Months of violence and vandalism in Hong Kong last year were orchestrated. 

Any pretext will do for the US to wage wars on other nations by hot and/or other means — directly by terror-bombing and/or use of proxies, financed and trained to do Washington’s bidding.

Last August during US orchestrated violence and vandalism in Hong Kong, commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s Hong Kong garrison, Chen Daoxiang, warned that PLA forces in the city are prepared to protect and defend it against hostile actions that threaten its stability.

At the time, he noted “a series of extremely violent incidents happening in Hong Kong” — US dirty hands all over them, my comment, not his, adding:

“This has damaged the prosperity and stability of the city, and challenged the rule of law and social order.”

“The incidents have seriously threatened the life and safety of Hong Kong citizens, and violated the bottom line of ‘one country, two systems.’ ”

“This should not be tolerated and we express our strong condemnation.”

“We resolutely support the action to maintain Hong Kong’s rule of law by the people who love the nation and the city, and we are determined to protect national sovereignty, security, stability and the prosperity of Hong Kong.”

If PLA intervention is needed to restore order, actions taken will adhere to the city’s Basic Law and Hong Kong Garrison Law, Chen stressed.

China won’t let the city be transformed into a US nerve center for undermining the mainland.

In response to China’s announced new national security law, Chen expressed support for the measure, saying:

It “will contribute to containing and punishing any attempt to sabotage the national unity or split the country…”

It will “help deter all kinds of secessionist forces and foreign forces attempting to interfere (in China’s internal affairs), and demonstrates our resolute will in safeguarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

A statement by China’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong warned that elements engaged in violence and vandalism, along with dark forces from abroad backing them, “not to underestimate the central government’s rock-firm determination to uphold national sovereignty, security and development interests and to safeguard Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability and Hong Kong compatriots’ fundamental interests.”

Without changing China’s one country, two systems policy, its new national security law aims to prevent pro-US 5th column elements from controlling Hong Kong and using the city as a platform for undermining mainland development and aims.

US war on China by other means rages, a country the Trump regime considers a “strategic competitor using predatory economics to intimidate its neighbors while militarizing features in the South China Sea (sic).”

Beijing is responding to its hostile agenda. The South China Morning Post (SCMP) said President Xi Jinping is focusing more on domestic over export-led growth.

His “strategic shift” includes preparing for a “worst case scenario.”

Xinhua quoted him saying “(f)or  the future, we must treat domestic demand as the starting point and foothold as we accelerate the building of a complete domestic consumption system, and greatly promote innovation in science, technology and other areas.”

According to economist Hu Xingdou, he’s preparing for possible “decoupling with the United States and even the whole Western world” if East-West hostility reaches boils over.

China seeks self-sufficiency in a changing world, triggered by COVID-19, economic collapse, disrupted international trade and investments, and hostile US actions that aim to undermine its development.

By no means will Beijing close itself off from the outside world it’s a major part of for its imports and exports.

It seeks multilateralism, “openness and inclusiveness,” said Xi.

Economist Raymond Yeung believes his strategic shift is over concern that export demand won’t recover for several years.

According to China’s official People’s Daily broadsheet, Beijing will counter Trump regime sanctions when imposed, including because of its new national security law.

A statement by China’s Foreign Ministry said

“(i)f the US insists on hurting China’s interests, China will definitely take all necessary measures to firmly fight back.”

Last weekend, White House national security advisor Robert O’Brien said the US will likely impose sanctions on China if it enacts its national security law.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian stressed that “Hong Kong is China’s Hong Kong.”

“Hong Kong affairs are purely China’s internal affairs. What legislation the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region makes, and how and when (it’s implemented) are entirely within China’s sovereignty.”

“The US has no qualification to point fingers and interfere.”

Under core UN Charter and other international law that’s also US constitutional law, no nation may interfere in the internal affairs of others for any reasons other than self-defense if attacked.

Even then, the Security Council has sole authority over this issue — not nations on their own, their leadership, legislators or courts.

It’s unclear how far the Trump regime may go to challenge China’s authority over its own territory.

It’s increasingly likely that Beijing will respond appropriately to hostile US actions if and when they occur.

A Final Comment

According to an SCMP article published by Global Research.ca, the US “slapped sanctions on 33 Chinese companies and institutions, putting them on two so-called entity lists as it dials up the hostility during the lowest point in US-China relations in decades.”

Clearly, China will respond in its own way at a time of its choosing.

All nations should refuse to tolerate what the scourge of US imperialism is all about.

The pandemic was needed as a pretext to halt and collapse the world economy and the underlying social fabric.

There is no coincidence. There were a number of preparatory events, all pointing into the direction of aworldwide monumental historic disaster. It started at least 10 years ago – probably considerably earlier – with the infamous 2010 Rockefeller Report, which painted the first phase of a monstrous Plan, called the “Lock Step” scenario. Among the last preparatory moves for the “pandemic” was Event 201, held in NYC on 18 October 2019.

The event was sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and the World Economic Forum (WEF), the club of the rich and powerful that meets every January in Davos, Switzerland. Participating were a number of pharmaceuticals (vaccine interest groups), as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s of the US and – of China.

