offguardian--2020-11-29--Keeping the Empire Running: Britain’s Global Military Footprint

A few nostalgic types still believe that the Union Jack continues to flutter to sighs and reverence over outposts of the world , from the tropics to the desert .
They would be right , if only to a point .
Britain , it turns out , has a rather expansive global reach when it comes to bases , military installations and testing sites .
While not having the obese heft and lumbering brawn of the United States , it makes a good go of it .
Globally , the UK military has a presence in 145 sites in 42 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cobain ’ s prickly observation in The History Thieves : that the British were the only people “ perpetually at war.
” Phil Miller ’ s rich overview of Britain ’ s military footprint for Declassified UK shows it to be heavy .
The UK military , for instance , has a presence in five countries in the Asia-Pacific : naval facilities in Singapore ; garrisons in Brunei , drone testing facilities in Australia ; three facilities in Nepal ; a quick reaction force in Afghanistan .
Cyprus remains a favourite with 17 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ personnel can be found in Kenya , Somalia , Djibouti , Malawi , Sierra Leone , Nigeria and Mali .
Then come the ever dubious ties to Arab monarchies .
The nature of having such bases is to be kind to your host , despite him being theocratic , barking mad , or an old fashioned despot with fetishes .
Despite the often silly pronouncements by British policymakers that they take issue with authoritarians , exceptions numerous in number abound .
The UK has never had a problem with authoritarians it can work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A closer look at such relations usually reveal the same ingredients : capital , commerce , perceptions of military necessity .
The approach to Oman , a state marked by absolute rule , is a case in point .
Since 1798 , Britain has had a hand in ensuring the success , and the survivability , of the House of Al Said .
On September 12 , UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace announced that a further £23.8 million would go to enhancing the British Joint Logistics Support Base at Duqm port , thereby @ @ @ @ @ @ @ UK base and help facilitate Royal Navy deployments to the Indian Ocean ” .
The Ministry of Defence also went so far as to describe a “ renewal ” of a “ hugely valuable relationship , ” despite the signing of a new Joint Defence Agreement in February 2019 .
The agreement had been one of the swan song acts of the ailing Sultan Qaboos bin Said , whose passing this year was genuinely mourned in British political circles .
Prime Minister Boris Johnson called him “ an exceptionally wise and respected leader @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of record wrote in praise of a reformer and a developer .
“ The longest serving Arab ruler , ” observed a sycophantic column in The Guardian , “ Qaboos was an absolute monarch , albeit a relatively benevolent and popular one.
” The same Sultan , it should be said , had little fondness for freedom of expression , assembly and association , encouraged the arrests and harassment of government critics and condoned sex discrimination .
But he was of the “ one of us ” labels : trained at the Royal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , installed on the throne by Britain in the 1970 palace coup during the all but forgotten Dhofar Rebellion .
“ Strategically , ” Cobain reminds us , “ the Dhofar war was one of the most important conflicts of the 20th century , as the victors could expect to control the Strait of Hormuz and the flow of oil.
” The British made sure their man won .
Public mention of greater British military involvement in foreign theatres can be found , though they rarely make front page acts .
The business @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Britannic model , should be careful , considered , even gnomic .
Britain , for instance , is rallying to the US-led call to contain the Yellow Peril in the Asia Pacific , a nice reminder to Beijing that old imperial misdeeds should never be a bar to repetition .
The head of the British Army , General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith , spoke in September about there being “ a market for a more persistent presence from the British Army ( in Asia ) .
It ’ s an area that saw @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Eighties , but with 9/11 we naturally receded from it.
” The time had come “ to redress that imbalance ” .
The UK Chief of Defence Staff , General Sir Nick Carter , prefers to be more enigmatic about the “ future of Global Britain.
” To deal with an “ ever more complex and dynamic strategic context , ” he suggests the “ Integrated Operating Concept ” .
Britain had to : Gone are the old thuggeries of imperial snatch and grab ; evident are matters of flexibility in terms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ campaign posture that includes continuous operating on our terms and in places of our choosing.
” This entails a thought process involving “ several dimensions to escalate and deescalate up and down multiple ladders – as if it were a spider ’ s web.
” The general attempts to illustrate this gibberish with the following example : In 2017 , there were already more than just murmurings from Johnson , then Foreign Secretary , and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon , that a greater British presence in the Asia-Pacific was warranted .
Fallon was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ involvement , listing them to a group of Australian journalists .
With such chatter about the China threat you could be forgiven for believing that British presence in the Asia-Pacific was minimal .
But that would ignore , for instance , the naval logistics base at Singapore ’ s Sembawang Wharf , permanently staffed by eight British military personnel with an eye on the busy Malacca Strait .
A more substantial presence can also be found in the Sultanate of Brunei , comprising an infantry battalion of Gurkhas and an Army Air Corps @ @ @ @ @ @ @ MOD is particularly keen on the surroundings , as they offer “ tropical climate and terrain … well suited to jungle training ” .
Over the next four years , the UK military can expect to get an extra £16.5 billion – a 10 % increase in funding and a fond salute to militarists .
“ I have decided that the era of cutting our defence budget must end , and ends now , ” declared Johnson .
“ Our plans will safeguard hundreds of thousands of jobs in the defence industry , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the British people safe.
” The prime minister was hoping to make that announcement accompanied by the “ Integrated Defence and Security Review ” long championed by his now-departed chief special adviser , Dominic Cummings .
Cummings might have been ejected from the gladiatorial arena of Downing Street politics , but the ideas in the Review are unlikely to buck old imperial trends .
At the very least , there will be a promise of more military bases to reflect a posture General Carter describes rather obscurely as “ engaged and forward deployed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College , Cambridge .
He lectures at RMIT University , Melbourne .
Email :

Binoy Kampmark
A few nostalgic types still believe that the Union Jack continues to flutter to sighs and reverence over outposts of the world, from the tropics to the desert. They would be right, if only to a point. Britain, it turns out, has a rather expansive global reach when it comes to bases, military installations and testing sites. While not having the obese heft and lumbering brawn of the United States, it makes a good go of it. Globally, the UK military has a presence in 145 sites in 42 countries.
Such figures tally with Ian Cobain’s prickly observation in The History Thieves: that the British were the only people “perpetually at war.”
Phil Miller’s rich overview of Britain’s military footprint for Declassified UK shows it to be heavy.
The size of the global military presence is far larger than previously thought and is likely to mean that the UK has the second largest military network in the world, after the United States.”
The UK military, for instance, has a presence in five countries in the Asia-Pacific: naval facilities in Singapore; garrisons in Brunei, drone testing facilities in Australia; three facilities in Nepal; a quick reaction force in Afghanistan. Cyprus remains a favourite with 17 military installations. In Africa, British personnel can be found in Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Mali. Then come the ever dubious ties to Arab monarchies.
The nature of having such bases is to be kind to your host, despite him being theocratic, barking mad, or an old fashioned despot with fetishes. Despite the often silly pronouncements by British policymakers that they take issue with authoritarians, exceptions numerous in number abound.
The UK has never had a problem with authoritarians it can work with or despots it can coddle. A closer look at such relations usually reveal the same ingredients: capital, commerce, perceptions of military necessity. The approach to Oman, a state marked by absolute rule, is a case in point.
Since 1798, Britain has had a hand in ensuring the success, and the survivability, of the House of Al Said. On September 12, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace announced that a further £23.8 million would go to enhancing the British Joint Logistics Support Base at Duqm port, thereby tripling “the size of the existing UK base and help facilitate Royal Navy deployments to the Indian Ocean”. The Ministry of Defence also went so far as to describe a “renewal” of a “hugely valuable relationship,” despite the signing of a new Joint Defence Agreement in February 2019.
The agreement had been one of the swan song acts of the ailing Sultan Qaboos bin Said, whose passing this year was genuinely mourned in British political circles. Prime Minister Boris Johnson called him “an exceptionally wise and respected leader who will be missed enormously.” Papers of record wrote in praise of a reformer and a developer. “The longest serving Arab ruler,” observed a sycophantic column in The Guardian, “Qaboos was an absolute monarch, albeit a relatively benevolent and popular one.”
The same Sultan, it should be said, had little fondness for freedom of expression, assembly and association, encouraged the arrests and harassment of government critics and condoned sex discrimination. But he was of the “one of us” labels: trained at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, an unwavering Anglophile, installed on the throne by Britain in the 1970 palace coup during the all but forgotten Dhofar Rebellion.
“Strategically,” Cobain reminds us, “the Dhofar war was one of the most important conflicts of the 20th century, as the victors could expect to control the Strait of Hormuz and the flow of oil.” The British made sure their man won.
Public mention of greater British military involvement in foreign theatres can be found, though they rarely make front page acts. The business of projecting such power, especially in the Britannic model, should be careful, considered, even gnomic. Britain, for instance, is rallying to the US-led call to contain the Yellow Peril in the Asia Pacific, a nice reminder to Beijing that old imperial misdeeds should never be a bar to repetition.
The head of the British Army, General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, spoke in September about there being “a market for a more persistent presence from the British Army (in Asia). It’s an area that saw a much more consistent Army presence in the Eighties, but with 9/11 we naturally receded from it.” The time had come “to redress that imbalance”.
The UK Chief of Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Carter, prefers to be more enigmatic about the “future of Global Britain.” To deal with an “ever more complex and dynamic strategic context,” he suggests the “Integrated Operating Concept”. Britain had to:
compete below the threshold of war in order to deter war, and to prevent one’s adversaries from achieving their objectives in fait accompli strategies.”
Gone are the old thuggeries of imperial snatch and grab; evident are matters of flexibility in terms of competition. “Competing involves a campaign posture that includes continuous operating on our terms and in places of our choosing.”
This entails a thought process involving “several dimensions to escalate and deescalate up and down multiple ladders – as if it were a spider’s web.” The general attempts to illustrate this gibberish with the following example:
One might actively constrain in the cyber domain to protect critical national infrastructure in the maritime Domain.”
In 2017, there were already more than just murmurings from Johnson, then Foreign Secretary, and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, that a greater British presence in the Asia-Pacific was warranted. Fallon was keen to stress the reasons for deeper involvement, listing them to a group of Australian journalists.
The tensions have been rising in the region, not just from the tests by North Korea but also escalating tension in the South China Sea with the building program that’s gone there on the islands and the need to keep those routes open.”
With such chatter about the China threat you could be forgiven for believing that British presence in the Asia-Pacific was minimal. But that would ignore, for instance, the naval logistics base at Singapore’s Sembawang Wharf, permanently staffed by eight British military personnel with an eye on the busy Malacca Strait. A more substantial presence can also be found in the Sultanate of Brunei, comprising an infantry battalion of Gurkhas and an Army Air Corps Flight of Bell 212 helicopters.
The MOD is particularly keen on the surroundings, as they offer “tropical climate and terrain … well suited to jungle training”.
Over the next four years, the UK military can expect to get an extra £16.5 billion – a 10% increase in funding and a fond salute to militarists. “I have decided that the era of cutting our defence budget must end, and ends now,” declared Johnson. “Our plans will safeguard hundreds of thousands of jobs in the defence industry, protecting livelihoods across the UK and keeping the British people safe.”
The prime minister was hoping to make that announcement accompanied by the “Integrated Defence and Security Review” long championed by his now-departed chief special adviser, Dominic Cummings. Cummings might have been ejected from the gladiatorial arena of Downing Street politics, but the ideas in the Review are unlikely to buck old imperial trends. At the very least, there will be a promise of more military bases to reflect a posture General Carter describes rather obscurely as “engaged and forward deployed”.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]


