The term Palestine was said to be derived from the Philistines, an Aegean people who settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain in the twelfth century BCE. This is the land that became known as Israel and the Gaza Strip. It was the Romans who first used the name Palaestina as reference to Judea (the southern West Bank) in the second century CE following the Jewish Revolt. [1] The Hebrews settled in Israel around 1300 BCE. At this time, the Israelis were believed to be tribal communities governed by a King named Saul. In about 1000 BCE King David established Jerusalem as the capital and David’s son Solomon built the Temple, which helped to bring the population together as one people. The land was divided under Solomon’s son who took the northern kingdom (Israel). The Assyrians attacked and destroyed it in 722 BCE. The southern kingdom of Judah survived until 568 BCE when the Babylonians sacked it. By 135 CE the Jews were driven en-mass out of their homeland. [2] They would not return until after the Second World War in 1948.
When the Romans governed Palestine, it was also part of Syria and by the time of the Crusades the area stretched from Beirut to the Sinai Desert on both sides of the River Jordan, this area was known as the Holy Land. The Roman Empires stretched across Europe and the Middle East, it was massive, but much of it was eventually conquered by the Muslims. After the Christian Crusades to win back Jerusalem the Muslims divided the area into districts. Palestine did not become an official district until the early Middle Ages.[3] Palestine was the subject of a British Mandate and the official name of a territory called Palestine did not exist until the early Middle Ages. [4]
After World War I, France and Britain drove the Turks back and carved up the Ottoman Empire, this set the boundaries for Palestine. At this time Palestine initially included both sides of the Jordan River until Churchill arbitrarily severed more than three-fourths of the area to create Transjordan. In addition, part of the Golan Heights was transferred from Palestine to Syria. The spoken language was Arabic, but Palestine was never an Arab country, rather one of mixed race. No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine.
Palestinian Arab nationalism was largely a post–World War I phenomenon that did not become a significant political movement until after the Six-Day War. For the duration, Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip. Palestinian nationalists made no claims for an independent state. When the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) was created by the Arab League to advance the interests of Arab governments it was interested in driving the Jews out of the area, not to create a Palestinian state.[5]
[1]The Arabic word Filastin is derived from this Latin name (Yehoshua Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918–1929, London: Frank Cass, 1974, p. 4).
[2] Max Dimont, Jews, God, and History, NY: Signet, 1962, pp. 49–53).
[3] Bernard Lewis, “On the History and Geography of a Name,” The International History Review, Vol. 2, No. 1, January 1980, pp. 1-12) and www.myjewishlibrary.com Retrieved 28th January 2020.
Governments across the world seem to be gaining more control over their populations and only a few seem to be bothered by the very obvious constraints on personal freedoms.
Why is it that people accept control so readily? Why are we so compliant?
The answer might be that political and social changes are discursive. We don’t see them coming. But, how does one explain the blatant curtailment of assumed and inalienable rights?
Maybe those rights were never there in the first place? Perhaps, we as the people, have just been duped. What we see, is only what we want to believe.
Nothing in politics ever happens by chance. There is always a science behind every decision and history has shown just how easy it is for science to control the masses. There are techniques and text books galore on how to convince people that something bad might actually be good for them. Reverse psychology works well, propaganda is even better. If we want answers we must look to the science. Science changes human perspectives.
There are three ways to seduce the masses; people are much easier to control when they feel cared for. That is, when the burden of individual responsibility is lifted. In this sense slavery may not be seen as an adverse state of affairs. People can be happy slaves. Populations are also easily controlled when they are living in fear. In addition, people are easily shaped when they are in communities of like-mindedness. Individuality is the enemy of the state.
None of these techniques are new Aldous Huxley’s classic dystopian novel, Brave New World, detailed the criteria for oppression by the state almost 90 years ago, prior to World War II; little has changed.
We are living in a technocratic world and for the most part people are loving it. The truth is we don’t see the wood for the trees. Our minds are cluttered with everyday events and material rewards for good behaviour.
The scientific tale of mental obliteration is a global phenomenon.
But, wait, we are human beings, we have minds of our own don’t we? What happened to evolution?
Let’s go back to those crucial states of emotion, fear, like-mindedness and the need for care (community). All very normal conditions, but they are also easy targets for manipulation.
Rich or poor, life has always been a struggle to survive. It has got harder because the problems are not so simple. We are a people suffering mass anxieties and they are escalating, which gives science, and in particular the pharmaceutical companies, a great opportunity to seize power over the individual.
