The origins of May Day

By Eric Chase (IWW)

Most people living in the United States know little about the International Workers' Day of May Day. For many others there is an assumption that it is a holiday celebrated in state communist countries like Cuba or the former Soviet Union. Most Americans don't realize that May Day has its origins here in this country and is as "American" as baseball and apple pie, and stemmed from the pre-Christian holiday of Beltane, a celebration of rebirth and fertility.

In the late nineteenth century, the working class was in constant struggle to gain the 8-hour work day. Working conditions were severe and it was quite common to work 10 to 16 hour days in unsafe conditions. Death and injury were commonplace at many work places and inspired such books as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Jack London's The Iron Heel. As early as the 1860's, working people agitated to shorten the workday without a cut in pay, but it wasn't until the late 1880's that organized labor was able to garner enough strength to declare the 8-hour workday. This proclamation was without consent of employers, yet demanded by many of the working class.

At this time, socialism was a new and attractive idea to working people, many of whom were drawn to its ideology of working class control over the production and distribution of all goods and services. Workers had seen first-hand that Capitalism benefited only their bosses, trading workers' lives for profit. Thousands of men, women and children were dying needlessly every year in the workplace, with life expectancy as low as their early twenties in some industries, and little hope but death of rising out of their destitution. Socialism offered another option.

A variety of socialist organizations sprung up throughout the later half of the 19th century, ranging from political parties to choir groups. In fact, many socialists were elected into governmental office by their constituency. But again, many of these socialists were ham-strung by the political process which was so evidently controlled by big business and the bi-partisan political machine. Tens of thousands of socialists broke ranks from their parties, rebuffed the entire political process, which was seen as nothing more than protection for the wealthy, and created anarchist groups throughout the country. Literally thousands of working people embraced the ideals of anarchism, which sought to put an end to all hierarchical structures (including government), emphasized worker controlled industry, and valued direct action over the bureaucratic political process. It is inaccurate to say that labor unions were "taken over" by anarchists and socialists, but rather anarchists and socialist made up the labor unions.

At its national convention in Chicago, held in 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (which later became the American Federation of Labor), proclaimed that "eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor from and after May 1, 1886." The following year, the FOTLU, backed by many Knights of Labor locals, reiterated their proclamation stating that it would be supported by strikes and demonstrations. At first, most radicals and anarchists regarded this demand as too reformist, failing to strike "at the root of the evil." A year before the Haymarket Massacre, Samuel Fielden pointed out in the anarchist newspaper, The Alarm, that "whether a man works eight hours a day or ten hours a day, he is still a slave."

Despite the misgivings of many of the anarchists, an estimated quarter million workers in the Chicago area became directly involved in the crusade to implement the eight hour work day, including the Trades and Labor Assembly, the Socialistic Labor Party and local Knights of Labor. As more and more of the workforce mobilized against the employers, these radicals conceded to fight for the 8-hour day, realizing that "the tide of opinion and determination of most wage-workers was set in this direction." With the involvement of the anarchists, there seemed to be an infusion of greater issues than the 8-hour day. There grew a sense of a greater social revolution beyond the more immediate gains of shortened hours, but a drastic change in the economic structure of capitalism.

Not surprisingly the entire city was prepared for mass bloodshed, reminiscent of the railroad strike a decade earlier when police and soldiers gunned down hundreds of striking workers. On May 1, 1886, more than 300,000 workers in 13,000 businesses across the United States walked off their jobs in the first May Day celebration in history. In Chicago, the epicenter for the 8-hour day agitators, 40,000 went out on strike with the anarchists in the forefront of the public's eye. With their fiery speeches and revolutionary ideology of direct action, anarchists and anarchism became respected and embraced by the working people and despised by the capitalists.

The names of many - Albert Parsons, Johann Most, August Spies and Louis Lingg - became household words in Chicago and throughout the country. Parades, bands and tens of thousands of demonstrators in the streets exemplified the workers' strength and unity, yet didn't become violent as the newspapers and authorities predicted.

More and more workers continued to walk off their jobs until the numbers swelled to nearly 100,000, yet peace prevailed. It was not until two days later, May 3, 1886, that violence broke out at the McCormick Reaper Works between police and strikers.

For six months, armed Pinkerton agents and the police harassed and beat locked-out steelworkers as they picketed. Most of these workers belonged to the "anarchist-dominated" Metal Workers' Union. During a speech near the McCormick plant, some two hundred demonstrators joined the steelworkers on the picket line. Beatings with police clubs escalated into rock throwing by the strikers which the police responded to with gunfire. At least two strikers were killed and an unknown number were wounded.

Full of rage, a public meeting was called by some of the anarchists for the following day in Haymarket Square to discuss the police brutality. Due to bad weather and short notice, only about 3,000 of the tens of thousands of people showed up from the day before. This affair included families with children and the mayor of Chicago himself. Later, the mayor would testify that the crowd remained calm and orderly and that speaker August Spies made "no suggestion... for immediate use of force or violence toward any person..."

As the speech wound down, two detectives rushed to the main body of police, reporting that a speaker was using inflammatory language, inciting the police to march on the speakers' wagon. As the police began to disperse the already thinning crowd, a bomb was thrown into the police ranks. No one knows who threw the bomb, but speculations varied from blaming any one of the anarchists, to an agent provocateur working for the police.

Enraged, the police fired into the crowd. The exact number of civilians killed or wounded was never determined, but an estimated seven or eight civilians died, and up to forty were wounded. One officer died immediately and another seven died in the following weeks. Later evidence indicated that only one of the police deaths could be attributed to the bomb and that all the other police fatalities had or could have had been due to their own indiscriminate gun fire. Aside from the bomb thrower, who was never identified, it was the police, not the anarchists, who perpetrated the violence.

Eight anarchists - Albert Parsons, August Spies, Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe, Michael Schwab, George Engel, Adolph Fischer and Louis Lingg - were arrested and convicted of murder, though only three were even present at Haymarket and those three were in full view of all when the bombing occurred. The jury in their trial was comprised of business leaders in a gross mockery of justice similar to the Sacco-Vanzetti case thirty years later, or the trials of AIM and Black Panther members in the seventies. The entire world watched as these eight organizers were convicted, not for their actions, of which all of were innocent, but for their political and social beliefs. On November 11, 1887, after many failed appeals, Parsons, Spies, Engel and Fisher were hung to death. Louis Lingg, in his final protest of the state's claim of authority and punishment, took his own life the night before with an explosive device in his mouth.

The remaining organizers, Fielden, Neebe and Schwab, were pardoned six years later by Governor Altgeld, who publicly lambasted the judge on a travesty of justice. Immediately after the Haymarket Massacre, big business and government conducted what some say was the very first "Red Scare" in this country. Spun by mainstream media, anarchism became synonymous with bomb throwing and socialism became un-American. The common image of an anarchist became a bearded, eastern European immigrant with a bomb in one hand and a dagger in the other.

Today we see tens of thousands of activists embracing the ideals of the Haymarket Martyrs and those who established May Day as an International Workers' Day. Ironically, May Day is an official holiday in 66 countries and unofficially celebrated in many more, but rarely is it recognized in this country where it began.