offguardian--2020-11-28--Dispossession and Imperialism Repackaged as ‘Feeding the World’

The world is fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the hands of rich and powerful land speculators and agribusiness corporations .
Smallholder farmers are being criminalised and even made to disappear when it comes to the struggle for land .
They are constantly exposed to systematic expulsion .
In 2014 , the Oakland Institute found that institutional investors , including hedge funds , private equity and pension funds , are eager to capitalise on global farmland as a new and highly desirable asset class .
Financial returns are what matter to these entities , not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ organisation Grain found that in 2014 small farmers operated 16 % of agricultural land in that country , but provided 55 % of agricultural output , including : 97 % of potatoes , 97 % of honey , 88 % of vegetables , 83 % of fruits and berries and 80 % of milk .
It is clear that Ukraine ’ s small farms were delivering impressive outputs .
Following the toppling of Ukraine ’ s government in early 2014 , the way was paved for foreign investors and Western agribusiness to take @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Reforms mandated by the EU-backed loan to Ukraine in 2014 included agricultural deregulation intended to benefit foreign agribusiness .
Natural resource and land policy shifts were being designed to facilitate the foreign corporate takeover of enormous tracts of land .
Frederic Mousseau , policy director at the Oakland Institute , stated at the time that the World Bank and IMF were intent on opening up foreign markets to Western corporations and that the high stakes around the control of Ukraine ’ s vast agricultural sector , the world ’ s third largest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of wheat , constitute an overlooked critical factor .
He added that in recent years , foreign corporations had acquired more than 1.6 million hectares of Ukrainian land .
Western agribusiness has been coveting Ukraine ’ s agriculture sector for quite some time , long before the coup .
That country contains one third of all arable land in Europe .
An article by Oriental Review in 2015 noted that since the mid-90s the Ukrainian-Americans at the helm of the US-Ukraine Business Council had been instrumental in encouraging the foreign control of Ukrainian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation drafted a legal amendment that would benefit global agribusiness producers by allowing the widespread use of genetically modified seeds .
When GMO crops were legally introduced into the Ukrainian market in 2013 , they were planted in up to 70 % of all soybean fields , 10-20 % of cornfields and over 10 % of all sunflower fields , according to various estimates ( or 3 % of the country ’ s total farmland ) .
Interestingly , the investment fund Siguler Guff & Co acquired a 50 % stake @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2015 , which specialises in agricultural exports .
In June 2020 , the IMF approved an 18-month $ 5 billion loan programme with Ukraine .
According to the Brettons Wood Project website , the government committed to lifting the 19-year moratorium on the sale of state-owned agricultural lands after sustained pressure from international finance .
The World Bank incorporated further measures relating to the sale of public agricultural land as conditions in a $ 350 million Development Policy Loan ( COVID ‘ relief package ’ ) to Ukraine approved in late June .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ to “ enable the sale of agricultural land and the use of land as collateral.
” But morality has little to do with it .
The September 2020 report on the grain.org website ‘ Barbarians at the barn : private equity sinks its teeth into agriculture ’ shows that there is no morality where capitalism ’ s profit compulsion is concerned .
Private equity funds – pools of money that use pension funds , sovereign wealth funds , endowment funds and investments from governments , banks , insurance companies and high net @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the agriculture sector throughout the world .
This money is used to lease or buy up farms on the cheap and aggregate them into large-scale , US-style grain and soybean concerns .
The article outlines how offshore tax havens and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development ( EBRD ) has targeted Ukraine .
In addition to various Western governments , the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust , which manages the foundation ’ s endowment , is also investing in private equity , taking positions in farm and food businesses around the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part of the trend whereby the world of finance – banks , funds , insurance companies and the like – is gaining control over the real economy , including forests , watersheds and rural people ’ s territories .
Apart from uprooting communities and grabbing resources to entrench an industrial , export-oriented model of agriculture , this process of ‘ financialisation ’ is shifting power to remote board rooms occupied by people with no connection to farming and who are merely in it to make money .
These funds tend to invest for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ handsome returns for investors but can leave a trail of long-term environmental and social devastation and serve to undermine local and regional food insecurity .
This financialisation of agriculture perpetuates a model of farming that serves the interests of the agrochemical and seed giants , including one of the world ’ s biggest companies , Cargill , which is involved in almost every aspect of global agribusiness .
Still run as a privately held company , the 155-year-old enterprise trades in purchasing and distributing various agricultural commodities , raises livestock and produces animal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ application in processed foods and industrial use .
Cargill also has a large financial services arm , which manages financial risks in the commodity markets for the company .
This includes Black River Asset Management , a hedge fund with about $ 10 billion of assets and liabilities .
A recent article on the Unearthed website accused Cargill and its 14 billionaire owners of profiting from the use of child labour , rain forest destruction , the devastation of ancestral lands , the spread of pesticide use and pollution , contaminated food , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ degradation .
As if this is not concerning enough , the UN Food and Agriculture is now teaming up with CropLife , a global trade association representing the interests of companies that produce and promote pesticides , including highly hazardous pesticides ( HHPs ) .
In a 19 November press release issued by PAN ( Pesticide Action Network ) Asia Pacific , some 350 organisations in 63 countries representing hundreds of thousands of farmers , fisherfolk , agricultural workers and other communities , as well as human rights , faith-based , environmental and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu urging him to stop recently announced plans to deepen collaboration with CropLife International by entering into a formal partnership .
HHPs are responsible for a wide range of devastating health harms to farmers , agricultural workers and rural families around the world and these chemicals have decimated pollinator populations and are wreaking havoc on biodiversity and fragile ecosystems .
Marcia Ishii , senior scientist at PAN North America , explained the serious implications of the proposed collaboration : She went on to state : The FAO has in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but , in calling for an independent FAO , Susan Haffmans from PAN Germany , argues : The July 2019 UN FAO High Level Panel of Experts concludes that agroecology provides greatly improved food security and nutritional , gender , environmental and yield benefits compared to industrial agriculture .
Agroecological principles represent a shift away from the reductionist yield-output chemical-intensive industrial paradigm , which results in among other things enormous pressures on human health , soil and water resources .
Agroecology is based on a more integrated low-input systems approach to food and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ local calorific production , cropping patterns and diverse nutrition production per acre , water table stability , climate resilience , good soil structure and the ability to cope with evolving pests and disease pressures .
Such a system is underpinned by a concept of food sovereignty , based on optimal self-sufficiency , the right to culturally appropriate food and local ownership and stewardship of common resources , such as land , water , soil and seeds .
However , this model is a direct challenge to the interests of CropLife members .
With @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , agroecology does not require dependency on proprietary chemicals , pirated seeds and knowledge nor long-line global supply chains .
By seeking to develop a formal partnership with the FAO , CropLife aims to further entrench its interests while derailing the FAO ’ s commitment to agroecology .
This much has been apparent in recent times with US Ambassador to the FAO Kip Tom having attacked agroecology – and like CropLife members – he perpetuates the myth ( recently debunked by Dr Jonathan Latham in the new book ‘ Rethinking Food and Agriculture @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do not accept the chemical-industrial paradigm .
Whether it involves farmers in India recently taking to the streets to protest against legislation that will throw the sector wide open to foreign agricapital , land acquisitions in Ukraine or struggles for land rights and seed sovereignty ( etc ) elsewhere , it is clear that a small cabal of unscrupulous global agribusiness giants are driving and benefitting from deregulated capital flows , peasant displacement , land acquisitions and decisions made at international and national levels via the IMF , World Bank and WTO .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a quest to seek out new profits , capture new markets and control common resources ( commonwealth ) is destroying farmer livelihoods , the environment and health under the bogus claim of ‘ feeding the world ’ .
Those farmers who survive the profiteering strategies of dispossession and imperialism are to become incorporated into a system of contract farming dictated by global agri-food giants tied to an exploitative food regime based on market dependency and corporate control .
A regime that places profit ahead of biodiverse food security , healthy diets and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ journalist who writes on development , environmental issues , politics , food and agriculture .
In August 2018 he was named as one of 400 Living Peace and Justice Leaders and Models by Transcend Media Services , in recognition of his journalism .
Join him on Twitter .

