lewrockwell--2020-05-27--Unexplained Anomaly Weakening Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Evolving and Splitting in Two, Warn Scientis

Unexplained Anomaly Weakening Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Evolving and Splitting in Two, Warn Scientists

The ESA has deployed its constellation of satellites to investigate unusual weaknesses in Earth ’ s magnetic field .
It appears that the strange anomaly believed to be responsible is now evolving and splitting in two .
The unexplained force , referred to as the South Atlantic Anomaly , is an area of reduced magnetic intensity that extends from South America to southwest Africa .
For now , the effects of this anomaly are restricted to technical malfunctions aboard spacecraft and orbital satellites .
However , because Earth ’ s magnetic field shields us from solar winds and cosmic radiation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of our planetary defence system , along with our atmosphere , which protects us from daily asteroid bombardment .
The European Space Agency ( ESA ) used its Swarm satellite constellation to study the phenomenon earlier this month , and the latest readings from the agency ’ s Data , Innovation and Science Cluster show a second anomaly is forming off West Africa .
Researchers still don ’ t understand the risks associated with this more recent development .
Over the past 200 years , Earth ’ s magnetic field has lost around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1970 and 2020 , the minimum level of strength dropped from approximately 24,000 nanoteslas to 22,000 .
Pole Shift : Evidence W ... David Montaigne Best Price : $ 10.85 Buy New $ 14.53 Given that the field is generated by electrical currents produced among the swirling liquid iron in the planet ’ s outer core , fluctuations are normal .
However , the initial South Atlantic Anomaly has grown and moved westward at a pace of roughly 20km ( 12 miles ) per year and scientists are yet to fully determine the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it now appears to be splitting in two all the more intriguing .
“ The new , eastern minimum of the South Atlantic Anomaly has appeared over the last decade and , in recent years , is developing vigorously , ” says geophysicist Jürgen Matzka , of the German Research Centre for Geosciences .
“ The challenge now is to understand the processes in Earth ’ s core driving these changes.
” Indeed , the Earth ’ s magnetic field is known to flip the poles altogether every few hundred thousand years , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a flip .
This recent unexplained magnetic activity over the Atlantic may be a sign of an impending flip , but more research is needed before we can understand what ’ s really going on with our planet and its defence systems .
Pole Shift : Scientific ... John White Best Price : $ 0.25 Buy New $ 27.99 Path of the Pole ( Myst ... Hapgood , Charles Best Price : $ 1,056.90

The ESA has deployed its constellation of satellites to investigate unusual weaknesses in Earth’s magnetic field. It appears that the strange anomaly believed to be responsible is now evolving and splitting in two.
The unexplained force, referred to as the South Atlantic Anomaly, is an area of reduced magnetic intensity that extends from South America to southwest Africa.
For now, the effects of this anomaly are restricted to technical malfunctions aboard spacecraft and orbital satellites. However, because Earth’s magnetic field shields us from solar winds and cosmic radiation, it’s a critical part of our planetary defence system, along with our atmosphere, which protects us from daily asteroid bombardment.
In an area stretching from Africa to South America, Earth’s magnetic field is gradually weakening. Scientists are using data from @esa_swarm to improve our understanding of this area known as the ‘South Atlantic Anomaly’ 👉 https://t.co/ZqTBA9DmX4 pic.twitter.com/klc5SS7zYo — ESA (@esa) May 20, 2020
The European Space Agency (ESA) used its Swarm satellite constellation to study the phenomenon earlier this month, and the latest readings from the agency’s Data, Innovation and Science Cluster show a second anomaly is forming off West Africa. Researchers still don’t understand the risks associated with this more recent development.
Over the past 200 years, Earth’s magnetic field has lost around nine percent of its strength. Between 1970 and 2020, the minimum level of strength dropped from approximately 24,000 nanoteslas to 22,000. Pole Shift: Evidence W... David Montaigne Best Price: $10.85 Buy New $14.53 (as of 07:10 UTC - Details)
Given that the field is generated by electrical currents produced among the swirling liquid iron in the planet’s outer core, fluctuations are normal. However, the initial South Atlantic Anomaly has grown and moved westward at a pace of roughly 20km (12 miles) per year and scientists are yet to fully determine the cause, which makes the fact that it now appears to be splitting in two all the more intriguing.
“The new, eastern minimum of the South Atlantic Anomaly has appeared over the last decade and, in recent years, is developing vigorously,” says geophysicist Jürgen Matzka, of the German Research Centre for Geosciences.
“The challenge now is to understand the processes in Earth’s core driving these changes.”
Indeed, the Earth’s magnetic field is known to flip the poles altogether every few hundred thousand years, and we are now long overdue such a flip. This recent unexplained magnetic activity over the Atlantic may be a sign of an impending flip, but more research is needed before we can understand what’s really going on with our planet and its defence systems.
Reprinted from RT News.
Pole Shift: Scientific... John White Best Price: $0.25 Buy New $27.99 (as of 11:14 UTC - Details) Path of the Pole (Myst... Hapgood, Charles Best Price: $1,056.90 (as of 03:20 UTC - Details)


lewrockwell--2020-05-27--From 9/11 to COVID-19, It’s Been a Perpetual State of Emergency