One of the objectives of Event 201 was a computer simulation of a corona virus pandemic. The simulated virus was called SARS-2-nCoV, or later 2019-nCoV. The simulation results were disastrous, killing 65 million people in 18 months and plunging the stock market by more than 30% — causing untold unemployment and bankruptcies. Precisely the scenario of which we are now living the beginning.

The Lock Step scenario foresees a number of ghastly and disturbing events or components of The Plan to be implemented by the so called Agenda ID2020, a Bill Gates creation, fully integrated into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) – target date for completion – 2030 (also called Agenda 2030, the hidden agenda unknown to most of the UN members), the same target date for completion of the Agenda ID02020.

This presentation PROOVES WITHOUT DOUBT that America is in for a major fight that will put you and your family in the firing line, literally… So make sure you watch this presentation while it’s still online…

Here, just the key elements as a precursor to what the world is living now, and what is to come, if we don’t stop it – to demonstrate how this entirely criminal sham has been planned. Parts of the scenario are:

• A massive vaccination program, probably through compulsory vaccination – Bill Gates’ dream and brainchild is vaccinating 7 billion people.
• Massive population reduction, a eugenics plan – in part through vaccination and other means (Ref. Bill Gates, “if we are doing a real good job vaccinating, we may reduce the world population by 10% to 15%”. See “Innovating to Zero!”, speech to the TED2010 annual conference, Long Beach, California, February 18, 2010).

Bill Gates has been advocating for years the need for a massive population reduction – and indeed the more than 20 years of the BMGF’s extensive vaccination programs in Africa, India and other places around the world have seen a record of involuntary sterilization of women between 14 and 49 years. See In 2014 and 2015 Kenya carried out a massive tetanus vaccination program, sponsored by WHO and UNICEF.

• An electronic ID for every person on the planet – in the form of a nano chip, possibly injected along with the mandatory vaccination. This nano-chip could be remotely uploaded with all personal data.
• Digitized money, no more cash.
• Universal rolling out of 5G, later to be followed by 6G.

This is leading to a total control of every individuum on the planet. It is sold to the public as the Internet of Things (TIT), meaning self-driving cars, robotized kitchen equipment, artificial intelligence (AI) for the production and delivery of everything. What the sales pitch doesn’t say, is how humans would be marginalized and enslaved. To carry this masterplan forward, high frequency electromagnet waves are needed. Therefore, rolling out of 5G is a must, no matter what the health impact on humans, fauna and flora may be – and no matter how it may influence viral infections, like possibly the current COVID19.

WHO remains silent, although they do admit that no independent official study has been carried out on the dangers of 5G – and electromagnetic fields in general. Does that mean that WHO is coopted by the Big and Powerful into this deadly spiel? – Let it suffice to say that unlike other UN agencies, WHO was created in 1948 by the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) – see The Lancet. It might be also noteworthy that about half of WHOs budget comes from private interest sources, mostly the pharma industry, but also others, like telecom giants.

This is a precursor for understanding how things are being planned. It may help connecting the dots for what is coming.

It may also help us understand what is happening right now, in the first phase of the Lock Step scenario. It portrays in vivid colors the criminal nature of the Dark Deep State.

Never mind the stock market crash – that’s a speculator’s syndrome, rich people’s risks, as the stock market is a western invention to play with capital and capital gains to the detriment of the workers, whose lives depend on working that capital. They are the first ones to go, when Big Money calls for a merger – or a bankruptcy.

Now the almost universal and justified by NOTHING quarantine, total lockdown of every business, small or big – restaurants, construction, tourism, little and big hardware stores, bakeries, air lines, transport – interrupted supply chains – factories, food processing – and it goes on and on.

In the Global North some up to 90% of business transactions are emanating from small and medium size enterprises (SME). Almost all of them are closed now. Two thirds or more of them may never open again. Employees and workers are laid off, or are reduced to part-time work, meaning part-time pay – but still need to sustain their families. Poverty and desperation set in and becomes rampant. No future in sight. Suicide rates will rise – see Greece in the 2008 / 2009 crisis – and up to ten years later – broken families, foreclosures, families expulsed from rental apartments because they can no longer pay their rents. Street begging becomes normal, except there is nobody left to spare a dime.

Even SWAT Teams are Helpless Against This – WATCH THIS VIDEO and you will find many interesting things!

In Europe at least a third to maybe 50% or more of the work force – depending on the country and structure of the labor force – is expected to be unemployed or will be reduced to part time work. And that’s only the beginning. In the US official unemployment figures are as of this writing in excess of 23 million – and are expected, by predictions of the FED, Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg -to reach between 32% and 40% in the next quarter. Bankruptcies may spin out of control.

The IMF predicts for 2020 a worldwide economic contraction of a mere 3% – and a small growth rate in the latter part of 2021. How utterly ridiculous! – What planet are these people on? Whom are they trying to fool, and why? Perhaps to encourage countries to borrow huge amounts of foreign exchange from these predatory Bretton Woods institutions, IMF and World Bank – to get deeply into debt, thinking with IMF predictions they will be fine? – Further enslavement by deceit?

This is the Global North – which has some kind of social safety nets, whatever flimsy they may be – there is a sliver of hope for relief. Another sliver of hope is built on the premises that mankind will be constantly creating – working ingeniously inventing -moving forward flowing like a river towards new horizons, creating new dynamics, new jobs… yes, that’s what mankind can do – and in our comfort we have forgotten this virtue – an essential virtue for survival – survival of the corona crisis.