Over one hundred years have passed since that first May Day. In the earlier part of the 20th century, the US government tried to curb the celebration and further wipe it from the public's memory by establishing "Law and Order Day" on May 1. We can draw many parallels between the events of 1886 and today. We still have locked out [workers] struggling for justice. We still have voices of freedom behind bars as in the cases of Mumia Abu Jamal and Leonard Peltier. We still had the ability to mobilize tens of thousands of people in the streets of a major city to proclaim "THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!" at the WTO and FTAA demonstrations.

Words stronger than any I could write are engraved on the Haymarket Monument:

    THE DAY WILL COME WHEN OUR SILENCE WILL BE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE VOICES YOU ARE THROTTLING TODAY.

Truly, history has a lot to teach us about the roots of our radicalism. When we remember that people were shot so we could have the 8-hour day; if we acknowledge that homes with families in them were burned to the ground so we could have Saturday as part of the weekend; when we recall 8-year old victims of industrial accidents who marched in the streets protesting working conditions and child labor only to be beat down by the police and company thugs, we understand that our current condition cannot be taken for granted - people fought for the rights and dignities we enjoy today, and there is still a lot more to fight for. The sacrifices of so many people can not be forgotten or we'll end up fighting for those same gains all over again. This is why we celebrate May Day.

'We will be huggers of trees'

Vandana Shiva, a world-famous environmental activist from India.

Her latest book is entitled "One Earth, One Humanity vs. the 1%". 

She talks about her opposition to big multinationals such as Monsanto for their nefarious influence on agriculture. But Shiva also singles out billionaires like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg for criticism - calling them 'bio-pirates'. 

"When Bill Gates pours money into Africa for feeding the poor in Africa and preventing famine, he’s pushing the failed Green Revolution, he’s pushing chemicals, pushing GMOs, pushing patterns", she tells FRANCE 24's Marc Perelman.

Discussing a must see film

Academy award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore and associates discuss their new documentary, 'Planet of the Humans,' a film that says we are selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America.

The reality is that Wall Street demands for 'endless growth' is destroying our Mother Earth.

You can find the free film here

History lesson: Operation Paperclip & Nazi operatives to America

Author Annie Jacobsen presents a slideshow about her book, Operation Paperclip, and takes questions from the audience.  Paperclip was the secret Pentagon program to smuggle more than 1,600 Nazi's into the US at the end of World War II.

In Germany the Nazis had a concentration camp called Dora where 40,000 Jews, French resistance fighters, homosexuals, communists and other prisoners of war (including a black American GI) were brought to build the V-1 and V-2 inside a mountain tunnel called Mittelwerk. By the time the slaves were liberated by the allies, over 25,000 had perished at the hands of the Nazi rocketeers.

Hitler's military liason to von Braun's rocket team was Maj. Gen. Walter Dornberger. Several times Dornberger and von Braun met with Hitler requesting more money and more slaves so they could step up the rocket production effort. Hitler was anxious to use the rockets to terrorize European cities like London, Paris and Brussels toward the end of the war as the Nazi army began to lose. Dornberger and von Braun showed Hitler films of the V-2 rocket launches to prove they were making significant progress.

Dornberger came to the U.S. along with von Braun's rocket team during Operation Paperclip. According to author Jack Manno in his book Arming the Heavens: The Hidden Military Agenda for Space, 1945-1995, Dornberger was appointed as a vice-president at Bell Aviation Corporation in New York and served on the first 'military oversight committee' that ensured that NASA was controlled by the Pentagon from the first days. It was Dornberger who first came up with the idea of 'missile defense' as an offensive program that would have nuclear powered satellites orbiting the planet and able to hit targets on Earth.

Kurt Debus, the chief of V-2 launch operations in Hitler's Germany, later became Chief of Operations for NASA at Cape Canaveral. When tourists converge on the Kennedy Space Center they will pass by a portrait of the former German SS member that hangs in the entrance in honor of Debus's service as the center's first director.

In a book called The Hunt for Zero Point, respected military journalist Nick Cook talks much about the "black" (the Pentagon's secret) budget. For 15 years Cook had been a defense and aerospace writer for Jane's Defence Weekly, which some consider the bible of the international weapons community. Cook spent 10 years researching secret military programs in the U.S. and believed that well over $40 billion a year is spent on these programs outside the purview of Congress. Cook states, "It [black programs] has a vast and sprawling architecture funded by tens of billion of classified dollars every year. The height of its powers was probably in the Reagan era. But it has not stopped since then. In fact, under the Bush administration it [had] something of a resurgence. Stealth technology is a primary example...research into anti-gravity technology...has been going on for quite some time."

Cook traced the roots of the U.S.'s secret programs back to the Nazi scientists brought to the U.S. after WW II in Operation Paperclip. He states, "We know the size and scope of Operation Paperclip, which was huge. And we know that the U.S. operates a very deeply secret defense architecture for secret weapons programs...it is highly compartmentalized...and one of the things that's intrigued me over the years is, How did they develop it? What model did they base it on? It is remarkably similar to the system that was operated by the Germans - specifically the SS - for their top-secret weapons programs."

"What I do mean," says Cook, "is that if you follow the trail of Nazi scientists and engineers who were recruited by America at the end of the second world war, the unfortunate corollary is that by taking on the science, you take on - unwittingly - some of the ideology...What do you lose along the way?" 

Must watch: Nuclear war becomes automatic

I have a San Quentin prisoner friend who calls every couple of weeks.  Last night he called and insisted that we watch 'Fail Safe' so we paid $4 online and saw this movie.  I'd heard of it before but had never seen it.  I'd strongly urge everyone to watch it.

Sidney Lumets powerful and shocking film Fail Safe opened in 1964. Released just after Dr. Strangelove, Fail Safe was a serious wake up call during the Cold War. 

Henry Fonda plays the president of the US who must make the tough decisions when technology takes over and limits human options to prevent nuclear war.  With the coming of Artificial Intelligence (AI) we are going to increasingly turn over life and death decision making to robots and computers.

Let this be a warning.

You can pay online to see Fail Safe here

Bruce

Bernie’s Political Funeral

By Kathleen Wallace

The end of the Bernie Sanders campaign always had a destination that was not the White House.

I’ll admit that I anticipated it playing out in a slightly different manner. The wildcard in all of this was COVID-19, but like all good disaster capitalists, the DNC, with the help of the Obama faction, used it to their advantage. I anticipated a contested convention, maybe a little latte-level rioting……but even that didn’t come to fruition. Sanders flamed out like a crappy defective Roman candle.

I counted myself as a Sanders supporter, of course that statement is interchangeable with “I decided to be an amateur piñata again since it had only been 4 years since I had the shit beat out of me with a stick by the neoliberal establishment. Mmmmm…….. want me some of that again.”

I assume for many like myself, Sanders was a huge compromise, but one we signed on for anyway.

His stances weren’t really that radical—hell, they would most likely not even raise one hair of an eyebrow in most other western nations. It’s testimony to how far right our government has slid that this guy was bandied about as a commie menace. Like he needed the 1980 US Hockey team to take him down. The reactionary damage from the Republicans has been solidified and was magnified surreptitiously through the Clinton and Obama administrations. Many seem to understand the brazen assault during Republican administrations, but the Democrats were like a thief from your family, living in your own house and by virtue of that, not really suspected readily of doing such things. Now we find ourselves in this craggy-ass rugged individualistic Randian state—all problems are the fault of the individual; society has no obligation to do anything for anyone. Sociopaths and corporations thrive.

