Dan Littauer

Observations, reflections, images and sound from one man's contiual life journey

[danlittauer]

Some important information about the Pfizer vaccine.I’m very encouraged to hear about the apparent 90% effectiveness of this vaccine, and I also think we need to have more information and transparency. Here are some things to think about:Pfizer struck a $1.95 billion deal with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense to provide Americans with 100 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, for free, with an option for 500 million additional doses. The agreement is part of Operation Warp Speed.

Pfizer/BioNTech have also inked a deal with the U.K. government for 30 million initial doses. The vaccine, currently known only as BNT162, developed in partnership with the German company BioNTech, requires two doses, which means the initial batch for the U.S. would cover 50 million people. The deal hinges on the vaccine clearing Phase 3 human trials.

The BNT162 vaccine is based on BioNTech’s proprietary mRNA technology. BioNTech is the market authorization holder for the mRNA technology worldwide, and will own all the trademarks for the vaccine.

Conflict of interest in the FDA?

Interestingly enough, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who served as commissioner of the FDA from May 2017 to April 2019, just so happened to be elected to Pfizer’s board of directors at the end of June 2019. At the time, Ian Read, executive chairman of Pfizer’s board of directors stated:

“We are fortunate to have Dr. Gottlieb join Pfizer’s Board of Directors. Scott’s expertise in health care, public policy and the industry will be an asset to our company and enable our shareholders to continue to benefit from a Board representing a balance of experience, competencies and perspectives.”

mRNA Vaccines May Produce Serious Side Effects

As detailed in the preliminary study results, posted on the preprint server medRxiv July 20, 2020, BNT162b1 is a lipid nanoparticle (LNP) formulated nucleoside-modified mRNA that encodes the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

mRNA vaccines have never before been licensed for use in humans. Inside your cells, mRNA activate DNA instructions, and act as a template to build a specific protein.

The theory behind mRNA vaccines is that when you inject the mRNA (encapsulated within lipid nanoparticles), the mRNA will stimulate your cells to manufacture their own viral proteins. In this case, those proteins would mimic the proteins found in SARS-CoV-2.Conventional vaccines train your body to recognize and respond to the proteins of a particular virus by injecting a small amount of the actual viral protein into your body, thereby triggering an immune response and the development of antibodies.

No previous vaccines have had your own cells produce the viral proteins responsible for producing immunity. mRNA vaccines are designed to make your body produce its own viral protein, which your immune system would then mount a response to. If you suspect a whole lot could go wrong here, you’d probably be right. As reported by The Vaccine Reaction:

“According to researchers at University of Pennsylvania and Duke University, mRNA vaccines have potential safety issues, including local and systemic inflammation and stimulation of auto-reactive antibodies and autoimmunity, as well as development of edema (swelling) and blood clots.”

Systemic inflammation, auto-reactive antibodies and autoimmune problems are no small matters. In fact, these are in large part why previous attempts to create a coronavirus vaccine have failed.

As explained by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in many interviews, coronavirus vaccines are notorious for creating paradoxical immune enhancement. Even though the vaccines create a robust antibody response, the subjects end up sicker than normal when they’re exposed to the wild virus. In one ferret study, all the vaccinated animals died.

Time will tell just how hazardous the COVID-19 vaccines turn out to be. Since they work on the genetic level, there could be long-term, perhaps even generational, issues that won’t be readily apparent anytime soon, as these vaccines could be integrated into your DNA.

Be Wary of the PR and media Propaganda Spin

A July 21, 2020, Wired article urges researchers and media to be upfront and transparent about the vaccines’ side effects right now, “before it ends up as fodder for the skeptics”:

“Neither the mainstream media nor the medical press has given much attention to the two vaccines’ potential downsides — in particular, their risk of nasty adverse effects, even if they’re not life-threatening. This sort of puffery doesn’t only help to build a false impression; it may also dry the tinder for the future spread of vaccine fearmongering.”

Wired points out that some trials are not using an inert placebo but rather injected meningococcal vaccine, which might hide certain symptoms or harms. Another example: The University of Oxford added study arms in which subjects are given acetaminophen every six hours for the first 24 hours after inoculation.

Is the pain and fever reducer given to mask and downplay certain symptoms and side effects, such as pain, fever, headache or general malaise? It very well could be. Wired notes:“The press release for … results from the Oxford vaccine trials described an increased frequency of ‘minor side effects’ among participants. A look at the actual paper, though, reveals this to be a marketing spin …Yes, mild reactions were far more common than worse ones. But moderate or severe harms — defined as being bad enough to interfere with daily life or needing medical care — were common too.

Around one-third of people vaccinated with the COVID-19 vaccine without acetaminophen experienced moderate or severe chills, fatigue, headache, malaise, and/or feverishness.

