mintpressnews--2020-12-21--Chris Hedges: The Great Delusion

Chris Hedges: The Great Delusion

Princeton , New Jersey ( Scheerpost ) — Joe Biden and the systems managers of the deep state and empire are returning to power .
Trump and his coterie of buffoons , racists , con artists and Christian fascists are sullenly preparing to leave office .
U.S. pharmaceutical corporations are starting to disseminate vaccines to mitigate the globe ’ s worst outbreak of COVID-19 that has resulted in more than 2,600 deaths per day .
America , as Biden says , is back , ready to take its place at the head of the table .
In the battle for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us , democracy has prevailed .
Progress , prosperity , civility and a reassertion of American prestige and power are , we are promised , weeks away .
But the real lesson we should learn from the rise of a demagogue such as Trump , who received 74 million votes , and a pandemic that our for-profit health care industry proved unable to contain , is that we are losing control as a nation and as a species .
Far more dangerous demagogues will arise from the imperial and neoliberal policies the Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will sweep the globe with higher rates of infections and mortality , an inevitable result of our continued consumption of animals and animal products , and the wanton destruction of the ecosystem on which we and other species depend for life .
“ One of the most pathetic aspects of human history , ” Reinhold Niebuhr wrote , “ is that every civilization expresses itself most pretentiously , compounds its partial and universal values most convincingly , and claims immortality for its finite existence at the very moment when the decay which leads @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s appointments are drawn almost exclusively from the circles of the Democratic Party and corporate elite , those responsible for the massive social inequality , trade deals , de-industrialization , militarized police , world ’ s largest prison system , austerity programs that abolished social programs such as welfare , the revived Cold War with Russia , wholesale government surveillance , endless wars in the Middle East and the disenfranchisement and impoverishment of the working class .
The Washington Post writes that “ about 80 percent of the White House and agency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ word ‘ Obama ’ on their résumé from previous White House or Obama campaign jobs.
” Bernie Sanders , apparently rebuffed in his efforts to become secretary of labor in the Biden administration , has expressed frustration with the Biden nominations .
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was denied a seat by House Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee because of her support for the Green New Deal .
The message of the Biden administration to progressives and left-wing populists is very clear – “ Drop dead.
” The list of new administration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ III who is being nominated to be secretary of defense .
Austin is on the board of Raytheon Technologies and a partner at Pine Island Capital , a firm that invests in defense industries and also includes Antony Blinken , Biden ’ s nominee to be secretary of state .
Blinken , who was deputy national security adviser and deputy secretary of state , is a strong supporter of the apartheid state of Israel .
He was one of the architects of the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and a proponent of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resulting in yet another failed state in the Middle East .
Janet Yellen , former Federal Reserve chair under Barack Obama , is slated to be Treasury Secretary .
Yellen as the chair of Bill Clinton ’ s Council of Economic Advisors ( CEA ) and later as a member of the board of the Federal Reserve , backed the repeal of Glass-Steagall , which led to the banking crisis of 2008 .
She supported the North American Free Trade Agreement ( NAFTA ) .
She also lobbied for a new statistical metric @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Social Security .
Yellen backed “ quantitative easing ” that provided trillions in virtually no-interest loans to Wall Street , loans used to bail out banks and corporations and engage in massive stock buy-backs while the victims of financial fraud were abandoned .
Former Secretary of State John Kerry is to become a special envoy for climate .
Kerry championed the massive expansion of domestic oil and gas production , largely through fracking , and , according to Obama ’ s memoir , worked doggedly to convince those concerned about the climate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ subsidies for the nuclear power industry and the opening of additional U.S. coastlines to offshore oil drilling.
” Avril Haines , a former Obama deputy CIA chief , is to become Biden ’ s director of national intelligence .
Haines oversaw Obama ’ s expanded and murderous drone program overseas and backed Gina Haspel ’ s nomination to be the head of the CIA , despite Haspels ’ direct involvement in the CIA torture program carried out in black sites around the globe .
Haines called Haspel “ intelligent , compassionate , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who was in charge of the “ climate portfolio ” at BlackRock , which invests heavily in fossil fuels , including coal , and who served as a former Obama economic adviser who advocated austerity measures , has been chosen to run the White House ’ s economic policy .
Neera Tanden , a former aide to Hillary Clinton , has been picked to be director of the Office of Management and Budget .
Tanden , as the head of the Democratic Party ’ s thinktank , the Center for American Progress , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Valley and Wall Street .
Her donors include Bain Capital , Blackstone , Evercore , Walmart and the defense contractor Northrup Grumman .
The United Arab Emirates , a close ally of Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen , also gave the thinktank between $ 1.5 million and $ 3 million .
She relentlessly ridicules Sanders and his supporters on cable news and social media .
She also proposed a plank in the Democratic platform calling for the bombing Iran .
The perpetuation of the deeply unpopular wars and onerous neoliberal policies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by a fevered demonization of Russia , most recently blamed for cyber-attacks .
A new Cold War with Russia will be used by the corporate Democrats to discredit domestic and foreign critics and deflect attention from the political stagnation and the corporate pillaging of the country .
It will allow MSNBC and The New York Times , which spent two years slogging empty Russiagate conspiracies , to disseminate a daily stream of emotionally charged rumors and shady accusations about Russia .
Cable celebrities such as Rachel Maddow will hyperventilate night after night about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden administration .
The only reason Russia is not blamed for rigging the election in 2020 , as opposed to 2016 , by the Democratic Party is because Trump was defeated .
Biden , after his defeat in the Democratic Party Caucus in Nevada by Bernie Sanders , where Sanders got more than twice his vote , immediately played the Russian card , telling CBS News that the “ Russians don ’ t want me to be the nominee , they like Bernie.
” Hillary Clinton started this dirty game when she attacked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a “ Russian asset ” and in 2020 leveled the same charge against Rep. Tulsi Gabbard .
The Democrats need an enemy , real or fictious , and Silicon Valley and major manufacturers will not allow them to target China .
More of the same means more disaster .
If we want to reclaim our open society and save the ecosystem , we must abolish the corporate stranglehold on global economic and political power .
If we want to avert zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19 , swine flu , avian flu , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) , Ebola , and SARS we must stop consuming animals and their bodily secretions .
We must abolish factory farming and adopt a vegan diet .
And we must keep fossil fuels in the ground .
Razing the rainforest for cattle grazing and vast tracts of farmland devoted to growing monocrops to feed animals destined for human consumption are responsible for up to 91 percent of Amazon rainforest destruction since 1970 .
The loss of forests is one of the single biggest contributors to climate change .