Colin Todhunter
The world is fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the hands of rich and powerful land speculators and agribusiness corporations. Smallholder farmers are being criminalised and even made to disappear when it comes to the struggle for land. They are constantly exposed to systematic expulsion.
In 2014, the Oakland Institute found that institutional investors, including hedge funds, private equity and pension funds, are eager to capitalise on global farmland as a new and highly desirable asset class. Financial returns are what matter to these entities, not food security.
Consider Ukraine. The organisation Grain found that in 2014 small farmers operated 16% of agricultural land in that country, but provided 55% of agricultural output, including: 97% of potatoes, 97% of honey, 88% of vegetables, 83% of fruits and berries and 80% of milk. It is clear that Ukraine’s small farms were delivering impressive outputs.
Following the toppling of Ukraine’s government in early 2014, the way was paved for foreign investors and Western agribusiness to take a firm hold over the agri-food sector. Reforms mandated by the EU-backed loan to Ukraine in 2014 included agricultural deregulation intended to benefit foreign agribusiness. Natural resource and land policy shifts were being designed to facilitate the foreign corporate takeover of enormous tracts of land.
Frederic Mousseau, policy director at the Oakland Institute, stated at the time that the World Bank and IMF were intent on opening up foreign markets to Western corporations and that the high stakes around the control of Ukraine’s vast agricultural sector, the world’s third largest exporter of corn and fifth largest exporter of wheat, constitute an overlooked critical factor. He added that in recent years, foreign corporations had acquired more than 1.6 million hectares of Ukrainian land.
Western agribusiness has been coveting Ukraine’s agriculture sector for quite some time, long before the coup. That country contains one third of all arable land in Europe. An article by Oriental Review in 2015 noted that since the mid-90s the Ukrainian-Americans at the helm of the US-Ukraine Business Council had been instrumental in encouraging the foreign control of Ukrainian agriculture.
In November 2013, the Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation drafted a legal amendment that would benefit global agribusiness producers by allowing the widespread use of genetically modified seeds. When GMO crops were legally introduced into the Ukrainian market in 2013, they were planted in up to 70% of all soybean fields, 10-20% of cornfields and over 10% of all sunflower fields, according to various estimates (or 3% of the country’s total farmland).
Interestingly, the investment fund Siguler Guff & Co acquired a 50% stake in the Ukrainian Port of Illichivsk in 2015, which specialises in agricultural exports.
In June 2020, the IMF approved an 18-month $5 billion loan programme with Ukraine. According to the Brettons Wood Project website, the government committed to lifting the 19-year moratorium on the sale of state-owned agricultural lands after sustained pressure from international finance.
The World Bank incorporated further measures relating to the sale of public agricultural land as conditions in a $350 million Development Policy Loan (COVID ‘relief package’) to Ukraine approved in late June. This included a required ‘prior action’ to “enable the sale of agricultural land and the use of land as collateral.”
In response, Frederic Mousseau recently stated:
The goal is clearly to favor the interests of private investors and Western agribusinesses… It is wrong and immoral for Western financial institutions to force a country in a dire economic situation amidst an unprecedented pandemic to sell its land.”
But morality has little to do with it. The September 2020 report on the grain.org website ‘Barbarians at the barn: private equity sinks its teeth into agriculture’ shows that there is no morality where capitalism’s profit compulsion is concerned.
Private equity funds – pools of money that use pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowment funds and investments from governments, banks, insurance companies and high net worth individuals – are being injected into the agriculture sector throughout the world. This money is used to lease or buy up farms on the cheap and aggregate them into large-scale, US-style grain and soybean concerns. The article outlines how offshore tax havens and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has targeted Ukraine.
In addition to various Western governments, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, which manages the foundation’s endowment, is also investing in private equity, taking positions in farm and food businesses around the world.
Grain notes that this forms part of the trend whereby the world of finance – banks, funds, insurance companies and the like – is gaining control over the real economy, including forests, watersheds and rural people’s territories.
Apart from uprooting communities and grabbing resources to entrench an industrial, export-oriented model of agriculture, this process of ‘financialisation’ is shifting power to remote board rooms occupied by people with no connection to farming and who are merely in it to make money. These funds tend to invest for a 10-15 year period, resulting in handsome returns for investors but can leave a trail of long-term environmental and social devastation and serve to undermine local and regional food insecurity.
This financialisation of agriculture perpetuates a model of farming that serves the interests of the agrochemical and seed giants, including one of the world’s biggest companies, Cargill, which is involved in almost every aspect of global agribusiness.
Still run as a privately held company, the 155-year-old enterprise trades in purchasing and distributing various agricultural commodities, raises livestock and produces animal feed as well as food ingredients for application in processed foods and industrial use. Cargill also has a large financial services arm, which manages financial risks in the commodity markets for the company. This includes Black River Asset Management, a hedge fund with about $10 billion of assets and liabilities.
A recent article on the Unearthed website accused Cargill and its 14 billionaire owners of profiting from the use of child labour, rain forest destruction, the devastation of ancestral lands, the spread of pesticide use and pollution, contaminated food, antibiotic resistance and general health and environmental degradation.
As if this is not concerning enough, the UN Food and Agriculture is now teaming up with CropLife, a global trade association representing the interests of companies that produce and promote pesticides, including highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs).
In a 19 November press release issued by PAN (Pesticide Action Network) Asia Pacific, some 350 organisations in 63 countries representing hundreds of thousands of farmers, fisherfolk, agricultural workers and other communities, as well as human rights, faith-based, environmental and economic justice institutions, delivered a letter to FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu urging him to stop recently announced plans to deepen collaboration with CropLife International by entering into a formal partnership.
HHPs are responsible for a wide range of devastating health harms to farmers, agricultural workers and rural families around the world and these chemicals have decimated pollinator populations and are wreaking havoc on biodiversity and fragile ecosystems.
Marcia Ishii, senior scientist at PAN North America, explained the serious implications of the proposed collaboration:
Unfortunately, since Mr. Qu’s arrival at FAO, the institution appears to be opening up to deeper collaboration with pesticide companies, which are likely to exploit such a relationship for bluewashing, influencing policy development and enhancing access to global markets.”
She went on to state:
It is no surprise that FAO’s recently appointed Deputy Director General, Beth Bechdol, comes to FAO with a history of close financial ties to Corteva (formerly Dow/DuPont).”
The FAO has in recent years shown a commitment to agroecology but, in calling for an independent FAO, Susan Haffmans from PAN Germany, argues:
The FAO should not jeopardize its successes in agroecology nor its integrity by cooperating with precisely that branch of industry which is responsible for the production of highly hazardous pesticides and whose products contribute to poisoning people and their environment worldwide.”
The July 2019 UN FAO High Level Panel of Experts concludes that agroecology provides greatly improved food security and nutritional, gender, environmental and yield benefits compared to industrial agriculture.
Agroecological principles represent a shift away from the reductionist yield-output chemical-intensive industrial paradigm, which results in among other things enormous pressures on human health, soil and water resources. Agroecology is based on a more integrated low-input systems approach to food and agriculture that prioritises local food security, local calorific production, cropping patterns and diverse nutrition production per acre, water table stability, climate resilience, good soil structure and the ability to cope with evolving pests and disease pressures.
Such a system is underpinned by a concept of food sovereignty, based on optimal self-sufficiency, the right to culturally appropriate food and local ownership and stewardship of common resources, such as land, water, soil and seeds.
However, this model is a direct challenge to the interests of CropLife members. With the emphasis on localisation and on-farm inputs, agroecology does not require dependency on proprietary chemicals, pirated seeds and knowledge nor long-line global supply chains.
By seeking to develop a formal partnership with the FAO, CropLife aims to further entrench its interests while derailing the FAO’s commitment to agroecology. This much has been apparent in recent times with US Ambassador to the FAO Kip Tom having attacked agroecology – and like CropLife members – he perpetuates the myth (recently debunked by Dr Jonathan Latham in the new book ‘Rethinking Food and Agriculture’) of impending disaster if we do not accept the chemical-industrial paradigm.
Whether it involves farmers in India recently taking to the streets to protest against legislation that will throw the sector wide open to foreign agricapital, land acquisitions in Ukraine or struggles for land rights and seed sovereignty (etc) elsewhere, it is clear that a small cabal of unscrupulous global agribusiness giants are driving and benefitting from deregulated capital flows, peasant displacement, land acquisitions and decisions made at international and national levels via the IMF, World Bank and WTO.
The web that global capitalism weaves in a quest to seek out new profits, capture new markets and control common resources (commonwealth) is destroying farmer livelihoods, the environment and health under the bogus claim of ‘feeding the world’.
Those farmers who survive the profiteering strategies of dispossession and imperialism are to become incorporated into a system of contract farming dictated by global agri-food giants tied to an exploitative food regime based on market dependency and corporate control. A regime that places profit ahead of biodiverse food security, healthy diets and the environment.
Colin Todhunter is an independent journalist who writes on development, environmental issues, politics, food and agriculture. In August 2018 he was named as one of 400 Living Peace and Justice Leaders and Models by Transcend Media Services, in recognition of his journalism. Join him on Twitter.


offguardian--2020-11-29--Review: Turning Back: The Personal Journey of a Born-Again Jew

