dailyveracity | Captagon is a drug that first came to prominence during the Islamic State’s terror wave throughout the middle east. Since 2014, the drug reportedly reemerged
within Ukraine, fueling neo-nazi terrorists who have used the meth-like
substance on the battlefield to overcome the fear of death, becoming
what some people call “zombie soldiers.”
The Donetsk People Republic (DPR) recently uncovered drug
laboratories where ‘combat drugs’ have reportedly been developed ii
village of Sopino near Mariupol, and administered to the Azov
Battalion. Sputnik reported.
DNR-Kräfte fanden Labors in der Nähe von Mariupol, in denen
"Kriegs"-Drogen für ukrainische Nationalisten hergestellt wurden,
berichtet RIA Novosti pic.twitter.com/PjZuDfPfSW
“You start taking him somewhere, and they’re laughing. They don’t
feel anything, no pain or anything. They’re like zombies.” describes a
Donbas soldier.
A DPR soldier alleged that the drugs, which are a combination of
Captagon, as well as other amphetamines, cause “stupidity and courage”
among the Ukrainian neo-nazis who are said to lose all fear of death
when taking the substance.
Some of the neo-nazis who were high on the drug, admitted to killing
fellow Ukrainian citizens, saying “I understood that I was shooting at
civilians, but I was high on drugs, I was following orders”
Captagon, before being banned throughout the western world, was first
manufactured in 1961 as an alternative to amphetamine and
methamphetamine—used at the time to treat narcolepsy, fatigue, and the
behavioral disorder “minimal brain dysfunction.”
Since, the illegal manufacturing of the substance exploded throughout
eastern Europe and the Middle East, and is said to have fueled ISIS
throughout their terror campaign across the middle east.
The ‘Combat Drug’ has since become a staple for the Neo-Nazi Azov
Battalion, who is said to manufacture the substance and administer it to
combatants who then are said to stay up for days without fatigue.
The Azov soldiers have gone through Ukraine, torturing, beating, and
killing Ukrainian civilians. It has been reported that the Ukrainian
soldiers have killed their own, indiscriminately, while laughing and
cheering.
Newsweek | In the past three months, investigators across Europe have
intercepted thousands of Captagon pills, an amphetamine-based drug
popular with the Islamic State militant group. Nicknamed "the jihadists'
drug," Captagon keeps users awake for long periods of time, dulls pain
and creates a sense of euphoria. According to one former militant who spoke to CNN
in 2014, ISIS "gave us drugs, hallucinogenic pills that would make you
go to battle not caring if you live or die." Given similar testimony
from other fighters, experts say it seems likely that the hallucinogenic
pills the militant took were Captagon.
Invented in Germany in the
1960s to treat attention and sleep disorders, and highly addictive,
Captagon was banned throughout most of the world in the 1980s.
On
May 10, Dutch investigators said they had discovered a drug lab the
previous month that was churning out Captagon pills, and they were
looking for two suspects associated with the lab. In March, Greek police
confiscated more than 600,000 Captagon pills in a raid and arrested
four people for allegedly manufacturing the drug.
Greek and Dutch police haven't said the Captagon stashes they found were destined for ISIS fighters.
Captagon is one of the brand names for the drug fenethylline, a combination of amphetamine and theophylline
that relaxes the muscle around the lungs and is used to treat breathing
problems. A German company first synthesized fenethylline in 1961, and
when it discovered the drug improved alertness, doctors began
prescribing it to treat narcolepsy and attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder. Though generally without side effects, says Dr. Raj Persaud, a
fellow at the London-based Royal College of Psychiatrists, overuse can
cause extreme depression, tiredness, insomnia, heart palpitations and,
in rare cases, blindness and heart attacks. In the 1980s, when the
drug's addictiveness became clear, the United States and the World
Health Organization listed it as a controlled substance, and it is now
illegal to buy and sell throughout most of the world.
Nevertheless,
fenethylline remains popular in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi
Arabia, where more Captagon is consumed than in any other country in the
world.
Though Islamic law forbids the consumption of alcohol and other drugs,
many users there see Captagon as a medicinal substance. In October 2015,
Lebanese authorities arrested a Saudi prince at the Beirut airport
after two tons of cocaine and Captagon pills, which sell for roughly $20
per pill in Saudi Arabia, were found on a private plane.
Once manufactured in Eastern Europe, Turkey and Lebanon, according to Columbia University's Journal of International Affairs,
Captagon is now predominantly made in Syria. The Syrian conflict has
allowed for illicit activities to flourish, and many fighters there know
the benefits of using the drug.
The use of drugs in war has a
long history. The ancient Greeks, the Vikings, U.S. Civil War soldiers
and the Nazis all relied on drugs—wine, mushrooms, morphine and
methamphetamines, respectively—to get them through the horror of battle.
"The holy grail that armies around the world have been looking for is a
drug that gives people courage," says Persaud, and Captagon comes
close. "It doesn't give you distilled courage, but it gives you a
tendency to want to keep going and impaired judgment, so you don't
consider whether you're scared or not," he says. "You feel euphoria. You
don't feel pain. You could say it's courage without the judgment." For a
fighter in a war so brutally waged, the benefits of that are clear.
marketwatch | As European governments struggle to contain the fallout of soaring energy costs
to their citizens, the U.S. may also be facing a brewing crisis with an
estimated 20 million households struggling to pay their utility bills.
Representing
one in six households, the eye-popping number comes from a study at
the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (Neada) that was
highlighted in a Bloomberg report
earlier this week. The total amount in arrears amounted to $16 billion
in June, just under the highest number so far this year — $16.5 billion
in March.
“So before the pandemic, it was about $8 billion…and then the number doubled,” the author of that study, Neada’s executive director Mark Wolfe, told MarketWatch on Thursday.
Those
20 million households — largely low-income — can be anywhere from 30 to
90 days in arrears on utility payments, said Wolfe, who has been
tracking the data for about 10 years.
Jean Su, a senior attorney
at the Center for Biological Diversity, which tracks utility
disconnections across the U.S. told Bloomberg that she expects a
“tsunami of shutoffs.”
The rise in the cost of living was at a 40-year-high at 8.5% in July
compared to the year before. Grocery prices continued to soar — the
price increase was 13.1% compared to the same period last year. Many
Americans reported they have already dipped into savings to pay for bills and bought smaller package sizes and cheaper alternatives to cut down on costs.
Because
of the rising costs, lower-income Americans are already struggling to
pay back credit-card loans and purchase big-ticket items like
automobiles, Radha Seshagiri told MarketWatch previously.
Seshagiri is the public policy and system change director at SaverLife,
a nonprofit that helps families with low and moderate incomes to save
money.
