thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-07-07--A Historical Reminder of What Defines the United States, As Told by a Former Slave

It is clear that there is a storm coming , however , the question is will it be the sort of storm that provides sustenance and relief to drought-stricken and barren lands , or will it be the sort of storm that destroys indiscriminately and leaves nothing recognizable in its wake ?
There is such a heavy tension in the air , the buildup we are told of centuries of injustice , oppression and murder .
It feels like the entire world ’ s burden has laid itself upon one culprit and that it is high time that that villain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ villain is the United States .
It is common to hear that this nation was created under the hubristic banner of “ Freedom from Empire ” , while it brutally owned slaves and committed genocide on the indigenous people .
That the “ Declaration of Independence ” and the “ U.S .
Constitution ” are despicable displays of the highest degree of grotesque hypocrisy , and that in reality the U.S. was to replace one system of empire with another and far worse .
These are weighty charges indeed , and nobody can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been committed .
However , it is important that we review this history in full , for if we lose sight of the forest , we will be losing sight of an ongoing battle that is still waging .
We will have abandoned the work of past heroes that has been left unfinished and will have replaced it with the false idol of anarchy , mistaking its ‘ empty-promises of liberty ’ as a mark of what constitutes a ‘ true freedom ’ .
How can we avoid such ‘ empty-promises ’ and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There is no better account in addressing such a question as that of Frederick Douglass ( 1817-1895 ) , a former slave who would become an advisor to Abraham Lincoln during the dark days of the Civil War and the Consul General to Haiti in his elder years .
Frederick Douglass was born in Talbot County , in the State of Maryland .
Though it was impossible to know his exact date of birth , he gathers that the month of February 1817 is as accurate as possible .
The name given to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the words of Douglass “ no less pretentious and long ” than Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey ( Frederick ’ s mother was believed to be the only slave in the region who knew how to read ) .
Frederick recalls that in his youth “ I was just as well aware of the unjust , unnatural , and murderous character of slavery , when nine years old , as I am now .
Without any appeals to books , to laws , or to authorities of any kind , to regard God @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a crime.
” Already , by the age of nine , Frederick had set himself upon not only the idea of escape from this destitution , but was always mindful to an education wherever he could find it .
Luckily , in this unhappy state his only adult friend Miss Lucretia , ( daughter of Captain Anthony the slaveholder of Frederick ) , arranged for Frederick , at the age of ten , to be sent away from the plantations to live in Baltimore with her husband ’ s brother Hugh Auld @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would learn how to read .
Years go by and at around the age of fifteen or sixteen , Frederick is sent back to the plantations ( over a family squabble ) , and not surprisingly is found to be wholly unfit for a life of hard-labour as an obedient slave .
He is thus promptly sent to “ Covey , The Negro Breaker ” to lodge with for a period of one year .
For six months , Frederick was whipped and beaten on a regular basis .
From the dawn of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evening , he was kept hard at work in the fields , and was worked up to the point of his powers of endurance .
Until one day he decides finally that it is better to resist and risk the consequences than continue to live such a contemptible life as a mere brute .
He decides one day to simply refuse to be treated as an animal , not to strike back but to oppose the striking .
As Frederick states “ A man without force is without the essential dignity of humanity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that it can not honor a helpless man , though it can pity him , and even this it can not do long if signs of power do not arise .
He only can understand the effect of this combat on my spirit , who has himself incurred something , or hazarded something , in repelling the unjust and cruel aggressions of a tyrant .
Covey was a tyrant and a cowardly one withal .
After resisting him , I felt as I had never felt before .
It was a resurrection from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , to the heaven of comparative freedom .
I was no longer a servile coward , trembling under the frown of a brother worm of the dust , but my long-cowed spirit was roused to an attitude of independence .
I had reached the point at which I was not afraid to die .
This spirit made me a freeman in fact , though I still remained a slave in form .
When a slave can not be flogged , he is more than half free .
He has a domain as broad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and he is really ‘ a power on earth ’ .
From this time until my escape from slavery , I was never fairly whipped .
Several attempts were made , but they were always unsuccessful .
Bruised I did get , but the instance I have described was the end of the brutification to which slavery had subjected me.
” The Abolitionist Cause in Light of the Preservation of the Union “ …that the fathers of the Republic neither intended the extension nor the perpetuity of slavery and that liberty is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make a long story short , Frederick would successfully escape the South and on September 3rd 1938 , arriving in New York at the age of 21 , he would finally embark on a life as a free man .
It would be only four or five months living in New Bedford before Douglass would meet William Lloyd Garrison , one of the most prominent leaders of the Abolitionist movement .
It did not take long for Douglass to be invited along their speaking tours to recount his story as a runaway slave @ @ @ @ @ @ @ owe much of his future as a great orator and writer in thanks to his Abolitionist friends who gave him a strong start in this direction and introduced him to many important figures , Douglass would eventually distance himself from the Abolitionist “ scripture ” .
This distancing was caused by Douglass ’ later recognition that there was in fact , no “ pro-slavery ” character in the U.S. Constitution as Garrison had been stating .
Douglass states , “ After a time , a careful reconsideration of the subject convinced me that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ union between the northern and southern states , that to seek this dissolution was not part of my duty as an abolitionist , that to abstain from voting was to refuse to exercise a legitimate and powerful means for abolishing slavery , and that the Constitution of the United States not only contained no guarantees in favor of slavery , but , on the contrary , was in its letter and spirit an antislavery instrument , demanding the abolition of slavery as a condition of its own existence as the supreme law of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Douglass would start his own anti-slavery newspaper called “ The North Star ” .
Along with this new editorial responsibility , Douglass would no longer leave it to the “ good advice ” of his “ more learned ” Abolitionist friends , but would take the responsibility upon himself to seek out and come to know whether such assertions by the Abolitionists on the nature of the Republic were true .
“ My new circumstances compelled me to re-think the whole subject , and to study with some care not only the just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but the origin , design , nature , rights , powers , and duties of civil governments , and also the relations which human beings sustain to it .
By such a course of thought and reading I was conducted to the conclusion that the Constitution of the United States – inaugurated to ‘ form a more perfect union , establish justice , insure domestic tranquility , provide for the common defense , promote the general welfare , and secure the blessings of liberty ’ – could not well have been designed at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a system of rapine and murder like slavery , especially as not one word can be found in the Constitution to authorize such a belief…the Constitution of our country is our warrant for the abolition of slavery in every state of the Union…being convinced of the fact , my duty upon this point in the further conduct of my paper [ The North Star ] was plain.
” Abraham Lincoln would be elected as the President of the United States on March 4th , 1861 .
To which Douglass stated of the occasion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told the American people at this crisis that the ‘ Union could not long endure half slave and half free ; that they must be all one or the other , and that the public mind could find no resting place but in the belief in the ultimate extinction of slavery.
’ These were not the words of an abolitionist – branded a fanatic , and carried away by an enthusiastic devotion to the Negro – but the calm cool , deliberate utterance of a statesman , comprehensive enough to take in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ simple words he had embodied the thought of the loyal nation , and indicated the character fit to lead and guide the country amid perils present and to come.
” “ I still believed , and spoke as I believed , all over the North , that the mission of the war was the liberation of the slave , as well as the salvation of the Union… ” With this newly discovered orientation , Douglass not only put the preservation of the Union as something necessary and expedient but , most importantly , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ striving for the Abolitionist cause .
Douglass would be one of the first to encourage the recruitment , through his paper “ The North Star ” , of black soldiers to join the Union ’ s war against the Confederate South .
The thought was that by these men joining the war , they would prove their mettle in the cause for emancipation .
These were hard days , since black soldiers were not given equal treatment nor protection in the Union army .
They also risked , if captured by the South @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Douglass ’ words “ worse than death ” .
Douglass had been assured that equal treatment would eventually occur , but it was too slow moving in his eyes and he refused to continue recruiting black soldiers into the Union army .
It was at this point that Douglass was invited to meet with President Lincoln to discuss his concerns over the matter .
Douglass describes his first meeting with Lincoln : “ I was never more quickly or more completely put at ease in the presence of a great man than in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were already deeply written on Mr. Lincoln ’ s brow , and his strong face , full of earnestness , lighted up as soon as my name was mentioned…I at once felt myself in the presence of an honest man – one whom I could love , honor , and trust without reserve or doubt.
” One of the points of concern Douglass discussed with the President , was on the unfair treatment of black soldiers as POWs and suggested that the North should retaliate and commit the same treatment on their Southern @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to which Lincoln responded , “ Retaliation was a terrible remedy , and one which it was very difficult to apply – that , if once begun , there was no telling where it would end – that if he could get hold of the Confederate soldiers who had been guilty of treating colored soldiers as felons he could easily retaliate , but the thought of hanging men for a crime perpetrated by others was revolting to his feelings…Though I was not entirely satisfied with his views , I was so well satisfied @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tendency of the conflict I determined to go on with the recruiting.
” “ It was a great thing to achieve American independence when we numbered three millions , but it was a greater thing to save this country from dismemberment and ruin when it numbered thirty millions .
He alone of all our presidents was to have the opportunity to destroy slavery , and to lift into manhood millions of his countrymen hitherto held as chattels and numbered with the beasts of the field.
” “ Since William the Silent , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for religious liberty against Spain and the Spanish Inquisition , no leader of men has been loved and trusted in such generous measures as was Abraham Lincoln.
” During the third year of the sanguinary Civil War , January 1st 1863 , President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation .
Douglass states of the occasion : “ the formal and solemn announcement was made that thereafter the government would be found on the side of emancipation…It must be the end of all compromises with slavery – a declaration that thereafter the war was to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a new aim.
” It was at this point that Lincoln received criticism for extending the war unnecessarily .
The South was ready to make certain concessions and the North was eager to end the war .
By Lincoln announcing the Emancipation Proclamation , it was thought by many to be a reckless provocation making any possibility of peace fruitless .
On this subject , Douglass would meet with Lincoln for the last time , before he would be assassinated .
“ The main subject on which he wished to confer with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ desirable to be employed outside the army to induce the slaves in the rebel states to come within the deferral lines .
The increasing opposition to the war , in the North , and the mad cry against it , because it was being made an abolition war , alarmed Mr. Lincoln , and made him apprehensive that a peace might be forced upon him which would leave still in slavery all who had not come within our lines .
What he wanted was to make his proclamation as effective as possible in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he was being accused of protracting the war beyond its legitimate object and failing to make peace when he might have done so to advantage .
He was afraid of what might come of all these complaints , but was persuaded that no solid and lasting peace could come short of absolute submission on the part of the rebels [ the South ] …He saw the danger of premature peace…I was the more impressed by this benevolent consideration because he before said , in answer to the peace clamor , that his object @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to do so with or without slavery .
What he said on this day showed a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had ever seen before in anything spoken or written by him .
I listened with the deepest interest and profoundest satisfaction , and , at his suggestion , agreed to undertake the organizing of a band of scouts , composed of colored men , whose business should be somewhat after the original plan of John Brown , to go into the rebel states , beyond the lines of our armies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emancipation , and urge the slaves to come within our boundaries .
…I refer to this conversation because I think that , on Mr. Lincoln ’ s part , it is evidence conclusive that the proclamation , so far at least as he was concerned , was not effected merely as a [ political ] ‘ necessity ’ .
” President Lincoln would be selected to continue a second term and was inaugurated on March 4th , 1865 .
About one month after the official end of the Civil War .
Lincoln would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after his second inauguration .
Douglass writes , “ His first inauguration arrested the fall of the Republic , and the second was to restore it to enduring foundations.
” The fact that Lincoln ’ s leadership was savagely cut short was a tragedy for all who understood that the true foundation of the Republic was built upon the principle “ liberty for all ” .
In that sad moment , when the country heard of the death of their leader who was to bring them closer to this goal , Douglass states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ terrible calamity , and this ‘ touch of nature made us ’ more than countrymen , it made us ‘ kin ’ .
” It is an utmost testament to the grace and nobility of Frederick Douglass ’ character that an soon as the law and spirit of slavery had been broken , he made a point to no longer harbour hate and resentment for the past wrongs committed upon himself .
He recognised that humanity was indeed inherently good and would ultimately strive towards goodness if left to its natural tendency… that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ committed crimes before them would destroy any good that ever existed in the world .
Douglass recounts , “ If any reader of this part of my life shall see in it the evidence of a want of manly resentment for wrongs inflicted by slavery upon myself and race , and by the ancestors of… [ those who once owned slaves ] , so it must be .
No man can be stronger than nature , one touch of which , we are told , makes all the world akin .
I esteem @ @ @ @ @ @ @ injustice and oppression , but my resentment ceases when they cease , and I have no heart to visit upon children the sins of their father.
” I will end here with an account of Douglass when he revisits the place where he was born a “ slave ” and sees his former “ master ” Captain Auld , upon his request on his deathbed , after his escape to the North over 25 years ago : “ But now that slavery was destroyed , and the slave and the master stood upon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ willing to meet him , but was very glad to do so…He was to me no longer a slaveholder either in fact or in spirit , and I regarded him as I did myself , a victim of the circumstances of birth , education , law , and custom .
Our courses had been determined for us , not by us .
We had both been flung , by powers that did not ask our consent , upon a mighty current of life , which we could neither resist , nor control .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and I a slave , but now our lives were verging towards a point where differences disappear , where even the constancy of hate breaks down and where the clouds of pride , passion , and selfishness vanish before the brightness of infinite light .
”