Close to 10 percent had a fever of at least 100.4 degrees, and just over one-fourth developed moderate or severe muscle aches. That’s a lot, in a young and healthy group of people — and the acetaminophen didn’t help much for most of those problems.

Conclusions:

So yes, this is good news but the public has the right to be educated and informed about this vaccine so we can make sure it is truly safe. Hope? Yes! But I urge also reflective and informed caution and debate. Please feel free to share this post, we need an informed debate based on facts free from political, commercial or conflict of interests. We should go ahead and investigate the issues carefully before we are clear that the vaccine works well. I know it’s hard because we badly want to go back to life as before, however, we must not let fear, media spin, big Pharma and its vested and conflicted interests with politicians, affect a rational examination. This is for our safety.

[danlittauer]

Queen Anne - International Women’s Day

Few know that the date of the International Women’s Day was also the date of the inauguration of Queen Anne of Great Britain, on the 8th of March 1702.  The last of the Stuarts.

Anne is one of the least talked about monarchs of British history, yet she was exceptionally intelligent, fiercely independent, and a lesbian, which probably accounts for the silence.

In fact, Anne’s relatively short reign (twelve years) was pivotal for England, with her political skill and intelligence; she finally cemented the undecided Church of England as Protestant after a century of religious quarrels, was victorious in war against France and was the first sovereign of the Kingdom of Great Britain (the union of England and Scotland), officially formed in 1707.

Although Anne was married to Prince George of Denmark, she was the first married queen to rule independently of her husband, and showed her wisdom and determination to rule, as her own woman, despite many personal tragedies. She was estranged from her father, her mother was dead, and she lost all 17 of her children to miscarriages, stillbirths or illness.

Before becoming a Queen, Anne fell in love with an older, glamorous, beautiful and world-savvy aristocrat, Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough (ancestor to Winston Churchill and Princess Diane), a friendship that lasted twenty-five years.  She looked up to her for guidance, and Sarah, guided her during the messy days of post “glorious revolution” and shifting Monarchic allegiances between Catholicism and Protestantism. Sarah was described as one of the great beauties of court: blonde, vivacious and charismatic, she enthralled both men and women. She married an ambitious, handsome young Army officer, John Churchill, ten years her senior.

“If I write whole volumes I could never express how well I love you,” wrote Anne to Sarah in one of hundreds of love letters.

“I hope I shall get a moment or two to be with my dear…”, wrote the smitten young Anne, “That I may have one dear embrace, which I long for more than I can express.”

In one letter, she begged: “Oh come to me as soon as you can that I may cleave myself to you.” And in another: “I can’t go to bed without seeing you… If you knew in what condition you have made me, I am sure you would pity.”

Her sister, Queen Mary, who reigned along with William, disapproved of Anne’s relationship with Sarah, labelling it as “criminal” in order to have her removed from Anne’s household. Anne then reassured Sarah in a letter: “I had rather live in a cottage with you than reign empress of the world without you.”

Anne adored Sarah with a combination of passion and extraordinary patience that is, alas, only too frequent in great love affairs.

Sarah saw herself as superior in intellect to Anne and apparently had quite a temper and was determined to squeeze every political and material advantage she could out of the Queen. Although it seems that Sarah did genuinely love Anne, and their relationship caused quite a scandal in their time,

When Anne became Queen in 1702, following the deaths of Mary and then William, Sarah became the most powerful woman at court. Among her posts was Keeper of the Privy Purse, controlling Anne’s finances, and Groom of the Stole, the most senior court position. She also became a duchess when, as commander-in-chief of the English and Dutch armies. Thus, the state was ruled and dominated by two shrewd women who were also lovers.

Sarah, however, started to overplay her hand treating Anne as a less than clever child rather than the shrewd and increasingly independent-minded woman-monarch she had become.

Sarah ordered Anne to appoint her own allies to cabinet posts, lectured her about affairs of state, refused to answer her letters, and showed little sympathy when Anne’s husband died.

A hurt Anne increasingly turned to Abigail Masham, a poor relation of the duchess for whom she had secured a post as one of Anne’s Women of the Bedchamber. Abigail was plain – she was mocked for her red nose – and placid. But she was ready to listen rather to lecture, to comfort instead of scold.

When Sarah realised Abigail had replaced her in Anne’s affections, and confidence she reacted with bitter fury, calling Abigail a ‘viper’.

She turned to blackmail and accused the Queen of having “so great a passion for such a woman” and warned her that if the world knew of her 'intimacy’ with Abigail and that the Queen had “no inclination for any but one’s own sex”, her reputation would be ruined. She was threatening to out her as a lesbian unless she got rid of Abigail. But Anne refused to be blackmailed, responding: “Sure I may love whom I please.”