Now Sanders definitely had problematic behavior in terms of being a member of Empire Inc. (despite a few good takes)—overall he was a clear part of the imperialist team. He didn’t show signs of any radical beliefs that would truly upset the ongoing death march of capitalism. I believe he was a bit of an FDR in that he might have thrown enough bones to the working class to have staved off unrest. The unmitigated greed necessary to not even allow that much change will surely be looked upon as one of the pivotal moments in American history. It of course begs the question—what would have happened without FDR’s New Deal? Misery for sure (short-term) but would something radical have been propelled forward without it? What would this time look like now if a more overt rebellion had ensued? I always thought it was a given that these measures were good and kind, but now I know the whole system is pure trash and always was—it’s seductive though, when you see people suffer through healthcare disparities and debt, you want them to be helped because you’re not a monster. Sanders was a siren song for immediate relief, or at least the illusion of it. Certainly, it’s a trap a lot of people with empathy fall into. It’s terrifying to consider complete collapse when you know so many will suffer—you don’t know what will emerge on the other side. It could be far worse. By the same token, backing Sanders and other milquetoast types could be like pulling off a band aid for decades and then generations—the pain is always there, but you’re able to continue functioning as a proper member of the state, there for them to feed off of. I don’t pretend to know the right way to proceed, but sometimes I’m weak and want the suffering to be mitigated. That could perhaps be at the expense of a truly needed systemic overhaul that might bring real change. I just don’t know, but that is basically why I supported Sanders. I’m just tossing around ideas, not solutions or decrees.

The sheer lunacy of participating in something so completely and fully rigged isn’t compatible with self-esteem though, and a lot of Bernie supporters, who overall are good and genuine people, merely wanted a better life for everyone. These supporters are feeling humiliated and played. Because they were. And they didn’t deserve it. All they wanted was a fair vote and media that was at least somewhat unbiased. They received neither. I really hoped the DNC wouldn’t take the path of dodgy apps in Iowa and causing by whatever means, the mismatches in exit polling extreme enough to indicate fraud. I was not surprised that they did this, but even I was taken aback by their use of voters as hostages. Encouraging in-person voting during a pandemic is an evil that I didn’t consider they would utilize. What else is in their bag of tricks? Kindergarten poisonings? Jesus DNC—you’re some sick fucks. Tom Perez, what the hell are you?  I’m sure that factored into Sanders dropping out when he did. Continued in-person voting would surely increase, umm……. plague issues. The slight traction he could have continued to have in advancing things like universal healthcare during a pandemic wasn’t even allowed to continue. This is a system that has nothing left to offer but wasted time and money from people who can’t afford either.

One thing perplexing about the current situation is this: Does the DNC really even want to win? Continued, generalized venom abounds in their treatment towards the left and even Sanders exudes petulant bitchiness towards his own previous staffers and surrogates. I’m thinking in particular of his statement in regard to Briahna Joy Gray when asked about her refusal to endorse Biden. He snarkily said “She is my former press secretary—not on the payroll.” One shouldn’t be surprised though, because he did the same treatment to surrogate Zephyr Teachout. She had an op-ed piece awhile back saying that Biden had a corruption problem. Bernie apologized….to Biden.  Bernie is very good at letting down his supporters. He would be the dad you come home to and complain that a bully beat you up. He would listen with attention and care, but then march you over to the bully’s house to apologize for sinking to the bully’s level.

More along the lines of do they really want to win???  The Biden campaign had an unbelievable sticker to pull in the vote, I guess….one that showed “plutocrat” and “socialist” crossed out and replaced with “proud democrat”. The inevitable conclusion is that they don’t want the Bernie supporters who identify with socialism and are fueling up to come off as distasteful to the Independent voters who decide general elections. I’m sure the plutocrats aren’t concerned. They win no matter what. The conclusion I come to is that they are ready to lose, in fact are fine with it, as their class will be protected. Despite the obvious embarrassing optics of a Trump presidency, the meat of it is that these types do well under his policies. It’s seeming to be a lot like theater and being continuously dismissive to the left, to the point of overt hostility will keep voters away from Biden. It’s too much to have been played in a rigged process and then to have literal insult added on. The continued gaslighting coming from a progressive talking-points babbling Obama the last few days is enough to replace all the worlds ipecac syrup. But it won’t make Charlie Brown try again for Lucy’s football. Just once I wish Charlie Brown would have beat the shit out of Lucy for that. That might make Lucy stop. Voting for Biden won’t make them stop.

For a time, it looked like they would push a Mayor Pete on us after New Hampshire. He seemed to have the Obama-esque method of flowery nothing-speak down pat. He also carried with him a virtue signaling token for the liberal voter, the of being gay—like Obama being biracial signaled a progressive notion that had no concrete benefit to anyone, but you could “feel” progressive backing him if you were an older voter—as if you were doing something noble ignoring the fact that he wasn’t lily white. Actual leftists have moved beyond that kind of optics only candidate.  Anyway, Mayor Pete for whatever reason, didn’t take, so they went with the guy who seems completely out of his gourd. During this primary fiasco I had a very off-putting dream/nightmare that I went to see my disturbed mother in the nursing home she resides in. While visiting her, I noticed one of the other residents was Joe Biden. I kept trying to tell people after the visit that he wasn’t a good choice for president as he lives at a nursing home in Oskaloosa, Kansas, but nobody would believe me. I woke up and thought “yeah, that’s about right.” That Cassandra thing all over again. The DNC choosing to elevate a character like Biden looks a lot like not caring if you win or lose. He’s that flawed of a candidate.

I did hope that having Bernie in the mix during the primary would also help others come to the conclusion that they matter—that they don’t deserve crippling debt, but I’m thinking COVID-19 is doing more for the left than any Sanders campaign. Suddenly the people who matter as far as keeping us going are being called heroes. Sure, it’s mostly empty platitudes, but the people doing those jobs know it’s fucking true. The notion that they didn’t deserve a living wage even though they are keeping the rest of us alive and fed now seems a bit more obscene than before.  It’s obvious who matters to society and who is needed. The people with bullshit jobs can sit it out, but they are typically the ones making the largest sums of money. This is evidence that is difficult to overlook. It’s evidence of structural dumb-fuckery that exists for no reason other than to keep a medieval class stratification in place. And the sheer incompetence of our government is in full view as healthcare workers wear garbage bags. In this case the emperor has on no clothes and the rest of us have homemade cloth masks. This is not the stuff of a normal society. Nothing is owed to those who treat us in this manner. This would have been evident with or without some of us taking part in the doomed heartbreak of another Sanders run.

The world is in turmoil and the fakery is known. What a bizarre ride we are all on, but if I ever, ever show signs of getting emotionally invested in any of these staged political theatrics….you know like Bernie 2024……..forget the piñata pretense and just hit me with the nearest large stick to the point of euthanasia.

~ Kathleen Wallace writes out of the US Midwest 

Dr. Boyle: COVID-19 is a bio-warfare agent

SARS-CoV-2 — A Biological Warfare Weapon?

April 26, 2020

Francis Boyle, a former advisory board member for the Council for Responsible Genetics, is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law.

