the Black Sea resort of Sochi. We apologise for our error. _
Who is Nina Baginskaya, the 73-year-old Belarusian protester that takes on riot police? 

By Emma Beswick • last updated: 13/09/2020 - 20:03

Opposition activist Nina Baginskaya, 73, struggles with police during a Belarusian opposition supporters' rally at Independence Square in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 26, 2020. - Copyright Dmitri Lovetsky/Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

As the women of Belarus' opposition take to the streets every Saturday in the wake of President Lukashenko's disputed election victory, one protester has become a key figure within the movement.

Nina Bahinskaya, 73, has been pictured at anti-government rallies since they kicked off, telling off police and at one point blocking one of the authorities' armoured vehicles by standing in front of it.

Video published on Nexta's Telegram channel showed the septuagenarian resisting arrest by police at the protest on September 12 and trying to remove one officer's balaclava.

The confrontation served to further raise her already-elevated profile and crowds could be heard chanting "Nina" as the event unfolded.

But this is nothing new for Bahinskaya — armed with the country's former red-and-white flag on a long pole, she has been demonstrating since long before Belarus' recent election.

The great-grandmother has appeared at demonstrations in the country since 1988, from demanding the arrest of political prisoners to protesting the demolition of a memorial site for the victims of Soviet-era mass executions.

Police take Baginskaya away prior to a demonstration against the detention of four people for their attempt to protest political repression. Minsk, Belarus. March 31, 2017.Sergei Grits/AP

Baginskaya blocks a drill at the Kuropaty mass grave site of Soviet-era mass executions in the Belarus capital Minsk. April 5, 2019.Sergei Grits/AP

Police officers detain opposition activist Nina Baginskaya at the Kuropaty mass grave site of Soviet-era mass executions in the Belarus capital Minsk, Friday, April 5, 2019.Sergei Grits/AP

The flag, now banned in Belarus, has become popular among opposition protesters as an anti-Lukashenko symbol.

When riot police took Bahinskaya's flag after a march at the end of August, video captured her confronting the officer.

Braginskaya holds a former Belarus flag during a protest in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 22, 2020.Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

Franak Viačorka, a journalist and analyst based in Minsk, Belarus, said on Twitter that protesters on September 13 informally named a square after Bahinskaya as part of an initiative which saw the opposition demonstrators assign names linked to the movement to squares and streets in the capital.

But not everyone is a fan of the 73-year-old and her tactics — in a recent report on her, the BBC pictured one woman on the sidelines of a protest shouting: "You found some half-mad babushka and you're following her."

As the unrest rages on in Belarus, the opposition's silver-haired celebrity has shown no sign of taking a step back from being at the centre of the movement.

'Tricks, truants and transsexuals': Lukashenko loyalists hit out over Belarus protests 

By Linas Jegelevicius • last updated: 11/09/2020

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko smiles after voting at a polling station during parliamentary elections, in Minsk, Belarus - Copyright Sergei Grits/Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved


The views of Belarus' opposition movement are well known: last month's presidential poll was rigged in Alexander Lukashenko's favour, he must step aside and free and fair elections should be held within six months.

But what about supporters of Lukashenko? Why are they backing him and what do they think about the demonstrations?


'Lukashenko cares about Belarusians'

For octogenarian Marina Anatoljevna Demjanina, from Grodno near the Polish border, Lukashenko is a pillar of Belarusian stability.

“Once it is broken, the rest tumbles down disastrously," she told Euronews. "When this happened in Ukraine, a war broke out there and the blood is being shed even now. Is that what our opposition people want?


“We all lived in fear under Stalin, but there was impeccable order and respect for order. Democracies are twisted and doomed. The people are much worse and much more selfish nowadays. Lukashenko does care about the Belarusians.

“It is far from the truth that only the elderly support Lukashenko. My grandsons, both in their twenties, also favour him, so far."


Lukashenko, 66, is the only president Belarus has ever known. Dubbed Europe's last dictator by his critics, he first came to power in 1994, three years after the former Soviet country declared independence.

But his grip on power has been shaken in recent weeks by a burgeoning opposition movement that has orchestrated regular anti-Lukashenko marches.

“Many people who support Lukashenko are frightened to speak out now and some are even fearful for their lives,” Demjanina claimed.

Viktor Mikhailovic Sevokhin, a veteran of the Afghanistan war, is not one of them.

“I am not afraid to admit that I am supporting our president (Lukashenko), despite the fact that he has shown some disrespect to veterans of the Afghanistan war," he said.

"A revolution – and this one ongoing these months in Belarus is no exception – is destructive.

"We may see the calmness and the relative wellbeing we’ve created under Lukashenko in tatters soon."
'Malicious truants'

Protests erupted after the August 9 poll, prompting a violent crackdown. In recent days key members of Belarus' opposition movement have been arrested or forced out of the country.

But Sevokhin has turned the finger of blame towards Lukashenko's critics, claiming they used "dirty tricks" to lure young people to protest.

"They massively, indiscriminately lured them and are still luring them to participate in the opposition rallies," said Sevokhin, who is based in the capital Minsk.

"The political wannabes netted them on social media, where the youth spends hours these days.

"Many of the children have never worked and many of them are malicious truants at their schools. But now they feel very important at the opposition-held rallies."

Nevertheless, Sevokhin admits he questions claims Lukashenko won 80% of the vote in the election and why the police were seemingly violent with the protesters.

But neither seem to affect his unswerving loyalty.

“Western values are already crippling societies," he continued. "And Lukashenko is the guarantor of our own Belarusian and Christian values.

"With Belarus being in the West, we will soon see transsexuals marching with their hands clasped in central Minsk.

“The syloviki (law enforcement) and veterans will stand behind “batjka” (Lukashenko's nickname, meaning “dad” diminutively) until our last gasp.”

Nikolaj Logvin, exiled in the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda but who goes back to Belarus regularly, has a more balanced view.

“The youth is for change, the elderly for Lukashenko, with some exceptions on both sides,” he said. “Most of them are wary of what happened in Ukraine, which still has not found peace within itself.

"It sad to see so much enmity and hostility across the ranks of a community, a workplace,” he added.

Logvin said his numerous relatives back home couldn’t have any complaints about their lives in Belarus.

“We all have problems. But my relatives had been leading quite a comfortable life until the recent political shake-up. I mean they had jobs, state-paid allowances, stipends, which were rising. Most importantly, we had stability.

“The opposition and the youth have only one goal – to depose the president (Lukashenko). But unfortunately, they haven’t laid out their vision, an economic plan how to move Belarus forward with Lukashenko out."
'Lukashenko's days are numbered'

So how much support does Lukashenko have in the country?

Belarusian political analyst Alyaksandr Klaskouski told Euronews that officials in the huge state apparatus, as well as the siloviki and their families, support him.

