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Doctrine of Discovery

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the discovery of land under public international law. For pre-trial phase of a lawsuit, see Discovery (law).

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The discovery doctrine, or doctrine of discovery, is a disputed interpretation of international law during the Age of Discovery, introduced into United States municipal law by the US Supreme Court Justice John Marshall in Johnson v. McIntosh (1823). In Marshall’s formulation of the doctrine, discovery of territory previously unknown to Europeans gave the discovering nation title to that territory against all other European nations, and this title could be perfected by possession. A number of legal scholars have criticized Marshall’s interpretation of the relevant international law. In recent decades, advocates for Indigenous rights have campaigned against the doctrine. In 2023, the Vatican formally repudiated the doctrine.[1]

Discovery in international law

The means by which a state can acquire territory in international law are conquest, cession by agreement, occupation of land which belongs to no state (terra nullius), and prescription through the continuous exercise of sovereignty.[2][3] Discovery of a territory creates a mere inchoate title which must be completed within a reasonable period by effective occupation of that territory.[3]

Robert J. Miller states that by 1493, “The idea that the Doctrine [of discovery] granted European monarchs ownership rights in newly discovered lands and sovereign and commercial rights over Indigenous peoples due to first discovery by European Christians was now established international law, at least to Europeans.”[4] Kent McNeil, however, states, “it is not apparent that such a rule was ever part of the European law of nations.”[5]

Historical background

Miller and others trace the doctrine of discovery back to papal bulls which authorized various European powers to conquer the lands of non-Christians.[6][7] In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the bull Dum Diversas, which authorized King Afonso V of Portugal to “subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ”, and “reduce their persons to perpetual servitude”, to take their belongings, including land, “to convert them to you, and your use, and your successors the Kings of Portugal.”[8] In 1455, Pope Nicholas V issued Romanus Pontifex, which extended Portugal’s authority to conquer the lands of infidels and pagans for “the salvation of all” in order to “pardon … their souls”. The document also granted Portugal a specific right to conquest in West Africa and to trade with Saracens and infidels in designated areas.[8][9] Charles and Rah argue that these bulls were used to justify the Atlantic slave trade.[7]

In 1493, following a dispute between Portugal and Spain over the discovery of non-Christian lands in the Americas, Pope Alexander VI issued Inter Caetera which drew a north-south line 100 leagues West of the Cape Verde Islands and gave the Spanish Crown exclusive rights to travel and trade west of that line, and to “bring under your sway the said mainland and islands with their residents and inhabitants and to bring them to the Catholic faith.” In 1494 Portugal and Spain signed the Treaty of Tordesillas which moved the line separating their spheres of influence to 300 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands.[8] The treaty was eventually endorsed by Pope Julius II in the 1506 bull Ea quae pro bono pacis.[10]

Throughout the sixteenth century, Spain and Portugal claimed that papal authority had given them exclusive rights of discovery, trade and conquest of non-Christian lands in their respective spheres of influence. These claims were challenged by theorists of natural law such as the Spanish theologians Domingo de Soto and Francisco di Vitoria. In 1539 Vitoria wrote that the Spanish discovery of the Americas provides “no support for possession of these lands, any more than it would if they had discovered us.”[11]

France and England also made claims to territories inhabited by non-Christians based on first discovery, but disputed the notion that papal bulls, or discovery by itself, could provide title over lands. In 1541, French plans to establish colonies in Canada drew protests from Spain. In response, France effectively repudiated the papal bulls and claims based on discovery without possession, the French king stating that “Popes hold spiritual jurisdiction, and it does not lie with them to distribute land amongst kings” and that “passing by and discovering with the eye was not taking possession.”[12]

Similarly, when in 1580 Spain protested to Elizabeth I about Francis Drake‘s violation of the Spanish sphere, the English queen replied that popes had no right to grant the world to princes, that she owed no allegiance to the Pope, and that mere symbolic gestures (such as erecting monuments or naming rivers) did not give property rights.[13]

From the sixteenth century, France and England asserted a right to explore and colonize any non-Christian territory not under the actual possession of a Christian sovereign.[14] The stated justifications for this included the spread of Christianity, the duty to bring civilization to barbarian peoples, the natural right to explore and trade freely with other peoples, and the right to settle and cultivate uninhabited or uncultivated land.[15]

Hugo Grotius, writing in 1625, stated that discovery does not give a right to sovereignty over inhabited land, “For discovery applies to those things which belong to no one.” Dutch policy was to acquire land in North America by purchase from indigenous peoples.[16]

By the eighteenth century, some leading theorists of international law argued that territorial rights over land could stem from the settlement and cultivation of that land. William Blackstone, in 1756, wrote, “Plantations or colonies, in distant countries, are either such where the lands are claimed by right of occupancy only, by finding them desert and uncultivated, and peopling them from the mother-country; or where, when already cultivated, they have been either gained by conquest, or ceded to us by treaties. And both these rights are founded upon the law of nature, or at least upon that of nations.”[17] Two years after Blackstone, Emer de Vattel, in his Le droit des gents (1758), drew a distinction between land that was effectively occupied and cultivated, and the unsettled and uncultivated land of nomads which was open to colonization.[18]

All imperial European states enacted symbolic rituals to give notice of discovery and possession of lands to other states. These rituals included burying plates, raising flags, erecting signs, and naming territories, rivers or other features. More concrete claims of possession ranged from building forts to establishing settlements. Rituals of a transfer of sovereignty often involved trials, executions and other acts to symbolize that the laws of the colonizing power were in force.[19][20]

European monarchs often asserted sovereignty over large areas of non-Christian territory based on purported discoveries and symbolic acts of possession. They frequently issued charters and commissions giving the grantees the power to represent the Crown and acquire property. While European states often acknowledged that indigenous peoples inhabiting these lands had property rights which had to be acquired through conquest, treaty or purchase, they sometimes acted as if territories were uninhabited and sovereignty and property rights could be acquired through occupation.[21][22]

Summarizing the practices European states used to justify their acquisition of territory inhabited by indigenous peoples, McNeil states, “While Spain and Portugal favoured discovery and papal grants because it was generally in their interests to do so, France and Britain relied more on symbolic acts, colonial charters, and occupation.”[21] Benton and Strauman argue that European powers often adopted multiple, sometimes contradictory, legal rationales for their acquisition of territory as a deliberate strategy in defending their claims against European rivals.[23]

North American jurisprudence

Chief Justice John Marshall

In 1792, U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson claimed that the doctrine of discovery was international law which was applicable to the new United States government as well.[24]

The discovery doctrine was expounded by the United States Supreme Court in a series of decisions, most notably Johnson v. McIntosh in 1823. In that case, Chief Justice John Marshall held that under generally accepted principles of international law:

  1. Discovery of lands previously unknown to Europeans gave the discovering nation title to that land against all other European nations, and this title could be perfected by possession.
  2. The nation discovering that land had “the sole right of acquiring the soil from the natives, and establishing settlements upon it.”
  3. On discovery, the sovereignty of the indigenous peoples and their rights to sell their land were diminished, but their right of occupancy remained.
  4. The discovering nation, having ultimate title to the land, had the right to sell the land of indigenous peoples, subject to the latter’s right of occupancy.
  5. This ultimate title of the discovering nation (in this case Britain) passed to the individual states after the Declaration of Independence, then to the United States in 1789.[25]

Dunbar-Oritz states that the doctrine outlined in this case continues to influence American imperialism and treatment of indigenous peoples.[24]

Johnson v. McIntosh

Main article: Johnson v. McIntosh

Banner and Kades argue that the 1823 case was the result of collusive lawsuits where land speculators worked together to make claims to achieve a desired result.[26][27] The plaintiff, Johnson, had inherited land originally purchased from the Piankeshaw tribes. Defendant McIntosh claimed the same land, having purchased it under a grant from the United States. In 1775, members of the Piankeshaw tribe sold certain land in the Indiana Territory to Lord Dunmore, Royal Governor of Virginia, and others. In 1805, the Piankeshaw conveyed much of the same land to William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory, thus giving rise to conflicting claims of title.[28] The court found, on three grounds, that it should not recognize the land titles obtained from Native Americans prior to American independence. A number of academics and Indigenous rights activists have argued that Chief Justice John Marshall had large real estate holdings that would have been affected if the case were decided in favor of Johnson.[29]

Decision

Marshall found that ultimate title to land comes into existence by virtue of discovery and possession of that land, a rule that had been observed by all European countries with settlements in the New World. The United States had ultimate title of the land, as against other European nations, because it inherited that title from the original discoverers Britain and France, as part of the sovereign rights the U.S. had won from the British crown through war.

Marshall noted:

On the discovery of this immense continent, the great nations of Europe … as they were all in pursuit of nearly the same object, it was necessary, in order to avoid conflicting settlements, and consequent war with each other, to establish a principle which all should acknowledge as the law by which the right of acquisition, which they all asserted, should be regulated as between themselves. This principle was that discovery gave title to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession. … The history of America, from its discovery to the present day, proves, we think, the universal recognition of these principles.[30]

Marshall noted the 1455 papal bull Romanus Pontifex approved Portugal‘s claims to lands discovered along the coast of West Africa, and the 1493 Inter caetera had ratified Spain‘s right to conquer newly found lands. Marshall stated, however, “Spain did not rest her title solely on the grant of the Pope. Her discussions respecting boundary, with France, with Great Britain, and with the United States, all show that she placed it on the rights given by discovery. Portugal sustained her claim to the Brazils by the same title.”[30] Marshall pointed to the exploration charters given to the explorer John Cabot as proof that other nations had accepted the doctrine.[31]

Legal critique

Allison Dussias states that the Piankeshaw were not party to the litigation and therefore, “no Indian voices were heard in a case which had, and continues to have, profound effects on Indian property rights.”[32]

McNeil states that the authority for the doctrine of discovery, as formulated by Marshall, was “flimsy”. Furthermore, Indigenous nations in North America were factually independent and sovereign prior to the arrival of Europeans and therefore the European powers should not have been able to acquire territorial sovereignty by discovery and settlement, but only by conquest or cession.[33]

Pagden states that Marshall did not sufficiently consider Francisco de Vitoria‘s critique of the claim that discovery gave a right to possession of inhabited lands.[34] Vitoria, however, stated that the Spanish could claim possession of the Americas by conquest if indigenous populations violated principles of natural law.[35]

Blake Watson states that Marshall overlooked evidence showing that the Dutch and some English settlers acknowledged the right of Indians to their land and favored purchase as a means of acquiring title. Watson and others, such as Robert A. Williams Jr., state that Marshall misinterpreted the “discovery doctrine” as giving exclusive right to lands discovered, rather than the exclusive right to treaty with the inhabitants who owned that land.[36]

Other United States cases

In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), the US Supreme Court found that the Cherokee Nation was a “domestic dependent nation” with no standing to take action against the state of Georgia.[37]

In Worcester v Georgia (1832), Marshall re-interpreted the doctrine of discovery. He stated that discovery did not give the discovering nation title to land, but only “the sole right of acquiring the soil and making settlements on it.” This was a right of preemption which only applied between the colonizing powers and did not diminish the sovereignty of the indigenous inhabitants. “It regulated the right given by discovery among the European discoverers, but could not affect the rights of those already in possession, either as aboriginal occupants, or as occupants by virtue of a discovery made before the memory of man.”[38]

In five further cases decided between 1836 and 1842, Mitchel I, Fernandez, Clark, Mitchel II, and Martin, the Supreme Court restored the rule in Johnson that discovery gave the discovering nation ultimate title to land, subject to a right of occupancy held by indigenous peoples.[39]

In Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe (1979), the Supreme Court held that discovery deprived tribes of the right to prosecute non-Indians. In Duro v. Reina (1990) the court held that tribes could not prosecute Indians who were not a member of the prosecuting tribe.[40] However in November 1990, the Indian Civil Rights Act was amended by Congress to permit inter-tribal prosecutions.[41][42]

As of March 2023, the most recent time the doctrine was cited by the Supreme Court is in the 2005 case City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York, by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the majority decision.[43]

More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_doctrine

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The Balfour Project

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Mission Statement

Vision

Lasting peace with justice, security and equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Mission Statement

The Balfour Project was created by British citizens to highlight Britain’s record in Palestine before, during, and after the Mandate, effectively from 1840 to 1948, to the present day. Through education and advocacy, we work to advance equal rights for all in Palestine/Israel regardless of race or creed and achieve greater public awareness of Britain’s current and historic responsibilities in Palestine/Israel. We seek to persuade the British Parliament and Government to demand that the rule of law and fundamental human rights, including the right to self-determination and the implementation of international law, are upheld in Israel/Palestine.  

The Balfour Project asks the Government and people of the United Kingdom to:

  • Acknowledge Britain’s historical role in shaping 20th and 21st century Palestine/Israel, particularly in light of the Balfour Declaration and the policies of the British Mandate;
  • Support Palestinians and Israelis in building a peaceful future based on equal rights, justice and security for all;
  • Work for British Government recognition of the State of Palestine.