Don ’ t pity this year ’ s crop of graduates because this COVID-19 pandemic caused them to miss out on the antics of their senior year and the pomp and circumstance of graduation .
Pity them because they have spent their entire lives in a state of emergency .
They were born in the wake of the 9/11 attacks ; raised without any expectation of privacy in a technologically-driven , mass surveillance state ; educated in schools that teach conformity and compliance ; saddled with a debt-ridden economy on the brink of implosion ; made vulnerable by the blowback @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against shadowy enemies ; policed by government agents armed to the teeth ready and able to lock down the country at a moment ’ s notice ; and forced to march in lockstep with a government that no longer exists to serve the people but which demands they be obedient slaves or suffer the consequences .
The Politics of Obedie ... Etienne de la Boetie Best Price : $ 7.00 Buy New $ 7.00 Unfortunately , we who should have known better failed to maintain our freedoms or provide our young people with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ alone succeed , in the impersonal jungle that is modern America .
We brought them into homes fractured by divorce , distracted by mindless entertainment , and obsessed with the pursuit of materialism .
We institutionalized them in daycares and afterschool programs , substituting time with teachers and childcare workers for parental involvement .
We turned them into test-takers instead of thinkers and automatons instead of activists .
We allowed them to languish in schools which not only look like prisons but function like prisons , as well—where conformity is the rule and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them easy prey for our corporate overlords , while instilling in them the values of a celebrity-obsessed , technology-driven culture devoid of any true spirituality .
And we taught them to believe that the pursuit of their own personal happiness trumped all other virtues , including any empathy whatsoever for their fellow human beings No , we haven ’ t done this generation any favors .
Given the current political climate and nationwide lockdown , things could only get worse .
For those coming of age today ( and for the rest of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dystopian nightmare ) , here are a few bits of advice that will hopefully help as we navigate the perils ahead .
Be an individual .
For all of its claims to champion the individual , American culture advocates a stark conformity which , as John F. Kennedy warned , is “ the jailer of freedom , and the enemy of growth.
” Worry less about fitting in with the rest of the world and instead , as Henry David Thoreau urged , become “ a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not of trade , but of thought.
” Learn your rights .
We ’ re losing our freedoms for one simple reason : most of us don ’ t know anything about our freedoms .
At a minimum , anyone who has graduated from high school , let alone college , should know the Bill of Rights backwards and forwards .
However , the average young person , let alone citizen , has very little knowledge of their rights for the simple reason that the schools no longer teach them .
So grab @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bill of Rights , and study them at home .
And when the time comes , stand up for your rights before it ’ s too late .
Speak truth to power .
Don ’ t be naive about those in positions of authority .
As James Madison , who wrote our Bill of Rights , observed , “ All men having power ought to be distrusted.
” We must learn the lessons of history .
People in power , more often than not , abuse that power .
To maintain our freedoms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whenever they exceed the bounds of their office .
The Know Your Bill of ... Patrick , Sean Best Price : $ 18.15 Buy New $ 11.69 Resist all things that numb you .
Don ’ t measure your worth by what you own or earn .
Likewise , don ’ t become mindless consumers unaware of the world around you .
Resist all things that numb you , put you to sleep or help you “ cope ” with so-called reality .
Those who establish the rules and laws that govern society @ @ @ @ @ @ @ However , as George Orwell warned , “ Until they become conscious , they will never rebel , and until after they rebelled , they can not become conscious.
” It is these conscious individuals who change the world for the better .
Don ’ t let technology turn you into zombies .
Technology anesthetizes us to the all-too-real tragedies that surround us .
Techno-gadgets are merely distractions from what ’ s really going on in America and around the world .
As a result , we ’ ve begun mimicking the inhuman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our humanity .
We ’ ve become sleepwalkers .
If you ’ re going to make a difference in the world , you ’ re going to have to pull the earbuds out , turn off the cell phones and spend much less time viewing screens .
Help others .
We all have a calling in life .
And I believe it boils down to one thing : You are here on this planet to help other people .
In fact , none of us can exist very long without help from others @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see any positive change for freedom , then we must change our view of what it means to be human and regain a sense of what it means to love and help one another .
That will mean gaining the courage to stand up for the oppressed .
Refuse to remain silent in the face of evil .
Throughout history , individuals or groups of individuals have risen up to challenge the injustices of their age .
Nazi Germany had its Dietrich Bonhoeffer .
The gulags of the Soviet Union were challenged by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ system of racial segregation and warmongering called out for what it was , blatant discrimination and profiteering , by Martin Luther King Jr. And then there was Jesus Christ , an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist , who not only died challenging the police state of his day—namely , the Roman Empire—but provided a blueprint for civil disobedience that would be followed by those , religious and otherwise , who came after him .
What we lack today and so desperately need are those with moral courage who will risk their freedoms and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evil in its many forms .
Cultivate spirituality , reject materialism and put people first .
When the things that matter most have been subordinated to materialism , we have lost our moral compass .
We must change our values to reflect something more meaningful than technology , materialism and politics .
Standing at the pulpit of the Riverside Church in New York City in April 1967 , Martin Luther King Jr. urged his listeners : Dietrich Bonhoeffer : I ... Geoff Benge Best Price : $ 4.49 Buy New $ 7.80 Pitch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the world a better place .
Don ’ t rely on someone else to do the heavy lifting for you .
Don ’ t wait around for someone else to fix what ails you , your community or nation .
As Mahatma Gandhi urged : “ Be the change you wish to see in the world.
” Stop waiting for political saviors to fix what is wrong with this country .
Stop waiting for some political savior to swoop in and fix all that ’ s wrong with this country .
Stop allowing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ politics .
Stop thinking of yourselves as members of a particular political party , as opposed to citizens of the United States .
Most of all , stop looking away from the injustices and cruelties and endless acts of tyranny that have become hallmarks of American police state .
Be vigilant and do your part to recalibrate the balance of power in favor of “ we the people.
” Say no to war .
Addressing the graduates at Binghampton Central High School in 1968 , at a time when the country was waging @ @ @ @ @ @ @ different levels , and with different weapons , ” Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling declared : Finally , prepare yourselves for what lies ahead .
The demons of our age—some of whom disguise themselves as politicians—delight in fomenting violence , sowing distrust and prejudice , and persuading the public to support tyranny disguised as patriotism .
Overcoming the evils of our age will require more than intellect and activism .
It will require decency , morality , goodness , truth and toughness .
As Serling concluded in his remarks to the graduating class @ @ @ @ @ @ @ singular quality most required of you… we have left you a world far more botched than the one that was left to us… Part of your challenge is to seek out truth , to come up with a point of view not dictated to you by anyone , be he a congressman , even a minister… Are you tough enough to take the divisiveness of this land of ours , the fact that everything is polarized , black and white , this or that , absolutely right or absolutely wrong .
This is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to seek out the middle ground … that wondrous and very difficult-to-find Valhalla where man can look to both sides and see the errant truths that exist on both sides .
If you must swing left or you must swing right—respect the other side .
Honor the motives that come from the other side .
Argue , debate , rebut—but don ’ t close those wondrous minds of yours to opposition .
In their eyes , you ’ re the opposition .
And ultimately … ultimately—you end divisiveness by compromise .
And so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be compromise… Battlefield America : T ... John W. Whitehead Best Price : $ 10.95 Buy New $ 18.80 Are you tough enough to face one of the uglier stains upon the fabric of our democracy—prejudice ?
It ’ s the basic root of most evil .
It ’ s a part of the sickness of man .
And it ’ s a part of man ’ s admission , his constant sick admission , that to exist he must find a scapegoat .
To explain away his own deficiencies—he must try to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Make your judgment of your fellow-man on what he says and what he believes and the way he acts .
Be tough enough , please , to live with prejudice and give battle to it .
It warps , it poisons , it distorts and it is self-destructive .
It has fallout worse than a bomb … and worst of all it cheapens and demeans anyone who permits himself the luxury of hating.
” The only way we ’ ll ever achieve change in this country is for people to finally say “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the things that truly matter .
It doesn ’ t matter how old you are or what your political ideology is : wake up , stand up , speak up , and make your citizenship count for something more than just voting .
Pandemic or not , don ’ t allow your freedoms to be curtailed and your voice to be muzzled .
It ’ s our civic duty to make the government hear us—and heed us—using every nonviolent means available to us : picket , protest , march , boycott , speak @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over the narrative about what is really going on in this country .
Mind you , the government doesn ’ t want to hear us .
It doesn ’ t even want us to speak .
In fact , as I make clear in my book Battlefield America : The War on the American People , the government has done a diabolically good job of establishing roadblocks to prevent us from exercising our First Amendment right to speech and assembly and protest .
Still we must persist .
So get active , get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s work to be done .
The Best of John W. Whitehead