Animal agriculture is the leading @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could be devoid of fish by 2048 .
Each minute , 7 million pounds of feces are produced by the animals raised for human food in the US alone .
The continued destruction of natural habitat , coupled with the vast factory farms which use 80 percent of the antibiotics in the U.S. and incubate drug-resistant pathogens that spread to human populations , presage new forms of the Black Death .
The belief that we can maintain current levels of consumption , especially of animal products , capitalist expansion , imperial wars , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ subservience to unfettered corporate power , which has solidified the worst income inequality in human history , is not a form of hope but suicidal self-delusion .
We are not headed under the policies of the Biden administration and the global ruling elite for the broad sunlit uplands of a new and glorious future , but economic misery , vast climate migrations , waves of new and more virulent pandemics , of which COVID-19 is a mild precursor , along with irreversible ecological systems collapse and frightening forms of societal breakdown , authoritarianism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It can not be stopped .
At best , it can be slowed .
Over the next 50 years the earth will most likely heat up to levels that will make whole parts of the planet uninhabitable .
Tens , perhaps hundreds , of millions of people will be displaced .
Millions of species will go extinct .
Cities on or near a coast , including New York and London , will be submerged .
Oceans absorb much of the excess CO2 and heat from the atmosphere .
This absorption is rapidly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the deoxygenation of the oceans .
Each of the earth ’ s five known mass extinctions was preceded by at least one part of what climate scientists call the “ deadly trio ” – warming , acidification and deoxygenation of the oceans .
The next mass extinction of sea life is already under way , the first in some 55 million years .
This is not defeatism .
It is realism .
We appear to have bought four years with Biden ’ s election , but if we do not use it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Biden nominations that offer any encouragement – we are merely reconstructing a shabby Potemkin village that will soon be flattened by the gale-force political and environmental hurricanes that are gathering around us .
One of the lessons I learned from covering wars and revolutions as a foreign correspondent is that the political , economic and cultural systems that are erected by any society are very fragile .
The façade of power remains in place , as I saw in Eastern Europe during the 1989 revolutions and later in Yugoslavia , long after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This façade fools a society into thinking the structures of authority remain solid , impervious to collapse .
So , when collapse comes , which should have been long predicted , it appears sudden and incomprehensible .
The ensuing chaos is disorienting and frightening .
The cognitive dissonance between the perception of power and its rapid dissolution feeds self-delusion .
It creates , as I witnessed in the former Yugoslavia , what anthropologists call crisis cults , as well as bizarre conspiracy theories , fascism and the embrace of inchoate violence to purge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ national debacle .
Hatred becomes the highest form of patriotism .
The vulnerable are scapegoated .
Intellectuals , journalists and scientists rooted in a fact-based world are despised .
Ruling elites and ruling structures lose all credibility .
This collapse is often a portal to a world of nihilism and blood-drenched fantasy .
After four years of lies , the stoking of racist violence , stunning ineptitude , rampant corruption and an abject failure to cope with a national health crisis , Trump expanded his base by 11 million votes .
This should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Worse , 70 percent of Trump voters , 51 million Americans , believe that “ radical Left Democrats ” and the deep state rigged the elections through “ voter fraud , ” including the importation of Venezuelan voting software , illegitimate mail-in ballots and the wholesale destruction of Trump ballots by election officials .
One hundred and twenty-six Republican House members joined a lawsuit filed by 18 Republican state attorneys general asking the Supreme Court to overturn Biden ’ s victory .
The vast majority of Republican senators refused to acknowledge the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Electors from the Electoral College were forced in several states to deliver their votes to state legislatures under armed guard .
Some two dozen armed protesters carrying American flags and chanting “ Stop the Steal ” descended on the home of Democratic Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson .
Seven hundred members of the white nationalist group the Proud Boys took over streets in Washington last weekend to protest the alleged theft of the election , leading to more than three dozen arrests , four stabbings , the vandalizing of four Black churches @ @ @ @ @ @ @ signs ripped down and burned .
Trump may be gone soon , but he leaves behind a party that is openly authoritarian , dismissive of democratic norms , an enemy to science and fact-based discourse and which attempted a coup d ’ état .
The next time around they won ’ t be so disorganized and inept .
This hostility to democracy by one of the two ruling parties , supported by millions of Americans , many of whom were betrayed by Biden and the leaders of the Democratic Party , will not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hammer of economic dislocation , including the looming evictions of millions of Americans , pummels the country .
The decades-long corporate assault on culture , journalism , education , the arts , universities and critical thinking has left those who speak this truth marginalized and ignored .
These Cassandras , locked out of the national debate , are dismissed as unhinged and depressingly apocalyptic .
The country is consumed by a mania for hope , which our corporate masters lavishly provide , at the expense of truth .
It is this delusional hope @ @ @ @ @ @ @ writer Stefan Zweig , who with a handful of other writers and artists desperately tried to warn of the suicidal folly of World War I , wrote of what he called “ the mental superiority of the defeated.
” His anti-war play Jeremiah , based on the Biblical prophet Jeremiah who issued warnings in vain , illustrated that those who face reality , however bitter , are able to endure and rise above it .
“ Awaken , doomed city , that thou mayest save thyself , ” the prophet cries out in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from your heavy slumbers , heedless ones , lest you be slain in sleep ; awaken , for the walls are crumbling , and will crush you ; awaken.
” But the warnings from Jeremiah , called “ the weeping prophet , ” were ignored and ridiculed .
He was attacked for demoralizing the people .
There were plots against his life .
When the Babylonian army captured Jerusalem , Jeremiah , like Julian Assange , was in prison .
“ I was always attracted to showing how any form of power can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , how victory can bring mental rigidity to whole nations , and to contrasting that with the emotional force of defeat painfully and terribly ploughing through the soul , ” Zweig wrote in his memoir , “ The World of Yesterday ” .
“ In the middle of war , while others , celebrating triumph too soon , were proving to one another that victory was inevitable , I was plumbing the depths of the catastrophe and looking for a way to emerge from them.
” We can not use the word hope @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
All hope rooted in self-delusion is fantasy .
We must lift the filter from our eyes to see the danger before us .
We must heed the warnings of our own prophets .
We must destroy the centers of power that lure us and our children , like the Pied Piper of Hamelin , to certain doom .
The walls , daily , are closing in around us .
The radical evil we face is as real under Trump as it will be under Biden .
And if this radical evil is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will be one of torment and mass death .
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times , where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper .
He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News , The Christian Science Monitor , and NPR .
He is the host of the Emmy Award-nominated RT America show On Contact .