Let’s start with fear. The world is a dangerous place, made more visible by the media. There is terrorism across the Earth, Climate Chane is upon us and although we may not feel the impacts of these events directly, they resonate with past memories. In fear we need protection (care). We give up our liberties to be protected. Yet, are we really protected? The authority that protects is also that which causes us fear.
In extreme cases governments and dictators have no qualm’s about shooting their own people, so we must comply. The masses then become, not just compliant, they believe they are on the right side, regardless of any lapses in morality or justice.
Huxley had a vision of this hell and wrote about it. Brave New World was a novel that predicted that one day we would all wake-up to a fascist dictator running our lives. Huxley knew this would happen because he witnessed the collaboration between the world’s governments and the wealthy. Fear, care and like-mindedness is how the rich made their money and controlled the masses, so governments did the same. Power escalates by controlling the masses.
The passion for power is built into the human psyche and it equates with the struggle for survival. But, the powerful have another discursive trick up their sleeve, they know that they can change the name of power discursively and/or replace it with a seemingly different system, such as democracy, which is not equality for all, as many people assume. Rather, democracy is majority rule (like-mindedness).
Democracy sets the benchmark against which power can be measured without actually having to reveal the source of the power. Documents, are a tool of democracy, they also serve to hide the source of power.
Huxley tells us that, the British and American Constitution excepted devices for limiting power, and all these devices are extremely efficient instruments for the imposition of power by small groups over larger masses. Legal documents turn the tables on the idea that there is power in numbers.
When all of the above fails, there are always the mind-altering pharmaceuticals. Legal or otherwise, drugs are the new potent form of slavery. Drugs can make people feel in control of situations. They offer a false sense of power.
Drugs can make people feel happy… for a while. Then the doses have to be increased for the drugs to be effective and eventually the recipient dies of organ failure or the fact that the drugs have magnified the original problem to such a high degree that life can no long be confronted… it is simply not worth living.
In the 1960s there was a sexual revolution that changed human behaviour. The contraceptive pill made men and women feel they had sexual freedom with no consequences. The freedom added a level of happiness. The pharmaceutical companies learned from this experiment and began making happy pills. The recipient could be happy without being responsible.
Now these mind-altering drugs have accelerated in production and effectiveness and they are changing brains and causing a disruption in the general fabric of societies everywhere in the world.
How did we get to this stage of play?
In order to get to where we are today science has had to learn about the human thought processes and how to change them. Access to the subconscious by scientists and professional practitioners is now routine.
If you go to a psychologist thinking you will come our with a mind of your own, think again! You might come away less confused, but you will be cast in the mould of what is socially or politically acceptable.
This might not seem like a bad thing. Being different is no easy way to live. Those who are different are subject to peer group pressure or worse. Being different can be an emotional roller-coaster. At the extreme end, it can also land a person in prison or a mental institution.
The emotions are stronger than reason and if any government wants to influence the masses, then it will do it through the channels of emotion aided by drugs and propaganda. This then becomes embedded into a culture and viewed as a natural and inevitable outcome of progress, or an individual life moving forward.
Huxley focused on forms of propaganda where the minds of the masses were hijacked and used for political means. Propaganda is very powerful. The brain operates on repetition, this is how we learn and how we remember. Emotional propaganda by-passes the rational elements of the human brain and excites the survival instincts. When this happens on mass it becomes a shared experience. Soon people begin to love their struggle because it doesn’t occur alone. No one is ever alone in their misery.
So what does the Bible have to say about contagious diseases or pandemics? In the older portion of the Bible, the primary language is ancient Hebrew. The Hebrew word for contagious disease or pandemic is dever. It occurs around 50 times in the “Old Testament”. The root word in the Hebrew has the meaning of “destroying”, with an extended meaning of “pestilence” or “plague”. Ironically, this word is not only associated with contagious disease, it is often associated with animals; it is the “cattle disease”of Exodus 9:3.
God was planning to use the threat of pestilence to scare off the Canaanites (local inhabitants of the land of Canaan), so Israel wouldn’t have to fight to enter the “promised land” (Numbers 14:12). We know, from current experience, how easily a pandemic can induce panic and irrational behaviour.