One of the important issues that the Balfour Project aims to promote is the impact and significance of recognition. While the British Government recognised the State of Israel in 1950, Palestinians remain stateless, exiled, refugees or second-class citizens within Israel. We urge the Government to immediately recognise the State of Palestine as a step towards equality and an end to the occupation. Recognition of a Palestinian state would substantially improve the Palestinian position in international forums and by enhancing its bargaining strengths and status. Advocacy of a Palestinian state does not mean that the Balfour Project takes a position on final status for the Palestine/Israel question.

Please click here for more information on the Balfour Project’s founding, mission and position on key issues.

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How to Think — Like a Transcendentalist

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On Living Deliberately

J.W. Bertolotti

J.W. Bertolotti

Published in PERENNIAL — Ancient Lessons for Modern Life

4 days ago (Medium.com)

Image: Portrait of Felix Feneon by Paul Signac (1890)

Today’s meditation is part of Reading & the Good Life, a weekly series (and Book Club) that explores classic texts on the art of living. Every Friday at Noon EST, Perennial Meditations readers are welcome to gather for connection, contemplation, and conversations on the art of living!

What is Transcendentalism?

Transcendentalism is an American literary, philosophical, religious, and political movement of the early nineteenth century centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson. Another important transcendentalist was Henry David Thoreau. Stimulated by English and German Romanticism, the transcendentalists understood that a new era was at hand. They criticized their contemporary society for its unthinking conformity and urged that each person find, in Emerson’s words, “an original relation to the universe.” Emerson and Thoreau sought this relation in solitude amidst nature and in their writing.

Who is Henry David Thoreau?

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an American philosopher, poet, environmental scientist, and political activist whose major work, Walden, draws upon these various identities in meditating upon the concrete problems of living in the world as a human being. He sought to revive a conception of philosophy as a way of life, not only a mode of reflective thought and discourse. An eclectic variety of sources informed Thoreau’s work. He was well-versed in classical Greek and Roman philosophy (and poetry), from pre-Socratics to Hellenistic schools. He was also an avid student of the ancient scriptures and wisdom literature of various Asian traditions.

Image: The Cabin at Saint-Adresse by Claude Monet (1867)

Living Deliberately

Thoreau opens Walden (1854) this way, “When I wrote the following pages or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months.” Relatively neglected during Thoreau’s lifetime, Walden achieved tremendous popularity in the 20th century.

In chapter two of Walden, Thoreau explains,

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life… .

Thoreau set out nearly two centuries ago to achieve what we are attempting today — to live deliberately. His description of the physical act of living day by day at Walden Pond and his command of a clear, straightforward, but elegant style helped raise it to the level of a literary classic.

Selected Passages from Walden

Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance — which his growth requires — who has so often to use his knowledge? … The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly. […]

—

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. … The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. […]

—

We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. … The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. […]

Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.

— J.W. Bertolotti

P.S. For more daily meditations on the art of living (or to learn more about Reading & the Good Life), check out the Perennial Meditations newsletter.

J.W. Bertolotti

Written by J.W. Bertolotti

·Editor for PERENNIAL — Ancient Lessons for Modern Life

Founder at Perennial Leader Project | Host of In Search of Wisdom Podcast | Reflections on wisdom and life. Say hello: JW@perennialleader.com

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Upanishad story

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Not Two


Once in a tree there were two birds, one at the upper branch, serene, majestic and divine, and the other at a lower branch, restlessly pecking fruits, sometimes sweet sometimes bitter.

Every time, when the restless bird ate a bitter fruit, it looked at the upper bird and climbed a branch up. This occurred a number of times and eventually the bird reached the topmost branch. 

There it was not able to differentiate itself from the divine bird, and then it learned that there was only one bird in the tree.

 Mundaka Upanishad

 AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY
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VAUSH ON THE STRUGGLE FOR THE FUTURE OF YOUNG MEN

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Screenshot from TRNN

POSTED IN POLITICS AND MOVEMENTS: US

The popular streamer explains the appeal of streaming as a new form of political media and what it tells us about masculinity in the internet age.

BY TAYA GRAHAM AND STEPHEN JANIS NOVEMBER 3, 2023 (therealnews.com)

Screenshot from TRNN

The media environment morphs with dizzying speed year after year, and the rise of political streamers is just the latest arc of the digital age. How do we explain the rise of streamers in the context of rising inequality and atomization? And what do we make of the popularity of many such streamers among a predominately male audience? Popular Twitch streamer and libertarian socialist Ian ‘Vaush’ Kochinski joins Taya Graham and Stephen Janis for a special discussion.

Studio Production / Post-Production: David Hebden

TRANSCRIPT

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Taya Graham:

Hello, everyone. My name is Taya Graham, and welcome back to The Inequality Watch, a show where we examine how corporate elites manufacture inequality, and weaponize it against us. Why do we call the show the Inequality Watch? Well, it’s for a pretty simple reason. There is no greater existential threat to our supposed democracy, or life on this planet, than the unjust enrichment of the few at the expense of the rest of us.

This extreme and unprecedented wealth leads to an unhealthy imbalance of power and opportunity. The result is an economic and political system warped by the naked theft of both our political and physical resources on a vibrant planet that should belong to all of us, but instead, ends up in the hands of a corrupt few. Part of the reason that we can and do report on this is because we’re independent media, right, Stephen?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. The tentacles of inequality run deep and my mainstream media counterparts often have to answer to them. Fortunately for us at The Real News, we don’t. So we can hopefully give you actual truth and objective reality.

Taya Graham:

You’re right, Stephen. The mainstream media often avoids challenging these powerful interests. No, not individual politicians, but the real power, the dark money that warps our political processes. Where do you turn? Where do you go to find news, information, and commentary that’s untainted by establishment politics and corporate interests? Well, could a video game streaming service be the next frontier of a new political movement? Could young progressives be shaping future policy positions while playing Dark Souls or Baldur’s Gate?

Well, that’s actually a distinct possibility. And why? Well, partly because of the work of my next guest. His name is Ian Kochinski, but he’s better known as Vaush, and he’s at the vanguard of what’s commonly called the Debate Bro Movement. His work is why we are taking a slightly different approach for today’s show. We’re starting on a series of reports on new media, and investigating a cultural phenomena that he is a part of.

It’s a sphere of fierce political debate, where some of the youngest voters go to learn and discuss the best policies and politics to save and prosper our nation. Where is this gladiators’ arena? Well, although I discovered it on YouTube, it initially evolved on Twitch. What is Twitch? Well, for the uninitiated, like myself, it’s primarily a streaming website for gamers, where they share their love of eSports. But like most social media, it has evolved to reflect the concerns of our day. In an era of a global pandemic, a worldwide economic crisis, and a surge in social unrest and political division, finding a space to break down and understand the shifting sands of today’s politics is happening more and more in these online communities, and are needed now more than ever.