The Global South – or developing countries – presents a grimmer story. Under normal circumstances a third to half of the economy is informal, meaning not tight to any norm of formal or legal organization. They are short-term workers, daily, hourly laborers – living from hand-to-mouth, no savings, no safety nets- and in most cases no health coverage. They are left to the whims of the “market”, literally. Now the market collapsed.

There is nothing left. No work, no income, no money to pay for food, rent, medication – and the government orders them, the deprived poverty-stricken, to stay ‘home’ – ‘lockdown’ in quarantine – to protect themselves from a virus, an imposed virus that nobody sees, but the government and the media make sure you are aware – and SCARED – of its dangers, you never know whether true or false.

Confinement at ”home”? – Where is home? Home is gone. No money to pay rent. Keep social distance – don’t get together. Stay apart. The infection could spread. Fear is of the essence.

Take a city like Lima, Peru. Peru’s total population about 30 million. Lima, about eleven million – of which some 3 to 4 million live on the margins or below – in shantytowns, or worse. Daily, or hourly laborers. They live sometimes hours away from their work place. Now, there is no workplace anymore. They have no money to pay for food, transport or rent – landlords put them in streets, expel them from their properties. How can they stay in confinement? How can they take care of themselves by quarantine – lockdown – having no shelter, no food – desperately looking to earn just enough money to survive another day – and perhaps to share with their families? They can’t.

Lockdown-protection (sic-sic) is only for the rich. The poor they starve with kids and families – and quite possibly with the corona disease. They live within the circles of poverty and misery, where there is nothing to spare. Nobody has anything. Not even in solidarity. There simply is nothing. Total deprivation, caused by a total economic standstill – forced upon the world and especially the poor by evil men – and perhaps also evil women.

These 3 to 4 or 5 million people, they all have come at one point or another from the rural provinces, for which the government does nothing, or not enough to keep them there. So, in search of a better life, they abandon their ‘çhacras’ (little plots of land) and move to the Big City – to paradise – where they are relegated to live in more misery than in their provincial meagre settlements. They endure – always with hope. Now this – the man-made corona crisis – has made life even worse, much worse for them. There are none or far from enough government handouts – or they come too late or get lost in corruption.

In solidarity they assemble. They need to get back to their provincial origins, to their çhacras, to their families – where they will get shelter and food, where they again may feel “home” and loved or at least welcome.

A dictatorial military style government prevents them from leaving – for security reasons, of course – they may infect other people, — the farse continues. And nobody says peep. Nobody dares, for fear of being locked away. Police brutality – sticks, tear gas – repression – back to no shelter – no food. Until the central almighty government decides to “organize” repatriation – by buses, but there is not enough capacity, nor organization – chaos emerges – and the lot gets worse – and how much worse can it get? Famine will strike, will make them weaker and weaker, more prone to diseases and to die – not fromCOVID19, but from famine. But as statistics go, MUST go, by orders of the Masters, such deaths will automatically be attributed to the corona pandemic. Naturally. It’s done elsewhere, in the Global North. Why not in the Global South?

Lima is just a case in point – Its representative probably for most of Latin America, except for Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba – where, in the midst of misery, there is still a sense of solidarity uniting the people – where the government stands with the people, yet, where people are more severely suffering, because of western sanctions – they are literally being murdered by western sanctions – foremost the US of A. A genocidal nation.

The New York Times (22 April 2020) reports, ‘Instead of Coronavirus, the Hunger Will Kill Us.’ A Global Food Crisis Looms. The world has never faced a hunger emergency like this, experts say. It could double the number of people facing acute hunger to 265 million by the end of this year.

The physical book has 300 pages, with 3 colored pictures for every plant and for every medicine.It was written by Claude Davis, whose grandfather was one of the greatest healers in America. Claude took his grandfather’s lifelong plant journal, which he used to treat thousands of people, and adapted it into this book.

Learn More…

Few can deny that a perfect storm is brewing and the early foundations for war are being set up by the obvious protagonists. That China has cancelled the dollar peg, in its stock exchange transactions, opting for the Chinese Yuan is an ominous sign. If this unpegging to the US dollar succeeds China will divest itself of US dollar dependence, a move implemented to escape the weaponisation of the dollar. China is, also, developing its artificial intelligence (AI) and 6G for her People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Washington, meanwhile, is fast creating an anti-China sentiment among its population, blaming China for what President Trump calls the “Wuhan virus” aka Covid-19 now afflicting the US, fast and furious, because of President Trump’s initial complacency claiming that the virus will perish as the weather warms up. But in two short weeks thousands have died and nearly a million were infected. As of 16th May 2020, there are 1.52 million confirmed cases. Of these 281,000 have recovered. Unfortunately, there have been 89,939 deaths, the world’s highest. New York has endured some nightmarish scenes of bodies left piled up because the funeral homes are not capable of meeting the spike in demand for their services. China, for her part, is saying it is a US produced virus. According to experts it is near impossible to definitively prove this allegation.