Princeton, New Jersey (Scheerpost) — Joe Biden and the systems managers of the deep state and empire are returning to power. Trump and his coterie of buffoons, racists, con artists and Christian fascists are sullenly preparing to leave office. U.S. pharmaceutical corporations are starting to disseminate vaccines to mitigate the globe’s worst outbreak of COVID-19 that has resulted in more than 2,600 deaths per day. America, as Biden says, is back, ready to take its place at the head of the table. In the battle for the soul of America, he assures us, democracy has prevailed. Progress, prosperity, civility and a reassertion of American prestige and power are, we are promised, weeks away.
But the real lesson we should learn from the rise of a demagogue such as Trump, who received 74 million votes, and a pandemic that our for-profit health care industry proved unable to contain, is that we are losing control as a nation and as a species. Far more dangerous demagogues will arise from the imperial and neoliberal policies the Biden administration will embrace. Far worse pandemics will sweep the globe with higher rates of infections and mortality, an inevitable result of our continued consumption of animals and animal products, and the wanton destruction of the ecosystem on which we and other species depend for life.
“One of the most pathetic aspects of human history,” Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “is that every civilization expresses itself most pretentiously, compounds its partial and universal values most convincingly, and claims immortality for its finite existence at the very moment when the decay which leads to death has already begun.”
Biden’s appointments are drawn almost exclusively from the circles of the Democratic Party and corporate elite, those responsible for the massive social inequality, trade deals, de-industrialization, militarized police, world’s largest prison system, austerity programs that abolished social programs such as welfare, the revived Cold War with Russia, wholesale government surveillance, endless wars in the Middle East and the disenfranchisement and impoverishment of the working class. The Washington Post writes that “about 80 percent of the White House and agency officials he’s announced have the word ‘Obama’ on their résumé from previous White House or Obama campaign jobs.” Bernie Sanders, apparently rebuffed in his efforts to become secretary of labor in the Biden administration, has expressed frustration with the Biden nominations. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was denied a seat by House Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee because of her support for the Green New Deal. The message of the Biden administration to progressives and left-wing populists is very clear – “Drop dead.”
The list of new administration officials includes retired General Lloyd J. Austin III who is being nominated to be secretary of defense. Austin is on the board of Raytheon Technologies and a partner at Pine Island Capital, a firm that invests in defense industries and also includes Antony Blinken, Biden’s nominee to be secretary of state. Blinken, who was deputy national security adviser and deputy secretary of state, is a strong supporter of the apartheid state of Israel. He was one of the architects of the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and a proponent of the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, resulting in yet another failed state in the Middle East.
Janet Yellen, former Federal Reserve chair under Barack Obama, is slated to be Treasury Secretary. Yellen as the chair of Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) and later as a member of the board of the Federal Reserve, backed the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which led to the banking crisis of 2008. She supported the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). She also lobbied for a new statistical metric intended to lower payments to senior citizens on Social Security. Yellen backed “quantitative easing” that provided trillions in virtually no-interest loans to Wall Street, loans used to bail out banks and corporations and engage in massive stock buy-backs while the victims of financial fraud were abandoned.
Former Secretary of State John Kerry is to become a special envoy for climate. Kerry championed the massive expansion of domestic oil and gas production, largely through fracking, and, according to Obama’s memoir, worked doggedly to convince those concerned about the climate crisis to “offer up concessions on subsidies for the nuclear power industry and the opening of additional U.S. coastlines to offshore oil drilling.”
Avril Haines, a former Obama deputy CIA chief, is to become Biden’s director of national intelligence. Haines oversaw Obama’s expanded and murderous drone program overseas and backed Gina Haspel’s nomination to be the head of the CIA, despite Haspels’ direct involvement in the CIA torture program carried out in black sites around the globe. Haines called Haspel “intelligent, compassionate, and fair.” Brian Deese, the executive who was in charge of the “climate portfolio” at BlackRock, which invests heavily in fossil fuels, including coal, and who served as a former Obama economic adviser who advocated austerity measures, has been chosen to run the White House’s economic policy.
Neera Tanden, a former aide to Hillary Clinton, has been picked to be director of the Office of Management and Budget. Tanden, as the head of the Democratic Party’s thinktank, the Center for American Progress, raised millions in dark money from Silicon Valley and Wall Street. Her donors include Bain Capital, Blackstone, Evercore, Walmart and the defense contractor Northrup Grumman. The United Arab Emirates, a close ally of Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen, also gave the thinktank between $1.5 million and $3 million. She relentlessly ridicules Sanders and his supporters on cable news and social media. She also proposed a plank in the Democratic platform calling for the bombing Iran.
The perpetuation of the deeply unpopular wars and onerous neoliberal policies by the Biden administration will be accompanied by a fevered demonization of Russia, most recently blamed for cyber-attacks. A new Cold War with Russia will be used by the corporate Democrats to discredit domestic and foreign critics and deflect attention from the political stagnation and the corporate pillaging of the country. It will allow MSNBC and The New York Times, which spent two years slogging empty Russiagate conspiracies, to disseminate a daily stream of emotionally charged rumors and shady accusations about Russia. Cable celebrities such as Rachel Maddow will hyperventilate night after night about Russia while ignoring the corruption of the Biden administration. The only reason Russia is not blamed for rigging the election in 2020, as opposed to 2016, by the Democratic Party is because Trump was defeated.
Biden, after his defeat in the Democratic Party Caucus in Nevada by Bernie Sanders, where Sanders got more than twice his vote, immediately played the Russian card, telling CBS News that the “Russians don’t want me to be the nominee, they like Bernie.” Hillary Clinton started this dirty game when she attacked 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein as a “Russian asset” and in 2020 leveled the same charge against Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. The Democrats need an enemy, real or fictious, and Silicon Valley and major manufacturers will not allow them to target China.
More of the same means more disaster. If we want to reclaim our open society and save the ecosystem, we must abolish the corporate stranglehold on global economic and political power. If we want to avert zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19, swine flu, avian flu, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (Mad Cow disease), Ebola, and SARS we must stop consuming animals and their bodily secretions. We must abolish factory farming and adopt a vegan diet. And we must keep fossil fuels in the ground.
Razing the rainforest for cattle grazing and vast tracts of farmland devoted to growing monocrops to feed animals destined for human consumption are responsible for up to 91 percent of Amazon rainforest destruction since 1970. The loss of forests is one of the single biggest contributors to climate change. Animal agriculture is the leading cause of ocean dead zones. Oceans could be devoid of fish by 2048. Each minute, 7 million pounds of feces are produced by the animals raised for human food in the US alone. The continued destruction of natural habitat, coupled with the vast factory farms which use 80 percent of the antibiotics in the U.S. and incubate drug-resistant pathogens that spread to human populations, presage new forms of the Black Death.
The belief that we can maintain current levels of consumption, especially of animal products, capitalist expansion, imperial wars, a reliance on fossil fuels and abject subservience to unfettered corporate power, which has solidified the worst income inequality in human history, is not a form of hope but suicidal self-delusion. We are not headed under the policies of the Biden administration and the global ruling elite for the broad sunlit uplands of a new and glorious future, but economic misery, vast climate migrations, waves of new and more virulent pandemics, of which COVID-19 is a mild precursor, along with irreversible ecological systems collapse and frightening forms of societal breakdown, authoritarianism and neofascism.
Global warming is inevitable. It cannot be stopped. At best, it can be slowed. Over the next 50 years the earth will most likely heat up to levels that will make whole parts of the planet uninhabitable. Tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of people will be displaced. Millions of species will go extinct. Cities on or near a coast, including New York and London, will be submerged.
Oceans absorb much of the excess CO2 and heat from the atmosphere. This absorption is rapidly warming and acidifying ocean waters, resulting in the deoxygenation of the oceans. Each of the earth’s five known mass extinctions was preceded by at least one part of what climate scientists call the “deadly trio” – warming, acidification and deoxygenation of the oceans. The next mass extinction of sea life is already under way, the first in some 55 million years.
This is not defeatism. It is realism. We appear to have bought four years with Biden’s election, but if we do not use it wisely – and there is nothing in the Biden nominations that offer any encouragement – we are merely reconstructing a shabby Potemkin village that will soon be flattened by the gale-force political and environmental hurricanes that are gathering around us.
One of the lessons I learned from covering wars and revolutions as a foreign correspondent is that the political, economic and cultural systems that are erected by any society are very fragile. The façade of power remains in place, as I saw in Eastern Europe during the 1989 revolutions and later in Yugoslavia, long after terminal rot has consumed the foundations. This façade fools a society into thinking the structures of authority remain solid, impervious to collapse. So, when collapse comes, which should have been long predicted, it appears sudden and incomprehensible. The ensuing chaos is disorienting and frightening. The cognitive dissonance between the perception of power and its rapid dissolution feeds self-delusion. It creates, as I witnessed in the former Yugoslavia, what anthropologists call crisis cults, as well as bizarre conspiracy theories, fascism and the embrace of inchoate violence to purge society of the demons blamed for the national debacle. Hatred becomes the highest form of patriotism. The vulnerable are scapegoated. Intellectuals, journalists and scientists rooted in a fact-based world are despised. Ruling elites and ruling structures lose all credibility. This collapse is often a portal to a world of nihilism and blood-drenched fantasy.
After four years of lies, the stoking of racist violence, stunning ineptitude, rampant corruption and an abject failure to cope with a national health crisis, Trump expanded his base by 11 million votes. This should be a huge, flashing red light. Worse, 70 percent of Trump voters, 51 million Americans, believe that “radical Left Democrats” and the deep state rigged the elections through “voter fraud,” including the importation of Venezuelan voting software, illegitimate mail-in ballots and the wholesale destruction of Trump ballots by election officials. One hundred and twenty-six Republican House members joined a lawsuit filed by 18 Republican state attorneys general asking the Supreme Court to overturn Biden’s victory. The vast majority of Republican senators refused to acknowledge the election results following the November vote. Electors from the Electoral College were forced in several states to deliver their votes to state legislatures under armed guard. Some two dozen armed protesters carrying American flags and chanting “Stop the Steal” descended on the home of Democratic Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. Seven hundred members of the white nationalist group the Proud Boys took over streets in Washington last weekend to protest the alleged theft of the election, leading to more than three dozen arrests, four stabbings, the vandalizing of four Black churches, and Black Lives Matter banners and signs ripped down and burned.
Trump may be gone soon, but he leaves behind a party that is openly authoritarian, dismissive of democratic norms, an enemy to science and fact-based discourse and which attempted a coup d’état. The next time around they won’t be so disorganized and inept. This hostility to democracy by one of the two ruling parties, supported by millions of Americans, many of whom were betrayed by Biden and the leaders of the Democratic Party, will not dissipate but grow, especially as the hammer of economic dislocation, including the looming evictions of millions of Americans, pummels the country.
The decades-long corporate assault on culture, journalism, education, the arts, universities and critical thinking has left those who speak this truth marginalized and ignored. These Cassandras, locked out of the national debate, are dismissed as unhinged and depressingly apocalyptic. The country is consumed by a mania for hope, which our corporate masters lavishly provide, at the expense of truth. It is this delusional hope that will doom us.
The Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, who with a handful of other writers and artists desperately tried to warn of the suicidal folly of World War I, wrote of what he called “the mental superiority of the defeated.” His anti-war play Jeremiah, based on the Biblical prophet Jeremiah who issued warnings in vain, illustrated that those who face reality, however bitter, are able to endure and rise above it.
“Awaken, doomed city, that thou mayest save thyself,” the prophet cries out in Zweig’s play. “Awaken from your heavy slumbers, heedless ones, lest you be slain in sleep; awaken, for the walls are crumbling, and will crush you; awaken.”
But the warnings from Jeremiah, called “the weeping prophet,” were ignored and ridiculed. He was attacked for demoralizing the people. There were plots against his life. When the Babylonian army captured Jerusalem, Jeremiah, like Julian Assange, was in prison.
“I was always attracted to showing how any form of power can harden a human being’s heart, how victory can bring mental rigidity to whole nations, and to contrasting that with the emotional force of defeat painfully and terribly ploughing through the soul,” Zweig wrote in his memoir, “The World of Yesterday”. “In the middle of war, while others, celebrating triumph too soon, were proving to one another that victory was inevitable, I was plumbing the depths of the catastrophe and looking for a way to emerge from them.”
We cannot use the word hope if we refuse to face the truth. All hope rooted in self-delusion is fantasy. We must lift the filter from our eyes to see the danger before us. We must heed the warnings of our own prophets. We must destroy the centers of power that lure us and our children, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, to certain doom. The walls, daily, are closing in around us. The radical evil we face is as real under Trump as it will be under Biden. And if this radical evil is not smashed, then the world ahead will be one of torment and mass death.
Feature photo | Art by Mr. Fish | Original to Scheerpost
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of the Emmy Award-nominated RT America show On Contact.