Residents living in rural areas were seeing even bigger impacts of inflation and the recent rise in energy costs, according to a report by Iowa State University professor Dave Peters, which studied the impact of inflation in small towns.
“The
biggest inflationary impact on rural households has been the increased
cost of transportation, which is essential in rural areas where
residents have to drive longer distances to work, school, or to shop for
daily needs.” Peters wrote in the report.
Rural people are
paying $2,470 per year more for gasoline and diesel fuels than they did
two years ago, while urban dwellers are paying $2,057 more, according to
the report.
indianpunchline | The US media vaguely claims that Ukrainian forces are making
“tactical gains” and are preparing “for a long and hard-fought battle
before winter sets in… Western officials cautioned the counteroffensive
won’t sweep the Russian forces out of Ukraine any time soon. However,
success in retaking the region of Kherson and gaining control of the
western side of the river would be “really significant.” (Politico)
The
daily noted, “Such a victory would show Ukraine’s Western allies that
they are right to continue sending billions of dollars of weapons and
supplies to help counter Russia.”
This
last bit is the crux of the matter. The arms supplies from European
countries to Ukraine have virtually dried up to a trickle and a similar
trend is discernible with the US supplies too. The Biden Administration
is asking Congress to approve another $11.7 billion in aid for Ukraine
but that is in anticipation of the likelihood that the 2023 budget may
not be passed by the deadline of Oct. 1. The White House Office of
Management and Budget announcement on Sept. 2 acknowledges that this is
“a short-term continuing resolution to keep the Federal government
running.”
The OMB
statement says the White House wants this anomaly because funds from
previous packages to boost Ukrainian military are running low, with
three-quarters distributed or committed, and more will follow in the
next month. Importantly, though, of the $11.7 billion requested by the
White House, $4.5 billion would go toward replenishing Pentagon’s
depleted stockpiles, $4.5 billion to budgetary support for Ukraine’s
government, and only $2.7 billion to defence and intelligence aid as
such. This new round of aid is intended to last through December.
Zelensky
must be a worried man. He needs to convince the US that such massive
multi-billion dollar military aid has been worth it. He should show at
the very least, a bloody stalemate on the southern warfront. (Russia is
gaining the upper hand in Donass already.)
There is always the danger that Zelensky might overreach. Politico disclosed:
“Western governments have warned Kyiv against spreading its forces too
thinly in a bid to capture as much territory as possible, since the
Ukrainians would have to hold any gains they make. The officials said
they expect Ukraine to reassess its military goals if it retakes
Kherson. However, the city of Melitopol, also in the south, remains too
far away from the Ukrainian positions, while a ground attack against
Crimea during this offensive is not plausible.”
Now, all this juxtaposes with the upbeat tone but bare factual information shared in the official Russian statements on Kherson front. OtherRussian
reports say that the “counteroffensive” has been virtually muzzled and
Ukrainian forces have taken heavy casualties running into several
thousands. It seems to be an apocalyptic scenario , too tragic to
recount.
The solitary
Ukrainian breakthrough remaining as of Saturday night was a bridgehead
across the Ingulets river — the so-called Andreevsky bridgehead. There
is speculation that Russians may have lured the Ukrainian troops into a
“fire trap.” The river crossings have been cut off and Russians are
probably encircling the Ukrainian troops trapped on the western side of
Ingulets with no supplies or reinforcements reaching them.
The
counteroffensive has lost its bite and is now turning into positional
battles on one or two sites in the Mykolaiv-Krivoy Rog direction. A
Russian counterattack has also been mentioned to the effect that the
frontline now touches the “administrative boundary” of Mykolaiv region
(which is a crucial city en route to Odessa.) Heavy bombardment of
Mykolaiv city has also been reported. The Russians claim to have
destroyed vast quantities of weaponry.
Russia’s
“domain control” can be put in perspective: the enemy is, on the one
hand, caught on the bare steppe and cut down with the overwhelming
superiority of Russian artillery and aviation, and, on the other hand,
encountering well-fortified, entrenched defence lines.
That
said, Zelensky cannot give up, as he is desperately in need of a
success story. Kiev still hopes to reverse the situation, but how that
is achievable remains to be seen.
Against
this sombre backdrop, more and more sceptical voices are being heard in
the US about the Biden Administration’s policy trajectory. The latest
is an opinion piece in Wall Street Journal
by Gen. (Retd) Mark Kimmitt, formerly Assistant Secretary of State for
Political-Military Affairs in the Bush administration. Kimmitt predicts
that “a breakthrough is unlikely” and soon, “logistics shortfalls” may
force a change in US strategy.
Head of UN mission to #Zaporozhye thanks the Russian Federation for keeping his team safe from attacks from Zelensky regime forces, who tried to stop the inspection team from reaching the plant.
"I'm glad the Russian military did what they had to do to keep our inspectors safe," pic.twitter.com/TUtsbupSAg
sonar21 | The title sums it up in a nutshell. The intelligence services of the
U.K. and the United States put together a plan and directed Ukraine to
carry it out–i.e., capture the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant from the
Russians on the very day that UN Inspectors were scheduled to arrive.
This was a highly coordinated operation. (See Andrei Martyanov’s piece
on U.S. role in planning the Kherson offensive.) For example, David
Ignatius, a reliable shill for the CIA, wrote a piece in the Washington
Post–Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Is More Than Just Bravado. His
cheerleading for Ukraine is no mere coincidence on the same day that the
Ukrainian Army gambled and lost at Zaporizhzhia (warning, this is behind a firewall):
As Ukraine mounts a new
counteroffensive in the southern part of the country, Zelensky’s bravado
risks setting expectations too high. In truth, Ukraine probably won’t
liberate its territory this year, or even next. Still, as Ukrainian
forces push toward the Black Sea coast, Zelensky is delivering a defiant
response to President Vladimir Putin’s claim that Ukraine is not a real
country. Not only can Ukraine survive, it also can regain some of its
occupied land.
The best defense is a good offense, as military
strategists have argued for centuries. And if Ukraine’s drive toward the
coast succeeds, it will restore the country’s economic viability by
relieving pressure on its port city of Odessa. Moreover, it could
threaten Russia’s occupation of Crimea by cutting into the land bridge
that connects to the Russian-controlled Donbas region in the east.
The Ukrainian attempt to capture the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant
consisted of two river crossings–1: seven speed boats carrying up to
60s that landed 3 kilometers northeast of the ZNP and 2: two barges
launched several miles south of the ZNP manned by Ukrainian airborne
forces.
On the morning of September 1, the
Kiev regime attempted a major provocation to disrupt the arrival of
IAEA expert working group at Zaporozhye nuclear power plant.