The most common occurrence of “pestilence” in the Hebrew portion of the Bible was as a consequence of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God. When Israel was unfaithful to God, they lost His protection, with the result that enemies would invade their land and cause destruction. In that context we repeatedly find the infamous trio: war, famine and pestilence (Leviticus 26:25; Jeremiah 24:10; Ezekiel 14:12–21). The three together portray the siege of an ancient city. War drives a people inside the walls of the city, famine follows as the siege continues and the end-result is contagious disease followed by exile (Leviticus 26:21–26; Jeremiah 21:6–9; Ezekiel 7:15). The important point for us, wondering about the spiritual significance of our current situation, is that contagious disease (Hebrew: dever) is not in these contexts portrayed as an active punishment from God, but rather as the consequence of disobedience, which results in a loss of God’s protection (Jeremiah 27:13; 32:14; 34:17; 38:2). Pandemics don’t come because God is angry with people, they are the natural consequences of human foolishness and rebellion.
The more recent portion of the Bible (the New Testament—written in the common Greek of the Roman world) has less to say about contagious disease. Luke 21:11 associates pestilence (Greek: loimos, loimoi) with earthquakes, famines and heavenly signs that would occur at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. But the word is not found in the part of Luke 21 that addresses the end of the world (Luke 21:25–28).
Some Bible versions, which rely on later Greek manuscripts, refer to “pestilence” in Matthew 24:7, which is a parallel text to Luke 21:11. But even if this were an accurate translation, Matthew 24:8, again, does not mention pestilence as a feature of the end times, but as part of “the beginning of birth pains”.
Pestilence was seen by Jesus as something general to the human experience, not something especially associated with the end. The word is also used metaphorically in Acts 24:5—“This Paul is such a pest.” That derogatory reference gives, of course, no clue as to the meaning of COVID-19 today.
There is another Greek word that often translated as “pestilence.” It is thanatos—a common Greek word for “death” and the usual word chosen in the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, to translate dever. So the Greek word for death at the time when the New Testament was written can carry connotations of “pestilence”, or pandemic.
Thanatos is used in this way three times in the book of Revelation. In Revelation 2:23, it is used in the context of a specific event that is in the past today. The second reference is found in Revelation 6:8. The rider on the pale horse is given authority over a fourth of the earth, to smite with sword, famine, and pestilence. Like Matthew 24 and Luke 21, pestilence is predicted to be a general characteristic of human history, which has certainly been the case.
The third reference to thanatos (death/pestilence) is clearly in an end-time context, however. Pestilence is one of the consequences of “Babylon’s” fall just before the second coming of Jesus. This text does not tell us that Covid-19 is a sign of the end—there is not enough information to be that specific. But it does indicate, more than other biblical texts, that pandemics are likely to be a feature of the end-times.
There is one other end-time text that could be relevant to our questions, and that is Revelation 16:2, which speaks of sores afflicting those who have the “mark of the beast”. While these sores are serious, the biblical words for contagious disease or pandemic are not used there.
The short conclusion of this biblical study is two-fold:
1) Pandemic as such is not a “sign of the end”. Since far worse pandemics have occurred in history, Covid-19 should not be used as an indicator of where we are in history. If the end-times are at hand, other indicators will prove to be more significant that this one. To put it plainly, Bible prophecy does not indicate that pandemic is a key element of the “signs of the end”, but neither does it rule it out as one of the troubles of the End.
2) Pandemic is not a direct, active punishment of God; it is a consequence of the human condition that the Bible calls sin and rebellion against God. According to the Bible, God (through Jesus Christ) is the Author and Sustainer of life (John 1:3–5). But there are forces in the universe that oppose God and create pain and destruction (Job 1:6–12; 2:1–6). To the degree that the word “judgement” is appropriate in a pandemic, it is God allowing the human condition to take its course and reap its consequences.
Is there anything else in the Bible that may be helpful in the current crisis? In the Old Testament contexts, contagious disease was a condition that could and should be alleviated by human action (Jeremiah 27:13; 38:2). The most practical remedy offered for contagious disease in the Bible is, in fact, social isolation (Numbers 5:1–4; see also Numbers 12:10–15 and Leviticus 13:45–46), the very strategy many of us are now using. It is important for a community to place a separation between those who have the disease and those who do not, as far as this is possible. Co-operating with authorities in these matters should not create an issue of conscience for believers; in fact, conscience should encourage co-operation in a crisis like this (Romans 13:1–5).