mintpressnews--2020-12-22--Could the Next Standing Rock Could Be Brewing in Northern Minnesota?

Despite sub-zero winter temperatures , a conflict over a controversial new pipeline is threatening to boil over in rural Minnesota , turning it into the next Standing Rock .
22 people were arrested last week during protests in Aitkin County , around 120 miles north of Minneapolis , for trespassing against the construction of the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline .
The pipeline project would carry more than 750,000 barrels of fracked Alberta tar sand oil through the United States .
Activists from environmental and indigenous groups are braving the snow to form a barrier to the construction of a pipeline @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through a number of delicate ecosystems , threatening many of the state ’ s famous rivers and lakes .
Other segments of the new pipeline have already been completed in Canada , North Dakota , and Wisconsin , leaving only the 337-mile Minnesotan section to be constructed .
The final go-ahead for the nearly $ 3 billion project was given late last month .
Around 2,000 people are currently employed on the Minnesotan portion , with 2,000 more expected to join soon .
Yet a whole range of environmental groups , including Greenpeace @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out strongly against its construction .
They have been joined by a number of local legislators .
Reporter and photographer Emma Fiala recorded their visit to the protest encampment for MintPress , which included two individuals staying high up in the trees .
“ We have a moral imperative to do our part of mitigating the damage of the climate crisis , ” said Jen McEwen , Senator-elect from District 7 in Duluth , “ If this happens right now while we are at the helm of these decisions , history will not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have existed since 2017 .
However , there is a feeling that , with construction beginning , something big might be about to happen , turning Aitkin County into the next Standing Rock .
That is certainly the worry of local police , who have been engaged in constant monitoring of the protesters , with documents showing they have repeatedly turned to North Dakota officials responsible for the militarized crackdown at Standing Rock for guidance .
The state of Minnesota is clearly expecting trouble and does not want to be left with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Dakota was following the massive protests at Standing Rock .
As a condition of its approval of the pipeline , the state required Enbridge to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in expected future policing costs up front .
While this might have been financially prudent , it has led to a situation where Enbridge is effectively calling the shots , working closely with law enforcement to suppress dissent .
One county sheriff even admitted that the oil company had donated the tools that he used to cut loose pipeline opponents who had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The molding of state and corporation goes further , as considerable resources have been spent on monitoring and spying on the water protectors .
“ When you walk in the grocery store of a town of 200 people , and there ’ s some guy taking a picture of you with a cellphone , that ’ s really obvious , ” said one leader .
However , others have alleged a near-constant network of surveillance , including drones and the use of informants and undercover agents posing as protesters , in what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ MintPress spoke to a number of environmental groups opposing the pipeline .
“ Tar sands are some of the world ’ s worst , most carbon-intensive oil on the planet…Studies confirm that the climate impact would be that of 50 coal plants , causing upwards of $ 280 billion in climate damages globally .
Line 3 , Keystone XL , and all tar sands extraction and pipelines must be stopped immediately , ” Osprey Orielle Lake , Executive Director of the Women ’ s Earth and Climate Action Network ( WECAN ) told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Canadian energy giant employing over 11,000 people , is infamous for the 2010 spilling of close to one million barrels of oil into the Kalamazoo Creek , a mistake for which it paid the state of Michigan $ 75 million in damages .
The new pipeline would cross the Mississippi three times , as well as 200 additional bodies of water .
“ Minnesota should be worried , ” Malik Russell from Stop the Money Pipeline , a coalition of 130 organizations attempting to halt Wall Street funding of environmental destruction , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ process of oil extraction is the most horrible ways of oil extraction methods on the planet .
Tar Sands is a toxic and brutal method that poisons and destroys our natural environment , clean water , and the communities near it.
” Much of the resistance to the project is led by local Indigenous organizations , who argue that the pipeline violates many treaties the U.S. signed with them .
The pipeline cuts through Ojibwe and Chippewa Reservations , including sacred land that the Ojibwe use to harvest wild rice .
“ Line @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the Dakota Access and Keystone XL Pipelines , where governments and corporations refuse to uphold and respect the rights and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples , refuse to listen to the public who do not support these pipelines and refuse to act in good faith to protect water and the global climate , ” said Osprey Orielle Lake .
“ We need to put people and the planet before profit.
” Minnesota is currently enduring an intense epidemic of COVID-19 , losing 92 people on Wednesday to the virus .
Bringing in thousands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already strained rural state hospitals .
Over 20,000 people have already been hospitalized since the pandemic began .
Activist groups have promised to continue fighting and brave the winter ’ s temperatures until the pipeline is shelved .
But protesting the fossil fuel industry will soon become a criminal offense , turning civil disobedience into serious felonies .
That is if new legislation pushed by industry groups such as the American Legislative Action Council ( ALEC ) is passed .
Minnesota is among their test states , where some legislators , their pockets @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to essentially criminalize protest .
“ This pipeline isn ’ t about the so-called ‘ safe ’ transportation of a necessary product , it ’ s the final gasp of a dying industry desperately trying to perpetuate fossil fuel use in a society that knows its past time to make better choices for energy use , ” said Amy Gray of the Stop the Money Pipeline Coalition .
At the protests against the Keystone XL pipeline at Standing Rock , protesters — and even journalists — were essentially treated as such .
Democracy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with rioting and faced one year in prison for covering the events .
Heavily armed police officers in full riot gear arrested nearly 500 people , even using water cannons on them amid freezing conditions in the winter of 2016-2017 .
The process was begun under President Obama , who refused to halt the pipeline ’ s construction , even symbolically , during his lame duck session .
Almost as soon as Donald Trump assumed office , he canceled the environmental impact assessment and the project was swiftly completed , the first oil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that year , the pipeline leaked 210,000 gallons of oil in Marshall County , South Dakota .
It is clear that , for many of the activist groups opposing the project , the question of the Enbridge pipeline construction is virtually a life and death one .
“ This is a fight we must win if we as a nation are going to beat back an existential crisis heading our way at full speed – the climate emergency , ” Russell told MintPress .
Senator-elect McEwen seemed to agree ; “ We have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of mitigating the damage of the climate crisis… If this happens right now while we are at the helm of these decisions , history will not look kindly on us , ” she said .
Protesters in Aitkin County predicted that , if construction is not halted , their numbers would swell , threatening to spark a nationwide story that could dominate the festive period .
Feature photo | Around 100 water protectors braved the frigid temperatures as they marched down Great River Road north of Palisade , MN toward the site of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , 2020 .
Emma Fiala | MintPress News Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News .
After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books : Bad News From Venezuela : Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age : Still Manufacturing Consent .
He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting , The Guardian , Salon , The Grayzone , Jacobin Magazine , Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary .

Despite sub-zero winter temperatures, a conflict over a controversial new pipeline is threatening to boil over in rural Minnesota, turning it into the next Standing Rock. 22 people were arrested last week during protests in Aitkin County, around 120 miles north of Minneapolis, for trespassing against the construction of the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline. The pipeline project would carry more than 750,000 barrels of fracked Alberta tar sand oil through the United States.
Activists from environmental and indigenous groups are braving the snow to form a barrier to the construction of a pipeline that will traverse the Mississippi and pass through a number of delicate ecosystems, threatening many of the state’s famous rivers and lakes.
Other segments of the new pipeline have already been completed in Canada, North Dakota, and Wisconsin, leaving only the 337-mile Minnesotan section to be constructed. The final go-ahead for the nearly $3 billion project was given late last month. Around 2,000 people are currently employed on the Minnesotan portion, with 2,000 more expected to join soon. Yet a whole range of environmental groups, including Greenpeace USA and the Sierra Club have come out strongly against its construction. They have been joined by a number of local legislators. Reporter and photographer Emma Fiala recorded their visit to the protest encampment for MintPress, which included two individuals staying high up in the trees.
“We have a moral imperative to do our part of mitigating the damage of the climate crisis,” said Jen McEwen, Senator-elect from District 7 in Duluth, “If this happens right now while we are at the helm of these decisions, history will not look kindly on us.”
Protest encampments have existed since 2017. However, there is a feeling that, with construction beginning, something big might be about to happen, turning Aitkin County into the next Standing Rock. That is certainly the worry of local police, who have been engaged in constant monitoring of the protesters, with documents showing they have repeatedly turned to North Dakota officials responsible for the militarized crackdown at Standing Rock for guidance.
The state of Minnesota is clearly expecting trouble and does not want to be left with a huge bill and cleanup operation like North Dakota was following the massive protests at Standing Rock. As a condition of its approval of the pipeline, the state required Enbridge to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in expected future policing costs up front. While this might have been financially prudent, it has led to a situation where Enbridge is effectively calling the shots, working closely with law enforcement to suppress dissent. One county sheriff even admitted that the oil company had donated the tools that he used to cut loose pipeline opponents who had chained themselves to Enbridge’s equipment.
The molding of state and corporation goes further, as considerable resources have been spent on monitoring and spying on the water protectors. “When you walk in the grocery store of a town of 200 people, and there’s some guy taking a picture of you with a cellphone, that’s really obvious,” said one leader. However, others have alleged a near-constant network of surveillance, including drones and the use of informants and undercover agents posing as protesters, in what effectively amounts to a counterinsurgency operation.
MintPress spoke to a number of environmental groups opposing the pipeline. “Tar sands are some of the world’s worst, most carbon-intensive oil on the planet…Studies confirm that the climate impact would be that of 50 coal plants, causing upwards of $280 billion in climate damages globally. Line 3, Keystone XL, and all tar sands extraction and pipelines must be stopped immediately,” Osprey Orielle Lake, Executive Director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) told us, adding that,
Business as usual must not and cannot continue. It is far past time for governments and financial institutions to immediately implement a managed decline off of all fossil fuels and support the already flourishing regenerative, renewable energy sector, just transition plans, and community-led climate solutions. These are the solutions we need.”
Enbridge, a Canadian energy giant employing over 11,000 people, is infamous for the 2010 spilling of close to one million barrels of oil into the Kalamazoo Creek, a mistake for which it paid the state of Michigan $75 million in damages. The new pipeline would cross the Mississippi three times, as well as 200 additional bodies of water.
“Minnesota should be worried,” Malik Russell from Stop the Money Pipeline, a coalition of 130 organizations attempting to halt Wall Street funding of environmental destruction, told MintPress. “The Tar Sands process of oil extraction is the most horrible ways of oil extraction methods on the planet. Tar Sands is a toxic and brutal method that poisons and destroys our natural environment, clean water, and the communities near it.”
Much of the resistance to the project is led by local Indigenous organizations, who argue that the pipeline violates many treaties the U.S. signed with them. The pipeline cuts through Ojibwe and Chippewa Reservations, including sacred land that the Ojibwe use to harvest wild rice.
“Line 3 is yet another example, similar to the Dakota Access and Keystone XL Pipelines, where governments and corporations refuse to uphold and respect the rights and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples, refuse to listen to the public who do not support these pipelines and refuse to act in good faith to protect water and the global climate,” said Osprey Orielle Lake. “We need to put people and the planet before profit.”
Minnesota is currently enduring an intense epidemic of COVID-19, losing 92 people on Wednesday to the virus. Bringing in thousands of out-of-state workers in risks overwhelming the already strained rural state hospitals. Over 20,000 people have already been hospitalized since the pandemic began.
Activist groups have promised to continue fighting and brave the winter’s temperatures until the pipeline is shelved. But protesting the fossil fuel industry will soon become a criminal offense, turning civil disobedience into serious felonies. That is if new legislation pushed by industry groups such as the American Legislative Action Council (ALEC) is passed. Minnesota is among their test states, where some legislators, their pockets greased with oil money, are attempting to essentially criminalize protest.
“This pipeline isn’t about the so-called ‘safe’ transportation of a necessary product, it’s the final gasp of a dying industry desperately trying to perpetuate fossil fuel use in a society that knows its past time to make better choices for energy use,” said Amy Gray of the Stop the Money Pipeline Coalition.
At the protests against the Keystone XL pipeline at Standing Rock, protesters — and even journalists — were essentially treated as such. Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was charged with rioting and faced one year in prison for covering the events. Heavily armed police officers in full riot gear arrested nearly 500 people, even using water cannons on them amid freezing conditions in the winter of 2016-2017. The process was begun under President Obama, who refused to halt the pipeline’s construction, even symbolically, during his lame duck session. Almost as soon as Donald Trump assumed office, he canceled the environmental impact assessment and the project was swiftly completed, the first oil being pumped by May 2017. Later that year, the pipeline leaked 210,000 gallons of oil in Marshall County, South Dakota.
It is clear that, for many of the activist groups opposing the project, the question of the Enbridge pipeline construction is virtually a life and death one. “This is a fight we must win if we as a nation are going to beat back an existential crisis heading our way at full speed – the climate emergency,” Russell told MintPress. Senator-elect McEwen seemed to agree; “We have a moral imperative to do our part of mitigating the damage of the climate crisis… If this happens right now while we are at the helm of these decisions, history will not look kindly on us,” she said. Protesters in Aitkin County predicted that, if construction is not halted, their numbers would swell, threatening to spark a nationwide story that could dominate the festive period.
Feature photo | Around 100 water protectors braved the frigid temperatures as they marched down Great River Road north of Palisade, MN toward the site of the Line 3 pipeline, December 14, 2020. Emma Fiala | MintPress News
Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.


mintpressnews--2020-12-22--Israel’s Genocide in Gaza Goes Uninterrupted, But Is Europe Finally Taking Notice?

A report published by the United Nations in 2018 stated that by the year 2020 the Gaza Strip would be uninhabitable .
It said specifically that , “ the United Nations has stated that Gaza may well be unlivable by 2020.
” The report emphasized also that “ Michael Lynk , Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied Since 1967 , drew attention to Israel ’ s persistent non-cooperation with the Special Rapporteur ’ s mandate .
As with his two predecessors , Israel has not granted him entry to visit the country , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who thinks that the Gaza Strip was liveable prior to 2020 is out of their mind .
The Gaza Strip has been a humanitarian disaster since it was artificially created in the aftermath of the 1948 Zionist campaign of ethnic cleansing .
It was created primarily as a holding place for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven off of their lands by Zionist terrorists in southern Palestine .
Impoverished and homeless , these refugees were forced to survive on handouts , and today they make up more than half of the Gaza @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Considering the high standard of living Jewish citizens of Israel in that part of the country enjoy , living as they do on the very lands from which the Palestinians were exiled , the “ Strip ” was never “ liveable.
” Now 2020 has come and gone , the United Nations report is shelved , and not a thing has changed .
Over two million people remain imprisoned by Israel in the Gaza Strip .
They suffer from a lack of the most basic needs like drinkable water , electricity , medicine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them basic human rights while Israeli Jews living minutes away enjoy a standard of living that is , by any measure , enviable with full access to the finest health care , nutrition , and clean water .
A delegation of European representatives recently visited Gaza , yet Europeans have not used their influence , political or otherwise , to end Israeli violations of human rights and international law .
It would not have taken much for EU representatives to see the devastation , poverty , and severe shortages experienced by the people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do is drive through the Gaza Strip to see the evidence , and yet no change seems to be forthcoming from the Europeans .
In fact , according to the Israeli press , Germany just announced that in order to provide Israel with a European made vaccine for Covid-19 , “ Germany used its influence in the EU to bend the rule that a European-produced vaccination would be given to European countries first .
Germany justified the decision in part through its “ historical commitment to supporting Israel.
” Knowing full well that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and that the spread of Covid-19 among Palestinians is alarming , no such commitment was made to assist the Palestinians in their fight against the deadly disease..
The comfort that Europeans display as they cooperate with the State of Israel , even as they claim to be champions of human rights , amounts to complicity .
According to the Geneva Convention , particularly the Rome Statute , European cooperation with Israel constitutes complicity in genocide .
When one looks at the definition of genocide and compares it with the actions of Israel in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Zionist State is engaged in genocide .
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide In the present Convention , genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy , in whole or in part , a national , ethnical , racial or religious group , as such : • • Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group ; • Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part ; • @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the group ; • Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group ; Three of the five examples given here are constantly committed by Israel in Gaza .
Furthermore , Article II of the Genocide Convention “ contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide , which includes two main elements , ” one of which is the “ intent to destroy , in whole or in part , a national , ethnical , racial or religious group , as such.
” Israeli attacks on Gaza for over seven decades clearly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ larger strategy and that there is clear intent to bring about the destruction of a people .
According to a report published by Human Rights Watch ( HRW ) , the issue of complicity with genocide is quite clear .
“ Prior jurisprudence has defined the term complicity as aiding and abetting , instigating , and procuring [ … ] Complicity to commit genocide in Article 2 ( 3 ) ( e ) refers to all acts of assistance or encouragement that have substantially contributed to , or have had a substantial effect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of genocide.
” The report defined the following as elements of complicity in genocide : • “ complicity by procuring means , such as weapons , instruments or any other means , used to commit genocide , with the accomplice knowing that such means would be used for such a purpose ; • complicity by knowingly aiding or abetting a perpetrator of a genocide in the planning or enabling acts thereof ; According to that definition , both the EU states and the United States are complicit in the crime of genocide .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ entrenched discriminatory systems that treat Palestinians unequally.
” It “ involves systematic rights abuses , including collective punishment , routine use of excessive lethal force against protesters , and prolonged administrative detention without charge or trial for hundreds.
” It continues to state that Israel , “ builds and supports illegal settlements [ … ] expropriating Palestinian land and imposing burdens on Palestinians but not on settlers , restricting their access to basic services and making it nearly impossible for them to build.
” Regarding the Gaza Strip , HRW writes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decade-long closure of Gaza severely restricts the movement of people and goods , with devastating humanitarian impact.
” The first order of business needs to be the immediate and unconditional lifting of the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip since 2007 .
A no-fly zone monitored by UN or European naval forces must be imposed on all Israeli aircraft .
In addition to these measures , humanitarian relief must be made available to the people of Gaza without delay .
Israel must be sanctioned and all military and economic cooperation with Israel must @ @ @ @ @ @ @ complies with international law and ends all its violations of human rights .
This should be followed by setting a date for free and fair one person , one vote elections in all of historic Palestine .
Then processes must be put in place for the repatriation of Palestinian refugees , and funding must be set aside for payment of reparations and restitution .
Israel must also be held accountable for its violations of international law since 1948 and Israeli politicians , as well as military commanders , must be investigated and charged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fully aware of the reality that exists in Gaza .
A long and cruel siege , constant Israeli attacks resulting in the killing of countless civilians , destruction of homes and infrastructure , extreme poverty , and trauma are the daily bread of Palestinians in Gaza .
The reality in Gaza is no secret and Israeli violations of international law are well known .
However , European governments are in the habit of seeing colonized and formerly colonized people as needing aid and doing little to provide the aid .
The aid they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the form of food items , but rarely is it sufficient .
In the case of the Gaza Strip , real political action is called for , but it is not clear if and when the EU will be willing to act .
Feature photo | Palestinians look on from their house in a slum on the outskirts of Khan Younis Refugee Camp , in the southern Gaza Strip , Nov. 25 , 2020 .
Khalil Hamra | AP Miko Peled is an author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ General ’ s Son .
Journey of an Israeli in Palestine , ” and “ Injustice , the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five .
”

