thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-04-19--Is the United States About to Engage in Official State Piracy Against China? Strong Precedent Points

Is the United States About to Engage in Official State Piracy Against China? Strong Precedent Points to Worrying Trend

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This article is part of a series on disgusting US-led imperialism From its politicians to media and think tank and academic personnel , the US empire is permeated with careerist criminals recommending the most wanton and indecent policies imaginable .
Abject sociopathy is the norm in the American governmental sphere .
The Coronavirus crisis appears set to herald a new era of much poorer relations between China and the Western world , with Western @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fallout from the pandemic and , particularly in the United States , increasingly blaming China at an official level for the effects .
[ 1 ] Looking at the U.S. case in particular , at first responses to the virus were if anything optimistic – the fallout in China was seen as a ‘ correction ’ which would shift the balance of global economic power back into Western hands .
Indeed , U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross stated on January 30th that the fallout from the virus in China “ will help to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ America ” with millions at the time placed under lockdown in Wuhan and elsewhere .
[ 2 ] Western publications from the New York Times to the Guardian widely hailed the virus as potentially bringing an end to China ’ s decades of rapid economic growth – with a ‘ rebalancing ’ of the global economy towards Western power strongly implied .
[ 3 ] , [ 4 ] Against North Korea , the New York Times described the virus as potentially functioning as America ’ s “ most effective ally ” in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ – “ choking the North ’ s economy.
” [ 5 ] The result , however , has if anything been strong resilience to the virus across much of East Asia , with Vietnam and South Korea being prime examples of successful handling alongside Macao , Hong Kong , Taiwan and the Chinese mainland – in contrast to a very sluggish and often ineffective response in the West .
[ 6 ] From rot filled and broken emergency supplies in the U.S. national reserve [ 7 ] to nurses wearing bin bags due @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 8 ] the commandeering of supplies heading to other countries , [ 9 ] and the enlistment of prison labour to build mass graves in New York City [ 10 ] – signs have unanimously pointed to chaos .
It should be pointed out that the U.S. reported its first case on the same day as South Korea – which had the virus fully under control several weeks earlier due to more effective handling and a lack of complacency .
[ 11 ] The U.S. and wider Western world had a major advantage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ particular , but effectively squandered it .
[ 12 ] The results of the fallout from the Coronavirus in the Western world , and in the U.S. in particular , could be extremely serious given the context of escalating American pressure on China in the leadup to the outbreak .
Blaming China for the virus across American press and in the White House itself – despite it having reached America primarily from Europe rather than Asia [ 13 ] – has heralded mass hate crimes against the Asian American community of unprecedented seriousness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the 1940s .
[ 14 ] Perhaps even more seriously , however , the official American response as public opinion is directed against China appears set to place the world ’ s two largest economies on a potentially catastrophic collision course .
On April 14th U.S .
Senator Josh Hawley unveiled highly provocative legislation which would strip China of its sovereign immunity in American courts and allow Americans to sue China ’ s ruling Communist Party directly for the damages caused by the coronavirus crisis .
[ 15 ] Such legislation relies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of China as directly responsible – and contradicts evidence from the World Health Organisation among others that China ’ s response effectively stalled the global spread of the virus at its own expense with its lockdown .
[ 16 ] An unbiased analysis shows that the disproportionate fallout in the Western world relative to East Asia is overwhelmingly due to poor preparation – and had effective South Korean style measures been implemented from the outset America would have seen only a small fraction of the cases it currently suffers from .
[ 17 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and to a lesser extent from within other Western states [ 18 ] to make China foot the bill are manifold .
Scholars from the American Enterprise Institute and Stanford University ’ s Hoover Institution among others have made direct calls for Western states to unilaterally “ seize the assets of Chinese state-owned companies , ” cancel debts to China and expropriate Chinese overseas assets “ in compensation for coronavirus losses.
” [ 19 ] The Florida based firm the Berman Law Group has already filed two major lawsuits suing China calling for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ situation looks set to worsen considerably with many more suits to follow .
Regarding how the crisis could play out , and how the U.S. could act on its massive claims against China over the virus which are expected to be in the hundreds of billions at least , there is an important precedent for American courts providing similar compensation to alleged victims of an East Asian government and the American state taking action accordingly – that of the Otto Warmbier case in 2018 .
Assessment of the Warmbier case sets a very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the outcome of a Sino-American dispute .
Otto Warmbier was an American student arrested in North Korea in 2016 for stealing a poster and violating a restricted high security area in Pyongyang .
The student was returned to the U.S. the following year in a comatose state , with his parents alleging that his teeth had been artificially rearranged and his body showed signs of torture .
This was strongly contradicted by medical analyses , with the Hamilton County Coroner ’ s Office carrying out an external examination of Warmbier ’ s body @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that his teeth had been pulled out and rearranged by the North Koreans .
“ The teeth are natural and in good repair , ” the office concluded , after Warmbier ’ s father had sensationally claimed that “ his bottom teeth look like they [ the Koreans ] had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged them.
” Coroner Dr. Lakshmi Kode Sammarco stated addressing the claim of forced rearranging of Otto ’ s teeth : ” I felt very comfortable that there wasn ’ t any evidence of trauma .
We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ] statement.
” She said her team , which included a forensic dentist , thoroughly evaluated the body and assessed various scans of his body .
[ 20 ] Medical assessments showed no signs of mistreatment or any trauma to the student ’ s head or skull , with a blood clot , pneumonia , sepsis , kidney failure , and sleeping pills were also cited as potential causes of death .
[ 21 ] Nevertheless , Warmbier ’ s parents would continue to claim against all available evidence that their son had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lawsuit against the North Korean government .
Where a full autopsy could have provided data to more completely undermine their claims , and was strongly recommended by doctors , they were adamant in their refusal and no autopsy was carried out .
Forensic scientists were highly critical of this unusual and unexpected decision in this critical case .
[ 22 ] In response to the Warmbers ’ claim against the North Korean state , which amounted to a staggering $ 1.05 billion in punitive damages and around $ 46 million for the family @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in U.S. District Court in Washington in October 2018 , Pyongyang was asked to pay the couple $ 500 million .
[ 23 ] This was despite no evidence for the couple ’ s claims of Korean culpability , but at a time when public opinion was strongly against North Korea and would have supported the motion .
To seize the Warmbiers ’ compensation , the United States Navy would later that year commandeer a North Korean cargo ship , the Wise Honest , and escort it to American territory where it was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was provided with a part of the ship ’ s value , and future seizures of Korean merchant shipping to meet the remainder of the American family ’ s claim remain possible under U.S .
law .
[ 24 ] The seizure of the ship , one of North Korea ’ s largest , represented a considerable loss to its fleet and complemented the effects of ongoing Western sanctions to undermine the country ’ s economy .
The significance of the Warmbier case is that it provides a strong precedent for the U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pay the hundreds [ of ] billions expected to be demanded in compensation , to engage in effective state level piracy against Chinese merchant shipping to provide funds for its increasingly struggling economy .
[ 25 ] With trade war having failed to significantly slow Chinese economic growth and foreign trade , which had been its primary goal , [ 26 ] more drastic means may be adopted for the same end using the Coronavirus crisis as a pretext .
Other similar recent cases of do exist , including unilateral seizure and sale @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Canadian government in 2019 to compensate alleged victims of terror of conflicts with Hezbollah and Hamas .
This was despite neither of these being UN recognised terrorist organisations and Iran ’ s support for these non-state actors being entirely legal under international law .
[ 27 ] The fact that these properties were on Canadian soil and governed under Canadian law however , rather than in international waters , makes this a considerably less provocative case than the Warmbier case one or than what is being proposed against China .
Further evidence that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shipping against China was provided by the U.S .
Naval Institute , which in April published an important paper titled ‘ Unleash the Privateers ’ highlighting that it remained legal under American law for U.S. security firms to be tasked with commandeering and either sinking or capturing and selling Chinese merchant ships in the event of conflict .
It highlighted that China was the largest trading nation in the world with a merchant fleet several times the size of its American counterpart – and that this provided a vulnerability the U.S. should be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Taken together , the circumstances surrounding claims against China and moves to strip it of its sovereign immunity , the Warmbier precedent , the well timed and extremely radical naval institute paper and above all America ’ s need to reverse its losses and undermine China ’ s growing trade and economic prosperity to perpetuate its own hegemony , between them point to a high possibility of the U.S. adopting state level piracy against Chinese shipping as a future policy .
While evidence strongly contradicts claims that China is responsible for the Coronavirus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now experiencing – much as evidence from American coroners and forensic scientists contradicted the claims of the Warmbier family – these inconvenient facts are highly unlikely to prevent the U.S. from taking action to secure its perceived rightful place as the leader of the global economy by seizing what it sees as its rightful property through attacks on Chinese trading vessels .
It is by no means a certainty that the United States will engage in such an escalatory course of action , and the nature of the overall Western response beyond the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ yet to be seen .
It is important at this stage , however , to highlight the not insignificant possibility such a course will be taken by the U.S. and other Western parties to reverse the trend towards a decline in their economic positions relative to China .
Repercussions from such seizures will almost certainly be far more severe than the relatively muted global response to the seizure and sale of a commandeered North Korean ship two years prior .
While China ’ s Navy is concentrated in the Western Pacific and is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the global reach of Western warships , Beijing and its allies have a wide range of means to retaliate which could deter the Western powers from taking such a course of action .
• None Staracqualursi , Veronica and Davis , Richard , ‘ Commerce secretary says coronavirus will help bring jobs to North America , ’ CNN , January 30 , 2020 .
↑ • None Davidson , Helen , ‘ Coronavirus deals China ’ s economy a “ bigger blow than global financial crisis , ” ’ The Guardian , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ None Koettl , Christoph , ‘ Coronavirus Is Idling North Korea ’ s Ships Achieving What Sanctions Did Not , ’ New York Times , March 26 , 2020 .
↑ • None Graham-Harrison , Emma , ‘ Coronavirus : how Asian countries acted while the west dithered , ’ The Guardian , March 21 , 2020 .
Inkster , Ian , ‘ In the battle against the coronavirus , East Asian societies and cultures have the edge , ’ South China Morning Post , April 10 , 2020 .
↑ • None @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Did the U.S. End Up with Nurses Wearing Garbage Bags ?
, ’ The New Yorker , April 9 , 2020 .
↑ • Willsher , Kim and Holmes , Oliver and .
McKernan , Bethan and Tondo , Lorenzo , ‘ US hijacking mask shipments in rush for coronavirus protection , ’ The Guardian , April 3 , 2020 .
Lister , Tim and Shukla , Sebastian and Bobille , Fanny , ‘ Coronavirus sparks a ‘ war for masks ’ as accusations fly , ’ CNN , April 3 , 2020 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ‘ Workers in full Hazmat suits bury rows of coffins in Hart Island mass grave as NYC officials confirm coronavirus victims WILL be buried there if their bodies aren ’ t claimed within two weeks after death toll rises to 4,778 , ’ Daily Mail , April 9 , 2020 .
↑ • None ‘ Special Report : How Korea trounced U.S. in race to test people for coronavirus , ’ Reuters , March 18 , 2020 .
‘ Once the biggest outbreak outside of China , South Korean city reports zero @ @ @ @ @ @ @ April 10 , 2020 .
↑ • None Johnson , Ian , ‘ China Bought the West Time .
The West Squandered It , ’ New York Times , March 13 , 2020 .
↑ • None De Souza , Alison , ‘ Asian Americans tell harrowing stories of abuse amid coronavirus outbreak in the US , ’ Straits Times , April 1 , 2020 .
• None Wang , Yanan , ‘ New virus cases fall ; WHO says China bought the world time , ’ Associated Press , February 15 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ China Bought the West Time .
The West Squandered It , ’ New York Times , March 13 , 2020 .
↑ • None ‘ Special Report : How Korea trounced U.S. in race to test people for coronavirus , ’ Reuters , March 18 , 2020 .
‘ Once the biggest outbreak outside of China , South Korean city reports zero new coronavirus cases , ’ Reuters , April 10 , 2020 .
↑ • None Cole , Harry , ‘ China owes us £351 billion : Britain should pursue Beijing through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ study claims as 15 top top Tories urge “ reset ” in UK relations with country , ’ Daily Mail , April 5 , 2020 .
↑ • None Nedelman , Michael , ‘ Coroner found no obvious signs of torture on Otto Warmbier , ’ CNN , September 29 , 2017 .
↑ • None Lockett , Jon , ‘ Tragic student Otto Warmbier ‘ may have attempted suicide ’ in North Korean prison after being sentenced to 15 years for stealing poster , ’ The Sun , July 28 , 2018 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ re reading : What happened to Otto Warmbier in North Korea , ’ Axios , July 25 , 2018 .
Tingle , Rory , ‘ Otto Warmbier ’ s brain damage that led to his death was caused by a SUICIDE ATTEMPT rather than torture by North Korean prison guards , report claims , ’ Daily Mail , July 25 , 2018 .
Tinker , Ben , ‘ What an autopsy may ( or may not ) have revealed about Otto Warmbier ’ s death , ’ CNN , June 22 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ Coroner found no obvious signs of torture on Otto Warmbier , ’ CNN , September 29 , 2017 .
↑ • None Tinker , Ben , ‘ What an autopsy may ( or may not ) have revealed about Otto Warmbier ’ s death , ’ CNN , June 22 , 2017 .
Nedelman , Michael , ‘ Coroner found no obvious signs of torture on Otto Warmbier , ’ CNN , September 29 , 2017 .
↑ • None Brookbank , Sarah , ‘ Family of Otto Warmbier awarded $ 500 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ USA Today , December 24 , 2018 .
↑ • None Blyth , Mark , ‘ The U.S. Economy Is Uniquely Vulnerable to the Coronavirus , ’ Foreign Affairs , March 30 , 2020 .
Schulze , Elizabeth , ‘ The coronavirus recession is unlike any economic downturn in US history , ’ CNBC , April 8 , 2020 .
Schwartz , Nelson D. , ‘ Coronavirus Recession Looms , Its Course “ Unrecognizable , ” ’ New York Times , April 1 , 2020 .
Davies , Rob , ‘ Coronavirus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ – says JP Morgan boss , ’ The Guardian , April 6 , 2020 .
• None Wei , Liu , ‘ Trump ’ s Trade War on China Is About More Than Trade , ’ The Diplomat , July 20 , 2018 .
↑ • None Cancian , Mark and Schwartz , Brandon , ‘ Unleash the Privateers !
, ’ U.S .
Naval Institute , vol .
146 , no .
2 , issue 1406 , April 2020 .
↑