Jealous, the duchess began spreading rumours about the Queen and her dresser, insinuating that the country was being ruled by a pair of lesbians.

One of her allies penned a scurrilous ballad about Anne’s unnatural infatuation with her “slut of state”, describing how she dearly loved the “dirty chambermaid” – Abigail – who performed “sweet service” for her Queen and “dark deeds in the night”.

She then showed this to the Queen, hoping to shame her into dropping Abigail, the “ungrateful bitch”, as the ballad described her. Another pamphlet – lurid even by today’s standards – asked whether Anne and Abigail indulged in 'that female vice… most detestable in nature?’

The gossip began to spread. It was said that “the Queen was very fond of her [Abigail] at the bath”. Sarah even hinted that, while Anne’s husband was alive, Anne and Abigail had enjoyed amorous encounters during his afternoon naps.

Eventually, infuriated by Sarah’s accusations, Anne banished Sarah from court.

She was replaced by Abigail as Keeper of the Privy Purse. Sarah’s allies in government were replaced by Abigail’s friends. Even the Duke of Marlborough himself was eventually dismissed.

A furious Sarah threatened to blackmail the Queen further by publishing the letters she had sent her over the years (but only Anne’s). Their contents, she hinted slyly, “if known… might lose a crown”. This time, the threats worked: she was given a generous payoff and the letters remained hidden until after Anne’s death.

By then, the duchess was the richest woman in England and owner of Blenheim Palace. But she still itched to have the last word, revealing Anne’s letters in her own self-justifying memoirs.

Anne is one of the greatest Monarchs of Britain, largely responsible for England and Scotland combining to create “Great Britain,” and in which their conquests and victories on land an on sea made it a worldwide empire, and a serious contender for European power.

Queen Anne’s life attests to her amazing strong sense of self, as a woman, and her increasingly firm grip on power, despite a life full of tragedies, intense family pressures and divisions, and the constant difficulty of dealing with her endlessly demanding and outspoken friend Sarah Churchill.

Happy International Women’s Day!

[danlittauer]

Surreptitious Smile

I wish my conscience could watch over me To enlighten and protect me Like a firefly in the dark When I hand gift my trust

We’ve been promising a promised land But I think we’ve lost the way When that gift is not cherished Because of fear of self

I love his surreptitious smile That hides the pain within him Feel alone in the brands of rapture And leave alone for the loss

I've been too long dreaming That our hearts could meet Yet feel alone in the brands of rapture And leave alone for the loss

You’ve got such amazing smile lines Yet your conscience cannot watch over you Turned back by the foot of the doorway Never lost and found

[danlittauer]

Needles of pain I need to outgrow

On a rainy, cold Scottish summer's day, I’ve built a nest home to shield me away, From the strong northern wind, Like cuddling with my cat in spring, Treading carefully on wet leaves, Squelching sounds - footsteps of reprieves, So I dream you up, You're all promise, my backup, In this frigid place I keep a little fire, I'm here like a bird on a wire, In a wee corner of Glasgow, Needles of pain I need to outgrow, I'm totally funny that way, Putting up a light sitting in the grey, Conjuring up a place, But down south where there is more grace, And a promise of a warm embrace.

[danlittauer]

“I cannot choose”

“I cannot choose,” he said, carrying pounds of flesh on his back, his eyes in a fog mesh.

A frozen heart locked in indecision thorns, veiled by mud mourns, black clouds of imaginary futures, his eyes cherry wary.

And even as I hold my hand, he insists about a crash land, sorrow tent of defence, he built a thorns fence, easier carrying a decision of indecision,   then face a moment of collision, and so he only arrives at elision.

So even as flower hope hands, reaches out but he withstands, burying his in sands, easier to choose laying in the dark known, and stay alone and postpone, future happiness.

[danlittauer]

A red flower

A red flower seed sprouts, like heart springs, a babbling brook from my heart to yours. Our twigs hands intertwine, silently embracing. With green shoots, of potential soul leafs. But that red red flower, springs in my head, intertwining me down to the earth, withwhom I silently embrace. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

[danlittauer]

The Collapse of the UK and USA I’m sorry to say this but there seems to be a great deal of denial both in the UK and US (and both by the right and left). The two countries imho are well underway into fascism, as a reactionary final phase against deep structural problems that’s leading them to socio-economic collapse. This final phase is an attempt to segment power of the elite that is based on a failed socio-economic order, and it won’t work. May and Trump are both authoritarian leaders and both will accelerate this inevitable collapse. This will be because their premise is pitting segments of the populations against each other and failure to deliver the promised prosperity (“Make America Great Again”, “Brexit’s Take back control”…). Ultimately this will tear these countries apart internally far faster now. It will also lead the two countries to withdraw from international organisation and weaken world alliances (NATO, EU).