A report published by the United Nations in 2018 stated that by the year 2020 the Gaza Strip would be uninhabitable. It said specifically that, “the United Nations has stated that Gaza may well be unlivable by 2020.” The report emphasized also that “Michael Lynk, Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied Since 1967, drew attention to Israel’s persistent non-cooperation with the Special Rapporteur’s mandate. As with his two predecessors, Israel has not granted him entry to visit the country, nor the Occupied Palestinian territory.” Anyone who thinks that the Gaza Strip was liveable prior to 2020 is out of their mind.
The Gaza Strip has been a humanitarian disaster since it was artificially created in the aftermath of the 1948 Zionist campaign of ethnic cleansing. It was created primarily as a holding place for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven off of their lands by Zionist terrorists in southern Palestine. Impoverished and homeless, these refugees were forced to survive on handouts, and today they make up more than half of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million inhabitants. Considering the high standard of living Jewish citizens of Israel in that part of the country enjoy, living as they do on the very lands from which the Palestinians were exiled, the “Strip” was never “liveable.”
Now 2020 has come and gone, the United Nations report is shelved, and not a thing has changed. Over two million people remain imprisoned by Israel in the Gaza Strip. They suffer from a lack of the most basic needs like drinkable water, electricity, medicine, and nutrition. Israel also denies them basic human rights while Israeli Jews living minutes away enjoy a standard of living that is, by any measure, enviable with full access to the finest health care, nutrition, and clean water.
A European delegation comes to visit
A delegation of European representatives recently visited Gaza, yet Europeans have not used their influence, political or otherwise, to end Israeli violations of human rights and international law.
It would not have taken much for EU representatives to see the devastation, poverty, and severe shortages experienced by the people of Gaza. All one needs to do is drive through the Gaza Strip to see the evidence, and yet no change seems to be forthcoming from the Europeans.
In fact, according to the Israeli press, Germany just announced that in order to provide Israel with a European made vaccine for Covid-19, “Germany used its influence in the EU to bend the rule that a European-produced vaccination would be given to European countries first. Germany justified the decision in part through its “historical commitment to supporting Israel.” Knowing full well that millions of Palestinians are denied health care and that the spread of Covid-19 among Palestinians is alarming, no such commitment was made to assist the Palestinians in their fight against the deadly disease..
Complicity
The comfort that Europeans display as they cooperate with the State of Israel, even as they claim to be champions of human rights, amounts to complicity. According to the Geneva Convention, particularly the Rome Statute, European cooperation with Israel constitutes complicity in genocide. When one looks at the definition of genocide and compares it with the actions of Israel in Gaza, it is quite clear that the Zionist State is engaged in genocide.
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group;
Three of the five examples given here are constantly committed by Israel in Gaza. Furthermore, Article II of the Genocide Convention “contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements,” one of which is the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” Israeli attacks on Gaza for over seven decades clearly demonstrate that they are part of a larger strategy and that there is clear intent to bring about the destruction of a people.
According to a report published by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the issue of complicity with genocide is quite clear. “Prior jurisprudence has defined the term complicity as aiding and abetting, instigating, and procuring […] Complicity to commit genocide in Article 2(3)(e) refers to all acts of assistance or encouragement that have substantially contributed to, or have had a substantial effect on, the completion of the crime of genocide.”
The report defined the following as elements of complicity in genocide:
“complicity by procuring means, such as weapons, instruments or any other means, used to commit genocide, with the accomplice knowing that such means would be used for such a purpose;
complicity by knowingly aiding or abetting a perpetrator of a genocide in the planning or enabling acts thereof;
According to that definition, both the EU states and the United States are complicit in the crime of genocide.
Human Rights Watch maintains that Israel has, “entrenched discriminatory systems that treat Palestinians unequally.” It “involves systematic rights abuses, including collective punishment, routine use of excessive lethal force against protesters, and prolonged administrative detention without charge or trial for hundreds.”
It continues to state that Israel, “builds and supports illegal settlements […]expropriating Palestinian land and imposing burdens on Palestinians but not on settlers, restricting their access to basic services and making it nearly impossible for them to build.”
Regarding the Gaza Strip, HRW writes that “Israel’s more than decade-long closure of Gaza severely restricts the movement of people and goods, with devastating humanitarian impact.”
What constitutes aid?
The first order of business needs to be the immediate and unconditional lifting of the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip since 2007. A no-fly zone monitored by UN or European naval forces must be imposed on all Israeli aircraft. In addition to these measures, humanitarian relief must be made available to the people of Gaza without delay.
Israel must be sanctioned and all military and economic cooperation with Israel must be stopped until such time that it complies with international law and ends all its violations of human rights. This should be followed by setting a date for free and fair one person, one vote elections in all of historic Palestine. Then processes must be put in place for the repatriation of Palestinian refugees, and funding must be set aside for payment of reparations and restitution.
Israel must also be held accountable for its violations of international law since 1948 and Israeli politicians, as well as military commanders, must be investigated and charged with war crimes.
European countries are fully aware of the reality that exists in Gaza. A long and cruel siege, constant Israeli attacks resulting in the killing of countless civilians, destruction of homes and infrastructure, extreme poverty, and trauma are the daily bread of Palestinians in Gaza.
The reality in Gaza is no secret and Israeli violations of international law are well known. However, European governments are in the habit of seeing colonized and formerly colonized people as needing aid and doing little to provide the aid. The aid they provide is sometimes monetary and sometimes humanitarian in the form of food items, but rarely is it sufficient. In the case of the Gaza Strip, real political action is called for, but it is not clear if and when the EU will be willing to act.
Feature photo | Palestinians look on from their house in a slum on the outskirts of Khan Younis Refugee Camp, in the southern Gaza Strip, Nov. 25, 2020. Khalil Hamra | AP
Miko Peled is an author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem. He is the author of “The General’s Son. Journey of an Israeli in Palestine,” and “Injustice, the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.”


mintpressnews--2020-12-22--What If Jesus Had Been Born in the American Police State?