The economic scenario unfolding in the United States, indicates that unemployment will hit 30 percent soon, one that is broader when compared to that of the Great Depression of the 1930s. One in three will be without a means to life and needing to be saved. Of course, there are many, unwilling to see any other than a V-shaped economic recovery, one where despite a sharp economic decline there is a quick, strong recovery. This outlook is causing many to demand an end to lockdowns. Yet prudence suggests that lifting the lockdowns without the necessary care can result in 100,000 deaths by 1^st June, according to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention. A massive economic disruption is already on the way. Bankruptcies of High Street businesses are up and with it unemployment. Retrenchments and layoffs by the thousands have been announced. Airlines are suffering almost without exception and all will benefit from the US 2.2 trillion dollars rescue package but the workers are not being given the means to keep consumption healthy as China has done by giving coupons to the population. And, regrettably the economic disruption is of a global dimension. Unless the domestic economy is resuscitated there is noother way.

The pivotal factor is whether an economically ravaged America, hocked to the tune of trillions of dollars, can support a peace that requires immense financial resources. The recent US$2.2 trillion rescue package is coming off the printing presses of the Federal Reserve, an act made possible because the US dollar is not held against guarantees such as gold. Some experts argue that America’s economic strength will pull the country through. But with the world oil industry going negative the petrodollar, too, is under threat. In short it would be true to say the American economy is under severe strain.

That there have been suggestions by some that China must compensate America by writing off its trillion dollar debt for the Covid-19 “invasion”, while definitely embarrassing is more revealing of a weakness. The US economy is unravelling under the lockdown ordeal with small businesses coming unglued and unemployment rocketing within a fortnight of the virus’ arrival. In a nutshell, both the US’ domestic and global economy are being almost torn asunder.

Further, the President is fighting for re-election. He has much to repair in the way of his public image. Nobody is even making a defence of his bungling in hisinitial handling of the Covid-19 virus. He had some 2 months to prepare for the viral onslaught but instead he remarked that it will go away with the heat. That he was prepared to take this risk is suspicious. Who told him this when the virus was already in the tropics and not any less virulent? Trump’s complacency parallels that of the British Prime Minister. The latter, Boris Johnson, was a victim and hospitalised.

Once it became clear that Trump had erred the “blame China” strategy took a sinister angle. Taking China to court seems almost the better alternative. It preserves peace.

But the global economy suffered from China’s economic shutdown caused by the Covid-19 infection. China is the world’s producer of far too many essential products. Even the global car industry was affected. And then as the world began recognising this global economic problem, the petroleum bombshell erupted. Today the price of oil per barrel has tanked. The shale oil industry is no longer supportable, dashing the US’ oil self-sufficient façade and leaving many firms bankrupt. Part of the recent trillion dollar rescue package was to bail out these companies. Boeing the aircraft producer, too, needed rescuing. The company’s 737 MAX was a dangerous lemon. And, Wall Street, too, was prioritised but not the Main Street. If this is the truth then the people will be left vulnerable.

The US$2.2 trillion Covid-19 rescue package will be another quantitative easing. Printed dollars will be poured into the system by the Federal Reserve. And experts are not expecting the economy to be saved if the money is not accompanied by guidelines for its distribution as the 2008 rescue demonstrated. Unfortunately, it is looking to repeat. Furthermore, if it ends up in stock buy backs the trillions spent will not move the economy. What leaves the observer of the USA perplexed and frightened is that the movers and shakers are looking for profit-taking opportunities instead of beefing up the public health sector. Huge companies like Amazon have made billions in these few short weeks of the Coronavirus tragedy.

There appears to be no real sense of national solidarity in the USA. Capitalism as a socio-cultural phenomenon remains pervasively a consumerist, profit maximisation phenomenon building a culture where the self centres the individual’s preferences. That lockdowns are viewed as an assault on the individual’s freedom is shocking when the aim is to save lives. This is the America that has been bred on crass materialism and even the Covid-19 death rate is proving unable to nurture a social culture of humane caring. An imagery made more heinous when the country’s own President is encouraging the people’s protest against lockdowns.

This is today’s USA in a world facing a massive challenge. With its perpetual war policy still on-going, where regime change remains active, it is difficult to perceive of Washington as part of global solidarity. With an official psyche very much intent on hegemony and superiority, it is difficult to picture an altruistic America. It is easier to see a repeat of the Iraq invasion but China is surely no walkover in this respect, she is a nuclear power; she is ahead in 5G technology; she can communicate with the far side of the moon. China is not Iraq. But how desperate is the USA? Is she really being economically undermined by the loss of her global reserve currency position?

Syria demonstrated the Russian ability to put a spanner in US military aspirations. Will this be the reality that will prevent a world war? After all even Tehran is able to get Washington to be more reticent. The missiles shot in Iraq may have not killed but it did cause damage to the mental well-being of many US soldiers. China has, too, demonstrated its military capability when in 2006, her Song-class submarine surfaced “within 5 miles of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, apparently without being detected”. But a New York Times 21 April 2020 report says, US warships have entered disputed waters of the South China Sea.

The International” is the world-renowned battle song of the socialist labor movement. The English version of the original French text reads:

“Wake up, damned of this earth, who are still forced to starve! (…) Army of slaves, wake up! (…) Peoples, hear the signals! To the final battle! There is no supreme being, no God, no emperor or tribune to save us. To put us out of our misery, that is something we can only do ourselves.”

This call was made to the international labor movement after the violent suppression of the Paris Commune in May 1871. It was not issued to the ruling “Elite” of the exploiters and oppressors.