At
6:20 a.m., seven fast-moving motorboats landed on the coast of
Kakhovskoye reservoir, three kilometres northeast of Zaporozhye NPP,
with two sabotage groups of up to 60 people in total.
The
sabotage groups were detected and blocked in the drop-off area by
Russian National Guard units guarding the territory of Zaporozhye NPP.
A
unit of the Russian Armed Forces and helicopters of the army aviation
arrived to reinforce Russian Guard troops in order to suppress an
attempt to enter the nuclear power plant and destroy Ukrainian
saboteurs.
At about 7:00 a.m., units of the Russian Armed Forces prevented another attempted landing to seize a nuclear power plant.
A
few kilometres from Zaporozhye NPP near Vodyanoye, an attempt was made
to land a tactical airborne assault by AFU two self-propelled barges
from Nikopol. Two self-propelled barges carrying tactical airborne
assault of AFU are sunk as a result of the Russian Armed Forces’
shelling.
As of 8:00 a.m., the Kiev regime has blocked the passage of IAEA expert mission from controlled territory to Zaporozhye NPP.
Ukrainian
artillery is shelling the territory of Zaporozhye NPP, the meeting
place of IAEA mission with Russian specialists near Vasil’evka, as well
as the route of their movement to Energodar. Four shells exploded 400
metres from the 1st unit of Zaporozhye NPP.
If Ukraine had pulled this off it would have been a major black eye
for the Russians and would have put the nuclear plant back in Ukrainian
hands. It would have marked the first serious victory in this war for
Ukraine. If, if, if. There is an old saying, “If ifs and buts were candy
and nuts it would be Christmas every day.” Christmas did not come for
Ukraine. They got their ass handed to them.
German FM: I will put Ukraine first “no matter what my German voters think” or how hard their life gets. pic.twitter.com/GwAqIZ2jL7
— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) August 31, 2022
Telegraph | Britain is now in grave danger of falling into Vladimir Putin’s trap.
His kamikaze economic war on the West will eventually take down his
disgusting coterie of war criminals, but in the meantime it is beginning
to inflict immense, permanent damage on the Western way of life, to the
great delight of Moscow’s siloviki hard men.
We risk ending up with calamitous poverty, civil disobedience, a new
socialist government by next year, a break-up of the UK,
nationalisations, price and incomes policies, punitive wealth taxes and
eventually a complete economic and financial meltdown and IMF bailout. The situation in the EU is, if anything, worse.
This is not a plea for pacifism, for looking away when Ukraine is
being illegally invaded by a savage regime. Britain was – and remains –
morally right to back Ukraine in a carefully calibrated way. Instead,
this is a plea for an economic counter-offensive, for Liz Truss, the
next PM, to tackle Putin’s economic and energy war head-on.
Mass, immediate intervention is inevitable, but must be designed to
avoid hastening Britain’s shift into demagoguery, welfarism and
socialist central planning, all steps down Hayek’s “road to serfdom”
that the Leftist and green elites are longing us to take. The wrong
response – because too little is done, or because the wrong solutions
are chosen – would merely advance Putin’s masterplan to cripple the
West.
Cheap and plentiful energy is essential to our consumerist societies.
We cannot be delusional about the scale of the developing catastrophe.
Household energy and vehicle fuel costs will jump from 4.5 per cent of
household spending in early 2021 to some 13.4 per cent by April next
year, much higher than at any time during the past 50 years, including
the 1970s, according to Carbon Brief. Households may face a rise in
energy costs of £167 billion, or 7 per cent of GDP, taking total
expenditure to £231 billion, more than government spending on health,
and that is before the hit to business is accounted for. The rise for
consumers alone is more than the combined defence and education budgets.
This is equivalent to a Depression-style shock. Pay rises will
protect some workers at the expense of investors, but – until and unless
energy prices fall again – our national living standards will slump
massively. The nation is sending tens of billions more abroad to pay for
energy imports.
The state can borrow to cushion the blow, reducing future consumption
to prop up current living standards, but our impoverishment cannot be
magicked away. Coming after years of QE,
there is a real danger of excess borrowing triggering even higher
inflation, rocketing interest rates, mass repossessions and a banking
crisis, so caution is imperative.
There was little the West could do other than rely on hostile Opec
nations in the 1970s, the last time an energy war almost destroyed us;
but it was an unforgivable error for Europe to become so reliant on
Russian supplies, and to fail so miserably to increase domestic energy
production. The French even allowed their nuclear plants to break down.
Putin struck at the right time: the zombified Western economy was in
the doldrums. Covid was a disaster of unpreparedness and errors,
increasing national debts and inflation and entrenching a dependency
culture. But the Russian tyrant’s canniest move was to understand just
how suicidal our energy policy had become. A toxic brew of net zero ideology,
deep hypocrisy about decarbonising without making the nuclear effort,
endemic nimbyism, short-termism and state incompetence had radically
weakened the West.
"It is a lunatic conspiracy theory to believe we are controlled by a secret cabal of child snuffing globalist snake human hybrids bent on microchipping all of us into slavery and then liquifying us into a tasty stew"
RT | US President Joe Biden has apparently made a 180-degree turn on the
alleged dangers posed by Donald Trump supporters, saying he doesn’t
consider his predecessor’s backers to be a threat to America.
“I don’t consider any Trump supporter to be a threat to the country,” Biden told reporters on Friday at the White House. “I
do think anyone who calls for the use of violence, fails to condemn
violence when it’s used, refuses to acknowledge an election has been
won, insists upon changing the way in which the rule you count votes,
that is a threat to democracy.”
The comment was a far cry
from the political rhetoric that Biden has used in recent days,
including a scathing speech he gave on Thursday night at Philadelphia’s
Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed in
1776. He argued that “MAGA forces” – referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan – are an existential threat to American democracy.
“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Biden said in the speech. He added in a Twitter post that “Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are a threat to the very soul of this country.”
Biden
altered that message dramatically on Friday, saying he was only talking
about people who fail to condemn political violence, those who try to
manipulate electoral outcomes and those who refuse to acknowledge the
results of an election.
“When people voted for Donald Trump and support him now, they weren’t voting for attacking the Capitol,” Biden said. “They weren’t voting for overruling an election. They were voting for a philosophy he put forward.”
However, just last week, Biden likened Trump’s “MAGA philosophy” to “semi-fascism.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre essentially confirmed
the president’s view when challenged on his controversial attack, saying
Biden is “never going to shy away from calling out what he sees.”