“Also the grandmas who spend their entire evenings watching state TV news," he added. "All in all, Lukashenko supporters must comprise 20-30 per cent, no more.

“So far, the siloviki are behind him, but erosion, however, has begun with some officials quitting their jobs in protest of the clamping down or siding with the opposition.

“I predict his chances of being in power at the new year as 50-50. But no one doubts, and perhaps he himself as well, that his days are numbered. It is just a matter of time until the regime collapses.”

Stun grenades, rubber bullets and secret service raids: What it's like reporting from Belarus 

By Emil Filtenborg • last updated: 09/09/2020

In this Aug. 10, 2020, file photo, protesters carry a wounded man during clashes with police after the presidential election in Minsk, Belarus. - Copyright AP Photo

One month on from the, now historic, disputed election of August 9 2020, Euronews asks Journalist Emil Filtenborg to tell the story of his and his colleague Stefan Weichert's reporting of what is now something the whole world is watching.

On the evening of August 9, I was running from riot police.

My colleague Stefan and me were in Belarus to cover the presidential elections for Euronews. Exit polls predicting a landslide victory for incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko had just been released prompting thousands to pour into the streets of capital Minsk in protest.

The authorities responded with a crackdown of unprecedented force.
August 9

That night, after dodging riot police for 20 minutes, we were pushed into a staircase leading to a backstreet. That is when we heard the first three stun grenades that kickstarted four days of violent crackdowns on peaceful protesters.

The grenades went off at the bottom of the staircase with a thundering crack that made our ears ring for minutes and impaired Stefan's vision for some time.


As the sound of police truncheons hammering down on protesters down on the main street reached us, we fled into a parallel street, following a group of panic eyed and disoriented protesters. Our priority was making it back to the demonstration so we could start interviewing people and get an overview of the events.

In pictures: The most striking images from Belarus protest
'Scores' detained as students in Belarus protest against President Lukashenko | #TheCube

We had people in place doing welfare checks, we did a risk assessment, and we had planned as best we could to find exit routes out of the protest. We had also prepared for violence from the authorities but we never expected it to be this brutal, this early.

Our plans of getting into the demonstration to secure information and interviews were thrown out the window after the flashbangs rang out. It was our second plan to be quickly derailed as we had initially hoped to follow a protester but we were barred from reaching his place by police.

Instead, we circled around for a while but eventually made it back to the protest by carefully avoiding empty main streets and areas with only one or two exit points.

Usually, we would have checked for information on Twitter, but the internet was down and so we were walking, virtually, blind.

When we finally made it back to where the main demonstration was taking place, a young woman — I doubt she was even 18 yet — tried to hug me when I introduced myself as a Danish journalist.

"Thank you for coming," she said with tears in her eyes. The gesture was interrupted, as people started running from a new push from the riot police.

We followed the protest for a couple of kilometres until a line of busses full of riot police separated us from the protestors. We decided to call it a night.

We sneaked back to the hotel, inconveniently located right where the protests started. We crossed the road, carefully avoiding a pool of blood on the pavement, and walked past two police officers assessing damage to the road. If they had asked for ID, we would most likely have been deported that night.

We slept for two hours and got up early to find a place with Wi-Fi to send our report.
Violence continues

The following two days, we didn’t go to the protests.

Every afternoon OMON (a Special Police Unit) would set up right outside the hotel, and walking out with a camera and two Danish passports would only have scored us a ride on the dreaded riot police busses.

We monitored the street from our hotel windows and we could see that although people could usually walk unhindered during the day, as the hours passed, OMON would start arresting people.

By then, protesters arrested that first night were starting to be released from detention centres and so we switched our focus to the victims of police violence.

Our first interview was a teenager who, upon being released from detention, find out that his parents had also been arrested as they were looking for him. We talked to the entire family when they were reunited. They were perfectly ordinary people who showed a touching degree of fortitude.

In Belarus, a family detained, separated and beaten by police is re-united

Stefan also visited a longtime activist, who had made it out of jail. She had just spent 30 days in solitary confinement under appalling conditions.

On the run: Activist recounts her experience of solitary confinement in Belarus
Beers, sandwiches and dirty underwear

Initially, the staff at our hotel were very forthcoming. Some even expressed gratitude because we were there to report on the events unfolding. However, three days after the election, the mood started to change.

Stefan received a call from reception, asking us to come down to settle the bill even though we were booked for three more nights. When we got down, the staff avoided eye contact.

When Stefan later went out to pick up dinner, he noticed a man with sunglasses talking to the hotel's two security guards. He immediately left out the front door when he saw my colleague, while the receptionist looked down at the desk.

Stefan had to go in the same direction as the unidentified man, who, upon passing a nearby café, nodded to another man sitting alone on the terrace prompting him to zero-in on Stefan.

EU announces sanctions against Belarus over 'violence' on protesters and electoral 'falsification'
Belarus deports several foreign journalists covering protests

Soon after, Stefan called me to warn me that something was wrong. I didn’t fully understand why he was so sure, but I know my colleague well enough to trust him in these situations.

Stefan proceeded as if nothing was the matter while I started packing. On his return trip, the man at the café immediately placed a call upon seeing him, and so minutes after Stefan had reached the hotel, we left out of the back entrance.

The next day, the Belarus secret service started raiding hotels downtown and even arresting some journalists. If they had raided our hotel, all they would have found were beer cans, uneaten sandwiches and dirty underwear.
Goodbye, Minsk

With our editor, we decided that it was time for us to leave. We went to the airport on Thursday night, five days after the election. Stefan kept saying it was a mistake, and I kept asking him to shut up because I knew he was right. At the time, it looked like Lukashenko might fall at any minute.

As I was following the news on Twitter and Telegram, I kept thinking of the young girl thanking me for being there.

I called Stefan and asked if he had any plans the following day. He said no. I asked if he wanted to take a short trip to Belarus. He said yes. We booked a flight for Minsk and landed in the morning after 36 hours or so back home.

This time we moved to an apartment instead of a hotel. We continued working with a mix of reports from the protests that had now turned less violent and interviews with people ranging from volunteers teaching protesters first aid to state-employed journalists leaving their jobs.

'They were beating people severely': Teenager relives detention in Belarus
On the run: Activist recounts her experience of solitary confinement in Belarus

On Sunday, the day after we entered the country a second time, we went to a protest at the location where it all began. Around 200,000 people showed up in the most massive demonstration the country had ever seen.

Though still fearful, the mood was hopeful, almost festive. It was surreal to think that this happened only a week after the election day protests. Nothing and everything had simultaneously changed.
On edge

We were already on edge after what we figured to be a close call in the hotel. When we saw someone running for the bus or heard a balloon pop, our first instinct was to flee. The stun grenades and the rubber bullets, for me at least, are not the worst part — it is the constant being on guard that drains you.

