Tag: slavery

Sustainable Debt Slavery

The UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is pitched as a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.” At the heart of this agenda are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. 

Many of these goals sound nice in theory and paint a picture of an emergent global utopia – such as no poverty, no world hunger and reduced inequality. Yet, as is true with so much, the reality behind most – if not all – of the SDGs are policies cloaked in the language of utopia that – in practice – will only benefit the economic elite and entrench their power. 

This can clearly be seen in fine print of the SDGs, as there is considerable emphasis on debt and on entrapping nation states (especially developing states) in debt as a means of forcing adoption of SDG-related policies. It is then little coincidence that many of the driving forces behind SDG-related policies, at the UN and elsewhere, are career bankers. Former executives at some of the most predatory financial institutions in the history of the world, from Goldman Sachs to Bank of America to Deutsche Bank, are among the top proponents and developers of SDG-related policies. 

Are their interests truly aligned with “sustainable development” and improving the state of the world for regular people, as they now claim?  Or do their interests lie where they always have, in a profit-driven economic model based on debt slavery and outright theft?

In this Unlimited Hangout investigative series, we will be exploring these questions and interrogating – not only the power structures behind the SDGs and related policies – but also their practical impacts. 

In this first instalment, we will explore what actually underpins the majority of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs, cutting through the flowery language to deliver the full picture of what the implementation of these policies means for the average person. Subsequent instalments will focus on case studies based on specific SDGs and their sector-specific impacts. 

Overall, this series will offer a fact-based and objective look at how the motivation behind the SDGs and Agenda 2030 is about retooling the same economic imperialism used by the Anglo-American Empire in the post-World War II era for the purposes of the coming “multipolar world order” and efforts to enact a global neo-feudal model, perhaps best summarized as a model for “sustainable slavery.”

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Inside the Pentagon’s shameful effort to draft mentally disabled men to fight in Vietnam

In 1967, a young man named Johnny Gupton was drafted into the Army to fight in Vietnam. Gupton didn’t know how to read or write; he didn’t even know what state he was from. He had never heard of Vietnam. When a fellow soldier questioned a noncommissioned officer (NCO) about how someone with such an obvious mental disability could join the Army, the NCO responded, “Ehh, he’s one of McNamara’s Morons.” 

This is what soldiers like Gupton were known as throughout the Armed Forces during the Vietnam War era. In 1967, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara lowered military recruiting standards as part of a program called Project 100,000. Its goal, as the name suggests, was to recruit 100,000 men each year who were otherwise mentally, physically or psychologically underqualified for service. These men all had IQs below 91, and nearly half had IQs below 71. From the Project’s launch in 1966, through its termination in 1971, it allowed 354,000 previously ineligible men into the military. Of these, 5,478 died in combat and 20,270 were wounded. 

These men were aggressively recruited and pushed through training without having met even the bare minimum of standards set for them. They were sent into combat in large numbers and many died. They were promised greater benefits and opportunities as an incentive to join the military, but those who returned alive came home to broken promises and were abandoned by the government. It’s a largely forgotten and shameful chapter in American history. 

Robert McNamara and the Johnson Administration sold Project 100,000 as an expansion of Great Society welfare programs where poor, mentally disabled men could learn important life skills. Labor Secretary Daniel Moynihan said, “Expectations of what can be done in America are receding. Our best hope is to use the Armed Forces as a socializing experience for the poor.”

This is how the idea was sold to the public, but there is a much more obvious reason to aggressively recruit mentally disabled soldiers. As the war raged on, more and more Americans were needed to fight in Vietnam each year. Children of the affluent middle class could avoid the draft by seeking an educational deferment (like Dick Cheney) or by finding a friendly doctor to get a medical deferment (like Donald Trump). McNamara and Johnson were faced with a choice; they could end draft deferments for college students and send children of the affluent to war in a country most Americans could not yet find on a map, or they could start signing up a lot more mentally disabled people. Guess which one they chose?