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.
This article is part of a series on disgusting US-led imperialism
The Saker
by A. B. Abrams
From its politicians to media and think tank and academic personnel, the US empire is permeated with careerist criminals recommending the most wanton and indecent policies imaginable. Abject sociopathy is the norm in the American governmental sphere.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Coronavirus crisis appears set to herald a new era of much poorer relations between China and the Western world, with Western countries having borne the brunt of the fallout from the pandemic and, particularly in the United States, increasingly blaming China at an official level for the effects.[1] Looking at the U.S. case in particular, at first responses to the virus were if anything optimistic – the fallout in China was seen as a ‘correction’ which would shift the balance of global economic power back into Western hands. Indeed, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross stated on January 30th that the fallout from the virus in China “will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America” with millions at the time placed under lockdown in Wuhan and elsewhere.[2] Western publications from the New York Times to the Guardian widely hailed the virus as potentially bringing an end to China’s decades of rapid economic growth – with a ‘rebalancing’ of the global economy towards Western power strongly implied.[3],[4] Against North Korea, the New York Times described the virus as potentially functioning as America’s “most effective ally” in achieving the outcome Washington had long sought – “choking the North’s economy.” [5]
The result, however, has if anything been strong resilience to the virus across much of East Asia, with Vietnam and South Korea being prime examples of successful handling alongside Macao, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Chinese mainland – in contrast to a very sluggish and often ineffective response in the West.[6] From rot filled and broken emergency supplies in the U.S. national reserve[7] to nurses wearing bin bags due a lack of protective equipment,[8] the commandeering of supplies heading to other countries, [9] and the enlistment of prison labour to build mass graves in New York City[10] – signs have unanimously pointed to chaos. It should be pointed out that the U.S. reported its first case on the same day as South Korea – which had the virus fully under control several weeks earlier due to more effective handling and a lack of complacency.[11] The U.S. and wider Western world had a major advantage in its warning time over China in particular, but effectively squandered it.[12]
The results of the fallout from the Coronavirus in the Western world, and in the U.S. in particular, could be extremely serious given the context of escalating American pressure on China in the leadup to the outbreak. Blaming China for the virus across American press and in the White House itself – despite it having reached America primarily from Europe rather than Asia[13] – has heralded mass hate crimes against the Asian American community of unprecedented seriousness and scale since the targeting of Japanese-Americans in the 1940s.[14] Perhaps even more seriously, however, the official American response as public opinion is directed against China appears set to place the world’s two largest economies on a potentially catastrophic collision course. On April 14th U.S. Senator Josh Hawley unveiled highly provocative legislation which would strip China of its sovereign immunity in American courts and allow Americans to sue China’s ruling Communist Party directly for the damages caused by the coronavirus crisis.[15] Such legislation relies heavily on growing anti-Chinese sentiments and depictions of China as directly responsible – and contradicts evidence from the World Health Organisation among others that China’s response effectively stalled the global spread of the virus at its own expense with its lockdown.[16]
An unbiased analysis shows that the disproportionate fallout in the Western world relative to East Asia is overwhelmingly due to poor preparation – and had effective South Korean style measures been implemented from the outset America would have seen only a small fraction of the cases it currently suffers from.[17] Nevertheless, calls from the U.S. and to a lesser extent from within other Western states[18] to make China foot the bill are manifold. Scholars from the American Enterprise Institute and Stanford University’s Hoover Institution among others have made direct calls for Western states to unilaterally “seize the assets of Chinese state-owned companies,” cancel debts to China and expropriate Chinese overseas assets “in compensation for coronavirus losses.”[19] The Florida based firm the Berman Law Group has already filed two major lawsuits suing China calling for compensation for the outbreak – and the situation looks set to worsen considerably with many more suits to follow. Regarding how the crisis could play out, and how the U.S. could act on its massive claims against China over the virus which are expected to be in the hundreds of billions at least, there is an important precedent for American courts providing similar compensation to alleged victims of an East Asian government and the American state taking action accordingly – that of the Otto Warmbier case in 2018. Assessment of the Warmbier case sets a very important precedent with very considerable implications for the outcome of a Sino-American dispute.
Otto Warmbier was an American student arrested in North Korea in 2016 for stealing a poster and violating a restricted high security area in Pyongyang. The student was returned to the U.S. the following year in a comatose state, with his parents alleging that his teeth had been artificially rearranged and his body showed signs of torture. This was strongly contradicted by medical analyses, with the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office carrying out an external examination of Warmbier’s body and dismissing the claim by his father that his teeth had been pulled out and rearranged by the North Koreans. “The teeth are natural and in good repair,” the office concluded, after Warmbier’s father had sensationally claimed that “his bottom teeth look like they [the Koreans] had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged them.” Coroner Dr. Lakshmi Kode Sammarco stated addressing the claim of forced rearranging of Otto’s teeth: ”I felt very comfortable that there wasn’t any evidence of trauma. We were surprised at the [parents’] statement.” She said her team, which included a forensic dentist, thoroughly evaluated the body and assessed various scans of his body.[20] Medical assessments showed no signs of mistreatment or any trauma to the student’s head or skull, with a blood clot, pneumonia, sepsis, kidney failure, and sleeping pills were also cited as potential causes of death.[21] Nevertheless, Warmbier’s parents would continue to claim against all available evidence that their son had been tortured to death – filing a lawsuit against the North Korean government. Where a full autopsy could have provided data to more completely undermine their claims, and was strongly recommended by doctors, they were adamant in their refusal and no autopsy was carried out. Forensic scientists were highly critical of this unusual and unexpected decision in this critical case.[22]
In response to the Warmbers’ claim against the North Korean state, which amounted to a staggering $1.05 billion in punitive damages and around $46 million for the family’s suffering in a motion filed in U.S. District Court in Washington in October 2018, Pyongyang was asked to pay the couple $500 million.[23] This was despite no evidence for the couple’s claims of Korean culpability, but at a time when public opinion was strongly against North Korea and would have supported the motion. To seize the Warmbiers’ compensation, the United States Navy would later that year commandeer a North Korean cargo ship, the Wise Honest, and escort it to American territory where it was subsequently sold at auction. The couple was provided with a part of the ship’s value, and future seizures of Korean merchant shipping to meet the remainder of the American family’s claim remain possible under U.S. law.[24] The seizure of the ship, one of North Korea’s largest, represented a considerable loss to its fleet and complemented the effects of ongoing Western sanctions to undermine the country’s economy.
The significance of the Warmbier case is that it provides a strong precedent for the U.S. Military, should China inevitably refuse to pay the hundreds [of] billions expected to be demanded in compensation, to engage in effective state level piracy against Chinese merchant shipping to provide funds for its increasingly struggling economy.[25] With trade war having failed to significantly slow Chinese economic growth and foreign trade, which had been its primary goal,[26] more drastic means may be adopted for the same end using the Coronavirus crisis as a pretext. Other similar recent cases of do exist, including unilateral seizure and sale of Iranian government owned properties by the Canadian government in 2019 to compensate alleged victims of terror of conflicts with Hezbollah and Hamas. This was despite neither of these being UN recognised terrorist organisations and Iran’s support for these non-state actors being entirely legal under international law.[27] The fact that these properties were on Canadian soil and governed under Canadian law however, rather than in international waters, makes this a considerably less provocative case than the Warmbier case one or than what is being proposed against China.
Further evidence that the U.S. would consider unilateral commandeering of shipping against China was provided by the U.S. Naval Institute, which in April published an important paper titled ‘Unleash the Privateers’ highlighting that it remained legal under American law for U.S. security firms to be tasked with commandeering and either sinking or capturing and selling Chinese merchant ships in the event of conflict. It highlighted that China was the largest trading nation in the world with a merchant fleet several times the size of its American counterpart – and that this provided a vulnerability the U.S. should be willing to exploit.[28] Taken together, the circumstances surrounding claims against China and moves to strip it of its sovereign immunity, the Warmbier precedent, the well timed and extremely radical naval institute paper and above all America’s need to reverse its losses and undermine China’s growing trade and economic prosperity to perpetuate its own hegemony, between them point to a high possibility of the U.S. adopting state level piracy against Chinese shipping as a future policy. While evidence strongly contradicts claims that China is responsible for the Coronavirus and the massive fallout the U.S. is now experiencing – much as evidence from American coroners and forensic scientists contradicted the claims of the Warmbier family – these inconvenient facts are highly unlikely to prevent the U.S. from taking action to secure its perceived rightful place as the leader of the global economy by seizing what it sees as its rightful property through attacks on Chinese trading vessels.
It is by no means a certainty that the United States will engage in such an escalatory course of action, and the nature of the overall Western response beyond the current harsh rhetoric and unfounded accusations is yet to be seen. It is important at this stage, however, to highlight the not insignificant possibility such a course will be taken by the U.S. and other Western parties to reverse the trend towards a decline in their economic positions relative to China. Repercussions from such seizures will almost certainly be far more severe than the relatively muted global response to the seizure and sale of a commandeered North Korean ship two years prior. While China’s Navy is concentrated in the Western Pacific and is poorly placed to defend its trade routes from the global reach of Western warships, Beijing and its allies have a wide range of means to retaliate which could deter the Western powers from taking such a course of action.
NOTES


thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-04-18--My Encounter with Sartre

My Encounter with Sartre

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Share with kin , friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise .
My Encounter with Sartre London Review of Books Once the most celebrated intellectual , Jean-Paul Sartre had , until quite recently , almost faded from view .
He was already being attacked for his ‘ blindness ’ about the Soviet gulags shortly after his death in 1980 , and even his humanist Existentialism was ridiculed for its optimism , voluntarism and sheer energetic reach .
Sartre ’ s whole career was offensive both to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attainments had only a fervid anti-Communism to attract any attention , and to the post-structuralists and Post-Modernists who , with few exceptions , had lapsed into a sullen technological narcissism deeply at odds with Sartre ’ s populism and his heroic public politics .
The immense sprawl of Sartre ’ s work as novelist , essayist , playwright , biographer , philosopher , political intellectual , engaged activist , seemed to repel more people than it attracted .
From being the most quoted of the French maîtres penseurs , he became , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the least read and the least analysed .
His courageous positions on Algeria and Vietnam were forgotten .
So were his work on behalf of the oppressed , his gutsy appearance as a Maoist radical during the 1968 student demonstrations in Paris , as well as his extraordinary range and literary distinction ( for which he both won , and rejected , the Nobel Prize for Literature ) .
He had become a maligned ex-celebrity , except in the Anglo-American world , where he had never been taken seriously as a philosopher and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quaint occasional novelist and memoirist , insufficiently anti-Communist , not quite as chic and compelling as ( the far less talented ) Camus .
Then , as with many things French , the fashion began to change back , or so it seemed at a distance .
Several books about him appeared , and once again he has ( perhaps only for a moment ) become the subject of talk , if not exactly of study or reflection .
For my generation he has always been one of the great intellectual heroes of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ insight and intellectual gifts were at the service of nearly every progressive cause of our time .
Yet he seemed neither infallible nor prophetic .
On the contrary , one admired Sartre for the efforts he made to understand situations and , when necessary , to offer solidarity to political causes .
He was never condescending or evasive , even if he was given to error and overstatement .
Nearly everything he wrote is interesting for its sheer audacity , its freedom ( even its freedom to be verbose ) and its generosity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exception , which I ’ d like to describe here .
I ’ m prompted to do so by two fascinating , if dispiriting discussions of his visit to Egypt in early 1967 that appeared last month in Al-Ahram Weekly .
One was in a review of Bernard-Henry Lévy ’ s recent book on Sartre ; the other was a review of the late Lotfi al-Kholi ’ s account of that visit ( al-Kholi , a leading intellectual , was one of Sartre ’ s Egyptian hosts ) .
My own rather forlorn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ episode in a very grand life , but it is worth recalling both for its ironies and for its poignancy .
It was early in January 1979 , and I was at home in New York preparing for one of my classes .
The doorbell announced the delivery of a telegram and as I tore it open I noticed with interest that it was from Paris .
‘ You are invited by Les Temps modernes to attend a seminar on peace in the Middle East in Paris on 13 and 14 March this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre.
’ At first I thought the cable was a joke of some sort .
It might just as well have been an invitation from Cosima and Richard Wagner to come to Bayreuth , or from T.S .
Eliot and Virginia Woolf to spend an afternoon at the offices of the Dial .
It took me about two days to ascertain from various friends in New York and Paris that it was indeed genuine , and far less time than that to despatch my unconditional acceptance ( this after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ euphemism for travel expenses , were to be borne by Les Temps modernes , the monthly journal established by Sartre after the war ) .
A few weeks later I was off to Paris .
Les Temps modernes had played an extraordinary role in French , and later European and even Third World , intellectual life .
Sartre had gathered around him a remarkable set of minds – not all of them in agreement with him – that included Beauvoir of course , his great opposite Raymond Aron , the eminent philosopher and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ left the journal a few years later ) , and Michel Leiris , ethnographer , Africanist and bullfight theoretician .
There wasn ’ t a major issue that Sartre and his circle didn ’ t take on , including the 1967 Arab-Israeli war , which resulted in a monumentally large edition of Les Temps modernes – in turn the subject of a brilliant essay by I.F .
Stone .
That alone gave my Paris trip a precedent of note .
When I arrived , I found a short , mysterious letter from Sartre @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hotel I had booked in the Latin Quarter .
‘ For security reasons , ’ the message ran , ‘ the meetings will be held at the home of Michel Foucault.
’ I was duly provided with an address , and at ten the next morning I arrived at Foucault ’ s apartment to find a number of people – but not Sartre – already milling around .
No one was ever to explain the mysterious ‘ security reasons ’ that had forced a change in venue , though as a result a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Beauvoir was already there in her famous turban , lecturing anyone who would listen about her forthcoming trip to Teheran with Kate Millett , where they were planning to demonstrate against the chador ; the whole idea struck me as patronising and silly , and although I was eager to hear what Beauvoir had to say , I also realised that she was quite vain and quite beyond arguing with at that moment .
Besides , she left an hour or so later ( just before Sartre ’ s arrival ) and was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made it clear to me that he had nothing to contribute to the seminar and would be leaving directly for his daily bout of research at the Bibliothèque Nationale .
I was pleased to see my book Beginnings on his bookshelves , which were brimming with a neatly arranged mass of materials , including papers and journals .
Although we chatted together amiably it wasn ’ t until much later ( in fact almost a decade after his death in 1984 ) that I got some idea why he had been so unwilling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Eastern politics .
In their biographies , both Didier Eribon and James Miller reveal that in 1967 he had been teaching in Tunisia and had left the country in some haste , shortly after the June War .
Foucault had said at the time that the reason he left had been his horror at the ‘ anti-semitic ’ anti-Israel riots of the time , common in every Arab city after the great Arab defeat .
A Tunisian colleague of his in the University of Tunis philosophy department told me a different story in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said , had been deported because of his homosexual activities with young students .
I still have no idea which version is correct .
At the time of the Paris seminar , he told me he had just returned from a sojourn in Iran as a special envoy of Corriere della sera .
‘ Very exciting , very strange , crazy , ’ I recall him saying about those early days of the Islamic Revolution .
I think ( perhaps mistakenly ) I heard him say that in Teheran he had disguised himself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while after his articles appeared , he rapidly distanced himself from all things Iranian .
Finally , in the late 1980s , I was told by Gilles Deleuze that he and Foucault , once the closest of friends , had fallen out over the question of Palestine , Foucault expressing support for Israel , Deleuze for the Palestinians .
Foucault ’ s apartment , though large and obviously extremely comfortable , was starkly white and austere , well suited to the solitary philosopher and rigorous thinker who seemed to inhabit it alone .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ there .
Among them I recognised only Ibrahim Dakkak , who has since become a good Jerusalem friend , Nafez Nazzal , a teacher at Bir Zeit whom I had known superficially in the US , and Yehoshofat Harkabi , the leading Israeli expert on ‘ the Arab mind ’ , a former chief of Israeli military intelligence , fired by Golda Meir for mistakenly putting the Army on alert .
Three years earlier , we had both been fellows at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relationship .
It was always polite but far from cordial .
In Paris , he was in the process of changing his position , to become Israel ’ s leading establishment dove , a man who was soon to speak openly about the need for a Palestinian state , which he considered to be a strategic advantage from Israel ’ s point of view .
The other participants were mostly Israeli or French Jews , from the very religious to the very secular , although all were pro-Zionist in one way or another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Gal , seemed to have a long acquaintance with Sartre : we were later told that he had been Sartre ’ s guide on a recent trip to Israel .
When the great man finally appeared , well past the appointed time , I was shocked at how old and frail he seemed .
I recall rather needlessly and idiotically introducing Foucault to him , and I also recall that Sartre was constantly surrounded , supported , prompted by a small retinue of people on whom he was totally dependent .
They , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ main business of their lives .
One was his adopted daughter who , I later learned , was his literary executor ; I was told that she was of Algerian origin .
Another was Pierre Victor , a former Maoist and co-publisher with Sartre of the now defunct Gauche prolétarienne , who had become a deeply religious and , I supposed , Orthodox Jew ; it stunned me to find out later from one of the journal ’ s assistants that he was an Egyptian Jew called Benny Lévy , the brother of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) , one of the so-called Mahmoud Hussein pair ( the other being a Muslim Egyptian : the two men worked at Unesco and as ‘ Mahmoud Hussein ’ wrote La Lutte des classes en Egypte , a well-known study published by Maspero ) .
There seemed to be nothing Egyptian about Victor : he came across as a Left Bank intellectual , part-thinker , part-hustler .
Third was Hélène von Bülow , a trilingual woman who worked at the journal and translated everything for Sartre .
