Rome 2020 under lockdown—eerie vistas

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

What new technologies can do, in expert hands

The old city acquires a strange character, as if a neutron bomb had cleared all her normally vibrant inhabitants. 

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The Western 1% colluded to start WWI – is the Great Lockdown also a conspiracy?

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.

This is part of a series of dispatches by correspondent Ramin Mazaheri

Skeptical Voices

Quick: What’s the reason World War One started?

And don’t say it was because leftist Yugoslavian patriot Gavrilo Princip joined with Muslim leftists to assassinate Austrian imperialist Archduke Franz Ferdinand – that explanation exists only because Western schoolchildren need something to recite.

 

Gavrilo Princip, 19 years of age, sitting at the centre of the front row, at his trial on December 5, 1914. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Few know the right answer: it was a war concocted by Western high finance in order to forestall the anti-1% revolution inspired by socialism. Given that the West is a bankocracy, with bankers as their enlightened, benevolent vanguard party – how can we expect their textbooks to tell the truth here?

Thus their “intelligent” analysis is the absurd myth that World War One was actually “an accident”. So we are to believe that the battle of Verdun lasted nine months and caused 700,000 casualties just because the average French and German soldier said, “Well, as long as we’re here… how about a good fight?”

Archduke Ferdinand and morganastic wife Duchess Sophie boarding car a few minutes before their assassination. As fate would have it, Princip thought the attempt had failed when the royal pair serendipitously crossed his path.

It’s preposterous, but it seems plausible when the West’s prior five decades of history also routinely go unexplained. The post-1860s birth of modern capitalism was actually far, far, FAR more deadly and evil than the formative years of socialism (and even without a Cold War to create sabotaging difficulties). The body counts aren’t even close – even further apart are the moral aims of the two systems.

The legendary book Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World by Mike Davis illustrated how US, UK and French imperialists purposely created and/or purposely failed to flatten the curve of multimillion-murdering epidemics and famines in order to adhere to (and obviously profit from) the new liberal economic dogma of a “free market”. If you thought 1930s Soviets or 1950s Chinese or 1980s Iranians were ideologically extremist, then that’s because you have not learned about the raging capitalist genocidists of the late 18th century.

WWI: German soldiers in France, wearing gas masks, with their dogs, c. 2016.

If you don’t teach that historical context, then how can World War One make sense? Thus, in order to protect their capitalist-imperialist ideology, World War One is an unexplainable aberration for the “advanced” Western intellectual.

Of course, even in the 1870s liberal ideology failed to create wealth for anyone but the 1% (whether Westerner or client/puppet) – the wealth has never, ever trickled down. What liberalism has always done is to permit increased market concentration and political power in a new 1%er aristocracy controlled by international bankers.

So the problem was not the nation-state, as Trotskyists assert – it was economic liberalism, i.e. globalisation. The idea that globalisation began around 1992 is a fiction, of course. This allows capitalists to keep ignoring their past crimes, and it has worked – their people cannot even explain why just a century ago their great-grandfathers fought their neighbors in trenches with chemical weapons.

We now know that the reason is that the Western 1% had stolen the wages and natural wealth from the entire world but now on an industrial scale and without any national patriotism, thus they conspired to forestall the socialist-inspired, progressive social changes which were the Western 99%’s only logical response to being forced to witness and participate in such atrocious money- and power-grabbing schemes. The common Marxist analysis back then was too hopeful: World War One was not the “final decline” of capitalism and imperialism – it was proof that international high finance will conspire however they can to prevent that final decline.

Indeed, socialism began in Western Europe and not elsewhere not because they are more “advanced” but because their lower classes were witnessing what their upper class was doing with the widest overview. Of course, they were shocked and proposed alternatives which they called “socialism”. But how could an Iranian or Chilean or Ethiopian have come up with such an idea – industrial & high-finance capitalism, and these “worst of humanity impulses on the largest scale”, were totally unimaginable and foreign until the moment that the Western 1% dropped their (debt) slave net on him or her?

Today we must say “no” to such collusions, not only because we have a duty to learn from a history our great-grandparents could not understand, but also because the same scheme keeps on being employed.

Tough hombres: As usual, the British mobilized hundreds of thousands of "colonials". India's Singhs, renowned for their warrior ethic, died by the tens of thousands. France's colonies in Africa, Asia and the Middle East also saw their men spilling their blood for a cause that certainly was not theirs.

The 2008 QE and ZIRP responses undoubtedly only continued this 150-year trend of financial consolidation and political concentration for 1%-er benefit, as evidenced by the 2010 court ruling that corporations are “people” in the US.

During these turbulent times I thus foresee one historical trend sure to continue for the West and their clients: increased political power and market concentration for their 1%.

The failure to see, or report, or educate oneself about what certainly appears to be a law which results from the foolish application of free market ideology means consigning oneself to total economic misunderstanding of one’s times, from 1914 until 2020.

So is the Great Lockdown a ‘conspiracy’ of the Western 1%?

As a longtime daily hard news reporter (and by nature and training) I have little use for conspiracy theories. For example: Was 9/11 an inside job, in order to deal with the dot-com bubble burst and to re-militarise Western culture after the fall of the USSR? There is, I’m told, a lot of evidence that the World Trade Center towers fell due to controlled demolition, but on that point I am rather apathetic: radical Islamic terrorism has been a Western creation and manipulation since their backing of the Taliban against the Soviets (indeed, since long before with their backing of the House of Saud). I simply prefer to deal with the real-world consequences upon the average person – 9/11 happened, somehow, and that’s enough for me to handle. I admit this even has a self-interested basis: I am not going to waste time and risk my reputation by publishing ideas for which I cannot provide a fully factual basis. World War One was NOT such an event, and people from Lenin to the man on the street hollered exactly that.