His educational background includes an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago, a juris doctor (lawyer) degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. in political science. For decades, he’s advocated against the development and use of bio-weapons, which he suspects COVID-19 is.

In fact, Boyle was the one who called for bio-warfare legislation at the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, and the one who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, which was passed unanimously by both houses of Congress and signed into law by George Bush Sr.

In our first, March 8, 2020, interview, Boyle shared his views on the origins of the novel corona-virus, SARS-CoV-2. Here, we continue our discussion, as more details have emerged about this virus. One of the criticisms raised since our last interview is that Boyle has no formal training in virology. When asked what makes him qualified to speak about this particular virus, he says:

“I went to the University of Chicago, which is one of the top five universities in the country, if not the world. There I took their bio pre-med sequence, which was biochemistry, population biology and genetics, and got straight A’s.

I was in there competing with all the University of Chicago bio pre-med students for grades and my biochem lab partner went to Harvard Medical School.

I won the University of Chicago’s Sigma Zi award and prize in biology for my graduating year. They gave out one per year and it usually went to seniors, but in my case, they had to make a special exception because I was a graduating junior.

So, yes, I’m not a scientist, but one of the reasons the Council for Responsible Genetics asked me to get involved was that my knowledge in this field was well-known to my life science friends there on the Harvard faculty, and that’s how I got involved here.

I had basic rudimentary training, actually very good training, at the University of Chicago, and my professors there, professor friends at Harvard in the life sciences, I guess they vouched for me. So, when I was asked to join shortly after CRG was founded in 1983, I agreed to do so and they asked me to handle their biological warfare work.”

SARS-CoV-2 — A Biological Warfare Weapon

“Novel corona-virus” means it is a new virus not previously known to previously infect humans. The currently held conventional view is that SARS-CoV-2 was transmitted through animals (zoonotic transmission), specifically bats. Boyle dismissed this notion in our initial interview, and still refutes the idea.

While a widely-cited paper, published in the Nature journal on February 3, 2020, claims to establish that SARS-CoV-2 is a corona-virus of bat origin that then jumped species, the work of one of the authors of that paper, Shi Zhengli, actually involved the weaponization of the SARS virus. (Another Nature paper published that same day reiterates the idea that the COVID-19 pandemic is zoonotically transmitted.)

However, according to Boyle, other scientific literature establishes that this is indeed an engineered synthetic virus that was not transmitted from animals to humans without human intervention.

For starters, a Lancet paper published February 15, 2020, by physicians who treated some of the first COVID-19 patients in China showed that patient zero, the one believed to have started the transmission, was nowhere near the Wuhan seafood market.

What’s more, there were no bats sold in or even close to the market. At least one-third of the patients reviewed also had no exposure or links to that market. This data supports the counter-hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 was not zoonotically transmitted but is in fact an engineered virus.

Even U.S. politicians and intelligence agencies are starting to say they believe the virus leaked from the Wuhan BSL4 lab. In our first interview, Boyle discussed published research establishing that the novel corona-virus is SARS, which is a weaponized version of the corona-virus to begin with Wuhan BSL4 lab, with added gain-of-function capabilities that increases its virulence (makes it spread easier and faster).

“I also went through the scientific article where the Australian health board working with Wuhan … genetically engineered HIV into SARS,” Boyle says. “So, that is all verified in scientific papers. In addition, it seems to me that they took that back to the [Wuhan] BSL4 and applied nanotechnology to it.

The size of the molecules are maybe 120 microns, which indicates to me we are dealing with nanotechnology. That’s [something] you need to do in a BSL4. Biological weapons nanotechnology is so dangerous, people working with it have to wear a moon suit with portable air …

We also know that one of the cooperating institutions [to Wuhan BSL4] was Harvard, and that the chairman of the Harvard chemistry department, [Dr. Charles Lieber], a specialist in nanotechnology, set up an entire laboratory in Wuhan where [according to reports] he specialized in applying nanotechnology to chemistry and biology.

My guess is, based on what I’ve read in the literature, that they tried to weaponize all that together. And that is SARS-CoV-2 that we are dealing with now.

So, it’s SARS, which is genetically engineered bio-warfare agent to begin with. Second, it has gain-of-function properties, which makes it more lethal, more infectious. It has HIV in there. That was confirmed by an Indian scientist … and it looks like nanotechnology [has been used]… An MIT scientist who did a study found that it traveled 27 feet through the air. And that, I guess, was in lab conditions.

That, I think, is why it’s so infectious, and that is what I believe we are dealing with here … [This is] why the 6-foot [distancing suggestion] by the CDC … is preposterous. Even doubling that will do you no good. If there is nanotechnology, it floats in the air …

I am not saying that China deliberately released this, shooting itself in the foot. But it was clear they were developing an extremely dangerous unknown biological weapon that had never been seen before, and it leaked out of the lab.

And as you see in the Washington Post, U.S. State Department officials … [reported] back to Washington that there were inadequate safety precautions and procedures in that lab to begin with. We also know that SARS has leaked out of other Chinese biological warfare labs. So right now, I believe that is what happened here …

I personally believe that until our political leaders come clean with the American people, both at the White House and in Congress and our state government, and publicly admit that this is an extremely dangerous offensive biological warfare weapon that we are dealing with, I do not see that we will be able to confront it and to stop it, let alone defeat it.”

The Origin of SARS-CoV-2

While Boyle made the origin of SARS-CoV-2 clear in our initial conversation, as I started reading some of the literature it really was shocking because one of the primary investigators on the 2015 paper from the University of North Carolina — “A SARS-like Cluster of Circulating Bat Corona-viruses Shows Potential for Human Emergence” — was Dr. Shi Zhengli, a virologist who in 2010 had published a paper discussing the weaponization of the SARS virus.

Normally, while the corona-virus found in bats may be SARS, it typically does not infect humans as it does not target the ACE-2 receptor. The infectious agent causing the current pandemic is called SARS-CoV-2 — SARS standing for “serious acute respiratory infection” and CoV-2 indicating that it’s a second type of SARS corona-virus known to infect humans. 

SARS-CoV-2, of course, contains the genetic modification to attach to ACE2 receptors in human cells, which allows it to infect them. Zhengli’s publications show that she engineered this bat corona-virus into one that crosses species and infects humans. She has in fact been working on this for more than 10 years.

“That is why I said SARS was a bio-engineered warfare weapon to begin with,” Boyle says. “And that is what … [the University of] North Carolina and … the Australian lab were trying to make even more dangerous with the gain-of-function and the HIV. So … SARS was a biological warfare [agent]to begin with, it leaked, and that is the origin of the [COVID-19] epidemic.”

In addition, an Indian paper that ended up being withdrawn due to intense political pressure, shows a specific envelope protein from the HIV virus called GP41 was integrated in the RNA sequences of SARS-CoV-2. In other words, the implication is that the HIV virus was genetically engineered into SARS.

So, in summary, SARS-CoV-2 appears to be a bio-engineered bat corona-virus — which was initially benign and non-transmittable to humans. Zhengli then genetically modified the virus to integrate spike proteins that allows the virus to enter human cells by attaching to ACE-2 receptors. That was the first modification.

The second modification was to integrate an envelope protein from HIV called GP141, which tends to impair the immune system. A third modification appears to involve nanotechnology to make the virus light enough to remain airborne for a long time, apparently giving it a range of up to 27 feet.