A review of Turning Back : The Personal Journey of a Born-Again Jew , by Michael Lesher .
Published by Lincoln Square Books The typical Jew-who-has-found-the-light-and-discovers-God book follows a familiar pattern : some description of the author ’ s upbringing in an identifiably Jewish but resolutely secular family , some event that causes him as a young adult to examine his or her values and study the tenets of traditional Judaism , a gradual embrace of orthodox Judaism , and finally a wholehearted commitment to what he or she describes as Torah-true Judaism and a concomitant rejection of outside values @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has become an enthusiastic , full-fledged baal teshuvah ( a man ; a woman is described as a baalot teshuvah ) , the Jewish version of a born-again Jew ( hence the title of Lesher ’ s book ) .
The term literally means a master of return , denoting a return to all-encompassing Jewish life , a lifestyle characterized by a commitment to an sometimes-unbending , sometimes-flexible series of commandments and beliefs , an uncompromising life that the author ’ s parents or grandparents had often forsaken .
Together , these books @ @ @ @ @ @ @ books and films in recent years that have documented the migration of dissatisfied men and women , mostly young , from orthodox upbringings , often haredi ( aka “ ultra-orthodox ” ) , who have become disaffected from their strictly religious milieus and opted for a non-observant lifestyle .
Lesher made the reverse trip , joining the ranks of the Orthodox .
Lesher , who lives , in many ways , a traditional Jewish life , observing the Sabbath and the biblical dietary laws and sending his children to Jewish day schools for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a full-flegded baal teshuvah , living in a northern New Jersey community whose Jewish population is largely comprised of fellow baalei teshuvah ( the Hebrew plural ; “ B.T.s ” in the nomenclature of Orthodox Jews ) .
But , a noted activist attorney who has challenged the acceptance of sexual abuse that characterizes part of the Orthodox community , and an advocate for the abuse victims , he has written a spiritual biography that is every bit as iconoclastic as his liberal political approach to Jewish life in the United States and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he writes , to enter the realm of what he had considered “ a disease I associated with the old , and from which I thought I enjoyed a lifelong immunity ” – but intellectual honesty required that he examine the creed that had sustained the Jewish people since Mount Sinai .
Lesher asked himself , in essence , “ what does it all mean ?
” And he asked his parents about their tenuous relationship with Judaism .
“ I began to write this book , ” he says , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ children may one day have a similar quarrel with me .
Maybe they will resent me for narrowing their own range of religious choice.
” He is , as his memoir shows , a decidedly unorthodox Orthodox Jew , an unconventional newcomer to a society that thrives on convention .
He is , as is the wont of an effective lawyer , an unsparing , unremittent asker of questions – of himself , of members of the Jewish community , and of its leaders .
He is , by any reasonable measure , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ associated with extremism – a type of behavior that his book shows he decidedly eschews .
“ I have not remained in Orthodox complacently … I have continued to change and to question.
” He veers from the blind acceptance of dogma to which believers of any faith naturally gravitate .
“ I ’ ve moved into the framework of Orthodox Judaism , but my questions haven ’ t stopped there , ” he writes in the introduction .
“ They have only evolved .
And I ’ ve evolved with them.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ within the structure and strictures of Judaism ’ s most conservative branch , he neither lauds without reservation the life that he has chosen , nor serves as a mouthpiece for Orthodox Judaism ’ s critics .
“ I am not writing in order to preach Orthodox Judaism to the reader , nor am I offering an expose of my coreligionists ’ failings or shortcomings , ” he stresses .
“ This my own story , and for better or worse it ’ s more about transformation than certainty.
” No missionary to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he makes clear , is not to preach to others , but , in the argot of the Orthodox community , to “ work on himself.
” While many autobiographies of this Jewish genre write disparagingly of the religious upbringing – or lack thereof – they experienced in their childhood ( homes where non-kosher food was served , Hebrew school lessons whose best feature was the closing bell , synagogues that the family visited at most twice a year – if even that often ) , Lesher avoids falling into that disrespecting-one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on his journey , on his final spiritual destination , not on the failings of his past .
He largely skips over that predictable part of a raised-in-the-USA-Jew ’ s personal history , and starts his narrative – he has a good eye for dialogue and descriptive detail – with the salient part of his emerging path to “ fully Orthodox ” Judaism as a young adult , highlighting some of his internal conflicts , and disagreements with the zeitgeist of the community in whose midst he would live , but some of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He receives from others , but does not offer , easy answers for the questions he continues to pose to himself and to his religion ’ s thought leaders .
Along the way he offers insights into the neighborhoods where he lived , the yeshivas where he studied , the intricacies of Talmudic study that he mastered to an acceptable degree , the theological challenges he encountered , the apparently arcane customs he came to understand , the exotic ( to outsiders ) dating rituals , and the interesting characters – of various @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He doesn ’ t romanticize or patronize the lives of the Orthodox men and women , many of them part of the “ black hat , ” “ yeshivishe ” ( “ ultra-Orthodox ” ) world he inhabits , but paints them in realistic , flesh-and-blood terms , with the foibles and strengths of anyone .
Weaving in some academic sources to augment his poetic voice , Lesher ’ s literary skill ( not automatic for someone schooled in composing turgid legal briefs ) is making the unfamiliar ( to him , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to non-Jews ) seem familiar .
And natural .
And logical , though many Orthodox actions and beliefs inevitably seem illogical to anyone who did not grow up within the confines of what its practitioners call “ Torah-true Judaism.
” Lesher doesn ’ t apologize for features of Orthodox Jewish life that he clearly does not share or appreciate ; he doesn ’ t condemn or hector ; he simply conveys what he has experienced , and offers an insight into the vagaries of the people who have alternately influenced , infuriated , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ His tacit message : every group has its quirks – allow us ours .
Neither he , nor the culture surrounding Orthodox Judaism , is perfect , he stresses .
His book documents how a newcomer to the exclusiveness of a “ religious ” Jew , as many Orthodox Jews would consider only themselves , to the exclusion of members of other denominations , or of no Jewish affiliation , must buy the whole package in order to fit in or to be considered properly orthodox Lesher tells how he changed , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ For instance , his name .
He describes an initial encounter with a rabbi at a B.T .
yeshiva , an institute of advanced Talmudic learning , where he wanted to study the intricacies of the Oral Law and the folkways of an intensely Orthodox community .
“ You ’ ll gain from us , ” the rabbi told him , calling Lesher mee-kho-el .
From his first day at the yeshiva , “ I almost never heard myself called anything else .
Mee-kho-el .
The full significance of this did not strike @ @ @ @ @ @ @ … it bears on the shift in identity that was so much a part of my experience of those days .
At the yeshiva , I ceased to be Michael .
I had not only changed my dress , my location , the nature of my reading , the language in which I would mainly study .
I had even changed my name .
Or rather , it had been changed for me .
No one had asked me.
” The question of his name ’ s pronunciation was more symbolic than substantive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the Orthodox community , or his commitment to the cause ( defending the interest of abuse victims ) that he sees as an expression of his Jewish values .
Though Lesher has devoted much of his professional life to aiding abuse victims , frequently attracting the ire of the Orthodox establishment , he does not deal with that in the pages of his autobiography .
He concentrates on the route that brought him to his current spiritual life , not what his professional life has consisted of since then ; on introspection @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Though much in his life has changed , one part of his approach to life has remained constant : his proclivity to ask probing questions .
Which has served him well in his legal career .
“ Where are the questions ?
” he asks .
“ Why aren ’ t B.T.s questioning Orthodoxy as they once questioned secular culture ?
” Why , he asks , does the yeshiva pedagogic culture , which is built on a question and answer – or a question and resolution – ethos , not foster a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ theological/cultural underpinnings ?
He offers no easy answers – but , in part of the Orthodox world , questioning the foundations of one ’ s faith and behavior , or showing doubts about accepted wisdoms , is simply out of bounds .
Who wants to be a pariah ?
Most B.T.
’ s , he concludes , don ’ t .
“ People fascinated by tradition are unlikely to ‘ wish to forget ’ their own pasts , unless of course their new community finds those pasts unassimilable , ” he writes .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ believes his nonreligious past encompasses ‘ all in life ’ outside Orthodoxy – but this is the way born-Orthodox Jews tend to view the newcomers … a B.T .
could hardly deny a spiritual challenge to the culture in which he first experienced his own religious stirrings.
” The author ’ s retrospective conclusion about his choice to position himself within the world , and demands , of Orthodox Judaism : “ I do know that my attitude toward Orthodoxy isn ’ t the conventional Orthodox one … I ’ m different from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ With a healthy contrarian and libertarian spirit , he retains enough of his old self to look at his insider life through the eyes of an outsider .
He questions when others accept .
He contradicts when others acquiesce .
He shakes his head when others nod .
He moves to the left when much of his community veers to the right .
“ I ’ ve become sort of exile within an exile – an exile within Orthodoxy.
” Despite the inconsistencies he cites in the actions of some Orthodox Jews , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ religious lives , as well as the discomfort he might feel when his wider , humanistic leanings confront the narrower demands of a card-carrying Orthodox Jew , Lesher writes that he still is at peace with the choice he made to embrace Orthodox Judaism .
“ I don ’ t regret the decision I made to turn back on everything that makes up my life , to examine and reexamine , to widen the context of my identity by locating myself within an older history and tradition.
” This , despite the limitations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do , within the confines of halacha , normative Jewish law .
No going to the movies on a Saturday .
Or writing then , “ no matter how deeply the desire stirs.
” Or other such no-no temptations .
Such actions “ are off limits.
” “ It ’ s unsatisfying to fall back on a rule out of mere habit , ” he writes .
“ Sometimes I miss the simplicity of my old non-religious days .
Yet I still think that the demands have been worth the trip … my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that contains as rich an experience of life as any I ’ ve ever heard of .
I ’ ve experienced the most tantalizing of discoveries : I ’ ve experienced a part , a very deep part of myself – a part I never would have known if I hadn ’ t taken a step back from me as I am now to consider my moral and cultural antecedents … it has never been dull .
”

