As the Ukraine war drags on, a grain export deal could be a sign of hope

Many obstacles stand in the way of negotiated peace in Ukraine but shoots of diplomatic pragmatism may be emerging

Paul Rogers
20 August 2022

Russia and Ukraine signed a deal to free up grain exports from Ukrainian ports |
UPI / Alamy Stock Photo

Six months ago, Poland’s air force included large numbers of obsolete Soviet-era planes. But it is now furiously re-arming and has just signed a major arms deal with South Korea.

The US$14.5bn deal with Poland includes 1,000 K2 main battle tanks, nearly 700 self-propelled howitzers and 48 FA-50 combat aircraft. It’s just one example of the rapid expansion of re-arming now under way across Europe. As Sean Howard put it recently, making a killing is a lot easier than making peace. It is certainly far more profitable, at least in the short term, even if almost everyone will lose in the long term.

The war in Ukraine, meanwhile, drags on with no end in sight as it approaches six months of killing and destruction. A violent stalemate has persisted for five of those six months, sometimes with Russia appearing in the ascendant but more recently Ukraine edging ahead. Neither can win and neither can lose. NATO will ensure that Ukraine is sufficiently well-armed to resist sudden Russian advances, but if Russia faces defeat it can threaten nuclear escalation.

Since early July, when Russian forces were still on the offensive, the transfer of new Western weapons to Ukraine has enabled its army to take the initiative. It is now combining accurate long-range rocket attacks with the greater use of special forces and irregulars operating behind Russian lines, especially in Crimea.

Even so, while Volodymyr Zelenskyi is now speaking openly of Ukraine reclaiming the whole of the Crimea from Russia, seasoned diplomats see this as principally for home consumption. If a deal was possible, then Ukraine would almost certainly be prepared to negotiate over territory, post-war governance and many other issues, and there is plenty of expert advice around on how to approach a negotiated settlement.

There are, though, many obstacles to a negotiated peace, three of which stand out.

One is Putin and his power group, which remains fixated on victory. They may no longer see much prospect of an immediate takeover of the Kyiv government, even if that remains the ultimate aim, but controlling much of Russian-speaking Ukraine in Crimea and Donbas is still the intention.

There is also little doubt that Putin himself remains committed to the grand vision of a greater Eurasia with Russia at the head. This exercise in ethno-nationalism with decided neo-Fascist and Tsarist undertones is his counter to Western hegemony, especially the global power of the United States.

Then there is the second obstacle. The hawks in the West, and especially in the United States, see the war as an extraordinary opportunity to cripple the Russian economy for a generation, freeing Washington to face up to its real enemy – China. There are shades here of the hawkish attitudes of the influential John Birch Society and other right-wing groups in the US back at the height of the Cold War era in the early 1980s. Spending the Soviets into an early grave was the mantra, and it came close to becoming the reality with the economic collapse of the early 1990s.

It is always possible that thoughtful analysts and perhaps even one or two political leaders will begin to question the consequences of the war

That economic crisis and the contempt with which a failing Russia was treated by the West has greatly helped Putin, especially with older Russians, but this is quietly forgotten as the war provides a new opportunity for US hawks to embrace old approaches. Their hope is to see it lasting at least a couple of years, with enough Western military support for Ukraine to wear down Russian forces. The next step may well be to ensure that Kyiv gets F-16 American strike aircraft, perhaps through a third country.

Finally, the war may actually be welcomed by the world’s military complexes, especially the major arms corporations, and is also something of a relief for NATO as a whole. There may be political divisions among member states, but the extensive NATO community is at last able to get back to ‘proper’ wars after the appalling consequences of its wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Even memories of the chaotic and lethal retreat from Kabul a year ago can at last be forgotten in the face of Putin’s Russia, just the kind of enemy that NATO military thinking is used to and believes it can handle.

If this all seems thoroughly Doomwatch then perhaps it is, but it is always possible that thoughtful analysts and perhaps even one or two political leaders will begin to question the consequences of the war, perhaps aided by occasional more positive developments.

This week, for example, saw President Zelenskyi inviting UN Secretary-General António Guterres and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to a summit meeting in Lviv, with Guterres going on to the grain-exporting port of Odessa the following day.

The stated aim was to discuss the whole grain export issue, and no doubt the security of Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant also came up, but it was a reminder that Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish and UN diplomats are actually engaged in coordinating grain export from Ukrainian ports, signing a deal in Istanbul on 22 July.

There may be political judgements determining Russia’s going along with this, not least the risk of governments across the Global South blaming Moscow for food shortages, but it still an indicator of a wedge of pragmatism intruding in a seemingly intractable conflict. As so often, UN diplomats are quietly working away with little publicity. Perhaps this time their efforts may be the start of something substantial.

JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY REDUX
Sen. Mike Lee calls on the US to withdraw from the United Nations

Derick Fox

KTVX
Thu, December 7, 2023 



SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R) introduced a bill to Congress on Wednesday, Dec. 6 which called for the complete withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations.

The bill, titled Disengaging Entirely from the United Nations Debacle (DEFUND) Act, would see the U.S. stop participating in U.N. peacekeeping operations including providing funding, personnel and equipment. it would also see diplomatic immunity in the U.S. revoked for U.N. employees and officers

The bill further prohibits the U.S. from re-entering an agreement with the U.N. without the consent and ratification of the Senate after it withdraws. In addition to a complete withdrawal from the United Nations, Lee’s DEFUND Act would also see the United States withdraw from the World Health Organization.

Lee said the DEFUND Act confronts “imperative issues” of national sovereignty and fiscal accountability.

TAX THE CHURCH

How Republicans conspire with churches for social and political control

Thom Hartmann
October 11, 2022

Franklin Graham attends UN global call to protect religious freedom meeting at UN Headquarters in 2019. (Shutterstock.com)

For Republicans, the purpose of religion is — as it has been for authoritarians since Old Testament days — political and social control. It’s not about spirituality: it’s all about raw, naked, taxpayer-subsidized power and the wealth associated with it.

A Michigan county Republican Party just posted a video showing picture after picture of that state’s Democratic politicians, starting with Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who right-wing terrorists have already tried to kidnap and murder.

Under each picture — including a picture of George Soros representing, presumably, the “International Jews” who Republican politicians suggest wield space lasers and secretly are trying to control the world — reads the death threat, in bold, all-caps:

“GOD’S GONNA CUT YOU DOWN!”

The wealthy pastors of at least four Republican-aligned megachurches in Georgia have invited Hershel Walker to campaign, in clear violation of their tax-exempt status.

Across the nation, white evangelical churches brazenly push their parishioners to vote for Republican candidates: they’ve been getting away with breaking the law since the 1980s and don’t show any inclination to stop now.