Nanotech Expert With Wuhan Connection Arrested

While the BSL4 lab in Wuhan may have leaked the virus, its creation does not appear to be limited to the Chinese. As noted by Boyle in his comment above, the chairman of the Harvard department of chemistry, nano-science expert Dr. Charles Lieber, was arrested earlier this year by federal agencies, suspected of illegal dealings with China.. Lieber has denied the allegations.

The Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) allegedly paid him $50,000 a month from 2012 to 2017 to help establish and oversee the WUT-Harvard Joint Nano Key Laboratory. He also received another $150,000 a month in living expenses from China’s Thousand Talents program. The problem was, Harvard officials claim they had not approved the lab and didn’t know about it until 2015. Boyle comments:

“The cover story here — that Harvard didn’t know what was going on — is preposterous. I spent seven years at Harvard. I have three degrees from Harvard. I spent two years teaching at Harvard.

Of course Harvard knew that its chair of the chemistry department had this lab in Wuhan, China, where he was working on nanotechnology with respect to chemical and biological materials. That’s been reported. They didn’t say what the materials were. In addition, it has now been reported that Harvard was a cooperating institution with the Wuhan BSL4.”

Researchers Working on Gain-of-Function to Spanish Flu

If you think SARS-CoV-2 is bad, be glad it’s not the weaponized version of Spanish flu, which has also been in the works, according to Boyle. He says:

“[The University of North Carolina’s] work was existentially dangerous and they knew it at the time. If you read the UNC scientific article16 [co-written by] the Wuhan BSL4 scientist [Shi Zhengli] … it says, ‘Experiments with the full-length and chimeric SHC014 recombinant viruses were initiated and performed before the GOF research funding pause and have since been reviewed and approved for continued study by the NIH.’

It says recombinant … So, they admit it was gain-of-function [research]. [The research] was paused by NIH [National Institutes of Health]. Why was it paused by NIH? Because there was a letter put out by large numbers of life scientists at the time saying this type of gain-of-function work … could be existentially dangerous if it got out in the public. Therefore, it had to be terminated … [But] the NIH was funding this in the beginning …

A footnote here: I read the NIH’s pause letter to the University of North Carolina, and UNC was doing two gain-of-function research projects. The other one was with Dr. [Yoshihiro] Kawaoka from the University of Wisconsin, who had resurrected the Spanish flu virus for the Pentagon.

He, according to the pause letter, was also there doing gain-of-function work on the flu virus — one could only conclude it was the Spanish flu virus. It did not say the Spanish flu, but they also put a gain-of-function pause on that type of deadly research …

I mean, the Spanish flu, we all know what that is, so imagine giving the Spanish flu gain-of-function properties, making it even more lethal and more infectious. That’s exactly what was going on there at that UNC lab …”

Disturbingly, while the NIH halted funding of this kind of gain-of-function research on lethal pathogens in 2014, it reauthorized it in December 2017, and Boyle suspects Kawaoka’s work may have been restarted as well, although he’s not found proof of it yet.

“So, this was existentially dangerous work that was going on at that UNC lab. Everyone knew it, NIH funded it, NIAID under Dr. Fauci funded it as well. They knew exactly how dangerous this was. They paused it and then they resumed it,” Boyle says.

Can Violations of Bio-warfare Treaty Be Enforced?

As mentioned, Boyle is a professor of international law and drafted an international treaty on bio-warfare agents and weapons. That law is still in force, and would provide life imprisonment for everyone involved in the creation and release of SARS-CoV-2, were it officially concluded to be a bio-warfare agent.

“If you read that UNC article, it says exactly it was dealing with synthetic molecules … And in my biological weapons anti-terrorism act of 1989, I specifically criminalized — by that name — synthetic molecules.

That is why, at first, the whole synthetic biology movement … was set up by the Pentagons DARPA. They funded the whole thing. And it’s DARPA money that is behind synthetic biology, gene drive and all the rest of it.

And that is why at the first convention of synthetic biologists, in their final report, one of their key recommendations was the repeal of my biological weapons anti-terrorism act, because they fully intended to use synthetic biology to manufacture biological weapons …

The law still applies. It provides for life imprisonment for everyone who has done this … all the scientists involved at the University of North Carolina and everyone who funded this project, knowing that it was existentially dangerous — and that includes Fauci and [people at]the NIH … UNC, Food and Drug Administration … the Dana Harvard Cancer Institute at Harvard … the World Health Organization …”

So, just how would we get that process of justice going? Boyle explains:

“There are two ways. First, you’re going to have to pressure the Department of Justice to prosecute these people. That might be very difficult to do. Federal statutes require indictments to be brought by U.S. attorneys. However, just with respect to North Carolina, state law applies there too. I haven’t researched North Carolina law; however, I was originally hired here to teach criminal law and I taught it for seven or eight years …

To have criminal intent, one of the variants of criminal intent is the demonstration of grave indifference to human life. And that is the criminal intent necessary for homicide.

So in my opinion, and my advice would be, if we can’t get [attorney general William Pelham] Barr to sign off on prosecuting these people, that the district attorney, state’s attorney, attorney general out there in North Carolina, institute and indict everyone involved in this North Carolina work for homicide.

And that could include up to and including murder, malice of forethought. Again, one of the elements can be manifestation of grave indifference to human life. And it’s clear from this article [the 2015 UNC paper], they knew it was gain-of-function, they paused it because it was existentially dangerous, it was then re-approved and they continued it.

So, I think a good case could be made, certainly, for indicting these people under North Carolina law by North Carolina legal authorities, if the federal government is not going to do it for us, under my law [the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989]. But again, I want to make it clear, I haven’t research North Carolina law.”

Time to Shutter All BSL4 Laboratories?

Boyle is adamant that all BSL3 and BSL4 laboratories must be closed down and all bio-warfare work with lethal pathogens ceased. “They are all existentially dangerous,” he says. “This is a catastrophe waiting to happen. And it is now happened. Here we are. It’s staring us in the face.”

Certainly, COVID-19 is nowhere near as devastating as the Black Death or the Spanish flu of 1918, both of which exacted a shocking death toll, all without the aid of synthetic molecules and nanotechnology.

The very idea that any of these horrific illnesses might be brought back in turbo-charged form should be terrifying enough for the world to unite in saying “No thanks; we don’t want or need that kind of research going on.” What value have these dangerous laboratories provided to date compared to the risk they are exposing all of us to?

In closing, while Boyle believes COVID-19 has the ability to become a serious pandemic killer, I strongly disagree. Based on all the data I’ve seen so far, I believe he’s wrong on this point, and I suspect the death toll due to economic hardship and emotional stress will be far worse than the disease itself. 

Returning to normal?

So what actually
is normal?

Is normal endless
US-NATO military
war games?

Seven US wars
currently underway,
that's normal?

Is it normal
that Mother Earth
is thrashing about
in toxic shock?

Is normal
massive profits
for health insurance,
resource extraction,
weapons production
corporations?

Is normal
the string of US
bio-warfare labs
around the globe
(particularly along
Russia's border)?

Is normal
the choking
traffic snarls
in major cities
around the globe?

Is it normal
that the oceans
are collapsing,
sea-life threatened?