Although he had spent time in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Heidegger , but on Faulkner and Dos Passos , Sartre knew neither German nor English .
An amiable and elegant woman , Von Bülow remained at Sartre ’ s side for the two days of the seminar , whispering simultaneous translations into his ear .
Except for one Palestinian from Vienna who spoke only Arabic and German , our discussion was in English .
How much Sartre actually understood I shall never know , but it was ( to me and others ) profoundly disconcerting that he remained silent throughout the first day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sartre ’ s bibliographer , was also there , but did not participate .
In what I took to be the French style , lunch – which in ordinary circumstances would have taken an hour or so – was a very elaborate affair taken at a restaurant some distance away ; and since it had been raining non-stop , transporting everyone in cabs , sitting through a four-course meal , then bringing the group back again , took about three and a half hours .
So on the first day our discussions about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ short time .
The themes were set out by Victor without any consultation with anyone else , so far as I could see .
Early on , I sensed that he was a law unto himself , thanks no doubt to his privileged relationship with Sartre ( with whom he occasionally had whispered exchanges ) , and to what seemed to be a sublime self-confidence .
We were to discuss : ( 1 ) the value of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel ( this was Camp David time ) , ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Arab world generally , and ( 3 ) the rather more fundamental question of future coexistence between Israel and the surrounding Arab world .
None of the Arabs seemed happy with this .
I felt it leapfrogged over the matter of the Palestinians .
Dakkak was uneasy with the whole set-up and left after the first day .
As that day wore on , I slowly discovered that a good deal of negotiating had gone on beforehand to bring the seminar about , and that what participation there was from the Arab world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by all the prior wheeling and dealing .
I was somewhat chagrined that I hadn ’ t been included in any of this .
Perhaps I had been too naive – too anxious to come to Paris to meet Sartre , I reflected .
There was talk of Emmanuel Levinas being involved , but , like the Egyptian intellectuals whom we ’ d been promised , he never showed up .
In the meantime all our discussions were being recorded and were subsequently published in a special issue of Les Temps modernes ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was pretty unsatisfactory .
We were covering more or less familiar ground , with no real meeting of minds .
Beauvoir had been a serious disappointment , flouncing out of the room in a cloud of opinionated babble about Islam and the veiling of women .
At the time I did not regret her absence ; later I was convinced she would have livened things up .
Sartre ’ s presence , what there was of it , was strangely passive , unimpressive , affectless .
He said absolutely nothing for hours on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from me , looking disconsolate and remaining totally uncommunicative , egg and mayonnaise streaming haplessly down his face .
I tried to make conversation with him , but got nowhere .
He may have been deaf , but I ’ m not sure .
In any case , he seemed to me like a haunted version of his earlier self , his proverbial ugliness , his pipe and his nondescript clothing hanging about him like so many props on a deserted stage .
I was very active in Palestinian politics at the time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ member of the National Council , and on my frequent visits to Beirut ( this was during the Lebanese civil war ) to visit my mother , regularly saw Arafat , and most of the other leaders of the day .
I thought it would be a major achievement to coax Sartre into making a pro-Palestinian statement at such a ‘ hot ’ moment of our deadly rivalry with Israel .
Throughout the lunch and the afternoon session I was aware of Pierre Victor as a sort of station-master for the seminar , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In addition to their mysterious whisperings at the table , he and Victor would from time to time get up ; Victor would lead the shuffling old man away , speak rapidly at him , get an intermittent nod or two , then they ’ d come back .
Meanwhile every member of the seminar wanted to have his or her say , making it impossible to develop an argument , though it soon enough became clear that Israel ’ s enhancement ( what today is called ‘ normalisation ’ ) was the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Arabs or the Palestinians .
Several Arabs before me had spent time trying to convince some immensely important intellectual of the justice of their cause in the hope that he would turn into another Arnold Toynbee or Sean McBride .
Few of these great eminences did .
Sartre struck me as worth the effort simply because I could not forget his position on Algeria , which as a Frenchman must have been harder to hold than a position critical of Israel .
I was wrong of course .
As the turgid and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that I was too often reminding myself that I had come to France to listen to what Sartre had to say , not to people whose opinions I already knew and didn ’ t find specially gripping .
I therefore brazenly interrupted the discussion early in the evening and insisted that we hear from Sartre forthwith .
This caused consternation in the retinue .
The seminar was adjourned while urgent consultations between them were held .
I found the whole thing comic and pathetic at the same time , especially since Sartre himself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
At last we were summoned back to the table by the visibly irritated Pierre Victor , who announced with the portentousness of a Roman senator : ‘ Demain Sartre parlera.
’ And so we retired in keen anticipation of the following morning ’ s proceedings .
Sure enough Sartre did have something for us : a prepared text of about two typed pages that – I write entirely on the basis of a twenty-year-old memory of the moment – praised the courage of Anwar Sadat in the most banal platitudes imaginable .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ were said about the Palestinians , or about territory , or about the tragic past .
Certainly no reference was made to Israeli settler-colonialism , similar in many ways to French practice in Algeria .
It was about as informative as a Reuters dispatch , obviously written by the egregious Victor to get Sartre , whom he seemed completely to command , off the hook .
I was quite shattered to discover that this intellectual hero had succumbed in his later years to such a reactionary mentor , and that on the subject @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the oppressed had nothing to offer beyond the most conventional , journalistic praise for an already well-celebrated [ and traitorous—Ed ] Egyptian leader .
For the rest of that day Sartre resumed his silence , and the proceedings continued as before .
I recalled an apocryphal story in which twenty years earlier Sartre had travelled to Rome to meet Fanon ( then dying of leukemia ) and harangued him about the dramas of Algeria for ( it was claimed ) 16 non-stop hours , until Simone made him desist .
Gone for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ transcript of the seminar was published a few months later , Sartre ’ s intervention had been edited down and made even more innocuous .
I can not imagine why ; nor did I try to find out .
Even though I still have the issue of Les Temps modernes in which we all appeared , I haven ’ t been able to bring myself to reread more than a few extracts , so flat and unrewarding do its pages now seem to me .
So I went to Paris to hear Sartre @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was invited to come to Egypt , to be seen and talked to by Arab intellectuals – with exactly the same results , though my own encounter was coloured , not to say stained , by the presence of an unattractive intermediary , Pierre Victor , who has since disappeared into well deserved obscurity .
I was , I thought then , like Fabrice looking for the Battle of Waterloo – unsuccessful and disappointed .
One further point .
A few weeks ago I happened to catch part of Bouillon de culture , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , screened on French television , and broadcast in the US a short time later .
The programme was about Sartre ’ s slow posthumous rehabilitation in the face of continuing criticism of his political sins .
Bernard-Henry Lévy , than whom in quality of mind and political courage there could scarcely be anyone more different from Sartre , was there to flog his approving study of the older philosopher .
( I confess that I haven ’ t read it , and do not soon plan to . )
He was not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ B-HL ; there were things about him , after all , that were consistently admirable and politically correct .
B-HL intended this to balance what he considered the well-founded criticism of Sartre ( made into a nauseating mantra by Paul Johnson ) as having always been wrong on Communism .
‘ For example , ’ B-HL intoned , ‘ Sartre ’ s record on Israel was perfect : he never deviated and he remained a complete supporter of the Jewish state.
’ For reasons that we still can not know for certain , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fundamental pro-Zionism .
Whether that was because he was afraid of seeming anti-semitic , or because he felt guilt about the Holocaust , or because he allowed himself no deep appreciation of the Palestinians as victims of and fighters against Israel ’ s injustice , or for some other reason , I shall never know .
All I do know is that as a very old man he seemed pretty much the same as he had been when somewhat younger : a bitter disappointment to every ( non-Algerian ) Arab who admired him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sartre , and in his last years ( though led on and , some would say , totally manipulated by my former Princeton classmate and one-time friend , Ralph Schoenman ) actually took positions critical of Israel ’ s policies towards the Arabs .
I guess we need to understand why great old men are liable to succumb either to the wiles of younger ones , or to the grip of an unmodifiable political belief .
It ’ s a dispiriting thought , but it ’ s what happened to Sartre .
With @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Arab cause simply could not make an impression on him , and whether it was entirely because of Israel or because of a basic lack of sympathy – cultural or perhaps religious – it ’ s impossible for me to say .
In this he was quite unlike his friend and idol Jean Genet , who celebrated his strange passion for Palestinians in an extended sojourn with them and by writing the extraordinary ‘ Quatre Heures à Sabra et Chatila ’ and Le Captif amoureux .
A year after our brief @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I vividly remember how much I mourned his death .