Having said all this, prophecy clearly indicates that panic is one characteristic of the final events (Luke 21:25,26). Could Covid-19 lead to eschatological levels of panic? I am not a prophet, an economist or a scientist, so take the following with a grain of salt. Covid-19, as we experience it, could get a whole lot worse, killing (in the worst case scenario publicly stated) more than 130,000 Australians and tens of millions worldwide. That would put it in Spanish flu territory, but not Black Plague numbers. The greatest concern would not be the current virus, but a mutation of the virus into something even more dangerous. This possibility is something to watch closely, but it does not seem likely to me (I am open to correction on this from scientific sources, not internet speculation). Viruses tend to decrease in potency over time rather than increase. And, due to lack of widespread testing, the death rate is probably much lower than three per cent right now, as many people who have COVID-19 don’t even know it. In Germany, a nation where testing has been much more widespread than most places, the death rate is currently about 0.08 per cent, around a quarter of the world rate. In the USA it is currently less than two per cent.
My greater concern for the future is the economic fallout of social isolation over many months (if that proves necessary). Worst-case estimates are that unemployment could reach 20 per cent or more here in the USA if the lockdowns last 6–12 months. This could trigger another Great Depression. Given the panic buying already occurring, the social order in a Facebook, post-Christian world could easily break down, leading to rioting, looting and other consequences. Among the likely consequences would be the end of face-to-face higher education as we know it, a long-term decline in tourism and international travel, a major decline in the restaurant industry and in–person retail, and in today’s climate, a serious increase in perceived anti-Christian persecution.
A couple of years from now, it is very possible that the current, global response to Covid-19 will be perceived as an over-reaction. But since we will never know for sure if that is really true, I am glad we are doing what we are doing, just in case. As to when the final events of earth’s history will happen, the words of Jesus remain relevant: “Stay awake, because you don’t know” (Matthew 24:42).
Dr Jon Paulien is Dean at the Loma Linda University School of Religion, California USA. Re-posted with courtesy from his blog, revelation-armageddon.com.
Scientists across the world have been anticipating a pandemic. A year before COVID-19 was first detected, biologists at the University of Warsaw published “Bats, Coronaviruses, and Deforestation,” a paper that links the rapid destruction of the natural habitats of bats to the spread of coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV.
The rainforests of Southeast Asia have been reduced by 50 percent over the last 70 years. .Across the world, natural habitat is being destroyed bringing disease-carrying animals in closer contact with humans than ever before. It then details that 31 percent of the viruses that bats are capable of carrying are different forms of coronaviruses. Finally, it ends with a prophetic warning: “The risk of newly emerging CoVs-associated diseases in the future should be considered seriously.”
The total amount of infectious disease outbreaks around the world has been steadily increasing over the last four decades, according to a 2014 study by Brown University scientists. During that time, the world’s forest coverage has been reduced to half its size. The majority (60 percent) of these new outbreaks were animal-borne (zoonotic) diseases, including the Ebola virus, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, H1N1 “swine flu,” Nipah virus and many others. The Brown University scientists therefore attributed this recent global rise in infectious disease primarily to an increase in “pathogens spilling over to humans from wildlife.”
Carlos Zambrana-Torrelio, the associated vice president for conservation and health at the EcoHealth Alliance, analyzed over 704 different infectious disease outbreaks between the years 1940 and 2008, and found that measuring the rate of deforestation in a given area was the number one predictor of where the next pandemic will occur. “Scientists have been sending out warnings about this for years now,” Zambrana-Torrelio told Truthout. “We can’t keep encroaching upon the natural habitats of wildlife without taking into consideration what deadly diseases might spill over from that wildlife into the neighboring humans.”
Regions of the Amazon with increased rates of deforestation have concurrently experienced increased rates of malaria in humans. As climate change withers away the canopy of trees that act as the “ceiling” of the rainforest, puddles of stagnant water are becoming increasingly common on the ground. Mosquitos, particularly the kind that carry malaria, love to breed in this murky standing water. This increase in mosquito population in deforested areas is going largely unchecked due to their natural predators, mainly frogs and dragonflies, dying off in the destroyed habitat.
“Normally, trees can absorb stagnant water through their roots,” Andy MacDonald, a disease ecologist and environmental scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told Truthout. “But if there’s not enough trees around, the stagnant water remains, creating a prime breeding ground for mosquitoes.” The areas of the rainforest where there’s the most standing water, MacDonald said, corresponds to the same areas where humans are encroaching upon and destroying the trees. “This creates deadly potential for interaction between people and malaria-carrying mosquitoes.”