Biden
is apparently trying to stoke fear of pro-Trump Republicans as this
November’s midterm congressional elections approach. But the strategy
may be risky, given reaction to past condemnations of large voting
blocs. For instance, Hillary Clinton may have helped energize her
opponent’s supporters when she said during the 2016 presidential
election that half of Trump backers belong in “the basket of deplorables.”
cell | We report genome sequence data from six individuals excavated from the
base of a medieval well at a site in Norwich, UK. A revised radiocarbon
analysis of the assemblage is consistent with these individuals being
part of a historically attested episode of antisemitic violence on 6
February 1190 CE. We find that four of these individuals were closely
related and all six have strong genetic affinities with modern Ashkenazi
Jews. We identify four alleles associated with genetic disease in
Ashkenazi Jewish populations and infer variation in pigmentation traits,
including the presence of red hair. Simulations indicate that
Ashkenazi-associated genetic disease alleles were already at appreciable
frequencies, centuries earlier than previously hypothesized. These
findings provide new insights into a significant historical crime, into
Ashkenazi population history, and into the origins of genetic diseases
associated with modern Jewish populations.
The deaths of 17 medieval Jews: An incredible new genetics paper has just dropped: The earliest Jewish genomes and the story of where they are from and how they died is incredibly important, and central to the origin of contemporary antisemitic conspiracy hatred. 🧵
In 2004 construction workers excavating land in central Norwich, UK, as part of the Chapelfield shopping center development recovered human skeletal elements from their spoil.
Subsequent archaeological investigations led to the discovery and excavation of a probable well containing the commingled remains of at least seventeen people. The stratigraphic position of the remains, their completeness, and state of articulation suggested that they had all been deposited in a single event shortly after their death. The overrepresentation of subadults and the unusual location of the burial outside of consecrated ground suggested that they may have been victims of a mass fatality event such as famine, disease, or mass murder.
Pottery sherds from the well were dated typologically to 12th–14th centuries CE, and two initial radiocarbon determinations on the skeletal remains placed these in the 11th–12th centuries.
The most prominent historically attested mass death in Norwich within this date range was in 1190 CE when members of the Jewish community were killed during antisemitic riots precipitated by the beginning of the Third Crusade although the number of individuals killed is unclear.
Norwich had been the setting for a previous notable event in the history of medieval antisemitism when, in 1144 CE, the family of William of Norwich claimed that local Jews were responsible for his murder, an argument taken up by Thomas of Monmouth through the first documented invocation of the blood libel myth. This represents the beginnings of an antisemitic conspiracy theory that persists up to the present day.
The possibility that the remains found at the Chapelfield well site were those of the victims of antisemitic violence is given further support by the site’s location just to the south of the medieval Jewish quarter of the city.
However, no additional archaeological evidence linked the human remains to a specific historical event or group of people. During the High Medieval period (ca. 1000–1300 CE), Norwich witnessed a number of outbreaks of large-scale violence, and additional data were therefore required to test the hypothesis that these individuals were of Ashkenazi Jewish descent.
Judaism is a shared religious and cultural identity, with endogamous marriage practices and distinctive diasporic histories of communities worldwide, particularly a Levantine origin and complex history of migrations over the last ∼2.5 millennia. Present-day Ashkenazim are descendants of medieval Jewish populations with histories primarily in northern and eastern Europe. As a result, they carry distinctive ancestries, and Jewish and non-Jewish medieval individuals living in the same regions would likely show characteristic patterns of genetic variation.
Hereditary disorders in Ashkenazi Jewish populations have been the focus of considerable medical research, with genetic screening now commonplace to mitigate risks.
Their prevalence is generally attributed to strong genetic drift during Ashkenazi population bottlenecks coupled with high endogamy although other processes such as heterozygote advantage have been proposed.
Candidate population bottlenecks include the phase of dispersion following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the formation of Ashkenazi communities in northern Europe during the medieval period, antisemitic persecution arising from the Crusades, unfounded reprisals for the Black Death, and the movement from western and central Europe to eastern Europe that preceded rapid population growth from the 15th to 18th centuries.
No genomes from known Jewish individuals are currently available from the medieval period or earlier, largely because exhumation and scientific testing of Jewish remains are prohibited. Such data could inform on the migration and admixture histories of Jewish populations. Furthermore, the presence of any pathogenic variants would provide valuable clues to the origins and spread of Ashkenazim-associated genetic disorders. Here, we examine results from radiocarbon dating and genetic analyses of the Chapelfield individuals to better establish who they were, when they died, and the nature of their death and burial, and identify potential broader implications for Ashkenazim population history and genetics.
zacharydcarter | So why all the vitriol over student debt? When we argue about student
debt, we aren't really debating credit policy, inflation, growth or the
separation of powers under the U.S. Constitution. All of these avenues
of discussion are elaborate detours around the central issue: the
structure of the American social order.
In the United
States, a college degree is about much more than securing a higher wage.
People without college degrees aren't just excluded from a lot of jobs
that pay well. They're more likely to be laid off and less likely to be
hired during recessions. They're less likely to have health insurance,
and more likely to have a disability
(the causal arrow there probably points both ways, but the combination
is particularly cruel). People who do not graduate from college even
have shorter life expectancies
than people who do. Higher education is perhaps the single most
important factor in determining who has access to a financially secure
lifestyle and the leisure to pursue intellectually interesting
activities. A college degree confers respect and prestige.
In
a better world, the simple fact of being human would command equal
respect for everyone. That is not our world, but we can imagine such a
place and work toward realizing it. Prestige, by
contrast, is inherently exclusive. The less there is to go around, the
better it is for the people who have it. And so the more people we
exclude from higher education, the more secure people with college
degrees will feel about their place in society.
The recent student debt freak-out reminds me a lot of God and Man at Yale --
the 1951 memoir that launched William F. Buckley into the conservative
intellectual stratosphere. It's remarkably bad for a book that has a
reputation as a political classic -- a wealthy conservative Catholic
goes to Yale and is horrified to find Protestants and Keynesians. What,
pray, can the Board of Trustees do to save our dear, beloved Yale? The
ideological material is generic McCarthyism, the writing is flat
(Buckley would get better at that), and the entire project is
preoccupied with weird provincial details. At one point he even
complains about the vending machines. The literary establishment
basically laughed at it, with both The New York Times and The Atlantic
running devastating reviews.
But God and Man at Yale became
a publishing sensation. After World War II, millions of new college
students arrived on campuses around the country to receive an education
funded by the G.I. Bill. Suddenly, an experience that had once been
restricted almost exclusively to the very rich became open to
infantrymen. And though the vast majority of colleges and universities
continued to exclude Black students, millions of white people who had
never dreamed of going to college eventually earned degrees. For many
prior graduates, this step toward democratization was threatening. Their
credential was being diluted. Buckley's book about the waywardness of
newfangled university life spoke to this new and unexpected status
anxiety among the American upper-class, and so it flew off the shelves.