“The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government. The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support.”—Étienne De La Boétie, The Politics Of Obedience
Don’t pity this year’s crop of graduates because this COVID-19 pandemic caused them to miss out on the antics of their senior year and the pomp and circumstance of graduation.
Pity them because they have spent their entire lives in a state of emergency.
They were born in the wake of the 9/11 attacks; raised without any expectation of privacy in a technologically-driven, mass surveillance state; educated in schools that teach conformity and compliance; saddled with a debt-ridden economy on the brink of implosion; made vulnerable by the blowback from a military empire constantly waging war against shadowy enemies; policed by government agents armed to the teeth ready and able to lock down the country at a moment’s notice; and forced to march in lockstep with a government that no longer exists to serve the people but which demands they be obedient slaves or suffer the consequences. The Politics of Obedie... Etienne de la Boetie Best Price: $7.00 Buy New $7.00 (as of 05:45 UTC - Details)
It’s a dismal start to life, isn’t it?
Unfortunately, we who should have known better failed to maintain our freedoms or provide our young people with the tools necessary to survive, let alone succeed, in the impersonal jungle that is modern America.
We brought them into homes fractured by divorce, distracted by mindless entertainment, and obsessed with the pursuit of materialism. We institutionalized them in daycares and afterschool programs, substituting time with teachers and childcare workers for parental involvement. We turned them into test-takers instead of thinkers and automatons instead of activists.
We allowed them to languish in schools which not only look like prisons but function like prisons, as well—where conformity is the rule and freedom is the exception. We made them easy prey for our corporate overlords, while instilling in them the values of a celebrity-obsessed, technology-driven culture devoid of any true spirituality. And we taught them to believe that the pursuit of their own personal happiness trumped all other virtues, including any empathy whatsoever for their fellow human beings
No, we haven’t done this generation any favors.
Given the current political climate and nationwide lockdown, things could only get worse.
For those coming of age today (and for the rest of us who are muddling along through this dystopian nightmare), here are a few bits of advice that will hopefully help as we navigate the perils ahead.
Be an individual. For all of its claims to champion the individual, American culture advocates a stark conformity which, as John F. Kennedy warned, is “the jailer of freedom, and the enemy of growth.” Worry less about fitting in with the rest of the world and instead, as Henry David Thoreau urged, become “a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.”
Learn your rights. We’re losing our freedoms for one simple reason: most of us don’t know anything about our freedoms. At a minimum, anyone who has graduated from high school, let alone college, should know the Bill of Rights backwards and forwards. However, the average young person, let alone citizen, has very little knowledge of their rights for the simple reason that the schools no longer teach them. So grab a copy of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and study them at home. And when the time comes, stand up for your rights before it’s too late.
Speak truth to power. Don’t be naive about those in positions of authority. As James Madison, who wrote our Bill of Rights, observed, “All men having power ought to be distrusted.” We must learn the lessons of history. People in power, more often than not, abuse that power. To maintain our freedoms, this will mean challenging government officials whenever they exceed the bounds of their office. The Know Your Bill of ... Patrick, Sean Best Price: $18.15 Buy New $11.69 (as of 09:00 UTC - Details)
Resist all things that numb you. Don’t measure your worth by what you own or earn. Likewise, don’t become mindless consumers unaware of the world around you. Resist all things that numb you, put you to sleep or help you “cope” with so-called reality. Those who establish the rules and laws that govern society’s actions desire compliant subjects. However, as George Orwell warned, “Until they become conscious, they will never rebel, and until after they rebelled, they cannot become conscious.” It is these conscious individuals who change the world for the better.
Don’t let technology turn you into zombies. Technology anesthetizes us to the all-too-real tragedies that surround us. Techno-gadgets are merely distractions from what’s really going on in America and around the world. As a result, we’ve begun mimicking the inhuman technology that surrounds us and have lost our humanity. We’ve become sleepwalkers. If you’re going to make a difference in the world, you’re going to have to pull the earbuds out, turn off the cell phones and spend much less time viewing screens.
Help others. We all have a calling in life. And I believe it boils down to one thing: You are here on this planet to help other people. In fact, none of us can exist very long without help from others. If we’re going to see any positive change for freedom, then we must change our view of what it means to be human and regain a sense of what it means to love and help one another. That will mean gaining the courage to stand up for the oppressed.
Refuse to remain silent in the face of evil. Throughout history, individuals or groups of individuals have risen up to challenge the injustices of their age. Nazi Germany had its Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The gulags of the Soviet Union were challenged by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. America had its color-coded system of racial segregation and warmongering called out for what it was, blatant discrimination and profiteering, by Martin Luther King Jr. And then there was Jesus Christ, an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist, who not only died challenging the police state of his day—namely, the Roman Empire—but provided a blueprint for civil disobedience that would be followed by those, religious and otherwise, who came after him. What we lack today and so desperately need are those with moral courage who will risk their freedoms and lives in order to speak out against evil in its many forms.
Cultivate spirituality, reject materialism and put people first. When the things that matter most have been subordinated to materialism, we have lost our moral compass. We must change our values to reflect something more meaningful than technology, materialism and politics. Standing at the pulpit of the Riverside Church in New York City in April 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. urged his listeners: Dietrich Bonhoeffer: I... Geoff Benge Best Price: $4.49 Buy New $7.80 (as of 03:21 UTC - Details)
[W]e as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motive and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
Pitch in and do your part to make the world a better place. Don’t rely on someone else to do the heavy lifting for you. Don’t wait around for someone else to fix what ails you, your community or nation. As Mahatma Gandhi urged: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
Stop waiting for political saviors to fix what is wrong with this country. Stop waiting for some political savior to swoop in and fix all that’s wrong with this country. Stop allowing yourselves to be drawn into divisive party politics. Stop thinking of yourselves as members of a particular political party, as opposed to citizens of the United States. Most of all, stop looking away from the injustices and cruelties and endless acts of tyranny that have become hallmarks of American police state. Be vigilant and do your part to recalibrate the balance of power in favor of “we the people.”
Say no to war. Addressing the graduates at Binghampton Central High School in 1968, at a time when the country was waging war “on different fields, on different levels, and with different weapons,” Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling declared:
Too many wars are fought almost as if by rote. Too many wars are fought out of sloganry, out of battle hymns, out of aged, musty appeals to patriotism that went out with knighthood and moats. Love your country because it is eminently worthy of your affection. Respect it because it deserves your respect. Be loyal to it because it cannot survive without your loyalty. But do not accept the shedding of blood as a natural function or a prescribed way of history—even if history points this up by its repetition. That men die for causes does not necessarily sanctify that cause. And that men are maimed and torn to pieces every fifteen and twenty years does not immortalize or deify the act of war… find another means that does not come with the killing of your fellow-man.
Finally, prepare yourselves for what lies ahead. The demons of our age—some of whom disguise themselves as politicians—delight in fomenting violence, sowing distrust and prejudice, and persuading the public to support tyranny disguised as patriotism. Overcoming the evils of our age will require more than intellect and activism. It will require decency, morality, goodness, truth and toughness. As Serling concluded in his remarks to the graduating class of 1968:
“Toughness is the singular quality most required of you… we have left you a world far more botched than the one that was left to us… Part of your challenge is to seek out truth, to come up with a point of view not dictated to you by anyone, be he a congressman, even a minister… Are you tough enough to take the divisiveness of this land of ours, the fact that everything is polarized, black and white, this or that, absolutely right or absolutely wrong. This is one of the challenges. Be prepared to seek out the middle ground … that wondrous and very difficult-to-find Valhalla where man can look to both sides and see the errant truths that exist on both sides. If you must swing left or you must swing right—respect the other side. Honor the motives that come from the other side. Argue, debate, rebut—but don’t close those wondrous minds of yours to opposition. In their eyes, you’re the opposition. And ultimately … ultimately—you end divisiveness by compromise. And so long as men walk and breathe—there must be compromise… Battlefield America: T... John W. Whitehead Best Price: $10.95 Buy New $18.80 (as of 10:15 UTC - Details) Are you tough enough to face one of the uglier stains upon the fabric of our democracy—prejudice? It’s the basic root of most evil. It’s a part of the sickness of man. And it’s a part of man’s admission, his constant sick admission, that to exist he must find a scapegoat. To explain away his own deficiencies—he must try to find someone who he believes more deficient… Make your judgment of your fellow-man on what he says and what he believes and the way he acts. Be tough enough, please, to live with prejudice and give battle to it. It warps, it poisons, it distorts and it is self-destructive. It has fallout worse than a bomb … and worst of all it cheapens and demeans anyone who permits himself the luxury of hating.”
The only way we’ll ever achieve change in this country is for people to finally say “enough is enough” and fight for the things that truly matter.
It doesn’t matter how old you are or what your political ideology is: wake up, stand up, speak up, and make your citizenship count for something more than just voting.
Pandemic or not, don’t allow your freedoms to be curtailed and your voice to be muzzled.
It’s our civic duty to make the government hear us—and heed us—using every nonviolent means available to us: picket, protest, march, boycott, speak up, sound off and reclaim control over the narrative about what is really going on in this country.
Mind you, the government doesn’t want to hear us. It doesn’t even want us to speak. In fact, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government has done a diabolically good job of establishing roadblocks to prevent us from exercising our First Amendment right to speech and assembly and protest.
Still we must persist.
So get active, get outraged, and get going: there’s work to be done.
The Best of John W. Whitehead