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.
by Edward Said
(1 June 2000)
My Encounter with Sartre
London Review of Books
[dropcap]O[/dropcap]nce the most celebrated intellectual, Jean-Paul Sartre had, until quite recently, almost faded from view. He was already being attacked for his ‘blindness’ about the Soviet gulags shortly after his death in 1980, and even his humanist Existentialism was ridiculed for its optimism, voluntarism and sheer energetic reach. Sartre’s whole career was offensive both to the so-called Nouveaux Philosophes, whose mediocre attainments had only a fervid anti-Communism to attract any attention, and to the post-structuralists and Post-Modernists who, with few exceptions, had lapsed into a sullen technological narcissism deeply at odds with Sartre’s populism and his heroic public politics. The immense sprawl of Sartre’s work as novelist, essayist, playwright, biographer, philosopher, political intellectual, engaged activist, seemed to repel more people than it attracted. From being the most quoted of the French maîtres penseurs, he became, in the space of about twenty years, the least read and the least analysed. His courageous positions on Algeria and Vietnam were forgotten. So were his work on behalf of the oppressed, his gutsy appearance as a Maoist radical during the 1968 student demonstrations in Paris, as well as his extraordinary range and literary distinction (for which he both won, and rejected, the Nobel Prize for Literature). He had become a maligned ex-celebrity, except in the Anglo-American world, where he had never been taken seriously as a philosopher and was always read somewhat condescendingly as a quaint occasional novelist and memoirist, insufficiently anti-Communist, not quite as chic and compelling as (the far less talented) Camus.
Then, as with many things French, the fashion began to change back, or so it seemed at a distance. Several books about him appeared, and once again he has (perhaps only for a moment) become the subject of talk, if not exactly of study or reflection. For my generation he has always been one of the great intellectual heroes of the 20th century, a man whose insight and intellectual gifts were at the service of nearly every progressive cause of our time. Yet he seemed neither infallible nor prophetic. On the contrary, one admired Sartre for the efforts he made to understand situations and, when necessary, to offer solidarity to political causes. He was never condescending or evasive, even if he was given to error and overstatement. Nearly everything he wrote is interesting for its sheer audacity, its freedom (even its freedom to be verbose) and its generosity of spirit.
There is one obvious exception, which I’d like to describe here. I’m prompted to do so by two fascinating, if dispiriting discussions of his visit to Egypt in early 1967 that appeared last month in Al-Ahram Weekly. One was in a review of Bernard-Henry Lévy’s recent book on Sartre; the other was a review of the late Lotfi al-Kholi’s account of that visit (al-Kholi, a leading intellectual, was one of Sartre’s Egyptian hosts). My own rather forlorn experience with Sartre was a very minor episode in a very grand life, but it is worth recalling both for its ironies and for its poignancy.
It was early in January 1979, and I was at home in New York preparing for one of my classes. The doorbell announced the delivery of a telegram and as I tore it open I noticed with interest that it was from Paris. ‘You are invited by Les Temps modernes to attend a seminar on peace in the Middle East in Paris on 13 and 14 March this year. Please respond. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre.’ At first I thought the cable was a joke of some sort. It might just as well have been an invitation from Cosima and Richard Wagner to come to Bayreuth, or from T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf to spend an afternoon at the offices of the Dial. It took me about two days to ascertain from various friends in New York and Paris that it was indeed genuine, and far less time than that to despatch my unconditional acceptance (this after learning that les modalités, the French euphemism for travel expenses, were to be borne by Les Temps modernes, the monthly journal established by Sartre after the war). A few weeks later I was off to Paris.
Les Temps modernes had played an extraordinary role in French, and later European and even Third World, intellectual life. Sartre had gathered around him a remarkable set of minds – not all of them in agreement with him – that included Beauvoir of course, his great opposite Raymond Aron, the eminent philosopher and Ecole Normale classmate Maurice Merleau-Ponty (who left the journal a few years later), and Michel Leiris, ethnographer, Africanist and bullfight theoretician. There wasn’t a major issue that Sartre and his circle didn’t take on, including the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which resulted in a monumentally large edition of Les Temps modernes – in turn the subject of a brilliant essay by I.F. Stone. That alone gave my Paris trip a precedent of note.
When I arrived, I found a short, mysterious letter from Sartre and Beauvoir waiting for me at the hotel I had booked in the Latin Quarter. ‘For security reasons,’ the message ran, ‘the meetings will be held at the home of Michel Foucault.’ I was duly provided with an address, and at ten the next morning I arrived at Foucault’s apartment to find a number of people – but not Sartre – already milling around. No one was ever to explain the mysterious ‘security reasons’ that had forced a change in venue, though as a result a conspiratorial air hung over our proceedings. Beauvoir was already there in her famous turban, lecturing anyone who would listen about her forthcoming trip to Teheran with Kate Millett, where they were planning to demonstrate against the chador; the whole idea struck me as patronising and silly, and although I was eager to hear what Beauvoir had to say, I also realised that she was quite vain and quite beyond arguing with at that moment. Besides, she left an hour or so later (just before Sartre’s arrival) and was never seen again.
Foucault very quickly made it clear to me that he had nothing to contribute to the seminar and would be leaving directly for his daily bout of research at the Bibliothèque Nationale. I was pleased to see my book Beginnings on his bookshelves, which were brimming with a neatly arranged mass of materials, including papers and journals. Although we chatted together amiably it wasn’t until much later (in fact almost a decade after his death in 1984) that I got some idea why he had been so unwilling to say anything to me about Middle Eastern politics. In their biographies, both Didier Eribon and James Miller reveal that in 1967 he had been teaching in Tunisia and had left the country in some haste, shortly after the June War. Foucault had said at the time that the reason he left had been his horror at the ‘anti-semitic’ anti-Israel riots of the time, common in every Arab city after the great Arab defeat. A Tunisian colleague of his in the University of Tunis philosophy department told me a different story in the early 1990s: Foucault, she said, had been deported because of his homosexual activities with young students. I still have no idea which version is correct. At the time of the Paris seminar, he told me he had just returned from a sojourn in Iran as a special envoy of Corriere della sera. ‘Very exciting, very strange, crazy,’ I recall him saying about those early days of the Islamic Revolution. I think (perhaps mistakenly) I heard him say that in Teheran he had disguised himself in a wig, although a short while after his articles appeared, he rapidly distanced himself from all things Iranian. Finally, in the late 1980s, I was told by Gilles Deleuze that he and Foucault, once the closest of friends, had fallen out over the question of Palestine, Foucault expressing support for Israel, Deleuze for the Palestinians.
Foucault’s apartment, though large and obviously extremely comfortable, was starkly white and austere, well suited to the solitary philosopher and rigorous thinker who seemed to inhabit it alone. A few Palestinians and Israeli Jews were there. Among them I recognised only Ibrahim Dakkak, who has since become a good Jerusalem friend, Nafez Nazzal, a teacher at Bir Zeit whom I had known superficially in the US, and Yehoshofat Harkabi, the leading Israeli expert on ‘the Arab mind’, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence, fired by Golda Meir for mistakenly putting the Army on alert. Three years earlier, we had both been fellows at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, but we did not have much of a relationship. It was always polite but far from cordial. In Paris, he was in the process of changing his position, to become Israel’s leading establishment dove, a man who was soon to speak openly about the need for a Palestinian state, which he considered to be a strategic advantage from Israel’s point of view. The other participants were mostly Israeli or French Jews, from the very religious to the very secular, although all were pro-Zionist in one way or another. One of them, Eli Ben Gal, seemed to have a long acquaintance with Sartre: we were later told that he had been Sartre’s guide on a recent trip to Israel.
When the great man finally appeared, well past the appointed time, I was shocked at how old and frail he seemed. I recall rather needlessly and idiotically introducing Foucault to him, and I also recall that Sartre was constantly surrounded, supported, prompted by a small retinue of people on whom he was totally dependent. They, in turn, had made him the main business of their lives. One was his adopted daughter who, I later learned, was his literary executor; I was told that she was of Algerian origin. Another was Pierre Victor, a former Maoist and co-publisher with Sartre of the now defunct Gauche prolétarienne, who had become a deeply religious and, I supposed, Orthodox Jew; it stunned me to find out later from one of the journal’s assistants that he was an Egyptian Jew called Benny Lévy, the brother of Adel Ref’at (né Lévy), one of the so-called Mahmoud Hussein pair (the other being a Muslim Egyptian: the two men worked at Unesco and as ‘Mahmoud Hussein’ wrote La Lutte des classes en Egypte, a well-known study published by Maspero). There seemed to be nothing Egyptian about Victor: he came across as a Left Bank intellectual, part-thinker, part-hustler. Third was Hélène von Bülow, a trilingual woman who worked at the journal and translated everything for Sartre. Although he had spent time in Germany and had written not only on Heidegger, but on Faulkner and Dos Passos, Sartre knew neither German nor English. An amiable and elegant woman, Von Bülow remained at Sartre’s side for the two days of the seminar, whispering simultaneous translations into his ear. Except for one Palestinian from Vienna who spoke only Arabic and German, our discussion was in English. How much Sartre actually understood I shall never know, but it was (to me and others) profoundly disconcerting that he remained silent throughout the first day’s proceedings. Michel Contat, Sartre’s bibliographer, was also there, but did not participate.