Cynthia Chung
It is clear that there is a storm coming, however, the question is will it be the sort of storm that provides sustenance and relief to drought-stricken and barren lands, or will it be the sort of storm that destroys indiscriminately and leaves nothing recognizable in its wake?
There is such a heavy tension in the air, the buildup we are told of centuries of injustice, oppression and murder. It feels like the entire world’s burden has laid itself upon one culprit and that it is high time that that villain pay for past blood spilled.
That villain is the United States.
It is common to hear that this nation was created under the hubristic banner of “Freedom from Empire”, while it brutally owned slaves and committed genocide on the indigenous people. That the “Declaration of Independence” and the “U.S. Constitution” are despicable displays of the highest degree of grotesque hypocrisy, and that in reality the U.S. was to replace one system of empire with another and far worse.
These are weighty charges indeed, and nobody can deny that great crimes against humanity have been committed. However, it is important that we review this history in full, for if we lose sight of the forest, we will be losing sight of an ongoing battle that is still waging.
We will have abandoned the work of past heroes that has been left unfinished and will have replaced it with the false idol of anarchy, mistaking its ‘empty-promises of liberty’ as a mark of what constitutes a ‘true freedom’.
How can we avoid such ‘empty-promises’ and strive for ‘true freedom’?
There is no better account in addressing such a question as that of Frederick Douglass (1817-1895), a former slave who would become an advisor to Abraham Lincoln during the dark days of the Civil War and the Consul General to Haiti in his elder years.
A through-and-through TRUE American hero (1).
From Slavery to Freedom
Frederick Douglass was born in Talbot County, in the State of Maryland. Though it was impossible to know his exact date of birth, he gathers that the month of February 1817 is as accurate as possible. The name given to him by his dear mother was, in the words of Douglass “no less pretentious and long” than Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey (Frederick’s mother was believed to be the only slave in the region who knew how to read).
Frederick recalls that in his youth “I was just as well aware of the unjust, unnatural, and murderous character of slavery, when nine years old, as I am now. Without any appeals to books, to laws, or to authorities of any kind, to regard God as ‘Our Father’ condemned slavery as a crime.”
Already, by the age of nine, Frederick had set himself upon not only the idea of escape from this destitution, but was always mindful to an education wherever he could find it.
Luckily, in this unhappy state his only adult friend Miss Lucretia, (daughter of Captain Anthony the slaveholder of Frederick), arranged for Frederick, at the age of ten, to be sent away from the plantations to live in Baltimore with her husband’s brother Hugh Auld.
It was in Baltimore that Frederick would learn how to read.
“A man without force is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, though it can pity him, and even this it cannot do long if signs of power do not arise. He only can understand the effect of this combat on my spirit, who has himself incurred something, or hazarded something, in repelling the unjust and cruel aggressions of a tyrant..."
Years go by and at around the age of fifteen or sixteen, Frederick is sent back to the plantations (over a family squabble), and not surprisingly is found to be wholly unfit for a life of hard-labour as an obedient slave. He is thus promptly sent to “Covey, The Negro Breaker” to lodge with for a period of one year.
For six months, Frederick was whipped and beaten on a regular basis. From the dawn of day till the complete darkness in the evening, he was kept hard at work in the fields, and was worked up to the point of his powers of endurance.
Until one day he decides finally that it is better to resist and risk the consequences than continue to live such a contemptible life as a mere brute. He decides one day to simply refuse to be treated as an animal, not to strike back but to oppose the striking.
As Frederick states “A man without force is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, though it can pity him, and even this it cannot do long if signs of power do not arise. He only can understand the effect of this combat on my spirit, who has himself incurred something, or hazarded something, in repelling the unjust and cruel aggressions of a tyrant. Covey was a tyrant and a cowardly one withal. After resisting him, I felt as I had never felt before. It was a resurrection from the dark and pestiferous tomb of slavery, to the heaven of comparative freedom. I was no longer a servile coward, trembling under the frown of a brother worm of the dust, but my long-cowed spirit was roused to an attitude of independence. I had reached the point at which I was not afraid to die. This spirit made me a freeman in fact, though I still remained a slave in form. When a slave cannot be flogged, he is more than half free. He has a domain as broad as his own manly heart to defend, and he is really ‘a power on earth’. From this time until my escape from slavery, I was never fairly whipped. Several attempts were made, but they were always unsuccessful. Bruised I did get, but the instance I have described was the end of the brutification to which slavery had subjected me.”
The Abolitionist Cause in Light of the Preservation of the Union
“…that the fathers of the Republic neither intended the extension nor the perpetuity of slavery and that liberty is national and slavery is sectional.”
– Frederick Douglass
To make a long story short, Frederick would successfully escape the South and on September 3rd 1938, arriving in New York at the age of 21, he would finally embark on a life as a free man.
It would be only four or five months living in New Bedford before Douglass would meet William Lloyd Garrison, one of the most prominent leaders of the Abolitionist movement. It did not take long for Douglass to be invited along their speaking tours to recount his story as a runaway slave from the South.
Though Douglass would owe much of his future as a great orator and writer in thanks to his Abolitionist friends who gave him a strong start in this direction and introduced him to many important figures, Douglass would eventually distance himself from the Abolitionist “scripture”.
This distancing was caused by Douglass’ later recognition that there was in fact, no “pro-slavery” character in the U.S. Constitution as Garrison had been stating.
Douglass states, “After a time, a careful reconsideration of the subject convinced me that there was no necessity for dissolving the union between the northern and southern states, that to seek this dissolution was not part of my duty as an abolitionist, that to abstain from voting was to refuse to exercise a legitimate and powerful means for abolishing slavery, and that the Constitution of the United States not only contained no guarantees in favor of slavery, but, on the contrary, was in its letter and spirit an antislavery instrument, demanding the abolition of slavery as a condition of its own existence as the supreme law of the land.”
During this time, Douglass would start his own anti-slavery newspaper called “The North Star”. Along with this new editorial responsibility, Douglass would no longer leave it to the “good advice” of his “more learned” Abolitionist friends, but would take the responsibility upon himself to seek out and come to know whether such assertions by the Abolitionists on the nature of the Republic were true.
“My new circumstances compelled me to re-think the whole subject, and to study with some care not only the just and proper rules of legal interpretation, but the origin, design, nature, rights, powers, and duties of civil governments, and also the relations which human beings sustain to it. By such a course of thought and reading I was conducted to the conclusion that the Constitution of the United States – inaugurated to ‘form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty’ – could not well have been designed at the same time to maintain and perpetuate a system of rapine and murder like slavery, especially as not one word can be found in the Constitution to authorize such a belief…the Constitution of our country is our warrant for the abolition of slavery in every state of the Union…being convinced of the fact, my duty upon this point in the further conduct of my paper [The North Star] was plain.”
Abraham Lincoln would be elected as the President of the United States on March 4th, 1861. To which Douglass stated of the occasion:
“It was Mr. Lincoln who told the American people at this crisis that the ‘Union could not long endure half slave and half free; that they must be all one or the other, and that the public mind could find no resting place but in the belief in the ultimate extinction of slavery.’ These were not the words of an abolitionist – branded a fanatic, and carried away by an enthusiastic devotion to the Negro – but the calm cool, deliberate utterance of a statesman, comprehensive enough to take in the welfare of the whole country…In a few simple words he had embodied the thought of the loyal nation, and indicated the character fit to lead and guide the country amid perils present and to come.”
On Meeting Lincoln
“I still believed, and spoke as I believed, all over the North, that the mission of the war was the liberation of the slave, as well as the salvation of the Union…”
– Frederick Douglass
With this newly discovered orientation, Douglass not only put the preservation of the Union as something necessary and expedient but, most importantly, something that could not be sacrificed in striving for the Abolitionist cause.
Douglass would be one of the first to encourage the recruitment, through his paper “The North Star”, of black soldiers to join the Union’s war against the Confederate South. The thought was that by these men joining the war, they would prove their mettle in the cause for emancipation.
These were hard days, since black soldiers were not given equal treatment nor protection in the Union army. They also risked, if captured by the South, being enslaved, a sentence in Douglass’ words “worse than death”. Douglass had been assured that equal treatment would eventually occur, but it was too slow moving in his eyes and he refused to continue recruiting black soldiers into the Union army.
It was at this point that Douglass was invited to meet with President Lincoln to discuss his concerns over the matter.
Douglass describes his first meeting with Lincoln: “I was never more quickly or more completely put at ease in the presence of a great man than in that of Abraham Lincoln…Long lines of care were already deeply written on Mr. Lincoln’s brow, and his strong face, full of earnestness, lighted up as soon as my name was mentioned…I at once felt myself in the presence of an honest man – one whom I could love, honor, and trust without reserve or doubt.”
One of the points of concern Douglass discussed with the President, was on the unfair treatment of black soldiers as POWs and suggested that the North should retaliate and commit the same treatment on their Southern POWs to dissuade this unequal treatment, to which Lincoln responded, “Retaliation was a terrible remedy, and one which it was very difficult to apply – that, if once begun, there was no telling where it would end – that if he could get hold of the Confederate soldiers who had been guilty of treating colored soldiers as felons he could easily retaliate, but the thought of hanging men for a crime perpetrated by others was revolting to his feelings…Though I was not entirely satisfied with his views, I was so well satisfied with the man and with the educating tendency of the conflict I determined to go on with the recruiting.”
Douglass reflects on his decision:
“It was a great thing to achieve American independence when we numbered three millions, but it was a greater thing to save this country from dismemberment and ruin when it numbered thirty millions. He alone of all our presidents was to have the opportunity to destroy slavery, and to lift into manhood millions of his countrymen hitherto held as chattels and numbered with the beasts of the field.”
The Emancipation Proclamation
“Since William the Silent, who was the soul of the mighty war for religious liberty against Spain and the Spanish Inquisition, no leader of men has been loved and trusted in such generous measures as was Abraham Lincoln.”
– Frederick Douglass
During the third year of the sanguinary Civil War, January 1st 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Douglass states of the occasion: “the formal and solemn announcement was made that thereafter the government would be found on the side of emancipation…It must be the end of all compromises with slavery – a declaration that thereafter the war was to be conducted on a new principle, with a new aim.”
It was at this point that Lincoln received criticism for extending the war unnecessarily. The South was ready to make certain concessions and the North was eager to end the war. By Lincoln announcing the Emancipation Proclamation, it was thought by many to be a reckless provocation making any possibility of peace fruitless.
On this subject, Douglass would meet with Lincoln for the last time, before he would be assassinated.
“The main subject on which he wished to confer with me was as to the means most desirable to be employed outside the army to induce the slaves in the rebel states to come within the deferral lines. The increasing opposition to the war, in the North, and the mad cry against it, because it was being made an abolition war, alarmed Mr. Lincoln, and made him apprehensive that a peace might be forced upon him which would leave still in slavery all who had not come within our lines. What he wanted was to make his proclamation as effective as possible in the event of such a peace…He said he was being accused of protracting the war beyond its legitimate object and failing to make peace when he might have done so to advantage. He was afraid of what might come of all these complaints, but was persuaded that no solid and lasting peace could come short of absolute submission on the part of the rebels [the South]…He saw the danger of premature peace…I was the more impressed by this benevolent consideration because he before said, in answer to the peace clamor, that his object was to save the Union, and to do so with or without slavery. What he said on this day showed a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had ever seen before in anything spoken or written by him. I listened with the deepest interest and profoundest satisfaction, and, at his suggestion, agreed to undertake the organizing of a band of scouts, composed of colored men, whose business should be somewhat after the original plan of John Brown, to go into the rebel states, beyond the lines of our armies, and to carry the news of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within our boundaries.
…I refer to this conversation because I think that, on Mr. Lincoln’s part, it is evidence conclusive that the proclamation, so far at least as he was concerned, was not effected merely as a [political] ‘necessity’.”
President Lincoln would be selected to continue a second term and was inaugurated on March 4th, 1865. About one month after the official end of the Civil War. Lincoln would be assassinated just a mere 41 days after his second inauguration.
Douglass writes, “His first inauguration arrested the fall of the Republic, and the second was to restore it to enduring foundations.” The fact that Lincoln’s leadership was savagely cut short was a tragedy for all who understood that the true foundation of the Republic was built upon the principle “liberty for all”.
In that sad moment, when the country heard of the death of their leader who was to bring them closer to this goal, Douglass states,
“We shared in common a terrible calamity, and this ‘touch of nature made us’ more than countrymen, it made us ‘kin’.”
Reflections on the Past
It is an utmost testament to the grace and nobility of Frederick Douglass’ character that an soon as the law and spirit of slavery had been broken, he made a point to no longer harbour hate and resentment for the past wrongs committed upon himself. He recognised that humanity was indeed inherently good and would ultimately strive towards goodness if left to its natural tendency… that to punish the children of those who committed crimes before them would destroy any good that ever existed in the world.
Douglass recounts, “If any reader of this part of my life shall see in it the evidence of a want of manly resentment for wrongs inflicted by slavery upon myself and race, and by the ancestors of…[those who once owned slaves], so it must be. No man can be stronger than nature, one touch of which, we are told, makes all the world akin. I esteem myself a good, persistent hater of injustice and oppression, but my resentment ceases when they cease, and I have no heart to visit upon children the sins of their father.”
I will end here with an account of Douglass when he revisits the place where he was born a “slave” and sees his former “master” Captain Auld, upon his request on his deathbed, after his escape to the North over 25 years ago:
“But now that slavery was destroyed, and the slave and the master stood upon equal ground, I was not only willing to meet him, but was very glad to do so…He was to me no longer a slaveholder either in fact or in spirit, and I regarded him as I did myself, a victim of the circumstances of birth, education, law, and custom.
Our courses had been determined for us, not by us. We had both been flung, by powers that did not ask our consent, upon a mighty current of life, which we could neither resist, nor control. By this current he was a master, and I a slave, but now our lives were verging towards a point where differences disappear, where even the constancy of hate breaks down and where the clouds of pride, passion, and selfishness vanish before the brightness of infinite light.”


thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-07-07--W.E.B. DuBois, champion of black people, and all oppressed people

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible .
Share with kin , friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise .
abies are named after him , organizations founded in his honor , grave risks run complying with his constant calls for action .
Brilliant , eloquent , and hungry for knowledge , by his mid-twenties he had completed a Ph.D. in Sociology at Harvard and the coursework for another in Economics at Humboldt University in Berlin , the leading economics department in the world .
After that , he wrote the first work on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of essays worthy of Shakespeare and the King James Bible .
A trail of Yankee and European admirers regularly seeks him out , staying in hotels segregation forbids DuBois himself to enter .
Such cruel ironies have etched a half-sneer on the good Doctor ’ s face , and the scorn only deepens when his requests for research funds are routinely dismissed or ignored .
Condescended to by his inferiors , DuBois responds with volleys of lucid indignation that may subside but never entirely disappear .
Seeing the wrath that greets what they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Southern “ gentlemen ” shake their heads and conclude smugly that cities breed a deracialized “ uppityness ” in general and racial Frankensteins like DuBois in particular .
Teacher , scholar , activist , sociologist , historian , writer , and world traveler , DuBois uses his lyrical voice , analytical rigor , and passionate advocacy with the supreme dignity of an avatar entrusted with the guidance of his entire race .
Boundless ambition marked him early .
While still a teenager he decided to “ prove to the world that Negroes [ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sources : David Levering Lewis , W. E. B. DuBois – Biography of a Race , 1868-1919 , ( Henry Holt and Co. , 1998 ) pps .
3 , 32 , 98 , 272 , 350 , 469 , 500 , 505 ; Playthell Benjamin and Stanley Crouch , C-SPAN Book TV , April 2 , 2003 Seeing a lynching victim ’ s blackened knuckles in a display case jolted him out of brilliant scholarly detachment and converted him to activism .
Decades of distinguished accomplishment later , universities shun him , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ refuse to write about him .
Only the Communists and the National Guardian risk publishing him , while his sole financial support comes from the pennies of the poor .
Heretical groups , their coffers empty and their leaders always on the brink of jail , compete to have him grace their gatherings with unpaid speeches , which he delivers with aplomb .
Always he says exactly what needs saying in an eloquently prophetic voice worthy of Robeson .
In private conversation he prefers listening to monopolizing the floor , but whenever he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the room .
Prolific author , spellbinding orator , tireless organizer , proud socialist , champion of a hundred causes Dr. DuBois speaks from Beijing University on his 91st birthday : “ I speak with no authority , no assumption of age nor rank ; I hold no position , I have no wealth .
One thing alone I own and that is my soul .
Ownership of that I have even while in my own country for near a century I have been nothing but a ‘ nigger.
’ On this basis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sources : Cedric Belfrage and James Aaronson , Something To Guard : The Stormy Life of the National Guardian 1948-1967 , ( Columbia , 1978 ) pps .
137-40 , 252 ; Mary Jo Buhle , Paul Buhle , and Harvey J. Kaye , The American Radical , ( Routledge , 1994 ) pps .
113-20 The gatekeeper of rewards , the key to black advancement , Tuskegee Institute champions hard work and savings , the purchase of respect , and a gradual alleviation of racism ’ s miseries .
Perpetually under construction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whose lessons consist of laying cement , transporting hods on scaffolds , and planing wood in the carpentry shop .
Commencement valedictories witness seniors quickly assembling demonstration houses while buildings bearing the names of Northern philanthropists rise up all over campus the whole year round .
Masters of cabinet-making , plastering , masonry , and steam-fitting , Tuskegee graduates never lack for jobs .
According to the Tuskegee creed , practical education is worth temporary political subservience , for a man without a vocation is no man at all .
Liberal arts mean @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and higher degrees merely glorify idleness .
Music , literature , and foreign language can wait until blacks become rich , while the vote is a useless thing .
Carpentry pays better , and invites no trouble .
Sources : David Levering Lewis , Kent , W. E. B. DuBois – Biography of a Race , 1868-1919 , ( Henry Holt and Co. , 1998 ) pps .
233 , 262 , 309 , 341 , 353 ; America In 1900 , ( M. E. Sharpe , 2000 ) p. 123 Collusion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is turning black society on its head , warn these learned blacks , a self-surrender that awards starring roles to sharecroppers , skilled mechanics , and domestics , while black teachers , preachers , doctors , and undertakers are forced off the stage .
In the past accomplished black people traveled and pondered , read more than just the Bible , and at least aspired to express themselves nobly , but today all march to segregated prosperity behind Booker T. Washington and his Tuskegee Machine .
“ In the history of nearly all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has been that manly self-respect is worth more than land and houses , ” W. E. B. DuBois reminds his tormented race .
Dignity comes before utility , he adds , and knowledge of values will forever trump obsession with prices .
Educated blacks insist that work and money can do their race no ultimate good until it has the vote , higher education , and the power to defeat discrimination .
A refinement of character , not material success , is the true measure of humanity .
Years ago , Dr. DuBois @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a Meal Ticket : “ Never make the mistake of thinking that the object of being a man is to make a carpenter ; the object of being a carpenter is to be a man.
” Sources : David Levering Lewis , W. E. B. DuBois – Biography of a Race , 1868-1919 , ( Henry Holt and Co. , 1998 ) pps .
108 , 288 ; W. E. B. DuBois – The Fight For Equality and the American Century , 1919-1963 , ( Henry Holt and Co. , 2000 ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ed.
, Afro-American History – Primary Sources ( Harcourt , 1971 ) pps .
119-28 ) “ What has gone wrong ?
It is clear the workers don ’ t understand the meaning of work .
Work is service , not gain .
The object of work is life , not income .
The reward of production is plenty , not private property .
We should measure the prosperity of the nation not by the number of millionaires , but by the absence of poverty ; the prevalence of health ; the efficiency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ number of people who can , do read worthwhile books .
Toward all this we do strive , but instead of marching breast forward , we stagger and wander thinking that food is raised not to eat , but to sell at good profit ; houses are not to shelter the masses , but to make real estate agents rich ; and solemnly declaring that without private profit there can be no food or homes .
All of this is ridiculous .
It has been disproven centuries ago .
The greatest thinkers of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wealth in the hands of the few and against poverty , and disease and ignorance in the masses of men .
We have tried every method of reform .
A favorite effort has been force by war .
But the loot stolen by murder went to the generals and not to the soldiers .
We tried through religion to lead men to sacrifice and right treatment of their fellow men , but the priests too often stole the fruits of sacrifice and concealed the truth .
In the 17th century of our modern @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and dreamed that justice might rule through natural law , but we misinterpreted that law to mean that most men were slaves and white Europeans were the right masters of the world .
In the 18th century , we turned toward the ballot in the hands of the worker to force a just division of the fruits of labor among the toilers .
But the capitalists , happening on black slavery and land monopoly and on private monopoly of capital , forced the modern worker into a new slavery which built a new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the bottom , with white serfs between , and the power still in the hands of the rich .
But one consideration halted this plan .
The serfs and even the slaves had begun to learn to think .
Some bits of education had stimulated them and some of the real scientists of the world began to use their knowledge for the masses and not solely for the ruling classes .
It became more and more a matter of straight thinking .
What is work ?
It was what all must contribute @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has a right to be idle .
It is the bounden duty of each to contribute his best to the well being of all , of what men gain by the efforts of all have a right to share , not to the extent of all that they may want , but certainly to the extent of what they really need .
You must let the world know that this is your simple and unwavering program : the abolition of poverty , disease and ignorance the world over among women and men of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to accomplish this by just control of concentrated wealth , and overthrow of monopoly to ensure that income depends on work and not on privilege or change ; that freedom is the heritage of man , and that by freedom we do not mean freedom from the laws of nature , but freedom to think and believe and express our thoughts and dream our dreams and to maintain our rights against secret police , witchhunters or any other sort of a modern fool or tyrant.
” Source : Heather Gray , Another Look @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , November 19 , 2007 This is the infamy Dr. DuBois and others like him were trying to erase , and the job is still far from done .