But is the Great Lockdown?

I only see three realistic answers, given that coronavirus has not, at least thus far, had the initially-predicted dangerously high fatality rates among even healthy sectors of the population:

  2. This is a case of Western 1% collusion: Realising the need to “bank one’s profits”, which had been generated by the 2008-2020 QE and ZIRP policies, the Western 1% took advantage of China’s sincerely-motivated lockdown policy to insist on the same policy for their own nations. They knew that whatever “Western Great Recession” economic bubbles were popped, controlling this popping was perhaps as key as controlling the outcomes. Of course, since the 1860s the Western 1% has been well-aware that aristocratic/bourgeois Western liberalism gave them all the power to control the outcomes.

I can’t say which it is, but I can say that #3 is certainly in keeping with liberal economic history. From the famines of the late 19th century, to World War One, to World War Two, to the oil price shock, to the dot-com bust, to the Great Recession to the hysterical “the Great Lockdown is the only solution” of 2020, the trend is the same: increased economic and political power in the West’s anti-democratic neo-aristocratic class.

It certainly is easy for that class to collude: in the 21st century their medias are privately owned by a handful of billionaires, so one simple phone call decides the editorial policy of often 90% of their media; their people have been told so often that There Is No Alternative to neoliberalism & neo-imperialism that they don’t even question the way they are totally disregarded by their own technocratic class; their wars on socialists and then Muslims have created a “perpetual war” popular mentality so they have been well-prepared to embrace a “war on coronavirus” no matter how much it costs them economically, politically, culturally or personally.

Market concentration is absolutely certain to increase, already: By making the historic decision to buy corporate debt Western central banks are going to dramatically cull the corporate herd – only profitable companies will get bailouts, with the roughly 20% of zombie corporations certain to fail and be stripped for parts. Because Western liberalism hates government – the only tool of the 99% to reign in an aristocracy which has neutered their (often still in place) monarchy – the Western taxpayer will get nothing for this financial assistance, as nationalisations cannot be permitted, with the idea itself being heavily censored across the West.

Was it worth it? One of the countless "gallant lads" that would suffer brutal maiming and death in a conflict as criminal as it was unnecessary. The ruling classes never care. Conrolling the narrative is all that matters.

But the effect on the non-corporate capitalist classes – the Mom and Pop stores, the medium-sized businesses of 499 employees – will be just as deadly. In the US their loans to these types of establishments are totally insufficient: bankruptcies will be widespread, thus – yet again – market concentration will increase as their real estate, assets, machinery and labor force get bought up at a fraction of the price by an ever-smaller, ever-richer elite. Europe will see the same trend, though only slightly mitigated: the idea that in thee years small-town France won’t have even more empty shop fronts and more (unthinkable 10 years ago) part-time work companies is absurd.

On top of the Western economic pyramid – ever since the monarchy was gutted – sits international high finance. In today’s terms they are the hedge funds, investment groups and major banks. A socialist-inspired revolution would mean a permanent reckoning for them, but in 2020 we will likely only see a partial one, yet again: For every Lehman Brothers which fails there is a BlackRock which rises even higher in the always-rigged-for-the-rich, faux-democratic system of Western liberalism.

These outcomes are absolutely nothing new, and it is a process which goes back to the East India Company because economic liberalism is not new, nor are its methods unknown, nor are the results ever anything but increased concentration of wealth and political power: the only time liberal economics “worked” is when it has been mixed with socialism (and thus is no longer liberal economics). What’s certain is that the bailout “solutions” for the Western Great Lockdown are only aimed to make whole the 1%’s losses of the “Double Bubble” economic chaos which will begin in earnest when the Great Lockdown hysteria ends.

Banks loved World War One: global national debts increased 475% from 1914-20; every dead soldier made a profit of $10,000 to international bankers. What will their profits be from the economic devastation undoubtedly already wrought by the Great Lockdown? Unsurprisingly, the West is talking about that as much as they talk about why World War One occurred.

Whether it was corona or not, or a conspiracy or not: those double bubbles were going to pop. It now turns out that it is World War One which popped them. Excuse me, the coronavirus.

The “accidental” famines of capitalism’s formative decades, World War One, the creation of the petrodollar, 9/11 coming on the heels of the dot-com bust, the continuation of trickle-down economics despite 40+ years of failure, the Great Lockdown’s forced suicide march for the West’s lower classes – are these the result of conspiracies among the international 1% class?

That’s up to the reader, but it’s not really important to me – what I care about is dealing with the outcomes.

And yet, some countries will avoid these outcomes – the “global economy” is not synonymous with the “Western economy”; some countries had modern, socialist-inspired revolutions and the only catastrophe they have been unable to avoid is perpetual Western hot and cold war.

But repeat after teacher like a good student: “World War One started when crazy anarchist Gavrilo Princip worked alone to murder the noble Archduke Franz Ferdinand….” (You know – just repeat what German corporate fascists taught their kinder.)

***********************************

Corona contrarianism? How about some corona common sense? Here is my list of articles published regarding the corona crisis, and I hope you will find them useful in your leftist struggle!