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Global Silence As HTS & Allies Take Alawite Women As Sex Slaves In Syria

Since December, when the former Al-Qaeda affiliate, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), toppled the government of Bashar al-Assad, Syria has witnessed a chilling wave of mysterious kidnappings of young women, predominantly from the Alawite community.

Evidence continues to emerge that these women, primarily from the Alawite religious sect, have been abducted and taken to live as sex slaves in Idlib governorate, the traditional HTS stronghold, by armed factions affiliated with the new Syrian government.

Shockingly, the mass kidnapping and enslavement of Alawite women now being carried out by HTS-affiliated factions mirrors the enslavement of the thousands of Yezidi women by ISIS during the 2014 genocide in Sinjar, Iraq.

In a now deleted Facebook post, Hiba Ezzedeen, a Syrian activist from Idlib, described her encounter with a woman she believes was captured and taken to the governorate as a sex slave during the wave of massacres carried out by government-affiliated factions and security forces against Alawites in the country’s coastal areas on March 7.

“During my last visit to Idlib, I was at a place with my brother when I saw a man I knew with a woman I had never met before,” Hiba explained. 

“This man had been married multiple times before and is believed to currently have three wives. What caught my attention was the woman’s appearance – specifically, it was clear she didn’t know how to wear a hijab properly, and her scarf was draped haphazardly.”

After inquiring further, Ezzedeen learned that the woman was from the coastal areas where the March 7 massacres, in which over 1,600 Alawite civilians were killed, took place. “This man had brought her to the village and married her, with no further details available. No one knew what had happened to her or how she got there, and naturally, the young woman was too afraid to speak,” Ezzedeen added.

Because the situation was so strange and alarming to her, she began asking everyone she knew, “rebels, factions, human rights activists,” about the abduction of Alawite women from the coast.  “Unfortunately, many confirmed that this had indeed happened, and not just by one faction. Based on what friends said, accusations point to factions of the National Army and some foreign fighters, with varying motives,” she reported. 

Syria’s new HTS-led security forces have incorporated armed extremist groups, including Uyghurs from the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) and Syrian Turkmen from factions of the Turkish-intelligence-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), into their ranks since coming to power in Damascus. 

Various SNA commanders and foreign extremists have been appointed to top positions in the Syrian Ministry of Defense.

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Germany’s Stern magazine calls for conscription of young people to take up arms ‘to defend diversity’ in pro-war propaganda piece

Stern Magazine is calling for mass conscription of German youths to join the army, including to ensure the defense of “freedom and diversity.” The reaction to the article has been harsh to say the least, with hundreds of negative comments directed at Stern.

The article, entitled “Others no longer defend us? Then we must do it ourselves!” claims that “the USA no longer wants to protect Germany. This brings a bitter realization: Our unbearable complacency must end.”

The solution? Start drafting German youth to fight the future wars. The author, Tilman Gerwien, a German male noticeable well past the age of someone who might typically be drafted, says that the days of a “dollhouse-like Bullerbü” are over and “we have to grow up.” He details the left’s traditional stance against conscription, which saw German youths demanding American troops leave Germany, was “not only a matter of conscience, but also a lifestyle.” He noted that at demonstrations against NATO, “people hopped around in peace-loving spirits, chanting ‘Out of NATO, into fun!’” All of this has to end, according to Gerwien, who does not seem particularly like the type of person to rush into battle himself.

There is no way to know if Gerwien was ever a part of these previous protests or ever shared those sentiments at one time, but it is notable that he is now old enough to not have to face the draft himself. Lucky him.

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United Nations judge convicted of forcing young woman to work as slave

A Ugandan judge who sits on a UN court has been convicted of enslaving a young woman while she was living in Oxford.

Lydia Mugambe, 49, took “advantage of her status” over her victim in the “most egregious way” by preventing her from holding down steady employment and forcing her to work as her maid, while providing childcare for free, prosecutors said.