As the University of Chicago Divinity School noted five months ago:

“In January, Walker spoke at Free Chapel in Gainesville, the congregation led by former Trump evangelical advisor Jentezen Franklin. In late February, Walker spoke during a worship service at First Baptist Atlanta. And in March, he spoke at Sugar Hill Baptist Church, where he made controversial comments questioning evolution. In each sanctuary, the pastors interviewed Walker on stage and offered their support for his candidacy in ways that appear to violate IRS rules prohibiting 501(c)3 tax-exempt nonprofits from engaging in partisan campaign activity.”

It’s time for average Americans to stop being forced to subsidize politically radical religious leaders and their institutions.

Back during Trump’s second impeachment trial, Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and heir to the multimillion-dollar Graham fortune, publicly said that the 10 Republicans voting to impeach Donald Trump in the US House of Representatives were like Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus.

“And these ten, from [Trump’s] own party, joined in the feeding frenzy,” he wrote. “It makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal.”

Franklin Graham is a multimillionaire in large part because neither he nor his family have to pay any taxes on their family’s business’ income or even pay property taxes on the land and buildings their business owns and in which they live.

Instead, you and I and the taxpayers of his town and state pay extra taxes to subsidize Graham and his “ministry,” as we do thousands of other politically active “preachers.”

There’s a history to this political-religious-financial complex.

Back in the 1950s, the John Birch Society put up billboards all across America demanding that Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren be impeached because he’d signed off on the Brown v Board decision that required schools be racially integrated.

White churches across the country, along with wealthy industrialists like Fred Koch, helped fund the effort, arguing that school integration was the first step to full-blown communism in America and was against “God’s will.”

Preachers ranted from the pulpit about the dangers of school integration: the issue birthed the modern “religious right.” Bob Jones, Jerry Falwell and others started all-white schools to defy the decision, often claiming that because their schools were “Christian” they were exempt from federal oversight and thus didn’t have to comply with the Supreme Court’s dictum.


Into this firestorm stepped Senator Lyndon Johnson, who proposed in 1954 that it was fine if churches wanted to engage in politics or argue that Jesus would have been against racial integration, but if they chose to preach and practice racism and politics the rest of America shouldn’t be forced to subsidize them.

It passed Congress that year and was signed into law by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Since the Reagan era, however, the law has been largely ignored. As The Washington Post noted in a 2016 editorial:

“Indeed, more than 2,000 mainly evangelical Christian clergy have deliberately violated the law since 2008 as a form of protest against it; only one has been audited by the IRS, and none punished…”

When preachers push politics instead of religion on Sunday morning, the so-called Johnson Amendment said, their church should lose its tax-exempt status.

As the IRS notes:

“Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

Churches could still participate in non-partisan political activities like a voter registration drive or organizing buses to take people to polling places, but when they took a position on candidates or political issues they lost their right to force all the rest of us pay for their roads, police, fire, and all the other public services that taxes fund.

But ever since George HW Bush brought his son George W. Bush into his 1988 campaign to reach out to white evangelical churches, many evangelists, televangelists, and churches across America have been ignoring this law.

They not only regularly preach rightwing hate, completely inconsistent with Jesus‘s message, but they raise hundreds of millions of dollars — all tax exempt — to inject into political campaigns.

This is not how the Framers of our Constitution thought America should operate.

At the founding of our republic, “Father of the Constitution” James Madison was worried about government influencing and corrupting churches as had happened in Massachusetts before the Revolution.

On the other hand, his mentor, Thomas Jefferson, was worried that churches and their religious leaders could corrupt politicians and government itself.

It turns out both were right.

Their solution was written into Article VI of the Constitution, which says:

“[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

They doubled-down on it with the First Amendment:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

Thomas Jefferson later referred to this as a “wall of separation between church and state” that would keep both our republic and our churches independent of each other.

When he became our fourth President, James Madison’s first veto was to reject a piece of legislation that would’ve given a federal subsidy to a church in Washington DC to feed needy people.

No American government should be giving money to churches, he said, regardless of purpose, and the proposed law he vetoed would “be a precedent for giving to religious societies as such a legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty.”

Sadly, and particularly since the Reagan Revolution, we’ve badly backslid on this principle. Churches have figured out hundreds of ways to get their hands on government money, and deeply embedded themselves in the business of lobbying and politics.

It’s hard to find a successful televangelist or major evangelical pastor who is not now a multimillionaire, presiding over a multi-million or even billion-dollar empire within America’s multi-billion-dollar-a-year religious industry. And they got there, in part, because you and I are subsidizing them.

Modern history, particularly since 1954, proves the wisdom of Madison and Jefferson‘s concern.

If rightwing religious leaders want to tell their followers how to believe, how to behave, and how to vote, that’s fine. That’s their right in a nation that celebrates both free speech and freedom of — and freedom from — religion.

Churches, after all, have been telling their members how to behave since the beginning of organized religion. Social and political control exercised through religion is nothing new: it’s at least as old as the Bible.

But you and I shouldn’t be forced to subsidize their political control over their followers through our tax dollars.

It’s time for the IRS to tighten up their enforcement and cut these freeloaders off their free lunch of tax exemption when they engage in politics.

Did some of our federal police conspire to overthrow the United States?
Thom Hartmann
December 01, 2022

Army Maj. Gen. William Walker, Commanding General of the Washington National Guard, said the Pentagon took three hours and 19 minutes to approve the deployment of the guard when the Capitol was attacked on January 6(AFP)

Congressman Ron Paul’s former staffer, Elmer Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oathkeepers, was just convicted of seditious conspiracy. But how did he and his merry band get close enough to Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi to present the kind of deadly threat they tried to carry out?

“Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” the Scotland Yard police inspector asked Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story The Adventure of Silver Blaze.
“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time,” Holmes replied.
“The dog,” the inspector said, “did nothing in the night-time.”
“That,” replied Holmes, “was the curious incident.”

Why didn’t the “dogs” of our federal police, investigative, and military agencies “bark” when they knew full well in advance that an armed mob was coming to the Capitol to try to overthrow our government, and that many within the mob were armed and willing to kill (and did) to try to accomplish their goal?

Why, afterward, did the Secret Service and the Department of Defense wipe their phones so the data could never be retrieved? Why has there never been a public examination of most of this?

It’s as if a small-town police force was warned that a gang of bank robbers was on their way into town on the following Saturday, and that weekend the entire police force decided to leave their phones off the hook and go fishing. And after the bank was robbed, they all said they didn’t realize they’d really intended to rob the town’s bank. And then destroyed the note warning them the robbers were coming to town.

Why are so few people openly speculating that corrupt individuals — possibly only a tiny handful — within the FBI, Secret Service, and Department of Defense may have participated in a plot led by Donald Trump to overthrow our government?

Is it simply because treason is such an unimaginably heinous act? Does journalistic integrity require them to await “smoking gun” evidence that, at the very least, some people within these organizations were knowing or unknowing participants in Trump’s plot to become America’s last president? Is it fear of losing sources in the agencies?

When I was 13 years old my father gave me a just-published book he’d gotten from a friend in the John Birch Society titled None Dare Call It Treason. It posited that the US State Department was riddled with communist sympathizers, largely based on circumstantial evidence and the “investigations” conducted a decade earlier by Senator Joe McCarthy.