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.
Michael K. Smith
Long before MLK, W.E.B. DuBois, gifted with a splendid intellect and the fierce certainty of his moral vision, defied the white establishment in America to the consternation and fury of racists everywhere. "Decades of distinguished accomplishment later, universities shun him, well-to-do blacks disdain him, and intellectuals refuse to write about him. Only the Communists and the National Guardian risk publishing him, while his sole financial support comes from the pennies of the poor...."
1903: Atlanta
Dr. W. E. B. DuBois
B
abies are named after him, organizations founded in his honor, grave risks run complying with his constant calls for action.
Brilliant, eloquent, and hungry for knowledge, by his mid-twenties he had completed a Ph.D. in Sociology at Harvard and the coursework for another in Economics at Humboldt University in Berlin, the leading economics department in the world. After that, he wrote the first work on American urban sociology and a powerful collection of essays worthy of Shakespeare and the King James Bible.
A trail of Yankee and European admirers regularly seeks him out, staying in hotels segregation forbids DuBois himself to enter. Such cruel ironies have etched a half-sneer on the good Doctor’s face, and the scorn only deepens when his requests for research funds are routinely dismissed or ignored.
Condescended to by his inferiors, DuBois responds with volleys of lucid indignation that may subside but never entirely disappear. Seeing the wrath that greets what they take to be their good intentions, Southern “gentlemen” shake their heads and conclude smugly that cities breed a deracialized “uppityness” in general and racial Frankensteins like DuBois in particular.
Teacher, scholar, activist, sociologist, historian, writer, and world traveler, DuBois uses his lyrical voice, analytical rigor, and passionate advocacy with the supreme dignity of an avatar entrusted with the guidance of his entire race.
Boundless ambition marked him early. While still a teenager he decided to “prove to the world that Negroes [are] just like other people.”
Sources: David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. DuBois – Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, (Henry Holt and Co., 1998) pps. 3, 32, 98, 272, 350, 469, 500, 505; Playthell Benjamin and Stanley Crouch, C-SPAN Book TV, April 2, 2003
1959: Beijing
Portrait of a Harvard Ph.D.
Seeing a lynching victim’s blackened knuckles in a display case jolted him out of brilliant scholarly detachment and converted him to activism.
Decades of distinguished accomplishment later, universities shun him, well-to-do blacks disdain him, and intellectuals refuse to write about him. Only the Communists and the National Guardian risk publishing him, while his sole financial support comes from the pennies of the poor.
Heretical groups, their coffers empty and their leaders always on the brink of jail, compete to have him grace their gatherings with unpaid speeches, which he delivers with aplomb. Always he says exactly what needs saying in an eloquently prophetic voice worthy of Robeson. In private conversation he prefers listening to monopolizing the floor, but whenever he opens his mouth a hush falls over the room.
Prolific author, spellbinding orator, tireless organizer, proud socialist, champion of a hundred causes Dr. DuBois speaks from Beijing University on his 91st birthday: “I speak with no authority, no assumption of age nor rank; I hold no position, I have no wealth. One thing alone I own and that is my soul. Ownership of that I have even while in my own country for near a century I have been nothing but a ‘nigger.’ On this basis and this alone I dare speak.”
Sources: Cedric Belfrage and James Aaronson, Something To Guard: The Stormy Life of the National Guardian 1948-1967, (Columbia, 1978) pps. 137-40, 252; Mary Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, and Harvey J. Kaye, The American Radical, (Routledge, 1994) pps. 113-20
1903: The Alabama Black Belt
The Tuskegee Machine
The gatekeeper of rewards, the key to black advancement, Tuskegee Institute champions hard work and savings, the purchase of respect, and a gradual alleviation of racism’s miseries.
Perpetually under construction, the school is built by students whose lessons consist of laying cement, transporting hods on scaffolds, and planing wood in the carpentry shop. Commencement valedictories witness seniors quickly assembling demonstration houses while buildings bearing the names of Northern philanthropists rise up all over campus the whole year round.
Masters of cabinet-making, plastering, masonry, and steam-fitting, Tuskegee graduates never lack for jobs. According to the Tuskegee creed, practical education is worth temporary political subservience, for a man without a vocation is no man at all.
Liberal arts mean nothing to menials locked in caste subordination, and higher degrees merely glorify idleness. Music, literature, and foreign language can wait until blacks become rich, while the vote is a useless thing. Carpentry pays better, and invites no trouble.
Sources: David Levering Lewis, Kent, W. E. B. DuBois – Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, (Henry Holt and Co., 1998) pps. 233, 262, 309, 341, 353; America In 1900, (M. E. Sharpe, 2000) p. 123
1903: The Urban North
The Talented Tenth
Collusion with oppression and meek acceptance of inferiority is turning black society on its head, warn these learned blacks, a self-surrender that awards starring roles to sharecroppers, skilled mechanics, and domestics, while black teachers, preachers, doctors, and undertakers are forced off the stage. In the past accomplished black people traveled and pondered, read more than just the Bible, and at least aspired to express themselves nobly, but today all march to segregated prosperity behind Booker T. Washington and his Tuskegee Machine.
“In the history of nearly all other races and peoples the doctrine preached has been that manly self-respect is worth more than land and houses,” W. E. B. DuBois reminds his tormented race. Dignity comes before utility, he adds, and knowledge of values will forever trump obsession with prices.
Educated blacks insist that work and money can do their race no ultimate good until it has the vote, higher education, and the power to defeat discrimination. A refinement of character, not material success, is the true measure of humanity. Years ago, Dr. DuBois warned that education should not be confused with a Meal Ticket: “Never make the mistake of thinking that the object of being a man is to make a carpenter; the object of being a carpenter is to be a man.”
Sources: David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. DuBois – Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, (Henry Holt and Co., 1998) pps. 108, 288; W. E. B. DuBois – The Fight For Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963, (Henry Holt and Co., 2000) p. 2; Thomas R. Frazier, ed., Afro-American History – Primary Sources (Harcourt, 1971) pps. 119-28)
E. B. DuBois Makes the Case For Economic Sanity
“What has gone wrong? It is clear the workers don’t understand the meaning of work. Work is service, not gain. The object of work is life, not income. The reward of production is plenty, not private property. We should measure the prosperity of the nation not by the number of millionaires, but by the absence of poverty; the prevalence of health; the efficiency of the public schools; and the number of people who can, do read worthwhile books.
Toward all this we do strive, but instead of marching breast forward, we stagger and wander thinking that food is raised not to eat, but to sell at good profit; houses are not to shelter the masses, but to make real estate agents rich; and solemnly declaring that without private profit there can be no food or homes. All of this is ridiculous. It has been disproven centuries ago.
The greatest thinkers of every age have inveighed against concentration of wealth in the hands of the few and against poverty, and disease and ignorance in the masses of men.
We have tried every method of reform. A favorite effort has been force by war. But the loot stolen by murder went to the generals and not to the soldiers. We tried through religion to lead men to sacrifice and right treatment of their fellow men, but the priests too often stole the fruits of sacrifice and concealed the truth.
In the 17th century of our modern European era we sought leadership in science and dreamed that justice might rule through natural law, but we misinterpreted that law to mean that most men were slaves and white Europeans were the right masters of the world.
In the 18th century, we turned toward the ballot in the hands of the worker to force a just division of the fruits of labor among the toilers. But the capitalists, happening on black slavery and land monopoly and on private monopoly of capital, forced the modern worker into a new slavery which built a new civilization of the world with colored slaves at the bottom, with white serfs between, and the power still in the hands of the rich.
But one consideration halted this plan. The serfs and even the slaves had begun to learn to think. Some bits of education had stimulated them and some of the real scientists of the world began to use their knowledge for the masses and not solely for the ruling classes. It became more and more a matter of straight thinking.
What is work? It was what all must contribute to the common good. No man has a right to be idle. It is the bounden duty of each to contribute his best to the well being of all, of what men gain by the efforts of all have a right to share, not to the extent of all that they may want, but certainly to the extent of what they really need.
You must let the world know that this is your simple and unwavering program: the abolition of poverty, disease and ignorance the world over among women and men of all races, religions and color; to accomplish this by just control of concentrated wealth, and overthrow of monopoly to ensure that income depends on work and not on privilege or change; that freedom is the heritage of man, and that by freedom we do not mean freedom from the laws of nature, but freedom to think and believe and express our thoughts and dream our dreams and to maintain our rights against secret police, witchhunters or any other sort of a modern fool or tyrant.”
—W. E. B. DuBois at the 1953 California Peace Crusade
Source: Heather Gray, Another Look at W. E. B. DuBois, Counterpunch, November 19, 2007
Appendix
This is the infamy Dr. DuBois and others like him were trying to erase, and the job is still far from done.


thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-07-08--Were the Skripals Secretly Executed by Britain’s Government?