BAR |Senator Joe Biden
played a role in creating these terrible conditions. In 2005 he and 17
other democrats joined republicans in voting for the Bankruptcy Act,
which made it all but impossible to discharge student loan debt in
bankruptcy. The Delaware senator was beholden to the consumer credit
industry, like all of that state’s elected officials. They were the
drivers in ensuring that filing for bankruptcy for any reason would
become very difficult and they were always among Biden’s biggest
campaign contributors.
Of course Biden knows what people need and want. During his campaign he said,
“I propose to forgive all undergraduate tuition-related federal student
debt from two- and four-year public colleges and universities for
debt-holders earning up to $125,000.” At other times he included
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in this debt
forgiveness plan.
It is easy to point out the discrepancy between what he promised and
what he now proposes, but the problem is bigger than the laundry list of
Biden campaign lies. There is great confusion among Black people about
student loan debt relief, what it will really accomplish, and what is
actually needed.
Biden promised well heeled democratic fundraisers that “nothing would
fundamentally change.” Forgiving student loans or any of the other
forms of debt peonage is the last thing that the U.S. oligarchy wants to
see. The increasingly predatory capitalist system demands that Biden
does little more than give lip service instead of meeting the people’s
needs. That is why the oddly named Inflation Reduction Act will
negotiate Medicare drug prices but not until 2026 and then only for ten
drugs. Even if Biden cared he wouldn’t be allowed to do anything more
for senior citizens, student loan debtors or anyone else.
Of course the Black political class can be counted on to aid in the
subterfuges that are used to keep the people quiet. Congresswoman Ayanna
Pressley falsely proclaimed,
“President Joe Biden just canceled student debt.” Her assigned role at
this juncture is to get Black voters to the polls in November and she
can’t do that without lying about Biden. Getting voter buy-in for
neo-liberal policies is Pressley’s problem. No one else has to go along
with the inevitable falsehoods that come with the territory of holding
elective office.
She and others may call themselves “progressives” but in the end they
are no better than Senator Biden when he worsened the student debt
crisis. They are all little more than errand boys and girls for the
kleptocrats and all of them are compromised.
theamericanconservative | Look, I don't like that Russia invaded Ukraine, and I don't like that
they are succeeding in their aggression. But they have won this thing.
Why? Because the West cannot afford to continue this proxy war with
Moscow.
Artur's household is one of the
nearly 4 million in Poland that rely on coal for heating (granted, these
households are probably in better shape than the ones relying on nat
gas whose price is rising by 10-20% every day and is now almost
literally in the stratosphere) and now face shortages and price hikes,
after Poland and the European Union imposed an embargo on Russian coal
following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in February. Poland banned
purchases with an immediate effect in April, while the bloc mandated
fading them out by August.
While Poland produces over 50 million
tonnes from its own mines every year, imported coal, much of it from
Russia, is a household staple because of competitive prices and the fact
that Russian coal is sold in lumps more suitable for home use.
Soaring
demand has forced Bogdanka and other state-controlled mines to ration
sales or offer the fuel to individual buyers via online platforms, in
limited amounts. Artur, who did not want to give his full name, said he
had collected paperwork from his extended family in the hope of picking
up all their fuel allocations at once.
Advertisement
Yesterday in Rome, I talked to a couple of Poles who are terrified of
the coming winter. If you are Polish and have the possibility of
burning firewood, you are stocking up on it. But very many Poles do not.
Nor can they burn coal in their flats for heat. What are they going to
do? They're not sure.
As rich as the West is, it can't keep its people warm in the winter by
burning cash. And so, European households are now being forced to ask if
freezing in the dark for Ukraine is something they really want to do.
This is not going to happen to Americans -- but you should think about
how you would react if this were you, and your elderly parents, and your
kids.
sonar21 | Just like Wile E Coyote, the United States and Europe are discovering
that their incredibly “clever” plan to punish Russia with draconian
economic sanctions is backfiring. And it is backfiring with a vengeance.
In Europe, things are markedly worse. The UK and Ireland are
grappling with soaring energy costs that are forcing many small
businesses to shutter their operations:
One such owner is Geraldine Dolan, who owns the Poppyfields cafe in Athlone, Ireland – and was charged nearly €10,000 (US$10,021) for just over two months of energy usage.
The
cost of electricity to the Poppyfields cafe for 73 days from early June
until the end of August came in at €9,024.70 an increase of 250 per
cent in just 12 months. There doesn’t include the €812.22 in VAT, which
brought her total bill to €9,836.92.
It has left Geraldine Dolan
wondering if she will be able to continue running the business she has
owned for the last 16 years as Ireland heads into what is certain to be a
winter of rising energy prices and cost of living spikes.
Geraldine
Dolan, of Poppy Fields Cafe, Athlone, with an electricity bill for just
under ten thousand euro for two months. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill /
The Irish Times Photograph: Dara Mac Donaill / The Irish Times
In short, small businesses are getting utility bills that are 10
times what they were paying a year ago. Most are going to be forced to
shutdown operations.
As the FT reports, German manufacturers are halting production in response to the surge in energy prices, a
trend the government has described as “alarming”. German economy
minister Robert Habeck said industry had worked hard to reduce its gas
consumption in recent months, partly by switching to alternative fuels
like oil, making its processes more efficient and reducing output. But
he amusingly clarified, some companies had also “stopped production altogether” — a development he said was “alarming”.
“It’s not good news,” he said, “because
it can mean that the industries in question aren’t just being
restructured but are experiencing a rupture — a structural rupture, one
that is happening under enormous pressure.”
Habeck said
rising gas prices were affecting everyone from big industrial companies
to small trading firms and the medium-sized enterprises that make up the
“Mittelstand”. “Wherever energy is an important part of the business
model, companies are experiencing sheer angst,” he said. And since
energy is a crucial part of every business model, one can only imagine the chaos, fear and loathing hammering the largest European economy right now.
Meanwhile, the Russian economy is doing okay. That is because it
produces energy and commodities and metals that the world needs. It is
not dependent on imports to stay afloat. And, the sanctions
notwithstanding, Russia continues to export oil, gas, fertilizer and
grains.
warontherocks | today’s growing wave of assassination attempts has crossed
ideologies. Certain adherents of the far left have been responsible for
attempts on the Republican baseball practice and more recently Justice
Kavanaugh. But the far-right is also active in this space and was
responsible for the most recent successful high-level political
assassination in the country: the killing
of Reverend Clementa Pinckney, state senator of South Carolina, at the
Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston in 2015. Jihadists often place
prominent figures in their crosshairs, as demonstrated by a recently disrupted plot against George W. Bush. Even the more nascent male supremacist movement has its targets: A so-called “men’s rights activist” attacked the home of U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas in July 2020, killing her son.