Is normal
the growing
amount of aluminum
in our soil
and our bodies?
Where does it come from?

So let's talk about
a new normal......

End the wars
convert the war machine,
public transit rather
than electric cars,

Conservation
and rejection
of consumerism

Free health care for all
Free public education
Shut down
fossil fuel industry

Stop glorifying
the growth culture
as if it were
inscribed in the bible

Walk, ride a bike,
spend time with your family,
pets, garden

Tax the rich
and giant corporations
Stop the oligarchs
control of Congress.
Reject the mafia-style
control of Washington.

Forget about planning
war in space.
Cut that budget.

Take care of every human
on Earth,
which would lead to the
stabilization of
global population

Once we do these things
then maybe we can
talk about normal.

When we truly listen to,
and embrace,
indigenous wisdom,
become
Earth-centered
spiritual beings
again,
then we might be heading
back toward
some kind of 
new normal.

Bruce

Sunday song - plus bonus poetry

Health care is a human right

Lisa Savage speaks with Dr. John Kazilionis about the crisis in US healthcare.

He called the current system a "dismal failure" that is "blatantly unfair" and "will end up bankrupting this country", and said he's come to realize that we need a single-payer system like Medicare For All.

Sign & share Lisa's petition for Medicare For All to make sure everyone who gets sick is covered and no one goes bankrupt!      https://www.lisaformaine.org/medicareforall 

Dr. Trump prescribes......

Now you are in the good hands with Dr. Trump running this virus pandemic

Stick out your tongue and say ahhh.....

Take a deep breath and cough

Please see the receptionist on your way out to pay your 'health insurance' bill - hope you brought your checkbook with you

Welcome to America - the greatest country in the history of the planet

See more on this story here

Ouch!

Bruce

Picking a fight with Iran

The US-Iranian standoff in the Persian Gulf has once again entered an acute phase. On April 22, US President Donald Trump announced that he had ordered the US Navy to “shoot down and destroy” Iranian gunboats that follow or harass US ships. In response, Commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, Major General Hossein Salami declared on April 23 that Iran will provide a swift, “decisive” and “effective” response to US forces if they threaten Iranian “vessels or warships”.

Even before Trump's vow to "shoot down" Iranian speedboats if they harass American ships in international waters, the Navy was bolstering its ability to call in AC-130 gunships and Apache attack helicopters to defend its presence in the Persian Gulf.

A practice run for the new tactics on April 15 drew 11 gunboats from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that crossed the bows and sterns of American vessels at close range. And that prompted Trump's tweet on April 22 saying he'd "instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea."

Take a close look at the map of the Persian Gulf region.  These Iranian speedboats are only operating in the gulf near their own borders.  It is the US warships that are 7,000 miles from home - bumping up along Iran's coast.

Could it be that the US is attempting to provoke a response from Iran that would then 'justify' further military escalations by the Pentagon?

The big question, if the US were to launch attacks on Iran, just how would Russia and China respond?

Grossman & Gagnon on weekly space segment

Listen to "Saying NO to the militarization of space" on Spreaker.

The White House recently issued an executive order on “encouraging international support for the recovery and use of space resources,” another push by the US to militarize and commercialize space, Karl Grossman, a professor of journalism at the State University of New York, College at Old Westbury, told Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear.

The April 6 executive order states: “Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law. Outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view it as a global commons. Accordingly, it shall be the policy of the United States to encourage international support for the public and private recovery and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law.”

According to Grossman, the executive order signed by US President Donald Trump might include the term “international support,” but it heavily implies that the US has a unilateral right to engage in the recovery and use of resources in space.

“So between denial and greed, here the US is moving ahead quite unilaterally to exploit - I think there’s gold up there. It’s very important. We’ve discussed this before - how US military documents throughout the years have actually talked about the US military moving up into space … We [the US] somehow think we have eminent domain,” Grossman added.

A report by Space Daily explains that space is a “challenging place for commercial activity,” especially since an increased body of knowledge points to there being valuable minerals such as gold, silver and platinum on celestial bodies such as the moon.

Under the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, of which the United States is a signatory, “the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind.” The nonbinding agreement further notes that “outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States” and “outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”

However, the Moon Agreement, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979, only has 18 signatories, none of which are major space powers such as Russia, China and the US, which potentially may open up the moon’s resources to the United States under the recent executive order. According to the agreement, “the moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of mankind,” and an “international regime should be established to govern the exploitation of such resources when such exploitation is about to become feasible.”

War is a virus

A lone voice in Augusta, Maine.

Speaks for many of us.

A new report examining the federal budget illuminates the deep connections between the climate emergency and the U.S. military, arguing that the shift to a green economy requires a just transition away from both fossil fuels and endless war.

The report, entitled No Warming, No War: How Militarism Fuels the Climate Crisis—and Vice Versa, says that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic "has utterly changed life as we know it" and warns against working toward a return to an old normal which was "defined by unfettered capitalism that thrives on the devastation of our planet, the devaluation of human life, and the use of military force to perpetuate both."

"On a local and global scale, humanity and community have been co-opted by profit and violence. This 'normal' has now brought us to the brink of an existential crisis as climate change continues nearly unabated," co-authors Lorah Steichen and Lindsay Koshgarian write in the foreword. "In the face of both COVID-19 and the climate crisis, we urgently need to shift from a culture of war to a culture of care."

The report was published Wednesday, the 50th annual Earth Day, by the National Priorities Project (NPP) at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). A 2014 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, NPP tracks military spending and promotes a federal budget "that represents Americans' priorities, including funding for people's issues such as inequality, unemployment, education, health, and the need to build a green economy."

"To achieve climate justice, we must transform the extractive economy we have now that is harming people and ecosystems," the report says. "Resisting militarization is core to building an economy that works for people and the planet. As such, we must pursue solutions to the climate crisis that challenge the violent and oppressive systems that have fueled war and warming for generations."

Virus update: Economics 101

Jimmy Dore dives into the global economic system with the good help of Dylan Radigan.

Ratigan is an American businessman, author, film producer, former host of MSNBC's The Dylan Ratigan Show and political commentator for The Young Turks.

Happy Earth Day from the Planet of the Humans (featuring Jeff Gibbs & Ozzie Zehner)

On the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, Michael Moore is joined again by Jeff Gibbs and Ozzie Zehner, the team behind the new film, “Planet of the Humans.” They discuss what Earth Day means to them, the explosive first day of the film’s release, and where we go from here.

Global Network Space issues webinar

This video is the Global Network's space issues Webinar that was held live on April 17.

Webinar brought together key activists Dave Webb (UK), Lynda Williams (California), Bruce Gagnon (Maine) and others to discuss the latest news and views on ‘star wars’, missile defence, space weapons, Space Force, mining the sky, and the on-going campaign to prevent a war in space.

We anticipate doing more of this in the coming weeks.

Co-sponsored by Yorkshire CND in the UK

The current Wall Street 'switch-er-oo'

Prague statue take-down: Degradation of Morality

By Andrey Kochetov

In recent years, an epidemic has swept across Eastern Europe. The epidemic of complete unconsciousness of pro-government elites. The unconsciousness of their own history. The Baltic countries for a long time, out of hatred of their Soviet past, made liquid goods for which Old Europe paid with great generosity and continues to pay those same thirty pieces of silver to the governments of these countries. (Europe is ready to spend money to encourage Baltic governments to say many dirty things about the Soviet past. It is very easy money. No need to produce anything. Just make a show in the informational field. That is all. And they are very glad to get this easy money.) 