There was no such conspiracy (although there were a few identified as “commies,” mostly just good liberals), but that didn’t stop the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, from frequently and loudly suggesting to the press that there was.

Similarly, from the viewpoint of some of the people working in the FBI and Secret Service on January 6th, it may not have been as absurd as it sounds today to have then believed that Democrats in a half-dozen states had successfully stolen the election from Trump.

After all, the President of the United States was making that claim himself, repeatedly. And dozens of other high-ranking officials, including members of the House and Senate from the various states where the crimes allegedly occurred, were themselves corroborating his claim.

Trump was the boss, and if people in police agencies are anything it’s deferential to the boss. And highly aware of the chain of command. As the old saying goes, if he says, “Jump!” it’s their job to reply, “How high?”

Anybody who’s ever had much contact with members of police and military agencies knows they lean conservative, sometimes to the point of outright support for police-state style fascism. In many instances and circumstances a certain amount of authoritarianism seems necessary to do the job, particularly policing, which is why that kind of work draws authoritarian personalities to it.

It’s also no secret that both police officers and military enlistees vote overwhelmingly Republican, largely for the same reasons (although the GOP also goes out of its way to court those voters).

So, should we be surprised to learn that a handful of members of our federal police agencies — the FBI and Secret Service — and a few most senior officials in the Department of Defense may have conspired — wittingly or unwittingly — with Donald Trump to end democracy in America and institute a Trump-led strongman government?

As the January 6th Select Committee in the House is wrapping up their work and writing their final report, there are more than a few questions around the DOD, FBI, and Secret Service that remain unanswered, particularly about the days and weeks leading up to that fateful day.

The largest question, of course, is why they all stood down, knowing that armed militias were coming to try to overturn an election. And that the militia members were willing to spill blood, which they did, including that of the three police officers killed and over 140 injured, to accomplish their goal.

The attack heading toward the Capitol wasn’t a secret, by any measure. Trump had tweeted an invitation on December 19th saying it would be “wild” and reiterated the invitation multiple times both on Twitter and in other venues.

Rhodes texted to his Oathkeeper members, which included at least one FBI informant:

“We are not getting through this without a civil war. Prepare your mind, body and spirit.”

If that wasn’t clear enough, he also proclaimed:
“We will have to do a bloody, massively bloody revolution against them. That's what's going to have to happen.”

Planning was all over right-wing media, Twitter, and Facebook. People were openly discussing violence and plans for violence. There was brazen talk of revolution, of assassination.

Somebody brought and assembled a gallows on the lawn of the capitol building, but somehow nobody stopped the construction or knows the identities of its builders and how or why it was organized.

And we now know that FBI field offices across the country had noticed the boiling calls for violence, and the Secret Service and DOD were also fully aware of it.

But not only did they do nothing: they actively prevented — for days in advance, and for multiple hours during the active armed assault — any rescue of the small contingent of Capitol Police and legislators left to deal with an armed mob of thousands.

The Commanding General of the National Guard, Gen. William J. Walker, has openly complained that he was prevented — for four hours — from helping the Capitol Police that day. As The Washington Post reported:
“Walker contends that restrictions placed on him by McCarthy and Trump’s acting defense secretary, Christopher Miller, prevented him from sending Guard members to assist sooner.”

How is this an accident?

When Trump took the dais to whip up the crowd before sending them to the Capitol to “hang Mike Pence,” he took the unusual step of speaking from behind a wall of bulletproof glass. Congressman Mo Brooks, among others, wore a bulletproof vest.

They knew what the hell was up.

Hours before Trump’s rally, in the early morning hours, armed people had started showing up near the ellipse; DC police and the Secret Service had reports of an armed person in a tree and others carrying semiautomatic weapons.

January 6th Committee testimony suggests the Secret Service reported this to Trump himself although, weirdly, nobody tried to disarm these people in a city where guns are largely illegal. Instead, apparently there was a debate about whether or not to turn off the metal-detecting magnetometers.

Trump then demanded — in real time, from the stage — that those armed followers be allowed in to hear his speech without having to go through the magnetometers that would have identified their weapons.

Yet somehow his hand-picked FBI Director hadn’t prepared to deal with an armed mob in advance and, on the day of the assault, went fishing or something (his statement to Congress is here).

Whatever he was doing, he was seemingly paralyzed for most of the day and only took direct action, he testified under oath to Congress:
“Beginning on the evening of January 6, the FBI surged substantial resources to help ensure the safety and security of the U.S. Capitol complex, members of Congress, and their staff, and the public.” (emphasis mine)


This isn’t to say I think Chris Wray was in on the conspiracy. Unless he’s managed to drag the agency back to the era of J. Edgar Hoover and is blackmailing politicians, his retention by the Biden administration speaks volumes.

Nonetheless, many of us would like to know, “WTF?!??”

For similarly unknown reasons Trump’s acting Defense Secretary told the National Guard two days earlier, on January 4th, that they were not, without specific permission from him, allowed to help the Capitol police on January 6th. (His memo is reproduced at the end of this article.)

Meanwhile, as convicted seditionist Stewart Rhodes testified at his own trial, Oathkeepers were fully expecting counter-protestors to show up, people they could identify as “Antifa” and attack. General Mike Flynn was pushing Trump to use that expected battle as the excuse to declare martial law and suspend election activity.

And it now looks like Trump may have been prepared to execute Flynn’s plan, had those counter-protestors actually showed up.

The day before, on January 5th, Trump issued an executive order asserting that “Antifa” was both a domestic terrorist and organized crime group and should be treated as such by the federal government.
“[R]eliable reporting,” the January 5th order notes, “suggests that the movement known as Antifa is directly or indirectly responsible for some of the recent lawlessness in our communities, and has exploited tragedies to advance a radical, leftist, anarchist, and often violent agenda. In fact, Antifa has long used otherwise permissible demonstrations to engage in lawless, criminal behavior to further its radical agenda. …
“Those affiliated with Antifa have also repeatedly threatened violence, including against law enforcement officers. …
“In late September of 2020, individuals in a moving truck distributed riot equipment — including shields, masks, and a sign emblazoned with an Antifa symbol — in Louisville, Kentucky, before riots ensued there. Hours later, the violent situation resulted in the shooting of two police officers. And on October 5, 2020, reported Antifa activists in Portland were captured on video attacking a woman carrying an American flag.
“The Department of Justice has already publicly confirmed that actions by Antifa and similar groups meet the standard for domestic terrorism.”


Over at the Department of Defense then-acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller and his Chief of Staff Kash Patel (formerly of Devin Nunes’ staff) were running the place.

They controlled the Pentagon and our armed forces but, more importantly, they controlled the National Guard, whose troops had previously surrounded buildings in the Capitol area three-deep during the peaceful BLM protests just six months earlier.

The prospect that violence was heading toward the Capitol on January 6th wasn’t a secret to anybody with a Twitter or Facebook account: the nation was awash with threats and planning for violence, much of it in the open. It was discussed on talk radio and podcasts.

