Whatever happened to Protein ?

 I suffered protein shortage after I retired 5 years ago by relying on frozen dinners for the first 3 months.  When I worked, I  used to do that on weekends and it was fine because during the weak I pigged out at a steak bar (with 12oz steak, cheese covered brocolli, and a full dish of ice cream) or equivalent dinners, where generally the rule was eat until you could eat no more.

But relying on that frozen dinner diet for months at a time caused drastic muscle loss, which I've never fully recovered, but have now stabilized muscle (still higher than average for age) at a lower weight.

People I know report similar experiences, even with somewhat higher protein "prepared meals."  Even though it may make a good meal, you need at least 2 more good meals with protein a day.

I might even add that my current short stature may have been reinforced by a diet, largely, of TV dinners after my father died at my age of 11.

Anyway, here I'd like to reprise and extend my commentary about Protein to my discussion group.

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The recommended daily allowance to prevent protein deficiency is 0.8g protein per 1kg weight.

For example,

165 pounds (75kg) 60 grams protein

But, people over 40 begin to experience muscle loss without additional protein, so they need 1-1.2g per kg.

That's 75-90 grams protein for 165 pound person.

People who exercise regularly (shouldn't that be everyone) need 1.1-1.5g per kg

People who regularly lift weights (shouldn't that be everone?) need 1.2-1.7g per kg.

Excessive intake begins somewhere over 2g/kg (indicated by ammonia in urine, which is an indicator for several things including too much protein).  One number I've seen is 2.4g/kg.

For determining protein need, obese people need to deduct excess weight due to bodyfat from obesity (probably best determined with bodyfat measurement because fat people may have more muscle too).

I'm linking Mayo on these numbers below (and they link their FDA reference) as a kind of "opposition" witness, however I discount their claim that "Americans get enough protein" (which comes straight from the FDA and a few other sources) because:

If Americans ate only the calories they needed, with the same diet as now, they would not be getting enough protein.

AND

If particular Americans avoid eating any of the following, it makes getting enough protein much more difficult:

Dairy, eggs, meat, seafood, beans, nuts, lentils.  Because standard American diets include those things.

But many people restrict or limit some of those foods.  I know many people who restrict dairy.  I myself avoid eggs, seafood, and beans and try to minimize meat to small portions.  So you can't generalize the assumed American Diet to everyone.

Finally, it's much more complicated than all the above suggests.  There are two additional issues:

Protein cannot be absorbed very quickly.  No more than 30g at one time.  So for someone elderly like me who needs at least 1.2g/kg* or over 90g protein, I need to eat in in no less than 3 meals per day.  (So, it doesn't look to me like single meal per day works...).

 And I lift weights and exercise regularly, putting need closer to 1.5 kg...and why don't they multiply the elderly and exercise factors???  Show me the easy peasy diet without too many calories that adds up to 120g.  It's easy go google everything you eat for grams of protein.  I have, and without 2 protein shakes I end up nowhere near 120g or even 100g.

Second, these numbers are essentially assuming all your protein is properly complemented.  So you are cleverly combining things lacking the essential amino acid lysine (like wheat) with things that have excess lysine (like beans).  Whatever protein you consume isn't so cleverly combined, you are getting less effective protein.

If you have a wheat heavy diet like me (I eat whole wheat bread daily and pasta regularly, and restrict or minimize other proteins) I am most likely short on lysine, which is the "limiting" amino acid of wheat protein.  Unless complemented, the 10g of raw protein I get from my serving of pasta is really only like 6g of fully complemented protein.  I don't eat beans to complement the wheat (and I'm thinking now I should find a way to do so).  Adding cheese doesn't complement the wheat so much as add to it, so if I added 5g of cheese protein I'd get 6+5 and not 10+5 grams of fully complemented protein.

A better way to look at this would be to look at the recommended need for each essential amino acid.  I haven't found any online calculators that do that sort of thing.

If you know which one(s) you are lacking, it is also possible to add limiting amino acids to your diet directly as most are available in bulk or capsule forms.  There are also pills with fully complemented set of amino acids but they are a very expensive way to eat.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be meeting my targets without 1-2 servings of the whey isolate protein I use.  (Whey protein, and dairy in general, has a near optimal profile of amino acids, but for that reason it also doesn't "complement" anything else.)  People having issues with dairy can get protein from bean or pea sources (which is not as good by itself but can be complemented and naturally complements grains).

Nevertheless I have hear a lot of people agreeing with official FDA documents that Americans are getting enough protein.   They think that all this buzz about getting enough protein is generated by the Meat industry, the Dairy industry, the supplements industry, and MAGA Republicans who worry that Democrats will take away their guns and their meat and the political operators who try to appeal to that segment which they spin up.

But why isn't the FDA very concerned about Americans getting enough protein?

Aren't the Meat and Dairy lobbies large enough to keep the fruit lobbies down?

1) Americans get too much protein (FDA says 200% in the 2023 report linked in the link I sent) and don't need to eat as much meat or dairy.

2) The cause of Heart Disease which is THE BIGGEST THING is saturated fats and cholesterol which mostly come from meat and dairy.

Over time, message #2 has been slightly modified, but message #1 remains the same.

For awhile, this led to all sorts of mischef regarding things like trans fats which turned out to be even more harmful than saturated fats.

Who was pushing for this message and why???Why exactly did meat and dairy, and hence protein, became evil in the 1970's and ever since (except among the "we must keep our guns and meat" crowd).

I have heard this cast a slightly different way.  Rather than pushing us all onto trans-fats, we were also being pushed into "Low Fat" dairy and meat products which employed elevated levels of sugar, typically in the form of corn syrup.

So some people blame the "Low Fat" craze not (only) on the makers of hydrogenated vegetable oils (big ag and especially big corn processors) but also on the producers of corn syrup (which happens to also be big ag and especially big corn).

One way or another it's big corn pushing to sell more corn oil and/or syrup.

I also have a 3rd conspiracy theory.

1970's was the rise of eco-consciousness, Earth Day, and all that.  One part of this was "Limits to Growth," something I hold very true and dear.

To me, this meant that not only human population stabilization, but human population reduction was (and even more now) needed.

A vast array of groups in society don't like this message.  Especially the longstanding promoters of birthing, always to their own advantage, conservative religious groups.  Best example is the Catholic Church, but don't forget Mormons, Evangelicals, Muslims, and even Orthodox Jews.