But Bulgaria and Poland were relatively recently affected by this disease. We all followed the mass demolition of monuments to Soviet soldiers in these countries. This was the result of the painstaking and lengthy work of Western propaganda aimed at completely erasing from the human memory the feats of the Soviet soldier [during World War II]. There are well-known data on the losses of the Red Army in the territory of Eastern Europe:

• in Poland - 600,212 people;
• in Czechoslovakia - 139,918 people;
• in Hungary - 140,004 people;
• in Germany - 101,961 people;
• in Romania - 68,993 people;
• in Austria - 26,006 people;
• in Yugoslavia - 7,995 people;
• in Norway - 3,436 people;
• in Bulgaria - 977 people.

The ashes of all these soldiers rest in the territory of the countries for whose freedom they gave their lives. And we, the heirs of the Victory soldiers, quite reasonably expected respect and dignity for the graves and monuments of fallen heroes, as the generally accepted laws of human morality suggest.

But no! Contrary to common sense and morality, egregious acts of vandalism have become the norm for the current descendants of the inhabitants of countries liberated by Soviet soldiers from [Nazi] fascism.

With alarm and indignation, we all watched with what frenzy the Polish authorities rushed to destroy the monuments. How bashfully, the Bulgarian authorities did not see anything reprehensible in numerous acts of vandalism over monuments to the soldiers of the Red Army.

But the Prague [in Czech Republic] authorities distinguished themselves with particular cynicism, which at the time of hype in the information field about the situation with the coronavirus, dismantled the monument to Marshal of the Soviet Union, Twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Ivan Stepanovich Konev. And if the Soviet ranks and awards may not be interesting to the modern Czech inhabitant, then the fact that it was Marshal Konev who commanded the Prague offensive operation in May 1945, during which not only was liberated but also saved Prague, they simply must know. It was Marshal Konev who defeated the remnants of the regular Wehrmacht troops and put the long-awaited point in the most bloody war of the past century.

Residents of liberated Prague then appreciated the merits of Marshall, conferring on him the title of “Honorary Citizen of Prague”. How can the descendants of these very liberated inhabitants allow the authorities of Prague to demolish the monument to the commander-liberator on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory? How can we evaluate the actions of the headman of the Prague-6 district, Ondrzej Kolář, who directed the demolition of the monument?

The special cynicism of his phrase is noteworthy: “We dismantled it, because the marshal did not have a mask." In our opinion, this is a complete degradation of morality. Especially against the background of the recent history with masks that China sent to Italy, and the Czech Republic calmly appropriated these masks, clearly demonstrating to the whole world the “unbreakable unity of the European Union”.

I really want to believe that the leadership of the Russian Federation will not leave unnoticed the fact of flagrant vandalism on the part of the authorities of the city of Prague, and also find a way to “note” directly the special cynicism of Ondrej Kolář. After all, the Russians do not abandon their own. And the slogan: "Nobody is forgotten, nothing is forgotten!" still remains the property of our national memory.

~ Andrey Kochetov is a labor leader living in the Lugansk People's Republic (LPR) in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.  During my visit last October he arranged a tour of the region for me and a couple of other visitors from the west.  The Donbass region (near the Russian border) is under constant attack by the puppet government now in control of Ukraine after the US orchestrated coup d'etat in 2014.

Someone has to get the blame....

The United Kingdom has retracted its invitation to Chinese tech giant Huawei to help build its 5G network. 

The frontal attacks on China continue as US-UK blame Beijing for the virus epidemic. 

Former UK MP George Galloway weighs in. 

Endless growth kills everything

Michael Moore presents Planet of the Humans, a documentary that dares to say what no one else will this Earth Day — that we are losing the battle to stop climate change on planet earth because we are following leaders who have taken us down the wrong road — selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America. This film is the wake-up call to the reality we are afraid to face: that in the midst of a human-caused extinction event, the environmental movement’s answer is to push for techno-fixes and band-aids. It's too little, too late. 

Removed from the debate is the only thing that MIGHT save us: getting a grip on our out-of-control human presence and consumption. Why is this not THE issue? Because that would be bad for profits, bad for business. Have we environmentalists fallen for illusions, “green” illusions, that are anything but green, because we’re scared that this is the end—and we’ve pinned all our hopes on biomass, wind turbines, and electric cars? 

No amount of batteries are going to save us, warns director Jeff Gibbs (lifelong environmentalist and co-producer of “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Bowling for Columbine"). This urgent, must-see movie, a full-frontal assault on our sacred cows, is guaranteed to generate anger, debate, and, hopefully, a willingness to see our survival in a new way—before it’s too late.

Virus photos reveal America

Food pantry in Des Moines, Iowa (Click on photos for better view)

The line for lunch at a soup kitchen in Minnesota

Statue of a lobster fisherman in Maine

The car culture is accommodated with a drive-up food pantry in Minnesota

Photos and more from Mother Jones

The rich rule

Just heard,
the rich
along the French
Riviera
have created
their own private
compound
with a virus testing center
'separate
and unequal'.

Good and evil.

Reminds me
of the timeless
struggle to
quench the
dark fires
of slavery

Hell,
some have
called it.

Hell on Earth,
slavery,
serve the rich,
fatcats,
mafia,
underworld,
corporate elite,
media,
Mr. Big,
psychopaths,
greed-mongers,
war-mongers,
Wall Street gamblers,
political hacks
and more.

Feudalism
making a strong
comeback.

Yes,
it is the time
to call them out
and build
the consciousness
to resist
the dark forces

But first
we must lay down
the barbed wires
that separate us
here in our own
nation

Right vs left
rural vs urban
Democrat vs Republican
blue vs red,
Harvard vs Yale,
all constructs
of manipulation
to keep the people
scratching at each other
rather than taking down
the feudal overlords
that rule us

Bruce 

Watch out for centrists.....

Pyramids to the Heavens, Inc.

Life of Cuban sugar cane workers

The Las Tunas region lies in the south east of Cuba. Here, the largest sugar crops in the Caribbean grow. 

The country’s vital export is still harvested manually by the "macheteros" who use machetes to cut the cane. 

Argelio Marrero Pérez has been working the fields for most of his life. To make sure he withstands the tough work, his wife Lucy cooks hearty meals like pork roast or yellow rice with chicken: Arroz amarillo con pollo.

Sunday song

Virus news - 'Odds & Ends'

Since we can't find masks here in Maine a friend in Massachusetts made some and mailed them to us.  I'm not sure how they are supposed to fit.  I finally got it on but can't see anything!  What do I do now?

• Nurses Strike: Ten nurses working at Providence Saint John’s health center in Santa Monica, California were suspended for refusing to work without N95 masks. They say the hospital didn’t provide essential protective gear.  They are among hundreds of doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers across the country who say they’ve been asked to work without adequate protection. Some have taken part in protests or lodged formal complaints. Others are buying or even making their own supplies.