The two countries with their highly linked financial industries have hallowed their own economies by deindustrialisation, the deliberate destruction and privatisation of public services and general neglect of their citizens and infrastructure. The big political topics of immigration, “evil” China, Russia, Iran (note I view these as nasty dictatorships, and Putin is helping destabilise the USA and Europe) and the “bad EU”, benefit claimants, etc, aren’t the main root of the problems facing the two countries but distractions and scapegoating, The UK and USA will decline and fall but this will trigger a global crisis. I give this process of decomposition and fragmentation no more than four years. It frightens the hell out of me.

The EU can become a bedrock of democracy and stability but only, if imho, it would accelerate deeper integration and federalisation as well as build an EU army, as a response. It also must move away from austerity policies and invest in the key areas which have been causing the decline in the two above mentioned counties.

Picture above: The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire, by JMW Turner, 1812

[danlittauer]

Capsuled love water hopes Capsuled love water hopes Fed the orchid Radiating big flowers By the window A clear shield of warmth My roots extend above and below Silently forever pointing to heaven and earth Beneath, they lay Dried dead flowers With the promise of capsuled love water hopes Landing intermittently Just as sure as the tick-tok Flower falls

[danlittauer]

[danlittauer]

In the beginning there were three parents: Sun, Moon, and Earth. Each produced an offspring, round and otherwise like itself. From sun was produced the man; from earth, the woman; from moon, the...

[danlittauer]

Goodbye

I couldn’t hold your hand before you died.

The two knives cut your heart,

And mine.

Under false piety, greed and hatred collided,

Two knives,

Two sisters,

Cutting into your flesh as you were dying,

Tormenting the still living.

  Two knives dripped in blood,

One in the Holyland the other in Scotland,

Beneath the false tears,

You buried mother’s soul, body and dignity,

To empty her pockets into your gaping soulless thirst.

The two knives,

Prevented me from attending your funeral,

Killing that day a part of me too.

  But I keep you alive and bury you each day,

I say my hello and goodbye,

I remember your life,

Feel my pain, loss,

I wish that you feel peace now,

Maybe you can save some for me. Mother.

[danlittauer]

Right wing populism or the marriage of corporations and states?

Congradulations: You’re married!

I am going to suggest that we are living through a process whereby there is a marriage of the state and private special interests through corporations. Today the reality is that big corporations are partners with, and/or became exclusive monopolies of the state. Whether in the sectors of banking, agriculture, housing, energy, transportation, manufacturing, or nearly any other facet of the economy it is a public/private collusion. The relationship between the state and corporation becomes indiscernible. Almost the entire British (and American) public sector have now been carved out and sold to different corporations which have links in the state governance; think the Royal Mail or the UK blood bank as just small examples… Less well known corporations run huge slabs of our public sector discreetly, for example Serco and Sodexo, just to name two…

Now ask yourself some questions…

Why can Goldman Sachs, the largest investment bank, speculate in markets using newly printed government money that has been borrowed virtually for free? 

  Why does Westminster/Congress write laws that are longer than the Old Testament with obscure, impossible to understand language, that more often than not restrict our freedoms and legalise further privatisation of public institutions built by tax payers money? 

The hidden reality

I suggest that what we are witnessing is the privatisation of the public sector, de-unionisation of the entire labour force, and violent austerity. This has brought about the rapid decline of political and economic conditions for the middle-class and the economic underclass, coupled with the rapid accumulation of wealth and profit for the ruling class, structured through huge corporations.

Meanwhile workers are working more and more for less and less pay.  The jobless are either searching desperately for work or simply have given up because there are hardly any options except taking “self employment” contracts which are, more often than not, even worse than the dreadful and meagre, declining benefit system.

  I’ve heard some naive speculation, mostly from uninformed Green Left activists saying the system will collapse. Yet corporations are not collapsing, they are taking over and merging with the functions of the state, and therein lies the secret of the system’s ability to sustain and grow in the midst of deteriorating conditions for the majority of the population. 

  Corporations adjust to our changing socio-economic reality and even flourish because they can create consumption even out of increasing levels of poverty by carving the population into niche groups and markets.  These can also be played one against each other to distract and consolidate this system of exploitation, far from eroding or undermining it.

  I’ve already elsewhere outlined examples to this, how the state has been transformed into a creditor essentially for corporations and asset management groups, and that’s just one aspect.

This hidden reality does not only effect the above but also has our planet in a destructive ecological course that many climatologists and biologists say is an irreversible global warming or even heating (think dystopic books/films like, Children of Men, Code 46 or the Hunger Games). The possible and very probable near future population decline, and conflicts due to loss of agricultural and habitable area, are just another issue corporations and their elites need to adjust to, rather than fear collapse of their control.