Capitalist-imperialist West stays home over corona – they grew a conscience? – March 22, 2020

A day’s diary from a US CEO during the Corona crisis (satire) March 23, 2020

Tough times need vanguard parties – are ‘social media users’ the West’s? – March 26, 2020

If Germany rejects Corona bonds they must quit the Eurozone – March 30, 2020

Landlord class: Waive or donate rent-profits now or fear the Cultural Revolution – March 31, 2020

(A Soviet?) Superman: Red Son – the new socialist film to watch on lockdown – April 2, 2020

Condensing the data leaves no doubt: Fear corona-economy more than the virus – April 5, 2020

‘We’re Going Wrong’: The West’s middling, middle-class corona response – April 10, 2020

Why does the UK have an ‘army’ of volunteers but the US has a shortage? – April 12, 2020

No buybacks allowed or dared? Then wave goodbye to Western stock market gains – April 13, 2020

Pity post-corona Millennials… if they don’t openly push socialism – April 14, 2020

No, the dollar will only strengthen post-corona, as usual: it’s a crisis, after all – April 16, 2020

Same 2008 QE playbook, but the Eurozone will kick off Western chaos not the US – April 18, 2020

We’re giving up our civil liberties. Fine, but to which type of state? – April 20, 2020

Coronavirus – Macron’s savior. A ‘united Europe’ – France’s murderer – April 22, 2020

Iran’s ‘resistance economy’: the post-corona wish of the West’s silent majority (1/2) – April 23, 2020

The same 12-year itch: Will banks loan down QE money this time? – April 26, 2020

The end of globalisation won’t be televised, despite the hopes of the Western 99% (2/2) – April 27, 2020

What would it take for proponents to say: ‘The Great Lockdown was wrong’? – April 28, 2020

Given Western history, is it the ‘Great Segregation’ and not the ‘Great Lockdown’? – May 2, 2020

Reference note: For a sympathetically written but conventional interpretation of WWI's beginnings, read this article by an Indian journalist: 

The Gunshot That Reshaped the World

About the author
I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China. His work has also appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television. He can be reached on Facebook. 

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Your Man in the Public Gallery – Assange Hearing Day 2

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.

Craig Murray


[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his afternoon Julian’s Spanish lawyer, Baltasar Garzon, left court to return to Madrid. On the way out he naturally stopped to shake hands with his client, proffering his fingers through the narrow slit in the bulletproof glass cage. Assange half stood to take his lawyer’s hand. The two security guards in the cage with Assange immediately sprang up, putting hands on Julian and forcing him to sit down, preventing the handshake.

That was not by any means the worst thing today, but it is a striking image of the senseless brute force continually used against a man accused of publishing documents. That a man cannot even shake his lawyer’s hand goodbye is against the entire spirit in which the members of the legal system like to pretend the law is practised. I offer that startling moment as encapsulating yesterday’s events in court.

Day 2 proceedings had started with a statement from Edward Fitzgerald, Assange’s QC, that shook us rudely into life. He stated that yesterday, on the first day of trial, Julian had twice been stripped naked and searched, eleven times been handcuffed, and five times been locked up in different holding cells. On top of this, all of his court documents had been taken from him by the prison authorities, including privileged communications between his lawyers and himself, and he had been left with no ability to prepare to participate in today’s proceedings.

Magistrate Baraitser looked at Fitzgerald and stated, in a voice laced with disdain, that he had raised such matters before and she had always replied that she had no jurisdiction over the prison estate. He should take it up with the prison authorities. Fitzgerald remained on his feet, which drew a very definite scowl from Baraitser, and replied that of course they would do that again, but this repeated behaviour by the prison authorities threatened the ability of the defence to prepare. He added that regardless of jurisdiction, in his experience it was common practice for magistrates and judges to pass on comments and requests to the prison service where the conduct of the trial was affected, and that jails normally listened to magistrates sympathetically.

Baraitser flat-out denied any knowledge of such a practice, and stated that Fitzgerald should present her with written arguments setting out the case law on jurisdiction over prison conditions. This was too much even for prosecution counsel James Lewis, who stood up to say the prosecution would also want Assange to have a fair hearing, and that he could confirm that what the defence were suggesting was normal practice. Even then, Baraitser still refused to intervene with the prison. She stated that if the prison conditions were so bad as to reach the very high bar of making a fair hearing impossible, the defence should bring a motion to dismiss the charges on those grounds. Otherwise they should drop it.

Emma Arbuthnot, representing the British ruling establishment, is extremely hostile to Assange. She is the senior magistrate overseeing his trial and direct supervisor to Baraitser. We can see where the latter gets her marching orders.  Corruption runs deep.

Both prosecution and defence seemed surprised by Baraitser’s claim that she had not heard of what they both referred to as common practice. Lewis may have been genuinely concerned at the shocking description of Assange’s prison treatment yesterday; or he may have just had warning klaxons going off in his head screaming “mistrial”. But the net result is Baraitser will attempt to do nothing to prevent Julian’s physical and mental abuse in jail nor to try to give him the ability to participate in his defence. The only realistic explanation that occurs to me is that Baraitser has been warned off, because this continual mistreatment and confiscation of documents is on senior government authority.

A last small incident for me to recount: having queued again from the early hours, I was at the final queue before the entrance to the public gallery, when the name was called out of Kristin Hrnafsson, editor of Wikileaks, with whom I was talking at the time. Kristin identified himself, and was told by the court official he was barred from the public gallery.

Now I was with Kristin throughout the entire proceedings the previous day, and he had done absolutely nothing amiss – he is rather a quiet gentleman. When he was called for, it was by name and by job description – they were specifically banning the editor of Wikileaks from the trial. Kristin asked why and was told it was a decision of the Court.