This apparently so alarmed Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy that, on January 4th, he reached out to his boss, Trump’s recently-appointed Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, to get permission to send the National Guard to the Capitol building on January 6th to prevent the violence they were seeing being planned all over social media.

Acting Defense Secretary Miller, in the effective role of commander of our entire military just one step below Commander-in-Chief Trump (on whose behalf he acted), then issued a memo on January 4th specifically directing McCarthy and the National Guard that they were:*Not authorized to be issued weapons, ammunition, bayonets, batons, or ballistic protection equipment such as helmets and body armor.

*Not to interact physically with protestors, except when necessary in self-defense or defense of others.
*Not to employ any riot control agents.
*Not to share equipment with law enforcement agencies.
*Not authorized to use Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) assets or to conduct ISR or Incident, Awareness, and Assessment activities in assistance to Capitol Police.
*Not allowed to employ helicopters or any other air assets.
*Not to conduct searches, seizures, arrests, or other similar direct law enforcement activity.
*Not authorized to seek support from any non-DC National Guard units.

There’s no coherent theory about why Chris Miller wrote this memo and thus blocked the National Guard from protecting the Capitol and the members of Congress within it.

Some have suggested it was to retain an appearance of “normality at the Capitol,” but that makes no sense when you see their response to things like that summer’s Black Lives Matter protests. That was the new normal.

But something wasn’t normal at all in the Trump administration.

Recall, way back on November 9, 2020, right after his election loss was called on November 7th, the Los Angeles Times wrote:

“President Trump’s decision to fire Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Monday [the day before the election] raised concerns that he may be planning far-reaching military moves in his final weeks in office — and is putting in place new leadership more inclined to go along.

“Trump named Christopher Miller, director of the national counterterrorism center, to take over as acting Defense secretary, bypassing the normal practice of having the Pentagon’s No. 2 official take charge temporarily if the top job becomes vacant.”

The article also noted that Miller’s predecessor, who’d been through a Senate confirmation and was a “legal” Secretary of Defense (Miller was not), was concerned:
“In an interview conducted before his dismissal but published after he was fired Monday, Esper suggested that his successor might be more willing than he was to go along with Trump’s questionable uses of the military.
“‘Who’s going to come in behind me?’ Esper told Military Times, which covers the armed forces. ‘It’s going to be a real ‘yes man.’ And then God help us.’”


What did it take for Trump to get Chris Miller to write this memo? Was he duped? Was he an enthusiastic or reluctant participant? Did Donald Trump or his Chief of Staff and apparent co-conspirator Mark Meadows dictate it?

If this isn’t bad enough, on January 6th itself — as armed traitors were attacking police and searching to “hang Mike Pence” — Chris Miller oversaw a mid-afternoon, mid-riot conference call in which Army Secretary McCarthy was again begging for authority to immediately bring in the National Guard.

Then-Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations General Charles Flynn, the brother of convicted/pardoned foreign agent General Michael Flynn (who had been pushing Trump to declare martial law and seize voting machines nationwide) was on the call; both the Pentagon and the Army, it has been reported, lied to the press, Congress, and, apparently, to the Biden administration about his presence on that call for almost a year.

It wasn’t until December, 2021 that it was widely reported that the National Security Council’s Colonel Earl Matthews (who was also on the call) wrote a memo calling both Charles Flynn and Lt. Gen Walter Piatt, the Director of Army Staff, “absolute and unmitigated liars” for their testimony to Congress in which they both denied they’d argued to withhold the National Guard on January 6th.

Then we discovered that the phones and text messages of most of the group, including Chris Miller, Walter Piatt, Kash Patel, and Ryan McCarthy were all wiped of all conversations and text messages they had on and in the lead-up to January 6th.

Most of the communication-based evidence was destroyed. Completely destroyed. By coincidence, they said.

Why is it such a stretch to imagine that at least some of these men believed, as Stewart Rhodes has said he believed, that the battle of January 6th would end with Donald Trump declared the president?

That, once declared, he’d award them all presidential medals and give them promotions and positions of even greater power in his second administration?

That 2016 would be the last election actually determined by the people themselves, and they were all okay with that?

Is it simply true that “none dare call it treason?”

Perhaps I’m missing some critical detail that reduces this speculation to nonsense. Or maybe it’s just that because I’m publishing here on Substack in my own little silo I don’t have to answer to a nervous editor who wants to maintain his publication’s access to the FBI, Secret Service, and DOD.

If you know what I’m missing, please let me know in the comments section below.

If not, please join me in asking this simple question:
“Was there a conspiracy — even if it only involved a handful of people — at the highest levels of our government to end the American Experiment that was only defeated by sheer luck? And, if so, who were the conspirators and who were the unwitting dupes?”


Americans deserve to know why the dog didn’t bark on January 6th and in the days leading up to it. And, if appropriate, to dare to call it treason.

WHO Official Warns Against ‘Profiling’ China, Says Observers ‘Over-Focused’ on Coronavirus Data

AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MOUTHPIECE NATIONAL REVIEW CONTINUES TO PROMOTE ITS JINGOIST RACIST BLAME CHINA CAMPAIGN TO PROTECT TRUMPS ASS SO I HAVE EDITED THIS WITH ANNOTATIONS

FOR THE NATIONAL REVIEW LIKE THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY BEFORE IT

 WHO IS A STAND IN FOR THE UN A FAVORITE TARGET OF THE AMERICAN RIGHT

Zachary Evans,National Review•April 3, 2020


Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Program, defended China on Thursday against accusations that the country has underreported cases and deaths from the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.

“I think we need to be very careful also to not to be profiling certain parts of the world as being uncooperative or non-transparent, and we need to look at transparency across the board,” Ryan said at a Geneva press conference.

“We need to be balanced in that, and we need to recognize that systems under pressure find it hard to share everything on a minute-to-minute basis,” Ryan continued. “Frankly, at times I think we get over-focused on this issue.”

Ryan claimed that there was a “lack of precise information from Italy,” whose medical system has been overwhelmed by the sheer amount of coronavirus patients. “Are we saying they’re lacking in transparency and not sending WHO all the data every day? No.”

As of Friday morning, Italy has over 115,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 13,915 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker. However, a Wall Street Journal analysis suggests the Italian coronavirus death toll could be much higher than was reported, because health workers did not have the time or resources to test all the casualties for the illness.

The U.S. Intelligence Community has reportedly concluded that China covered up the extent of the outbreak in the country. WELL THEY ARE UNBIASED

One recent study found that roughly 95 percent of global cases could have been prevented if China acted earlier to stem the outbreak. WHAT STUDY IS THAT NO REFERENCE JUST ANOTHER SMEAR 

Meanwhile, Senator Rick Scott (R, Fla.) has called for a congressional hearing on the WHO’s ties to China, while Senator Martha McSally on Thursday called on the director of the WHO to resign. MCCARTHYITE RED BAITING

Rick Scott demands congressional investigation into the WHO for ‘helping Communist China cover up’
HE IS FROM FLORIDA ITS IN THE WATER
THIS IS JUST THE USUAL JOHN BIRCH ANTI UN CONSPIRACY THEORY APPLIED TO WHO
March 31, 2020 By Sarah K. Burris


Tuesday, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) called for an investigation into the World Health Organization because he thinks they are aiding in a “Communist China cover up.”