We were not the only ones being a bit jumpy. A lot of the sources we spoke to wanted anonymity, which we often agreed on. We were writing all our articles without putting our names on them because we did not want the attention.

The Belarusians we spoke to risked detention and the beatings that often came with it. In extreme cases, they took serious risks by speaking with us.

Being a journalist Belarus is not safe, but it is undeniably a lot safer than being an ordinary citizen.

While I appreciate the opportunity to provide an account of what working in situations like this is like, I find it necessary to stress that journalists can go home and regroup when we lose sight of things. The Belarusians can’t.
Belarus: Unfinished Revolution 

By Anelise Borges • last updated: 10/09/2020

euronews - Copyright 

On August 9th, Belarus held presidential elections that were set to change the course of politics in the country.

An unprecedented opposition movement had been gaining support and gathering tens of thousands of people in weekly rallies called by candidate Sviatlana Tikhanouskaya.

A trained translator turned presidential hopeful, Tikhanouskaya used to say, if elected, she would not stay at the job too long - her project was to free political prisoners (her husband included) and put in place conditions for free and fair elections to be held.

But her project has yet to see the light of day. Belarus’ election commission say Tikhanouskaya won a mere 10.12% of the vote, something her teams (and a large number of voters in the country) dispute.

“Belarus: Unfinished Revolution” tells the story of a grassroots political movement that represents the biggest challenge faced by the regime of President Alexander Lukashenko in the nearly 30 years he’s been in power.

This short piece is a collection of individual stories - a look at what brought people to the streets and drives them to continue protesting one month on despite the crackdown and the intimidation.


It’s about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. 

 UK

“Stand by working families – don’t walk away,” TUC’s O’Grady tells Rishi Sunak

Sienna Rodgers is editor of LabourList.

General secretary Frances O’Grady has issued a personal challenge to Rishi Sunak at the opening of the TUC Congress 2020 this morning by telling the Conservative Chancellor to “stand by working families – don’t walk away”.

Addressing the trade union federation’s 152nd Congress in London, O’Grady warned ministers of mass unemployment amid the coronavirus pandemic and said the UK faces a “tsunami of job losses” as the furlough scheme ends.

She said: “Unions pushed for the jobs retention scheme. Millions of livelihoods were saved – both employees and the self-employed. From this Thursday, it will be just 45 days before the JRS ends.

“That’s the notice period that companies have to give if they intend to make mass redundancies. If the government doesn’t act, we face a tsunami of job losses. So my message to the Chancellor is this:

“We worked together once before. We are ready to work with you again – if you are serious about stopping the catastrophe of mass unemployment. Rishi Sunak: stand by working families – don’t walk away.”

The coronavirus job retention scheme is set to end next month, despite the Tory-dominated Treasury select committee, think tanks, opposition parties and industry leaders warning that many businesses will still be struggling.

The TUC has revealed its own blueprint for saving jobs and retraining workers affected by coronavirus, whereby the government would offer subsidies of up to 70% to participating companies’ pay and overhead costs.

Under the plan, if employees were brought back from furlough for less than 50% of their normal hours, the government would fund retraining so that workers could transition into industries less affected by the pandemic.

The ‘job protection and upskilling deal’ put forward by the trade union body would provide more “targeted” support than the furlough scheme by adding conditions to the financial assistance offered by the government.

O’Grady told TUC Congress today: “When the crisis began, the Chancellor said he would do ‘whatever it takes’. He must keep that promise. Some will ask can the country afford to do it? The answer is – we can’t afford not to.”

Amid fears that the national minimum wage will not be increased next year due to the damage done by coronavirus, the general secretary stressed the importance of this rise taking place, telling ministers: “don’t punch down”.

10 Downing Street last week said the government still intended to introduce the wage boost, but added that it had been originally planned “provided that economic conditions allow” – and the UK’s economy is being hard-hit by Covid-19.

O’Grady also touched on the Black Lives Matter movement in her speech, saying: “When Black workers rise, we all rise. We don’t need another review to know what needs to change. The government needs to act now.”

The union leader advised the Tory government to introduce mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting, address any pay gaps revealed and ban zero-hour contracts, which disproportionately affect Black workers in the UK.

She concluded: “To all key workers: thank you for your sacrifice and for your service. This country must make a promise to you and to all working people: there must be no return to business as usual.”

The TUC is today launching its campaign for key workers to receive decent pay, as well as fair terms and conditions in their contracts, to give “dignity at work” to those who risked their lives during the coronavirus crisis.

"Telling the truth never causes panic"

Axios




Michael Osterholm, a renowned infectious-disease expert and the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that leaders must tell the truth when it comes to public health and that "telling the truth never causes panic."

Why it matters: Host Chuck Todd asked Osterholm if President Trump had made a mistake by not being upfront with the American people about the dangers of COVID-19 and the threat of a pandemic. In an interview for Bob Woodward's new book "Rage," Trump said that he was purposefully "playing it down" so as not to create a "panic."

What he's saying: "If you just tell people the truth, they will respond and they will trust you to continue to tell them the truth. The great leaders of the world have done that," Osterholm said.

The big picture: Osterholm conceded that the early days of coronavirus spread were confusing to a lot of people, but that by March — when Trump sat for one of his 18 interviews with Woodward — it was clear that the pandemic threat was real.
"I hope that we stick with the science and not with all this rhetoric that we're hearing right now," Osterholm said.
Trump has continued to say that the country is "rounding the turn" on the coronavirus, while Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said life may not return to normal until the end of 2021.

The other side: Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel defended Trump earlier on the program, saying that he had acted decisively by banning travel from China in January.
"Think about what would have happened if he'd gone out and said, 'This is awful, we should all be afraid, we don't have a plan.' It would have been a run on the banks, it would have been a run on the hospitals, and the grocery stores," McDaniel insisted.
"The president was calm and steady at a time of unrest and uncertainty, and I think history will look back on him well as to how he handled this pandemic."

What's next: "We really have another 12–14 months of a really hard road ahead of us," Osterholm said, backing Fauci's assessment about how long the coronavirus will remain a threat.
"With the colleges and universities opening, with the spillover that's occurring, with people experiencing even more pandemic fatigue, wanting to be in indoor airspaces with other people as we get into the fall, we're going to see these numbers grow substantially," he predicted.
"If the vaccine does become available, it won't be in any meaningful way until the beginning of next year. And then it's still going to take us months to vaccinate the population of just this country."

UK SCIENTISTS COLLABORATE WITH SYRIAN REFUGEES TO PRODUCE REUSABLE PPE



The UK government has sent more than £760,000 in funding to support The People’s PPE project

Sabrina Barr@fabsab5
Saturday 05 September 2020 14:27


A team of UK scientists and artists have collaborated with Syrian refugees to produce reusable personal protective equipment (PPE), which is to be distributed in Jordan.