However, it is precisely this so-called elite that seems to be blowing to the last battle today, in that it is seeking to reduce the population (depopulation) by means of a compulsory “mass protective vaccination”. The pathogenic or even deadly composition of this vaccine, which will also contain Nano-chips to control humanity, has certainly already been mixed in the world’s secret laboratories.

Even the active euthanasia of elderly and sick fellow citizens by means of strong sleeping pills and opiates has already set these dark figures on their way. Likewise a worldwide redistribution of general wealth from the bottom to the top, from the poor to the super rich. Should we citizens of this world, remembering these plans of the cabal, not recall to whom the call for the final battle was actually made?

Two of these “world citizens” who are involved in such sinister plans are the former US Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger and the wealthy US entrepreneur and patron of the arts Bill Gates.

More than 50 years ago, Kissinger was Secretary of State and head of the US National Security Council and author of the “National Strategic Security Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200)

“. According to the memorandum, depopulation should be “the highest priority in US foreign policy towards the Third World”, (…) because “the US economy needs large and growing amounts of raw materials from overseas, especially from the less developed countries” (Eggert, W. (2003). The planned epidemics AIDS – SARS and military genetic research. Munich, p. 64)

In an opinion piece for the “Wall Street Journal”, Kissinger called for

“a first step to develop ‘new techniques and technologies for infection control and appropriate vaccines for large populations’. (…) In a second step, the focus should now be on ‘healing the wounds of the global economy’. ( quoted in RT Deutsch  https://de.rt.com/25kn)

The citizens of the world should therefore – whether they want to or not – be vaccinated and, in addition, it should be checked whether they have complied with this vaccination obligation.

In the RT article just mentioned, Nobel Peace Prize winner Kissinger is also referred to as a war criminal because, as the architect of the US aggression against Vietnam and other covert CIA secret operations, he is responsible for the death of millions of people.

Vaccination

Kissinger and the The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation seem to agree on the question of “mass protection vaccination”. On March 31, 2020, the “Washington Post” published an opinion article by Gates in which he describes his vision to vaccinate people around the world:

“To bring the disease to an end, we’ll need a safe and effective vaccine. If we do everything right, we could have one in less than 18 months — about the fastest a vaccine has ever been developed.

But creating a vaccine is only half the battle. To protect Americans and people around the world, we’ll need to manufacture billions of doses. (Without a vaccine, developing countries are at even greater risk than wealthy ones, because it’s even harder for them to do physical distancing and shutdowns.)

Is the vaccination program related to the objective of reducing world population?

In this context, let us recall Kant’s Enlightenment motto “Sapere aude!”:“Have the courage to use your own intellect!”

These are not only rapidly changing times; they are revolutionary times. The people are awakening not only to a new situation of living under Coronavirus, but a situation in which the hot spotlight is shining on the ongoing injustices, incompetence, and uncaring attitude and actions of our government toward the plight of the people at large. This is what makes for revolutionary times.

There are people trying to form alternative parties of varying sorts and kinds. But unless they can unify under a common banner, the further splintering of populist groups and organized actions will never be galvanized sufficiently to exact the change they seek.

Here is a suggestion for that common banner for unity of the People: use the Declaration of Independence. Since our leaders in all branches and levels of government have shown their lack of concern for and even hostility to the People and our needs, especially seen now more obviously (but in fact already their well-established and ongoing modus operandi) in the Coronavirus “stimulus” packages that gave the people next to nothing, we are undoubtedly back to that revolutionary moment that prompted the founding document that declared that the People were no longer servants of the oppressive government holding them under its thumb.

So why not use that same document, update it, and in that way craft a new banner to unify all populist parties? At this moment in time, we cannot allow the disagreements between specific party ideas to dissuade us from uniting together under the name of the People and our rights. We must learn to work together for the same general principles that will result in the fall of the current form of government, and something more akin to the rule of law, of rights, and of justice to found our rule. To that end, I have proffered a re-writing of Jefferson’s famous document, with full honor and respect being given to the original, as a suggestion for a Populist banner that will be a platform of unity, rather than independent and isolated small parties of division. Here is a suggestion for a new Declaration of Independence of the People from the current government, which is now on the border of being the type of tyranny that so concerned the Founders. Just like in their time, so in ours: we need a declaration of the unity of the People against the current oppressive government, which has completely refused to be concerned with the needs or good of the People, and has sided completely with the wealthy at all levels of government. So now to Jefferson, with a twist:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all humans are equal, that as human they have certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted to protect and serve the People, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Parties and a Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Objects of money and power, evinces a design to reduce the People under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of the People; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present form of government in the United States is a history of repeated ignorance, injuries, and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over the People. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world, that show that each or all of the instituted branches of government have either singly or one and all, failed to protect and preserve the good of the People.

They have refused their Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

They have refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, thereby forcing the People to relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

They have bypassed Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. The Representative Houses, for their part, acknowledge and cooperated in this surrender of their Constitutionally designated power, and permitted its usurpation by the Executive Branch.

They have refused for a long time to allow others to be elected by free, open, and verifiable vote, allowing the People in the meantime to be exposed to all the dangers of invasion of their individual and collective economic and social good from within and without the country.

They have endeavoured to prevent the population of these States by non-native others; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to permit their migrations hither, and refusing and obstructing the conditions for safe harbor for those immigrants.