Another important dispatch from The Greanville Post .
Be sure to share it widely .
This article is part of an ongoing series of dispatches by historian Eric Zuesse Sergei Skripal is ( or was ) the Russian and British double agent ( Russian spy who defected to UK ) , who had become imprisoned for six years in Russia , and then became spy-swapped to , and resided in , UK .
Yulia is ( or was ) his daughter , who happened to be visiting with him from Russia on that fateful day , which almost ended her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ freedom .
The last time that either Sergei or Yulia were seen or heard from in news-media , was on 23 May 2018 , shortly after both of them had been released by a British hospital from their poisoning .
They had been poisoned by a nerve agent which the UK Government said came from Russia , but the UK ’ s laboratory at Porton Down that had actually investigated the matter declined to confirm publicly this allegation from their Government , though the lab was under considerable pressure from the Government to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Skripal was speaking from a secret location in London as she is under the protection of the British state.
” ( As will here be documented , she wasn ’ t actually in London at the time , and both she and her father were now actually prisoners of the UK and U.S .
Governments , without any trial and on no charges , and probably until they both will be dead — but that ’ s the question here : are they now already dead ? )
Also : “ Skripal spoke @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she said she had written herself in both Russian and English .
She signed both documents after making her statement .
She declined to answer questions after speaking to camera.
” The Reuters report also included this : However , that ’ s a pdf of a photographic kind that can not be scanned or searched and so it was specifically intended to discourage being quoted from , excerpted , or reported about , by other news-media .
Unfortunately , no news-medium has taken the trouble to read it from that photograph and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been successful at discouraging other media from reporting on this .
Therefore , so as to make this complete transcript publicly available finally in an easily usable form , for the benefit of researchers and others , I ’ m doing that here , and this transcript will be Yulia ’ s complete statement , which was shown by Reuters in the form of a handwritten note only in English , though the video had her speaking only in Russian .
No Russian transcript was supplied by Reuters , though their report alleges @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accompanied the English version .
Here is this searchable transcript : Good afternoon .
My name is Yulia Skripal .
I came to the UK on the 3rd of March to visit my father , something I have been doing regularly in the past .
After 20 days in a coma , I woke to the news that we had both been poisoned .
I still find it difficult to come to terms that both of us were attacked .
We are so lucky to have both survived this attempted assassination .
Our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The fact that a nerve agent was used to do this is shocking .
I don ’ t want to describe the details but the clinical treatment was invasive , painful and depressing .
I am grateful to all of the wonderful , kind staff at Salisbury hospital , a place I have become all too familiar with .
I also think fondly of those who helped us on the street the day of the attack .
I was discharged from hospital on the 9th of April and continue to progress with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ upside down as I try to come to terms with the devastating changes thrust upon me both physically and emotionally .
I take one day at a time and want to help care for my dad till his full recovery .
In the longer term I hope to return to my country .
I wish to address a couple of issues directly and have chosen to interrupt my rehabilitation to make this short statement .
I ask that everyone respects the privacy of me and my father .
We need time to recover @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has happened .
I ’ m grateful for the offers of assistance from the Russian Embassy but at the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services .
Also , I want to reiterate what I said in my earlier statement that no one speaks for me , or for my father , but ourselves .
Finally , I would like to again thank everyone involved in my continued care .
My focus remains on my recovery and my dad ’ s health .
That ’ s the last time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or her father .
That three-day court-hearing ( it wasn ’ t a trial ) occurred before either of the Skripals had awoken from their coma ; so , they too had no role in it .
They became prisoners of UK while under sedation .
This is British ‘ justice ’ ( or ‘ Protection ’ ) .
( Britain , of course , like the U.S. , pontificates abroad about ‘ human rights ’ and invades foreign countries that it accuses of violating “ human rights ” ; so , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ violating human rights , but hypocritically pontificating about ‘ human rights ’ . )
No one outside can reach them , and they can ’ t reach anyone outside , except for a very few rushed phone-contacts that the UK allowed them until June this year to their Russian relatives , in order to keep those relatives as quiet as possible for as long as possible .
Furthermore , the last chapter of Helmer ’ s book opens : “ You kill traitors like you brush your teeth .
It wasn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ operational matter , ” a senior Whitehall official said of his Russian counterparts to Mark Urban , the BBC reporter whom MI6 assigned to write Sergei Skripal ’ s story a few months before it was somebody ’ s idea to finish it off ; the book , if not Skripal .
The official and the reporter meant they had no doubt the Russian Government ’ s motive for attacking Skripal was a routine policy of killing .
If that is as true as Urban and his Whitehall source intended for public consumption @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the first to say so .
That they are refusing is part of the case this book has compiled that the British Government ’ s narrative provides no evidence which the Whitehall man , his superiors and his underlings dare to submit in court , let alone allow for Freedom of Information Act release .
The second part of the case is analysis of as much of the evidence as has been announced officially to demonstrate its improbability or prove its impossibility .
When the first part is compared to the second , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the conclusion : the British Government ’ s case against Russia for attempted murder and chemical warfare is a lie .
That lie leaves Sergei Skripal free to brush his teeth .
But he is in a prison which is far more solitary than the Russian ones in which he spent six years between 2004 and 2010 .
According to what Skripal told Urban in 2017 , when Skripal still thought he was safe in Salisbury , he regularly received food packages and other comforts from his family during his Russian prison time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much that – again according to Urban ’ s report – after he arrived in the UK he used to telephone his mother every two weeks over eight years .
It is now clear he has not called home since June 26 , 2019 .
He ’ s either dying , or dead already , according to some Russian commentators .
Yulia Skripal has been cut off for almost a year longer – since July 24 , 2018 , the date of her grandmother ’ s 90th birthday .
It is equally certain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to use a computer with internet access to communicate .
Urban claims that after Yulia had come out of her coma and was still in Salisbury hospital , she “ had already exchanged messages online ” with her cousin Viktoria in Yaroslavl .
“ What was to be done with him ?
” Urban ended his book in September 2018 .
“ From the British government perspective it was better that he remain quietly out of view , even if a statement like Yulia ’ s might follow .
In theory he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whether that be launching a blistering attack on the British government for failing to protect him from Putin ’ s assassins to pleading it had all been a terrible misunderstanding and could he go back to Russia now please.
” Viktoria Skripal , though , “ had shown them how , even starting with the best intentions , going public carried the risk of creating untold family pain as well as serving the Kremlin ’ s interests .
Sergei and his daughter were so dependent on the British government at this time that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ advice of those around them.
” According to Urban also , they don ’ t want to hide in the US .
“ There had been suggestions from Downing Street , while the Skripals were in hospital , that they might well end up in America or another English-speaking country , and be given new identities .
Neither of them , I hear , particularly liked this idea.
” If Yulia and Sergei have both been executed by Britain ’ s Government , then the Times ’ s publication of an undocumented allegation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they had instead both been sent to New Zealand and given new identities there , is a convenient way for UK ’ s Government to avoid ever needing to face the public after having continually lied to the public by blaming Russia ’ s Government for the poisonings that had happened to both the father and the daughter .
If the Skripals have been provided new identities and sent to live in New Zealand , will they be freed from Britain ’ s imprisonment of them ?
Will , for example , they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ neither Sergei nor Yulia are free to use a computer with internet access to communicate , ” and will they be free to , for example , read newspapers and other media that are accessible online ?
Or will they still be in the ‘ Protective ’ custody of the UK Government , or will it then be of the NZ Government ?
And will they be able , for example , to resume real living , and maybe ( if they wish ) to write and publish books about what they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them after 4 March 2018 ?
Will the UK ’ s Government want that to happen ?
Will the UK ’ s Government , which has lied about so much , be comfortable about returning the Skripals ’ freedom ?
Or , will it , instead , continue ‘ protecting ’ them ?
the Moscow District Military Court sentenced former GRU colonel Sergei Skripal … [ as having ] worked for the British MI6 for nine years and exposed to UK the names of dozens of Russian intelligence officers who worked in Europe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ espionage , Sergei Skripal , who is compared with Oleg Penkovsky at the FSB , was assigned a 13-year term .
At the same time , intelligence agencies threaten to expel diplomats with whom the spy allegedly collaborated .
Sergei , after having been in a Russian prison for six years on treason , was spy-swapped in 2010 back to UK .
Yulia Skripal is not as naive as the note that her captors required her to sign might suggest .
If she or her father are still alive somewhere and not still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or a regime that is allied with it , then one may expect that Yulia and/or Sergei will present a full account of what happened to them while they were in captivity by the UK regime and its allies such as the U.S. regime .
Or else they might already have been killed — disappeared by UK , like Jamal Khashoggi was disappeared on 2 October 2018 by Saudi Arabia .
Never to be heard from again .
( And forgotten by that trusting , faithful , public . )