In what I took to be the French style, lunch – which in ordinary circumstances would have taken an hour or so – was a very elaborate affair taken at a restaurant some distance away; and since it had been raining non-stop, transporting everyone in cabs, sitting through a four-course meal, then bringing the group back again, took about three and a half hours. So on the first day our discussions about ‘peace’ lasted for a relatively short time. The themes were set out by Victor without any consultation with anyone else, so far as I could see. Early on, I sensed that he was a law unto himself, thanks no doubt to his privileged relationship with Sartre (with whom he occasionally had whispered exchanges), and to what seemed to be a sublime self-confidence. We were to discuss: (1) the value of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel (this was Camp David time), (2) peace between Israel and the Arab world generally, and (3) the rather more fundamental question of future coexistence between Israel and the surrounding Arab world. None of the Arabs seemed happy with this. I felt it leapfrogged over the matter of the Palestinians. Dakkak was uneasy with the whole set-up and left after the first day.
As that day wore on, I slowly discovered that a good deal of negotiating had gone on beforehand to bring the seminar about, and that what participation there was from the Arab world was compromised, and hence abridged, by all the prior wheeling and dealing. I was somewhat chagrined that I hadn’t been included in any of this. Perhaps I had been too naive – too anxious to come to Paris to meet Sartre, I reflected. There was talk of Emmanuel Levinas being involved, but, like the Egyptian intellectuals whom we’d been promised, he never showed up. In the meantime all our discussions were being recorded and were subsequently published in a special issue of Les Temps modernes (September 1979). I thought it was pretty unsatisfactory. We were covering more or less familiar ground, with no real meeting of minds.
Beauvoir had been a serious disappointment, flouncing out of the room in a cloud of opinionated babble about Islam and the veiling of women. At the time I did not regret her absence; later I was convinced she would have livened things up. Sartre’s presence, what there was of it, was strangely passive, unimpressive, affectless. He said absolutely nothing for hours on end. At lunch he sat across from me, looking disconsolate and remaining totally uncommunicative, egg and mayonnaise streaming haplessly down his face. I tried to make conversation with him, but got nowhere. He may have been deaf, but I’m not sure. In any case, he seemed to me like a haunted version of his earlier self, his proverbial ugliness, his pipe and his nondescript clothing hanging about him like so many props on a deserted stage. I was very active in Palestinian politics at the time: in 1977 I had become a member of the National Council, and on my frequent visits to Beirut (this was during the Lebanese civil war) to visit my mother, regularly saw Arafat, and most of the other leaders of the day. I thought it would be a major achievement to coax Sartre into making a pro-Palestinian statement at such a ‘hot’ moment of our deadly rivalry with Israel.
Throughout the lunch and the afternoon session I was aware of Pierre Victor as a sort of station-master for the seminar, among whose trains was Sartre himself. In addition to their mysterious whisperings at the table, he and Victor would from time to time get up; Victor would lead the shuffling old man away, speak rapidly at him, get an intermittent nod or two, then they’d come back. Meanwhile every member of the seminar wanted to have his or her say, making it impossible to develop an argument, though it soon enough became clear that Israel’s enhancement (what today is called ‘normalisation’) was the real subject of the meeting, not the Arabs or the Palestinians. Several Arabs before me had spent time trying to convince some immensely important intellectual of the justice of their cause in the hope that he would turn into another Arnold Toynbee or Sean McBride. Few of these great eminences did. Sartre struck me as worth the effort simply because I could not forget his position on Algeria, which as a Frenchman must have been harder to hold than a position critical of Israel. I was wrong of course.
As the turgid and unrewarding discussions wore on, I found that I was too often reminding myself that I had come to France to listen to what Sartre had to say, not to people whose opinions I already knew and didn’t find specially gripping. I therefore brazenly interrupted the discussion early in the evening and insisted that we hear from Sartre forthwith. This caused consternation in the retinue. The seminar was adjourned while urgent consultations between them were held. I found the whole thing comic and pathetic at the same time, especially since Sartre himself had no apparent part in these deliberations. At last we were summoned back to the table by the visibly irritated Pierre Victor, who announced with the portentousness of a Roman senator: ‘Demain Sartre parlera.’ And so we retired in keen anticipation of the following morning’s proceedings.
Sure enough Sartre did have something for us: a prepared text of about two typed pages that – I write entirely on the basis of a twenty-year-old memory of the moment – praised the courage of Anwar Sadat in the most banal platitudes imaginable. I cannot recall that many words were said about the Palestinians, or about territory, or about the tragic past. Certainly no reference was made to Israeli settler-colonialism, similar in many ways to French practice in Algeria. It was about as informative as a Reuters dispatch, obviously written by the egregious Victor to get Sartre, whom he seemed completely to command, off the hook. I was quite shattered to discover that this intellectual hero had succumbed in his later years to such a reactionary mentor, and that on the subject of Palestine the former warrior on behalf of the oppressed had nothing to offer beyond the most conventional, journalistic praise for an already well-celebrated [and traitorous—Ed] Egyptian leader. For the rest of that day Sartre resumed his silence, and the proceedings continued as before. I recalled an apocryphal story in which twenty years earlier Sartre had travelled to Rome to meet Fanon (then dying of leukemia) and harangued him about the dramas of Algeria for (it was claimed) 16 non-stop hours, until Simone made him desist. Gone for ever was that Sartre.
When the transcript of the seminar was published a few months later, Sartre’s intervention had been edited down and made even more innocuous. I cannot imagine why; nor did I try to find out. Even though I still have the issue of Les Temps modernes in which we all appeared, I haven’t been able to bring myself to reread more than a few extracts, so flat and unrewarding do its pages now seem to me. So I went to Paris to hear Sartre in much the same spirit as Sartre was invited to come to Egypt, to be seen and talked to by Arab intellectuals – with exactly the same results, though my own encounter was coloured, not to say stained, by the presence of an unattractive intermediary, Pierre Victor, who has since disappeared into well deserved obscurity. I was, I thought then, like Fabrice looking for the Battle of Waterloo – unsuccessful and disappointed.
One further point. A few weeks ago I happened to catch part of Bouillon de culture, Bernard Pivot’s weekly discussion programme, screened on French television, and broadcast in the US a short time later. The programme was about Sartre’s slow posthumous rehabilitation in the face of continuing criticism of his political sins. Bernard-Henry Lévy, than whom in quality of mind and political courage there could scarcely be anyone more different from Sartre, was there to flog his approving study of the older philosopher. (I confess that I haven’t read it, and do not soon plan to.) He was not so bad really, said the patronising B-HL; there were things about him, after all, that were consistently admirable and politically correct. B-HL intended this to balance what he considered the well-founded criticism of Sartre (made into a nauseating mantra by Paul Johnson) as having always been wrong on Communism. ‘For example,’ B-HL intoned, ‘Sartre’s record on Israel was perfect: he never deviated and he remained a complete supporter of the Jewish state.’
For reasons that we still cannot know for certain, Sartre did indeed remain constant in his fundamental pro-Zionism. Whether that was because he was afraid of seeming anti-semitic, or because he felt guilt about the Holocaust, or because he allowed himself no deep appreciation of the Palestinians as victims of and fighters against Israel’s injustice, or for some other reason, I shall never know. All I do know is that as a very old man he seemed pretty much the same as he had been when somewhat younger: a bitter disappointment to every (non-Algerian) Arab who admired him. Certainly Bertrand Russell was better than Sartre, and in his last years (though led on and, some would say, totally manipulated by my former Princeton classmate and one-time friend, Ralph Schoenman) actually took positions critical of Israel’s policies towards the Arabs. I guess we need to understand why great old men are liable to succumb either to the wiles of younger ones, or to the grip of an unmodifiable political belief. It’s a dispiriting thought, but it’s what happened to Sartre. With the exception of Algeria, the justice of the Arab cause simply could not make an impression on him, and whether it was entirely because of Israel or because of a basic lack of sympathy – cultural or perhaps religious – it’s impossible for me to say. In this he was quite unlike his friend and idol Jean Genet, who celebrated his strange passion for Palestinians in an extended sojourn with them and by writing the extraordinary ‘Quatre Heures à Sabra et Chatila’ and Le Captif amoureux.
A year after our brief and disappointing Paris encounter Sartre died. I vividly remember how much I mourned his death.


thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-04-19--Russian filmmaker speaks the (often obfuscated) truth about the USSR during WWII

n excerpt form the popular Russian talk show “ An evening with Vladimir Solovyov ” .
Translated and subtitled by @ @ @ @ @ filmmaker Karen Shakhnazarov discusses the meaning of the WWII memory for the Russian society and @ @ @ @ @ context of the discussion was the proposed constitutional amendments .
Translator ’ s notes : @ @ @ @ @ division consisted of 10,000 soldiers .
( 2 ) The British light cruiser Edinburgh carrying @ @ @ @ @ gold as payment for Western supplies was sunk by a German submarine on its way @ @ @ @ @ Murmansk in April of 1942 .
Shakhnazarov mistakenly said that it happened in 1941 .
@ @ @ @ @ on “ cc ” to see the English language subtitles .

An evening with Vladimir Solovyov, April 9, 2020.
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]n excerpt form the popular Russian talk show “An evening with Vladimir Solovyov”. Translated and subtitled by Eugenia. A well-known Russian filmmaker Karen Shakhnazarov discusses the meaning of the WWII memory for the Russian society and the Russian people. The context of the discussion was the proposed constitutional amendments. Translator’s notes: (1) The Soviet division consisted of 10,000 soldiers. (2) The British light cruiser Edinburgh carrying 5.5 tons of the Russian gold as payment for Western supplies was sunk by a German submarine on its way home from the Soviet port Murmansk in April of 1942. Shakhnazarov mistakenly said that it happened in 1941.
Please make sure to press on “cc” to see the English language subtitles.


thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-04-21--Moon of Alabama pushes back against those claiming Covid-19 lockdowns are unjustified

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DISPATCHES FROM MOON OF ALABAMA , BY “ B ” This article is part of an ongoing series of dispatches from Moon of Alabama On two Coronavirus pieces on other websites : • Sweden Is Right .
The Economy Should be Left Open – Mike Whitney , UNZ The piece debunks itself when it quotes a Swedish epidemiologist who says : Sweden can do without orders of social distancing because its people will socially @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because “ there is a high level of trust here between the population and the authorities ” .
That does not hold for the community of Somali people and other immigrants in Sweden more of whom are dying than in any other group .
Now project such a voluntary attempt onto the U.S. public where there is little , if any , trust between the population and the authorities .
It simply would not work and one would soon have a runaway epidemic with all its bad consequences .
Whitney ’ s conclusion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is thus not justified .
The [ above ] piece was posted on April 17 .
One of the ‘ experts ’ it quotes is Dr. John Oxford , “ an English virologist and Professor at Queen Mary , University of London.
” Here is the quote as posted on Off-Guardian : a .
On April 17 , when Off-Guardian posted the piece , the United Kingdom already had 14.607 deaths from Covid-19 .
Those were 6.600 more than the total number Dr. John Oxford predicted .
If the real numbers , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ % higher than the expert ’ s guesstimate should one really use that expert to claim that the ‘ coronavirus panic ’ is unjustified ?
b. Dr. Oxford made his claim in a “ blog post on Novus Communications website ” .
Novus Comes is a public relations agency which provides “ financial social media & digital communications for small caps ” .
The company is paid by its clients to talk up certain sectors of the stock market .
Should one really use paid PR posts on a PR company ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ about an epidemic is justified ?
As for the other ‘ experts ’ Off-Guardian quoted .
Yes , there are some doctors who do have a different opinion than most of their colleagues .
But that does not make them right .
An astroturfing campaign was launched in the U.S. to end the lockdowns .
It is paid for by rightwing big money : Covid-19 is a really , really nasty disease : • How does coronavirus kill ?
Clinicians trace a ferocious rampage through the body , from brain to toes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strokes : How COVID-19 may affect the brain – AFP • Coronavirus infection may cause lasting damage throughout the body , doctors fear – LA Times • Coronavirus Antibodies May Not Make You Immune , WHO Warns – Forbes We need to learn from this : • Leaked Labour Report Shows Party ’ s Own Senior Staff Acted To Keep Corbyn Out Of Power – Media Lens Posted by b on April 19 , 2020 at 14:26 UTC Permalink Commentary on Trump ’ s Tweets ( excerpts ) Mary McCord , The Washington @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Norwalk , Conn. ) President Donald Trump incited insurrection Friday against the duly elected governors of the states of Michigan , Minnesota and Virginia .
Just a day after issuing guidance for reopening America that clearly deferred decision-making to state officials – as it must under our constitutional order – the president undercut his own guidance by calling for criminal acts against the governors for not opening fast enough .
Trump tweeted , “ LIBERATE MINNESOTA !
” followed immediately by “ LIBERATE MICHIGAN !
” and then “ LIBERATE VIRGINIA , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is under siege !
” This follows Wednesday ’ s demonstration in Michigan , in which armed protesters surrounded the state capitol building in Lansing chanting “ Lock her up !
” in reference to Democratic Gov .
Gretchen Whitmer , and “ We will not comply , ” in reference to her extension of the state ’ s coronavirus-related stay-at-home order .
Much smaller and less-armed groups had on Thursday protested on the state capitol grounds in Richmond , Va. , and outside the governor ’ s mansion in St. Paul , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s declared by the chief executive of our republic – isn ’ t some sort of cheeky throwaway .
Its definition is “ to set at liberty , ” specifically “ to free ( something , such as a country ) from domination by a foreign power.
” We historically associate it with the armed defeat of hostile forces during war , such as the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany ’ s control during World War II .
Just over a year ago , Trump himself announced that “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ territory in Syria and Iraq.
” In that context , it ’ s not at all unreasonable to consider Trump ’ s tweets about “ liberation ” as at least tacit encouragement to citizens to take up arms against duly elected state officials of the party opposite his own , in response to sometimes unpopular but legally issued stay-at-home orders .
This is especially so given the president ’ s reference to the Second Amendment being “ under siege ” in Virginia , where Democratic Gov .
Ralph Northam just signed into law @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the most recent session of the state general assembly – bills that prompted protests by Second Amendment absolutists at the state capitol in January , leading Northam to declare a state of emergency and temporarily ban firearms from the capitol grounds due to the threat of violence .
< .
> Regardless of whether the tweets are criminal on their own , more importantly , they are irresponsible and dangerous .
Private armed militias recently expressed eagerness to support the president ’ s veiled call to arms when he shared a comment on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and removed from office , it could lead to civil war : Just a day before , the Oath Keepers Twitter account tweeted , in an apparent reference to the president , that “ All he has to do is call us up .
We WILL answer the call.
” Months before , vigilante groups responded to Trump ’ s frequent rhetoric about an “ invasion ” on America ’ s southern border by deploying to the border and illegally detaining migrants while heavily armed , dressed in military fatigues and calling themselves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has a bully pulpit unlike an ordinary citizen .
His Twitter account boasts over 77 million followers , but many more see his tweets when they ’ re retweeted by others , posted on other social media and covered by media outlets .
He is prolific , having tweeted more than 50,000 times .
And he is influential : his three “ Liberation ” tweets have been retweeted and “ liked ” hundreds of thousands of times .
We are not talking about a typical person when we consider the impact of his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ b ” is Moon of Alabama ’ s founding ( and chief ) editor .
This site ’ s purpose is to discuss politics , economics , philosophy and blogger Billmon ’ s Whiskey Bar writings .
Moon Of Alabama was opened as an independent , open forum for members of the Whiskey Bar community .
Bernhard ) ” b ” ) started and still runs the site .
Once in a while you will also find posts and art from regular commentators .
You can reach the current administrator of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aol.com .
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License .