They have obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing their Assent to Laws for limiting Judiciary powers.

They have kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies which influence and even involve themselves by plan in the affairs of the People, all with the Consent of our legislatures, but not the People.

They have affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

They have combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution (Wall Street), and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

• For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
• For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
• For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
• For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
• For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
• For abolishing the free System of Laws in neighboring Provinces, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
• For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments;

They have abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of their Protection and waging War against us by removing our fair and safe voting to all citizens, and by diminishing our rights.

They are at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the leaders of a civilized nation, by attacking and preparing to attack leaders of other countries as well as their people and geographical territory.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. An Oligarch ruling class whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

We, therefore, the People of the united States of America, in full and unbreakable unity, and appealing to the universal good of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of this United States, solemnly publish and declare, That the People are and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent from such authoritative and unresponsive government; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to this government, and that all political connection between them and the government, is and ought to be totally dissolved until and unless our grievances are met with just response; and that as Free and Independent, the People have full Power to control the way we are governed. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Justice herself, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

Some have said that history is cyclical. If that is true, the current times certainly mirror our founding times in many ways. Why not use the truths that the Founders held, and make them once again our own? Why not unite all Populists under some version of a banner such as this? Without it, there can be no unity and no overcoming of the current authoritarian oligarchy under which we now live.

The American idiot is, by now, a figure that’s the stuff of myth and legend across the world. Nobody else is really quite sure: are Americans really like this? This…well…laughable? Yesterday, they were the kind of people who made their kids do “active shooter drills,” meaning masked men burst into classrooms…and pretend…to kill them. What the? Today, they’re the kind of people who happily congregate in parks and on beaches during a global pandemic…when the lunatic fringe amongst them isn’t protesting for “liberation” in the first place. What on earth?

I don’t use the term as an insult — the American idiot. I mean it in a precise way, as I try to remind people. For the Greeks, “idiot” carried a precise and special meaning. The person who was only interested in private life, private gain, private advantage. Who had no conception of a public good, common wealth, shared interest. To the Greeks, the pioneers of democracy, the creators of the demos, such a person was the most contemptible of all. Because even the Greeks seemed to understand: you can’t make a functioning democracy out of…idiots.

Now, I’m going to generalize. But I don’t mean that all Americans are idiots. I mean that, for example, more or less everyone who wants to carry a gun to Starbucks, deny their neighbours healthcare, make people beg for medicine online, and not let anyone in society ever retire…all of those people in the world, by and large, are Americans. Nobody else — nobody in the whole world at this point in history — thinks such things are remotely desirable. Hence, the American idiot. It means: the world’s largest and most hardened subset of idiots at this point, in the Classical Greek meaning of the word, is largely American.

You don’t have to think very hard to understand why my Italian friend laughed at such a person. We’ve had many serious conversations over the last few months. “How are things in Italy going”, I ask, trying to be gentle. He looks away, in grief, and says simply: “Dificile.” The dogs play. I wonder if his loved ones are OK. He tells me stories of a society pulling together, to fight a deadly disease, whose toll has been heavy and grave. Is it any wonder that, looking at Americans gathering in Central Park, on Long Beach, he’s shocked into laughter? We’re lucky he’s laughing. What he really feels, I’d bet, is a kind of horror, combined with contempt. The very same contempt the Greeks felt for…their idiots.

‘Freedom?’ I’d bet he thinks. ‘More like freedumb.’

When Matteo, when Ben, when every single person I know who’s not American, when the world looks at America, it sees the American idiot, and what it tries — and usually fails, because it’s lost for words — to express is something like this: can people really be this selfish? This oblivious? This…thankless? Why do they keep voting for less healthcare, retirement, education, income, savings, happiness, trust, year after year — even the so-called good ones? What kind of people…why are the literally the only people left in the whole world who do that? And then…complain bitterly about not having…the very things…they deny each other? Who can even make sense of this, the bizarre circular firing squad of social suicide that America has become? But all those, of course, are key traits of the idiot. The answer — sadly, I think — is: yes, people can really be this way.

Perhaps because they don’t know any other way. Maybe because it’s all they’ve ever been taught or told. That’s not an apologia for the American idiot, by the way. Or is it? Even I wonder. Still, let me try to explain as best I can — America’s strange and complicated with freedom, one so perverse that freedom became twisted into something very much like its opposite. It has to do with the way Americans think — unsubtly, narrowly, single-mindedly — about what freedom is, and means.

About half a century ago, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin divided freedom into two categories — maybe you already know them. Negative freedom, or freedom from. And positive freedom, or freedom to. The theory then went — and this became the basis of generations of American thought — that only the freedom from was worth developing and cultivating.

The freedom “to”, on the other hand, was vilified as something that only communists and socialists would want. Why? Because my “freedom to” — say to be educated, or to be healthy — requires your input, help, cooperation. But American thinking — which became obsessed with individualism — couldn’t admit or permit that, because then maybe you weren’t “taking responsibility for yourself” and all the rest of the jargon.