The initiative, titled “People’s PPE”, has been organised by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

It involves academics from the University of Sheffield, the London College of Fashion, the University of the Arts London (UAL), and researchers from two universities in Jordan – Al Albayt University and the University of Petra.

The project, which has received £766,675 in funding from the UK government, is offering refugees in the Zaatari camp in Jordan the opportunity to take on small-scale manufacturing jobs by producing reusable masks, shields and gowns amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The PPE is being made using materials that are low-cost, locally sourced and recyclable.

Moh’d Al Taher, associate external relations officer at UNHCR, explained that the project is helping to support the Syrian refugees in the camp by creating “livelihood opportunities”.

“The cooperation with the University of Sheffield and London College of Fashion, UAL, has resulted in training many Syrian refugee women in the Zaatari camp with skills in developing PPE,” he said.


“These skills created livelihood opportunities for refugees and supported the refugee community.”


Al Taher added that the UNHCR “plans to cover the needs of the camp community with PPE by using high-quality and low-cost materials”, using “innovative solutions” in doing so.

(Aya Musmar/Petra University/PA)

The 3D-printed face shields being as part of The People’s PPE were designed and produced using iForge, a collaborative workspace at the University of Sheffield run by engineering students.

Professor Tony Ryan, director of the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures at the university and principle investigator for The People’s PPE, stated that the initiative is “about empowering refugees in a moment of health crisis”.


“I’ve spent years working with the people of Zaatari and learning from their incredible resourcefulness and creativity,” the professor said.


“Faced with a global pandemic, we are working together to design and produce the protective equipment the refugees and their host community need to stay safe, while reducing plastic waste, creating jobs and building resilience within the camp community.”

Inside the courtroom battle against the deadly rhino horn trade


We are working with conservation charity Space for Giants to protect wildlife at risk from poachers due to the conservation funding crisis caused by Covid-19. Help is desperately needed to support wildlife rangers, local communities and law enforcement personnel to prevent wildlife crime

Emma Ledger
4 days ago

A poached rhino can be seen in Africa(SaveTheRhinoInternational)


Poachers used a silenced hunting rifle to kill this black rhino for its horn while it drank at a water hole in South Africa.


Around the world, one rhino is killed every 10 hours. To stop this slaughter, either consumer demand for their horn must be eradicated, or poachers must be stopped from killing them. Those are the intractable options.


Charity Save the Rhino is committed to changing how rhino horn is perceived in South East Asia - where most trafficked horn ends up, and where it is prized as a symbol of power and wealth.



However, enacting a cultural change could take decades. That’s too long for some species of rhinoceros, such the Javan and Sumatran, who are on the path to extinction.


With consumer demand unlikely to disappear any time soon, and a black market continuing regardless, the survival of rhinos hinges on innovative strategies to prevent poaching.

more

Why we need to win the war against rhino poachers


One of the most important is what happens inside the courtrooms that trial rhino horn hunters and traffickers.


Shamini Jayanathan is a criminal barrister working in illegal wildlife trafficking in Africa, with a focus on prosecutions. She tells The Independent: “The only way to tackle and deter the killing of rhinos is through the courts. Arrests and seizures of horn represent only a disruption to criminal operations, not an end.”


Ms Jayanathan explains that because the rhino is such a highly protected animal, many African countries rightly have high minimum prison terms for related cases. But as a result, every defendant pleads not guilty, meaning there is no incentive to cooperation. Trials can last years, with hearings delayed or endlessly postponed, running up costs and zapping time and momentum.The Covid-19 conservation crisis has shown the urgency of The Independent’s Stop the Illegal Wildlife Trade campaign, which seeks an international effort to clamp down on illegal trade of wild animals(ESI)


“The biggest enemy to rhino horn cases is delay,” says Ms Jayanathan. “And as the legal maxim attests, justice delayed is justice denied. There is ongoing, vital work in the courts to speed up criminal trial process, to ensure the prosecution case is strong at the start of the case, and that the sentence at the end is proportionate to the crime.

The Independent’s Stop the Illegal Wildlife Trade campaign, which was launched earlier this year, seeks an international effort to clamp down on poaching and the illegal trade of wild animals.

South Africa is home to nearly 80 per cent of the world's remaining rhinos. It has been hit hard by wildlife crime, with more than 1,000 rhinos killed there each year between 2013 and 2017.

In March 2017 the South African government created Skukuza Regional Court close to the edge of one of its most famous nature conservancy, Kruger National Park.
Read more

Stop the Illegal Wildlife Trade: How pangolins became the ultimate luxury good


Hailed as a hugely positive step for the effective and swift handling of trials for rhino poachers and traffickers, Skukuza’s two senior prosecutors had backgrounds in organised crime cases and extensive knowledge of wildlife crime-related law.


During its first year, the ‘rhino court’ - as it became known - brought more than 90 poachers to justice, with a 100 percent conviction rate. Prison sentences ranged from 12 to 40 years. Elsewhere in South Africa, fewer than 25 per cent of similar convictions resulted in sentences longer than 10 years, according to Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries.

Rhino poaching also declined. Last year in South Africa there was a reported 594 rhinos killed for their horn, down from 769 in 2018. And the data detailing where rhinos were killed suggests that poachers had begun to avoid Kruger to hunt in other provinces - likely deterred by the ‘rhino court’.


However, Skukuza Regional Court has been closed since August last year, amid unexpected plans to move it almost 100km away from Kruger.

Save the Rhino’s Emma Pereira says that moving the court could have dire consequences for rhinos. “Skukuza’s proximity to Kruger is really helpful in terms of rangers being able to quickly get there to give evidence that can help secure convictions. Moving it might mean it would take much longer for a ranger to travel there and back, something many just won’t be able to do."

Activists created a petition to fight the plan, and the Department of Justice and Correctional Services has halted the decision for now, as stakeholders question how the upheaval would benefit rhinos.

Read more

Leading US investigator into illegal ivory and rhino horn trade stabbed to death in his Kenyan home


Crispin Phiri, spokesperson for the department, says “the court plays an important role in conserving our environment in so far as rhino poaching is concerned”, and confirmed “a moratorium to get a proper briefing on what the understanding is and the motivation for moving the court”.


Most working in wildlife crime agree that Skukuza is a model that works, and one that needs replicating in countries that have a population of rhino, or act as trafficking transit corridors.


To protect rhinos and other wildlife at risk from poachers, The Independent is working with Space for Giants, a conservation charity that has extensive expertise in strengthening the judicial and conservation authorities in six African countries.