To understand these new political communities, and the movements they’re fostering, I delved into what’s known as the realm of the Debate Bros. Young folks, often, but not exclusively men, who step into the arena to fight for their ideals in politics, philosophy, and ethics. To understand this world better, of course, I had to call in one of the reigning champions, Vaush.

Vaush:

I can’t precisely do that. I’d have to run you through specific scenarios in which it fails to make my argument.

Stephen Janis:

What’s your political ascription?

Vaush:

I’d say left liberal, for the most part.

Stephen Janis:

Damn. All right. Why are you punching left, comrade? What’s up?

Destiny:

All I’m saying is that one of the biggest ways you can control your budget is to control the place that you live in. And that sometimes if you’re a poor person, sometimes moving to a different area can be a good way of managing your budget. That’s all I’m saying. Is there anything there that you disagree with?

Vaush:

Yeah, that sometimes the costs associated with moving are substantial and they can prevent people from moving, especially if you’re disabled or have a family.

Destiny:

Okay.

Vaush:

Yeah, substantially so. You do realize the entire video that I have just watched, of yours, is a screed of arguments you would’ve argued against two years ago? Some of these arguments are riddled with survivorship bias, some of them sound very similar to arguments [inaudible 00:03:53].

Destiny:

You’re going way over course. So if you’re like a fucking disabled war veteran with a family of 27 or whatever, and you [inaudible 00:03:58]-

Vaush:

No, no, no, no, no. If you’re a regular, one of the many Americans who lives paycheck to paycheck or can’t afford a $300 emergency, not if you’re a disabled war veteran with 87 children who [inaudible 00:04:10].

Destiny:

If you can’t afford anything in your life, then how are you going to affording your current rent?

Vaush:

What? Because moving is an additional cost, because you added to the existing cost.

Destiny:

[inaudible 00:04:16] and you’d be saving money after moving, you’d move to someplace cheaper.

Vaush:

You don’t know. Destiny, you don’t know anything about me.

Destiny:

[inaudible 00:04:23]. Mr. Mom and Dad paid… Mr. Mommy and Daddy paid for your school. I promise you I know more than you about this. [inaudible 00:04:27].

Vaush:

Then respond to the arguments rather than characterizing what I have to say.

The landlord can’t just walk away unless he’s able to sell the property. He is tied to that property. The renter is not so much wait.

Stephen Janis:

As a homeowner, again, I don’t have a problem with homeowner and I don’t have a problem with property management, I have a problem with landlords.

Vaush:

You don’t have to rent.

Stephen Janis:

Wait, wait. What can you do? Wait. What’s the alternative between renting and owning a house?

Vaush:

No, I’m saying the alternative to being a renter is to buy a property.

Stephen Janis:

So that’s what I was saying. The only way out of this exploitative system is to have an enormous amount of money that most people don’t have access to. You should look up Portugal and their drug policies. Freedom makes societies better, just a better place to live for everyone.

Taya Graham:

Well, figuratively punching Nazis or admonishing impractical or intractable leftists, Vaush is a libertarian socialist. His edgy humor and no holds bards fights for his ideals often leave him somewhat alienated from his leftist comrades, feared and despised by the alt-right, but still beloved by his audience of over half a million subscribers combined. Please welcome to this episode of the Inequality Watch Vaush.

Vaush:

Hello.

Taya Graham:

Vaush, it’s great to have you. Thank you so much for joining me.

Stephen Janis:

Welcome to our show.

Taya Graham:

Join thousands of others who rely on our journalism to navigate complex issues, uncover hidden truths, and challenge the status quo with our free newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox twice a week:

How did you carve out this particular niche? How did you start streaming gaming and debating? Can you walk me through it? How did it go from just playing video games and chatting to this very substantial political debate?

Vaush:

Well, I’ve liked live-streaming as a format for about as long as it’s existed technologically and since basically its inception. Initially it was mostly a gaming thing. I think that live-streaming mostly started out with Korean eSports players, broadcasting like StarCraft matches, going way back. But very, very quickly, it was evident to a lot of people, this was a medium that was pretty revolutionary. The ability for a person to interact in real time with an audience was pretty unmatched in basically any other mass media format. So invariably it was going to become a medium for political discussion, and I wanted in on that.

I think that there’s something very authentic and engaging about being able to do this in a very live quick, easy format. We’re entering an era of populism. More and more so people are distrustful and discontented with who they see as suited politicians, the class of politicians. And live-streaming is innately, if not authentic, at the very least, somewhat populous because you have to be there live, you have to respond and engage live. It’s disarming, it’s personable, and I think it’s endemic to the era. So I’m happy to be here.

Taya Graham:

How would you describe what you do? I would categorize you as part of a new leftist media ecosystem, but how would you describe your work and its goals?

Vaush:

I have a tendency to play down what I do. After all, it is largely live-streaming and YouTubing, it’s not anywhere near as rote and professional as, I guess, what a lot of people who believe what I believe would’ve done in the past. But really it’s just the modern version of pamphleteering or running radio shows, in a day-to-Day sense practically. I mean, at my computer right now, it’s a very informal job with very low professional standards, which I like, both because it’s incredibly personally convenient and also because I think it’s better representative of what it is we’re trying to do. It does away with a lot of ostentatiousness and respectability politics that are otherwise really common to entry level political engagement.

Not having to deal with that, being able to just talk about what I want just to sit here and engage freely, I like that, and I think the audience likes it too. I think it breaks down what would otherwise be a uncomfortable barrier of professionalism.

Stephen Janis:

Did I make a mistake by wearing a tie to this interview, or should I take my tie off at this point?

Vaush:

I think you look great in it personally.

Stephen Janis:

Okay, thanks.

Taya Graham:

You need to break down those barriers. You know what? I have to say though, I have found your conversations with both American and Canadian Nazis fascinating. Let’s take a look at a clip.

Vaush:

Walk over here. Holy shit, you’re losing it. Just move on with the white nationalist ethnostate thing. So let’s say, the moral argument would be that I don’t think it’s okay to say that a person can’t live in a neighborhood or country because of their race. That would be my argument.

Speaker 1:

It’s fighting against the thought that in X amount of years, whites are going to go extinct. And we perhaps, and again, this is imaginative, there’s so much overlapping with societal, cultural, moral claim. I think it would benefit the people of America to have some separation, have some breathing there.

Vaush:

How would it benefit us? How do I benefit from this?

Speaker 1:

There’s going to be less right wing voters in the voting demographics, in the electoral. So right away, you’re going to be better situated to win elections for the left. I know you’re not necessarily a Biden supporter.

Vaush:

Sure.

Speaker 1:

And as a nice guy, white nationalist, I favor secession over civil war and eternal fighting.