A similar phenomenon happens in the rainforests of Southeast Asia, where El Niño droughts are becoming increasingly intense due to rising global temperatures. The 1998 El Niño drought, for example, occurred at the exact same time as the 1998 Nipah virus outbreak in Malaysia. “The drought caused mass forest fires that swept the region. These fires created a huge smog that prevented the plants from growing fruit,” said Amy Vittor, an assistant professor at the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute told Truthout. “This forced the flying fox bats of the rainforest to migrate to the towns of Malaysia.”
Measuring the rate of deforestation in a given area was the number one predictor of where the next pandemic will occur.
Some of these bats flocked to Malaysian pig farms, where the first cases of Nipah virus were reported. Bats would bite into fruit that the pigs ate, causing the virus to spread to the pigs. Humans caught the virus when they came in contact with the pigs.
The majority of global deforestation today is driven by multinational corporations, including Cargill, JBS and Mafrig, as well as their creditors BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC. These corporations clear acres of land for the mass production of a single cash crop. The Amazon, for example, is primarily being destroyed for products that people in Western countries buy but do not necessarily need — palm oil, sugar cane or various biofuels like ethanol.
Monocrop farming, in which large swathes of land are dedicated for the repeated production of a single crop, is a relatively new phenomenon that depletes soil (such as in the case of the 1930s Dust Bowl), leaves crops vulnerable to pests (as in the case of the Irish potato famine) and leaves humans vulnerable to disease by reducing the biodiversity of animals in the surrounding region (as in the case of global bee populations).
“Farms that produce a variety of crops will attract a variety of wildlife that come to feed on the crops,” biologist John Swaddle of the College of William & Mary told Truthout. On the flip side, when a farm is only producing a single type of crop, it will only attract a limited variety of animals. If one type of animal from that limited variety catches a disease, the entire ecosystem is threatened. This dynamic creates what is commonly known as the dilution effect: The more types of species there are in a given ecosystem, the more resistant the overall ecosystem will be to the spread of disease.
West Nile virus, for example, infects some species of birds more easily than others. Ducks and geese are naturally more resistant to contracting and spreading the virus, so they act as a kind of “buffer” against the species that are more vulnerable to the virus, like crows and finches. If a mosquito carrying West Nile virus bites into a duck or goose, it is likely that the virus will simply die off in their system. To investigate this phenomenon, Swaddle compared every county in the eastern U.S. that reported a case of West Nile virus in 2002 (the first year of the outbreak) to a neighboring county that did not. The result? On average, the counties that reported cases of West Nile virus had a significantly lower diversity of bird species than the counties that had no cases. And what factors affect the biodiversity of bird species in a given area? Deforestation, climate change and monoculture farming.
The Amazon is primarily being destroyed for products that people in Western countries buy but do not necessarily need.
Likewise, the rise of monocrop palm plantations in the forests of West Africa have been a significant driver of the spread of the Ebola virus. The first known cases of the 2013 Ebola outbreak occurred in the Guinean villages of Guéckédou and Meliandou, which are both surrounded by areas that had been heavily deforested for monocrop palm plantations. Much of the Upper Guinean forests have been reduced to 16 percent of the size that they were in 1975. This is largely due to the industrial monocrop farming of western-backed corporations like the Guinean Oil Palm and Rubber Company, which is financed by the European Investment Bank. As Ebola-carrying bats are pushed out of their natural habitat, they flock to places like palm oil plantations, where they can find ample food and shelter.
Another one of the largest corporations driving deforestation, and thereby the spread of Ebola in West Africa, is the London-based Farm Lands of Africa, Ltd. Between 2010 and 2012, the three years leading up to the 2013 Ebola outbreak, Farm Lands of Africa acquired over 1,608,215 hectares of forest in the Congo Basin. This massive land grab forcibly displaced thousands of families, turning land that was previously used primarily for vegetable farming by Indigenous people into monoculture plantations for the export of cash crops like palm oil. It also displaced thousands of Ebola-carrying fruit bats — many of which are attracted to the rich vegetation and shelter of the palm plantations.
The world’s rainforests are not being destroyed to feed people. “Many options exist to meet the global food supply in 2050 without deforestation,” wrote University of Klagenfurt ecologist Karl-Heinz Erb in the journal Nature. Forests are primarily being cleared for the plunder of cash crops that mostly benefit the wealthy heads of multinational corporations.