At this stage John Shipton, Julian’s father, announced that in this case the family members would all leave too, and they did so, walking out of the building. They and others then started tweeting the news of the family walkout. This appeared to cause some consternation among court officials, and fifteen minutes later Kristin was re-admitted. We still have no idea what lay behind this. Later in the day journalists were being briefed by officials it was simply over queue-jumping, but that seems improbable as he was removed by staff who called him by name and title, rather than had spotted him as a queue-jumper.

None of the above goes to the official matter of the case. All of the above tells you more about the draconian nature of the political show-trial which is taking place than does the charade being enacted in the body of the court. There were moments today when I got drawn in to the court process and achieved the suspension of disbelief you might do in theatre, and began thinking “Wow, this case is going well for Assange”. Then an event such as those recounted above kicks in, a coldness grips your heart, and you recall there is no jury here to be convinced. I simply do not believe that anything said or proved in the courtroom can have an impact on the final verdict of this court.

So to the actual proceedings in the case.

For the defence, Mark Summers QC stated that the USA charges were entirely dependent on three factual accusations of Assange behviour:

1) Assange helped Manning to decode a hash key to access classified material.
Summers stated this was a provably false allegation from the evidence of the Manning court-martial.

2) Assange solicited the material from Manning
Summers stated this was provably wrong from information available to the public

3) Assange knowingly put lives at risk
Summers stated this was provably wrong both from publicly available information and from specific involvement of the US government.

In summary, Summers stated the US government knew that the allegations being made were false as to fact, and they were demonstrably made in bad faith. This was therefore an abuse of process which should lead to dismissal of the extradition request. He described the above three counts as “rubbish, rubbish and rubbish”.

Summers then walked through the facts of the case. He said the charges from the USA divide the materials leaked by Manning to Wikileaks into three categories:

a) Diplomatic Cables
b) Guantanamo detainee assessment briefs
c) Iraq War rules of engagement
d) Afghan and Iraqi war logs

Summers then methodically went through a), b), c) and d) relating each in turn to alleged behaviours 1), 2) and 3), making twelve counts of explanation and exposition in all. This comprehensive account took some four hours and I shall not attempt to capture it here. I will rather give highlights, but will relate occasionally to the alleged behaviour number and/or the alleged materials letter. I hope you follow that – it took me some time to do so!

On 1) Summers at great length demonstrated conclusively that Manning had access to each material a) b) c) d) provided to Wikileaks without needing any code from Assange, and had that access before ever contacting Assange. Nor had Manning needed a code to conceal her identity as the prosecution alleged – the database for intelligence analysts Manning could access – as could thousands of others – did not require a username or password to access it from a work military computer. Summers quoted testimony of several officers from Manning’s court-martial to confirm this. Nor would breaking the systems admin code on the system give Manning access to any additional classified databases. Summers quoted evidence from the Manning court-martial, where this had been accepted, that the reason Manning wanted to get in to systems admin was to allow soldiers to put their video-games and movies on their government laptops, which in fact happened frequently.

Magistrate Baraitser twice made major interruptions. She observed that if Chelsea Manning did not know she could not be traced as the user who downloaded the databases, she might have sought Assange’s assistance to crack a code to conceal her identity from ignorance she did not need to do that, and to assist would still be an offence by Assange.

Summers pointed out that Manning knew that she did not need a username and password, because she actually accessed all the materials without one. Baraitser replied that this did not constitute proof she knew she could not be traced. Summers said in logic it made no sense to argue that she was seeking a code to conceal her user ID and password, where there was no user ID and password. Baraitser replied again he could not prove that. At this point Summers became somewhat testy and short with Baraitser, and took her through the court martial evidence again. Of which more…

Baraitser also made the point that even if Assange were helping Manning to crack an admin code, even if it did not enable Manning to access any more databases, that still was unauthorised use and would constitute the crime of aiding and abetting computer misuse, even if for an innocent purpose.

After a brief break, Baraitser came back with a real zinger. She told Summers that he had presented the findings of the US court martial of Chelsea Manning as fact. But she did not agree that her court had to treat evidence at a US court martial, even agreed or uncontested evidence or prosecution evidence, as fact. Summers replied that agreed evidence or prosecution evidence at the US court martial clearly was agreed by the US government as fact, and what was at issue at the moment was whether the US government was charging contrary to the facts it knew. Baraitser said she would return to her point once witnesses were heard.

Baraitser was not making no attempt to conceal a hostility to the defence argument, and seemed irritated they had the temerity to make it. This burst out when discussing c), the Iraq war rules of engagement.  Summers argued that these had not been solicited from Manning, but had rather been provided by Manning in an accompanying file along with the Collateral Murder video that showed the murder of Reuters journalists and children. Manning’s purpose, as she stated at her court martial, was to show that the Collateral Murder actions breached the rules of engagement, even though the Department of Defense claimed otherwise. Summers stated that by not including this context, the US extradition request was deliberately misleading as it did not even mention the Collateral Murder video at all.

At this point Baraitser could not conceal her contempt. Try to imagine Lady Bracknell saying “A Handbag” or “the Brighton line”, or if your education didn’t run that way try to imagine Pritti Patel spotting a disabled immigrant. This is a literal quote:

“Are you suggesting, Mr Summers, that the authorities, the Government, should have to provide context for its charges?”

An unfazed Summers replied in the affirmative and then went on to show where the Supreme Court had said so in other extradition cases. Baraitser was showing utter confusion that anybody could claim a significant distinction between the Government and God.

The bulk of Summers’ argument went to refuting behaviour 3), putting lives at risk. This was only claimed in relation to materials a) and d). Summers described at great length the efforts of Wikileaks with media partners over more than a year to set up a massive redaction campaign on the cables. He explained that the unredacted cables only became available after Luke Harding and David Leigh of the Guardian published the password to the cache as the heading to Chapter XI of their book Wikileaks, published in February 2011.