Another important dispatch from The Greanville Post. Be sure to share it widely.
This article is part of an ongoing series of dispatches by historian Eric Zuesse
Where are Sergei and Yulia Skripal? Are they still alive? Their having been poisoned in England on 4 March 2018 didn’t kill them.
Sergei Skripal is (or was) the Russian and British double agent (Russian spy who defected to UK), who had become imprisoned for six years in Russia, and then became spy-swapped to, and resided in, UK.
Yulia is (or was) his daughter, who happened to be visiting with him from Russia on that fateful day, which almost ended her life but which definitely did end her freedom.
The last time that either Sergei or Yulia were seen or heard from in news-media, was on 23 May 2018, shortly after both of them had been released by a British hospital from their poisoning.
They had been poisoned by a nerve agent which the UK Government said came from Russia, but the UK’s laboratory at Porton Down that had actually investigated the matter declined to confirm publicly this allegation from their Government, though the lab was under considerable pressure from the Government to confirm it.
At this sole occasion of public presentation by either of them, on 23 May 2018, only Yulia appeared. She was shown in a pre-scripted one-minute and thirty-eight second video, in which she spoke only in Russian, and this video was accompanied by a similarly brief and puzzling 23 May 2018 news-report from Reuters: “Exclusive: Yulia Skripal - Attempted assassination turned my world upside down”
It said that “Skripal was speaking from a secret location in London as she is under the protection of the British state.” (As will here be documented, she wasn’t actually in London at the time, and both she and her father were now actually prisoners of the UK and U.S. Governments, without any trial and on no charges, and probably until they both will be dead — but that’s the question here: are they now already dead?)
Also: “Skripal spoke in Russian and supplied a statement that she said she had written herself in both Russian and English. She signed both documents after making her statement. She declined to answer questions after speaking to camera.”
The Reuters report also included this:
Read Skripal's handwritten statements:
However, that’s a pdf of a photographic kind that cannot be scanned or searched and so it was specifically intended to discourage being quoted from, excerpted, or reported about, by other news-media. Unfortunately, no news-medium has taken the trouble to read it from that photograph and transcribe it by hand. Reuters has been successful at discouraging other media from reporting on this. Therefore, so as to make this complete transcript publicly available finally in an easily usable form, for the benefit of researchers and others, I’m doing that here, and this transcript will be Yulia’s complete statement, which was shown by Reuters in the form of a handwritten note only in English, though the video had her speaking only in Russian. No Russian transcript was supplied by Reuters, though their report alleges that a Russian original in her handwriting accompanied the English version. Here is this searchable transcript:
Good afternoon. My name is Yulia Skripal. I came to the UK on the 3rd of March to visit my father, something I have been doing regularly in the past. After 20 days in a coma, I woke to the news that we had both been poisoned. I still find it difficult to come to terms that both of us were attacked. We are so lucky to have both survived this attempted assassination. Our recovery has been slow and extremely painful. The fact that a nerve agent was used to do this is shocking. I don’t want to describe the details but the clinical treatment was invasive, painful and depressing.
I am grateful to all of the wonderful, kind staff at Salisbury hospital, a place I have become all too familiar with. I also think fondly of those who helped us on the street the day of the attack.
I was discharged from hospital on the 9th of April and continue to progress with treatment but my life has been turned upside down as I try to come to terms with the devastating changes thrust upon me both physically and emotionally. I take one day at a time and want to help care for my dad till his full recovery. In the longer term I hope to return to my country.
I wish to address a couple of issues directly and have chosen to interrupt my rehabilitation to make this short statement. I ask that everyone respects the privacy of me and my father. We need time to recover and come to terms with everything that has happened. I’m grateful for the offers of assistance from the Russian Embassy but at the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services.
Also, I want to reiterate what I said in my earlier statement that no one speaks for me, or for my father, but ourselves.
Finally, I would like to again thank everyone involved in my continued care.
My focus remains on my recovery and my dad’s health.
That’s the last time the public has heard from either Yulia or her father.
Subsequently, on 8 December 2019, the Australian and American independent investigative journalist John Helmer, who reports from Moscow, published an article that conclusively located where Yulia had been speaking from in that video. He headlined there “THE SKRIPALS UNDER US CONTROL, AT A USAF NUCLEAR BOMBER BASE IN FAIRFORD, GLOUCESTERSHIRE” and he provided solid documentation that that video was filmed at that location, which wasn’t “in London.” So, the handling of the Skripals is both a UK Government and a U.S. Government deception-operation.
As I reported on 17 April 2020 , a one-minute-and-forty-seven-second rushed phone call had been made by Yulia on 5 April 2018 from the British hospital, in which call she used coded language to inform her cousin Victoria Skripal, who was in Russia, that she and her father were being prohibited by the UK’s Government to communicate with the outside world, and, on the same day as that rushed phone call, Helmer reported that “In Moscow, her cousin Victoria Skripal has told the Russian press she has repeatedly tried to telephone her cousin on the latter’s Russian mobile telephone, but that this device has been disconnected.” So, there are clear indications that UK’s Government doesn’t want either Yulia or Sergei to be able to communicate ever again with the outside world. Furthermore, as I also stated in that article:
The “Court of Protection … Date 22/03/2018” proceeding, which seems to have determined their legal fate, didn’t even consult any of their relatives, and, according to John Helmer’s terrific book just issued, Skripal in Prison, (p. 74), also “The Russian Government was not consulted or informed in advance” about the proceeding, and therefore was allowed no role whatsoever in deciding the outcomes regarding these two Russian citizens. The UK Court’s ruling, on 22 March [2018], stated that “Neither Mr Skripal nor Ms Skripal appear to have relatives in the UK although they appear to have some relatives in Russia. The SSHD [Secretary of State for Home Development] have not sought to make contact with them.” No explanation was provided on why. So, the Skripals are stranded. [2018][Secretary of State for Home Development]
That three-day court-hearing (it wasn’t a trial) occurred before either of the Skripals had awoken from their coma; so, they too had no role in it. They became prisoners of UK while under sedation. This is British ‘justice’ (or ‘Protection’). (Britain, of course, like the U.S., pontificates abroad about ‘human rights’ and invades foreign countries that it accuses of violating “human rights”; so, it’s bottom-of-the-barrel, not only rampantly violating human rights, but hypocritically pontificating about ‘human rights’.)
No one outside can reach them, and they can’t reach anyone outside, except for a very few rushed phone-contacts that the UK allowed them until June this year to their Russian relatives, in order to keep those relatives as quiet as possible for as long as possible.
Furthermore, the last chapter of Helmer’s book opens:
“You kill traitors like you brush your teeth. It wasn’t a political matter, it was an operational matter,” a senior Whitehall official said of his Russian counterparts to Mark Urban, the BBC reporter whom MI6 assigned to write Sergei Skripal’s story a few months before it was somebody’s idea to finish it off; the book, if not Skripal.
The official and the reporter meant they had no doubt the Russian Government’s motive for attacking Skripal was a routine policy of killing. If that is as true as Urban and his Whitehall source intended for public consumption, Sergei and Yulia Skripal should be the first to say so.