Such is the case with the PT. Hardaya Inti Plantations company, owned by billionaire Siti Hartati Murdaya, which has seized over 22,000 hectares of land in Indonesia for monoculture palm oil plantations. The acquisition displaced over 6,500 families by destroying the subsistence farms and forests that they relied on to live. Half of those families ended up working on the palm plantations, where they were cruelly exploited for meager wages. So it is questionable whether this deforestation is benefiting the majority of Indonesians, beyond its billionaire kleptocrats. On top of that, the resulting environmental destruction is causing a mass displacement of wildlife in the region, leading to the proliferation of malaria and dengue.
As University of Ferrara scientists state in their April 2020 paper, “The novel zoonotic COVID-19 pandemic: An expected global health concern,” the current COVID-19 pandemic was highly predictable. Based on the patterns of deforestation associated with the two most recent outbreaks of other coronaviruses, SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, as well as countless other animal-borne diseases, including Ebola, malaria and dengue fever, there is much evidence to suggest that this current pandemic is part of a larger global trend.
“If we want to do everything we can to prevent the next pandemic from occurring,” Zambrana-Torrelio said, “we must stop deforestation.”
I am no economist or political analyst, but as a general theorist here is my take on the coronavirus. There is no doubt this pandemic has caused panic in the world’s communities and while many are suffering, we only have to look back into history to see that there will always be those who find ways to benefit from other’s who are in pain. Plagues have brought down governments and destroyed empires. During the 6th Century bubonic plague stopped Justinian I from reuniting the west and eastern sectors of the Roman Empire. It ended an era and invoked the period we call the Dark Ages.
As for the current coronavirus pandemic, two things caught my attention, first the massive billions, if not trillions of dollars worldwide, put into stimulus packages and second, the institution of what is effectively Marshall Law in Australia. Let us think about these two things first and foremost, beginning with Marshall Law. Governments bring in the military when there is a strong likelihood the population will riot to bring down the authority and damage individual economies of a country, or in this case the global economy. To put it more succinctly when the elite in society, those who run the society, have their position severely threatened they come out fighting.
As for the amount of money governments have thrown at a world-wide economic stimulus, this is unprecedented and it is designed to prop-up the (global) economy. No secrets here!
A crash in any economy usually leads to chaos and the more people hurt, the bigger the threat to the elite. History shows us that the result is usually violent. So, who then are the threatened elite? We like to think of them as the rulers, the banks and big business; but in reality, they are the entrepreneurs, investors and largely the middle class. The capitalist revolution was a middle-class revolution that stole the power of the aristocratic society. That said, the middle class did not want equality or justice, they wanted what the aristocratic society had. The middle class are the mass consumers and the engine that drives capitalist consumption. If the middle-class fall into decline (and this is happening) so too does capitalism fall into decline. What we see instead is the establishment of oligarchs.
What we have today is a declining middle-class and the establishment of a global labour class, which also causes a decline in broad based investments and brings about new forms of centralisation in capital and power.
Following the Second World War, the British Empire was in deep financial trouble and the war itself had taken its toll on Briton’s economic power. Hence, America won the privilege of leading the world’s economy. However, the American boom is over and the militarist imperialist policies of Poincaré have failed. Global capitalism is in decline and declining rapidly despite reports to the contrary.
Capitalism began declining following the Second World War. Prior to the Second World War the bourgeoisie had succeeded throughout the world, with the exception of Russia and China, in establishing its capitalist hegemony, but the short post-war boom ended in a period of crisis for capitalism and it never fully recovered. We have been going down hill ever since with consecutive booms and busts, each being longer and more difficult than the one before. As capitalism expanded geographically it has drawn the originators (the middle class elites) into a vortex, whereby attempts to boost the middle class do not satisfy the labour needs of global markets. Inevitably, the middle class must become the new working poor.
Let us put aside the devastating impacts of a pandemic on ordinary people and look at who benefits. What we know from past experience that whenever there is a crisis, no matter what the context, governments always manage to secure more powers and in some cases, they will turn ordinary civilian life into life in a police state. This in part gives governments some indication of how far they can push the public before the radical groups protest. It is a way of testing whether the Constitution and Human Rights can survive a crisis and a scheme of rigid authoritarian discipline. Why would governments want to test the waters this way? Governments and economists across the world know that capitalism is a sinking ship. How else can they prepare for the inevitable? People are going to be hurting and the masses will protest.
Nonetheless, as far as government are concerned, knowing what is happening to global economies on a grand scale cannot change it. Capitalism is now a lost cause. Capitalism has reached its apex.