The emerging trend is due in no small part to the reemergence of so-called “accelerationism”
as a distinct violent extremist strategy. For extremists seeking to sow
chaos and speed up some cataclysmic societal collapse, high-profile
politicians provide an attractive target, as symbols of the mainstream
liberal political order. “We need to kill the HVT’s,” one poster wrote
on Telegram in August 2019, using a military acronym for high-value
target. “When a popular HVT is gunned down, it inspires hope and
dreams.” The COVID pandemic then added fuel to the fire as public
officials were blamed and then threatened for the lockdowns and enforced
quarantines. Targets ranged from prominent health officials like
cerebral National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director
Dr. Anthony Fauci to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, as well as many
other lower-level state officials responsible for the imposition of
these extraordinary public health measures. Fauci was forced
into constant law enforcement protection because of threats against his
life — which was only a prelude to the death threats and serial
harassment that now routinely are directed against local and state
election officials.
Political assassinations are uniquely suited to tear at the country’s
social fabric. For starters, they force opposing politicians and voters
into an apparently awkward dilemma between condemning hatred and
violence and seeming to renege on their own political positions — a
situation Democrats did not handle particularly well after the attempt on Kavanaugh’s life. As Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco stated
in June in response to that attempted attack, “We can’t come together
on this topic without acknowledging and condemning the appalling rise in
violence that we have seen from a range of ideologies directed at
public officials.” But they also risk dissuading good people, across the
political spectrum, from running for public office and participating in
a vibrant American democracy. Indeed, perhaps the most damning element
of the January 6 commission hearings has been the broadcasting of the
threats issued against everyday public servants, such as Georgia’s election workers. The Department of Justice recently announced
it has opened around 110 federal criminal investigations into “contacts
reported as hostile or harassing by the election community.” “A common
refrain I hear from my members is that nobody is going to take this
seriously until something bad happens, and we are all braced for the
worst,” the National Association of State Election Directors executive
director warned in recent written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Until recently, this was not a field you went into thinking it could cost you your life.”
Heightening the threat yet further is a growing tendency for
assailants to use untraceable or even homemade weaponry as part of
violent plots — as seen in the assassination of Abe, in which the
assassin used a fully homemade shotgun to evade Japan’s stringent gun
laws. The crude attack was reminiscent of failed drone attacks against
political leaders in Venezuela and Iraq
and may be indicative of an emerging era in which more widely
accessible tools are weaponized in these strikes against individuals —
again, regardless of the motivating ideology. Cruder technology lowers
the barriers to entry for attackers, allowing even untrained or
unprepared extremists — such as Zeldin’s assailant, who, despite being
an Army veteran, used a personal protection device disguised as a cat-shaped keychain in his assault — to attempt serious plots. As Colin Clarke and Joseph Shelzi write,
“The proliferation of emerging personal technologies like drones,
3-D-printed weapons, and other innovations will likely open the door for
more attacks against high-profile figures in the future.”
We live in an age of heightened political tensions, when political
decisions are often seen as existential crises, and where elections,
therefore, carry perceived life-or-death stakes. With a midterm around
the corner, a former president under investigation, and major upheavals
occurring on hot-button issues such as abortion and gun control,
extremists inclined to violence will be increasingly likely to lash out.
The situation is only made more serious by the seeming consent
a faction of the political right has offered to would-be assassins,
including a Florida State House candidate who was recently expelled from
Twitter for writing, “Under my plan, all Floridians will have
permission to shoot FBI, IRS, ATF and all other feds on sight! Let
freedom ring!” The conceit that fuels these would-be assassins’
fanaticism and feeds their egos poses a considerable and growing danger
to civil servants and political figures across the political spectrum —
at a time when mass shootings at schools, shopping malls, cinemas, and
other public venues have already become an increasingly frequent
occurrence. “The system was blinking red,” Director of Central
Intelligence George Tenet famously told the 9/11 Commission describing the months before September 2001 — a sentiment which feels pertinent again now.
FoxNews | President Biden took another swipe at supporters of the Second Amendment during his speech in Pennsylvania on Wednesday.
Biden
appeared in the battleground state to tout his latest "Safer America"
agenda to promote efforts to support law enforcement and deter crime.
Biden: "He used to go down in the East Side, what they call the bucket. Highest crime rate in the country. Theres a place where I was the only white guy that worked, was a lifeguard down in that area.... you could always tell where the best basketball in the state is." pic.twitter.com/Hl3o3ZwTe3
Although his speech was primarily focused on his policies, Biden later
turned his attention towards his political opponents, attacking Republicans for opposing actions on gun control.
Specifically,
he attacked defenders of the Second Amendment who argue that the right
is necessary for self-defense against foreign enemies and a tyrannical
government.
"For
those brave right-wing Americans who say it’s all about keeping America
independent and safe, if you want to fight against the country, you
need an F-15. You need something more than a gun," Biden said.
Social media users attacked the comment for being tone-deaf and
criticizing American citizens. Others pointed out that this claim
followed the one-year anniversary of Biden’s Afghanistan pullout, where
several weapons, including F-15s, were left behind for Taliban forces.
"The
only F-15s the Taliban had when they fought against our country were
the ones Biden left in Afghanistan for them," X Strategies senior
digital strategist Greg Price tweeted.
"The president has been
saying this for years but it's less and less congruent with how even his
own administration has played out. How many F-15s did the Taliban have
when Biden decided to surrender Afghanistan to them?" The Reload founder
Stephen Gutowski wrote.
Red State deputy managing editor Brandon Morse joked, "I'd say he's
ignoring the Eric Holder ‘Fast and Furious’ scandal but it's Biden and
it's very likely that he actually forgot."
caityjohnstone | None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
None are more hopelessly ignorant than those who falsely believe they’re informed.
None are more hopelessly propagandized than those who don’t know they are propagandized.
Living
in a liberal western democracy means having the freedom to criticize
the tyranny of your government, but instead spending your time
criticizing the tyranny of foreign governments who your government
doesn’t like.
Free
speech in a liberal western democracy means you have the freedom to say
whatever you want about the abuses of your government, and the press
has the freedom to hammer you with propaganda to ensure that you never
do.
In
a liberal western democracy you are free to criticize your government,
but instead you are propagandized into criticizing the impotent puppets
who get rotated in and out of office while your government continues
doing all the same evil things regardless of who gets elected.
In
liberal western democracies you are free to call the president “Drumpf”
or “Brandon”, but you are not free to know who’s actually calling the
shots in your country underneath the official government.
In
liberal western democracies people say, “I’m so glad I don’t live in a
country like Russia or China where people are forbidden to criticize
their government. I live in the west, where I’m free to criticize Russia
and China all I want.”