Nobody had put 2 and 2 together on this password until the German publication Die Freitag had done so and announced it had the unredacted cables in August 2011. Summers then gave the most powerful arguments of the day.

The US government had been actively participating in the redaction exercise on the cables. They therefore knew the allegations of reckless publication to be untrue.

His government and establishment have betrayed him, as expected, but a growing tide of ordinary Australians are beginning to demand his freedom and vindication.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once Die Freitag announced they had the unredacted materials, Julian Assange and Sara Harrison instantly telephoned the White House, State Department and US Embassy to warn them named sources may be put at risk. Summers read from the transcripts of telephone conversations as Assange and Harrison attempted to convince US officials of the urgency of enabling source protection procedures – and expressed their bafflement as officials stonewalled them. This evidence utterly undermined the US government’s case and proved bad faith in omitting extremely relevant fact. It was a very striking moment.

With relation to the same behaviour 3) on materials d), Summers showed that the Manning court martial had accepted these materials contained no endangered source names, but showed that Wikileaks had activated a redaction exercise anyway as a “belt and braces” approach.

There was much more from the defence. For the prosecution, James Lewis indicated he would reply in depth later in proceedings, but wished to state that the prosecution does not accept the court martial evidence as fact, and particularly does not accept any of the “self-serving” testimony of Chelsea Manning, whom he portrayed as a convicted criminal falsely claiming noble motives. The prosecution generally rejected any notion that this court should consider the truth or otherwise of any of the facts; those could only be decided at trial in the USA.

Then, to wrap up proceedings, Baraitser dropped a massive bombshell. She stated that although Article 4.1 of the US/UK Extradition Treaty forbade political extraditions, this was only in the Treaty. That exemption does not appear in the UK Extradition Act. On the face of it therefore political extradition is not illegal in the UK, as the Treaty has no legal force on the Court. She invited the defence to address this argument in the morning.

It is now 06.35am and I am late to start queuing…

With grateful thanks to those who donated or subscribed to make this reporting possible.

This article is entirely free to reproduce and publish, including in translation, and I very much hope people will do so actively. Truth shall set us free. 

About the author(s)
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010.

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Acclaimed by critics, Ron Ridenour’s incisive history of the struggle between the US and Russia, extending from the Bolshevik revolution to our day, plus a wide-ranging and comprehensive analysis of many cultural America features which continue to  bolster the US drive for world domination, is now available in print at a discount price. It’s 564 pages packed with information, many critical but practically unknown facts, and an uncompromising revolutionary perspective on the colossal challenges confronting this generation. (Click here or on the image below to order.)

 



John Wight on Corbyn’s cynically engineered defeat.

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Patrice Greanville

Corbyn: probably overwhelmed by the unceasing barrage of lies, threats and malicious pressures.

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]y far one of the best post mortem analyses of the Corbyn defeat—irrefutably engineered by a shameless and unrelenting campaign of demonisation engaging all major sectors of the British ruling class— came from the always compelling John Wight. Wight, a Scot by birth, is not just a solid rebel thinker, he's also what we might call a muscular renaissance scholar in our time.  His Edinburgh Trilogy of novels is available from Amazon. He also wrote a highly entertaining (and culturally incisive) memoir of his experience of Hollywood and participation in the US antiwar movement in the runup to the war in Iraq. It is titled Dreams That Die, and is published by Zero Books. Having read these books I highly recommend them.

Wight

Not surprising, then, that on 18 December he delivered a dissection job aptly titled, Corbyn was our Father Gapon, They have yet to meet our Lenin which  just about covers everything you need to know about this epochal (but long anticipated) disaster. I would have loved to republish John's article in toto here but due to our acute financial stress, and his own financial difficulties (he survives on his writing) we are unable to afford writers' fees. That said, we could not pass the article without some commentary and quotes. Of course you can always read the whole piece here, and you should. 

Meditating on the nature of failed uprisings, Wight reminds us, via martyred Rosa Luxemburg and other revolutionary heroes, of the bitter price paid by all failed insurgents, pointing to the main reason why many of the failures happened in the first place:

In her final letter, written while in hiding just days before she and her comrade in struggle, Karl Liebknecht, were tracked down in Berlin by counterrevolutionary Freikorps proto-fascists prior to being butchered, Rosa Luxemburg summed up the crisis facing the workers’ movement she’d helped to inspire and lead in Germany, and which had just culminated in a failed uprising:

these events are a tremendous school for the masses…One must take history as it comes…At this moment in Berlin the battles are continuing. Many of our brave lads have fallen…For today, I have to close.

Young Freikorps members—practically children— executing a defiant young revolutionary on the spot during the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 in Berlin. The victorious counter-revolution was—as usual—brutal.

 

Wight suggests—correctly I think— that the almost universal sanguinary reprisals against class rebels stem from the ruling orders' well entrenched fears of an overthrow by the majorities.  In such cases, defeating an enemy must not only be militarily conclusive—as often happens in classical wars— but exemplary, a prominent deterrent and reminder to future generations of malcontents of the risks involved in such enterprise. Malcontents which, by definition, live right under their noses, not in some distant land behind clearly delineated borders.

The barrage of invective that has been directed at Jeremy Corbyn in the aftermath of a general election which proved to be a second referendum on Brexit in all but name, only reveals that socialism — the idea of a society underpinned by human solidarity rather than human greed — continues to strike terror in the hearts and minds of the servants of capital in our world...