Western nations in particular are terrified of a total capitalist collapse, because when governments fail, the people have to step up. Today, we are seeing people stepping up. Communities are becoming more cooperative, independent and sustainable. This is not good for big business and it is not good for capitalism
I am not saying that the coronavirus was deliberately introduced for political means. I am not advocating any kind of conspiracy. What I am saying is, the coronavirus has provided an opportunity for governments to gamble huge amounts of money, not only to keep capitalism afloat, but as a two-way bet on future markets. When the markets are cheap the elite go shopping and they make millions when markets recover again. This may seem like a good thing and perhaps the economies will bounce back; but it will only forestall the inevitable.
The transition to an equitable way of life is not going to be easy. The elites will hold on to their power in any way possible. What the coronavirus crisis has done is to shed light on numerous other problems, such as the damaging effects humans have on the planet, which is going to cause a collapse anyway if we do not act to prevent it.
Supreme political and social control take a discursive and insidious journey through everyday affairs and a politics of opportunism. According to John Hopkins Coronavirus Centre and Transcend media, official reports indicate that the COVID-19 virus has so far infected 372,563 people in a world population of 7,800,000,000 (that is, about .0048% of the human population), killing 16,380 (4.3% of those infected) with 100,885 (27%) recovered already (and many more highly likely to do so). Moreover, as one doctor has reported after researching the data on Italy, where the greatest rate of COVID-19 infection has occurred: ‘80% of the deceased had suffered from two or more chronic diseases’ and ‘90% of the deceased are over 70 years old’. In addition, ‘Less than 1% of the deceased were healthy persons’ defined, very simply, as ‘persons without pre-existing chronic diseases.’
Compare this to the ever-increasing numbers of people suffering human displacement through wars, poverty, curable illnesses and climate change. The coronavirus will peak and reach its end. The other injustices will continue and increase as capitalism falls into greater decline.
This is not to undermine the serious impact coronavirus has had on individuals and communities. Rather, to just look at the bigger picture. We know that coronavirus can have a perilous impact on health and the relative support systems, but keep in mind that those who surrender their Rights rarely get them back.
We demand action on Climate Change. Why are we NOT outraged at the proliferation of nuclear weapons?
Albert Einstein wrote: “Man has within him a lust for hatred and destruction. In normal circumstances this passion exists in a latent state; it emerges only in unusual circumstances; but it is comparatively easy to call into play and rise to the power of a collective psychosis”. How do we tame the human animal? When a world government was suggested the west thought it a communist idea and the east thought the west was wanting supremacy. Perhaps it was a good idea, but nobody wanted it. Is there hope for a federation of nations coming together for peace?
I, for one, am outraged at the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force. I cannot believe this was a rationally calculated decision, but one reflecting President Trump’s instability, narcissism and envy. Further, it came after the U.S. President had said he had no desire to go to war, he was against wars. In fact, he had pulled troops out of the region.
This act of war carried out against Iran demonstrates the unpredictability of the U.S. President and the need to have him removed immediately. There is an impeachment notice pending, but action appears to have stalled due to the fear that an impeachment trial to convict Donald Trump will fail. This raises the question of why the man, pending such a hearing, is still allowed to make crucial decisions that impact directly upon the nation’s safety and well-being. It is a constitutional question that America needs to address.
Qasem Soleimani was one of the most influential and popular figures in the Islamic Republic and a thorn in the side of the United States, but he made no direct threat against the American homeland, in fact he fought against one of Americas main enemies, Islamic State (ISIS). Had the U.S. stayed out of Middle Eastern politics in the first place, we may never have heard of Qasem Soleimani.
In effect, we must rely on the western media, from which we learn that Qasem Soleimani led Iran’s campaign to arm and train Shiite militias in Iraq, the war that America fought on the basis of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction that were eventually found not to have existed. America’s miscalculations in respect of this war were incomparable.
While Qasem Soleimani could be said to be responsible for the deaths of an estimated 600 American troops from 2003 to 2011, tens of thousands of people died fighting in the Iraq War, which lasted for 15 years. Nearly 5,000 of them were U.S. service members. Tens of thousands were insurgents battling the transitional Iraqi government put in place after Saddam Hussein was ousted.[1]
The true number of deaths is not known. During the Islamic State’s occupation (they held a third of the country) the death toll escalated into the hundreds of thousands. Many civilians were killed as a result of violence and many died due to the collapse of infrastructure. The emergence of the Islamic State increased the ensuing instability and prolonged what was a three-phase war brought about by the U.S.