Steve Lipman
A review of Turning Back: The Personal Journey of a Born-Again Jew, by Michael Lesher. Published by Lincoln Square Books
The typical Jew-who-has-found-the-light-and-discovers-God book follows a familiar pattern: some description of the author’s upbringing in an identifiably Jewish but resolutely secular family, some event that causes him as a young adult to examine his or her values and study the tenets of traditional Judaism, a gradual embrace of orthodox Judaism, and finally a wholehearted commitment to what he or she describes as Torah-true Judaism and a concomitant rejection of outside values.
By this point, the author has become an enthusiastic, full-fledged baal teshuvah (a man; a woman is described as a baalot teshuvah), the Jewish version of a born-again Jew (hence the title of Lesher’s book). The term literally means a master of return, denoting a return to all-encompassing Jewish life, a lifestyle characterized by a commitment to an sometimes-unbending, sometimes-flexible series of commandments and beliefs, an uncompromising life that the author’s parents or grandparents had often forsaken.
Together, these books provide a counter-weight to the spate of books and films in recent years that have documented the migration of dissatisfied men and women, mostly young, from orthodox upbringings, often haredi (aka “ultra-orthodox”), who have become disaffected from their strictly religious milieus and opted for a non-observant lifestyle.
Lesher made the reverse trip, joining the ranks of the Orthodox.
Lesher, who lives, in many ways, a traditional Jewish life, observing the Sabbath and the biblical dietary laws and sending his children to Jewish day schools for their Jewish and general education, is a full-flegded baal teshuvah, living in a northern New Jersey community whose Jewish population is largely comprised of fellow baalei teshuvah (the Hebrew plural; “B.T.s” in the nomenclature of Orthodox Jews). But, a noted activist attorney who has challenged the acceptance of sexual abuse that characterizes part of the Orthodox community, and an advocate for the abuse victims, he has written a spiritual biography that is every bit as iconoclastic as his liberal political approach to Jewish life in the United States and in Israel.
He had not intended, he writes, to enter the realm of what he had considered “a disease I associated with the old, and from which I thought I enjoyed a lifelong immunity” – but intellectual honesty required that he examine the creed that had sustained the Jewish people since Mount Sinai.
Lesher asked himself, in essence, “what does it all mean?” And he asked his parents about their tenuous relationship with Judaism. “I began to write this book,” he says, “when it occurred to me that my children may one day have a similar quarrel with me. Maybe they will resent me for narrowing their own range of religious choice.”
He is, as his memoir shows, a decidedly unorthodox Orthodox Jew, an unconventional newcomer to a society that thrives on convention. He is, as is the wont of an effective lawyer, an unsparing, unremittent asker of questions – of himself, of members of the Jewish community, and of its leaders. He is, by any reasonable measure, a moderate theologically in a movement often associated with extremism – a type of behavior that his book shows he decidedly eschews. “I have not remained in Orthodox complacently … I have continued to change and to question.”
He veers from the blind acceptance of dogma to which believers of any faith naturally gravitate.
“I’ve moved into the framework of Orthodox Judaism, but my questions haven’t stopped there,” he writes in the introduction. “They have only evolved. And I’ve evolved with them.”
Though Lesher philosophically follows his own path within the structure and strictures of Judaism’s most conservative branch, he neither lauds without reservation the life that he has chosen, nor serves as a mouthpiece for Orthodox Judaism’s critics. “I am not writing in order to preach Orthodox Judaism to the reader, nor am I offering an expose of my coreligionists’ failings or shortcomings,” he stresses. “This my own story, and for better or worse it’s more about transformation than certainty.”
No missionary to unschooled Jews is he. His focus, he makes clear, is not to preach to others, but, in the argot of the Orthodox community, to “work on himself.”
While many autobiographies of this Jewish genre write disparagingly of the religious upbringing – or lack thereof – they experienced in their childhood (homes where non-kosher food was served, Hebrew school lessons whose best feature was the closing bell, synagogues that the family visited at most twice a year – if even that often), Lesher avoids falling into that disrespecting-one’s-parents-with-faint-praise trap. He concentrates instead on his journey, on his final spiritual destination, not on the failings of his past.
He largely skips over that predictable part of a raised-in-the-USA-Jew’s personal history, and starts his narrative – he has a good eye for dialogue and descriptive detail – with the salient part of his emerging path to “fully Orthodox” Judaism as a young adult, highlighting some of his internal conflicts, and disagreements with the zeitgeist of the community in whose midst he would live, but some of the prevailing values he would battle.
He receives from others, but does not offer, easy answers for the questions he continues to pose to himself and to his religion’s thought leaders.
Along the way he offers insights into the neighborhoods where he lived, the yeshivas where he studied, the intricacies of Talmudic study that he mastered to an acceptable degree, the theological challenges he encountered, the apparently arcane customs he came to understand, the exotic (to outsiders) dating rituals, and the interesting characters – of various levels of renown – whom he befriended.
He doesn’t romanticize or patronize the lives of the Orthodox men and women, many of them part of the “black hat,” “yeshivishe” (“ultra-Orthodox”) world he inhabits, but paints them in realistic, flesh-and-blood terms, with the foibles and strengths of anyone.
Weaving in some academic sources to augment his poetic voice, Lesher’s literary skill (not automatic for someone schooled in composing turgid legal briefs) is making the unfamiliar (to him, at first; to non-Orthodox Jews and to non-Jews) seem familiar. And natural. And logical, though many Orthodox actions and beliefs inevitably seem illogical to anyone who did not grow up within the confines of what its practitioners call “Torah-true Judaism.”
Lesher doesn’t apologize for features of Orthodox Jewish life that he clearly does not share or appreciate; he doesn’t condemn or hector; he simply conveys what he has experienced, and offers an insight into the vagaries of the people who have alternately influenced, infuriated, puzzled or judged or inspired him.
His tacit message: every group has its quirks – allow us ours. Neither he, nor the culture surrounding Orthodox Judaism, is perfect, he stresses. His book documents how a newcomer to the exclusiveness of a “religious” Jew, as many Orthodox Jews would consider only themselves, to the exclusion of members of other denominations, or of no Jewish affiliation, must buy the whole package in order to fit in or to be considered properly orthodox
Lesher tells how he changed, or how change was forced upon him.
For instance, his name.
He describes an initial encounter with a rabbi at a B.T. yeshiva, an institute of advanced Talmudic learning, where he wanted to study the intricacies of the Oral Law and the folkways of an intensely Orthodox community.
“You’ll gain from us,” the rabbi told him, calling Lesher mee-kho-el.
From his first day at the yeshiva, “I almost never heard myself called anything else. Mee-kho-el. The full significance of this did not strike me for a long time, but … it bears on the shift in identity that was so much a part of my experience of those days. At the yeshiva, I ceased to be Michael. I had not only changed my dress, my location, the nature of my reading, the language in which I would mainly study. I had even changed my name. Or rather, it had been changed for me. No one had asked me.”
The question of his name’s pronunciation was more symbolic than substantive. It did not shake his attachment to the Orthodox community, or his commitment to the cause (defending the interest of abuse victims) that he sees as an expression of his Jewish values.
Though Lesher has devoted much of his professional life to aiding abuse victims, frequently attracting the ire of the Orthodox establishment, he does not deal with that in the pages of his autobiography. He concentrates on the route that brought him to his current spiritual life, not what his professional life has consisted of since then; on introspection, and on his personal obligations.
Though much in his life has changed, one part of his approach to life has remained constant : his proclivity to ask probing questions. Which has served him well in his legal career.
“Where are the questions?” he asks. “Why aren’t B.T.s questioning Orthodoxy as they once questioned secular culture?” Why, he asks, does the yeshiva pedagogic culture, which is built on a question and answer – or a question and resolution – ethos, not foster a spirit of questioning itself and its own theological/cultural underpinnings?
He offers no easy answers – but, in part of the Orthodox world, questioning the foundations of one’s faith and behavior, or showing doubts about accepted wisdoms, is simply out of bounds. Who wants to be a pariah? Most B.T.’s, he concludes, don’t.
“People fascinated by tradition are unlikely to ‘wish to forget’ their own pasts, unless of course their new community finds those pasts unassimilable,” he writes. “No B.T. I know really believes his nonreligious past encompasses ‘all in life’ outside Orthodoxy – but this is the way born-Orthodox Jews tend to view the newcomers … a B.T. could hardly deny a spiritual challenge to the culture in which he first experienced his own religious stirrings.”
The author’s retrospective conclusion about his choice to position himself within the world, and demands, of Orthodox Judaism: “I do know that my attitude toward Orthodoxy isn’t the conventional Orthodox one … I’m different from many others who have entered orthodoxy.”
With a healthy contrarian and libertarian spirit, he retains enough of his old self to look at his insider life through the eyes of an outsider. He questions when others accept. He contradicts when others acquiesce. He shakes his head when others nod. He moves to the left when much of his community veers to the right. “I’ve become sort of exile within an exile – an exile within Orthodoxy.”
Despite the inconsistencies he cites in the actions of some Orthodox Jews, or those who purport to lead authentically religious lives, as well as the discomfort he might feel when his wider, humanistic leanings confront the narrower demands of a card-carrying Orthodox Jew, Lesher writes that he still is at peace with the choice he made to embrace Orthodox Judaism.
“I don’t regret the decision I made to turn back on everything that makes up my life, to examine and reexamine, to widen the context of my identity by locating myself within an older history and tradition.” This, despite the limitations on what he can or cannot do, within the confines of halacha, normative Jewish law. No going to the movies on a Saturday. Or writing then, “no matter how deeply the desire stirs.” Or other such no-no temptations. Such actions “are off limits.”
“It’s unsatisfying to fall back on a rule out of mere habit,” he writes. “Sometimes I miss the simplicity of my old non-religious days. Yet I still think that the demands have been worth the trip … my journey has introduced me to a world that contains as rich an experience of life as any I’ve ever heard of.
I’ve experienced the most tantalizing of discoveries: I’ve experienced a part, a very deep part of myself – a part I never would have known if I hadn’t taken a step back from me as I am now to consider my moral and cultural antecedents … it has never been dull.”