Their whole operation relies on getting people to have as many children as they can.  That's also part of the "benefit" to the people involved, or at least they perceive it that way.  This makes up for the fact that otherwise too many people "get wise" and leave the movement otherwise.

So such people (along with plain vanilla capitalists, finance bankers, and so on who rely on and endlessly "growing" world) sought to erase the population explosion message, and divert concerned people to other concerns.

And the way that did that was by diversion.  No, there's not too many people, in fact we could have far more people, if we only all stopped eating meat, since meat requires a lot more resources to produce.

So we had (and still have) Diet for a Small Planet, and so on.

Now there are several problems with this diversion.  First is that producing meat may not in itself be the largest driver of environmental destruction.  When you have more people, that also means more houses, cars, power plants, etc, etc, and ultimately even more wars.

Second is that even if these people involved with the production of meat suddenly became unemployed and had to find other work to do, what would it be?  It would possibly be something equally environmentally destructive.Ending with

Finally, it could also be cynically said that as a diversion, the idea that getting away from animal protein would permit ever greater population growth, was of no danger to the powers that be, precisely because "it's never gonna happen."

It will attract a certain segment of the left wing (labeled by others as bleeding hearts) who will voluntarily give up animal protein (leaving more and lower prices for everyone else).  They and many others will live in a perpetual state of insufficient protein.  From the standpoint of the powers that be, if this segment has a nil population growth rate, that's perfectly fine, it can be made up among more useful far right christians.

And therefore, one could perhaps say the same thing about people who push my message, we need to reduce population drastically by choice or it will be forced upon us in a terrible way later.

Ain't gonna happen.  I concede that.  I'm pushing for something that won't work, not because it couldn't but because enough people will never believe it it enough to overcome other influences.  (That could always change, with a global revolution in thought.  All we're talking about is thought, but behind that thought currently lies a vast power.)

But I'm thinking in terms of the people a thousand years from now, looking back at the disaster that transpired.

Are they saying, why couldn't those people just switch to a vegetarian diet?  Only kooks, because virtually everyone says that the failure of the human population to get it's numbers under control was the #1 reason for the collapse of civilization.   Everything else was secondary or largely driven by that overpopulation.  And we must never forget, but it's won't be easy for a long time, because we now live in a much smaller and ravaged world because of the human population bubble.

That's the optimistic version anyway.

Now why is it that a pretty sizable segment of society believes that "overpopulation" is a meme invented by Gates or Soros for purposes of fostering or opposing some kind of racial readjustment?

This is a pretty widely held view on the US right.

You have to understand how the range of acceptable opinion works in a meme-controlled society like ours.  There are two sides to the US oligarchy, the "conservative" side which included the likes of Koch, and the "liberal" side which includes Gates and Soros.

BOTH SIDES promote something akin to business as usual including maximum growth, but in different ways.  Neither side actually supports the kind of radical change we need to get to a sustainable society.  (This is much as it is in the realm of global warming.  No major actor actually supports the kind of radical changes we need.  Instead, there is much talk, conferences, and programs, and yet the greenhouse gasses keep ratcheting up decade after decade, much as the population itself has done).

It has to be understand that GROWTH IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING OF ALL to the powers that be in our society.   The oligarchs, religions, governments, businesses, pretty much everyone who has any power in society depends and relies on it.  Bonds, stocks, religions, government projects, and wars all need population growth.

The Koch side wants to see (and may soon get) the ascendency of supposedly conservative values, including strong religion, sexism, and no abortion or birth control to let people get away.  Simple enough, they say that overpopulation is a myth.

On the Gates / Soros they recognize the (intuitively obvious) fact that there is overpopulation (as somebody in the range of acceptable opinion has to, or at least did before the myth that loss of fertility was the greater danger was erected) but proclaim it can be managed with small incremental reforms, such as promoting birth control or the education of women (which are fine ideas, but will do even less to tackle the population bubble than fertility loss).

One of the exact problem with the Gates / Soros kinds of fake solutions is that they aren't going to happen.  It would take a revolution to get birth control and abortion available everywhere.  And while that revolution is supposedly obviated by incremental reforms, the other side is growing like gangbusters, largely through greater birthing.  The most conservative religions are growing fastest, and that includes Islam and Mormonism which promote birthing the most strongly.  These are the religions that also oppose abortion the most strongly and demand traditional sex roles which either suppress or negate the effects of the greater education of women on reducing population growth.

Stronger medicine is needed, and I've already proposed it.  It's the "half child" policy.  There should be two sets of adults for each child born.  Only with this kind of drastic population decrease can be population bubble be deflated fast enough to avoid the collapse of civilization.  There is no racial selectivity in my proposal whatever.  The same rule should apply to all.

It could happen if enough people believed in it.  That is the only hope, and I wouldn't bet on it.

But whenever sustainable-population-size advocates appear, even in environmental organizations like the Sierra Club, they are promptly discharged into oblivion, or throttled back into no views by social media, whose oligarch owners are committed in every way (with some tilt on it away from their disfavored groups) to growth.

What Caused Death of Iranian President?

https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2024/05/22/breaking-israel-downed-iranian-presidents-helicopter/

Strategic Voting in 2024

1) Vote for a Presidential candidate who opposes the genocide of Palestinians (West, Stein, or De La Cruz).   Blue MAGA types will say this is "voting for Trump," but it is not.  At most, it is disciplining the lefter Presidential candidate.  The lefter party must be forced to run anti-Genocide Presidential candidates to win.

2) Vote for Congressional and State candidates who can best defeat the fascist theocracy supported by Red MAGA.  Generally speaking, this means voting for Democrats.

I am not a great admirer of Saul Alinsky.  I think his movement for reform (not revolution) had many weaknesses and ultimately fizzled out.  It was fundamentally flawed because Alinsky refused to have any fundamental ideas about what society should be like.  He was opposed to all "-isms".  In contrast, I do have a fundamental idea of what society should be like.  I am a Communist.

However, I recognize Alinsky as a great strategic thinker.  He won his first campaign, and a few others, by following the rules he outlined in Rules for Radicals.  Some of those rules embody excellent strategic thinking.