lewrockwell--2020-05-27--The Decolonization of Israel Has Begun

The Decolonization of Israel Has Begun

For three quarters of a century , an Anglo-Saxon colony , now a US arsenal , has been trying to conquer all the lands from the Nile to the Euphrates ( Egypt , Palestine , Jordan , Lebanon , Syria and part of Iraq ) .
And for some years now , citizens of this same colony have been aspiring to transform it into a normal state .
This conflict of another age has reached a stage with the appointment of a bicephalous government : two prime ministers representing the two political visions are going to paralyze each other .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in social and health matters , further accelerating the modernisation of society and thus the end of the colonial fantasy .
The appointment of the Israeli coalition government does not bring to an end the six-year-long battle between two opposing and irreconcilable visions of Israel [ 1 ] , nor the government paralysis that has lasted for a year and a half .
On the contrary , it marks the beginning of the agony of one of the two protagonists and the slow transformation of the country into a normal state .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out under the blows of the former Soviet Avigdor Liberman over the privileges of yeshiva students .
The former defence minister , by asserting that religious alibi does not exempt anyone from national service , challenged the knot of the lie on which Israel was founded seventy-two years ago .
Justice for Some : Law ... Erakat , Noura Best Price : $ 20.59 Buy New $ 16.99 General Ehud Barack ’ s call to end Benjamin Netanyahu through legal means has failed .
The supporters of the colonial dream are still there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into a kind of fear by persuading them that they are threatened by foreigners .
As in the time of the ghettos , in order to “ protect ” them , they have locked them up behind a Wall that even separates them from their Arab fellow citizens .
Let us recall that Israel is not the product of Jewish culture , but of the will of the English Puritans [ 2 ] .
As early as the seventeenth century , Lord Protector Cromwell committed himself to create a Jewish State in Palestine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up again during the dynastic restoration .
In the eighteenth century , the leaders of the US War of Independence , Cromwell ’ s heir , also supported the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine , so that the United Kingdom and the United States were the natural godparents of this entity .
In the 19th century , Queen Victoria ’ s Prime Minister , Benjamin Disraeli , theorized Zionism as an instrument of British imperialism and included the “ Restoration of Israel ” on the agenda of the 1878 Berlin International @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supported this far-fetched project .
It was not until the Dreyfus affair in France that Theodor Hertzl committed himself to converting the Jewish diaspora to Anglo-US Zionism .
He conceived a colonial system on the model of the one put into practice by Cecil Rhodes in Africa and gradually managed to rally many atheist Jewish intellectuals .
Transcolonial Maghreb : ... Best Price : $ 47.88 Buy New $ 45.87 When the British and American governments were occupied by Puritans ( David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson ) during World War I , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countries to create Israel .
The principle of a “ Jewish national home ” was made public by a letter from Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild , and President Wilson officially established the creation of Israel as one of the 14 American war aims .
At the peace conference , Emir Faisal endorsed the Zionist project and pledged his support .
Jews began to colonize Mandate Palestine with the help of the local bourgeoisie , but at the expense of the common people , and then to emancipate themselves from London @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Ben Gurion , this time five years ahead of the Rhodesian model , proclaimed Israel ’ s independence before the United Nations had defined its borders .
Only then did the rabbis massively support the colonial project .
For seventy-two years , Palestine has endured a perpetual war .
After several successive waves of immigration , the State of Israel has invented from scratch a “ culture ” around an imaginary people ( including ethnic groups from the Caucasus to Ethiopia ) , an artificial language ( modern Hebrew has little to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ written in Aramaic characters ) and a fictitious history ( despite UNESCO ’ s objections , the ancient city-state of Jerusalem has been confused with the State of Israel ) .
The assimilation of this intellectual creation to the Puritan colonial project was solidified around a sacralized interpretation of certain Nazi crimes , described as “ holocaust ” by the Puritans and “ shoah ” by the Jews .
Nothing in this fake construction resists analysis .
Everything is done there to increase the continuity of a People and a State , even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
However , all the colonial states have disappeared today with the exception of Israel and , with time , the majority of today ’ s Israelis were born in Israel .
Two conceptions of this state now coexist : Inter/Nationalism : Dec ... Salaita , Steven Best Price : $ 24.90 Buy New $ 16.30 – on the one hand the supporters of Anglo-Saxon colonialism who claim sovereignty of the lands from the Nile to the Euphrates .
They think they are an island of pirates , sheltering criminals from all over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They claim to be a “ chosen people ” , superior to other men , and consider Israel to be “ The Jewish State ” .
– The other is people who want to live in peace with their neighbours , regardless of their religion or lack of religion and regardless of their ethnicity .
They want nothing to do with the colonial fantasies of past centuries , but do not intend to give up anything they inherited from their fathers , even if they have stolen it .
They would like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their homeland solved .
These are two irreconcilable visions embodied by two Prime Ministers , Benjamin Netanyahu and his “ deputy ” General Benny Gantz .
This tandem will never be able to resolve any conflict with the Arab peoples .
At most , it will at last be able to consider the terrible injustices of the country .
For example , nearly 50,000 citizens who passed through the Nazi death camps are today surviving in the country as best they can , without help from the State , which ignores them but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them , claiming to save them .
By the simple pressure of Time and Demography , after three successive and useless legislative elections , the decolonization of Israel has begun .
[ 1 ] “ The Geopolitical Approach : Two States for Two Peoples ” , by Commanders for Israel ’ s Security , Voltaire Network , 30 October 2014 .
[ 2 ] “ Who is the Enemy ?
” , by Thierry Meyssan , Translation Roger Lagassé , Voltaire Network , 4 August 2014 .
The Best of Thierry Meyssan

For three quarters of a century, an Anglo-Saxon colony, now a US arsenal, has been trying to conquer all the lands from the Nile to the Euphrates (Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and part of Iraq). And for some years now, citizens of this same colony have been aspiring to transform it into a normal state. This conflict of another age has reached a stage with the appointment of a bicephalous government: two prime ministers representing the two political visions are going to paralyze each other. The only progress can only be made in social and health matters, further accelerating the modernisation of society and thus the end of the colonial fantasy.
The appointment of the Israeli coalition government does not bring to an end the six-year-long battle between two opposing and irreconcilable visions of Israel [1], nor the government paralysis that has lasted for a year and a half. On the contrary, it marks the beginning of the agony of one of the two protagonists and the slow transformation of the country into a normal state.
It is not fortuitous that this debate broke out under the blows of the former Soviet Avigdor Liberman over the privileges of yeshiva students. The former defence minister, by asserting that religious alibi does not exempt anyone from national service, challenged the knot of the lie on which Israel was founded seventy-two years ago. Justice for Some: Law ... Erakat, Noura Best Price: $20.59 Buy New $16.99 (as of 03:22 UTC - Details)
General Ehud Barack’s call to end Benjamin Netanyahu through legal means has failed. The supporters of the colonial dream are still there. They have plunged their fellow citizens into a kind of fear by persuading them that they are threatened by foreigners. As in the time of the ghettos, in order to “protect” them, they have locked them up behind a Wall that even separates them from their Arab fellow citizens.
Let us recall that Israel is not the product of Jewish culture, but of the will of the English Puritans [2].
As early as the seventeenth century, Lord Protector Cromwell committed himself to create a Jewish State in Palestine, a theme that was not taken up again during the dynastic restoration. In the eighteenth century, the leaders of the US War of Independence, Cromwell’s heir, also supported the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, so that the United Kingdom and the United States were the natural godparents of this entity. In the 19th century, Queen Victoria’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, theorized Zionism as an instrument of British imperialism and included the “Restoration of Israel” on the agenda of the 1878 Berlin International Congress. At that time no Jews supported this far-fetched project.
It was not until the Dreyfus affair in France that Theodor Hertzl committed himself to converting the Jewish diaspora to Anglo-US Zionism. He conceived a colonial system on the model of the one put into practice by Cecil Rhodes in Africa and gradually managed to rally many atheist Jewish intellectuals.
Transcolonial Maghreb:... Best Price: $47.88 Buy New $45.87 (as of 03:22 UTC - Details) When the British and American governments were occupied by Puritans (David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson) during World War I, an agreement was reached between the two countries to create Israel. The principle of a “Jewish national home” was made public by a letter from Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild, and President Wilson officially established the creation of Israel as one of the 14 American war aims. At the peace conference, Emir Faisal endorsed the Zionist project and pledged his support.
Jews began to colonize Mandate Palestine with the help of the local bourgeoisie, but at the expense of the common people, and then to emancipate themselves from London. In 1948, an atheist Jew, Ben Gurion, this time five years ahead of the Rhodesian model, proclaimed Israel’s independence before the United Nations had defined its borders. Only then did the rabbis massively support the colonial project.
For seventy-two years, Palestine has endured a perpetual war. After several successive waves of immigration, the State of Israel has invented from scratch a “culture” around an imaginary people (including ethnic groups from the Caucasus to Ethiopia), an artificial language (modern Hebrew has little to do with the ancient patois and is written in Aramaic characters) and a fictitious history (despite UNESCO’s objections, the ancient city-state of Jerusalem has been confused with the State of Israel). The assimilation of this intellectual creation to the Puritan colonial project was solidified around a sacralized interpretation of certain Nazi crimes, described as “holocaust” by the Puritans and “shoah” by the Jews.
Nothing in this fake construction resists analysis. Everything is done there to increase the continuity of a People and a State, even though it is only an Anglo-Saxon colony.
However, all the colonial states have disappeared today with the exception of Israel and, with time, the majority of today’s Israelis were born in Israel. Two conceptions of this state now coexist: Inter/Nationalism: Dec... Salaita, Steven Best Price: $24.90 Buy New $16.30 (as of 03:22 UTC - Details)
– on the one hand the supporters of Anglo-Saxon colonialism who claim sovereignty of the lands from the Nile to the Euphrates. They think they are an island of pirates, sheltering criminals from all over the world and refusing any extradition agreement. They claim to be a “chosen people”, superior to other men, and consider Israel to be “The Jewish State”.
– The other is people who want to live in peace with their neighbours, regardless of their religion or lack of religion and regardless of their ethnicity. They want nothing to do with the colonial fantasies of past centuries, but do not intend to give up anything they inherited from their fathers, even if they have stolen it. They would like to see the bewildering social problems of their homeland solved.
These are two irreconcilable visions embodied by two Prime Ministers, Benjamin Netanyahu and his “deputy” General Benny Gantz.
This tandem will never be able to resolve any conflict with the Arab peoples. At most, it will at last be able to consider the terrible injustices of the country. For example, nearly 50,000 citizens who passed through the Nazi death camps are today surviving in the country as best they can, without help from the State, which ignores them but has cashed in the compensation intended for them, claiming to save them.
By the simple pressure of Time and Demography, after three successive and useless legislative elections, the decolonization of Israel has begun.
—
[1] “The Geopolitical Approach: Two States for Two Peoples”, by Commanders for Israel’s Security, Voltaire Network, 30 October 2014.
[2] “Who is the Enemy?”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 4 August 2014.
The Best of Thierry Meyssan