The Christmas story of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one .
The Roman Empire , a police state in its own right , had ordered that a census be conducted .
Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted .
There being no room for the couple at any of the inns , they stayed in a stable ( a barn ) , where Mary gave birth to a baby boy , Jesus .
Warned that the government planned to kill the baby , Jesus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ until it was safe to return to their native land Yet what if Jesus had been born 2,000 years later ?
What if , instead of being born into the Roman police state , Jesus had been born at this moment in time ?
What kind of reception would Jesus and his family be given ?
Would we recognize the Christ child ’ s humanity , let alone his divinity ?
Would we treat him any differently than he was treated by the Roman Empire ?
If his family were forced to flee @ @ @ @ @ @ @ refuge and asylum within our borders , what sanctuary would we offer them ?
How would Jesus—the baby born in Bethlehem who grew into an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist , who not only died challenging the police state of his day ( namely , the Roman Empire ) but spent his adult life speaking truth to power , challenging the status quo of his day , and pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire—react to the American Police State ?
After all , Jesus—the revered preacher , teacher , radical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not unlike the growing menace of the American police state .
When he grew up , he had powerful , profound things to say , things that would change how we view people , alter government policies and change the world .
“ Blessed are the merciful , ” “ Blessed are the peacemakers , ” and “ Love your enemies ” are just a few examples of his most profound and revolutionary teachings .
When confronted by those in authority , Jesus did not shy away from speaking truth to power .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and religious establishment of his day .
It cost him his life .
He was eventually crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be .
Can you imagine what Jesus ’ life would have been like if , instead of being born into the Roman police state , he had been born and raised in the American police state ?
Consider the following if you will .
Had Jesus been born in the era of the America police state , rather than traveling to Bethlehem for a census , Jesus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 28-page American Community Survey , a mandatory government questionnaire documenting their habits , household inhabitants , work schedule , how many toilets are in your home , etc .
Instead of being born in a manger , Jesus might have been born at home .
Rather than wise men and shepherds bringing gifts , however , the baby ’ s parents might have been forced to ward off visits from state social workers intent on prosecuting them for the home birth .
Had Jesus been born in a hospital , his blood and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ parents ’ knowledge or consent and entered into a government biobank .
Then again , had Jesus ’ parents been undocumented immigrants , they and the newborn baby might have been shuffled to a profit-driven , private prison for illegals where they first would have been separated from each other , the children detained in make-shift cages .
Rather than disappearing from the history books from his early years to adulthood , Jesus ’ movements and personal data—including his biometrics—would have been documented , tracked , monitored and filed by governmental agencies and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ From the moment Jesus made contact with an “ extremist ” such as John the Baptist , he would have been flagged for surveillance because of his association with a prominent activist , peaceful or otherwise .
Jesus ’ anti-government views would certainly have resulted in him being labeled a domestic extremist by law enforcement agencies .
Rather than being permitted to live as an itinerant preacher , Jesus might have found himself threatened with arrest for daring to live off the grid or sleeping outside .
Viewed by the government as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ power , Jesus might have had government spies planted among his followers to monitor his activities , report on his movements , and entrap him into breaking the law .
Had Jesus attempted to feed large crowds of people , he would have been threatened with arrest for violating various ordinances prohibiting the distribution of food without a permit .
Had Jesus spoken publicly about his 40 days in the desert and his conversations with the devil , he might have been labeled mentally ill and detained in a psych ward against his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with no access to family or friends .
Had Jesus attempted to overturn tables in a Jewish temple , he would have been charged with a hate crime .
Rather than having armed guards capture Jesus in a public place , government officials would have ordered that a SWAT team carry out a raid on Jesus and his followers , complete with flash-bang grenades and military equipment .
Instead of being detained by Roman guards , Jesus might have been made to “ disappear ” into a secret government detention center where he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and subjected to all manner of abuses .
Charged with treason and labeled a domestic terrorist , Jesus might have been sentenced to a life-term in a private prison where he would have been forced to provide slave labor for corporations or put to death by way of the electric chair or a lethal mixture of drugs .
Indeed , as I show in my book Battlefield America : The War on the American People , given the nature of government then and now , it is painfully evident that whether Jesus had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his own , he still would have died at the hands of a police state .
Thus , as we draw near to Christmas with its celebrations and gift-giving , we would do well to remember that what happened on that starry night in Bethlehem is only part of the story .
That baby in the manger grew up to be a man who did not turn away from evil but instead spoke out against it , and we must do no less .
Feature photo | MintPress News | Associated Press Constitutional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ founder and president of The Rutherford Institute .
His new book Battlefield America : The War on the American People ( SelectBooks , 2015 ) is available online at www.amazon.com .
Whitehead can be contacted at johnw @ rutherford.org .

The Christmas story of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one. The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable (a barn), where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus. Warned that the government planned to kill the baby, Jesus’ family fled with him to Egypt until it was safe to return to their native land
Yet what if Jesus had been born 2,000 years later?
What if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, Jesus had been born at this moment in time? What kind of reception would Jesus and his family be given? Would we recognize the Christ child’s humanity, let alone his divinity? Would we treat him any differently than he was treated by the Roman Empire? If his family were forced to flee violence in their native country and sought refuge and asylum within our borders, what sanctuary would we offer them?
How would Jesus—the baby born in Bethlehem who grew into an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist, who not only died challenging the police state of his day (namely, the Roman Empire) but spent his adult life speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo of his day, and pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire—react to the American Police State ?
After all, Jesus—the revered preacher, teacher, radical and prophet—was born into a police state not unlike the growing menace of the American police state. When he grew up, he had powerful, profound things to say, things that would change how we view people, alter government policies and change the world. “Blessed are the merciful,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Love your enemies” are just a few examples of his most profound and revolutionary teachings.
When confronted by those in authority, Jesus did not shy away from speaking truth to power. Indeed, his teachings undermined the political and religious establishment of his day. It cost him his life. He was eventually crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be.
Can you imagine what Jesus’ life would have been like if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, he had been born and raised in the American police state?
Consider the following if you will.
Had Jesus been born in the era of the America police state, rather than traveling to Bethlehem for a census, Jesus’ parents would have been mailed a 28-page American Community Survey, a mandatory government questionnaire documenting their habits, household inhabitants, work schedule, how many toilets are in your home, etc.
Instead of being born in a manger, Jesus might have been born at home. Rather than wise men and shepherds bringing gifts, however, the baby’s parents might have been forced to ward off visits from state social workers intent on prosecuting them for the home birth.
Had Jesus been born in a hospital, his blood and DNA would have been taken without his parents’ knowledge or consent and entered into a government biobank.
Then again, had Jesus’ parents been undocumented immigrants, they and the newborn baby might have been shuffled to a profit-driven, private prison for illegals where they first would have been separated from each other, the children detained in make-shift cages.
Rather than disappearing from the history books from his early years to adulthood, Jesus’ movements and personal data—including his biometrics—would have been documented, tracked, monitored and filed by governmental agencies and corporations such as Google and Microsoft.
From the moment Jesus made contact with an “extremist” such as John the Baptist, he would have been flagged for surveillance because of his association with a prominent activist, peaceful or otherwise.
Jesus’ anti-government views would certainly have resulted in him being labeled a domestic extremist by law enforcement agencies.
Rather than being permitted to live as an itinerant preacher, Jesus might have found himself threatened with arrest for daring to live off the grid or sleeping outside.
Viewed by the government as a dissident and a potential threat to its power, Jesus might have had government spies planted among his followers to monitor his activities, report on his movements, and entrap him into breaking the law.
Had Jesus attempted to feed large crowds of people, he would have been threatened with arrest for violating various ordinances prohibiting the distribution of food without a permit.
Had Jesus spoken publicly about his 40 days in the desert and his conversations with the devil, he might have been labeled mentally ill and detained in a psych ward against his will for a mandatory involuntary psychiatric hold with no access to family or friends.
Had Jesus attempted to overturn tables in a Jewish temple, he would have been charged with a hate crime.
Rather than having armed guards capture Jesus in a public place, government officials would have ordered that a SWAT team carry out a raid on Jesus and his followers, complete with flash-bang grenades and military equipment.
Instead of being detained by Roman guards, Jesus might have been made to “disappear” into a secret government detention center where he would have been interrogated, tortured, and subjected to all manner of abuses.
Charged with treason and labeled a domestic terrorist, Jesus might have been sentenced to a life-term in a private prison where he would have been forced to provide slave labor for corporations or put to death by way of the electric chair or a lethal mixture of drugs.
Indeed, as I show in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, given the nature of government then and now, it is painfully evident that whether Jesus had been born in our modern age or his own, he still would have died at the hands of a police state.
Thus, as we draw near to Christmas with its celebrations and gift-giving, we would do well to remember that what happened on that starry night in Bethlehem is only part of the story. That baby in the manger grew up to be a man who did not turn away from evil but instead spoke out against it, and we must do no less.
Feature photo | MintPress News | Associated Press
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].