One of his central rules was to pick out a single figure of the "opposition" and demonize them.  It is important not to demonize everyone apparently in opposition because (1) that doesn't work, and (2) if the single figure can be defeated (which will be hard enough) it will put pressure on the others to change.  THEN, if it still doesn't usher in the desired change, pick out another single figure, and so on.  We must recognize the limits to our power--we can't change the whole society or slate of candidates or opposition at once.

He confessed that few problems are caused by a single person.  Demonizing just one person is a simplification.  But sometimes simplification is necessary to win, and everybody does it to one degree or another.  We should not feel that it is immoral or dishonest, in contrast it it being honest with ourselves about how power works.

Most state and congressional representatives have little control over foreign policy.  (It could be argued that even the President may not have that much control, he is largely owned and operated by the Deep State.)  It is not wise, practical, or even possible to demonize them all at the cost of a Red MAGA wave.  The US is already deeply into fascism (such as the crackdowns on student protestors and they way they are characterized by politicians including Biden and Eric Adams.  But believe me, things can (and will!) get much worse before they are likely to get any better.  To not realize how much worse things could get is a fundamental failure of imagination.

It is the lack of this sort of strategic thinking that generally has me opposing the Green Party as such.  They want to treat all Democrats and all Republicans as the same.  Alinsky would predict this would lead nowhere, and in fact it has led nowhere.

Secure Messaging and Browsing

For a few years, I've suggested Signal as a relatively secure messaging app for activists concerned about privacy.

But Signal has long had a singular problem.  It uses phone numbers!  Right there, the metadata (which is what intelligence agencies are MOST interested in...in their work the connections tell the story) is accessible.

Makes you wonder about Snowden who has long promoted Signal and Tor.  (Is Snowden really controlled opposition after all?)

US controlled OTF has long funded Signal along with Tor and many other supposedly secure apps which casts a shadow over all of them.

(My longstanding opinion is that nearly everything that claims to provide security or protection actually does the opposite.  What these things really are is protection rackets.  Of these, the very worst is so-called virus protection.  The only organization that has the incentive to do it correctly is the OS provider.  Every other virus protector has the incentive to make more viruses and it is well known they "recruit" hackers by feeding them pizza, etc.)

However, a journalist I trust mostly* (Kit Klarenberg) has pointed to another journalist I don't trust as much for his recommendation of the Session messaging app.  It sounds like the best I've heard of before, combining the encryption of Signal with anonymizing strategies.  Following that are descriptions of the Brave browser and the Brave Search search engine which also sound like best-in-class.

(*Mostly is my highest standard of trust.  I would say nearly completely except for his antivaxx writing which creeps into nearly everything and everyone he points to.  Either this is because Kit and many other journalists simply don't understand science--starting with Bayes Theorem--or perhaps the lot of them and to the edge of the universe are some kind of controlled opposition limited hangout.  But then many people like Peter Hotez who are pretty good on vaccines mostly are wrong about quite a lot of other things, like ongoing US proxy wars.  And so it goes.  BTW, Hotez also becomes merely tribal when he insists that COVID is of natural origin.  The likelihood that COVID derived from a laboratory accident has no bearing on the usefulness of vaccines for it and/or other diseases.  But the general rule is that nearly everyone--except Zionists--contributes to discussion in one way or another by having some area of expertise.  Zionists contribute only by helping us understand the lunacy of Zionism.)

Regardless of what Snowden says about privacy (saying you don't need privacy is like saying you don't need free speech because you have nothing to say) I've never been a big believer in it myself.  Instead, I encourage people in Intelligence to read and otherwise follow me in the hopes they might learn something.  But I have to keep up appearances too, and if I were organizing a radical group (I've given up) I would use the best messaging app, etc.

I also believe that privacy is essentially impossible (especially in any kind of electronic communication) and people who claim to provide it are generally spooks themselves, and the mere fact that you are using such things is the biggest giveaway of all.

A good lock is a good idea however because even though every spook in the world might well have the key, they can't use it and take anything without giving away that fact.  If they're not taking anything, they might learn something.  (And of course it only works if everyone else is using locks too...otherwise the mere fact that you have a lock may suggest to others that there's something especially valuable.)

Correspondingly, some limited "privacy" is required simply to keep people from taking your money, or talking too much about you.  Even commercial browsers and search engines do that mostly (or better if you practice common sense 'safe internet' ideas, like not trusting any popup that proposes that you need its help).

Color Revolutions Ain't What They Used To Be

https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/cia-hong-kong-agitators-reject-revolution

How US controls Oil Revenue from Iraq

 Iraq is the OPEC's second largest producer, after Saudi Arabia.  And yet, Iraq lives in poverty, unable to rebuild infrastructure to where it was before the US illegal invasion.  US controls all of Iraqi oil revenue, and only remits whatever portion it wants to Iraq.  How does this happen?  The US President signs an executive order every year in violation of international law which gives the "legal" basis (legal only in the USA) for this to happen, and there's a long history behind it which illustrates the illegality and impunity of the USA in dealing with Iraq.

The following is quoted from a post by Hussein Askari on X.

My goal in writing this text is to clarify an important fact, which is that, contrary to what is rumoured by Iraqi politicians and media figures out of ignorance or deliberately to hide the facts from the Iraqi people for unknown purposes, there is no UN Security Council resolution that forces Iraq to put its oil imports into the account of “Development Fund for Iraq” in the US Federal Reserve of New York as has been done since May 2003. This act is also an American and Iraqi violation of Security Council Resolution No. 1956, issued in December 2010, which stipulates the closure of the “Development Fund for Iraq” and the transfer of its deposited to the Central Bank of Iraq. The decision to place funds from Iraq’s oil exports in an account at the Federal Reserve Bank came as a decision by Paul Bremer, the American governor of Iraq after the invasion in 2003, and was backed by a presidential decree signed by US President George W. Bush on May 22, 2003 (Executive Order 13303). This was a purely an American decision that had nothing to do with any UNSC resolutions, nor the issue of the use of Chapter VII, which is used as a scarecrow to frighten the Iraqi people of the consequences of violating the orders and desires of the American occupier.

The issue of Chapter VII

Let us first explain where the issue of placing Iraq under Chapter VII (which means the use of force or the threat of use of force to compel Iraq to implement United Nations resolutions) came from and how Iraq got out of this clause in 2013.