offguardian--2020-11-29--Three New Reads – November

Three New Reads – November

At the beginning of this month the most dangerous nation on earth held the four yearly circus [ 1 ] by which presidents and other occupants of high office are chosen .
Four weeks on , so much has been written , some of it by me – here and here for instance – that I ’ ve steered clear of it in my chosen reads for this month .
My themes instead are a murder two days ago in an eastern suburb of Tehran , the contempt of our media for truth , and the dangers – by no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of really existing human beings – of the concentration of the planet ’ s terra firma into fewer and fewer hands .
Top Scientist Assassinated as Israel and US Stage War Provocations on Iran ( 1510 words ) This year began with the murder of Iran ’ s General Quassem Suleimani .
( Think Winston Churchill – with a soupcon of Nelson Mandela , JFK and John Lennon thrown in – for an approximation of the respect and affection in which he was held by the chap on the Tehran omnibus . )
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ for all three of my January reads .
Now we have a second hit to digest , that on Iranian nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh two days ago .
Writing in the Guardian the next day , Simon Tisdall begins : Note the use , de riguer for Guardian and all mainstream media , of the term , ‘ regime ’ .
It vilifies Iran ’ s government ( as it does others insufficiently compliant with Washington ’ s will ) to build our consent for subjecting its people to lethal sanctions and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ vendetta ’ .
It trivialises the issue , reducing the acceleratingly titanic struggle between a declining West and rising Eurasia to one more instance of Trump ’ s volatility .
Yes , there are differences between neocons and neoliberals over how best to contain Iran and its backers in Moscow and Beijing , but they are over means not ends .
Moreover , there are powerful players in Washington – some likely to serve in Joe Biden ’ s cabinet – who ’ ll be there long after Trump has packed his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who do indeed espouse a violent ‘ solution ’ to the ‘ problem ’ not just of Iran but of two ascendant economies , both of them nuclear powers .
[ 2 ] Note the inclusion of bin Salman alongside Pompeo and Netanyahu , as though such a trio were bosom buddies .
If Saudi Arabia is in for the ride , and it most likely is , then it must be the most jittery member of the gang .
In my second January read on the Suleimani hit , Professor Michael Hudson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eyes , said this : Beyond Iraq looms Saudi Arabia … the Great Satan , the supporter of Wahabi extremism , the terrorist legion of US mercenary armies fighting to maintain control of Near Eastern oil and foreign exchange reserves , the cause of the great exodus of refugees to Turkey , Europe and wherever else it can flee from the arms and money provided by the U.S. backers of Isis , Al Qaeda in Iraq and their allied Saudi Wahabi legions .
The logical ideal , in principle , would be to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in its oil fields .
They already have fallen under attack by modest Yemeni bombs .
If U.S. neocons seriously threaten Iran , its response would be the wholesale bombing and destruction of Saudi oil fields , along with those of Kuwait and allied Near Eastern oil sheikhdoms .
It would end the Saudi support for Wahabi terrorists , as well as for the US dollar .
[ 3 ] Though Iran is on paper weaker than the region ’ s major powers – Israel , Saudi Arabia , Turkey – she has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ asymmetrical war .
Nuclear Israel rightly fears her .
In short , here as in other arenas , we won ’ t get a lot of depth from the Guardian .
Pending more telling analyses over the next few days , my selected piece offers a useful start point .
I do , however , distance myself from its final two paragraphs .
I do not share the WSWS view – indeed , I find it quite bizarre in its lack of class analysis , more befitting Graun and Beeb than an organisation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Trump is set for a fascist power grab .
Fascism is a specific response by a capitalist ruling class to serious challenge from the Left .
No such challenge can currently be seen in the USA , so why would its rulers , for all their divisions , back a far-right subversion of its largely sham ( see my second read ) democracy ?
The question is touched on in my recent post on America ’ s Christian Right .
That aside , this is a useful introductory corrective to Tisdall ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ underline the thrust of this piece , when I checked my own link to it , I was greeted by this : Chris Hedges , Presbyterian minister and journalist of many years standing , can no longer gain a mainstream hearing for his critiques of imperialism .
Like others – Jonathan Cook and John Pilger spring to mind , though the list is longer – he must turn to marginalised outlets .
This leads to his dismissal as at best a crank and at worst – when , as here , he writes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Judge for yourself .
As I do Cook and Pilger , I ’ ll always give a Hedges piece a read , and suggest you do the same .
Introducing my previous read , I called America ’ s democracy a sham .
Consent , as any contract and tort lawyer will tell you , is meaningless if not informed .
I put it to you that , by extension , democracy is meaningless if not informed .
Cue for this admirably succinct encapsulation of just how badly , and deliberately so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not just by mainstream media but in an increasingly reined in cyberspace .
Land inequality is significantly higher than previously reported .
This directly threatens the livelihoods of an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide in smallholder agriculture .
It is also central to other inequalities – of wealth , power , gender , health , and environment – and linked to global crises of democratic decline , climate change , pandemic , migration , unemployment , and intergenerational injustice .
Land inequality undermines stability and sustainable societies , affecting all of us in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Land is a common good , providing water , food , and natural resources that sustain all life .
It is the guarantor of biodiversity , health , and equitable and sustainable livelihoods .
It is immovable , non-renewable .
How we manage and control land has shaped our economies , political structures , communities , cultures , and beliefs for thousands of years .
Despite their centrality to many global challenges , inequalities in rights to land and the benefits from it are on the increase , while unsustainable land use is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ able to bear it .
The “ uneven ground ” of the title is where most rural people are increasingly finding themselves .
Smallholders and family farms , indigenous peoples , rural women , youth , and landless rural communities are being squeezed into smaller parcels of land or forced off the land altogether , while more and more land is concentrated in fewer hands , serving the interests of corporate agribusiness and distant investors , utilising industrial models of production that employ fewer and fewer people .
It amazes me how little @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tendency to monopoly .
Empirically , it is visible everywhere you look .
Britain ’ s pubs are closing at a rate of one every twelve hours , with independents taking the brunt .
In a hospitality sector not only of high volume and low margins , but of staying one step ahead through complete pub makeovers once or even twice a decade , very few indies can stay afloat .
[ 4 ] It ’ s the same on high streets dominated by the likes of Greggs , Superdrug and Poundland at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ half dozen big supermarket players at the generalised end .
Ditto the coffee shops , ditto even the dental practices .
Monopoly is the only game in town .
And these examples , selected more for visibility than global clout , are the tip of an iceberg .
The world is ruled by capital concentrated into ever fewer hands .
It helps to have an understanding of value – Mandel ’ s 1969 Introduction to Marxist Theory takes some beating – but for these purposes that is to take a sledgehammer to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dialectic by which capitalist competition leads – via the need to drive down prices and consequent need for economies of scale – to its own antithesis [ 5 ] is unlikely to be reading the likes of me !
The age of imperialism – north-south export of capital , and south-north repatriation of profits – is premised on that capital being monopoly capital .
Think about it .
Am I right , or am I right ?
What I ’ ve been less aware of , however , is the extent to which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ownership .
This report by the Land Coalition plugs the gap .
I don ’ t agree with all of its proposed remedies , though it does make the important point – frequently lost on reformers unable to see that wealth creation rather than distribution is the nub of capitalism ’ s life negating nature – that land redistribution alone is no solution .
Nevertheless , its executive summary sets out the scale and hydra-headed nature of the problem most admirably .
And as with every other aspect of capital ’ s logic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ simply unfair , obscene though that is .
[ 1 ] That ‘ four yearly circus ’ is grotesque even by the abysmal standards of other Western ‘ democracies ’ .
In addition to market driven media , vital to the reconciling of class rule with the trappings of democratic accountability , America adds evils of its own .
One reason thinking people do not dismiss out of hand Trump ’ s claims of a stolen election , is that its systems are deeply flawed , To which we can add that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now put at between two and three billion dollars .
[ 2 ] Tisdall ’ s trivialisation of the hit by personalising it is echoed in today ’ s Observer Editorial , whose kicker has this to say : ‘ As the president lashes out wilfully during his last days in office , it seems likely that he at least gave the nod to this killing.
’ Which seems to me a textbook example of how our media can be narrowly right ( probably ) and yet so profoundly ( and , at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrong .
[ 3 ] “ It would end the Saudi support for Wahabi terrorists , as well as for the U.S. dollar.
” Elsewhere in the cited piece , Hudson – held by some to be America ’ s greatest living economist – argues that Saudi Arabia is an ally even more vital to US hegemony than Israel .
The vulnerability of Saudi oilfields , hence the petrodollar system , to asymetric strikes by Iranian or proxy forces must make for as many frayed nerves on Wall Street as in Riyadh .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ can stay afloat.
” As ever , the few exceptions are those operating in a niche – Sheffield ’ s Fat Cat and Kelham Island pubs being cases in point .
They draw a clientele sufficiently affluent to have priorities other than the cheapest pint , and as such are exceptions who prove the rule , analogous to those of the middle classes who shun Amazon .
( I don ’ t knock the latter for this .
Indeed , I have principled pals among their number .
I reserve my scorn for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can and should be joined by one and all , seek the moral high ground and thereby betray a root and branch misdiagnosis of the problem . )
[ 5 ] In a post last month I likened this intrinsic contradiction within capital ’ s own laws of motion to the fermentation process , in which yeast is killed by its own product .