mintpressnews--2020-12-22--Could the Next Standing Rock Be Brewing in Northern Minnesota?


mintpressnews--2020-12-28--Killer Cops: Police Killed Over 1,000 Americans in 2020

American law enforcement officers have killed well over 1,000 people in 2020 .
Between January 1 and December 15 of this year , the Mapping Police Violence project has recorded 1,066 people nationwide killed at the hands of the police , an average of around three killings per day .
Despite the fact that 2020 has brought with it a pandemic forcing Americans to stay off the streets ( and , presumably , out of trouble ) as much as possible , there have only been 17 days recorded this year where the police did not kill someone .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ backgrounds of the victims .
Black people are three times more likely than white people to be slain by police , and more likely to be unarmed when it does happen .
Eight of the 100 largest city police departments kill black men at a higher clip than the U.S. murder rate .
Those eight are Reno , NV , Oklahoma City , Santa Ana , CA , Anaheim , CA , St Louis , MO , Scottsdale , AZ , Hialeah ( Miami ) , FL , and Madison , WI .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ leading cause of death for black males in the U.S. , killing around one in 1,000 .
U.S. police violence is off the charts in comparison to other developed countries , with homicides occurring at a per capita rate almost 70 times that of the United Kingdom , or nearly 170 times more than Japan .
This puts it closer to many Latin American nations , notorious for their corrupt and militarized police departments ’ heavy-handed response to drug smuggling and organized crime .
Police have killed 1,066 people so far in 2020 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 3 was the deadliest day this year , with police killing nine men in California , Colorado , Florida , Indiana , Kansas , North Carolina and Texas .
Perhaps the most infamous day came three weeks later , however , when police killed seven men , among them 46-year-old African American George Floyd .
Floyd would likely have been as anonymous as the other 1,065 names on the list had the incident not been caught on camera and gone viral on social media , causing a worldwide uproar .
Video showed Minneapolis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into Floyd ’ s neck for nearly nine minutes until he suffocated to death , even as onlookers pleaded with him not to kill him .
Floyd ’ s final words , “ I can ’ t breathe , ” became a rallying cry , sparking hundreds of large demonstrations nationwide .
Between 15 and 26 million Americans are estimated to have attended at least one related protest in the subsequent weeks .
As a response to the demonstrations , Chauvin was arrested and charged with second-degree unintentional murder and second-degree manslaughter .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
However , his situation is unusual .
Mapping Police Violence ’ s numbers show that only 1.7 % of killer cops are ever charged with a felony , and far fewer are actually convicted , meaning there are very rarely any serious negative consequences for those that do kill while in uniform .
The protests sparked a nationwide debate about the role of the police in society , with polls showing that up to 39 % of the country approved of the measure to defund the police .
Even more popular were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for situations like mental health crises and homelessness , measures that would make up the backbone of any police defunding agenda .
Despite being responsible for hundreds of brutality incidents during the subsequent protests , and hundreds more attacks on journalists , police themselves claimed to be under assault .
After a police officer was killed in Washington State in July , the institution ’ s defenders suggested that the Black Lives Matter protests were morally responsible .
“ Any time the anti-police rhetoric heats up , it sends a message that it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We saw it in 2016 and we ’ re seeing it now , ” a retired senior Secret Service agent told ABC News .
Yet the government ’ s own data does not back this up .
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics , law enforcement is not a particularly dangerous profession .
Virtually any other job performed mostly outside , from construction work and gardening to agriculture , fishing , and forestry all carry far more risk of death than being a police officer .
Also more dangerous are professions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ garbage collection , delivery driving , or trucking , is a key component of the job .
The 2020 presidential election was colored by the debate around police violence , with the incumbent Trump accusing Joe Biden of being in the pockets of radical anti-police leftists .
In reality , however , Biden appeared hesitant to criticize the police at all , initially suggesting only that they shoot suspects in the leg , rather than in the torso .
The 78-year-old Delawarean also chose former prosecutor Kamala Harris , who described herself as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as his running mate , all of which suggests that it is unlikely we will see a massive drop in police violence figures come 2021 .
Feature photo | In this May 31 , 2020 file photo , visitors make silent visits to organic memorial featuring a mural of George Floyd , near the spot where he was killed by police in Minneapolis .
Bebeto Matthews | AP Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News .
After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books : Bad News From Venezuela @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age : Still Manufacturing Consent .
He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting , The Guardian , Salon , The Grayzone , Jacobin Magazine , Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary .

American law enforcement officers have killed well over 1,000 people in 2020. Between January 1 and December 15 of this year, the Mapping Police Violence project has recorded 1,066 people nationwide killed at the hands of the police, an average of around three killings per day. Despite the fact that 2020 has brought with it a pandemic forcing Americans to stay off the streets (and, presumably, out of trouble) as much as possible, there have only been 17 days recorded this year where the police did not kill someone.
The project also compiled statistics on the racial backgrounds of the victims. Black people are three times more likely than white people to be slain by police, and more likely to be unarmed when it does happen. Eight of the 100 largest city police departments kill black men at a higher clip than the U.S. murder rate. Those eight are Reno, NV, Oklahoma City, Santa Ana, CA, Anaheim, CA, St Louis, MO, Scottsdale, AZ, Hialeah (Miami), FL, and Madison, WI. “Death by cop” is a leading cause of death for black males in the U.S., killing around one in 1,000.
U.S. police violence is off the charts in comparison to other developed countries, with homicides occurring at a per capita rate almost 70 times that of the United Kingdom, or nearly 170 times more than Japan. This puts it closer to many Latin American nations, notorious for their corrupt and militarized police departments’ heavy-handed response to drug smuggling and organized crime.
Police have killed 1,066 people so far in 2020. Source | Mapping Police Violence
May 3 was the deadliest day this year, with police killing nine men in California, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, North Carolina and Texas. Perhaps the most infamous day came three weeks later, however, when police killed seven men, among them 46-year-old African American George Floyd.
Floyd would likely have been as anonymous as the other 1,065 names on the list had the incident not been caught on camera and gone viral on social media, causing a worldwide uproar. Video showed Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes until he suffocated to death, even as onlookers pleaded with him not to kill him. Floyd’s final words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry, sparking hundreds of large demonstrations nationwide. Between 15 and 26 million Americans are estimated to have attended at least one related protest in the subsequent weeks.
As a response to the demonstrations, Chauvin was arrested and charged with second-degree unintentional murder and second-degree manslaughter. He was released on bail in October. However, his situation is unusual. Mapping Police Violence’s numbers show that only 1.7% of killer cops are ever charged with a felony, and far fewer are actually convicted, meaning there are very rarely any serious negative consequences for those that do kill while in uniform.
The protests sparked a nationwide debate about the role of the police in society, with polls showing that up to 39% of the country approved of the measure to defund the police. Even more popular were actual policy proposals of removing police responsibility for situations like mental health crises and homelessness, measures that would make up the backbone of any police defunding agenda.
Despite being responsible for hundreds of brutality incidents during the subsequent protests, and hundreds more attacks on journalists, police themselves claimed to be under assault. After a police officer was killed in Washington State in July, the institution’s defenders suggested that the Black Lives Matter protests were morally responsible. “Any time the anti-police rhetoric heats up, it sends a message that it’s open season on law enforcement. We saw it in 2016 and we’re seeing it now,” a retired senior Secret Service agent told ABC News.
Yet the government’s own data does not back this up. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, law enforcement is not a particularly dangerous profession. Virtually any other job performed mostly outside, from construction work and gardening to agriculture, fishing, and forestry all carry far more risk of death than being a police officer. Also more dangerous are professions where driving a vehicle, such as garbage collection, delivery driving, or trucking, is a key component of the job.
BARTENDERS have a more dangerous job than cops h/t @VanguardVivian pic.twitter.com/AgYaf49aKm — Ninja Economics (@NinjaEconomics) July 17, 2016
The 2020 presidential election was colored by the debate around police violence, with the incumbent Trump accusing Joe Biden of being in the pockets of radical anti-police leftists. In reality, however, Biden appeared hesitant to criticize the police at all, initially suggesting only that they shoot suspects in the leg, rather than in the torso. The 78-year-old Delawarean also chose former prosecutor Kamala Harris, who described herself as “California’s top cop” as his running mate, all of which suggests that it is unlikely we will see a massive drop in police violence figures come 2021.
Feature photo | In this May 31, 2020 file photo, visitors make silent visits to organic memorial featuring a mural of George Floyd, near the spot where he was killed by police in Minneapolis. Bebeto Matthews | AP
Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.