When Saddam's regime invaded and occupied Kuwait on August 2, 1990, the Security Council met on the same day in New York and issued UNSC Resolution No. 660, which demanded that Iraq withdraw its troops from Kuwait, and called on the two parties (i.e., Iraq and Kuwait) to settle their differences peacefully and through dialogue. That is, the resolution did not include Chapter VII: It did not threaten to use force. (https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/94220?ln=en&v=pdf#files)

But, because Iraq did not implement Article Two of Resolution 660, which stipulates the immediate withdrawal of all Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the Security Council followed that up with Resolution No. 661 on August 6, 1990, which demanded that Iraq implement this under Chapter VII. The resolution also called for a complete halt to all exports and imports to and from Iraq and Kuwait (i.e. an economic blockade). Here Iraq came under the penalty of Chapter Seven.

http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/661

Subsequently, the UN Security Council issued about eleven resolutions pertaining to Iraq's occupation of Kuwait until April 1991 (i.e., when the liberation of Kuwait was achieved). The fateful UNSC Resolution 687 was issued on April 8, 1991, which established the economic blockade on Iraq with the exception of some foodstuffs and medicines, and the establishment of United Nations committees to inspect weapons of mass destruction, establishing a border demarcation committee, establishing a compensation fund for Kuwait and third countries’ citizens affected by the Iraqi invasion, forming a committee to search for the fate of Kuwaiti prisoners and missing persons in Iraq as well as citizens of other countries, and establishing a fund to pay Iraq’s previous debts. This decision established the era of economic blockade, humiliation, hunger and poverty in Iraq (500,000 children died) and paved the way for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 under false pretexts that Iraq was not cooperating to disclose its "weapons of mass destruction". 

https://un.org/depts/unmovic/documents/687.pdf

Other resolutions were issued to establish the issue of the reparations fund and the export of Iraqi oil on a limited basis to finance the fund, such as Resolution 692.

https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/113598?ln=en&v=pdf

These decisions, which were under Chapter VII mandate, will be cancelled later (as will be stated below) after Iraq fulfils its obligations or proves that it is committed to fulfilling its obligations.

Iraq was released from Chapter VII captivity in 2013 before completing the payment of reparations to Kuwait.

It is worth noting that completing the payment of reparations was no longer linked to Chapter 7 since the issuance of Security Council Resolution No. 2107, which removed Iraq from Chapter 7 on June 27, 2013, that is, nine years before the completion of the payment of reparations to Kuwait.

https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n13/376/61/pdf/n1337661.pdf?token=LgSlAEiaB71geFtLTD&fe=true

The reason, as stated in the text of the resolution, is that Iraq has shown full cooperation in settling the issue of finding Kuwaiti prisoners and missing persons from other countries in Iraq or finding and returning their remains, and also because Iraq was committed to completing the payment of full reparations to Kuwait. That is, the compensation has not been paid in full yet when the resolution was issues, but Chapter VII yoke will be removed from Iraq’s back, because it has shown good faith and cooperation in completing this file in the coming years as well.

As Iraq left Chapter VII, all obligations under previous resolutions were cancelled, the most important of which were Nos. 661, 687, and 692, all of which fell under Chapter VII authority.

Resolution 2621 was issued on February 22, 2022 by the Security Council, in which it confirmed that Iraq had completed paying all reparations to Kuwait and the rest of those affected by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and it was decided to close the Reparations Committee and the Compensation Fund.

http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/2621

US control of Iraqi oil imports after the invasion in 2003

After the illegal American-British invasion of Iraq, which violated the United Nations Charter (Article Two, Fourth Paragraph, of the United Nations Charter: protection of the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence of nations) became a reality, and after the collapse of Saddam’s regime, the Security Council had to accept the new status quo and deal with the post-invasion phase, because the United States The United States and Britain have become responsible for the situation in Iraq as an occupying force. Therefore, UNSC Resolution 1483 was issued by the UN Security Council on May 22, 2003.

https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/495555?ln=en&v=pdf

The vote on the resolution and its drafting came at the request of the representatives of the United States, Britain, and Northern Ireland, as stated in the text of the resolution.

It has also been stated that the occupying countries are responsible for all aspects of life in Iraq under the “coalition authority” as an occupying authority responsible for managing the affairs of Iraq, the occupied country. This means that it is also authorized to dispose of Iraq's resources.

UNSC Resolution 1483 was also taken under the provisions of Chapter VII.

The resolution addressed various issues, including disarmament, the former regime, the call to help Iraq’s transition to a normal situation, the creation of the Development Fund for Iraq of Iraq (DFI), which required the receipt of all oil revenues therein, assistance to Iraq to solve the debt problem, and deduction of reparations at a certain percentage. From all oil revenues. The resolution also stipulated the cancellation of economic sanctions on Iraq, the end of the “Oil for Food Program” and the transfer of funds allocated to it (about 1-10 billion dollars according to different reports), and the transfer of responsibility over it to the coalition authority.

Paragraphs 12, 13, and 14 of the UNSC Resoultion 1483, that established the “Development Fund for Iraq”, did not mention the US Federal Reserve, nor where the DFI's headquarters or account is to be located. Rather, it confirms that it is “to be held by the Central Bank of Iraq.” However, its resources are disposed of by the ruling coalition authority in consultation with interim Iraqi administration.

Text of Article 12 of Resolution 1483 states: “Notes the establishment of a Development Fund for Iraq to be held by the Central Bank of Iraq and to be audited by independent public accountants approved by the International Advisory and Monitoring Board of the Development Fund for Iraq and looks forward to the early meeting of that International Advisory and Monitoring Board, whose members shall include duly qualified representatives of the Secretary-General, of the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, of the Director-General of the Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development, and of the President of the World Bank.”

President Bush seizes the Development Fund for Iraq hours later!