lewrockwell--2020-05-27--The Coming of a Social-Distancing Version of War

Covid-19 , an ongoing global human tragedy , may have at least one silver lining .
It has led millions of people to question America ’ s most malignant policies at home and abroad .
Regarding Washington ’ s war policies abroad , there ’ s been speculation that the coronavirus might , in the end , put a dent in such conflicts , if not prove an unintended peacemaker — and with good reason , since a cash-flush Pentagon has proven impotent as a virus challenger .
Meanwhile , it ’ s become ever more obvious that , had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been invested in chronically underfunded disease control agencies , this country ’ s response to the coronavirus crisis might have been so much better .
Curiously enough , though , despite President Trump ’ s periodic complaints about America ’ s “ ridiculous endless wars , ” his administration has proven remarkably unwilling to agree to even a modest rollback in U.S. imperial ambitions .
In some theaters of operation — Iraq , Iran , Venezuela , and Somalia above all — Washington has even escalated its militarism in a fit of macabre @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Dissent : Ame ... Sjursen , Daniel A .
Buy New $ 22.00 For all that , this is an obvious moment to reflect on whether America ’ s nearly two-decade-old “ war on terror ” ( perhaps better thought of as a set of wars of terror ) might actually end .
Predictions are tricky matters .
Nonetheless , the spread of Covid-19 has offered a rare opportunity to raise questions , challenge frameworks , and critically consider what “ ending ” war might even mean for this country .
In some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gradually subsiding for some time now .
Even though the total number of U.S. troops deployed to the Middle East has actually risen in the Trump years , those numbers pale when compared to the U.S. commitment at the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars .
The number of American soldiers taking fire overseas has , in recent years , dropped to levels unthinkably low for those of us who entered the military around the time of the 9/11 attacks .
That said , in these years , even unwinnable , unnecessary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evidence of this , look no further than that perennial war hawk Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina .
Given the lack of success of the various campaigns run by U.S. Africa Command , or AFRICOM , across that continent and the Pentagon ’ s stated desire to once again pivot to great-power competition with China and Russia , just before the pandemic arrived on our shores Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced plans for a modest troop drawdown in parts of Africa .
Appalled by even such minor retrenchments , Graham , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reportedly confronted Esper and threatened to make his “ life hell , ” should the secretary downsize U.S. forces there .
Less than two months later , AFRICOM declared a public-health emergency at the largest of this country ’ s African bases in Djibouti amid concerns that even far smaller , more spartan American facilities on that continent lacked the requisite medical equipment to fight the spreading virus .
Whether the pandemic facilitates Esper ’ s contemplated reductions remains to be seen .
( A mid-April AFRICOM press release offering reassurance that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Covid-19 ” doesn ’ t bode well for such a transformation . )
Ghost Riders of Baghda ... Daniel A. Sjursen Best Price : $ 16.67 Buy New $ 16.58 Still , the disease will surely have some effect .
Just as quarantine and social-distancing measures have transformed people ’ s lives and work in the U.S. , Washington ’ s war fighting will undoubtedly have to adapt , too .
Minimally , expect the Pentagon to wage wars ( largely hidden from public view ) that require ever fewer of its troops @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still to die doing so .
Expect Washington to mandate and the Pentagon to practice what might increasingly be thought of as social-distancing-style warfare .
Soldiers will operate in ever smaller teams .
Just as senior leaders constantly counseled us junior officers in the bad old days to “ put an Iraqi face between you and the problem , ” so today ’ s and tomorrow ’ s troopers will do their best to place drones or ( less precious ) proxy lives between themselves and enemies of any sort .
Meanwhile , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public and the wars being fought in its name is only likely to widen .
What may emerge from these years is a version of war so unrecognizable that , while still unending , it may no longer pass for war in the classic sense .
To grasp how we ’ ve made it to a social-distancing version of war , it ’ s necessary to go back to the earlier part of this century , years before a pandemic like Covid-19 was on anyone ’ s radar screen .
When , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I joined what were then called “ surges ” in Iraq in 2006 and Afghanistan in 2011 , conventional foot soldiers like me were the main game in town .
The doctrine of counterinsurgency , or COIN , then ruled the Pentagon ’ s intellectual roost .
The trick , so key commanders believed , was to flood the war zone with infantry brigades , securing the conflict ’ s “ center of gravity “ : the locals .
Behind the scenes , Special Operations units were already taking on ever-larger roles @ @ @ @ @ @ @ boots-on-the-ground ” and relatively high casualties in conventional units like mine .
Times have changed .
Full-scale invasions and long-term occupations , along with COIN as a war-on-terror cure-all , long ago fell out of favor .
By Barack Obama ’ s second term , such unpopular and costly campaigns were passé .
Even so , rather than rethink the efficacy of imperial interventionism , Washington simply substituted new methods masquerading as the latest strategy of success .
OVERTHROW Kinzer , Stephen Best Price : $ 4.29 Buy New $ 14.88 By the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ carnage ” inaugural address , the burdens of Washington war-making had flipped .
When I served in Iraq and Afghanistan , about half of the Army ’ s 40-odd combat brigades were deployed in those two regional theaters at any given time .
The remainder were training for their next rotations and already on the “ patch chart ” where each unit ’ s logo indicated its future scheduled deployment .
This was the life on the conveyor belt of American war that a generation of soldiers like me lived .
By January @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conventional brigades deployed in the war on terror could be counted on one hand .
For instance , the Army ’ s most recent round of deployments , announced this April , included just six brigades .
Of these , two were aviation units and , among the ground forces , one was headed for Europe , another for Kuwait .
Only two ground combat brigades , in other words , were slated for Iraq , Syria , or Afghanistan and one of them was a reconstituted Security Force Assistance Brigade — essentially @ @ @ @ @ @ @ officers meant to train and advise local troops .
Meanwhile , the Pentagon ’ s Special Operations forces , which had by then crested above 70,000 , a figure so large as to raise questions about how “ special ” they remained , stepped onto that conveyor belt .
America ’ s commandos now bear most of the burden of forever-war deployments and ( modest ) casualties .
When the virus struck , the Pentagon had long been developing a bifurcated military machine with two separate and largely discrete roles .
The commandos @ @ @ @ @ @ @ CIA paramilitaries , local proxies , and private security contractors — continued to fight the lingering war on terror .
They were generally handling the lethal end of American war , calling in airstrikes , while training , advising , and sometimes even leading often abusive indigenous forces .
Conventional active-duty brigades — reduced to 32 — were largely given quite a different task : to prepare for a future revamped Cold War with Russia and , increasingly , China .
That crew — infantry , armored brigades , and Navy carrier squadrons @ @ @ @ @ @ @ purportedly vital mission of checking , containing , or challenging Moscow in Eastern Europe and Beijing in the South China Sea .
Senior generals and admirals were comfortable with such Cold War-style tasks ( most having been commissioned in the mid-1980s ) .
However , viewed from Russia or China , such missions looked increasingly provocative as ever more American riflemen , tanks , and warships regularly deployed to former Soviet republics or , in the case of the Navy , to Western Pacific waters that abut China , making the risk of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ COVID-19 OUTBREAK : How ... O'Donnel , Kevin Buy New $ 9.99 Meanwhile , those shadowy special operators were directing the ongoing shooting wars and other conflicts , which , though given precious little attention in this country , seemed patently counterproductive , not to say unwinnable .
For the Pentagon and military-industrial-complex profiteers , however , such unending brushfire conflicts , along with a new great power build-up , were the gift that just kept giving , a two-tiered modus operandi for endless war-funding .
Thought of a certain way , American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ increasingly be waged in cold blood .
While Covid-19 spreads virally through respiratory droplets , the disease of endless war continues to be blood-borne ( even if ever less of it is American blood ) , ensuring that the social-distancing-style combat of the future could become even more of an abstraction here .
In addition , the preferred post-pandemic warriors of that future may not be uniformed soldiers , special or otherwise , or necessarily American — or in some cases ( think drones and future robotic weaponry ) human .
U.S. war @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Only recently , Erik Prince , the former CEO of the private military company Blackwater , an influential Trump ally as well as the brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos , pitched the president on a far-fetched plan to privatize the whole Afghan War .
The Donald passed on the offer , but that it was even considered at such a high level suggests the role of private contractors and soldiers of fortune in future American war-making may be here to stay .
In that sense , the recent fiasco of an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and aimed at the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro may prove as much a foreboding glimpse of the future as it was a farce .
When uniformed U.S. service members are deemed necessary , the trend toward using just handfuls of them to run an increasingly proxy-war machine is likely to accelerate .
Such teams will fit well with public-health guidelines limiting gatherings to 10 people .
For instance , drone ground control stations , essentially mobile trailers , require only a pair of operators .
Similarly , the military ’ s newest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may not be made up of the hackers of Donald Trump ’ s imagination ( “ somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds ” ) , but they , too , will work in tiny teams abroad , and at a great distance .
Pushing those guidelines just a tad will be Army Special Forces A-Teams of 12 Green Berets each , which may prove to be core building blocks for a new American version of post-pandemic warfare .
Most disturbingly , American social-distancing ways of war will likely operate smoothly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ successfully than the previous versions of forever war did , or solving local ethno-religious conflicts , or improving the lives of Africans or Arabs .
Like their predecessors , future American wars in cold blood will fail , but with efficiency and , from the point of view of the military-industrial complex , lucratively .
Here , of course , is the deep and tragic paradox of it all .
As the coronavirus should have reminded us , the true existential threats to the United States ( and humanity ) — disease pandemics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ climate change — will be impervious to Washington ’ s usual military tools .
No matter the number of warships , infantry and armored brigades , or commando teams , none of them will stand a chance against lethal viruses , rising tides , or nuclear fallout .
As such , the Pentagon ’ s plethora of tanks , aircraft carriers ( themselves petri-dishes for any virus around ) , and towers of cash ( sorely needed elsewhere ) will , in the future , be monuments to an era of American delusion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ system with any semblance of genuine legislative oversight or citizen input might respond to such conspicuous realities by rethinking the national security paradigm itself and bringing the war state to a screeching halt .
Unfortunately , if America ’ s imperial past is any precedent , what lies ahead is the further evolution of twenty-first-century imperial war to the end of time .
Still , Covid-19 may prove the death knell of American war as classically imagined .
Future combat , even if broadly directed from Washington , may be only vaguely “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part in it and even fewer die from it .
During the prolonged endgame of wars that don ’ t really end , U.S. military fatalities will certainly continue to occur in occasional ones and twos — often in far-flung places where few Americans even realize their country is fighting ( as with those four U.S. troops killed in an ambush in Niger in 2018 and the Army soldier and two private contractors killed in Kenya earlier this year ) .
Such minuscule American losses will actually offer Washington more leeway to quietly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , raiding , and killing , as has already happened in Somalia , with assumedly ever less oversight or attention at home .
As in the Horn of Africa of late , the Pentagon won ’ t even have to bother to justify escalations in its war-making .
Which raises a sort of “ if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there… ” conundrum : if the U.S. is killing brown folks around the world , but hardly anyone notices , is the country still at war ?
Moving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may treat war with the same degree of entitlement and abstraction as ordering items from Amazon ( especially during a pandemic ) : Click a button , expect a package at the door posthaste , and pay scant thought to what that click-request set in motion or the sacrifice required to do the deed .
Only in war , one thing at least stays constant : lots of someones get killed .
The American people may leave their wars to unrepresentative professional “ volunteers ” led by an unchecked imperial presidency that increasingly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and local militias .
One thing is , however , guaranteed : some poor souls will be at the other end of those bombsights and rifle barrels .
In contemporary battles , it ’ s already exceptionally rare that a uniformed American is on that receiving end .
Almost midway through 2020 , only eight U.S. service members have been killed by hostile fire in Iraq and Afghanistan combined .
Yet many thousands of locals continue to die there .
No one wants U.S. troops to die , but there ’ s something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the staggering casualty disparity implicit in the developing twenty-first-century American way of war , the one that , in a Covid-19 world , is increasingly being fought in a socially-distanced way .
Taken to its not-unimaginable extreme , Americans should prepare themselves for a future in which their government kills and destroys on a global scale without a single service member dying in combat .
After the pandemic , in other words , talk of “ ending ” this country ’ s forever wars may prove little more than an exercise in semantics @