Between 2016 and 2020 Ms Jayanathan led Space for Giants' team of legal professionals training prosecutors, investigators and magistrates so trials run smoother and legal processes are more effective. She says: “In Kenya - where we collaborated with prosecution services and the judiciary, Kenya Wildlife Service and other partners - we have seen a steady rate of convictions of wildlife criminals, including rhino horn traffickers.


“Rhino cases are inevitably hard fought because the penalties are so high. But progress is being made. In Kenya, in the courts we have worked in, we have reduced the average time for criminal procedures from 32 months to 11 months, and we have also seen a reduction in rhino horn crime.”
Read more

Shame on those who rejoiced at the death of a rhino poacher, who was just a poor and desperate pawn of the mega-rich


Pereira agrees that strengthening the judicial process is a vital part of the fight to save rhinos, to act as both punishment and deterrent.


“Save the Rhino is working with partners to develop learning among the legal system, such as how evidence is collected, and making it standard across the board,” she says. “Often, when it comes to rhino horn cases, evidence is not as well understood by judiciary, or courts are not able to trace people to give evidence.


“The picture is slowly getting better; there have been some large fines for people who have done the damage to rhinos - but we are seeing a lot of corruption too.


“It takes a mental toll on those dedicated to protecting rhinos - especially on rangers who are having to work overtime as a result of Covid. The fight to save rhinos a long, hard slog.”


Donate to help Stop the Illegal Wildlife Trade HERE

RIP 

Diana Rigg: An immensely powerful actor – and undoubtedly the best Bond girl

Whether in James Bond, The Avengers or Game of Thrones, the actor wielded an immense, innate power on screen. Clarisse Loughrey pays tribute to the late, great star

Avengers star Diana Rigg, who has died at the age of 82, at Cannes Film Festival in 2019(AFP/Getty)

Diana Rigg wasn’t just the best Bond girl – she transcended that label entirely. As Contessa Teresa “Tracy” di Vicenzo, she became the only woman to officially call herself Mrs James Bond – his total equal in elegance, confidence, and daring. Perhaps that’s why things couldn’t last. She might have overtaken him.

Not long after Rigg’s Tracy marries George Lazenby’s Bond, in the closing scenes of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), she’s gunned down by Blofeld’s henchwoman. It’s one of the few moments of genuine sentiment in the series, as he cradles his lost love in his arms and whispers: “She’s having a rest. There’s no hurry, you see, we have all the time in the world.” On her death, at the age of 82, it’s a scene many of her fans might find themselves impulsively drawn back to.

Diana Rigg and George Lazenby in ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’(Rex)



Rigg wielded an immense, innate power on screen – she was never the one left lingering in the shadows. You can see it in the first moments she turned up as Emma Peel on TV’s The Avengers in 1965 – she was billed as a replacement for Honor Blackman, who’d left the show to play Pussy Galore in Goldfinger (1964). There she was, dressed in a leather catsuit and wielding a fencing sword. Her voice was raspy (thanks to a 20-a-day cigarette habit), but oh-so deliciously confident, like the cat who got the cream. 

Watch more

Diana Rigg death: James Bond and Game of Thrones star dies aged 82


All the show’s flirtations, sexual innuendos, and outright objectification made Rigg an instant sex symbol. She had no idea how to respond to all the fan mail suddenly piling up. Eventually, she got her mother to reply to the more lascivious ones with: “My daughter’s far too old for you. Go take a cold shower!” But Rigg, as she karate-chopped her way through 51 episodes, always came off as coolly controlled and in charge – it helped make Emma Peel one of the great feminist icons of the Sixties.

Offscreen, she found herself at the centre of the burgeoning pay equality movement after she demanded a pay rise, having discovered that a cameraman on the show earned significantly more than her. She found few allies in the industry. The press tore her to shreds. But she still managed to nearly triple her pay. Although it’s a story often recounted, it’s strangely at odds with how Rigg talked about herself. “I’m portrayed as this tough broad, but I’m not,” she told The Guardian in 2014. Her relationship with feminism was complicated – in 1969, she famously declared that “women are in a much stronger position than men”.

Diana Rigg and ‘Avengers’ co-star Patrick Macnee(Getty)


But Rigg, in truth, never thought she’d become any kind of pop culture icon. She struggled with post-Avengers fame and would hide in the bathroom to avoid the attention of crowds. She left the show after two years.

Born in Doncaster, Rigg was the daughter of an engineer. When she was two months old, her father moved the family to Bikaner, India, after he was hired as a railway executive. She spoke Hindi as her second language during that time. Eight years later, Rigg and her family returned to England, where she attended boarding school and later trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

Rigg as Lady Olenna Tyrell in 'Game of Thrones'(HBO)

Though she made her professional debut in a Rada production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle in 1957, the greatest of Rigg’s stage successes came in the Nineties, when she won her third Tony for playing Medea in a 1994 Broadway production, alongside roles in Mother Courage, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Phèdre. Beyond Bond, her film roles included A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1968), Theatre of Blood (1973), The Great Muppet Caper (1981), and Evil Under the Sun (1982).

Many, of course, will know her from the great role of her later years: the sly, peevish Lady Olenna Tyrell on Game of Thrones. It earnt her four Emmy nominations. In a world of swords and dragons, Rigg was a memorable presence because of how much fun she seemed to be having. As she said at the time: “The older you get, I have to say, the funnier you find life. That's the only way to go.”

Air quality is so bad in Washington that it broke the monitoring system




Published September 13, 2020 By Sarah K. Burris

Smoke in the western United States (Photos: NOAA)


While fires are destroying homes and lives, those in safety still aren’t quite as protected as they might think. According to the Seattle Times, air quality has been so bad that it broke the monitoring system.

“As of Sunday morning, air quality readings throughout Eastern and Central Washington, as well as Seattle, showed very unhealthy to hazardous levels of air pollution for everyone,” said the update.

For anyone suffering from the after-affects of the coronavirus, COPD, lung cancer, asthma, and other breathing challenges, the air is downright dangerous. Children and the elderly are especially at risk.

On the West Coast, the problem is that the air is simply “sitting” on the state. There is weather on its way that should help calm things down.


“But the Washington Department of Ecology says it will be Monday before Western Washington sees improvements,” said the report.

The Center for Disease Control encourages Americans to stay indoors with everything closed up tight.

“Do not rely on dust masks for protection,” the CDC also says. “Paper ‘comfort’ or ‘dust’ masks commonly found at hardware stores are designed to trap large particles, such as sawdust. These masks will not protect your lungs from the small particles found in wildfire smoke. Read more on choosing and using respirators to protect your lungs from smoke and ash.”