Vaush:

If we’re talking pragmatics though, then the easiest thing that I could do is grant you territory in the heartland of America, starve you out with the blockade, deny you airspace in the surrounding area, wait for you all to starve, retake my territory, and now I have 1 million less fascists in my country. If we’re talking pragmatics, the easiest thing that I could do would not be to your benefit. You’re asking to be left alone, which is not something that I’d be willing to do purely because it benefits my voting demographics. If you’re making that argument, why do you deserve this? What’s so wrong with living in America?

Taya Graham:

So what I’ve noticed is that you really take the time to tease out their belief systems and then challenge them. What benefit do you think this brings to your audience?

Vaush:

Well, I think this is something that is very particular to live-streaming. Far right politics has always been about dog whistles and euphemisms. You can’t just go online or I guess in any format really, and just scream the N-word. I guess you can, but it’s not very politically effective. Usually you have to bury it under a bunch of associative issues. Donald Trump represented the death of many euphemisms, but even in his case, there is still a layer of civility and mutual respectability he has to upkeep. The case with live-streaming is that very often people who represent far right values can’t actually keep it in that well. It’s very difficult for them, I almost sympathize, to accurately reflect and describe their politics in a way that doesn’t completely give the game away. So you have to tease out those values, you don’t want to argue what they want to argue because what they want to argue is a substitute for what they actually believe.

It’s like getting into, if you could analogize it back to the 1960s, getting into a big argument about, I don’t know, forced busing, or school rights, or something, when in reality you’re talking about race. You want to focus on what people are actually thinking about, otherwise you’re just shadow-boxing and you don’t want to do that.

Stephen Janis:

I’ve noticed Vaush in your comment section, even in the way just watching your videos, that a lot of times you’re in the process of deradicalizing young men. Can you talk about that process? Because it seems so potent and we’ll talk about more about the right radicalization process. But how do you go about that? How do you approach that? Because it’s so hard, I think as people get programmed on YouTube, how do you kind of confront that, or otherwise try to help people with that?

Vaush:

Well, I think that people fall down those pipelines really quickly these days. Maybe they always have, but it’s more visible now than ever.

Stephen Janis:

I agree.

Vaush:

It simplifies, and it’s weird too, because you think, you just casually like a 14-year-old boy in high school, it’s like, “Here’s my Nazi phase,” or whatever. It’s surreal. I don’t like it. I don’t like the fact that that’s what we deal with, but it’s deliberate, it’s targeted. Steve Bannon spoke extensively about his efforts to reach out to sexually insecure young men and convince them that far right politics were the answer to the issues, like the incel problem.

This is targeted. Deradicalizing, trying to show people that maybe they shouldn’t be 14-year-old Nazis or whatever, at any age or position they have to be at, it’s vital. There is a tendency with some left-leaning people to write-off some groups as lost, that there are some groups of people like, “Why bother with them?” And while I don’t think disproportionate time and energy should be spent, I don’t think we should all commit ourselves entirely to the project of fixing this one white boy or whatever. At the very least, it’s something worth thinking about. And the fact that we keep seeing these recurring cycles of reactionary thought propagated by people appealing to young men, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, clearly this is something worth attention. We don’t want to be caught unawares here.

Stephen Janis:

What do you think makes young men so vulnerable to this? Taya and I always talk about this sentence that he started watching YouTube videos and it never ends well.

Taya Graham:

Exactly.

Stephen Janis:

What do you think makes young men so vulnerable to this kind of… I don’t want to say propaganda, but this type of line of thinking that puts them down the rabbit holes that you’re trying to pull them out of?

Vaush:

Honestly, I think it’s just sexual insecurity. Often unwarranted sexual insecurity, oftentimes held by young men who have not even been old enough… They haven’t been alive long enough to have any real reasons to be sexually insecure. I think that fascism tends to stem from that. Even if you go back to 120-

Stephen Janis:

That’s deep.

Vaush:

Like the Jim Crow days, right? These propagated myths of white insecurity against Black men. What would they do-

Taya Graham:

That’s a good point.

Vaush:

The lynchings they did. There would be castration, accusations of rape or sexual assault. There’s this fear of impotence, it seems, that’s reflected in a lot of this propagandizing, and young people are just really insecure. They’re pretty vulnerable to that just by virtue of being young and stupid. It’s like a messy subject, but it’s worth paying attention to.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, because you had Senator Josh Holly writing a book on masculinity, and you see polls that say that young men tend to be less liberal than young women. It really seems like the right has said, “If we can profit, or if we can somehow exploit that security you’re talking about we can build a larger coalition of young men who will vote for us.” Is that what you see happening with people like Josh Hawley going, saying, “I’m going to define masculinity.”

Vaush:

Yeah, for sure. The right is very, very, very worried about young people because young people are so disproportionately liberal. Look at Vivek Ramaswamy talking about raising the voting age to 25 or whatever. And the demographics show this, young people will be the death of the Republican Party unless something changes, and they know that. So how do you convince these people? Well, in an age of populism and distrust, young people aren’t going to be moved over with these bow tie libertarian arguments anymore. The Ben Shapiro era of young people being motivated by some snobby intellectualism or pseudo intellectualism, I don’t think that’s as prominent anymore.

Ben Shapiro gets picked on by his other daily wild cohorts quite often, the more openly fascist ones. I think now it’s all about the big guns. It’s insecurity, racial politics, sexual politics, get them young when they’re stupid and easy to give narratives to. “That girl you liked didn’t give you any attention? That’s actually because feminism has ruined modern women. You notice that a cool Black guy who plays basketball, he’s getting a lot of attention, you’re not? That’s because racial politics promoted by the left, which is actually promoted by Jews, is convincing young women that they need to be more like…” Shit like that, you know? It sounds crazy, but that is legitimately the narrative that gets pushed in a lot of cases. And 14 year olds are dumb, so that’s a demographic you can push for.

Taya Graham:

And I just wanted to follow up by saying that there are certain neoconservative reactionaries, influencers even, that have gone out of their way to capture the hearts and minds of these young men. And I notice that often in your conversations with… You have a very male audience in general, I hope I’m not misspeaking, it seems like you have a lot of men in your audience-

Vaush:

For sure.

Taya Graham:

… you give them advice and insights into dating, and how to be a good ally, and how to talk to women, what consent is, how to get enthusiastic consent. Why do you think one of the extreme right wing’s goals is hooking young men in the area of dating and relationships, and what do you think the left could or should be doing?