Politico reported that the China hawk has long had issues with the WHO’s relationship with Beijing. China stopped counting cases of coronavirus weeks ago and removed American reporters from their country.

“The mission of the WHO is to get public health information to the world so every country can make the best decisions to keep their citizens safe. When it comes to coronavirus, the WHO failed,” said the Florida senator, claiming the WHO is intentionally spreading misinformation. “We know Communist China is lying about how many cases and deaths they have, what they knew and when they knew it — and the WHO never bothered to investigate further. Their inaction cost lives.”

While the number of coronavirus cases in China is inconsequential and confusion over the start of the virus hardly matters to the United States, any possible developments in treatment or virus control can be helpful to other countries

“Scott and other lawmakers have raised questions about the WHO’s refusal to grant membership to Taiwan, which the Chinese government has tried to alienate from the global community,” Politico reported.

The public timeline of the virus cited China’s learning of an outbreak of pneumonia in mid-November 2019. Weeks later, when it became clear that the “pneumonia” was actually contagious and spreading, China informed the WHO. It’s unknown if that timeline is truthful, but Scott did not give any indication that had had alternative information to refute it.

Scott wrote a New York Times op-ed earlier in March, attacking “Communist China” for the way they’ve responded to the coronavirus.

Having an accurate count of people in China doesn’t do anything to heal the sick people in the United States, though it does make President Donald Trump look better if the United States was not the top country in the world with the most coronavirus cases, as it is currently.

Scott also didn’t indicate whether he would be raising questions about Trump’s slow action on early on in the coronavirus crisis.

Read the full report at Politico.

‘Republicans are nervous’: Some in GOP eye protests warily

1 of 6
In this April 15, 2020, photo, Steve Polet holds a sign during a protest at the State Capitol in Lansing, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

APRIL 23, 2020

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The latest demonstration by right-wing groups against measures to contain the coronavirus will be held Friday in Wisconsin, where hundreds, and possibly thousands of people plan to descend on the state Capitol to protest the Democratic governor’s stay-home ordinance.

It’s expected to be among the biggest of the protests that have popped up around the U.S. in recent days. But as with some earlier events, one group will be noticeably absent: the state’s most prominent Republicans.

That includes Sen. Ron Johnson, a Trump ally, who says he’ll be sheltering in place at his home in Oshkosh about 90 miles from Madison.


“I’m neither encouraging nor discouraging them,” said Johnson, 65, whose career was launched by the tea party movement, a protest effort with ties to the current one. He urged anyone who decides to attend the protest to practice good personal hygiene and social distancing.

Johnson’s distance and ambivalence is shared by many Republicans as they warily watch the protests — with their images of gun-toting activists, the occasional Confederate flag, and protesters wearing Trump hats but no face masks. Six months away from an election, the protests are forcing some Republicans to reckon with a restless right flank advocating an unpopular opinion even as the party seeks to make gains with moderates, women and suburban voters.

Polls show the sentiment behind these groups is currently unpopular. A survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found only 12% of Americans say the measures in place where they live to prevent the spread of the coronavirus go too far, though Republicans are roughly four times as likely as Democrats to say so — 22% to 5%. The majority of Americans — 61% — feel the steps taken by government officials in their area are about right.

Still, a network of conservative groups has activated to support the efforts — seizing on the anxiety and distrust that comes with a moment of turmoil. Conservative groups with national networks, including FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots, have pushed the “reopen” message on social media.

Friday’s rally was promoted by Thomas Leager, a prominent Wisconsin gun-rights advocate. Those who are members of the Facebook group for the event or have advocated for rallying to reopen the state include Matt Batzel, the executive director of the Wisconsin chapter for American Majority, a group that helps conservative candidates get elected; Christian Gomez, research project manager at the John Birch Society; and Stephen Moore, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.


“The polls are very clear. That’s why I think Republicans are nervous about this,” said Moore, who is on Trump’s economic task force and has promoted some of the protests provided attendees should follow social distancing guidelines. “But these things can change. That’s the point of these protests — to change public opinion.”

The many unknowns of pandemic — including what the death toll might be if restrictions like stay-home orders are lifted — complicate the political calculations. And Trump himself has positioned himself on both sides of the divide in this party. After issuing guidelines for states to reopen, he tweeted support for protesters who were violating them, calling on them to “LIBERATE” three states with Democratic governors. He empathized with protesters, saying they have “cabin fever” and “want their lives back,” then criticized Georgia’s governor for reopening his state too early.

That’s left most Republicans — particularly those in tough re-election fights this fall — playing it safe by staying away from protests or from being overly vocal about reopening things.

In North Carolina, Sen. Thom Tillis, who is among the GOP senators whose elections could determine if the party keeps control of the Senate, has been repeatedly complimentary in public of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and his decisions.

“We need to let people know that now is not the time to let their guard down,” Tillis said on Thursday during a coronavirus conference call with constituents. He said he thinks one or two other states talking about reopening are “doing just a little bit too soon based on the data and the presidential guidelines.”

“People need to wear a mask, they need to avoid going out if they don’t need to,” Tillis said. “That’s the only way that we are ultimately going to be beat this virus and get our economy back on sound footing.”

For some Republican candidates and elected officials the protests have been a way to get attention from a vocal faction of the party. said Wisconsin-based pollster Charles Franklin.

In Minnesota, former GOP congressman and Senate candidate Jason Lewis made a protest outside the governor’s mansion one of the first stops on an RV tour of the state where he’s pushing for an end to the shutdowns. Lewis said he’s skeptical of the polling on the question, noting people are honking in support and giving thumbs up as his RV passes by, particularly in smaller towns where people feel like the restrictions are unfair and killing their businesses and livelihood.

“People are saying ‘Finally someone is saying what I feel,’” he said, predicting the shutdowns will be “the defining issue” in his race against Sen. Tina Smith.

In Maine, where moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins is up for reelection, rural residents were behind a protest Monday in the capital city of Augusta. The event divided GOP contenders in a congressional primary: One Republican, Eric Brakey, joined the protesters, while one of his opponents skipped the event but called on others to join her in a “virtual” protest using social media.

Republican Adrienne Bennett said it’s important to be “safe and responsible.” Collins did not respond to request for comment about the protest.

Wisconsin Republicans were initially generally supportive of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers approach to fighting coronavirus, but they broke last week when he extended a stay-at-home order for another month until May 26, which was the latest in the Midwest and one of the latest in the country. This week Republican legislative leaders asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to block the order and force the state Department of Health Services to work with them on a new approach to reopening the state.