N95 IS THE ONLY REAL PARTICULATE RESPIRATOR

See the graphics below:


The smoke is not clearing as fast as we hoped, but help is on the way. You can see the cleaner marine air out off the coast – it just has a huge amount of smoke to push out before it can reach us. It will be Monday before W. WA sees major improvements. https://t.co/Pcx2t495tW pic.twitter.com/A6o6mctTZE— 

WA Department of Ecology (@EcologyWA) September 13, 2020


Here's a smoke model forecast for the next 36 hours. It shows improvements expanding across eastern WA Monday. Unfortunately some spots in southeast WA & the ID Panhandle may not reap these benefits. Confidence is low on where the smoke goes through the week. #wawx #idwx pic.twitter.com/xuY3zoNi8J
— NWS Spokane (@NWSSpokane) September 13, 2020


The. West. Coast. Is. On. Fire. And the air quality is horrific and dangerous everywhere today — and there really isn’t anywhere accesible for people to go to escape. And it’s only getting worse. #ActOnClimate and VOTE! pic.twitter.com/EDImUENQCT
— Erin Schrode (@ErinSchrode) September 13, 2020


It's bad out there. Air quality is very unhealthy to hazardous across most of W. WA. The silver lining is that this is as bad as it should get, although clearing won't start until Sunday (Monday for E. WA). Stay indoors, stay safe. Forecast – https://t.co/2u6VAV6Dy8 pic.twitter.com/mTTPBDv4J3

— WA Department of Ecology (@EcologyWA) September 12, 2020

The new American religion of QAnon is giving the right-wing an army of useful idiots


September 13, 2020 By Robert Guffey,

 Salon- Commentary

QAnon conspiracy theorists attend a Trump rally (Screen cap).


In the previous four installments of this series, I chronicled the attempts made by an old friend to convince me of an outlandish conspiracy theory being promoted by the group of rabid online Trump supporters known as QAnon. According to my friend, initiates of the Illuminati had teamed up with subterranean demons to torture, rape and eat kidnapped children in underground military bases ruled by the mortal enemies of Donald Trump. He insisted that when Trump is re-elected in November we can all look forward to the abolition of the income tax, the development of “free energy” for all and the public unveiling of thousands of grateful kidnapped children rescued by Trump’s private army of “white hats” from cages squirrelled away in these Satanist-controlled underground dungeons.

One of the pieces of so-called “evidence” provided by my friend was a YouTube documentary called “Out of Shadows,” which took the internet by storm in April. Perhaps the most impactful propaganda film of the past few years, “Out of Shadows” is a thinly-disguised QAnon recruitment video that mixes small slices of truth with a whole lot of lies to confuse the viewer into believing various bizarre theories promoted by QAnon. In this final installment, we conclude our analysis of “Out of Shadows,” delve into the Jeffrey Epstein mystery and explain why QAnon is the catfish scheme of all catfish schemes.

The strange case of Jeffrey Epstein is left for the very end of “Out of Shadows.” What the filmmakers choose to report regarding the Epstein affair is intriguing. Why does the documentary spend so much time talking about the known or alleged crimes of the convicted sex offender who died in a Manhattan jail cell last year, but never mention that the name of Donald J. Trump appears in Epstein’s infamous little black book, alongside those of Bill and Hillary Clinton? (Trump’s name and contact information are listed on page 85.)

As you no doubt know, Epstein was a wealthy financier with endless connections to the rich and famous (including businessmen, politicians, scientists, Hollywood stars and royalty) who ran a child sex ring operation out of his luxurious “temple” in the Virgin Islands. On July 6, 2019, Epstein was arrested for trafficking underage girls in Florida and New York. On Aug. 10, while incarcerated in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, Epstein won the “Most Improbable Suicide of the Year” Award after he was found dead in his cell under suspicious circumstances.

An informant who told New York Post reporters he had spent several months in the same “special housing unit” at the MCC where Epstein died claimed, “There’s no way that man could have killed himself. I’ve done too much time in those units. It’s an impossibility.” The informant said that the height from floor to ceiling in those cells “is like eight or nine feet. There’s no way for you to connect to anything. You have sheets, but they’re paper level, not strong enough. He (Epstein) was 200 pounds — it would never happen. … There’s a steel frame, but you can’t move it. There’s no light fixture. There’s no bars.”

Whatever really happened in that cell, there are a lot of powerful people in the world whose lives were made much easier the second Epstein checked out of existence. The real point, however, is this: Instead of focusing on real-world methods of preventing other Epsteins from torturing innocent children, Team QAnon wastes its time searching for Satanic, Illuminati-related symbols hidden in the décor of celebrities they dislike.

For example, in one episode of the aforementioned “Rick B2T” QAnon talk show, Rick’s anonymous buddy “Gene” flashes a photo of Ellen DeGeneres sitting on the set of her daily talk show. On the wall behind DeGeneres, to the right, one can see a series of horizontal lines; to the left is a mural that depicts a row of palm trees. “Gene” then flashes a photo of Epstein’s mosque-like temple, the walls of which are decorated with a series of horizontal lines. The temple is surrounded by palm trees. A horrified expression darkens the face of “Rick B2T,” immediately after which he snarls, “Can you believe that? Her set is Epstein Island! That is just sick!”

Horizontal lines.

Palm trees.

Based on these uncanny symbols, one can only conclude the obvious: Ellen DeGeneres is involved in sex trafficking, just like Epstein

One wonders how Rick would react if he ever encountered a real Satanic symbol.

If these QAnon people could take a step back from their own weird neuroses, they might realize that there’s absolutely no evidence connecting Epstein to Satanism or the Illuminati. (In fact, there’s no evidence connecting the historical Illuminati to Satanism either.) The Epstein story is sordid enough without having to drag ancient secret societies into it. These are red herrings that merely deflect attention from the real story, which is that Epstein’s sex trafficking ring was being used to collect blackmail material against some of the most powerful people on the planet.

Here’s an excerpt from a Daily Mail article published on May 27:

Epstein’s victims have spoken in depth about his camera [surveillance] system and artist Maria Farmer has described how he had a room at the front of his $75 million Upper East Side mansion full of screens.

Court documents show that other victims told officials that Epstein had his private island in the Caribbean wired up too, as well as his mansion in Palm Beach.

Some have speculated that Epstein could have made his $650 million fortune by blackmailing his powerful friends, such as Prince Andrew and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Among the others who Epstein knew were former President Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, magicians David Blaine and David Copperfield, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and Michael Jackson.

And in an interview with New York Times journalist James B. Stewart, Epstein claimed to know a “great deal” about his powerful friends, some of his knowledge was “potentially damaging or embarrassing, including details about their supposed sexual proclivities and recreational drug use.”