It
doesn’t matter if you have freedom of speech if those in power can
control what you will say. And in liberal western democracies, this is
exactly what happens.
We
grow up saturated with US empire propaganda in the west. We marinate in
it. It pervades our consciousness. But because it’s all we’ve ever
known, most of us don’t even notice it.
We
think it’s normal that we’re always told our government is on the good
and righteous side of every international conflict. We think it’s normal
that we hear constantly about the tyranny of foreign governments while
only occasionally hearing about bad things our own government did years
ago (but it was an innocent mistake and it’ll never happen again).
“If we were being propagandized, I’m sure we’d have heard about it in the news,” we tell ourselves.
But the news is the propaganda. And it will never report on that bombshell story.
Propaganda
is the single most overlooked and underappreciated aspect of our
society. In controls how the public thinks, acts, votes and behaves, but
hardly anyone ever talks about it. Because the sources they’ve been
trained to look to for information never say anything about it.
So
people say what’s on their mind, after what’s on their mind has been
carefully curated by the imperial narrative managers who are responsible
for controlling what information goes into their mind.
responsiblestatecraft | With an article in The National Interest entitled “Don’t Rule Out Intervention in the Solomon Islands,”
Julian Spencer-Churchill provides such an example. The piece — which
makes the case that Australia and the United States ought to consider
military intervention to topple the government of the Solomon Islands in
the wake of the small nation’s adoption of a security pact with China —
presents an inartful mix of threat inflation, outright factual error,
and regurgitations of basic international relations theory, and is not
particularly worth engaging with in and of itself.
Yet Spencer-Churchill’s argument is useful in that it draws out some
important contradictions in the strategy of liberal hegemony that drives
U.S. foreign policy, and the “rules-based international order” it
supposedly upholds.
The piece begins with a brief recitation of the origins and
importance of self-determination and state sovereignty to the
international system. This is immediately followed by a claim on behalf
of the “coalition of democracies” to a right to violate these principles
more or less at will.
This coalition, Spencer-Churchill writes, has “legally and morally
valid justifications for intervention in a foreign country” first, “when
there is a dire security threat that emerges within its sphere of
influence” and second, “because liberal democracies have an
unprecedented understanding of the world population’s aspirations for
human rights-based rule of law and innovation-based prosperity for
middle-income countries.” The policies of liberal democracies, he
asserts “are moving in the broader direction of history.” The citation
for this last statement is a link to a brief summary of Francis
Fukuyama’s “End of History.”
The first claim bears a notable resemblance to Russia’s
justifications of its ongoing aggressive war against Ukraine. Such
claims of “dire security threats” can be asserted by great powers with
little evidence and no need for ratification by any third party, and, as
Spencer-Churchill demonstrates, it is easy to gin up a grave security
threat out of developments that pose no significant danger.
The second claim is even more striking. In essence, Spencer-Churchill
argues that all peoples self-evidently desire liberal democratic
capitalism, and therefore capitalist democracies like the United States
have a right to deliver this system to them by force, whether asked for
or not.
This contention, of course, is nothing new. It has helped sell
numerous U.S. military interventions since the Second World War and
itself is only a refinement of the “civilizing missions” of earlier
European imperialisms. Yet, in a year when the United States has rallied
global opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the name of
upholding the rules-based international order, state sovereignty, and
self-determination, the absurdity of Spencer-Churchill’s claims is shown
in stark relief.
In Spencer-Churchill’s formulation, the United States and its allies
serve as the guarantors of a rules-based international order, but also
enjoy license to violate these rules under broad circumstances of their
own determination. While it is not often laid out so bluntly, this is
largely how American foreign policy has operated for over seven decades.
The United States points to a liberal order as the justification for
and result of its predominant military power and global influence, and
will invoke that order in the face of other parties’ abuses, but will
accept no restraints on its own freedom of action.
This is well demonstrated by Washington’s habitual rejection
of international treaties produced by the United Nations system (the
creation of which, of course, was led by the U.S. itself). The U.S. will
nonetheless wield
these treaties against the behavior of other nations, as it does with
China’s maritime claims and the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea,
which the United States has neither signed nor ratified.
When proponents of liberal hegemony acknowledge this tension, some
argue that it is necessary, even beneficial to the project of building a
stable, liberal world order. The international system is anarchic and
actors worse than the United States abound, ready to fill any power
vacuum left vacant by Washington or its close allies. Such an order
needs a powerful state to enforce it, and sometimes it may be necessary
to bend or even break rules in defense of higher principles.
In a recent article for The Atlantic,
journalist Tom McTague made such a case, examining the “idea that
convinces U.S. leaders that they never oppress, only liberate, and that
their interventions can never be a threat to nearby powers, because
America is not imperialist.” McTague recognizes that this – the notion
that the U.S. is driven by universal values and acts in the universal
interest – is both a “delusion” and “lies at the core of [the United
States’] most costly foreign policy miscalculations.” Yet McTague
asserts that this delusion is necessary to sustain America’s commitment
to upholding global order and keeping more malicious powers at bay.
thecradle | The cold-blooded assassination of Darya Dugina
– terrorism at the gates of Moscow – may have fatefully coincided with
the six-month intersection point, but will do nothing to change the
dynamics of the current, work-in-progress, historical shift.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) appeared to have cracked the
case in a little over 24 hours, designating the perpetrator as a
neo-Nazi Azov operative instrumentalized by the Security Service of
Ukraine (SBU) – itself a mere tool of the CIA/MI6 combo that de facto
rules Kiev.
The Azov operative is just a patsy. The FSB will never reveal in
public the intel it has amassed on those that issued the orders, and how
they will be dealt with.
One Ilya Ponomaryov, an anti-Kremlin minor character granted
Ukrainian citizenship, boasted he was in contact with the outfit that
prepared the hit on the Dugin family. No one took him seriously.
What is manifestly serious, however, is how oligarchy-connected
organized crime factions in Russia would have a motive to eliminate
Alexander Dugin, the Christian Orthodox nationalist philosopher who,
according to them, may have influenced the Kremlin’s pivot to Asia (he
didn’t).
These organized crime factions blamed Dugin for a concerted Kremlin
offensive against the disproportional power of Jewish oligarchs in
Russia. So these actors would have both the motive and the local
know-how to mount such a coup.
If that’s the case, it potentially spells out a Mossad-linked
operation – especially given the serious schism in Moscow’s recent
relations with Tel Aviv. What’s certain is that the FSB will keep their
cards very close to their chest – and retribution will be swift, precise
and invisible.
The straw that broke the camel’s back
Instead of delivering a serious blow to Russia’s psyche that could
impact the dynamics of its operations in Ukraine, the assassination of
Darya Dugina only exposed the perpetrators as tawdry killers who have
exhausted their options.