“There’s a lot of frustration out there,” said Republican state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, among those filed the lawsuit against Evers. “The fact that Governor Evers’ voicemail is full and people aren’t getting a reply to their emails makes people feel like they’re not being heard.”

Vos, who made headlines for declaring Wisconsin polling places safe for voters while covered in protective gear, would not say whether he will attend Friday’s rally. His counterpart in filing the lawsuit, and candidate for Congress, state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald did not respond to requests for comment.

One of the rally’s organizers, Madison Elmer, said they were approached by at least one office holder who wanted to speak but organizers turned them down. Elmer would not identify the person. Instead, the rally will feature speeches from business owners, farmers, a doctor and a nurse.

___

Burnett reported from Chicago. Associated Press reporters David Sharp in Portland, Maine and Gary Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina contributed.

JOHN BIRCH UN CONSPIRACY REDUX
GOP lawmakers push legislation to preempt WHO global pandemic treaty

Critics say the treaty and related measures vastly expand the authority and resources of the the U.N. health arm at the expense of national sovereignty.



By Aaron Kliegman
Updated: June 2, 2022

JUST THE NEWS


Critics of the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations' health agency, breathed a sigh of relief last week when legally binding international health rules proposed by the Biden administration weren't adopted.

However, concerns remain about ongoing efforts to establish a sweeping global agreement to combat future pandemics, leading Republican Reps. Chris Stewart and Ronny Jackson, of Utah and Texas, respectively, to introduce legislation on Tuesday to preempt U.S. participation in such an arrangement.

Stewart's legislation would prohibit the use of funds to propose amendments to either the International Health Regulations (IHR) or a so-called "global pandemic treaty," or any other agreement among member states of the WHO.

The Biden administration has proposed controversial amendments to the IHR, an instrument of international law that is legally binding on WHO member countries, including the U.S.

The treaty — currently being drafted — is a separate but related initiative to create a globally binding accord on pandemic preparedness.

Supporters argue the treaty and IHR changes can address the holes exposed by the world's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"A pandemic treaty and IHR reform can only make the world safer from fast moving infectious diseases," Georgetown University law professor Lawrence Gostin told Just the News. "After all we have suffered during the pandemic, isn't that what we all should want?"

Critics say the measures vastly expand the authority and resources of the WHO, which they argue would be given greater control to dictate how nations respond to future pandemics and undermine national sovereignty.

"President Biden must be stopped from handing power to a corrupt body of international bureaucrats," Stewart said in a statement. "If he gets his way, the WHO will have the power to unilaterally declare a public health crisis in America. Yes, the same WHO that actively covered for China by denying their role in the origins of COVID-19. If an American citizen didn't vote someone into office, they have no business telling us how to live."

Stewart's bill would prohibit the use of funds to propose any amendments to the WHO that would supersede or modify authorities under the U.S. It would also halt U.S. WHO funding, unless the global body takes certain steps, including holding China accountable for its alleged role in the origin and spread of COVID-19.

"Congress must now pass my legislation to hold China accountable and keep American decision-making where it belongs: with the American people," said Stewart.

Jackson's legislation, meanwhile, would prohibit the use of funds to implement any obligations of the U.S. under a pandemic treaty.


"Since the onset of COVID-19, the WHO has proven to be as corrupt as its leaders are incompetent," said Jackson, former physician to the president under both Obama and Trump. "The WHO was complicit in helping the Chinese Communist Party cover up COVID-19's initial spread and origin, yet Joe Biden wants to give them control over public health matters in America. It's an insult to every American citizen who has been affected by the pandemic, and I will not stay silent as this farce of a treaty is negotiated behind the American peoples' backs."

Experts and lawmakers in recent weeks have shined a spotlight on the WHO's checkered record during the COVID-19 pandemic, warning the public health measures under discussion would centralize too much power in the hands of the WHO.

The House bills were introduced days after Republicans in the Senate unveiled similar measures last week.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) introduced legislation requiring any agreement resulting from the work of the WHO's intergovernmental negotiating body to be deemed a treaty per U.S. law, requiring the advice and consent of a supermajority of the Senate.

"The WHO, along with our federal health agencies, failed miserably in its response to COVID-19," Johnson said in a statement. "Its failure should not be rewarded with a new international treaty that would increase its power at the expense of American sovereignty. What the WHO does need is greater accountability and transparency. This bill makes clear to the Biden administration that any new WHO pandemic agreement must be deemed a treaty and submitted to the Senate for ratification. The sovereignty of the United States is not negotiable."

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) introduced his own bill to prevent the WHO from unilaterally imposing public health restrictions on the U.S.

Proponents of the WHO's initiative dismissed such concerns about undermining American sovereignty.

"There is considerable disinformation and even conspiracy theories about the IHR reforms and the pandemic treaty," said Gostin, who works as director of the WHO's Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. "It does not allow WHO to make any decisions about U.S. health policy. WHO powers are currently weak. They need to be stronger, but it is crystal clear that WHO will not have any power to dictate U.S. domestic health policy."

Last week, the World Health Assembly, the WHO's decision-making body comprised of 194 member countries, convened in Geneva, Switzerland. Topping the agenda was the WHO's push to create a pandemic treaty.

The current working draft of the treaty would give the WHO more power to impose its recommendations to combat pandemics, potentially including lockdown measures and travel restrictions. It also calls for the WHO to establish a "new global system for surveillance" and "to deploy proactive countermeasures against misinformation and social media attacks."

Additionally, the accord includes provisions for the development of digital vaccine certificates and contact tracing "in the international context."

The WHO's intergovernmental negotiating body will meet multiple times this and next month to continue on the working draft of the pandemic treaty. The goal is to deliver a progress report to the World Health Assembly in 2023 and adopt the agreement by 2024.

Also topping the World Health Assembly's agenda was voting on America's proposed amendments to the IHR.

The Biden administration quietly submitted the proposed amendments in January, but they weren't made public until last month and only received major attention ahead of the World Health Assembly.

The administration's proposed amendments to the IHR would, among other changes, expand the power of the WHO to declare pandemics and other health emergencies. The U.S. proposal specifically deleted a key line from the old version of the IHR that required the WHO to consult with and attempt to obtain verification from countries in whose territory the public health issue in question is allegedly occurring before declaring an emergency and pushing certain recommendations.

The U.S. proposal would also establish "compliance committees" in each WHO member country to gather information and promote compliance with regulations.

Critics were concerned the measures would be adopted at the World Health Assembly and empower the WHO in significant ways.

However, the only IHR amendments actually adopted at the gathering "appear to be very minor in scope," according to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University.

Most notably, the changes shrink the time period in which a country can oppose amendments to the IRH from 18 months to 10 months and shrink the time lag after which new amendments come into effect after adoption from 24 months to 12 months.

The Biden administration's original proposal — which met with opposition at the assembly from dozens of countries, especially from Africa — was effectively deferred. A committee was formed to review the U.S. amendments and recommend adoption of some or all the measures at a later date.