The tainted lenses

In order to maintain order and control of mass impoverishment and deteriorating living standards for the majority of the population, a climate of jealousy and fear is being encouraged.  This functions to distract people from seeing the transformations, of which some we have discussed above.

  No jobs? It’s the immigrants fault who came here, allegedly taking opportunities and lowered pay.  Decline in living standards? Well you are supporting through your hard work “lazy” people on benefits costing the state billions and burdening its ability to help you advance in social mobility… That’s the kind of the consensus in most mainstream parties in the UK or USA, the difference is only by the degree of vehemence such lies are propagated.  

The reality is that the economic conditions that are undermining you are also pushing you to see the world through a distorted lense, all that is needed is to repeat lies and exacerbate the conditions to accentuate and further consolidate this process. 

The unmagnifying glass

In most developed Western states the media and civil society acted as a magnifying glass - providing a space for debate, accountablity, respresentation and transprancey between the interests of the state, economic organisations and corporations and citizens. The media itself is either privatised and/or eroded due to worsening economic conditions and the drying up of income revenues. This in turn consolidates control of them by bigger and bigger coporations and/or along with state intervention. Even NGOs, most charities and human rights (and leading LGBTI rights) organisations are going down that path, like the media, and no longer can be wholly trusted to monitor and act as a balance to the system - quite the opposite in fact. The average activist in one of the big LGBTI NGOs not just deals of a CEO like salary (and gets it once they become prominent enough) but becomes part of the system (local civil service, G20, UN, etc...). The role of unions in our society is increasingly minimised and weakened, their traditional linkage to parties that aimed to represent the intersts of the workers eroded or dropped in favour of connections between parties and corporations.

Such institutions increasingly become networks of aspiring inividulas that wish to serve the interests of corporate-state elite. This inevtiably leads to a culture of clientism, nepotism and self intersts, the work for better causes of the groups they proport to represent is incidental, their loyality is by far to their sponsors, the state, corporations, or both. This diminishes the ability of accountability, transparency and critical thinking in society. This in turn contributes to social antagnims, opportunism and mistrust. Mechanisms that acted previously to porvide a balance and check for the interest of the public are themesleves being corrupted or outright absorbed by the the marriage of corporate-state interests; We no longer have a maginifying glass but a distorive one - acting for self-interests of the elite, of which they are apart (check the pay rolls of the CEOs of must of such organisations).

The hand of fear

In order to further protect and insure this continues more and more “threats” are created or provoked to scare the population (think of Al-Qaeda, ISIL, Iran and now increasingly DPRK and Russia). These threats are then used as excuse for legislation that signs off more and more of our civil liberties in order to “protect us”, but in reality they are designed to protect corporate interests above all, think DRIP, RIPA and TTIP.

The perverse marriage between corporations and the state  is exactly what is pushing real wages down, creating a workforce that fears so much joblessness, poverty, imprisonment, and homelessness, that they’ll be prepared to do jobs for less and less pay and accept passively worsening living conditions, or blame it on scapegoats.

People don’t see each other as people, rather they see each other as competitors or means to an end, that erodes the ability for empathy, solidarity and therefore resistance to the processes described above.  These are the material forces that breed fear and competition amongst the majority of working people, keeping them in check of through antagonism and dehumanisation. One could call it “interanlised consumerism”.

  In this situation the population doesn’t even notice the slide of political realism to fabricated fear, threats, dehumanisation and social paranoia. 

UKIP is not an exception but a symptom

UKIP, sadly, isn’t an “aberration” in this situation, something you can wake up from, or see through: what some of my rather lofty fellow activists fail to see is that it is the LOGICAL CONCLUSION of this process, a new kind of corporate-state driven fascism.  UKIP of course, as I explained elsewhere, isn’t an alternative, that is plain to see.  Rather, it is the just another manner to consolidate the same coporate-state interests, with the Conservative and Labour parties following closely behind but to the same end.

  Most of the UK and U.S. citizens are taught in school that fascism and totalitarianism are a ruthless one party dictatorship, the most popular example being Nazi Germany, and more recently the DPRK, China, and Putin’s Russia. This is a misconception: Fascism is a political economy, not merely a political system that existed in one moment of history.

  We are at a stage where there’s a near complete control of the state by monopoly capital, which Marxists would remind us is the logical conclusion of capitalism; a point where the relationship between the state and corporation becomes indiscernible.  

  The use of holding to us counter examples of despicable regimes, fanatical organisations (sometimes deliberately provoked and even engineered) as examples of evils of fascism, or antithesis to our own growing corporate-state fascism is simply to distract us from what is happening here and now. Naturally it doesn’t mean that Putin, the DPRK and others are any better, far from it.