The plutocrats, evidence be damned, apparently do not see themselves as the walking breathing horrors they are, socially speaking. They see themselves, Wight notes, as the "indispensable" members of society, its rightful foundation,  

the salt of the earth, to whom the spoils of class war rightly belong, while the poor are just so much human flotsam and jetsam, whose condition is that of the defeated army in this class war and as such wholly in keeping with the natural order of things.

With such a contemptuous view of the vast majority of their fellows, the methods to put down social insolence are not liable to be humane, at least not much more humane than the methods used on animals at the abattoir.

Such failed attempts at toppling the status quo, whether in antiquity, whether in the context of the 1848 pan-Europe revolutions, the Paris Commune of 1871, the late-19th century and early-20th century Labor Wars in America, have each met with similar bloody reprisals.

And the purpose has always been a return to the status quo ante, since, as Marx reminds us, each ruling class thinks of itself in Panglossian terms worthy of eternity, holding the best of all possible values and necessitating, therefore, no further refinement, except in cosmetic matters. Thus, after capitalism, only more and "better" capitalism (bold mine):

In our time, in the context of a Corbyn-led project not so much to topple the status quo as change it, though the reprisal in the wake of his defeat may not be bloody, it certainly has been unleashed with the same objective of crushing any prospect of another such attempt at social and economic transformation being possible for many years to come, driving home the message this is the best of all possible worlds — one in which nothing more than the most tepid reforms are either acceptable or workable.

Yes, this deeply intermingled and certifiably sociopathic crowd, this "fortress of cruelty, brutality and mendacity" which, as Wight puts it, has "the temerity to describe [itself[ as a civilised society", is also quite convinced that nothing radical needs to be done about the cascade of awful things constantly emanating from every pore of its scandalously lopsided arrangements. 

Wight is characteristically most insightful and outspoken in what we might call his final "coroner's finding":

We all have our reasons for why Labour lost the election so emphatically — Brexit, media bias, smear campaigns surrounding antisemitism, and so on. The bald truth is that the real reason Labour and Corbyn lost is to be found in the axiom that those who make revolution halfway dig their own graves. The aforementioned cocktail of attacks on Corbyn and his allies could only have been defeated if fire had been fought with fire.

This is something we should all ponder. 

—PG
John Wight's article can be read in full here: https://medium.com/@JohnWight1/corbyn-was-our-father-gapon-they-have-yet-to-meet-our-lenin-5a6c7abcda46

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrice Greanville is founding editor of The Greanville Post. 

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THE DEEP STATE IS CLOSING IN

The big social media —Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter—are trying to silence us.



25 Times Trump Has Been Dangerously Hawkish On Russia

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.

Caitlin Johnstone

CNN has published a fascinatingly manipulative and falsehood-laden article titled “25 times Trump was soft on Russia“, in which a lot of strained effort is poured into building the case that the US president is suspiciously loyal to the nation against which he has spent his administration escalating dangerous new cold war aggressions.

The items within the CNN article consist mostly of times in which Trump said some words or failed to say other words; “Trump has repeatedly praised Putin”, “Trump refused to say Putin is a killer”, “Trump denied that Russia interfered in 2016”, “Trump made light of Russian hacking”, etc. It also includes the completely false but oft-repeated narrative that “Trump’s team softened the GOP platform on Ukraine”, as well as the utterly ridiculous and thoroughly invalidated claim that “Since intervening in Syria in 2015, the Russian military has focused its airstrikes on anti-government rebels, not ISIS.”

CNN’s 25 items are made up almost entirely of narrative and words; Trump said a nice thing about Putin, Trump said offending things to NATO allies, Trump thought about visiting Putin in Russia, etc. In contrast, the 25 items which I am about to list do not consist of narrative at all, but rather the actual movement of actual concrete objects which can easily lead to an altercation from which there may be no re-emerging. These items show that when you ignore the words and narrative spin and look at what this administration has actually been doing, it’s clear to anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty that, far from being “soft” on Russia, Trump has actually been consistently reckless in the one area where a US president must absolutely always maintain a steady hand. And he’s been doing so with zero resistance from either party.

It would be understandable if you were unaware that Trump has been escalating tensions with Moscow more than any other president since the fall of the Berlin Wall; it’s a fact that neither of America’s two mainstream political factions care about, so it tends to get lost in the shuffle. Trump’s opposition is interested in painting him as a sycophantic Kremlin crony, and his supporters are interested in painting him as an antiwar hero of the people, but he is neither. Observe:

1. Implementing a Nuclear Posture Review with a more aggressive stance toward Russia

Last year Trump’s Department of Defense rolled out a Nuclear Posture Review which CNN itself called “its toughest line yet against Russia’s resurgent nuclear forces.”

“In its newly released Nuclear Posture Review, the Defense Department has focused much of its multibillion nuclear effort on an updated nuclear deterrence focused on Russia,” CNN reported last year.

This revision of nuclear policy includes the new implementation of so-called “low-yield” nuclear weapons, which, because they are designed to be more “usable” than conventional nuclear ordinances, have been called “the most dangerous weapon ever”by critics of this insane policy. These weapons, which can remove some of the inhibitions that mutually assured destruction would normally give military commanders, have already been rolled off the assembly line.

2. Arming Ukraine


Lost in the gibberish about Trump temporarily withholding military aide to supposedly pressure a Ukrainian government who was never even aware of being pressured is the fact that arming Ukraine against Russia is an entirely new policy that was introduced by the Trump administration in the first place. Even the Obama administration, which was plenty hawkish toward Russia in its own right, refused to implement this extremely provocative escalation against Moscow. It was not until Obama was replaced with the worst Putin puppet of all time Uthat this policy was put in place.