Vaush:

I think that people, especially young people, are very self-interested when it comes to the ideologies they hop on board with. If a good pitch is given to them, they’re more likely to go with it. It’s what benefits them. The left has strong messages of empowerment for young women. If you’re a young woman and you listen to the left attitude on what young woman are and should be, you’re going to hear a lot about freedom, you’re going to hear a lot about empowerment. It’s not always good all the time, but I think for the most part, there’s a pretty strong positive message. Whereas with men, there’s a mixed narrative of it’s not that men are bad, it’s that let’s be real here, men are dangerous. And on the left, that gets promoted often. And if you’re like a 14-year-old boy and you hear that, that’s not really… You hear a message from the left and it’s like, “well, what should I do to be a left-leaning person? How should I be a progressive?”

And it’s like, “Well, you have to check your privilege.” It’s like, that’s not bad. I’m not saying that’s a bad message. I’m saying that it’s a bad onboarding message for your average guy. So the right comes in and they’re like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, you don’t need to change a thing. In fact, you are being held back by the media, by the narrative, by feminists.” They give a much more compelling message. So I try to match that. I think there are lots of ways to promote empowerment and confidence without playing into those tropes.

Stephen Janis:

How do you really craft a message to young men that’s an alternative to the idea of just check your privilege. Do you have any methodology you use or any sort of examples or just if you don’t mind exploring that, because it’s fascinating.

Vaush:

Yeah. Well, I think a lot of it is just about the appropriate ways to channel confidence. A lot of the advice people give for being confident is not that, it’s actually an advice for covering up insecurity. You see this a lot with Andrew Tate style stuff where it’s like, the solution to being insecure is actually to be this monstrous force where you demand or intimidate or otherwise project strength onto others to compensate for a genuine lack of competence in yourself. And the left response, which I think is often very lacking, is, “No, no, no, no, no. Don’t do any of that. In fact, be smaller, take up less space. If you’re a guy, you already take up a lot of space, so take up less space.” And again, is there value to that? To an extent, sure, we can talk about it, but bad messaging. I think that promoting healthy confidence, the idea that the left shouldn’t be afraid of talking about stuff like dating advice, they’re like, “Well, what is it?”

Realistically, give dating advice to a young guy. A lot of left-leaning people can’t because it gets locked up in this performative PSA talk about the importance of being respectful and not being a misogynist or whatever, which is good, but it’s not holistic, it’s not the whole message, and it doesn’t teach people everything they need to know. They miss out on a lot. I guess that’s the main thing I try to focus on. What slips in the gaps? What insecurities does the right pretend to fix and can you actually fix them? What evidence really touches on that?

Taya Graham:

That’s really interesting, and I actually hate to veer the conversation from the direction we were taking, but you made a statement recently that really stood out to me, and I think it was in a conversation with a documentary filmmaker working on a piece about the Seven Mountains Christian Project. And you said What we need to focus on is not necessarily critiquing Democrats, or liberals, or progressives, but fighting the fascist impulse in our country. And I took that to mean essentially that there can be common ground found with Republicans, or Democrats, or libertarians, or moderates, but that the fascist impulse would co-opt everything we cherish. Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

Vaush:

Yeah. Ultimately, from a left-leaning perspective, if fascism wins, it’s over. It’s done. We see this happen in other countries, there’s no two words about it, they’ll kill us. They will kill us. We’ll all be in mass graves. By we, I mean any kind of remotely left-leaning figure, any visible queer sexual minorities, these groups are done. So their victory cannot happen. I think that there are good and bad ways to do coalition building against that. The bad way is what the Democrats want you to do, which is this, “The Republicans are really bad and they’re so bad that you can’t criticize us, because we’re so much better than them. So fall in the line because we’re the best option you have, and if you criticize us, you’re actually helping them.” And I think that this is the very cynical way that liberals try to placate progressive or socialist critiques of their political strategies in the face of fascism.

The good way is, I think, more of a tactical alliance. What can liberals help on specifically and at what point is undermining them to a more progressive and actually beneficial? I think that’s a really difficult thread to weave. It’s really difficult to find a good balance there. And the frustration I have, I guess, is that it seems like a lot of people just can’t have that conversation. There are people who are very ideologically motivated to despise the Democrats to the point where they downplay the threat fascist pose. And then there are people who think that the fascists aren’t really that much of a threat, so it’s unnecessary to oppose the Democrats meaningfully for that reason. It’s such a mess.

And you see flavors of this all over the left’s face, people argue amongst themselves constantly. I personally side with anything in terms of coalition building is justifiable if it means keeping the fascist from winning, and as long as that need has been met, it’s free game. Any dissident behavior outside of that purview is acceptable, but you can’t compromise the fascism thing. Because, man, it’s like with Biden, right? I don’t want Biden to be the democratic front-runner for 2024. I’m not happy about that, but he is. That’s a fact. And I don’t think Trump should win. So you do what you can.

Stephen Janis:

What do you think is the root of the fascist impulse in this country? Because we grapple this a lot in our coverage of policing across the country, but what’s the root, why is fascism so hard to root out in this country? Why does it seem to be so stubborn?

Vaush:

I think that in a way, fascism is like politics without politics, or politics by other means. It’s a way of supplanting political thought in favor of a frenzy drive that is of course political, it’s fully political, but it’s a way of masking those broader intentions. I think that Republicans are fastidiously pro-corporate. They’re more pro-corporate than Dems are, on average, though, of course, both are corporate parties.

Stephen Janis:

True.

Vaush:

And I think that as is often the case with reactionary pro-corporate parties, the Republicans realize that people are getting less and less amenable to trickle down economic bullshit, because nobody believes that crap anymore. Even Republicans don’t really. The voters, no one buys that. So how do you get people to vote Republican if all the economic arguments are bunk, completely discredited? Well, you have to get them the reactionary angle. But if you go too far down the reactionary angle, people stop promoting reactionary politics for the sake of corporate politics, and instead go the other direction where they promote pro-corporate politics secondarily, and the reactionary impulse becomes the norm.

And that’s, I think, where the tipping point towards fascism really hits on. And right now you take a look at the discourse with the far right in this country, and it’s insane, genuinely psychotic every day. It’s like, “What’s the new culture war talking point? Let me watch this episode of Sesame Street because a prominent senator called it the downfall of the West or something. Here’s a clothing company that released an item for the binding trans men’s breasts or something. Now I need to do research to find out whether or not this person was substantiated and say that it was actually designed by a pedophile in 1973.” It is so disconnected from reality that it’s farcical, but it’s unfortunately also the battlefield and the right has always been better at setting the stage for that. So we just have to deal with it and learn the arguments.

Stephen Janis:

And also, as Taya said at the beginning of the show, we talked about inequality, the show deals with inequality, and how much is the inequality in our country, which makes so many things impossible, like healthcare for all and other things, how much is that driving the simplistic solutions of fascism? You’re saying, “The country can’t take care of me.” We were just talking about how Narcan spent seven or eight years not being easily accessible because of the greed of the company. And when you see a system fail like that, doesn’t that make it easier to make the fascist argument in some ways?