Angela Gatdula, a Saint John’s nurse who fell ill with coronavirus, said she asked hospital managers why doctors were wearing N95 masks but nurses weren’t. She says they told her the CDC said surgical masks were enough to keep her safe.  Then she was hit with a dry cough, severe body aches and joint pain. “When I got the phone call that I was positive, I got really scared,” she said. She is recovering and plans to return to work next week. “The next nurse that gets this might not be lucky. They might require hospitalization. They might die,” she said.

Wrestling Essential: In Florida, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has decreed that professional wrestling is an 'essential service'.  He will allow matches to resume but without fans in the seats.  The matches will be televised giving the public 'the diversion' they need from the virus pandemic the governor maintained.  The decision marked some positive news for WWE CEO Vince McMahon, whose startup professional football league, the XFL, filed for bankruptcy on Monday after firing all of its employees and ceasing operations Friday. McMahon is a long-time friend of Donald Trump.  They famously had a live wrestling match some years ago.  I've always believed that Trump's political base came from this 'wrestling' exposure.

• French Navy hit with virus: Nearly 1,000 sailors assigned to the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle have tested positive for the coronavirus. The French armed forces ministry said nearly all 2,000 sailors from the carrier had been tested so far. Results have yet to come in for all of those tested. The carrier had most recently been taking part in exercises with northern European NATO navies in the Baltic Sea. (Ask your self - aimed at whom?) Charles de Gaulle's warplane and helicopter pilots are also in quarantine. The armed forces ministry said the navy chief has ordered an investigation into the outbreak.

• U.S. wants to run from its Chinese debt:  The repeated accusations of White House against Beijing concerning a coronavirus epidemic have ended in demands not to pay US  debts owed to China. Since China remains the largest holder of US government bonds, it is essentially a selective default. “In order to punish Beijing for hiding information about the outbreak in Wuhan, which started a planetary-scale health crisis, we need to write off some of the American debt in the reserves of the Chinese Central Bank,” said Tennessee Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn. 

The Americans are demanding $1.2 trillion in compensation. By “random” coincidence, this exactly corresponds to the amount of US bonds on the balance sheet of the People’s Bank of China. If Washington goes forward with this plan it could completely destroy the US public debt market – investors will stop buying new bond issues because of the excess supply. Consequently, the Treasury will have nothing to finance a record budget deficit, as well as multi-trillion-dollar anti-crisis support programs for the national economy. If the Federal Reserve dares to cover these costs only at the expense of the printing press, the position of the dollar as the world reserve currency will be permanently undermined.

• Washington DC clamp down: Newsweek reports that District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser has ordered a one-month extension of the state of emergency, as cases in the region grow at a rapid pace. Federal officials in the nation's capital expect a New York-like epidemic in the District, Maryland and Virginia, one that could potentially cripple the government. "No one wants to talk evacuation, especially when there's nowhere to go," says a senior military officer working on continuity of government planning; he requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak on the record.

But a little-known military task force charged with evacuating Washington has already been activated, a task force charged with the most sensitive government mission of "securing" Washington in the face of attackers, foreign and domestic—and if necessary, moving White House and other key government offices to alternate locations.

• Light on Gates: The virus epidemic has shifted much light onto the Robert Gates foundation's work and particularly on his global vaccine campaign.  His efforts in India and Africa have been controversial for many years.  The Gates foundation essentially tests vaccines on children.  He hires doctors and nurses at pay far above usual hiring scales.  Thus the normal medical systems in those countries are negatively impacted as they lose medical staffs and quality of health care declines.  In India, where 5 vaccines were the normal standard, Gates imposed the need for 50 vaccines per child. Many children got ill from the vaccines.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an American environmental attorney, author, and critic of the Gates vaccination program. Kennedy is a son of Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former president John F. Kennedy. He is the president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, a non-profit environmental group.

Kennedy writes: 

#Vaccines, for #BillGates, are a strategic philanthropy that feed his many vaccine-related businesses (including #Microsoft’s ambition to control a global vac ID enterprise) and give him dictatorial control over global health policy—the spear tip of corporate neo-imperialism.

Gates’ obsession with vaccines seems fueled by a messianic conviction that he is ordained to save the world with technology and a god-like willingness to experiment with the lives of lesser humans.

• Aggressive navy?: With too much time on their hands, those working inside the massive Pentagon in Washington are doing their bit to help stoke the growing China demonization campaign.  During the past week we heard unrestrained outrage from Washington as China dared to sail some of its warships into the East China Sea.  (Please note the irony in the name of the waterway.)  The US quickly dispatched its own warships to challenge the Chinese, declaring that they were protecting the right of passage in international waters.  

In this graphic below you can see just how 'aggressive' the Chinese navy is.  Ask yourself which navy (China or the US) is far from home?  The continued attacks on China (and Russia) indicate the US corporate oligarchy are in a state of panic as they attempt to reimpose their global economic and military empire.  It is a dangerous game that Washington is playing.

Bruce

A ride through the north....

For the past decade, New Zealanders Joanne and Gareth Morgan have been living the semiretired lifestyle of their dreams, traveling around the world on motorcycles alongside a few of their closest friends.  

Take a ride with them into North Korea.

Space Force commander on "American way of war"

Mitchell Institute conducts an interview with new Space Force commander General Jay Raymond.

The intention is to give US full control of access to space for military purposes and also to be able to determine who can mine the sky for resources in the coming years.

So the 'Space Force' has a dual role.

The taxpayers will cover the bills - essentially becoming like the slaves in Egypt land when the Pharaohs lorded over the masses.  In today's world they are building pyramids to the heavens.  There won't be much money left for anything else. 

It's a return to feudalism and we are living in the moment of decision.

Bruce

Space Force comedy coming soon on Netflix

 Even as a global pandemic threatens our way of life, there still exist occasional moments that are not shrouded entirely in the impending doom of our species.

Netflix has confirmed that Steve Carell’s newest workplace comedy, “Space Force,” would be available to stream starting May 29.

The release of the 10-episode season, an obvious nod to President Donald Trump’s launch of the U.S. military’s newest branch, coincides with Netflix’s impending loss of Carell’s iconic sitcom, “The Office,” which is expected to move over to NBC’s soon-to-launch streaming platform, “Peacock.”

“Space Force” — co-created by Carell and Greg Daniels, the man who brought us the American version of “The Office” — centers on the exploits of four-star Gen. Mark R. Naird (Carell), a decorated pilot who once had lofty dreams of leading the Air Force.

Much to his chagrin, Naird is instead appointed as the head of the military’s sixth branch — a service whose mission is “to defend satellites from attack” and “perform other space-related tasks ... or something,” the show’s teaser trailer says.

“Skeptical but dedicated, Mark uproots his family and moves to a remote base in Colorado where he and a colorful team of scientists and ‘Spacemen’ are tasked by the White House with getting American boots on the moon (again) in a hurry and achieving total dominance,” a Netflix release said.

Inside the forbidden zone.....

Benjamin Rich, better known by his YouTube channel name Bald and Bankrupt, is an English travel blogger and author. He began his YouTube channel in June 2018, documenting the Indian subcontinent and the post-Soviet states before expanding to the rest of the world.

Not far from the Chernobyl reactor in Ukraine is the town of Pripyat which housed the plant's workers and was abandoned due to high levels of radiation not long after the disaster.

He went there on a winters day to see what traces of the past remained... 

You can watch this new Chernobyl documentary below for free from April 16-26