On the same day that UN Security Council Resolution 1483 was voted, i.e., on May 22, 2003, US President George W. Bush signed Executive Order No. 13303, entitled “Protection of the Development Fund for Iraq and Other Property in which Iraq Has an Interest.”

https://govinfo.gov/content/pkg/WCPD-2003-05-26/pdf/WCPD-2003-05-26-Pg646.pdf

Accordingly, the American president became an official custodian of the DFI and all oil export revenues, according to American law, not international law. It is clear that the U.S. Administration was prepared for the issuance of the Security Council resolution that it had called for and contributed to drafting, and it took over the fund only hours after the issuance of the UNSC resolution, meaning that although the fund had not yet been actually established, it had become at the disposal of the American president. All presidents of the United States since George W. Bussh, have subsequently annually renewed this presidential decree in May of each year, the last of which was President Joe Biden signing the renewal on May 16, 2023.

https://whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/05/16/notice-on-the-continuation-of-the-national-emergency-with-respect-to-the-stabilization-of-iraq-3/

The Coalition Provisional Authority, led by Paul Bremer, which proposed establishing the fund to the United Nations, was the one that decided to place the account number for the DFI in the US Federal Reserve Bank of New York, not the United Nations.

It may be possible to argue legally that since the United States is responsible for Iraq's funds because it is an occupation power, it has the right to dispose of the funds and where it is based. But why did the situation continue as it was after the end of the occupation was announced, even though just formally, and the signing of the “Strategic Cooperation Framework” agreement between Iraq and the United States in 2008, which stipulates that American forces are present in Iraq at the request of the Iraqi government and not an occupation imposed by the United States?

(See paragraph 2 of the preamble of the U.S.-Iraq Strategic Cooperation Framework)

https://uploads.mwp.mprod.getusinfo.com/uploads/sites/103/2023/01/se_sfa.pdf

The UN Security Council abolishes the Development Fund for Iraq in 2010

None of the successive Iraqi governments has demanded moving the account of the Development Fund for Iraq from the Federal Reserve of New York to the Central Bank of Iraq in Baghdad.

But on December 15, 2010, the UN Security Council unanimously (i.e., with the approval of the United States) issued Resolution No. 1956, after the letter sent by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to the Security Council “in which he affirmed the Iraqi government’s commitment not to request further extensions” of the arrangements of the Development Fund for Iraq, and that oil revenues will be used fairly. He pointed to the important role of the Development Fund and the International Advisory and Monitoring Council.”

The decision stipulates that the DFI will be cancelled and UN supervision of it will end no later than June 30, 2011.

Article Five of UNSC Resolution 1956 reads:

“Indicates the transfer of all proceeds from the Iraq Development Fund to the account or accounts of successor arrangements established by the Government of Iraq and the closure of the Iraq Development Fund no later than June 30, 2011, and requests that the Council be provided with proof of A written statement as soon as the transfer of proceeds is completed and the fund is closed.”

Issuing this resolution practically means the cancelling Resolution No. 1483 issued in 2003, which established the DFI.

It is worth noting that from that moment on, the United Nations no longer supervised the DFI and could not scrutinize its affairs. Thus the DFI cam under the complete control of the United States, which refused to close it down. Was that the goal of the Iraqi Prime Minister when he asked the Security Council not to

prolong the mission of the International Advisory and Monitoring Board of the Development Fund for Iraq (check recommendation number 5 of the Internationak Advisory).

https://iraq-businessnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/iamb-june-30-2011-press-release-re-DFI.pdf

RECOMMENDATION 5 REFERS TO THIS AUDIT:

https://federalregister.gov/documents/2013/09/24/2013-22971/final-listing-of-audit-and-other-reports-issued-by-sigir-on-reconstruction-spending-in-iraq

The Final report of the International Advisory and Monitoring Board of the Development Fund of Iraq:  IAMB-Final_Report_revised_2011__English_re-DFI.pdf  (http://iraq-businessnews.com)

U.S. and Iraq violated UNSC Resolution

Accordingly to all the above, the U.S. Administration and the Iraqi government can be considered to be  in violation of United Nations Resolution 1956 issued in 2010, which means that it is possible, on the one hand, to file a complaint against the Iraqi government by Iraqi citizens or members of parliament on this issue, and / or also file a complaint against the United States government for its continued seizure of the DFI and the revenues of Iraq's oil exports, in contravention of United Nations resolutions.

TEHCNICAL NOTE:

The way the revenues of Iraqi oil sales (nearly 4 million barrel per day) are deposited in the DFI bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is as follows: The buyer (mostly Chinese and other Asian customers) issues a letter of credit from its bank to the Iraqi Oil Marketing Authority (SOMO) which is state-owned. When the oil delivery is made and the money is transferred from the buyer’s account to the Iraqi account of the DFI in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, SOMO’s job is done. The money then is controlled by the U.S. Treasury, not the Iraqi Central Bank. The way the Iraqi Central Bank gets some of the money to the Iraqi government to cover its needs (96% of the Iraqi state revenues are from oil, and oil represents 97% of all Iraqi income), is that the Iraqi Finance Ministry sends a bill to the U.S. Treasury through the Iraqi Central Bank to recover some of the oil money, specifying in the bill how much and how that money will be dispersed in Iraq. The U.S. Treasury officials check the list in the bill and approve its items. Sometimes they disapprove some of the items for “national security” reasons or if US$ risks ending up in Iran. When the Treasury approves the items, a shipment of US dollar bills is prepared and transferred by airplanes to Baghdad. This happens every month. So, the Iraqi people (40 million) are waiting every month for the delivery of their money from the U.S. to be able to get salaries and buy food and medicine and other necessities.

Anytime the U.S. government does not like the Iraqi government’s behaviour or senses that the Iraqi government is not obedient enough to U.S. goals in the region, cuts are made to these airplane loads of dollar bills. So, Iraq is practically not a sovereign country. Its policies are totally controlled by this mechanism which has been in place since 2003.

It is also for this reason, the Iraqi government have not been able to raise enough funds to rebuild the infrastrcuture, industry, and agriculture of the coubtry in 20 years. Iraq, which is the second largest exporter of raw oil still does not have enough electricity for its people. Iraq, which has two rivers, still imports bottled water from abroad for drinking. Iraqis have to travel abroad for the simplest dental or eye surgery, because the Iraqi healthcare system has not been rebuilt. 

Letter to my Senator

Please reject the Antisemitism Awareness Act recently passed by the US House.  This proposed law violates our Constitutional rights to free speech, including our right to criticize nation states and other political arrangements.  It enshrines a false and highly politicized definition of antisemitism, the IHRA, which has been pushed by Zionists and other defenders of Israel.  A more accurate definition of antisemitism is found in the Jerusalem Definition of Antisemitism, which recognizes that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.  Anti-Zionism is the strong political belief of many Jews, including many Orthodox Jews and secular leftist Jews.  By sanctioning the political beliefs of many Jews (not to mention many non-Jews) it is the Antisemitism Awareness Act which is actually antisemitic.