Covid-19, an ongoing global human tragedy, may have at least one silver lining. It has led millions of people to question America’s most malignant policies at home and abroad.
Regarding Washington’s war policies abroad, there’s been speculation that the coronavirus might, in the end, put a dent in such conflicts, if not prove an unintended peacemaker — and with good reason, since a cash-flush Pentagon has proven impotent as a virus challenger. Meanwhile, it’s become ever more obvious that, had a fraction of “defense” spending been invested in chronically underfunded disease control agencies, this country’s response to the coronavirus crisis might have been so much better.
Curiously enough, though, despite President Trump’s periodic complaints about America’s “ridiculous endless wars,” his administration has proven remarkably unwilling to agree to even a modest rollback in U.S. imperial ambitions. In some theaters of operation — Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, and Somalia above all — Washington has even escalated its militarism in a fit of macabre, largely under-the-radar pandemic opportunism. Patriotic Dissent: Ame... Sjursen, Daniel A. Buy New $22.00 (as of 03:27 UTC - Details)
For all that, this is an obvious moment to reflect on whether America’s nearly two-decade-old “war on terror” (perhaps better thought of as a set of wars of terror) might actually end. Predictions are tricky matters. Nonetheless, the spread of Covid-19 has offered a rare opportunity to raise questions, challenge frameworks, and critically consider what “ending” war might even mean for this country.
In some sense, our post-9/11 wars have been gradually subsiding for some time now. Even though the total number of U.S. troops deployed to the Middle East has actually risen in the Trump years, those numbers pale when compared to the U.S. commitment at the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The number of American soldiers taking fire overseas has, in recent years, dropped to levels unthinkably low for those of us who entered the military around the time of the 9/11 attacks.
That said, in these years, even unwinnable, unnecessary wars have proven remarkably unendable. For evidence of this, look no further than that perennial war hawk Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Given the lack of success of the various campaigns run by U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, across that continent and the Pentagon’s stated desire to once again pivot to great-power competition with China and Russia, just before the pandemic arrived on our shores Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced plans for a modest troop drawdown in parts of Africa. Appalled by even such minor retrenchments, Graham, leading a bipartisan group of lawmakers, reportedly confronted Esper and threatened to make his “life hell,” should the secretary downsize U.S. forces there.
Less than two months later, AFRICOM declared a public-health emergency at the largest of this country’s African bases in Djibouti amid concerns that even far smaller, more spartan American facilities on that continent lacked the requisite medical equipment to fight the spreading virus. Whether the pandemic facilitates Esper’s contemplated reductions remains to be seen. (A mid-April AFRICOM press release offering reassurance that the “command’s partnership endures during Covid-19” doesn’t bode well for such a transformation.) Ghost Riders of Baghda... Daniel A. Sjursen Best Price: $16.67 Buy New $16.58 (as of 05:55 UTC - Details)
Still, the disease will surely have some effect. Just as quarantine and social-distancing measures have transformed people’s lives and work in the U.S., Washington’s war fighting will undoubtedly have to adapt, too. Minimally, expect the Pentagon to wage wars (largely hidden from public view) that require ever fewer of its troops to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with allies and fewer still to die doing so. Expect Washington to mandate and the Pentagon to practice what might increasingly be thought of as social-distancing-style warfare.
Soldiers will operate in ever smaller teams. Just as senior leaders constantly counseled us junior officers in the bad old days to “put an Iraqi face between you and the problem,” so today’s and tomorrow’s troopers will do their best to place drones or (less precious) proxy lives between themselves and enemies of any sort. Meanwhile, the already immense chasm between the American public and the wars being fought in its name is only likely to widen. What may emerge from these years is a version of war so unrecognizable that, while still unending, it may no longer pass for war in the classic sense.
To grasp how we’ve made it to a social-distancing version of war, it’s necessary to go back to the earlier part of this century, years before a pandemic like Covid-19 was on anyone’s radar screen.
American Wars Don’t End, They Evolve
When, as a young Army lieutenant and later captain, I joined what were then called “surges” in Iraq in 2006 and Afghanistan in 2011, conventional foot soldiers like me were the main game in town. The doctrine of counterinsurgency, or COIN, then ruled the Pentagon’s intellectual roost. The trick, so key commanders believed, was to flood the war zone with infantry brigades, securing the conflict’s “center of gravity“: the locals. Behind the scenes, Special Operations units were already taking on ever-larger roles. Nevertheless, there were ample “boots-on-the-ground” and relatively high casualties in conventional units like mine.
Times have changed. Full-scale invasions and long-term occupations, along with COIN as a war-on-terror cure-all, long ago fell out of favor. By Barack Obama’s second term, such unpopular and costly campaigns were passé. Even so, rather than rethink the efficacy of imperial interventionism, Washington simply substituted new methods masquerading as the latest strategy of success. OVERTHROW Kinzer, Stephen Best Price: $4.29 Buy New $14.88 (as of 11:35 UTC - Details)
By the time Donald Trump delivered his “American carnage” inaugural address, the burdens of Washington war-making had flipped. When I served in Iraq and Afghanistan, about half of the Army’s 40-odd combat brigades were deployed in those two regional theaters at any given time. The remainder were training for their next rotations and already on the “patch chart” where each unit’s logo indicated its future scheduled deployment. This was the life on the conveyor belt of American war that a generation of soldiers like me lived. By January 2017, however, the number of conventional brigades deployed in the war on terror could be counted on one hand.
For instance, the Army’s most recent round of deployments, announced this April, included just six brigades. Of these, two were aviation units and, among the ground forces, one was headed for Europe, another for Kuwait. Only two ground combat brigades, in other words, were slated for Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan and one of them was a reconstituted Security Force Assistance Brigade — essentially a skeleton crew of officers and noncommissioned officers meant to train and advise local troops. Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s Special Operations forces, which had by then crested above 70,000, a figure so large as to raise questions about how “special” they remained, stepped onto that conveyor belt. America’s commandos now bear most of the burden of forever-war deployments and (modest) casualties.
A Two-Tier War-Making System
When the virus struck, the Pentagon had long been developing a bifurcated military machine with two separate and largely discrete roles. The commandos — with key assists from drones, CIA paramilitaries, local proxies, and private security contractors — continued to fight the lingering war on terror. They were generally handling the lethal end of American war, calling in airstrikes, while training, advising, and sometimes even leading often abusive indigenous forces.