Continue reading VAUSH ON THE STRUGGLE FOR THE FUTURE OF YOUNG MEN →
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Just One of the Ways the Media Lies: Looking at the World Through a Straw

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Israeli army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari

Israeli army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari speaks to the press from The Kirya, which houses the Israeli Ministry of Defence, in Tel Aviv on October 18, 2023.

 (Photo by Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images)

Have you ever seen a one-sided coin? No? That’s because there isn’t one. And there is no world in a straw either.

ROBERT FREEMAN

Nov 06, 2023 Common Dreams

The mainstream media lie to us every day. This is especially pernicious in the present case of Gaza. And the lying is not accidental or incidental. It is intentional, pervasive, relentless, and reckless. It’s one of the reasons U.S. foreign policy so often results in failure: it is so often premised on lies. I call this phenomenon “Looking at the World Through a Straw.” Here’s how it works.

Imagine you’re looking at a photo of a man being measured for height. There he is in his undershirt, back against the wall, the ruler painted on the wall next to him. The nurse is dutifully taking notes on a clipboard. He’s 5’10” tall. Photos don’t lie, right?

But what you didn’t see in the photo was that the man was standing on a small stool. The stool is 6” tall. The man is really 5’4”. The photographer intentionally kept the stool outside of the frame of the photo to make the man look taller than he actually was. You were Looking at the World Through a Straw.

Until the media begin telling the true context in which the Gaza conflict occurs, and the true, horrifying facts of its occurrence, they are perpetrating a mass deceit on the world.

The media do this all the time. They decide the narrative they want to convey and anything that doesn’t fit that narrative gets left out of the frame. Reality is reduced to the view through a straw. This is profoundly deceitful but often, hard to detect.

Some immediate and enormously important examples of this…

We were always told that Vietnam was about fighting communism. The reality is that communism was a far secondary motive. The real motive of the Vietnamese was nationalism. They wanted their country back from the white Western invaders who had captured and occupied it since the 1860s.

At the end of World War II, Ho Chi Mihn, the leader of Vietnam, asked U.S. President Harry Truman for help in evicting the French colonialists. He had great admiration for the U.S. and how it had broken free of British colonial domination in its Revolutionary War in the 1700s. He wanted to do the same for his country.

But Truman needed the French to help fight communism in Europe so he told Ho to take a hike. It was the original sin—betrayal—in the U.S.’ involvement in Vietnam. It assured that the U.S. would never “win the hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people and would, therefore, never be able to win the War.

With nowhere else to go, Ho turned to the Soviet Union which had just defeated Hitler in Europe. The U.S. went on to kill four million Vietnamese in its failed effort to deny them the right to choose their own government, the very Democracy it so hypocritically, sanctimoniously trumpeted (and still does) as its international agenda.

These facts are still all but unknown in the U.S. They were, and still are, left out of the frame the media maintains to manage their preferred narrative about the War. We’re left looking at the War through a straw, a narrowing so severe it is impossible to form a coherent understanding of what it was all about and why it was The First War America Ever Lost.

Consider a second example of the media lying to us by forcing us to Look at the World Through a Straw: Ukraine.

The conventional narrative is that the Russian invasion was “unprovoked.” That adjective has been unceasingly applied to mainstream coverage of the War. And not without reason. It was Adolph Hitler, in Mein Kampf, who wrote regarding how to succeed with propaganda, “Make the lie big. Make it simple. Repeat it often. People will come to believe it.”

If you look at Ukraine through a straw, as if history began on February 23, 2022, it does, indeed, look like the invasion was “unprovoked.” Nothing big happened on February 23, 2022, the day before the Russian invasion. But if you scope out even a little, you see that the provocations were many, diverse, severe, and going back decades.

When George H.W. Bush wanted Mikhail Gorbachev’s help unifying East and West Germany, he promised Gorbachev that the U.S. would not move NATO eastward, toward Russia, “not one inch.” But the moving east began under Bush’s successor, Bill Clinton. In 1999, he admitted Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to NATO. George W. Bush admitted seven more countries. Obama, two more, and Trump, two more, still.

There was furious resistance to this eastward march by leading U.S. foreign policy intellectuals. They were adamant that the move would be provocative, that is to say, provoking. This cadre of luminaries included George Kennan, the architect of the Cold War policy of Containment, William Perry, former Secretary of Defense, Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State, Strobe Talbott, former Ambassador to Russia, Robert Gates, former head of the CIA and future Secretary of Defense, and many, many others.

More than 50 former Senators, Cabinet Secretaries, diplomats and arms control experts wrote a letter to Clinton stating that moving NATO east would be “a policy error of historic importance.” They knew it would elicit the same defensive response—and for the exact same reason—that the U.S. had mustered when the Soviet Union moved missiles into Cuba, in 1962.

But this enormous intellectual edifice, drawn from the top echelons of U.S. foreign policy expertise, didn’t fit the narrative the media wanted to peddle about the War. So, it was left out of the straw. All we heard was the nauseatingly repeated refrain that the War was “unprovoked.” The truth is that Ukraine was one of the most nakedly provoked wars in history and the media lied profusely in claiming the opposite.

Gaza presents a final and even more egregious example of media lying by Looking at the World Through a Straw.

A cursory look at mainstream coverage has us hearing, by and large, about Palestinian savagery and Israeli victimhood, a sneak attack and existential dread. Let’s state for the record, unambiguously, that Jews have the right to live safely, securely, with full human and political rights, in the country of their choosing, and without fear of attack by anybody.

But there is never a media-given acknowledgement that Palestinians have exactly the same rights. And there is certainly no acknowledgement from Israeli officials that they do. And therein lies the problem.

There’s no coverage of why a caged mass of 2.2 million people, humiliated and denied political and human rights for decades, might strike back at their oppressors. Those discussions are outside of the straw of permissible discourse on the War, so never occur. But they are the overwhelming reason why Gaza—and the West Bank—are tinderboxes.

The first central fact of the situation in Gaza is this: Israel was founded in 1948 by the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinian natives. The Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, who John Pilger called “Israel’s bravest historian,” wrote a book about it titled, “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.” But it is not just history. Ethnic cleansing has continued uninterrupted ever since.

This past summer, Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, showed a map of the “New Middle East” to the United Nations General Assembly. It showed Israel but no Palestinian territories. No Gaza, West Bank, Golan Heights, East Jerusalem. They had been ethnically cleansed from the land Netanyahu said that Jews will dominate “from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea.”