Debunking "Israel Accepted the UN Plan and the Arabs didn't"

Zionists accepted the original UN Partition Plan (which had no other legal basis, and was manifestly and objectively unfair to Palestinians in its allocation of lands let alone violating what should have been full and undivided Palestinian self-determination) but immediately set out to defy it, with Plan Dalet, to remove enough Palestinians to achieve a Jewish Zionist majority within the Zionist state.

The UN itself proceeded with a plan for trusteeship, which would guarantee the emergence of separate Zionist and Palestinian states.

Harry Truman was officially championing the Trusteeship plan, and US delegates at the UN including Eleanor Roosevelt were working hard to achieve it.

Meanwhile, Zionists lobbied Truman through Truman's boyhood best friend Eddie Jacobson.  Although initially resisting all attempts by Zionists to meet with him, Truman ultimately relented, and changed his mind about Israel, without letting anyone else know.  US delegates at the UN continued to work towards Trusteeship.

By faking support for the Trusteeship being debated in UN, Truman was actually just letting Plan Dalet continue, until Zionists had achieved the demographic majority they were seeking.  They then declared "Israel" an independent state (within borders significantly larger than proposed by UN Partition Plan, and means completely in contradiction with it) and Truman immediately recognized the new entity, which should have been held illegal.

In so doing, Truman defied his senior advisors (except for political strategist Clark Clifford), Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Wise Men who were supposedly guiding his foreign policy, including Robert Lovett, Dean Acheson, George Kennan, James Forrestal, and Dean Rusk.

https://twitter.com/YosiZelalem/status/1743412042856366533

The "generous" offers Arafat rejected

None of the offers made to Arafat at Camp David or Taba included real state sovereignty for Palestinians.  They stipulated:

1) There would be no Palestinian military

2) Israel would retain control of the airspace

3) Israel would retain control of a central highway, not useable by Palestinians, that Palestinians would not be allowed to cross.

Nor were they ever offered pre-1967 borders:

1) Palestinians would relinquish 9% of the west bank (6% was offered at Taba) in exchange for 3% unspecified land elsewhere.

2) The 6-9% that Palestinians would give up were of very great importance to Palestinians, including East Jerusalem and the water resources for the entire region.  The 3% that they would get in return would not be of remotely comparable value.

And there would be no Right of Return for Palestinian Refugees.

Finally, by the time of Taba, where the best offers were made, the execution of any deal was highly unlikely.  George W Bush was already President-Elect, and he was already saying he would not honor any deal made by Clinton.  Ehud Barak, who had negotiated all the deals, was also going down, respectively, to Ariel Sharon.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2002/04/was-arafat-the-problem.html

Also this:

https://mneumann.tripod.com/pundak.pdf

Actually, all the Peace Offers from Israel since 1967 amounted to essentially the same thing: Israel would take enough land and resources so that a viable Palestinian state would be impossible.  Key points always include:

a) Severing East Jerusalem, which would be both the spiritual and economic powerhouse of any Palestinian state, from Palestine.  Israel quickly built settlements surrounding East Jerusalem and counted those as not subject to negotiation.

b) Annexing the Jordan Valley, so the proposed state of Palestine has no borders with a country external to Israel.  In effect, "Palestine" is a reservation inside Israel.  The Jordan Valley is also the agricultural powerhouse of the West Bank, and without it Palestinians would have to rely on Israel for food.

c) Annexing the water supplies

d) Annexing enough of the rest that Palestinians have no meaningful territorial contiguity.  To go from one part of Palestine to another you have to pass through Israel, which might not let you.

The bottom line (as described in link above) is this:

Israel has, and has only ever had for the past 40 years, one plan for the Occupied Territories. The plan is to control permanently the whole West Bank, but to avoid annexing the people who live there (and who would simply vote Zionist control over them out of existence if they ever enjoyed equal rights) by forcing them to leave or - for the really stubborn ones - by confining them in impoverished reservations and calling this "Palestine". 

Disinvesting From Israel

 It's been pointed out by some that a key demand of pro-Palestinian student protestors, Disinvesting From Israel, is not all that easy to do.

A Complete Disinvestment is basically impossible in the absence of government sanctions.  Every corporation tries to trade wherever it can make a profit, and most colleges invest in funds which include a lot of corporations.

But various kinds of partial disinvestments may be possible.  Such as disinvesting from large weapons manufacturers.

Disinvestors can also find more opportunities to disinvest over time.

I think colleges can commit to doing it in principle and as opportunities arise.  They could state limits such as we will not allow our investment income fall more than 15% in order to achieve disinvestment.  (There's a fundamental principle that if you invest for other reasons than maximum profit, you will not likely get maximum profit.)  They could assign a Disinvestment Officer to find disinvestment opportunities.

A creative way to achieve similar effects would be to short Israeli funds.  That has costs and risks.

A discussion at Reddit.

Another approach might be to invest in Palestinian operations or simply spend on charities, etc.

Trinity College in Dublin has agreed to divest from Israel.

Also University of Barcelona.

Violence against pro-Palestinian protesters

A Twitter/X thread of videos showing violence against pro-Palestinian protesters. 

Dance Clubs are the Best

 Dance Clubs are the best kind of institution available in modern capitalist and alienated society.

In a Club the institutional goal is to get everyone dancing.  In a Bar the institutional goal is to keep everyone drinking by making excuses for not dancing.  Therefore clubs bring people together, and dancing brings people often of different sex as close together as they can be within organizations in the context of modern society.

Dance clubs represent the closest thing available to sex positivity.  Every other aspect of modern society is sex negative.  Anything you have to pay for, is limited on that basis and in principle (although the paying may make things available which otherwise would not be).

 While not exactly sex, Dancing is coordinated activity, often close and tactile, among or within people sexually attractive to one another.  It is about as close as anything can get to being like sex without actually being sex.

Asians have long believed there is a transfer of energy when men and women touch each other, which is necessary for both to survive.