Illustration above: A picturesque view of the state of the nation for February 1778 - A cartoon shows America (represented by a man with feathered cap) cutting the horns off a cow (representing British commerce) which is being milked by a Dutchman, two men (representing France and Spain) are standing toward the rear of the cow holding bowls of milk. In the foreground, on the right, lies the British lion asleep, a small dog is standing on the lion’s back urinating. A distraught Englishman is standing to the left of the lion. In the background, across an expanse of water, is a city labeled “Philadelphia”, to the left of the city is a ship, the “Eagle”, laid-up in dry dock, Admiral Howe is sitting at a table, out of sight of his flag ship, with his brother General Howe, a keg is on the ground to the left and wine bottles on the ground to the right of the table.

[danlittauer]

The Decline and Fall of The Nation State

The role of The State is changing. Increasingly relinquishing its already problematic function to better the welfare of the "nation" to be substituted by the function of the creditor. The State becomes creditor and enforcer of fiscal and tax policies to benefit its de facto ruling elite, the so called 1%.

The State's wealth and assets aren't seen any more as means to better its population, but as means to guarantee more borrowing and credit to keep its ailing ship afloat. 

The State becomes increasingly seen as a tax and corrupt burden by the dwindling middle-class and poor who are made to increasingly shoulder the costs while the elite find more and more creative ways to avoid any.

As its ability to sustain itself fiscally and support the "Nation" erodes, so does its standing and power dwindle symbiotically.

As for its leaders, politicians no longer see themselves as doing public services, rather they are using "public office" as a jumping board to a career in the bureaucracy of the huge corporations that dominate the world's economy.   The better they serve them the better the reward in the end of their office. This means that The State in its current form it will not be able to survive for long.  Some right wing ideologues say it will evolve into an "entrepreneurial state", but this is unlikely and will not be sustainable.

Four hundred years after its birth as outlined in the painting above depicting the Ratification of The Treaty of Muster, it will be very unlikely to survive as it was originally envisaged.

We've got a warning from history - The Western Roman Empire - and its eventual decline, went through a somewhat similar process.

Welcome to our age of Advanced Corporate Monopoly Capitalism and its corresponding Decline and Fall of The Nation State.

[danlittauer]

Passover: Reflection on Slavery

Tonight, during the Seder Jews celebrate Passover, the holiday of freedom: the liberation of the Jewish slaves from the tyranny of the Egyptian Pharaoh.

May it help many Jews around the world to draw analogy with Palestine. If Moses said" "Let my people go" to Pharaoh, we should take note and let our brothers go, release them from the shackles of occupation and oppression.

Let them find freedom in their land and home, let there be peace.

[danlittauer]

UKIP & Farage’s dangerous myths and distortions

Who is the real Nigel Farage?

Farage likens himself to an “outsider”, an ordinary blokey man-of-the-people, one you could have a friendly pint with in a pub.  He brandishes his “white English” background and recently speaks of the oppression of the “white working class”.

But Farage shouldn’t be ashamed of his less than perfect little-England background….  His great-grandfather Carl Schrod, born in 1864, was the child of German immigrant cabinetmakers in London. His family name was originally Ferauge which got anglicised to Farage, is of Huguenot ancestry, which were French protestant refugees that received asylum all over protestant Europe, including the UK.

Farage was BORN INTO money, not “white working class”. Like his father, Farage was a stockbroker who worked in the City of London, he was educated in the elite Dulwich College and later joined the American commodity brokerage firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, transferring to Credit Lyonnais Rouse in 1986. He joined Refco in 1994, and Natexis Metals in 2003.

Incidentally, Farage is also married to a German lady, nothing to be ashamed of.

Lets turn our attention to his political self-portrait. Nigel Farage speaks constantly of him and his party as having an “outsider” status. He claims he is being excluded, like ordinary people, from economic justice by “career politicians”.

However, his velveteen jacket lapels and checked bonnet can hardly hide the hankerings for country squire status.

As for “career politicians” off the 12 UKIP members of the European parliament (MEPs) elected in 2004, UKIP have had to expel two for corruption. Farage himself has taken £2 million of taxpayers' money in expenses and allowances as a MEP, on top of his £64,000 a year salary.

He certainly IS MAKING A CAREER in the EU which largely funds him, and so are roughly a third of his candidates standing for the European elections are currently working in politics, as MEPs, staffers, or researchers.

And behind him are some fairly unpleasant characters. Never mind that in the last European Parliament, several of his MEPs ended up in trouble for fiddling their expenses, with one actually jailed. 

UKIP – a party by the elite for the elite.