"There is no current consensus on IHR reform, and there is also considerable opposition to the Biden administration proposals within the U.S., especially among conservative Republicans," said Gostin. "Yet, I am optimistic that some reforms will probably be adopted next May," the date of the next World Health Assembly.

Still, U.S. critics of the WHO hailed the delay as a victory — but a temporary one.

The WHO didn't respond to a request for comment for this story.

The Real Middle Class

THE MEDIA speaks of the mass of the American proletariat as Middle Class, during the recent election the term was used interchangeably with 'working class'. But who is the real middle class? Why the bourgeoise of course.

The working class, the mass of those who sell their labour or are unemployed or unpaid (housewives and students), are still the proletariat. In America the myth that we can all become bourgeois; that is small business owners our own bosses, gave rise to the declasse melting pot that is American economics. In the sixties the ideology of the neocons was that in order to end class war they would announce the end of Marxism and that we had all become consumers and taxpayers. Gone was the idea of the proletariat, now we were all middle class. But were we ever?

FROM THE RIGHT

Real Solutions for the Economy - Grow the Middle Class

Part 7 in a multipart series examining solutions for our ailing economy,

presented by Art Thompson, CEO of The John Birch Society.

One of the most misunderstood terms used in America today is “middle class.” Because people think they know what it is, they are very misled when and how it is used.

The greatest boon to an economy, likewise the freedom of the people, is a vibrant and growing middle class.

For this reason, Karl Marx attacked the middle class, or what he called the bourgeoisie. Marx was never against the rich. After all, his greatest associate was Frederick Engels, himself a rich man. Neither of them ever advocated Engels giving up his riches in empathy for the downtrodden masses.

Marx and Engels and those who used them only objected to certain people flush with "old money." It wasn't because these people had money, that the early Marxists opposed them. Power, not wealth, was their concern. Those in power had wealth in the form of "old money," handed down through the wealthy aristocratic classes. The Marxists wanted nothing more than to take the reigns of power for themselves and away from the old ruling class, and they wanted to undermine the cultural and societal architecture that supported the old governing structures in order to make way for their own. Their criticism of wealth, therefore, was simply a rhetorical device to be used to that end, nothing more, and their supposed fellowship with and concern for the downtrodden was only a vicious lie.

Because the middle class was part of the old cultural and societal architecture they sought to replace, in the Marxist view the middle class needed to be destroyed. We ought not use the past tense, either. For today's Marxist follows the same stategy.

Universally, communists, socialists, Nazis  Marxists all  work to destroy the middle class, which in Marx’s day was a growing segment of all Western society, and a threat to any accumulation of power.

So just what is the middle class and how does it pose a threat to Marxism, but is a boon to the people in general?

First, what it is not. It is not a standard of living. And this is what most people think it is. This definition misses the mark.

The middle class is essentially entrepreneurial. It is a condition of risk taking and responsibility, both emblematic of the exercise of essential individual liberties and freedoms. A member of the middle class may be a professional or a businessman. What he must be is an independent (i.e., free) professional and businessman, with an ability to provide a service or a product. He must be able to start up a practice or a business simply due to the fact that he has the innate ability and desire to do so. He must be free to form contracts with others. He is not a manager, but may function as a manager. An entrepreneur risks his fortune; a manager risks his boss’s fortune.

The owner of a small hardware store is a member of the middle class. The manager of the local Wal-Mart is not, even if he makes more money than the hardware store owner. An entrepreneur has a heightened sense of responsibility since he not only risks his fortune; he risks his family’s as well, and the fortunes and families of all he employees, even the businesses that supply him with the goods and services he requires to carry on his trade. If he makes the wrong decisions, he risks losing everything — including his family in some cases.

The frequent references to the middle class made by the media typically gloss over or obscure what the words "middle class" really mean. But, to solve our economic woes and to save our freedoms, we need to constantly remember what the middle class really is so that we understand the ramifications of its dimunition or destruction.

The middle class produces new products, provides better services, creates jobs, etc., and many are amply rewarded for their work. Some are not. But they only do this well when they are free to do it. Yet we are told that by regulating business, which really means putting controls on the actions of the middle class, government is doing the people a great service. We have seen what regulation has done to Wall Street. And now we hear that more regulation will solve the problem.

Taking that attitude and visiting more regulations upon the middle class, soon there will be no middle class. And that is the point. The people who want to socialize Wall Street are the same people who want to regulate all business. They will destroy the middle class in the process.

Since they are in essence free men and have independent means, the middle class is a threat to those who want power. They can provide the wherewithal to oppose would-be totalitarians, both with money and the means to fight the accumulation of power in the hands of the few.

This is the reason would-be tyrants hate the middle class ? it has the ability to stop the growth of total government.

The reason that we need to stop government from regulating and nationalizing business has as much to do with our future as a free country, as it does with providing the atmosphere for the economy to grow. When the middle class grows, the country benefits.


FROM THE LEFT

Definitions: The bourgeoisie

It’s a capricious irony of history that the word bourgeois, which pinpoints the capitalist class, is perceived by nearly everyone, including the bourgeois themselves, as an epithet and is almost universally rebuffed!
Generally we conceive of the bourgeois in reference to their overemphasis on form and formality, in total contrast with the image of the bohemian radical. Bourgeois characteristics include emphasis on tradition, pretentiousness, conventionality, propriety, status obsession, respectability at all costs, an affected manner of speech and an overall comportment befitting such a description. The bourgeois personality is one of seeming rather than being.
To most ears both the noun and the adjective bourgeois ring negative and evil. Both upper and lower social classes detest that person and class. Bourgeois bastard! Fucking bourgeois! No wonder few people choose to identify themselves as bourgeois, preferring “middle class” or some such.

In this essay, I have in mind the socio-political meaning of bourgeoisie, the morally corrupt class that Marxism equates with the capitalist class. Precisely the corrupt bandit class of the USA to be saved by the great financial bailout of Wall Street. Which shows again that in the eternal class struggle the bourgeoisie is always the evil oppressor. The crucial distinction between bourgeoisie and proletariat is the distinction between evil and good. Yet, the modern age is known as the epoch of the bourgeoisie, that is, of capitalism.

That is the great contradiction of our epoch. Since modern revolutions eliminated monarchies and simplified the class struggle, western society has been divided into two hostile camps: the bourgeoisie which runs things, and the proletariat which resists exploitation by it. The ethical pathos of Marxism is the exposure of exploitation of labor as the basis of human society.

One recalls that the bourgeoisie played the major role in the French Revolution. Since then, in the shape and form of the capitalist system, it has maintained the upper hand most everywhere, or sooner or later regained it, as in post-Communist East Europe. It has crushed the other classes and converted everyone else into wage earners. That is its nature.