3. Bombing Syria

Another escalation Trump took against Russia which Obama wasn’t hawkish enough to also do was bombing the Syrian government, a longtime ally of Moscow. These airstrikes in April 2017 and April 2018 were perpetrated in retaliation for chemical weapons use allegations that there is no legitimate reason to trust at this point.

4. Staging coup attempts in Venezuela


Venezuela, another Russian ally, has been the subject of relentless coup attempts from the Trump administration which persist unsuccessfully to this very day. Trump’s attempts to topple the Venezuelan government have been so violent and aggressive that the starvation sanctions which he has implemented are believed to have killed tens of thousands of Venezuelan civilians.

Trump has reportedly spoken frequently of a US military invasion to oust Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, provoking a forceful rebuke from Moscow.

“Signals coming from certain capitals indicating the possibility of external military interference look particularly disquieting,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. “We warn against such reckless actions, which threaten catastrophic consequences.”

5. Withdrawing from the INF treaty


For a president who’s “soft” on Russia, Trump has sure been eager to keep postures between the two nations extremely aggressive in nature. This administration has withdrawn from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, prompting UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to declare that “the world lost an invaluable brake on nuclear war.” It appears entirely possible that Trump will continue to adhere to the John Bolton school of nuclear weapons treaties until they all lie in tatters, with the administration strongly criticizing the crucial New START Treaty which expires in early 2021.

Some particularly demented Russiagaters try to argue that Trump withdrawing from these treaties benefits Russia in some way. These people either (A) believe that treaties only go one way, (B) believe that a nation with an economy the size of South Korea can compete with the US in an arms race, (C) believe that Russians are immune to nuclear radiation, or (D) all of the above. Withdrawing from these treaties benefits no one but the military-industrial complex.

6. Ending the Open Skies Treaty

“The Trump administration has taken steps toward leaving a nearly three-decade-old agreement designed to reduce the risk of war between Russia and the West by allowing both sides to conduct reconnaissance flights over one another’s territories,” The Wall Street Journal reported last month, adding that the administration has alleged that “Russia has interfered with American monitoring flights while using its missions to gather intelligence in the US.”

Again, if you subscribe to the bizarre belief that withdrawing from this treaty benefits Russia, please think harder. Or ask the Russians themselves how they feel about it:

“US plans to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty lower the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons and multiply the risks for the whole world, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said,” Sputnik reports.

“All this negatively affects the predictability of the military-strategic situation and lowers the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, which drastically increases the risks for the whole humanity,” Patrushev said.

“In general, it is becoming apparent that Washington intends to use its technological leadership in order to maintain strategic dominance in the information space by actually pursuing a policy of imposing its conditions on states that are lagging behind in digital development,” he added.

7. Selling Patriot missiles to Poland

“Poland signed the largest arms procurement deal in its history on Wednesday, agreeing with the United States to buy Raytheon Co’s Patriot missile defense system for $4.75 billion in a major step to modernize its forces against a bolder Russia,” Reuters reported last year.

8. Occupying Syrian oil fields

The Trump administration has been open about the fact that it is not only maintaining a military presence in Syria to control the nation’s oil, but that it is doing so in order to deprive the nation’s government of that financial resource. Syria’s ally Russia strongly opposes this, accusing the Trump administration of nothing short of “international state banditry”.

“In a statement, Russia’s defense ministry said Washington had no mandate under international or US law to increase its military presence in Syria and said its plan was not motivated by genuine security concerns in the region,” Reuters reported last month.

“Therefore Washington’s current actions – capturing and maintaining military control over oil fields in eastern Syria – is, simply put, international state banditry,” Russia’s defense ministry said.

9. Killing Russians in Syria

Reports have placed Russian casualties anywhere between a handful and hundreds, but whatever the exact number the US military is known to have killed Russian citizens as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing Syria occupation in an altercation last year.

10. Tanks in Estonia

Within weeks of taking office, Trump was already sending Abrams battle tanks, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and other military hardware right up to Russia’s border as part of a NATO operation.

“Atlantic Resolve is a demonstration of continued US commitment to collective security through a series of actions designed to reassure NATO allies and partners of America’s dedication to enduring peace and stability in the region in light of the Russian intervention in Ukraine,” the Defense Department said in a statement.

11. War ships in the Black Sea


12. Sanctions

Trump approved new sanctions against Russia on August 2017. CNN reports the following:

US President Donald Trump approved fresh sanctions on Russia Wednesday after Congress showed overwhelming bipartisan support for the new measures,” CNN reported at the time. “Congress passed the bill last week in response to Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election, as well as its human rights violations, annexation of Crimea and military operations in eastern Ukraine. The bill’s passage drew ire from Moscow — which responded by stripping 755 staff members and two properties from US missions in the country — all but crushing any hope for the reset in US-Russian relations that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had called for.”

“A full-fledged trade war has been declared on Russia,” said Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in response.

13. More sanctions

“The United States imposed sanctions on five Russian individuals on Wednesday, including the leader of the Republic of Chechnya, for alleged human rights abuses and involvement in criminal conspiracies, a sign that the Trump administration is ratcheting up pressure on Russia,” The New York Times reported in December 2017.

14. Still more sanctions


“Trump just hit Russian oligarchs with the most aggressive sanctions yet,” reads a Viceheadline from April of last year.