An IED cannot kill a philosopher – or his daughter. In an essential essay, Dugin himself explained how the real war – Russia against the US-led collective west – is a war of ideas. An existential war.
Dugin correctly defines the US as a “thalassocracy,” heir to
“Britannia rules the waves.” Yet now the geopolitical tectonic plates
are spelling out a new order: The Return of the Heartland.
Russian President Vladimir Putin himself first spelled it out at the
Munich Security Conference in 2007. China’s Xi Jinping put it into
action by launching the New Silk Roads in 2013. The Empire struck back
with Maidan in 2014. Russia counter-attacked by coming to the aid of
Syria in 2015.
The Empire doubled down on Ukraine, with NATO weaponizing it non-stop
for eight years. At the end of 2021, Moscow invited Washington for a
serious dialogue on “indivisibility of security” in Europe. That was
dismissed with a non-response response.
gatestoneinstitute | Can Americans of Chinese descent be loyal to both America and China?
No. China's Communist Party has made itself an existential threat to
America and every other society. The Chinese regime, especially in
recent years under General Secretary Xi, has been pushing the notion
that it holds the Mandate of Heaven to rule tianxia, "All Under Heaven." The promotion of tianxia
means, among other things, that the Party views the U.S. government as
illegitimate and America as nothing more than a tributary society or
colony.
To make matters worse, the Chinese state has been open about its
hostility to the United States. Among other things, in May 2019 People's Daily,
the Party's self-described "mouthpiece" and therefore most
authoritative publication in China, declared a "people's war" on
America.
Let me end on a personal note, as dragon blood proudly flows in my
veins. My dad, who arrived in this country in early 1945, came from a
small farming village in Jiangsu province, across the mighty Yangtze
River from Shanghai. My mother's family traces its roots to Dundee, in
Scotland, but I have not identified with that half of my heritage. I
grew up in New Jersey, steeped in Dad's stories of the Yellow Emperor
and of course tales of dragons.
Nonetheless, my story-telling dad never missed an opportunity to vote
or tell his four children how wonderful his adopted country was. He
always said "China is my birthplace but America is my home."
We "Chinese-Americans"—I abhor the term—need to remember where we now
live. We cannot remain oblivious, as we so far have had the luxury of
doing.
Although we technically do not have an obligation to prove our
loyalty to America, we must, as a group, understand that a hostile power
is trying to weaponize us. Xi Jinping has openly called on us to become
a subversive force, to help him destroy the country we now call home.
It is time, therefore, for us to begin cleaning our own ranks. This
means, among other things, not tolerating displays promoting Chinese
communism in our country. Moreover, it means not shouting "racism" every
time law enforcement arrests someone of Chinese descent. If we do not
take the lead in these tasks, others will naturally do that for us.
We may think it unfair, but we now have to make a choice.
After all, our country—the United States of America—is in peril
because a foreign state—the People's Republic of China—is attacking it
and hoping to use us to take it down.
The Communist Party of China refers to us as "overseas patriotic
forces." People in our communities will want to know to which country we
feel patriotic.
FP | Modi’s BJP government is also undercutting India’s institutions in
unprecedented ways. It has made a mockery of India’s rich tradition of
civil liberties by charging activists and dissidents with crimes under
colonial-era laws. One egregious example is the case of left-wing activists detained
under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for alleged
links to Maoist groups and allegedly fomenting riots. One of the
accused, lifelong Jesuit activist Rev. Stan Swamy,
died in custody last year. Furthermore, Modi and the BJP have co-opted
much of the media and important private sector actors. Journalists have
faced intimidation and harassment;
prominent nongovernmental organizations have been cut off from foreign
funding while others can receive overseas money only into accounts with a
government-owned bank.
Unfortunately, the most important lessons from the independence
movement seem to be lost on India’s contemporary leaders, as shown by
their approach to religious pluralism and democratic institutions.
Although India’s leading revolutionaries were committed to nonviolence,
tensions between Hindus and Muslims marred the independence movement.
These tensions pulled the British Raj apart, and two new countries
emerged in its place: India and Pakistan. This week also marks the
anniversary of the Partition of India, which triggered one of the
world’s worst humanitarian disasters as Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs were
forced to flee in different directions across the new border. A few
months later, India and Pakistan went to war over the status of Jammu
and Kashmir—a disagreement that still plagues the subcontinent.
In the face of these tensions, India and Pakistan’s leaders charted
opposing courses. India’s leaders advanced a progressive and modern
vision for their new country, eschewing a national Hindu religion in
favor of a secular identity. They worked hard to minimize religious
tensions by speaking against communal strife and promoting religious
protections. When Gandhi was assassinated in 1948—for supposedly being a
supplicant to the Muslim community—his political heirs continued to
push for a liberal vision of India. Working with the opposition, they
produced a constitution that enshrined a liberal and secular democracy
that remains in force today.
On the other hand, Pakistan struggled. The country’s founder,
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, led the Muslim League that split from the Indian
National Congress. But he was rarely clear in his vision for Pakistan:
There is some evidence that he wanted a secular state,
but he also called for an Islamic republic. When Jinnah died in 1948,
he left behind a political mess. Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan’s first
prime minister, rejected amendments offered by the opposition in his own
founding document, which became a precursor to the country’s 1956
constitution that gave Islam its pride of place in the project of
Pakistan. By turning to communalism, Pakistan has suffered as political
actors stir religious tensions to benefit their own ends. Without
credible institutions or norms that allow political differences to be
resolved, the country has not been able to maintain political order.
Modi’s speech reflects how he and the BJP appear to embrace some of
these traits. By lionizing fringe actors from the independence
movement—including those who exacerbated religious tensions—they are
rewriting history to suit their own political agenda. They have
undermined civil liberties and shown basic disregard for political
opposition. Taking a page from Jinnah’s book, Modi has ensured that any
substantive decision must come through him. Such a system may work in
the short term, but what happens when Modi is no longer prime minister?
The contrast with then-Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s epic “A Tryst With Destiny” speech,
delivered on Aug. 14, 1947, couldn’t be starker. Nehru said he sought
to “bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and
workers of India; to fight poverty and ignorance and disease; to build
up a prosperous, democratic, and progressive nation.” Most poignantly,
he highlighted that India’s religious pluralism was integral to the
newly founded country: “All of us, to whatever religion we may belong,
are equally the children of India, with equal rights, privileges, and
obligations.”
India’s Independence Day has traditionally provided an opportunity to
reflect on the horrors of colonialism and the dangers of religious
discord while also celebrating the vibrance of the country’s democracy.
Modi’s speech this week reflects the departure that India’s contemporary
leaders have made from these foundational values.
A Foundation of Joy
-
Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