How did Epstein get this complex operation up and running in the first place? Was this elaborate intelligence-gathering plot funded by the money he made as a hedge fund manager? If not, who gave Epstein the resources to get this show on the road in the first place? And how did these blackmail schemes affect the national policies enacted into law by the politicians mentioned in the article above

QAnon as a form of MindWar

The sources upon which QAnon draws are relatively obscure. For example, the tall tales being spread by Team QAnon in YouTube videos like “Out of Shadows” and “The Underground War, Happening Now” sound suspiciously like the horror stories made up by Special Agent Richard Doty and his psychological warfare military cohorts in the 1980s and 1990s. The apparent purpose of those tales was to deflect the attention of a UFO researcher namd Paul Bennewitz away from sensitive intelligence operations being deployed at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, as well as the adjacent Manzano Nuclear Weapons Storage Facility and Coyote Canyon Test Area. This long, complicated, and ultimately tragic story has been documented by Greg Bishop in his excellent 2005 book, “Project Beta: The Story of Paul Bennewitz, National Security, and the Creation of a Modern UFO Myth.”

The parallels between QAnon’s tales and Doty’s military-funded disinformation campaign — including such oddities as subterranean battles between the American military and otherworldly creatures — are remarkable. Are such cover stories endlessly recycled with slight new twists whenever necessary? After all, why dream up new cover stories when the old ones will do? Who even remembers these obscure details from the ’80s and ’90s?

Perhaps the real secret behind QAnon is connected to the identity of the one military official who has actually endorsed the anonymous “whistleblower” in public. That lone endorser is retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely. On Oct. 14, 2019, Vallely appeared on Mike Filip’s “AmeriCanuck Internet Radio of Canada” talk show and made this provocative statement:

QAnon is tied to information that comes out of a group called “The Army of Northern Virginia.” This is a group of military intelligence specialists, of over 800 people that advise the president. The president does not have a lot of confidence in the CIA or even the DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] much anymore. So he relies on real operators, who are mostly special-operations type of people. This is where “Q” picks up some of his information.


Before you leap to the conclusion that Vallely is just some random nutjob flapping his lips on the radio, let’s refer to his official biography on the U.S. Army Pacific website:

Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely is a 1961 West Point graduate who retired as Deputy Commanding General for the US Army Pacific in 1991. A veteran of two combat tours in Vietnam, he is a graduate of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces as well as the Army War College.

Throughout his 32-year military career, Maj. Gen. Vallely served in many overseas theaters to include Europe and the Pacific Rim Countries. He has served on US security assistance missions on civilian-military relations to Europe, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and Central America with in-country experience in Indonesia, Columbia, El Salvador, Panama, Honduras and Guatemala. …

Vallely commanded the 351st Civil Affairs Command from 1982-1986, including all Special Forces, Psychological Warfare, and Civil Military units in the Western US and Hawaii. He developed and designed the Host Nation Support Program in the Pacific for the Department of Defense and the State Department.

Since his retirement from the military, Vallely has served as a military analyst for the FOX News Channel and is a guest on many nationally syndicated radio talk shows. He co-authored the book Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror (2004).

A military officer of this caliber publicly endorsing at least “some” of QAnon’s information as being authentic, and flat-out stating that President Trump was forming his policy decisions on the same intelligence sources upon which QAnon’s posts are based, caused waves of excitement to ripple through the Q community. No longer did they have to rely on faith alone. Here, at least, was “proof” that QAnon was no mere hoaxer.

Yet how many of these QAnon devotees are aware of the fact that Vallely collaborated with Lt. Col. Michael Aquino on the very same “From PSYOP to MindWar” paper quoted in “Out of Shadows”?

In the film, Kevin Shipp is quoted as saying that Aquino “wrote a paper called ‘MindWar,’ and ‘MindWar’ was about psychological operations against populations, including the American domestic population, using Satanist techniques and tools.” At that moment, the filmmakers flash the title page of the paper on the screen. One can clearly see Paul Vallely’s name listed above Aquino’s name (though it’s misspelled as “Paul E. Valley”). Is it not curious that the filmmakers don’t point out that the one former high-ranking military officer who has endorsed QAnon as authentic is in fact the same military officer who commissioned Aquino to write “From PSYOP to MindWar” in the first place?

In November of 2003, Michael Aquino wrote a new introduction to his paper:

In the later 1970s, Psychological Operations (PSYOP) doctrine in the U.S. Army had yet to emerge from the disappointment and frustration of the Vietnam War. Thus it was that in 1980 Colonel Vallely, Commander of the 7th PSYOP Group, asked me, as his Headquarters PSYOP Research & Analysis (FA) Team Leader, to draft a paper that would encourage some future thought within the PSYOP community. He did not want a Vietnam postmortem, but rather some fresh and innovative ideas concerning PSYOP’s evolution and application.

I prepared an initial draft, which Colonel Vallely reviewed and annotated, which resulted in revised drafts and critiques until he was satisfied, and the result of that was this paper: From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory.

Colonel Vallely sent copies of it to various government offices, agencies, commands, and publications involved or interested in PSYOP. He intended it not as an article for publication, but simply as a “talking paper” to stimulate dialogue. In this it was quite successful, judging by the extensive and lively letters he received concerning it over the next several months.

That should have been the end of MindWar: a minor “staff study” which had done its modest job.

With the arising of the Internet in the 1980s, however, MindWar received an entirely unexpected — and somewhat comic — resurrection. Allusions to it gradually proliferated, with its “sinister” title quickly winning it the most lurid, conspiracy-theory reputation. The rumor mill soon had it transformed into an Orwellian blueprint for Manchurian Candidate mind control and world domination. My own image as an occult personality added fuel to the wildfire: MindWar was now touted by the lunatic fringe as conclusive proof that the Pentagon was awash in Black Magic and Devil-worship.

Now that this absurdly comic opera has at least somewhat subsided, I thought that it might be interesting to make a complete and accurate copy of the paper available, together with an Introduction and some historical-hindsight annotations to place it in reasonable context. After all it did — and perhaps still does — have something worthwhile to say.

I agree with Aquino. His and Vallely’s blueprint does indeed have something important to say. Let’s return to their original paper for a moment:

… the MindWar operative must know that he speaks the truth, and he must be personally committed to it. What he says is only a part of MindWar; the rest — and the test of its effectiveness — lies in the conviction he projects to his audience, in the rapport he establishes with it. And this is not something which can be easily faked, if in fact it can be faked at all. “Rapport,” which the Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychological and Psychoanalytical Terms defines as “unconstrained relations of mutual confidence,” approaches the subliminal; some researchers have suggested that it is itself a subconscious and perhaps even ESP-based “accent” to an overt exchange of information. Why does one believe one television newsman more than another, even though both may report the same headlines? The answer is that there is rapport in the former case; and it is a rapport which is recognized and cultivated by the most successful broadcasters …. For the mind to believe its own decisions, it must feel that it made those decisions without coercion. Coercive measures used by the MindWar operative, consequently, must not be detectable by ordinary means.