For its prosperity the capitalist bourgeoisie depends on free trade. Except for down moments like today when things go haywire for free market capitalism, especially on deregulated and uncontrolled Wall Street and it turns back to the people to bail it out of the chaos it creates at regular intervals. Its survival depends on unending growth and constantly expanding markets, the continual acceleration and revolutionizing of production, political centralization and today in Europe and the USA on the exportation of jobs to the poor world. Meanwhile bourgeois (bandit) capitalism requires and has achieved the concentration of property and wealth in a few hands. That is its constant goal. It thrives on the incessant creation of new desires -- subsequently morphed into needs -- throughout the world. In that sense the bourgeoisie is through and through cosmopolitan.

Paradoxically, those primary requisites for the bourgeoisie’s existence provoke the resistance of the proletariat. It’s a vicious circle. In a great dialectic the survival needs of the bourgeoisie generate the resistance that can ultimately crush it. The resistance that according to Marxist theory will someday crush it. These days, there for everyone to see, for everyone to feel, the spreading sense of unease marking its successive economic-financial crises point to the eventual demise of bourgeois, bandit capitalism.

So why has it not already happened, one must wonder? Why hasn’t it collapsed long ago? Though the bourgeoisie-capitalist class is small and the proletariat wage earners an overwhelming majority, why don’t the exploited classes rebel and rebel, revolt and revolt, again and again? Why not? The reason is clear: the exploited classes are not only victims. They are also accomplices. Half victim, half accomplice. The historical paradox. The ruling class counts on this dichotomy to maintain the system. Divide and rule. Meritocracy. 

Rewards for obedience. Two cars and bigger houses for staying in line. A system based on money, domination and fear. Religion too, but especially FEAR. Fear of fear. Fear of change. Fear, fear, fear. A fearful people is an obedient people. Today’s Americans are a sacrificed generation. Their illusion of true love has faded. Instead there is the feminine side -- seduction and sex ever before us, in all its forms. But love is not the question. For love you still need illusion and innocence. And we are a disillusioned generation. All of us. Only fiction remains. And our bitterness, jealousy and fear. That’s why you need an absolute, overwhelming desire to fight back. The only alternative is to flee into the mountains or the desert, 20 miles from anyplace. No banks, no commerce, no bureaucratic offices in sight. Or perhaps resort to walking the labyrinth in the Chartres Cathedral in search of the final secret, the beautiful butterfly to change things.

At the same time there is a glut of everything in the Western world. Yet vampire bourgeois capitalism cannot cut back. Staggering, careening on its crazy course, it goes after more and more growth, to survive. It needs more and more production, more markets, more and cheaper labor, more consumers (while salaries everywhere are lower and lower so that consumption decreases), more power, more of everything, clearly unachievable forever. How fast can a man run, one asked after the new world record 100-meter dash at the Beijing Olympics? 9.5 seconds? Then tomorrow, perhaps 9 seconds. Then 8. But can it go on forever, faster and faster?

On the other hand, the European bourgeoisie is not to be confused with the American middle class. They are not the same thing. Sociologically, in the pejorative sense my wife means, both Italy and France are largely “bourgeois” North Europe is even more of the petit petit bourgeois category, East Europe and Latin America are by nature proletarian with a thin bourgeois-intellectual class at the top. The European bourgeoisie creates more culture, while in the USA because of social mobility (itself rapidly vanishing) culture and art can come from anywhere.

The bourgeoisie in feudal pre-revolutionary France was a specific class. Much wealthier than the lower classes, it lacked the privileges of the aristocracy against whom it made the French Revolution. It made its revolution in order to rip political power from the hands of the aristocracy and acquire its privileges. It became the new ruling class.

Since then it has incurred the hate and wrath of all other classes. Deregulation is not new. Bourgeois slogans have always been ‘no rules, no laws, all power to the middle classes.’ Compromise with other powers, yes, -- especially with organized religions and various forms of “democracy” -- but forever at the expense of the working classes.

In the bourgeois world anywhere and under any form of government workingmen are destined to remain forever workingmen.

The principle of private property is a religion that has nothing to do with homeowners. It refers to ownership of the means of production. That is great wealth and the political power to back it up. That religion was the economic basis of the French Revolution. That has never changed. For that same reason, the great Socialist revolution was always just around the corner, a hairsbreadth away. That again is the history of man.

Soon Marxism came along to pinpoint and define once and for all the bourgeoisie as the exploiting class, the class that obtains its income from capital and commerce. The bourgeoisie is the ruling class because it owns the means of production -- land, factories and resources.

Moreover it has the means of coercion of the lower classes. By control of police and army it is able to keep in line and exploit the work of wage earners who live only from their labor. Perhaps in no other major country do Marx’s theses more concisely describe the societal line-up than in the USA today. Therefore America cannot remain forever immune to the class struggle, quiet today, deathly quiet, mute, unvoiced, but potentially explosive.

Power in America is aware of the menace and the threat of the extension of the struggle for justice to all social classes, to el pueblo unido. Therefore the system’s perfidious use of terrorism and fear, religion, the American way of life and the future of our children to hoodwink the people.

One often hears the expression exploitation of labor. What does it mean exactly?
It’s basic. The heart of Marxism. Its validity is recognized most everywhere. The capitalist owner of the means of production pays wages and production costs and then sells the goods produced by labor, keeping for himself the difference between costs and sales. Part of his profit is Marx’s “surplus value.” It’s the size of his profit that creates inequalities. The point is the worker creates the wealth of the greedy capitalist, who squeezes the working man up to the limit, gaining thousands of times more than the worker can earn in a lifetime. 

That is injustice. 

The owner, the entrepreneur and his executives (here we mean also the real owners and CEOs of banks and funds, of stock markets, insurance giants, holding companies and the like) gain the maximum profit without actually doing any work. And he has the bourgeois government ready to bail him out when he fucks up, which his greed causes at regular intervals. That too is exploitation of labor. That is injustice.

Karl Marx used the word bourgeois to describe the social class that holds property and capital making possible exploitation. Though he recognized the bourgeoisie’s industriousness, he criticized its moral hypocrisy for its exploitation of other men. As time passed he came to use bourgeois to describe not only the class, but also its ideology: class society based on capitalism and labor. A society of the capitalist and the worker.

Members of the American middle class are marked by considerable diversity, who however tend to overlap. They prize non-conformity, innovation and independence and tend to comprise also the artistically creative part of the nation. Education is a chief indicator of middle class status. Education is fundamental to prepare members of the class for creative and leadership roles. For that reason, writers, educators, teachers, journalists, artists and the mainline media owners come chiefly from the middle class (es).

It is that middle class-bourgeoisie that has written the bulk of modern social and political history. The history most of us know best is their view of history. Now that history must be re-written. Everything must be reviewed. Everything must be revised. All of it -- World Wars I and II, the “forgotten” Korean War where it all started, the Cold War, the USSR, Stalin, Iran, Iraq. Everything. Especially 911. GW Bush in power is not the same thing as Reagan who set the scene. But something changed. What has changed? That is also a mystery that must be clarified.

Capitalism as an economic and social system can only work when there are new frontiers to discover. Since, as we have seen, new opportunities and eternal growth are basic requirements for capitalistic society and since they have been exhausted, I too believe America has completed its historic Manifest Destiny.