“The sanctions target seven oligarchs and 12 companies under their ownership or control, 17 senior Russian government officials, and a state-owned Russian weapons trading company and its subsidiary, a Russian bank,” Vice reports. “While the move is aimed, in part, at Russia’s role in the U.S. 2016 election, senior U.S. government officials also stressed that the new measures seek to penalize Russia’s recent bout of international troublemaking more broadly, including its support for Syrian President Bashar Assad and military activity in eastern Ukraine.”

15. Even more sanctions

The Trump administration hit Russia with more sanctions for the alleged Skripal poisoning in August of last year, then hit them with another round of sanctions for the same reason again in August of this year.

16. Guess what? MORE sanctions


“The Trump administration on Thursday imposed new sanctions on a dozen individuals and entities in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea,” The Hill reported in November of last year. “The group includes a company linked to Bank Rossiya and Russian businessman Yuri Kovalchuk and others accused of operating in Crimea, which the U.S. says Russia seized illegally in 2014.”

17. Oh hey, more sanctions

“Today, the United States continues to take action in response to Russian attempts to influence US democratic processes by imposing sanctions on four entities and seven individuals associated with the Internet Research Agency and its financier, Yevgeniy Prigozhin. This action increases pressure on Prigozhin by targeting his luxury assets, including three aircraft and a vessel,” reads a statement by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from September of this year.

18. Secondary sanctions

Secondary sanctions are economic sanctions in which a third party is punished for breaching the primary sanctions of the sanctioning body. The US has leveled sanctions against both China and Turkey for purchasing Russian S-400 air defense missiles, and it is threatening to do so to India as well.

19. Forcing Russian media to register as foreign agents

Both RT and Sputnik have been forced to register as “foreign agents” by the Trump administration. This classification forced the outlets to post a disclaimer on content, to report their activities and funding sources to the Department of Justice twice a year, and could arguably place an unrealistic burden on all their social media activities as it submits to DOJ micromanagement.

20. Throwing out Russian diplomats

The Trump administration joined some 20 other nations in casting out scores of Russian diplomats as an immediate response to the Skripal poisoning incident in the UK.

21. Training Polish and Latvian fighters “to resist Russian aggression”

“US Army Special Forces soldiers completed the first irregular and unconventional warfare training iteration for members of the Polish Territorial Defense Forces and Latvian Zemmessardze as a part of the Ridge Runner program in West Virginia, according to service officials,” Army Times reported this past July.

“U.S. special operations forces have been training more with allies from the Baltic states and other Eastern European nations in the wake of the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014,” Army Times writes. “A low-level conflict continues to simmer in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region between Russian-backed separatists and government forces to this day. The conflict spurred the Baltics into action, as Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia embraced the concepts of total defense and unconventional warfare, combining active-duty, national guard and reserve-styled forces to each take on different missions to resist Russian aggression and even occupation.”

22. Refusal to recognize Crimea as part of the Russian Federation


…even while acknowledging Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights as perfectly legal and legitimate.

23. Sending 1,000 troops to Poland

From the September article “1000 US Troops Are Headed to Poland” by National Interest:

Key point: Trump agreed to send more forces to Poland to defend it against Russia.

What Happened: U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to deploy approximately 1,000 additional U.S. troops to Poland during a meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City, Reuters reported Sept. 23.

Why It Matters: The deal, which formalizes the United States’ commitment to protecting Poland from Russia, provides a diplomatic victory to Duda and his governing Law and Justice ahead of November elections. The additional U.S. troops will likely prompt a reactive military buildup from Moscow in places like neighboring Kaliningrad and, potentially, Belarus.

24. Withdrawing from the Iran deal

Russia has been consistently opposed to Trump’s destruction of the JCPOA. In a statement after Trump killed the deal, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it was “deeply disappointed by the decision of US President Donald Trump to unilaterally refuse to carry out commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”, adding that this administration’s actions were “trampling on the norms of international law”.

25. Attacking Russian gas interests

Trump has been threatening Germany with sanctions and troop withdrawal if it continues to support a gas pipeline from Russia called Nord Stream 2.

“Echoing previous threats about German support for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, Trump said he’s looking at sanctions to block the project he’s warned would leave Berlin ‘captive’ to Moscow,” Bloomberg reports. “The US also hopes to export its own liquefied natural gas to Germany.”

“We’re protecting Germany from Russia, and Russia is getting billions and billions of dollars in money from Germany” for its gas, Trump told the press.

I could have kept going, but that’s my 25. The only reason anyone still believes Trump is anything other than insanely hawkish toward Russia is because it doesn’t benefit anyone’s partisanship or profit margins to call it like it really is. The facts are right here as plain as can be, but there’s a difference between facts and narrative. If they wanted to, the political/media class could very easily use the facts I just laid out to weave the narrative that this president is imperiling us all with dangerous new cold war provocations, but that’s how different narrative is from fact; there’s almost no connection. Instead they use a light sprinkling of fact to weave a narrative that has very little to do with reality. And meanwhile the insane escalations continue.

In a cold war, it only takes one miscommunication or one defective piece of equipment to set off a chain of events that can obliterate all life on earth. The more things escalate, the greater the probability of that happening. We’re rolling the dice on armageddon every single day, and with every escalation the number we need to beat gets a bit harder.

We should not be rolling the dice on this. This is very, very wrong, and the US and Russia should stop and establish detente immediately. The fact that outlets like CNN would rather diddle made-up Russiagate narratives than point to this obvious fact with truthful reporting is in and of itself sufficient to discredit them all forever.

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This is a dispatch from our ongoing series by Caitlin Johnstone

About the Author

Caitlin Johnstone is a brave journalist, political junkie, relentless feminist, champion of the 99 percent. And a powerful counter-propaganda tactician. 

 

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