Philip Roddis
At the beginning of this month the most dangerous nation on earth held the four yearly circus[1] by which presidents and other occupants of high office are chosen.
Four weeks on, so much has been written, some of it by me – here and here for instance – that I’ve steered clear of it in my chosen reads for this month.
My themes instead are a murder two days ago in an eastern suburb of Tehran, the contempt of our media for truth, and the dangers – by no means confined to the impoverishing of billions of really existing human beings – of the concentration of the planet’s terra firma into fewer and fewer hands.
*
This year began with the murder of Iran’s General Quassem Suleimani. (Think Winston Churchill – with a soupcon of Nelson Mandela, JFK and John Lennon thrown in – for an approximation of the respect and affection in which he was held by the chap on the Tehran omnibus.) I used it as the organising theme for all three of my January reads. Now we have a second hit to digest, that on Iranian nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh two days ago.
Writing in the Guardian the next day, Simon Tisdall begins:
The assassination … has heightened suspicions that Trump, in cahoots with hardline Israeli and Saudi allies, may be trying to lure the Tehran regime into an all-out confrontation in the dying days of his presidency. Trump’s four-year-long Iranian vendetta is approaching a climax – and he still has the power and the means to inflict lasting damage. Speculation that Trump might soon initiate or support some kind of attack on Iran … had swirled across the Middle East in the wake of last weekend’s unprecedented meeting in Saudi Arabia between Netanyahu, Mike Pompeo, and the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
Note the use, de riguer for Guardian and all mainstream media, of the term, ‘regime’. It vilifies Iran’s government (as it does others insufficiently compliant with Washington’s will) to build our consent for subjecting its people to lethal sanctions and the possibility of all-out attack.
Note that ‘vendetta’. It trivialises the issue, reducing the acceleratingly titanic struggle between a declining West and rising Eurasia to one more instance of Trump’s volatility.
Yes, there are differences between neocons and neoliberals over how best to contain Iran and its backers in Moscow and Beijing, but they are over means not ends. Moreover, there are powerful players in Washington – some likely to serve in Joe Biden’s cabinet – who’ll be there long after Trump has packed his bags and gone; men and women who do indeed espouse a violent ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ not just of Iran but of two ascendant economies, both of them nuclear powers.[2]
Note the inclusion of bin Salman alongside Pompeo and Netanyahu, as though such a trio were bosom buddies. If Saudi Arabia is in for the ride, and it most likely is, then it must be the most jittery member of the gang. In my second January read on the Suleimani hit, Professor Michael Hudson, looking at things through Shia theocratic eyes, said this:
Beyond Iraq looms Saudi Arabia … the Great Satan, the supporter of Wahabi extremism, the terrorist legion of US mercenary armies fighting to maintain control of Near Eastern oil and foreign exchange reserves, the cause of the great exodus of refugees to Turkey, Europe and wherever else it can flee from the arms and money provided by the U.S. backers of Isis, Al Qaeda in Iraq and their allied Saudi Wahabi legions. The logical ideal, in principle, would be to destroy Saudi power. That power lies in its oil fields. They already have fallen under attack by modest Yemeni bombs. If U.S. neocons seriously threaten Iran, its response would be the wholesale bombing and destruction of Saudi oil fields, along with those of Kuwait and allied Near Eastern oil sheikhdoms. It would end the Saudi support for Wahabi terrorists, as well as for the US dollar.[3]
Though Iran is on paper weaker than the region’s major powers – Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey – she has invested heavily in the ability to wage asymmetrical war. Nuclear Israel rightly fears her.
In short, here as in other arenas, we won’t get a lot of depth from the Guardian. Pending more telling analyses over the next few days, my selected piece offers a useful start point.
I do, however, distance myself from its final two paragraphs. I do not share the WSWS view – indeed, I find it quite bizarre in its lack of class analysis, more befitting Graun and Beeb than an organisation seeking to rebuild the Fourth International – that Trump is set for a fascist power grab.
Fascism is a specific response by a capitalist ruling class to serious challenge from the Left. No such challenge can currently be seen in the USA, so why would its rulers, for all their divisions, back a far-right subversion of its largely sham (see my second read) democracy? The question is touched on in my recent post on America’s Christian Right.
That aside, this is a useful introductory corrective to Tisdall’s predictable superficiality.
*
As if to underline the thrust of this piece, when I checked my own link to it, I was greeted by this:
Chris Hedges, Presbyterian minister and journalist of many years standing, can no longer gain a mainstream hearing for his critiques of imperialism. Like others – Jonathan Cook and John Pilger spring to mind, though the list is longer – he must turn to marginalised outlets. This leads to his dismissal as at best a crank and at worst – when, as here, he writes in RT – a “Putin-bot”.
Judge for yourself. As I do Cook and Pilger, I’ll always give a Hedges piece a read, and suggest you do the same. Introducing my previous read, I called America’s democracy a sham. Consent, as any contract and tort lawyer will tell you, is meaningless if not informed. I put it to you that, by extension, democracy is meaningless if not informed.
Cue for this admirably succinct encapsulation of just how badly, and deliberately so, we are kept in the dark not just by mainstream media but in an increasingly reined in cyberspace.
*
Land inequality is significantly higher than previously reported. This directly threatens the livelihoods of an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide in smallholder agriculture. It is also central to other inequalities – of wealth, power, gender, health, and environment – and linked to global crises of democratic decline, climate change, pandemic, migration, unemployment, and intergenerational injustice. Land inequality undermines stability and sustainable societies, affecting all of us in almost every aspect of our lives. Land is a common good, providing water, food, and natural resources that sustain all life. It is the guarantor of biodiversity, health, and equitable and sustainable livelihoods. It is immovable, non-renewable. How we manage and control land has shaped our economies, political structures, communities, cultures, and beliefs for thousands of years. Despite their centrality to many global challenges, inequalities in rights to land and the benefits from it are on the increase, while unsustainable land use is placing a huge burden on those least able to bear it. The “uneven ground” of the title is where most rural people are increasingly finding themselves. Smallholders and family farms, indigenous peoples, rural women, youth, and landless rural communities are being squeezed into smaller parcels of land or forced off the land altogether, while more and more land is concentrated in fewer hands, serving the interests of corporate agribusiness and distant investors, utilising industrial models of production that employ fewer and fewer people.
It amazes me how little is said of capitalism’s inexorable tendency to monopoly. Empirically, it is visible everywhere you look. Britain’s pubs are closing at a rate of one every twelve hours, with independents taking the brunt. In a hospitality sector not only of high volume and low margins, but of staying one step ahead through complete pub makeovers once or even twice a decade, very few indies can stay afloat.[4]
It’s the same on high streets dominated by the likes of Greggs, Superdrug and Poundland at the specialist end of retail, the half dozen big supermarket players at the generalised end. Ditto the coffee shops, ditto even the dental practices. Monopoly is the only game in town.
And these examples, selected more for visibility than global clout, are the tip of an iceberg. The world is ruled by capital concentrated into ever fewer hands. It helps to have an understanding of value – Mandel’s 1969 Introduction to Marxist Theory takes some beating – but for these purposes that is to take a sledgehammer to a walnut.
Anyone incapable of seeing the dialectic by which capitalist competition leads – via the need to drive down prices and consequent need for economies of scale – to its own antithesis[5] is unlikely to be reading the likes of me!
The age of imperialism – north-south export of capital, and south-north repatriation of profits – is premised on that capital being monopoly capital. Think about it. Am I right, or am I right?
What I’ve been less aware of, however, is the extent to which the same process plays out in land ownership. This report by the Land Coalition plugs the gap. I don’t agree with all of its proposed remedies, though it does make the important point – frequently lost on reformers unable to see that wealth creation rather than distribution is the nub of capitalism’s life negating nature – that land redistribution alone is no solution. Nevertheless, its executive summary sets out the scale and hydra-headed nature of the problem most admirably.
And as with every other aspect of capital’s logic, the problems go way beyond the simply unfair, obscene though that is.
NOTES:- [1] That ‘four yearly circus’ is grotesque even by the abysmal standards of other Western ‘democracies’. In addition to market driven media, vital to the reconciling of class rule with the trappings of democratic accountability, America adds evils of its own. One reason thinking people do not dismiss out of hand Trump’s claims of a stolen election, is that its systems are deeply flawed, To which we can add that the cost of running a presidential campaign is now put at between two and three billion dollars. [2] Tisdall’s trivialisation of the hit by personalising it is echoed in today’s Observer Editorial, whose kicker has this to say: ‘As the president lashes out wilfully during his last days in office, it seems likely that he at least gave the nod to this killing.’ Which seems to me a textbook example of how our media can be narrowly right (probably) and yet so profoundly (and, at some level of consciousness, mendaciously) wrong. [3] “It would end the Saudi support for Wahabi terrorists, as well as for the U.S. dollar.” Elsewhere in the cited piece, Hudson – held by some to be America’s greatest living economist – argues that Saudi Arabia is an ally even more vital to US hegemony than Israel. The vulnerability of Saudi oilfields, hence the petrodollar system, to asymetric strikes by Iranian or proxy forces must make for as many frayed nerves on Wall Street as in Riyadh. [4] “Very few indies can stay afloat.” As ever, the few exceptions are those operating in a niche – Sheffield’s Fat Cat and Kelham Island pubs being cases in point. They draw a clientele sufficiently affluent to have priorities other than the cheapest pint, and as such are exceptions who prove the rule, analogous to those of the middle classes who shun Amazon. (I don’t knock the latter for this. Indeed, I have principled pals among their number. I reserve my scorn for those who, assuming their personal boycott can and should be joined by one and all, seek the moral high ground and thereby betray a root and branch misdiagnosis of the problem.) [5] In a post last month I likened this intrinsic contradiction within capital’s own laws of motion to the fermentation process, in which yeast is killed by its own product.