Conventional active-duty brigades — reduced to 32 — were largely given quite a different task: to prepare for a future revamped Cold War with Russia and, increasingly, China. That crew — infantry, armored brigades, and Navy carrier squadrons — had the “new,” purportedly vital mission of checking, containing, or challenging Moscow in Eastern Europe and Beijing in the South China Sea. Senior generals and admirals were comfortable with such Cold War-style tasks (most having been commissioned in the mid-1980s). However, viewed from Russia or China, such missions looked increasingly provocative as ever more American riflemen, tanks, and warships regularly deployed to former Soviet republics or, in the case of the Navy, to Western Pacific waters that abut China, making the risk of accidental escalation seem ever more conceivable. COVID-19 OUTBREAK: How... O'Donnel, Kevin Buy New $9.99 (as of 03:24 UTC - Details)
Meanwhile, those shadowy special operators were directing the ongoing shooting wars and other conflicts, which, though given precious little attention in this country, seemed patently counterproductive, not to say unwinnable. For the Pentagon and military-industrial-complex profiteers, however, such unending brushfire conflicts, along with a new great power build-up, were the gift that just kept giving, a two-tiered modus operandi for endless war-funding.
Enter the coronavirus.
In Cold Blood
Thought of a certain way, American war will, in the future, increasingly be waged in cold blood. While Covid-19 spreads virally through respiratory droplets, the disease of endless war continues to be blood-borne (even if ever less of it is American blood), ensuring that the social-distancing-style combat of the future could become even more of an abstraction here.
In addition, the preferred post-pandemic warriors of that future may not be uniformed soldiers, special or otherwise, or necessarily American — or in some cases (think drones and future robotic weaponry) human. U.S. war fighting has already been increasingly privatized. Only recently, Erik Prince, the former CEO of the private military company Blackwater, an influential Trump ally as well as the brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, pitched the president on a far-fetched plan to privatize the whole Afghan War.
The Donald passed on the offer, but that it was even considered at such a high level suggests the role of private contractors and soldiers of fortune in future American war-making may be here to stay. In that sense, the recent fiasco of an armed raid led by former Green Berets-turned-mercenaries and aimed at the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro may prove as much a foreboding glimpse of the future as it was a farce.
When uniformed U.S. service members are deemed necessary, the trend toward using just handfuls of them to run an increasingly proxy-war machine is likely to accelerate. Such teams will fit well with public-health guidelines limiting gatherings to 10 people. For instance, drone ground control stations, essentially mobile trailers, require only a pair of operators. Similarly, the military’s newest cyberwar branch (formed in 2015) may not be made up of the hackers of Donald Trump’s imagination (“somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds”), but they, too, will work in tiny teams abroad, and at a great distance. Pushing those guidelines just a tad will be Army Special Forces A-Teams of 12 Green Berets each, which may prove to be core building blocks for a new American version of post-pandemic warfare.
Most disturbingly, American social-distancing ways of war will likely operate smoothly enough without suppressing terrorist groups any more successfully than the previous versions of forever war did, or solving local ethno-religious conflicts, or improving the lives of Africans or Arabs. Like their predecessors, future American wars in cold blood will fail, but with efficiency and, from the point of view of the military-industrial complex, lucratively.
Here, of course, is the deep and tragic paradox of it all. As the coronavirus should have reminded us, the true existential threats to the United States (and humanity) — disease pandemics, a potential nuclear Armageddon, and climate change — will be impervious to Washington’s usual military tools. No matter the number of warships, infantry and armored brigades, or commando teams, none of them will stand a chance against lethal viruses, rising tides, or nuclear fallout. As such, the Pentagon’s plethora of tanks, aircraft carriers (themselves petri-dishes for any virus around), and towers of cash (sorely needed elsewhere) will, in the future, be monuments to an era of American delusion.
A rational (or moral) system with any semblance of genuine legislative oversight or citizen input might respond to such conspicuous realities by rethinking the national security paradigm itself and bringing the war state to a screeching halt. Unfortunately, if America’s imperial past is any precedent, what lies ahead is the further evolution of twenty-first-century imperial war to the end of time.
Post-Pandemic War
Still, Covid-19 may prove the death knell of American war as classically imagined. Future combat, even if broadly directed from Washington, may be only vaguely “American.” Few uniformed citizens may take part in it and even fewer die from it.
During the prolonged endgame of wars that don’t really end, U.S. military fatalities will certainly continue to occur in occasional ones and twos — often in far-flung places where few Americans even realize their country is fighting (as with those four U.S. troops killed in an ambush in Niger in 2018 and the Army soldier and two private contractors killed in Kenya earlier this year). Such minuscule American losses will actually offer Washington more leeway to quietly ramp-up its drone attacks, air power, raiding, and killing, as has already happened in Somalia, with assumedly ever less oversight or attention at home. As in the Horn of Africa of late, the Pentagon won’t even have to bother to justify escalations in its war-making. Which raises a sort of “if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there…” conundrum: if the U.S. is killing brown folks around the world, but hardly anyone notices, is the country still at war?
Moving forward, policymakers and the public alike may treat war with the same degree of entitlement and abstraction as ordering items from Amazon (especially during a pandemic): Click a button, expect a package at the door posthaste, and pay scant thought to what that click-request set in motion or the sacrifice required to do the deed.
Only in war, one thing at least stays constant: lots of someones get killed. The American people may leave their wars to unrepresentative professional “volunteers” led by an unchecked imperial presidency that increasingly outsources them to machines, mercenaries, and local militias. One thing is, however, guaranteed: some poor souls will be at the other end of those bombsights and rifle barrels.
In contemporary battles, it’s already exceptionally rare that a uniformed American is on that receiving end. Almost midway through 2020, only eight U.S. service members have been killed by hostile fire in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Yet many thousands of locals continue to die there. No one wants U.S. troops to die, but there’s something obscene — and morally troubling — about the staggering casualty disparity implicit in the developing twenty-first-century American way of war, the one that, in a Covid-19 world, is increasingly being fought in a socially-distanced way.
Taken to its not-unimaginable extreme, Americans should prepare themselves for a future in which their government kills and destroys on a global scale without a single service member dying in combat. After the pandemic, in other words, talk of “ending” this country’s forever wars may prove little more than an exercise in semantics.
Reprinted with permission from TomDispatch.com.