UKIP was born from the Anti-Federalist-League and was founded by Alan Sked, Professor of International History at the London School of Economics, who studied history at Merton College, Oxford.  Sked himself now disassociates from UKIP which he says, thanks to Farage has “gone completely fruitcake,” becoming “anti-immigrant, anti-intellectual and racist”.

Most of its leadership can be traced to the extreme Thatcherite wing of the Tories, who wanted to leave the European Union, and were pushed to the margins in their mother party. UKIP is backed financially by big business and some very wealthy people, whom it backs in return.

One of UKIP's biggest donors in the past was Stuart Wheeler. He is a rich businessman and Tory party member who has donated millions of pounds to the Tories. Now he has donated £100,000 to UKIP and called on other Tory party members to vote for them. These right-wing businessmen aren't giving millions of pounds to UKIP because they want more money spent on hospitals and education. They oppose the EU partly from a standpoint of wanting more "free trade" and "deregulation" of businesses. That is, more freedom for big business to gamble with our jobs and pensions, and to profit from the sell-off of more public services.

UKIP opposes any regulation or controls on the banks and backs massive tax cuts for millionaires. Its key policy is the a flat tax of around 31% of income (this would also incorporate national insurance) - meaning tax rises for the majority of people and substantial cuts for the elite.

The NO TO IMMIGRATION is a cynical attempt to tap into the real fear that exists about jobs and wages. This fear is not just as a result of the current economic crisis but also present and previous UK governments including new Labour’s attempts to use migrant labour, particularly from Eastern Europe, to drive down wages and increase the profits of big business.  The only way to protect jobs and wages is to regulate them and having people work together to take collective action for workers’ rights.  The solution is not a “NO to immigration”, but no to erosion in workers rights (which withdrawing from the EU will accelerate not combat!) and a massive YES to investment in infrastructure, education, training and diversification of industries that can produce quality products, not financial schemes!

As we’ve seen UKIP has no plans to reverse the massive redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle class to the plutarchy of big business/bankers, quite the opposite.

Put differently, does UKIP Farage have any plans for reversing this?  Say mass employment or helping the poor/destitute and middle class in terms of investment in infrastructure, high skills education, creating industries and so on? 

Instead UKIP plays on a classic divide and rule agenda, one that the Nazi party perfected to an art - struggling to pay your mortgage? Well, that's because of Asians/fake disabled people/slothful benefits scroungers/Asylum seekers/the European Union, etc. Nothing to do with corrupt bankers or millionaire tax dodgers. The majority of its voters are former Conservatives, but it has also tapped into disillusioned former Labour supporters, playing to an anti-migrant agenda, and increasingly people who are just fed up with being ripped off, being fooled by the superficial window dressing that UKIP is the party of the “White Working Class.”

What about the European Union?  Is it the big enemy of the people? The answer is No and Yes… Is the EU flawed? Sure. There are marco economic flaws, certainly its institutions are over bureaucratic and undemocratic to some extent - but the problem isn't the EU, its a symptom or a result of countries like the UK vetoing reform and more transparent citizen power/vote rather than individual countries governments steering the EU agenda.  To blame the EU for the failure is hypocrisy, given Farage and his colleagues opportunistic relationship to it.

The EU, even with its limitations and help to big business, is, as an institution and its laws, a moderating influence against a far more right wing UK which wants to continue to destroy the already eroded workers rights and conditions, human rights and transparency and accountability – ironically exactly what UKIP wants to accelerate!   

Is this Farage’s/UKIP’s vision of helping the poor and middle class?

What Farage really wants is a slice of the pie, to be an agent of the big multinationals and banks, as he is not challenging them, merely displacing the anger felt by the population over exploitation into racist/xenophobic strawmen

In their seminal work, The Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno and Max Horkheimer outline how  "culture industry", constantly creates a false consciousness about the world around us based on myths and distortions deliberately spread in order to benefit the ruling class.

Time to spill the beans and dispel the Mirage of Farage’s myths and distortions.

[danlittauer]

Ethnically cleansed Oympics: Sochi's bloody historical secret revealed

Did you know that Sochi was once the capital of Circassia (or Cherkessia) until Russia invaded it in the late 19th century?  Russia systematically engaged in mass ethnic cleansing, killing over 4 million of the Cherkessi people, while another 4 million became refugees, forced to settle all over the world.  This was modern Europe's first mass ethnic cleansing, or perhaps holocaust. 

The mountain from where the skiers are now doing their skijumps is called to this day the Red Mountain (by both Russians and Cherkessis) because the snow was unable to absorb the blood from the slaughter inflicted by the Russians on the locals.  It is now called the KrasnayaPolyana ski complex, and is purportedly built on the site of the Circassians’ legendary last battle.  This is why some Cherkessi people protest and say "Sochi: Skiing on mass graves!"