She was found guilty on Thursday at Oxford crown court of conspiring to breach UK immigration law, people trafficking, modern slavery and conspiracy to intimidate a witness.

Mugambe collapsed in the dock as the guilty verdicts were read out and the judge ordered that the court be cleared after there were audible gasps in the public gallery. The Ugandan judge was escorted from the court by two dock officers.

Mugambe was appointed two years ago to the UN court that deals with residual matters from the criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

She is understood to be a PhD research student at Oxford’s law faculty while on sabbatical from her main role as a high court judge in Uganda.

At the trial, Caroline Haughey KC, for the prosecution, said that Mugambe had “exploited and abused” the victim by “taking advantage of her lack of understanding of her rights to properly paid employment and deceiving her as to the purpose of her coming to the UK”.

The jury accepted the prosecution’s case that Mugambe had engaged in “illegal folly” with John Leonard Mugerwa, who was Uganda’s deputy high commissioner in London.

The pair were found to have conspired to arrange for the young woman to come to the UK. Prosecutors said that Mugambe and Mugerwa had participated in a “very dishonest” trade-off.

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As Germany debates conscription, it’s clear women should also be drafted to fight, and potentially die, for their countries (for gender equality)

Waves of TikTok club-going Ukrainian women mowed down by first-person drones, arms missing, legs missing, battlefields littered by female corpses as far as the eye can see. In a “gender equal” world, this would be the brutal and terrifying reality on the ground in the Ukraine war. That is unfortunately the reality that men are facing every single day.

Historical grievances from women — less pay for the same work, even lacking the right to vote — pale in comparison to the issue of forced conscription, which dates back to our origins as a tribal species. Men mostly had no choice but to pick up a spear or gun when the call came, or face imprisonment, execution or even torture. On the battlefield, men died violent, horrifying deaths.

In fact, the issue of conscription, and the imbalance between the genders, is becoming increasingly relevant across the world. As women demand the benefits of equality, equal pay for instance, they mostly have no desire to experience the negatives of equality, especially when it comes to combat operations.

The issue is now being debated in the German press as the country grapples with potentially reintroducing conscription under the new CDU and SPD government. Arguably, progressive and liberal Germany makes gender equality even more of an issue than mostly conservative Ukraine, so if conscription is instated in Germany once again, women should not only be drafted, but they should also be drafted in equal numbers for front-line combat positions.

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Modern Slavery? Wealthy New Yorkers Beg Police Not to Turn in Their Cheap Illegal Servants

Affluent liberals’ purported compassion bears a striking resemblance to self-interest.

In fact, like their 19th-century forebears, modern Democrats seem to fancy themselves benefactors to those whom they exploit.

According to the New York Post, police officials in the upscale village of East Hampton on New York’s Long Island have assured wealthy residents that local police cannot cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in detaining and deporting the illegal immigrants upon whom those residents rely for domestic service.

“If it is an ICE detainer or an administrative warrant, we do not have the authority. We will not hold them,” East Hampton Village Police Chief Jeffrey Erickson said at a community meeting on Tuesday.

East Hampton Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo said effectively the same thing at a different meeting.

“Our level of participation and cooperation with ICE lies in criminal matters,” Sarlo said. “I haven’t seen an ICE agent in this town in I can’t tell you how long.”

Sarlo did add, however, that local police do not make a habit of violently confronting armed federal agents.

In other words, police in sanctuary cities cannot assist ICE, but neither do they actively resist ICE’s efforts. Thus, sanctuary cities themselves constitute the real problem here.

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Heritage Foundation Project Wants To Weaponize Selective Service Registration Against Immigrants

According to an exclusive report by Fox News, the Oversight Project of the Heritage Foundation is filing Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the Selective Service System and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for records of how many “illegal immigrants” may have violated US law by failing to register with the SSS for a possible future military draft. Fox News quotes the FOIA request as alleging that, “there is widespread criminal non-compliance by such aliens”.