That they are refusing is part of the case this book has compiled that the British Government’s narrative provides no evidence which the Whitehall man, his superiors and his underlings dare to submit in court, let alone allow for Freedom of Information Act release. The second part of the case is analysis of as much of the evidence as has been announced officially to demonstrate its improbability or prove its impossibility. When the first part is compared to the second, the third part of the case is the conclusion: the British Government’s case against Russia for attempted murder and chemical warfare is a lie.
That lie leaves Sergei Skripal free to brush his teeth. But he is in a prison which is far more solitary than the Russian ones in which he spent six years between 2004 and 2010. According to what Skripal told Urban in 2017, when Skripal still thought he was safe in Salisbury, he regularly received food packages and other comforts from his family during his Russian prison time. He also loved his family so much that – again according to Urban’s report – after he arrived in the UK he used to telephone his mother every two weeks over eight years. It is now clear he has not called home since June 26, 2019.
He’s either dying, or dead already, according to some Russian commentators.
Yulia Skripal has been cut off for almost a year longer – since July 24, 2018, the date of her grandmother’s 90th birthday. It is equally certain that neither Sergei nor Yulia are free to use a computer with internet access to communicate. Urban claims that after Yulia had come out of her coma and was still in Salisbury hospital, she “had already exchanged messages online” with her cousin Viktoria in Yaroslavl.
“What was to be done with him?” Urban ended his book in September 2018. “From the British government perspective it was better that he remain quietly out of view, even if a statement like Yulia’s might follow. In theory he was free to do or say anything, whether that be launching a blistering attack on the British government for failing to protect him from Putin’s assassins to pleading it had all been a terrible misunderstanding and could he go back to Russia now please.” Viktoria Skripal, though, “had shown them how, even starting with the best intentions, going public carried the risk of creating untold family pain as well as serving the Kremlin’s interests. Sergei and his daughter were so dependent on the British government at this time that there was every reason to follow the advice of those around them.”
According to Urban also, they don’t want to hide in the US. “There had been suggestions from Downing Street, while the Skripals were in hospital, that they might well end up in America or another English-speaking country, and be given new identities. Neither of them, I hear, particularly liked this idea.”
Times headlined On 7 June 2020, the neoconservative (pro-imperialism) Londonheadlined “Salisbury novichok poisonings: Sergei and Yulia Skripal move to New Zealand” , and unquestioningly asserted as if they were unquestionable facts (as neocon ’news’-media, actually propaganda-media, almost invariably do) the allegations by the routinely lying UK Government (a provably unreliable source regarding anything concerning its international relations). In this particular case, those ‘facts’ concerned the poisonings by Russia of Yulia Skripal and Sergei Skripal.
If Yulia and Sergei have both been executed by Britain’s Government, then the Times’s publication of an undocumented allegation by UK’s Government, that they had instead both been sent to New Zealand and given new identities there, is a convenient way for UK’s Government to avoid ever needing to face the public after having continually lied to the public by blaming Russia’s Government for the poisonings that had happened to both the father and the daughter.
If the Skripals have been provided new identities and sent to live in New Zealand, will they be freed from Britain’s imprisonment of them? Will, for example, they finally be freed from the condition that “neither Sergei nor Yulia are free to use a computer with internet access to communicate,” and will they be free to, for example, read newspapers and other media that are accessible online? Or will they still be in the ‘Protective’ custody of the UK Government, or will it then be of the NZ Government? And will they be able, for example, to resume real living, and maybe (if they wish) to write and publish books about what they can recollect about what has happened to them after 4 March 2018? Will the UK’s Government want that to happen? Will the UK’s Government, which has lied about so much, be comfortable about returning the Skripals’ freedom? Or, will it, instead, continue ‘protecting’ them?
Yulia Skripal was a Russian citizen who only shortly before her airline flight to UK to visit with her father, had become engaged in Russia to marry a fellow Russian (and none of the couple’s parents approved of their intended marriage; this caused both Yulia and her fiancé great distress), when, on 4 March 2018, she and Sergei were somehow poisoned by a chemical that UK’s Porton Down intelligence laboratory soon thereafter identified as being a “nerve agent” which might have been novichok, but whose source and country of origin the Porton Down lab was unable to identify with any certainty. UK’s Foreign Minister, Boris Johnson, said that Porton Down had identified the chemical as having been made in Russia, but he was simply lying, as he routinely does. (He’s famous for it , actually, like Trump is.)
are, and the public overwhelmingly believe the lies. The public have Yulia’s father, Sergei, had been a Russian citizen who had served in Britain as a spy for Russia, who then switched sides to become a spy for UK against Russia. At some time in December 2004, right after returning from UK to Russia, he was taken into custody to be tried for treason for his having sold out to the country that his own country had hired him to spy against. Honor in the intelligence services is far lower than is honor among thieves (like Mike Pompeo very unprofessionally bragged publicly about his time heading the CIA, “We lied, we cheated, we stole” ), but lying ‘news’-media nonetheless cite their own country’s top intelligence officials as if those people had been hired to tell the truth to the public, instead of to deceive the public into believing whatever the Government’s top officials want their public to believe about foreign countries. Yet the public trust the allegations by them that are stenographically reported by the ‘news’-media. (Think of the invasion of Iraq, for example.) Public statements by intelligence officials are believed only by fools, but that unfortunately includes most of the public anywhere, which is one of the reasons why democracies tend to descend into dictatorships, which are the actual default condition for any government anywhere. Democracy is unnatural, though it’s far better than is that natural default condition. Evil is natural, and good is not, but the propaganda lies about this fact, and pretends that good is natural and evil is not; so, it lies about what good and evil even, and the public overwhelmingly believe the lies. The public have faith . (All else follows from that sad fact.)
On 9 August 2006 , was reported, in Russia, that
the Moscow District Military Court sentenced former GRU colonel Sergei Skripal … [as having] worked for the British MI6 for nine years and exposed to UK the names of dozens of Russian intelligence officers who worked in Europe. For treason in the form of espionage, Sergei Skripal, who is compared with Oleg Penkovsky at the FSB, was assigned a 13-year term. At the same time, intelligence agencies threaten to expel diplomats with whom the spy allegedly collaborated.
Sergei, after having been in a Russian prison for six years on treason, was spy-swapped in 2010 back to UK.
Yulia Skripal is not as naive as the note that her captors required her to sign might suggest. If she or her father are still alive somewhere and not still being held captive by the UK regime or a regime that is allied with it, then one may expect that Yulia and/or Sergei will present a full account of what happened to them while they were in captivity by the UK regime and its allies such as the U.S. regime. Or else they might already have been killed — disappeared by UK, like Jamal Khashoggi was disappeared on 2 October 2018 by Saudi Arabia. Never to be heard from again. (And forgotten by that trusting, faithful, public.)
Had this poisoning been done actually by the UK Government in order to be able to create a pretext to expel Russian diplomats? As Wikipedia summarizes those consequences : “Later on 12 March, the British government accused Russia of attempted murder and announced a series of punitive measures against Russia, including the expulsion of diplomats, on the 14 March. The UK’s official assessment of the incident was supported by 28 other countries which responded similarly. Altogether, an unprecedented 153 Russian diplomats were expelled.[17]”


thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-07-08--In An Insane World, Madness Looks Moderate And Sanity Looks Radical