In principle sex clubs could be even more sex positive as they are actually sex, instead of dancing.   But sex is complicated, possibly too much so for any club in principle, certainly within the context of modern sex negative society.  All modern sexual prohibitions work against it.

Sex in modern sex negative society is basically managed by faith organizations, of which the classic example is a church (or synagogue temple or mosque).

These organizations act as the gatekeepers for socially proscribed monogamous sexual relationships.  A monogamous partner must be a soulmate having shared values if not ideas.

Modern society relies on a limited variety of sets of values roughly consistent with the powers that be.

Therefore there are a variety of faith organizations, but still limited to an area of acceptable opinion.

The net effect of this is to divide the pools of available partners to zero for the less desired sets of values, the radical left, and increase mating to the maximum for those most easily used and manipulated, conservative Christians.  An ever growing fascist right and ever shrinking left is virtually guaranteed.

The pre-civilizational form is not so hierarchical and top down directed for the benefit of the hierarchy which is in the suppression of free thinking competitors to its dominance.

The pre-civilizational form, hybrid matriarchy, is bottom up, from each woman and group of women.

Sex positivity results from these for bonding and cooptation of men and their peculiar resources (such as in the capture of animals for meat, women providing basically everything else).

But in modern society, men as such have nothing unique to offer women.  Even the insemination can be purchased.

Modern society therefore breaks the natural bonding (human sex evolved to serve bonding more than reproduction, as a higher order of reproduction which is systemically limited) between men and women and replaces it with a form more suitable to hierarchical control, ultimately for the benefit of the controlling power which nowadays derives from capital ownership.

Mamallian biology in general and human biology in particular leads to the situation where the males are seekers and the females are resistors, since the eggs are in short supply and the sperm unlimited.  The eggs therefore have more value, the sperm are comparatively valueless.  Females in this fundamentality have the upper hand in sexual reproduction, and if they have nothing in particular to gain from males, sex negativity will result.  Far less sex than is desirable for either male or female.  Females are the ultimate power, but ameliorated by various means, which ultimately relate to a means of female selectivity.

There are many 'solutions' to this 'problem.'  One is to have big domineering males who physically control females, typically groups of females, while weaker males are cut out.  That is the system of the Great Apes.  For the females it's desirable to have a powerful male to keep other males from trying to cut in, and therefore selecting the most powerful progeny for themselves.

Another is to have sex after a huge fight, as when female cats give the male cat a fight of it's lifetime before permitting insemination.  Thereby selecting the hardest fighting male cat as the fittest.

In prehistoric times, the bottom up combination of resources and abilities led to sex positivity stemming from differential resources and needs.  Men were biologically better suited to hunting animals and warfare.  For those needs they were coopted by groups of women, and bonded to them with sex.

From just after the dawn of agricultural civilization, patriarchal societies emerged.  These controlled everything, including sexuality, from the top down.

For the longest time, this top down direction favored the widespread and massive production of excess males for fighting wars, and also the 'attachment' to the continuation of society that each male has which comes from having his own wife and children.

Toward these ends, women's resources were defined by traditional roles and practices instead of fundamental resources as in earlier times.  Different societies defined these differently, but the common theme of monotheistic societies ultimately became monogamy with women as housewives.  This was most suitable for creating militaristic and ultimately imperial societies.  Men were satisfied and attached to the society in a way that made for larger and more faithful armies, which was the chief concern of the people on top (not necessarily always men).

As warfare was modernized, and having a giant economy and technology became more important than bodies, the powerful changed the formula.

Now, nearly all (previously it had been just some, who didn't necessarily consider it liberation) women were liberated to work outside the traditional to create an even larger economy more supportive of high tech warfare.

Such liberated women have no need for men individually.

So now there is no force opposing the biological female tendency towards resistance of sex, other than conservative religion which pushes for greater membership through greater birthing.

Creative new solutions* are probably better at this point than going backwards to tradition or prehistory.  Although, certain changes to the existing sex negative culture of USA would obviously be helpful, including greater wage equality and general equity for women.  All working people should make income sufficient for a household of 3.  Nonworking women guaranteed income sufficient for a household including all their children (we used to have AFDC...that was a great amelioration).  Hours should be reduced to no more than 32 per week with the greatest employee-based flexibility in scheduling possible with guaranteed vacations and sick leave.  National Healthcare.  Free College Education.  Ubiquitously legal abortion.  All these changes would foster greater love and freedom.  Some have long been available in European countries, which apparently care a bit more about love than USA.

But Dance Clubs are the best we have now.  They are the closest thing we have to traditional roles and prehistory in bringing people of different sexes together.  And meeting fundamental human needs like being close to, coordinating moves with, and touching other sexes, without which we feel ever more isolated and alienated from our true selves.

Dancing itself comes from prehistory.  It was how our earliest ancestors brought the sexes together at first even back then.

Dance clubs have been one of the best things in my life, however because I am far out from the pack in radical values and views of everything, it's unlikely to bring me to a suitable life partner.  That's been my experience.  Dancing is a necessary adjunct to living well, but not complete social fulfillment, because of views and values differences.  Only someone with more mainstream views is likely to find a soulmate in such a general sampling, even among the relatively cool people of dance.

And so, we're back to churches.  Nothing else has the correct structure in modern society for finding soulmates of similar values, when they're brought up in those values.  If you're non-religious like me, there are non-religious churches like Unitarian Universalist and Quaker, and some others whose religiosity is vastly exceeded by their social grace (though I'd beware of getting too close to those committed to anti-abortion and other social injustice including Israel).  As I've written before, little can compete with how churches bring a broad swath of ages together, in at least the imagined simulcrum of shared values which are fairly all encompassing.  Political or ideological organizations tend not to have the size and 'all ages' quality that somehow makes churches work uniquely well.  They do not have the daily activities, circles, and so on.  All this church stuff can all become quite tiring, and there's no guarantee if you're barely social.  But if you keep with it, it seems to have the best results.

The limited, one sided, and often coercive sex positivity of religion is purely to producing offspring, rather than continuous bonding.  So it doesn't usually work every day, every week, etc, but perhaps once in a lifetime, and with incomplete results.  Modern people, with partners or not, may go years or decades without sex.  

So we're back to dancing.