Qasem Soleimani was the chief purveyor of Iranian political influence in Iraq, most notably through his efforts to fight the Islamic State (ISIS).[2] At the closure of this epoch America did not only turn on its enemies, but also its friends.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump argues that Soleimani was a terrorist and that assassinating him was a defensive action that stopped an imminent attack. Accordingly, the Washington Post, details how Qasem Soleimani is said to have driven “Iran’s policies to arm and support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including by deploying an estimated 50,000 Shiite militia fighters to Syria”. He was believed to be “the point man for Iran’s relationship with Hezbollah in Lebanon, helping to supply the group with missiles and rockets to threaten Israel”. In addition, he was accused of creating “Iran’s strategy to arm the Houthis in Yemen”. Undoubtedly, Soleimani was a cult hero in Iran and across the region.
There is no simple answer to these accusations, it comes down to issues of neo-colonization by the west and if this is going to be acceptable or not. Seemingly, it is not! And why should it be?
Whether the accusations against Soleimani are true or not, the action against the Iranian general by the U.S. was just another example of the reckless policy the U.S. administration has pursued since it came into office.
In May 2018, Trump left the Iran nuclear agreement and adopted a “maximum pressure” policy of economic sanctions on Iran. For a year, Iran responded with restraint in an effort to isolate the United States diplomatically and win economic concessions from other parties to the nuclear agreement.
There was no restrained approach by the U.S. The President is known for throwing his weight around and his tactics of bullying. By May 2019, it was alleged that Tehran had chosen instead to breach the nuclear agreement. The President had thought the agreement irrelevant anyway.
This escalated tensions across the region.
Then came Iranian mine attacks against international shipping in May and June, if they were caused by Iran, all we have is the American President’s say so… Then Iran shot down a U.S., drone. Was the drone in Iran’s territory? It was open to question. In September, Iranian missiles struck the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia, the most important piece of oil infrastructure in the world. Again, we only have the word of the President and his cohorts as to who was responsible for this breach. Then we are told, Shiite militia groups began launching rockets at U.S. bases in Iraq.
The fact is, who can we believe? The President is not known for his honesty.
Where is the rule of law, innocent until proven guilty? Personally, I am, not one who is willing to take Donald Trump at his word.
None of the actions carried out by Qasem Soleimani or other parties give the U.S., the right to assassinate him, it brings the International Law into disrepute and it only serves to escalate the already existing tensions in the region.
Can America pull back from this without going to war? Maybe, but frankly, I feel this whole scenario is not going to end well.
Where to now? This from the Washington Post’s correspondent.
“The most important question now is how will Iran respond. The Islamic Republic’s behavior over the past few months and over its long history suggests that it may not rush to retaliate. Rather, it will carefully and patiently choose an approach that it deems effective, and it will likely try to avoid an all-out war with the United States. Nonetheless, the events of the past few days demonstrate that the risk of miscalculation is incredibly high. Soleimani clearly didn’t believe that the United States was going to dramatically escalate or he wouldn’t have left himself so vulnerable, only a stone’s throw away from U.S. military forces in Iraq. For his part, Trump has been adamant about his lack of interest in starting a new war in the Middle East—and yet, here we are at the precipice”.
The correspondent goes on to say,
“United States must, at a minimum, expect to find itself in conflict with Shiite militias in Iraq that will target U.S. forces, diplomats, and civilians. Iraq is the theater where the U.S. strike took place and therefore the most rational place for Iran to immediately respond. Moreover, the militia groups have already been escalating their activities over the past six months. They are among Iran’s most responsive proxies and will be highly motivated, given that Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, one of their top commanders, was killed in the strike along with Soleimani.”
The assassination was such an extreme violation of Iraqi sovereignty, Many Iraqis have no love for either the United States or Iran and they fear being put in the middle of a confrontation. Nonetheless, the United States should not expect to get away with this. No one wants a declaration of war, but it is about time the U.S. received the kind of sanctions it is happy to dish out to other nations. America cannot be permitted to rule the world.
If the U.S. find itself in conflict with Shiite militias in Iraq all we can expect is another rise to the death tolls. The President has shown himself to be a revengeful individual with little restraint, so we might find a full-on confrontation with Iran unless the more rational country leaders can pull the President back. The only group who will benefit from this in the long run are ISIS who appear to still retain a strong underground presence.
I feel for the victims who have no voice in these matters, but who bear the consequences.