It ’ s not that moderate , mainstream centrism is an inherently impossible position .
In a healthy world , that ’ s exactly what the predominant worldview would be .
But we do not live in a healthy world .
There are no moderate , mainstream centrists anywhere in the tight alliance of nations which function as a single empire on foreign policy , because that functional empire is built upon murder , terrorism , exploitation , oppression , ecocide and the stockpiling of armageddon weapons .
People who support the status quo of this empire are called “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the so-called “ moderate rebels ” of Syria , they are in fact violent extremists .
This is the reality of living in a world that is profoundly psychologically unhealthy .
If you make a career out of facilitating wars which cause explosives to be dropped from the sky on top of innocent human beings causing their bodies to be ripped to shreds and buried in rubble , then you are treated as an exemplar of ideal leadership and rewarded with prestigious positions in politics , punditry , book publishing and think tankery @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , you are marginalized and smeared as at best an extremist whack job and at worst a literal traitor conducting psyops for a foreign government .
Because the plutocratic class owns the political class which advances depraved plutocratic agendas and the media class which normalizes and justifies those agendas , a mainstream consensus has been forcibly manufactured that maintaining the oppressive , exploitative , omnicidal , ecocidal status quo is a good and sane thing to do .
Voices which point out that this is bat shit crazy are marginalized and ignored when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The ability of our plutocratic rulers and their lackeys to do this is the only reason why defenders of the status quo get to call themselves “ centrists ” and “ moderates ” .
It ’ s not because their position is middle-of-the-road in any way whatsoever , it ’ s because they stand in alignment with the consensus that has been deliberately artificially manufactured and shoved into the mainstream by sheer force of narrative control .
This consensus manufacturing is then carried home by a glitch in human cognition known as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to tend toward holding to the familiar as a default preference and perceive the risk of losing what we have as far less favorable than the reward gaining something better .
Psychology Today explains : Research from Kahneman and Tversky suggests that losses are twice as psychologically harmful as gains are beneficial .
In other words , individuals feel twice as much psychological pain from losing $ 100 as pleasure from gaining $ 100 .
One interpretation is that in order for an individual to change course from their current state of affairs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as twice as beneficial .
This highlights the challenges we may face when considering a change to our usual way of doing things .
When military members are considering their choices as their contract comes to an end , many consider re-enlisting simply because they are unaware of the many opportunities that exist for them .
Even when we understand our current path is no longer beneficial or no longer makes us happy , we must still overcome the natural urge to stay on the path unless the alternative is sufficiently attractive .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ an alternate path , we must believe that the alternative is clearly superior to the current state of affairs .
The status quo effect is pervasive in both inconsequential and major decisions .
Oftentimes we are held back by what we believe to be the safe option , simply because it is the default .
Bearing in mind our natural propensity for the status quo will enable us to recognize the allure of inertia and more effectively overcome it .
Status quo bias is further exacerbated in our current predicament by the fact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ close to the brink of financial ruin and so terrified of what can happen to them if things change in a sudden and unpredictable way .
The result of this is that now you ’ ve got the majority of people in the most dominant country on earth supporting the “ slow incremental change ” philosophy of so-called centrism , which in practice has always ended up meaning no change whatsoever .
Meanwhile our ecosystem is dying and the US is escalating nuclear tensions with Russia and China and everyone ’ s getting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the oppressive and exploitative status quo .
Did you ever climb a tree when you were a kid and get stuck because you were afraid to climb down ?
It ’ s a common experience for a lot of us .
You get lost in the joy of the climb and so pleased with yourself in how well you ’ re doing , then suddenly you notice that the branches are getting a lot thinner and the wind is starting to sway you back and forth , and suddenly you look down and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for your mother and she came out and told you to climb down , calling up “ Well you can ’ t stay up there !
” And you knew she was right , but in that moment the idea of looking down and letting go of the thin branches you were clinging to felt so much scarier than just staying put in your precarious and unsustainable position .
That ’ s exactly where we ’ re at right now with status quo bias in our current predicament .
People know things need @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in such a precarious position that the risk of change feels far too scary to take the leap and force a deviation from our trajectory toward disaster .
But that is our only choice if we are to survive as a species .
We know we were able to climb down from whatever trees we got stuck in as kids , and we know that our mother was as right then as that small inner voice inside us is now : we can ’ t stay here .
We ’ ve got to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ management and find a way to get down from our precarious and unsustainable position to the stable ground of sanity .

It’s not that moderate, mainstream centrism is an inherently impossible position. In a healthy world, that’s exactly what the predominant worldview would be. But we do not live in a healthy world.
There are no moderate, mainstream centrists anywhere in the tight alliance of nations which function as a single empire on foreign policy, because that functional empire is built upon murder, terrorism, exploitation, oppression, ecocide and the stockpiling of armageddon weapons.
People who support the status quo of this empire are called “moderates”, but, just like the so-called “moderate rebels” of Syria, they are in fact violent extremists.
This is the reality of living in a world that is profoundly psychologically unhealthy. If you make a career out of facilitating wars which cause explosives to be dropped from the sky on top of innocent human beings causing their bodies to be ripped to shreds and buried in rubble, then you are treated as an exemplar of ideal leadership and rewarded with prestigious positions in politics, punditry, book publishing and think tankery. If you oppose those same wars, you are marginalized and smeared as at best an extremist whack job and at worst a literal traitor conducting psyops for a foreign government.
Because the plutocratic class owns the political class which advances depraved plutocratic agendas and the media class which normalizes and justifies those agendas, a mainstream consensus has been forcibly manufactured that maintaining the oppressive, exploitative, omnicidal, ecocidal status quo is a good and sane thing to do. Voices which point out that this is bat shit crazy are marginalized and ignored when possible and smeared and demonized when necessary.
The ability of our plutocratic rulers and their lackeys to do this is the only reason why defenders of the status quo get to call themselves “centrists” and “moderates”. It’s not because their position is middle-of-the-road in any way whatsoever, it’s because they stand in alignment with the consensus that has been deliberately artificially manufactured and shoved into the mainstream by sheer force of narrative control.
This consensus manufacturing is then carried home by a glitch in human cognition known as status quo bias, which causes us to tend toward holding to the familiar as a default preference and perceive the risk of losing what we have as far less favorable than the reward gaining something better. Psychology Today explains:
Research from Kahneman and Tversky suggests that losses are twice as psychologically harmful as gains are beneficial. In other words, individuals feel twice as much psychological pain from losing $100 as pleasure from gaining $100. One interpretation is that in order for an individual to change course from their current state of affairs is that the alternative must be perceived as twice as beneficial. This highlights the challenges we may face when considering a change to our usual way of doing things. When military members are considering their choices as their contract comes to an end, many consider re-enlisting simply because they are unaware of the many opportunities that exist for them. Even when we understand our current path is no longer beneficial or no longer makes us happy, we must still overcome the natural urge to stay on the path unless the alternative is sufficiently attractive. In order for us to readily pursue an alternate path, we must believe that the alternative is clearly superior to the current state of affairs. The status quo effect is pervasive in both inconsequential and major decisions. Oftentimes we are held back by what we believe to be the safe option, simply because it is the default. Bearing in mind our natural propensity for the status quo will enable us to recognize the allure of inertia and more effectively overcome it.
Status quo bias is further exacerbated in our current predicament by the fact that so many people are now so close to the brink of financial ruin and so terrified of what can happen to them if things change in a sudden and unpredictable way. The result of this is that now you’ve got the majority of people in the most dominant country on earth supporting the “slow incremental change” philosophy of so-called centrism, which in practice has always ended up meaning no change whatsoever. Meanwhile our ecosystem is dying and the US is escalating nuclear tensions with Russia and China and everyone’s getting more and more crazy and miserable under the oppressive and exploitative status quo.
Did you ever climb a tree when you were a kid and get stuck because you were afraid to climb down? It’s a common experience for a lot of us. You get lost in the joy of the climb and so pleased with yourself in how well you’re doing, then suddenly you notice that the branches are getting a lot thinner and the wind is starting to sway you back and forth, and suddenly you look down and get terrified.
Maybe you called out for your mother and she came out and told you to climb down, calling up “Well you can’t stay up there!” And you knew she was right, but in that moment the idea of looking down and letting go of the thin branches you were clinging to felt so much scarier than just staying put in your precarious and unsustainable position.
That’s exactly where we’re at right now with status quo bias in our current predicament. People know things need to change, but they’re in such a precarious position that the risk of change feels far too scary to take the leap and force a deviation from our trajectory toward disaster.
But that is our only choice if we are to survive as a species. We know we were able to climb down from whatever trees we got stuck in as kids, and we know that our mother was as right then as that small inner voice inside us is now: we can’t stay here. We’ve got to wake up from the status quo narrative management and find a way to get down from our precarious and unsustainable position to the stable ground of sanity.


thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-07-08--Whitney Webb Discusses FBI Arrest Of Ghislaine Maxwell

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible .
Share with kin , friends and workmates and @ @ @ @ @ .
The arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell may well be part of a carefully planned coverup @ @ @ @ @ Webb about the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein ’ s accomplice .

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.
Graham Elwood & Whitney Webb
The arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell may well be part of a carefully planned coverup.
Graham talks with Whitney Webb about the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice.


thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-07-08--Caleb Maupin on the current crisis, US politics, the future of socialism in China, what real sociali

Caleb Maupin on the current crisis, US politics, the future of socialism in China, what real socialism is, and more

Check out Marxist Think Tank on Caleb Maupin is a widely acclaimed speaker , writer , journalist , and political @ @ @ @ @ extensively in the Middle East and in Latin America .
He was involved with the @ @ @ @ @ its early planning stages , and has been involved many struggles for social justice .
@ @ @ @ @ of international friendship and cooperation , as well 21st Century Socialism .

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