Now we learn that an Israeli government-connected think tank has written a report explaining how the government can finish the ethnic cleansing: simply herd the 2.2 million residents of Gaza to the south and force Egypt to admit them to avoid a “humanitarian catastrophe.” Presto! No more Palestinians in Gaza. Which is exactly what the government is doing.

But, again, the historic and on-going facts of ethnic cleansing don’t fit the preferred Western narrative about the conflict so are left out of the straw. As with Vietnam and Ukraine, we are left without the ability to form a coherent, which is to say contextually valid, understanding of what is going on. Which is exactly the intent.

The second central fact of the situation which is never mentioned in the mainstream media accounts of the conflict, i.e., left out of the straw, is apartheid.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Israeli human rights organization B’TSelem, all charge that the Israeli state operates an apartheid regime to deprive Palestinians of basic human and political rights. It is not sporadic, benign, isolated, or incidental. It is systematic, savage, institutional, and intentional. It is one of the most revolting forms of state actions in all of history, which is why it is so universally reviled.

The result of decades of ethnic cleansing and apartheid are genocide: the destruction of a specific group of people based on ethnic, racial, religious, or other common traits. Raz Segal, an Israeli historian writing in Jewish Currents magazine, wrote recently that Gaza is “a textbook case of genocide.” He wondered how the West’s media could not be talking about it as the central focus of what is happening in Gaza.

Similarly, 800 legal scholars recently issued a public statement declaring that Israeli actions in Gaza likely amount to genocide. That is a hugely momentous charge, one that those 800 scholars would not make lightly. Surely it is weighty enough to be reported on by the mainstream media, right? Wrong.

The very word “genocide” is freighted with the horrors of the Holocaust in which millions of Jews were murdered. You would think that even the slightest chance it was happening here, now, with Jews as the perpetrators and not victims, would be newsworthy. Wrong, again. Left out of the straw.

What else is left out?

The Israelis are murdering—not killing, but murdering—130+ innocent, defenseless Palestinian children every day. A week ago we had an enormous, masturbatory, around-the-clock national fetish festival about how one lone psycho in Maine killed 18 people.

Here we have Israel, a state actor with complete U.S. support, murdering more than 130 innocent, defenseless children every day, and seeming to be planning to keep it up for an unknown duration, and it never makes the nightly news. Shouldn’t that be the headline of every news story about the conflict, in every medium, every day, every hour, until this stops? Yet, it doesn’t register with the mainstream media. It doesn’t get included in the straw.

We could go on.

Killing thousands—soon to be tens of thousands—of civilians in collective punishment for the acts of a few fanatics. Killing civilians in collective punishment is a war crime according to the Fourth Geneva Convention. It’s not being reported as such, is it.

Nor are the crimes against humanity reported as crimes against humanity. That’s what cutting off the water, food, electricity, and food to 2.2 million people amount to. So are the intentional bombings of hospitals, schools, churches, mosques, escape convoys, relief agencies, refugee camps, and other places where people under attack shelter in hope of escaping the torrential death being rained down on them. They are crimes against humanity.

These are the essential facts of the background and the conduct of the conflict: ethnic cleansing; apartheid; genocide; war crimes; crimes against humanity; mass murder. The most heinous actions of a state actor that we know of. All are left out of the straw in favor of endless tear-jerking stories of Israeli suffering, Israeli angst, Israeli trauma, Israeli fear. Not that those aren’t real, but they don’t begin to explain what is going on.

By never covering these things, ever, the Western mass media are complicit in creating the environment where such atrocities have come to fruition, and where the potential for escalation into World War III is getting more real by the day.

Have you ever seen a one-sided coin? No? That’s because there isn’t one. There is no world in a straw, except the fantasy one fed to us by the media to keep us confused, passive, and impotent. Until the media begin telling the true context in which the Gaza conflict occurs, and the true, horrifying facts of its occurrence, they are perpetrating a mass deceit on the world, certainly on the people of the U.S. At the very least they deserve our contempt and revulsion, and profound suspicion of their agenda and motives. They are not stupid. They are not neutral. Nor should we be.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

ROBERT FREEMAN

Robert Freeman is Founder and Executive Director of The Global Uplift Project which builds small-scale infrastructure projects in the developing world to improve humanity’s capacity for self-development. Robert taught economics and history at Los Altos High School where he also coached the Speech and Debate team, including producing a national champion in 2006. He has traveled extensively in both the developed and developing world. He is the author of “The Best One Hour History” series which includes “World War I” (2013), “The InterWar Years” (2014), “The Vietnam War” (2013), and other titles.

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The Mirror Principle | If You Don’t Change This, Reality Will Never Change

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Awakened Mind Nov 4, 2023 Embark on a transformative journey with us as we delve deep into the profound concept of the Mirror Principle. This powerful principle suggests that our external reality is a direct reflection of our inner world. In this enlightening video, we’ll explore practical insights, real-life examples, and actionable techniques to empower you to reshape your reality. ? Key Topics Explored: Understanding the Mirror Principle and its Significance Recognizing Patterns and Repetitions in Your Experiences Embracing Personal Growth for a Shift in Reality Practical Techniques: Visualization, Affirmation, and Mindfulness Taking Responsibility for Your Co-Creation Journey ? Join us on this transformative quest to unlock the secrets of conscious creation and redefine your reality through the Mirror Principle.

(Contributed by Ned Henry, H.W.)

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Tarot Card for November 7: The Five of Wands

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The Five of Wands

The Lord of Strife usually appears in a reading to indicate quarrels, conflict and discord. There is rarely anything of value to be gained from the disharmony introduced by this card – in fact, it will often indicate bitterness and argument for argument’s sake.

To try to determine how serious the strife will be, look for cards like Nine of Swords, Ten of Swords or the Tower to indicate a really bad situation. With cards such as the Eight of Wands or the Six of Wands it’s probable that the friction may clear an outstanding problem area.

This card will often come up when some-one is very unhappy with a working situation – there is, perhaps, a clash of personality with somebody else; or perhaps the individual is unhappy with working practises. Often in this situation there’s a tendency toward rashness and loss of control which can lead to further problems.

Another time that the Lord of Strife will make an appearance is when we are in inner conflict – most often about something we consider to be immoral. This is probably the most significant type of problem that can be highlighted with this card. For instance, if we have taken an easy option, or a dishonest turn, and are now troubled by the voice of our conscience, we could expect to see the Lord of Strife appearing.

In this case we need to set right whatever we believe we have done wrong – or failed to do altogether. We will not be at peace until we do. The Five of Wands is a card that reminds us quite firmly about the ethical considerations that underpin the Suit of Wands.

The Five of Wands

(via angelpaths.com and Alan Blackman)