The Oversight Project appears to misunderstand both immigration and Selective Service law. With respect to “illegal immigrants”, seeking asylum isn’t illegal – it’s a human right. By international treaty, penalties cannot lawfully be imposed on refugees for “illegal entry or presence”. And failing to register with the Selective Service System is a crime only if it is “knowing and willful”, which it usually isn’t. Most immigrants are unaware, until the question comes up on an application for naturalization, that they are supposed to sign up for a possible U.S. draft even if they aren’t U.S. citizens.

But quotes in the Fox News article from Executive Director Mike Howell and Chief Counsel Kyle Brosnan of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project suggest that the goal of their FOIA requests is to put pressure on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to embark on bound-to-fail attempts to prosecute immigrants for failing to register with Selective Service:

“Howell said the FOIA request’s results could go beyond the scope of just determining whether undocumented residents of the U.S. may have attempted to avoid the draft – but also potentially offer an additional avenue for… mass deportation plans.

“With failure to register with SSS being a felony and a deportable offense, Howell said that… it could provide simplified legal grounds for the mass deportation plans of the Trump administration.

“‘You can turn a class of individuals into potential criminals overnight. What it also means is you don’t need ICE necessarily to do it. [Alleged SSS violators] would be prosecuted by DOJ. That means they’re in other beds that aren’t ICE beds. So you’re looking at all of them being in federal prison potentially, as opposed to taking up space in ICE custody,’ Howell said.”

Immigrants shouldn’t be scared, however, by these threats of deportation or prosecution for not having signed up for the draft.

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Trump & Ukraine: The Coming Battle Over Conscription

There may be a battle looming, not just between the Trump administration and Ukraine over the conscription of men between the ages of 18 and 25, but also within the Trump administration.

The call for Ukraine to cast a wider conscription net predates the Trump administration. Facing imminent loss on the battlefield, after NATO had bankrupted its supply of weapons, demanding that Ukraine throw more men into battle emerged as the last grasp solution during the Biden administration.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, “In fact, we believe manpower is the most vital need they have. So, we’re also ready to ramp up our training capacity if they take appropriate steps to fill out their ranks.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained that “getting younger people into the fight, we think, many of us think, is necessary. Right now, 18 to 25-year olds are not in the fight.”

That call was picked up by Trump’s national security advisor, Mike Waltz, who said “one of the things we’ll be asking of the Ukrainians is, they have real manpower issues. Their draft age right now is 26 years old, not 18. I don’t think a lot of people realise that they could generate hundreds of thousands of new soldiers… [I]f the Ukrainians have asked the entire world to be all in for democracy, we need them to be all in for democracy.”

But Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, seemed to take the opposing view to Waltz, recognizing that throwing more Ukrainians into the battle compounds Ukraine’s problems rather than solving them. “The problem with Ukraine is not that they’re running out of money,” Rubio said at his January 22 confirmation hearing, “but that they’re running out of Ukrainians.”

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Digital Currency Leads Us by the Hand Down the Primrose Path to Slavery

The decay of values, the decline of crafts, of art, of literature, and, above all, of intellectual inquiry in the United States leaves us facing a wasteland wherein money is the only sentient beast, demanding due worship by all.

This horrific change was accompanied by the hollowing out of the economy. We went from agriculture in which there is a clear relationship between labor, product, and the moral and physical wellbeing of the family, to manufacturing in which production was cut off from daily life and monopolized by global capital, to a consumption and the service economy which is mediated by computers, creating online platforms controlled behind the curtains by unaccountable multinational technological monopolies.

And now, in the last stage of the decay of the angel, we are encouraged to welcome as a sign of advancement the replacements of humans with robots, drones, and AI systems. Citizens have no role in this alien economy and we can only feed our families by engaging in some banal activity at a tremendous distance from family and neighbors, and then bringing back the dollars so earned to purchase products sold retail by multinational corporations.

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