Sex between people serves both bonding and pleasure.  It's essential that we get some sort of bonding (a category which includes handholds, hugs, and kisses) at least weekly to retain sanity.  Many times a day is best.

So bonding doesn't require sex, but sex can be one of the most powerful forms of bonding.  

And pleasure doesn't require sex either.  Dancing and exercise generally are associated with some pleasure.  (Dancing is is a similarly satisfying in general that I've often said to myself that good dancing is far better than mediocre sex.)

But one peculiarly singular and non-fungible form of pleasure is given by sexual orgasm(s).  These are a form of release unlike any other, and they also help release pent up fluids and cells.

So while bonding and pleasure in general takes many forms (sex being one of if not the best when it is really good but maybe replaceable by others in most ways) sexual release is always singular and must be dealt with.  This is why everyone must learn how to and frequently masturbate.  Other than those with harems or in sex clubs or primitive sex tribes, hardly anyone can get enough release from sex with other people.  Masturbation is required about once per week (once a day or two is better) and is helpful up to 3 times a day (beyond that it gets abusive), to retain bodily functioning and sanity.  Beyond 3 times per day suggests abnormality (or professional status).  These rates are what our bodies were evidently designed for (by evolutionary forces), frequent sexual release.  Prehistoric humans spent a lot of time laying with one another.  Civilization has largely pulled us apart except to meet its ends.

Powers-that-be use the general sexual starvation to run operations (like Epstein's) that provide sex in exchange for desired political action (such as support of Israel).  For the rest of us, we get all sorts of pseudo replacements, sold to fulfill what are essentially sexual desires.  The whole range of boy toys, for example, like cars, trucks, boats, planes, and rockets.  And girl toys, outfits, and styling as well as certain fiction books and movies.   The more the frustrated and pent-up desire, the more substitutes can be sold to (incompletely) fulfill it.

Lack-of-sex-and-masturbation famously drives priests and others to have sex with little boys.

Orgasm and release through sex or masturbation is simply essential as well as pleasurable.  Masturbation does not provide the bonding part, though that may be obtained through many other means.  Or you could say, masturbation is a kind of self-bonding, or self-love, and that's of course where it all starts.

This essay has been about the material basis of sexual alienation in western society (and US in particular) but there are other aspects of that alienation, including the quasi-religious and highly misandric Second Wave Feminism which was funded and advanced by US intelligence primarily to stymie the nascent peace and freedom movement by means of sexual division.  I have written much about that in previous posts, however it's interesting the founders were generally anti-abortion (as well as antiporn) and quite conservative such as Catharine A. MacKinnon.  "Antiporn" meant any picture of a fully clothed woman or even thought of a woman for purposes of masturbation were immoral and violence-inducing "objectification."  (One of my friends was exactly on this "thought of a woman" page.  One needed to have her permission to think of her during masturbation, and she wasn't giving it.)  Second Wave Feminism is extreme sexist fascism and sex negativity.  Individuals including Gloria Steinem are known to have been covert US intelligence agents.  Though "porn" won in court battles in the US in the 1980's (and lost elsewhere, including once libertine and now conservative vassal Sweden), and then proceeded to conquer the at-least-in-one-way-free world on the internet, the toxic legacy of the Second Wave lives on as a general mumble of sex negative words and memes, with periodic waves of trashing mostly gatekeepers for the left side  (sometimes right side) when they begin to step awry of ever changing imperially acceptable narratives, but the material basis of sexual alienation is ultimately more important than any set of mumbles.

(*Reinforcing the original automatic sexual division of resources, nowadays it is men who are presumed to be good with all sorts of technology, including motorized transport and electronic entertainment.  Though older guys might be presumed to know little about phones, apps, and such, only remember fondly the Basic interpreter of Commodore 64 and MSDOS.  Meanwhile, women know about clothing, makeup, and personal styling which men often don't believe they care much about.  I think divisions like this rise up naturally to build up something like the old need-for-relationships-with-men that meat-gathering used to provide.  So women have a need for men, though these things are more fungible than meat gathering.  You can choose just to trust salesmen about as much as any particular guy.  Once and awhile one finds a genuine woman audiophile or gearhead, and they're usually gay.  There's literature out there, and classes, anyone can learn about these things if they wished, including cars.  I used to get the car shop manuals, and do a lot of second guessing, then I realized the best policy seems to be to let the dealer do what they say it needs, otherwise something seems to break.)

State Reconstruction is not Genocide

The One State Solution that most pro Palestinian advocates endorse (and most Palestinians too, though numbers may vary with the current state of apartheid/war/genocide on Palestinians) is not a Genocide of Jews.

Jews would not have to leave the new One State Palestine which would span from the River to the Sea.  They would not have to give up Judaism or even the Judeo-Atheism many of them actually practice.

They should not have to live under anything like Sharia Law.

They should be faced with any sort of discrimination as a result of being Jewish or even having Zionism as a dream (though not Zionism as a continuing practice).

All that the Jews of Israel would have to give up are the reigns of illegally and immorally concentrated murderous power they have exercised over the Palestinians since the creation of the state of Israel.

While demanding a non-discriminatory and secular state, the Jews of Israel should not prevent the realization of the full Right of Return of Palestinians to Palestine.

That is in the international law, and justice, and morality.

The Jews of Israel will have to accept that they are no longer the majority of the reconstructed State of Palestine R2S.  They will be a minority, but a minority of sufficient power to demand their fair and equal rights going forwards, after the implementation of the Right of Return.*

In fact, the Hamas Charter of 2017 basically calls for what I am describing.  It calls for a new state without religious discrimination.  (And that's in the part that does not accept a limited Two State Solution as an interim step.)  It does not call for the elimination of Jews or Zionist settlers.  They are welcome to stay and be free and equal as long as they now respect the rights of other Palestinians in a state of equality for all.

(*This means that some stolen properties may need to be vacated, though in many if not most cases the change is simply in title, who owns the land, not so much in occupation.  Palestinians deserve their original homes back, but not all current homes originated during Palestinian times (eg Palestinian Mandate and Ottoman Empire).  Most settler homes are new homes, but on previously Palestinian properties.  It should be understood that in Mandate and Ottoman times, most land was owned by the state of Palestine, only a fraction was in private hands.  Such properties would now be owned by the new R2S One State of Palestine, which would through constitution guarantee non-discriminatory access by Jews.)