All this dates back, of course, to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, the Uberman. It’s not too hard to see why a society that was born in slavery, and continued into segregation, in which horrors like crippling and maiming people for the color of their skin were perfectly alright — why a society like that ends up prizing freedom from. America’s obsession with freedom from dates right back to the slave-owner’s desire for freedom from government intervention, law, common decency, any tiny shred of humanity — to have the power to exploit and abuse human beings on an unthinkable scale. There’s a straight line from Nietzsche’s “master morality” naturally dominating the “slave morality” to Berlin’s “freedom from” any restraint on power — and that straight line is the one American thinking, still backwards, mired in the logic of domination and exploitation, traced.

Americans don’t like it when I make those links for them. But they are as plain as day. You only really have to look at Europe or Canada to see the contrast.

There, the idea of freedom itself evolved. Away from “freedom from” — which is what the early European revolution were about, for example, when the French abolished the formal class system, freedom from nobility and monarchy and so forth — and towards “freedom to.”

By the end of the Second World War, Europe had done something radical and transformative: written the “freedom to” into its constitutions. People would now have expansive freedoms to — freedom to have good healthcare, education, retirement, income, savings, and so forth. It’s true that today’s Europe is forgetting about that breakthrough, but it’s not true that it wasn’t history changing. The power of the freedom to gave Europe history’s highest standards of living — in just one human lifetime. Nothing has been seen like it ever before — and maybe nothing will be ever again.

You might have noticed, though, that I’m still accepting Berlin’s old dichotomy: freedom from and freedom to. I reject it. I think the dichotomy itself is a mistake — maybe the formative mistake of American ideas. Isn’t good education also just freedom from ignorance? Good healthcare freedom from illness? And so forth. I think that a century ago, trying to neatly cleave freedoms into the good kind and the bad kind, American thinking made a huge, terrible mistake. One which trapped it to circle a desert for a century — and then find itself in a dead end.

You can see that dead end everywhere today.

In the cruelty, aggression, rage, violence, hate which characterize American life as especially brutal. Americans are always trying to escape from any kind of obligation or responsibility to…anything. Each other. History. The future. Just common decency. Even just basic humanity. Who else makes their kids…pretend to die? And then pretends that doesn’t scar kids for life? What the? That’s why the world doesn’t know whether to be horrified, shocked, repelled, or astonished by America — and it laughs. Nervously, oddly, baffled. What Americans don’t know is that that laughter is a world being polite.

Here’s how extreme America’s belief in freedumb — freedom as the absence of any kind of obligation or responsibility to anything greater than narrow, immediate, infantile self-satisfaction — has gotten. Americans aren’t just congregating in parks and beaches during a global pandemic. They’re literally the only people in the world who just voted against better healthcare (from Bernie and Liz) in the middle of a pandemic. Think about the scale of such folly for a moment. What kind of people vote for worse healthcare…during a pandemic? John Cleese would struggle to make a face that expressed the surreal tragicomedy of such a thing. But that’s what Americans did…what they do, over and over and over again.

Why? Because they still believe — even if they don’t think they believe — in Berlin’s tired, weary, flawed old distinction. Freedom has only come to mean the removal of any restraint — negative freedom — on the exercise of individual desire, the satiation of individual appetite. What freedom still doesn’t mean in America is any of the following, good healthcare, retirement, education, and so forth, because what freedom has never meant is any form of collective action.

Let me put that more sharply. What if the only way that I can have decent healthcare is for you to have decent healthcare — first? What if the only for me to have a decent retirement is for us all to have one, first? You see, that logic — which is the math of public goods — makes a mockery of Berlin’s dichotomy. Then, what we don’t need is simple “freedom from” some kind of restraint — but the “freedom to”…collectively organize, coordinate, take action.

Freedom from can give us liberty as individuals, it’s true, from kings, and even governments. But only the freedom to can give us liberty as societies, groups, classes, nations. These two kinds of freedoms might exist in tension — but try to have one without the other, and the result is a spectacular collapse. Freedom to without freedom from gave us the Soviet Union. But freedom from without freedom to gave us America, the failed state, the world’s first poor rich country. Gentle Europe, wise New Zealand, humble and kind Canada — which balance the two — have found a kind of miracle in that equilibrium.

Matteo and Ben often ask me: “What wrong with Americans?” All my non-American friends do, as do everyone’s. What they really mean is: “why don’t they get it? Why can’t they change?” I tell them that Americans will never really change. They used to think I was kidding. Looking at Americans voting down better healthcare during a pandemic…then happily crowd parks and beaches…after protesting for liberation from lockdown…they’re beginning to believe me.

Change? You know about sunk costs, I’m sure. You should let them go…but you can’t. Think of a bad relationship. You know you should break up. But how can you let all that investment go? So it is with Americans and freedom. They’re too invested in the fools’ idea of freedom that wrecked their future to really begin to understand that it is a fools’ definition of freedom. They’ll go on thinking, in my estimation, that freedom means things like this.

Carrying a gun to Starbucks — so kids have to do active shooter drills. Being able to “choose” between a million health insurance plans, none of which covers you — so that you don’t have to pay higher taxes to the hated government. Making everyone stand on their own two feet — even while every force in society is cutting those very limbs away. Never taking any kind of collective action as a society — that’s socialism! That’s communism!! Those things are bad!! They’re terrible!

No, my friends. Americans will never understand the miracle of European social democracy, of Canadian investment in each other, of New Zealand making a difficult, joyous peace with a broken past. They won’t. Because they can’t? Because they don’t want to? Because nobody teaches them about the gentle and beautiful power in cooperation, in dignity, in respect for the self and others as more than a thing of appetite? Because they’re trapped by a sordid history — which they secretly care little about overcoming?