offguardian--2020-12-01--EHRC “Youth Climate Case” could see courts forcing policy on nation-states

The European Court of Human Rights is prepping to hear a civil case brought against the governments of 33 European nations by six teenage “ climate activists ” .
The six youth activists are allegedly crowd-funding the campaign , but also have the backing of the Global Legal Action Network NGO .
Though the six teenagers are all Portuguese , the case is being brought against thirty-three different nations simultaneously – all 27 EU members , the UK , Russia , Norway , Turkey , Ukraine and Switzerland .
To defend themselves the 33 countries will be asked to explain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on climate change doesn ’ t equate to a violation of the human rights of their citizens .
If they lose , the countries in question will be legally forced to “ take greater action ” on climate , or face penalties for missing lower carbon emissions goals etc .
One of the kids , 12-year-old André Oliveira , is quoted in The Guardian as saying [ our emphasis ] : It gives me lots of hope to know that the judges in the European court of human rights recognise the urgency of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ d like the most would be for European governments to immediately do what the scientists say is necessary to protect our future .
Until they do this , we will keep on fighting with more determination than ever.
” The story itself is nonsense of course .
Twelve-year-olds do not talk like that .
Plus the case originated over 3 years ago , when young André was only nine .
Nine-year-old boys do not see footage of forest fires on the news and decide to sue the European Union .
Even if the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wouldn ’ t have the resources , knowledge or wherewithal to actually do anything about it .
Not without some pretty all-encompassing adult supervision .
This whole story has the Greta-like whiff of adults using children to mask their agenda .
It ’ s unsavoury , but that ’ s not really the worst part .
The worst part is what this case is aiming to achieve .
Consider the precedents being set here .
As the Guardian rightly points out , the ECHR is a standard-setting body , even if the final @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ignored , or considered simply symbolic , it will still sit on the books as a precedent in several ways .
Firstly , there ’ s the precedent of over-ruling democracy .
The governments of these 33 nations were all elected , they ( notionally ) answer to their electorate , not the EHRC .
It ’ s one thing to prosecute a nation or head of state for actually committing a crime , but bringing a civil case to dictate policy is quite another .
Secondly , there ’ s the question @ @ @ @ @ @ @ plaintiffs are Portuguese , yet the case is seeking to alter the policy of 32 other nation-states as well .
Neither these six Portuguese children , their British lawyers or the Strasbourg-based courts have the right to tell Hungary or Norway or Turkey how to run their country , certainly not when it involves going against the democratic will of the people .
Finally , there ’ s the tell-tale quote from young André – bolded above .
Granted these are just the words of a child , but he almost certainly was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And it ’ s definitely the aim of the exercise .
A government which has policy dictated by what scientists say is necessary .
NOT what is democratically mandated .
NOT what is legally permitted .
Not even what is morally correct .
What the scientists say is necessary .
Anybody paying attention to the way the world is being run in the wake of the Covid19 “ pandemic ” should find those words at least a little chilling .

Kit Knightly
The European Court of Human Rights is prepping to hear a civil case brought against the governments of 33 European nations by six teenage “climate activists”.
The six youth activists are allegedly crowd-funding the campaign, but also have the backing of the Global Legal Action Network NGO. Though the six teenagers are all Portuguese, the case is being brought against thirty-three different nations simultaneously – all 27 EU members, the UK, Russia, Norway, Turkey, Ukraine and Switzerland.
To defend themselves the 33 countries will be asked to explain how their “lack of action” on climate change doesn’t equate to a violation of the human rights of their citizens. If they lose, the countries in question will be legally forced to “take greater action” on climate, or face penalties for missing lower carbon emissions goals etc.
One of the kids, 12-year-old André Oliveira, is quoted in The Guardian as saying [our emphasis]:
It gives me lots of hope to know that the judges in the European court of human rights recognise the urgency of our case. But what I’d like the most would be for European governments to immediately do what the scientists say is necessary to protect our future. Until they do this, we will keep on fighting with more determination than ever.”
The story itself is nonsense of course. Twelve-year-olds do not talk like that. Plus the case originated over 3 years ago, when young André was only nine.
Nine-year-old boys do not see footage of forest fires on the news and decide to sue the European Union. Even if the thought did occur to them, they wouldn’t have the resources, knowledge or wherewithal to actually do anything about it. Not without some pretty all-encompassing adult supervision.
This whole story has the Greta-like whiff of adults using children to mask their agenda. It’s unsavoury, but that’s not really the worst part. The worst part is what this case is aiming to achieve.
Consider the precedents being set here. As the Guardian rightly points out, the ECHR is a standard-setting body, even if the final judgment in this particular case is largely ignored, or considered simply symbolic, it will still sit on the books as a precedent in several ways.
Firstly, there’s the precedent of over-ruling democracy. The governments of these 33 nations were all elected, they (notionally) answer to their electorate, not the EHRC. It’s one thing to prosecute a nation or head of state for actually committing a crime, but bringing a civil case to dictate policy is quite another.
Secondly, there’s the question of state sovereignty. All of the plaintiffs are Portuguese, yet the case is seeking to alter the policy of 32 other nation-states as well. Neither these six Portuguese children, their British lawyers or the Strasbourg-based courts have the right to tell Hungary or Norway or Turkey how to run their country, certainly not when it involves going against the democratic will of the people.
Finally, there’s the tell-tale quote from young André – bolded above.
what I’d like the most would be for European governments to immediately do what the scientists say is necessary”
Granted these are just the words of a child, but he almost certainly was reading something an adult had written. And it’s definitely the aim of the exercise. A government which has policy dictated by what scientists say is necessary.
NOT what is democratically mandated. NOT what is legally permitted. Not even what is morally correct.
What the scientists say is necessary.
Anybody paying attention to the way the world is being run in the wake of the Covid19 “pandemic” should find those words at least a little chilling.


offguardian--2020-11-30--WATCH: Covid-19 Deaths – A Look at US Data

The above video is a webinar given by Dr Genevieve Briand , a lecturer in advanced economics and statistics at Johns Hopkins University .
In her talk , Dr Briand claims that the “ Covid19 pandemic ” has resulted in marked declines in other causes of death , most particularly heart disease , the usual leading cause of death in the United States .
Dr Briand reasons that deaths from other causes are being miscategorized as “ Covid19 ” , and this is inflating the numbers and leading to misleading reporting of the “ pandemic ” situation .
Whether or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s no denying this interpretation is possible – given the bizarrely loose definitions of “ Covid death ” being used around the world .
It would also explain the inexplicable lack of influenza activity occurring this year .
statistician WM Briggs has a good write-up on this video here .
The presentation became the subject of some controversy after an article summing up Dr Briand ’ s work was published by the Johns Hopkin ’ s Newsletter , only to be pulled from publication a few days later .
It was soon replaced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in which they claim the article was removed because : Both the article ’ s author , Johns Hopkins neuroscience student Yanni Gu , and Dr Briand herself , objected to the article being removed .
Whilst “ fact-checkers ” rushed to defend the retraction , keen to point out that a publication voluntarily choosing to pull an article out of fear of backlash is NOT the same as censorship .
It ’ s vital to note here that neither the newsletter , nor the fact-checkers , are accusing Dr Briand of being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are simply claiming her conclusions are flawed .
Allowing air time and discussion of flawed conclusions is a vital part of the scientific method .
Even if Briand is wrong – and we ’ ve seen nothing yet to show she is – there is no excuse to for trying to limit exposure or discussion of her report .
All Dr Briand ever said was that there was likely “ some misclassification ” – but , apparently , the Covid narrative can not be subject to even that minuscule level of dissent .

The above video is a webinar given by Dr Genevieve Briand, a lecturer in advanced economics and statistics at Johns Hopkins University. In her talk, Dr Briand claims that the “Covid19 pandemic” has resulted in marked declines in other causes of death, most particularly heart disease, the usual leading cause of death in the United States.
Dr Briand reasons that deaths from other causes are being miscategorized as “Covid19”, and this is inflating the numbers and leading to misleading reporting of the “pandemic” situation.
Whether or not she is correct, there’s no denying this interpretation is possible – given the bizarrely loose definitions of “Covid death” being used around the world. It would also explain the inexplicable lack of influenza activity occurring this year. statistician WM Briggs has a good write-up on this video here.
The presentation became the subject of some controversy after an article summing up Dr Briand’s work was published by the Johns Hopkin’s Newsletter, only to be pulled from publication a few days later. It was soon replaced with a statement from the editors, in which they claim the article was removed because:
[It] has been used to support dangerous inaccuracies that minimize the impact of the pandemic.
Both the article’s author, Johns Hopkins neuroscience student Yanni Gu, and Dr Briand herself, objected to the article being removed. Whilst “fact-checkers” rushed to defend the retraction, keen to point out that a publication voluntarily choosing to pull an article out of fear of backlash is NOT the same as censorship.
It’s vital to note here that neither the newsletter, nor the fact-checkers, are accusing Dr Briand of being dishonest or repudiating her work, they are simply claiming her conclusions are flawed. Allowing air time and discussion of flawed conclusions is a vital part of the scientific method. Even if Briand is wrong – and we’ve seen nothing yet to show she is – there is no excuse to for trying to limit exposure or discussion of her report.
All Dr Briand ever said was that there was likely “some misclassification” – but, apparently, the Covid narrative cannot be subject to even that minuscule level of dissent.