Consider this: “Out of Shadows” strategically creates a special rapport with its targeted audience by first presenting accurate — though relatively little known — information about such real-life government conspiracies as Project Paperclip and MK-ULTRA. Then it begins to push all the fear buttons to which any devoted evangelical Christian is likely to respond (i.e., accusations of Satanism in public schools, Hollywood movies and U.S. intelligence agencies), leaving out any information that would connect Trump or QAnon supporter Paul Vallely to the “black hats” (i.e., Jeffrey Epstein and Michael Aquino, respectively), and caps all that off by ramming home the obvious conclusion: Despite what the mainstream media says, QAnon has been right all along.

The final punchline goes unsaid because, after all, the viewer’s mind “must feel that it made [its decision] without coercion.” But the decision is inevitable: If QAnon is right, who must you vote for in November of 2020?

In other words, if it’s not already clear to you, “Out of Shadows” employs the very same “MindWar” PSYOP techniques supposedly reviled by the filmmakers themselves. That same statement applies just as much to all the other related QAnon material I’ve cited here. As mentioned earlier, the true warrior accuses his opponent of the offenses he himself is enthusiastically committing.

In his May 27 Daily Grail article entitled “Civil War Psy-Op: An Alternative Narrative of the QAnon Conspiracy Theory,” Greg Taylor wrote:


Seeing as the dominant QAnon narrative — that Q drops are a secret way of informing the public that Trump is the literal savior of the world, taking down the evil cabal of Satanist paedophiles that currently run the show — is based on only tidbits of suggestive evidence and links, I thought I’d put forward a counter-narrative — similarly backed by just suggestive evidence and links, because hey if that’s the standard of proof needed ….

What if there is a secret, far-right group consisting of an association of white supremacists, Nazis, mobbed up millionaires, and generally fascist-leaning RWNJs [Rightwing Nutjobs] — and QAnon is a psy-op they created to build an army of useful idiots, who would help spread their message so that eventually a large portion of the population would be compliant when the American putsch goes down?

This “alternative narrative” might not be quite as fanciful as Taylor suggests. In fact, the evidence for the preceding scenario is infinitely stronger than the evidence that Donald Trump has literally saved Americans from being eaten by underground demons.

When I emailed my friend a brief, gently worded but highly skeptical analysis of the QAnon material he had sent me, he responded by sending me an image of an eagle soaring through a fiery Q accompanied by a single sentence: “God Bless America, Where We Go One We Go All.” This is a quote from John F. Kennedy that has been appropriated by QAnon as an all-purpose motto, slogan and battle cry. (JFK might be the only Democrat in history considered untainted enough to quote among the QAnon crowd. Ironically, if JFK hadn’t been assassinated in 1963, QAnon would now be accusing him of worshipping Satan and having sex with children in some random D.C. pizza joint.)

The fact that my friend — unable to counter my arguments with anything remotely based on rationality — felt it necessary to respond to my message with nothing more than an empty slogan preselected by QAnon tells you almost everything you need to know about the cult-like qualities of this new American religion.

This reminded me of a telltale moment during a 2000 primary-season debate among the Republican presidential candidates. At one point, the candidates were asked to name a particular book that had changed their lives or somehow informed their point of view. Every candidate gave an intelligent, reasoned response — except George W. Bush, that is. This is what he came up with (I am paraphrasing): “The Holy Bible! Yes, sir! I can’t explain my personal philosophy any better than that. There’s nothin’ I can say to explain my heart to all of you if you don’t feel the Word of God in your own heart.”

In other words, Bush had no intelligent answer to offer, so he fell back on invoking the Bible merely to avoid using his gray matter to formulate a semi-reasonable response. To claim that these words were mere “platitudes” would be an understatement. Bush’s response was nothing more than a clumsy attempt to deflect attention away from his obvious ignorance and illiteracy. As we know now, that didn’t stop him from winning the nomination and then the presidency (thanks of course to the Supreme Court). Why not? As Buckminster Fuller once observed, “Human beings will always do the intelligent thing, after they’ve exhausted all the stupid alternatives.” Bush was just another in a long line of stupid alternatives. QAnon is the latest one, perhaps the stupidest of the lot.

The same people who wait on the edge of the seat for the next “Q” message to drop have probably watched the popular reality TV show “Catfish” and laughed at the unwitting dupes who find themselves falling in love with an online phantom too good to be true. Urban Dictionary defines the word “catfish” as: “A fake or stolen online identity created or used for the purposes of beginning a deceptive relationship.”

What better word could be used to describe QAnon’s relationship with his/her/their followers? If divine intervention allowed these devout, evangelical Christians to see who was actually posting these “Q” messages, they would no doubt vomit into their Wheaties in the morning. Would they still hang on Q’s every word if they could suddenly teleport into a glass-lined office building — perhaps on Madison Avenue or in the Virginia suburbs — filled with a team of tattooed, hipster-aged “influencers” hired by the Trump campaign to comb through decades-worth of obscure conspiracy theories and rebrand them as ultra-right-wing horror stories aimed at the gullible and downtrodden? I doubt it.

In the final analysis, based on almost 30 years of experience researching conspiracy theories, I can only conclude that QAnon is the ultimate catfish scheme for the 21st century.

P.T. Barnum uttered some wise words in this context. (Maybe you’ve heard them.)

Media manipulation has spilled out well beyond the borders of Hollywood. The real battleground for the minds of Americans is Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, 8kun, etc. That’s why we’re now seeing books and documentaries (like “Out of Shadows”) that claim to reveal the influence of Hollywood. Hollywood now borders on the obsolete. People are more entertained by cat videos on TikTok. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan: When something is rendered obsolete, it becomes an art form. Rather than producing art, Hollywood itself is the art form. Grist for the conspiracy mill. That’s why I subtitled my first book “Conspiracy Theory as Art Form.” Conspiracy theories are an art form, and they’re now being used to create elaborate fictions deployed to support those in power.

We’re told this is a free country. If so, everyone has the right to vote for whoever they want in this year’s election. If your informed research leads you to vote for Donald Trump, feel free. I would suggest, however, that if you vote for Trump for any of the following reasons, you’ve been had:
Because you think he’s a devout, Satanist-exterminating Christian;
Because you think he’s going to screw over a secret cabal of cultish “black hats” by abolishing the income tax;
Because you think he’s going to reveal the existence of Tesla-derived free energy to the world at some point after November of 2020;
Because you think he’s liberating thousands of sexually abused children locked up in Illuminati conclaves hidden within or below U.S. military bases;
Because you think he’s going to save your flesh from being masticated by the blood-spattered fangs of subterranean beasts.

I may not know much, and there aren’t too many words I could ever utter that one might actually take to the bank, but I can guarantee you this:

President Donald J. Trump is not going to prevent you from being eaten by demons.