Maybe, in the end, it’s just all the above.

Freedom! Here I am, the American idiot, carrying my gun to Starbucks, before I go to Walmart, where I’ll choose between a million different flavors of the Everyday Low Price, and then I’ll dream about being Great Again, while I drive my big car down the big, empty highway, listening to some bellowing mullah of capital and individualism and cruelty telling me to hate and rage a little more. Along the way, so what if I create my very own exploitation, abuse, misery, decline into poverty, despair, degradation, dehumanization? Hey! Don’t tell me any different!

Isn’t that what freedom really is?

When in trouble politically, governments have traditionally conjured up a foreign enemy to explain why things are going wrong. Whatever one chooses to believe about the coronavirus, the fact is that it has resulted in considerable political backlash against a number of governments whose behavior has been perceived as either too extreme or too dilatory. Donald Trump’s White House has taken shots from both directions and the response to the disease has also been pilloried due to repeated gaffes by the president himself. The latest mis-spoke, now being framed by Trump’s press secretary as sarcasm, involved a presidential suggestion that one might consider injecting or imbibing disinfectant to treat the disease, either of which could easily prove lethal.

So, the administration is desperate to change the narrative and has decided to hit on the old expedient, namely seeking out a foreign enemy to distract from what is going on in the nation’s hospitals. The tale of malevolent foreigners has been picked up by a number of mainstream media outlets and has proven especially titillating because there is not just one bad guy, but instead at least four: China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

The accepted narrative is that America’s enemies are now taking advantage of a moment of weakness due to the lockdown response to the coronavirus and have stepped up their attacks, both physical and metaphorical, on the Exceptional Nation Under God. The most recent claim that the United States is being targeted involves an incident in mid-April during which a swarm of Iranian gunboats allegedly harassed a group of American warships conducting a training exercise in the Persian Gulf by crossing the bows and sterns of the U.S. vessels at close range. The maneuvers were described by the Navy as “unsafe and unprofessional” but the tiny speedboats in no way threatened the much larger warships (note the photo in the link which illustrates the disparity in size between the two vessels).

Donald Trump characteristically responded to the incident with a tweet last Wednesday: “I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea.” Although no context was provided, the president commands the armed forces and the tweet essentially defined the rules of engagement, meaning that it would be up to the ships’ commanders to determine whether or not they are being harassed. If so, the would be able to open fire and destroy the Iranian boats. Of course, there might be a physical problem in “shooting down” a gunboat that is in the water rather than in the air.

In the Mediterranean the threat against the U.S. consisted of two Russian jet fighters flying close to a Navy P8-A submarine surveillance plane. The Russian fighters were scrambled from Hmeymim air base in Syria after the U.S. aircraft approached Syrian airspace and Russian military facilities. One of the fighters, a SU-35 carried out an “unsafe” maneuver when it flew upside down at high-speed 25 feet in front of the Navy plane.

Also in mid-April, North Korea meanwhile fired cruise missiles into the Sea of Japan amidst rumors that its head of state Kim Jong Un might be dead or dying after major surgery. President Trump was unconcerned about the missiles and also commented that he had received a “nice note” from the North Korean leader.

Wars and rumors of wars notwithstanding, China continues to be the principal target for Democrats and Republicans alike on Capitol Hill. GOP congressmen are reportedly urging sanctions against China while there are already a number of coronavirus lawsuits targeting Chinese assets in U.S. courts, at least one of which has a trillion dollar price tag. Theories about the deliberate weaponization of the Wuhan virus abound and they are also mixed in with stories of how Beijing unleashed the weapons and is now engaged in Russia style social media intervention to promote the notion that the United States has proven incapable of handling what has become a major medical emergency. However, those who are pushing the idea that the Chinese communist party has declared war by other means fail to explain why the government in Beijing is so keen on destroying its largest export market. If the U.S. economy goes down a large part of the Chinese economy will go with it, particularly if China’s second largest export market Europe is also suffering.

The craziness of what is going on in the context of the disruption caused by the coronavirus has apparently increased the normal paranoia level at the top levels of the U.S. government. Pentagon plans to fight a war with Russia and China simultaneously, first mooted in 2018, are still a work in progress in spite of the fact that Washington has fewer cards to play currently than it did two years ago. The economy is down and prospects for recovery are speculative at best, but the war machine rolls on. Many Americans tired of the perpetual warfare are hoping that the virus aftermath will include demands for a genuine national health system that will perforce gut the Pentagon budget, leading to an eventual withdrawal from empire.

In spite of the hysteria, it is important to note that no Americans have been killed or injured as a result of recent Iranian, Russian, Chinese and North Korean actions. When you station ships and planes close to or even on the borders of countries that you have labeled as enemies it would be reasonable to expect that there will be pushback. And as for taking advantage of the virus, it is the United States that has suggested that it would do so in the cases of Iran and Venezuela, exerting “maximum pressure” on both countries in their times of troubles to bring about regime change. If those countries that are accustomed to being regularly targeted by the United States are taking advantage of an opportunity to diminish America’s ability to intervene globally, no one should be surprised, but it is a fantasy to make the hysterical claim that the United States has now become the victim of some kind of vast international conspiracy.