The last stand by the Circassians against the Russians was at Sochi, and in 1864 Russia finally conquered and wiped any trace of the Cherkessi in the area by either mass murder or systematic deportation into boats that sailed from Sochi to the Ottoman Empire, and from there resettled (or sold as slaves) around the Middle East.  Less than 10% Cherkessi people remained in their homeland, and they too have been later forcibly expelled from their homeland.

A Russian officer described the scene around Sochi as the Russians were celebrating their victory: “On the road our eyes were met with a staggering image: corpses of women, children, elderly persons, torn to pieces and half-eaten by dogs ; deportees emaciated by hunger and disease, almost too weak to move their legs, collapsing from exhaustion and becoming prey to 4 dogs while still alive.”

Nikolai Evdokimov, the general in charge of the operation, wrote annoyedly, of a subordinate, “I wrote to Count Sumarokov as to why he keeps reminding me in every report concerning the frozen bodies which cover the roads,” (from Walter Richmond's, The Circassian Genocide).

Russia has worked hard to erase any trace of history of Circassia, it also exiled the few remaining Cherkessis into a another region away from the ethnically cleansed Sochi.

Over six million Cherkessi people now live in exile, without a homeland.

They keep the memory of their homeland alive and mark May 21st as the memorial day for the Circassian Genocide.

This is why some have labelled Sochi the Genocide Olympics, although it is probably more accurate to talk of mass ethnic cleansing.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing_of_Circassians

[danlittauer]

Happy birthday Facebook, you made us.

So Facebook is celebrating 10 years for its online existence, but the real headline is how it transformed YOU.

YOU are now Facebook's product, and even more so, YOUR data is a commodity that can be used to find out anything you reveal about YOU, available for a price.

But there’s more, Facebook has accelerated the already present condition of alienation and loneliness in advanced capitalism a ten fold.

Alienation is a product of world that judges YOU by income, YOUR job, consumer objects, and self-projected image causing the loss of YOUR family and organic social and community connections.

Facebook offers an imaginary solution to loneliness that accelerates the collapse of the social fabric in advanced capitalist societies.

Instead of YOU taking time to see, meet, emotionally and intellectually connect with people, we retreat to a world where our connection is based on sharing photos, videos, status updates, carefully edited thoughts and “feelings” provided on Facebook.

Facebook gives us the illusion that we are not alone and always connected, YOU being the centre of an online world, but in fact it often ends up making YOU feel even more lonely and disconnected from real people.

On Facebook YOU get to edit, delete, present, YOUR optimal message; Instead of building true connection YOU become obsessed with personal promotion, online romance, and textual exchanges.

Facebook hasn’t just changed what and how YOU socialise, it is transforming who YOU are.

It appeals to us where we’re most vulnerable due the changes above: we are lonely, we are afraid of intimacy and confused about our place in the world.

Facebook offers us three core fantasies: that we focus our attention wherever we like, we will always be heard, and finally we’ll never have to be alone.

We are sharing carefully edited “experiences” so we can feel connected to others, heard, and alive.

But the Facebook “reality” in which YOU find yourself is carefully orchestrated, organised and faked. 

If Descartes once said “I think therefore I am” – Facebook’s motto is “I share therefore I am.”

But if YOU allow YOURSELF to become totally swept by Facebook’s fantasy gratifications, YOU will only know LONELINESS, which makes you more and more hooked and dependent on it.

Happy Birthday Facebook – It is EVERYONE’S BIRTHDAY and NOONE’s at the same time.

Blog post inspired by TED talks, Connected, but alone and the Innovation of Loneliness YouTube post.

[danlittauer]

What Is Boxing Day?

Why Boxing Day? Some say it stems from Roman times when money to pay for athletic games was collected in boxes. Amongst the ruins of Pompeii, boxes made out of earthenware with slits in the top full of coins have been found. Later the Romans brought the idea of collecting boxes to Britain, and monks and clergy soon used similar boxes to collect money for the poor at Christmas. 

With Christianity superimposed on pagan ritual it was associated with St Stephen's Day, who was the first Christian martyr, stoned to death in 34 AD.

During St Stephen's Day, celebrated a day after Christmas, charity boxes were used at the church door to collect money for the needy.

For various reasons this custom was discontinued in Europe but held on in the Anglican Church, which renamed it “Boxing Day”. From around the 17th century the upper class used to give boxes containing food, clothing or money to tradespeople and servants.

Thus, it was a day to thank the community for all their effort throughout the years. The maids, drivers and other service workers were thanked with gifts of food, money, clothing, and other goods.

The institution of it as a bank holiday originated in England in the middle of the nineteenth century under Queen Victoria, and thus is secular in its institution.