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.
DISPATCHES FROM MOON OF ALABAMA, BY "B"
This article is part of an ongoing series of dispatches from Moon of Alabama
Moon of Alabama's editor has taken issue with two articles (and presumably any others of the same ilk) recently published by progressive sources, one by Mike Whitney, the other, Off-Guardian. We agree with Moon of Alabama's position.
By Moon of Alabama editor:
On two Coronavirus pieces on other websites:
Sweden Is Right. The Economy Should be Left Open - Mike Whitney, UNZ
The piece debunks itself when it quotes a Swedish epidemiologist who says:
“The truth is that we have a policy similar to that of other countries,” says Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, “Like everyone, we are trying to slow down the rate of infection … The differences derive from a different tradition and from a different culture that prevail in Sweden. We prefer voluntary measures, and there is a high level of trust here between the population and the authorities, so we are able to avoid coercive restrictions”
Sweden can do without orders of social distancing because its people will socially distance voluntarily when asked. That works because "there is a high level of trust here between the population and the authorities". That does not hold for the community of Somali people and other immigrants in Sweden more of whom are dying than in any other group.
Now project such a voluntary attempt onto the U.S. public where there is little, if any, trust between the population and the authorities. It simply would not work and one would soon have a runaway epidemic with all its bad consequences. Whitney's conclusion that we should all do like Sweden is thus not justified.
---
The [above] piece was posted on April 17. One of the 'experts' it quotes is Dr. John Oxford, "an English virologist and Professor at Queen Mary, University of London." Here is the quote as posted on Off-Guardian:
Personally, I view this Covid outbreak as akin to a bad winter influenza epidemic. In this case we have had 8000 deaths this last year in the ‘at risk’ groups viz over 65% people with heart disease etc. I do not feel this current Covid will exceed this number. We are suffering from a media epidemic! – “A VIEW FROM THE HVIVO / OPEN ORPHAN #ORPH LABORATORY”, blog post on Novus Communications website, March 31st 2020
Two remarks:
a. On April 17, when Off-Guardian posted the piece, the United Kingdom already had 14.607 deaths from Covid-19. Those were 6.600 more than the total number Dr. John Oxford predicted. If the real numbers, which are still increasing, are already 80+% higher than the expert's guesstimate should one really use that expert to claim that the 'coronavirus panic' is unjustified?
b. Dr. Oxford made his claim in a "blog post on Novus Communications website". Novus Comes is a public relations agency which provides "financial social media & digital communications for small caps". The company is paid by its clients to talk up certain sectors of the stock market. Should one really use paid PR posts on a PR company's website to judge if some 'panic' about an epidemic is justified?
As for the other 'experts' Off-Guardian quoted. Yes, there are some doctors who do have a different opinion than most of their colleagues. But that does not make them right.
An astroturfing campaign was launched in the U.S. to end the lockdowns. It is paid for by rightwing big money:
Somebody did some extremely basic WHOIS searching and found that the person who set up all the "reopen $STATENAME" protest web sites is in fact one guy in Jacksonville. -> reddit thread
and:
[Thread] 1/ Much talk this morning about numerous Facebook groups cropping up with "insert state name" + "against excessive quarantine". Some are suggesting that there is mass astroturfing campaign occurring to pressure state governors to reopen after Donald Trump's tirade
...
LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 17, 2020
---
Covid-19 is a really, really nasty disease:
---
We need to learn from this:
Leaked Labour Report Shows Party’s Own Senior Staff Acted To Keep Corbyn Out Of Power - Media Lens
Use as open thread ...
Posted by b on April 19, 2020 at 14:26 UTC Permalink
Addendum
Trump's tweets encouraged online extremists to speculate whether he was advocating for armed conflict, an event they’ve termed "the boogaloo.” Afterward, there was a sharp increase in both the use of conspiracy terminology and violent threats online. https://t.co/viMiM0HqyY — Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) April 17, 2020
“Trump’s tweets about “liberation” [are] at least tacit encouragement to citizens to take up arms against duly elected state officials of the party opposite his own, in response to sometimes unpopular but legally issued stay-at-home orders.”https://t.co/xkidKWvFCj — Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) April 18, 2020
Protesters demanding an end to shutdown orders gathered in streets and outside several states' capitol buildings on Saturday, a day after President Trump posted a series of tweets calling for demonstrators to "LIBERATE" certain states. https://t.co/iN05lWNLoC — NBC News (@NBCNews) April 18, 2020
The “liberate Minnesota” protesters are now outside the home of the governor. pic.twitter.com/MoppWGHnxJ — Joshua Potash (@JoshuaPotash) April 17, 2020
Liberate Michigan
Liberate Minnesota
Liberate Virginia How about Liberate America! Trump is tweeting this shit and inciting violence? pic.twitter.com/CPi60FoxmR — Jerry Avenaim (@avenaim) April 17, 2020
Here's the Fox News segment that inspired Trump's unhinged "LIBERATE MINNESOTA" tweet (as @MattGertz notes it ran just two minutes before Trump's tweet was posted) pic.twitter.com/mHLxCcpoDP — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 17, 2020
Trump's call to LIBERATE Minnesota and out of The entire state of Minnesota- over 5 million people- only a few hundred showed up for a protest. Looking more and more like this November we will LIBERATE AMERICA From Trump and the virus known as Trumpism https://t.co/khEF4ef16D — (((DeanObeidallah))) (@DeanObeidallah) April 17, 2020
Commentary on Trump's Tweets (excerpts)
Mary McCord, The Washington Post (Reposted on The Hour, Norwalk, Conn.)
President Donald Trump incited insurrection Friday against the duly elected governors of the states of Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia. Just a day after issuing guidance for reopening America that clearly deferred decision-making to state officials - as it must under our constitutional order - the president undercut his own guidance by calling for criminal acts against the governors for not opening fast enough.
Trump tweeted, "LIBERATE MINNESOTA!" followed immediately by "LIBERATE MICHIGAN!" and then "LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!" This follows Wednesday's demonstration in Michigan, in which armed protesters surrounded the state capitol building in Lansing chanting "Lock her up!" in reference to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and "We will not comply," in reference to her extension of the state's coronavirus-related stay-at-home order. Much smaller and less-armed groups had on Thursday protested on the state capitol grounds in Richmond, Va., and outside the governor's mansion in St. Paul, Minn.
"Liberate" - particularly when it's declared by the chief executive of our republic - isn't some sort of cheeky throwaway. Its definition is "to set at liberty," specifically "to free (something, such as a country) from domination by a foreign power." We historically associate it with the armed defeat of hostile forces during war, such as the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany's control during World War II. Just over a year ago, Trump himself announced that "the United States has liberated all ISIS-controlled territory in Syria and Iraq."
Donald Trump is massive piece of shit! Tweeting (instead of actually doing his fucking job) to liberate Michigan, Virginia & Minnesota states with a stay at home order.. basically encouraging his insane fan base to protest etc. Further spreading this virus. Fuck him! pic.twitter.com/vJwCZ40spQ — Amy ???????????? (@Steelers_Girl74) April 17, 2020
In that context, it's not at all unreasonable to consider Trump's tweets about "liberation" as at least tacit encouragement to citizens to take up arms against duly elected state officials of the party opposite his own, in response to sometimes unpopular but legally issued stay-at-home orders. This is especially so given the president's reference to the Second Amendment being "under siege" in Virginia, where Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam just signed into law a number of gun-safety bills passed during the most recent session of the state general assembly - bills that prompted protests by Second Amendment absolutists at the state capitol in January, leading Northam to declare a state of emergency and temporarily ban firearms from the capitol grounds due to the threat of violence.
<.>
Regardless of whether the tweets are criminal on their own, more importantly, they are irresponsible and dangerous. Private armed militias recently expressed eagerness to support the president's veiled call to arms when he shared a comment on Twitter suggesting that if he were impeached and removed from office, it could lead to civil war:
Just a day before, the Oath Keepers Twitter account tweeted, in an apparent reference to the president, that "All he has to do is call us up. We WILL answer the call." Months before, vigilante groups responded to Trump's frequent rhetoric about an "invasion" on America's southern border by deploying to the border and illegally detaining migrants while heavily armed, dressed in military fatigues and calling themselves the "United Constitutional Patriots."
Trump has a bully pulpit unlike an ordinary citizen. His Twitter account boasts over 77 million followers, but many more see his tweets when they're retweeted by others, posted on other social media and covered by media outlets. He is prolific, having tweeted more than 50,000 times. And he is influential: his three "Liberation" tweets have been retweeted and "liked" hundreds of thousands of times. We are not talking about a typical person when we consider the impact of his statements.
Read the whole article here.
Comments Sampler
NOTE ^1000Careerist lackeys serving the elites control the American press. Ever pushing for war and inequality, covering up the oligarchy's crimes... They are in reality shameless disinformers. No wonder the world is in such terrible disarray.
About the author(s) "b" is Moon of Alabama's founding (and chief) editor. This site's purpose is to discuss politics, economics, philosophy and blogger Billmon's Whiskey Bar writings. Moon Of Alabama was opened as an independent, open forum for members of the Whiskey Bar community. Bernhard )"b") started and still runs the site. Once in a while you will also find posts and art from regular commentators. You can reach the current administrator of this site by emailing Bernhard at MoonofA@aol.com.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS
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thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-04-20--Codepink denounces Biden’s shameless warmongering against China.

Have you seen Biden ’ s new campaign video ?
It accuses Trump of praising and “ rolling over for the Chinese.
” How are we ever going to defeat COVID-19 if Biden is joining Trump in whipping up hate , and potentially a second cold war , with China ?
Send an email to Biden demanding he fight COVID-19 , sanctions , climate change , bigotry , and hatred , not China .
Demand he take down the video .
Both Trump and Biden are playing a deadly game trying to blame China .
It could turn into a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Pentagon , creating greater global instability and perhaps even leading to a military conflict with a nuclear power .
That is precisely the opposite of what the world needs right now .
That ’ s why we need to hold Biden ’ s feet to the fire .
We ’ ve learned not to expect anything peaceful from Trump .
When asked on Sunday about the protestors defying states ’ stay-at-home orders , he gushed that he had never seen so many American flags .
When asked about the overt displays of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he “ hadn ’ t seen ” anything .
But Biden can and must do better .
Send him a message nowdemanding that he promote cooperation with China and take down his dangerous , xenophobic anti-China video .
Coronavirus deaths in the U.S have topped 40,000 and the U.S. is only managing 100,000 tests per day .
Studies say between five and 35 million tests per day are needed .
Given the woefully inadequate state of the U.S. supply of COVID-19 testing and PPE , and the frightening fact that we have become @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and deaths , Biden needs to be shaming Trump right now for defunding the World Health Organization , not helping Trump divert attention from his gross mishandling of the crisis .
Read from our own Ariel Gold on how Unethical , Cruel , and Dangerous it is to cut funding to the WHO and tell Biden to take down his revolting video .
P.S .
Want to learn more about China ’ s response to COVID-19 and why it is dangerous for the U.S. not to cooperate with them and the World Health @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : De-Funding the World Health Organization : Unethical , Cruel , and Dangerous for the World , by our own Ariel Gold How China Broke the Chain of Infection , by Vijay Prashad , Du Xiaojun – Weiyan Zhu

Biden just released a disgusting video full of lies about China. His attempts to out-Trump Trump on China bashing are shameful and dangerous. Tell Biden to take down his hateful video and show us what a peace president would look like. Right now we need healthcare, not warfare; love not hate.
Dear reader,
Have you seen Biden’s new campaign video? It accuses Trump of praising and “rolling over for the Chinese.” How are we ever going to defeat COVID-19 if Biden is joining Trump in whipping up hate, and potentially a second cold war, with China?
Send an email to Biden demanding he fight COVID-19, sanctions, climate change, bigotry, and hatred, not China. Demand he take down the video.
Both Trump and Biden are playing a deadly game trying to blame China. It could turn into a second cold war—justifying yet more money for the Pentagon, creating greater global instability and perhaps even leading to a military conflict with a nuclear power. That is precisely the opposite of what the world needs right now. That’s why we need to hold Biden’s feet to the fire.
We’ve learned not to expect anything peaceful from Trump. When asked on Sunday about the protestors defying states’ stay-at-home orders, he gushed that he had never seen so many American flags. When asked about the overt displays of anti-semitism, he dismissed it saying that he “hadn’t seen” anything. But Biden can and must do better. Send him a message nowdemanding that he promote cooperation with China and take down his dangerous, xenophobic anti-China video.
Coronavirus deaths in the U.S have topped 40,000 and the U.S. is only managing 100,000 tests per day. Studies say between five and 35 million tests per day are needed. Given the woefully inadequate state of the U.S. supply of COVID-19 testing and PPE, and the frightening fact that we have become number one in both confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths, Biden needs to be shaming Trump right now for defunding the World Health Organization, not helping Trump divert attention from his gross mishandling of the crisis. Read from our own Ariel Gold on how Unethical, Cruel, and Dangerous it is to cut funding to the WHO and tell Biden to take down his revolting video.
Towards global solidarity and health,
Jodie, Ariel, Ann, Asia, Carley, Caty, Cody, Emily, Kelsey, Leonardo, Makena, Medea, Michelle, Nancy, Paki, Teri, and Yousef
P.S. Want to learn more about China’s response to COVID-19 and why it is dangerous for the U.S. not to cooperate with them and the World Health Organization? Here are some recommended readings:
De-Funding the World Health Organization: Unethical, Cruel, and Dangerous for the World, by our own Ariel Gold
How China Broke the Chain of Infection, by Vijay Prashad, Du Xiaojun – Weiyan Zhu