lewrockwell--2020-05-28--The Freedom To Pursue Happiness

The Freedom To Pursue Happiness

The governors of all 50 states , and the mayors of many large cities , have assumed unto themselves the powers to restrict private personal choices and lawful public behavior in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19 .
They have done so not by enforcing previously existing legislation but by crafting their own executive orders , styling those orders as if they were laws , using state and local police to enforce those so-called laws and — presumably when life returns to normal and the courts reopen — prosecuting the alleged offenders in court .
Cool & Unique @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is hard to believe that any judge in America would permit a criminal trial of any person for violating a standard of behavior that has not been enacted into law by a legislature .
We know this because under our system of representative government , separated powers and guaranteed liberties , only the legislative branch can craft laws and assign punishments for noncompliance .
This is Constitutional Law 101 .
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has written that the executive branch can not enforce a law that it has written .
If it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Have we approached tyranny already ?
During the past eight weeks , governors and mayors have closed most businesses , public venues and houses of worship , prohibited public assembly and restricted travel — all of which they have unilaterally decreed to be nonessential .
In his terrifying novel “ 1984 ” — which posits a future of total control of all persons by the government and total control of the government by one political party — George Orwell argued that he who controls the meaning of words controls the laws as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ manifested like never before here in America , where executive branch officeholders have used state and local police to restrain people from engaging in private and public behavior which they concede was lawful two months ago because today it is not deemed “ essential.
” Suicide Pact : The Radi ... Napolitano , Andrew P. Best Price : $ 0.25 Buy New $ 2.84 Frankly , I am surprised at the ferocity of police enforcement and the lameness of police compliance .
The police have taken the same oaths to uphold the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not the Bill of Safety ; it ’ s the Bill of Rights — as have all other officeholders .
The police also know that it is unlawful for them to obey an unlawful order , particularly when they use force .
The lockdown orders are all unlawful because none of them — none — has been enacted by a legislature , and all of them — all — interfere with fundamental liberties , each of which is guaranteed — guaranteed — by the Constitution .
Please don ’ t misunderstand me .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ efforts to control contagion .
But under the Constitution , these social-distancing , wear-your-mask , shut-your-business , stay-at-home edicts constitute mere recommendations that should induce rational voluntary compliance , because the government in America is without lawful power to compel compliance .
The governors complain about resistance .
They need to know that Americans will resist efforts to interfere in behavior that remains as moral , natural , lawful and constitutional as it was 60 days ago .
Last week , President Donald Trump , sounding fed up with gubernatorial lockdown orders , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ meaning , in his opinion , all houses of worship should be opened — and he offered that he was prepared to “ override ” any governors who disagreed with him .
POLIGO 12pcs Stainless ... Buy New $ 31.99 When he realized that he lacked any authority to override even unlawful gubernatorial decrees , he dispatched the Department of Justice to begin filing challenges to governors in federal courts and to argue that constitutional freedoms are being impaired by the states .
I applaud this , but it is too little , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when Catholic priests were threatened with arrest for saying Mass or distributing palms and when Jewish rabbis were put in COVID-19-infested jails for holding funerals ?
At all these religious events , folks freely chose to exercise their freedom to worship ; and to take their chances .
These DOJ interventions provoked the question : Who should decide what goods , services or venues are essential — the states or the federal government ?
The question is Orwellian , as the answer is : neither of them .
The government in America — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and no right to determine what goods , services and venues are essential .
Those determinations have been for individuals to make since 1776 , and those individual choices have been constitutionally protected from the feds since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791 and from the states since the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 .
Hamilton Beach Breakfa ... Best Price : $ 22.83 Buy New $ 24.99 What is essential to the laborer or student or housewife may not be essential to the former Goldman Sachs partner who was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who decreed last week , “ It shall be the duty of every person or entity in this State… to cooperate fully ” with his orders , or essential to the ideologue who is mayor of the Big Apple and who , for all his professed liberality , threatened to close permanently — permanently — businesses and houses of worship that flaunt his guidelines .
A duty is undertaken voluntarily or by nature , not by executive command , Governor Murphy .
And the government can not take property away from its owners @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only for just compensation , Mayor de Blasio .
Governors and mayors can make all the dictatorial pronouncements and threats that they wish .
But they can not use public assets to enforce them .
And when they seek to use force , those from whom they seek it should decline the offer .
In America , we decide for ourselves what produces happiness .
We have never delegated to the government — ever — the power to make personal choices for us .
And some of us are willing to take chances @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The essence of the freedoms for which we have fought since 1776 is the liberty to be ourselves .
The Best of Andrew P. Napolitano

Shop all books by Judge Napolitano
The governors of all 50 states, and the mayors of many large cities, have assumed unto themselves the powers to restrict private personal choices and lawful public behavior in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19.
They have done so not by enforcing previously existing legislation but by crafting their own executive orders, styling those orders as if they were laws, using state and local police to enforce those so-called laws and — presumably when life returns to normal and the courts reopen — prosecuting the alleged offenders in court.
Cool & Unique Fathers ... Buy New $35.99 (as of 03:53 UTC - Details) It is hard to believe that any judge in America would permit a criminal trial of any person for violating a standard of behavior that has not been enacted into law by a legislature. We know this because under our system of representative government, separated powers and guaranteed liberties, only the legislative branch can craft laws and assign punishments for noncompliance. This is Constitutional Law 101. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has written that the executive branch cannot enforce a law that it has written. If it does, we will have approached tyranny.
Have we approached tyranny already?
During the past eight weeks, governors and mayors have closed most businesses, public venues and houses of worship, prohibited public assembly and restricted travel — all of which they have unilaterally decreed to be nonessential.
In his terrifying novel “1984” — which posits a future of total control of all persons by the government and total control of the government by one political party — George Orwell argued that he who controls the meaning of words controls the laws as well.
That Orwellian truism has been manifested like never before here in America, where executive branch officeholders have used state and local police to restrain people from engaging in private and public behavior which they concede was lawful two months ago because today it is not deemed “essential.” Suicide Pact: The Radi... Napolitano, Andrew P. Best Price: $0.25 Buy New $2.84 (as of 04:15 UTC - Details)
Frankly, I am surprised at the ferocity of police enforcement and the lameness of police compliance. The police have taken the same oaths to uphold the same Bill of Rights — it’s not the Bill of Safety; it’s the Bill of Rights — as have all other officeholders. The police also know that it is unlawful for them to obey an unlawful order, particularly when they use force.
The lockdown orders are all unlawful because none of them — none — has been enacted by a legislature, and all of them — all — interfere with fundamental liberties, each of which is guaranteed — guaranteed — by the Constitution.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I recognize the scientific value of personal efforts to control contagion. But under the Constitution, these social-distancing, wear-your-mask, shut-your-business, stay-at-home edicts constitute mere recommendations that should induce rational voluntary compliance, because the government in America is without lawful power to compel compliance.
The governors complain about resistance. They need to know that Americans will resist efforts to interfere in behavior that remains as moral, natural, lawful and constitutional as it was 60 days ago.
Last week, President Donald Trump, sounding fed up with gubernatorial lockdown orders, declared that religious worship is essential — meaning, in his opinion, all houses of worship should be opened — and he offered that he was prepared to “override” any governors who disagreed with him. POLIGO 12pcs Stainless... Buy New $31.99 (as of 03:53 UTC - Details)
When he realized that he lacked any authority to override even unlawful gubernatorial decrees, he dispatched the Department of Justice to begin filing challenges to governors in federal courts and to argue that constitutional freedoms are being impaired by the states.
I applaud this, but it is too little, too late. Where was the DOJ when Catholic priests were threatened with arrest for saying Mass or distributing palms and when Jewish rabbis were put in COVID-19-infested jails for holding funerals? At all these religious events, folks freely chose to exercise their freedom to worship; and to take their chances.
These DOJ interventions provoked the question: Who should decide what goods, services or venues are essential — the states or the federal government? The question is Orwellian, as the answer is: neither of them. The government in America — state or federal — has no power and no right to determine what goods, services and venues are essential.
Those determinations have been for individuals to make since 1776, and those individual choices have been constitutionally protected from the feds since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791 and from the states since the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868. Hamilton Beach Breakfa... Best Price: $22.83 Buy New $24.99 (as of 03:53 UTC - Details)
What is essential to the laborer or student or housewife may not be essential to the former Goldman Sachs partner who was elected governor of New Jersey, and who decreed last week, “It shall be the duty of every person or entity in this State… to cooperate fully” with his orders, or essential to the ideologue who is mayor of the Big Apple and who, for all his professed liberality, threatened to close permanently — permanently — businesses and houses of worship that flaunt his guidelines.
A duty is undertaken voluntarily or by nature, not by executive command, Governor Murphy. And the government cannot take property away from its owners except for a legitimate public use and only for just compensation, Mayor de Blasio.
Governors and mayors can make all the dictatorial pronouncements and threats that they wish. But they cannot use public assets to enforce them. And when they seek to use force, those from whom they seek it should decline the offer.
In America, we decide for ourselves what produces happiness. We have never delegated to the government — ever — the power to make personal choices for us.
And some of us are willing to take chances and even do “nonessential” things. The essence of the freedoms for which we have fought since 1776 is the liberty to be ourselves.
Reprinted with the author’s permission.
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