Mona Lisa's smile mystery turns mysterious than ever!

Another twist to an already twisterly twisted mystery...

The real-life scandal and shame behind Mona Lisa’s smile
Larry Getlen
New York Post, August 28, 2017

MONA LISA was famously unable to conjure up a fully joyous smile for Leonardo da Vinci. Perhaps that’s because she was married off to a slave trader at the age of 15.

In Mona Lisa: The People and The Painting, authors Martin Kemp and Giuseppe Pallanti reveal the lives of Lisa Gherardini — the painting’s real-life Mona Lisa — and others involved in the work. Her husband, they write, was a prominent Florentine businessman named Francesco del Giocondo, who was likely involved in the trading of female slaves.

Gherardini was born in Florence in June 1479. At the time, girls were often married off young to older men, and del Giocondo was a wealthy 30-year-old merchant and widower in 1495 when he married the teenage Gherardini.

Throughout his life and for generations before, del Giocondo and his family kept slave girls to serve as maids.

“Since his childhood,” the authors write, “Francesco had lived side-by-side with some female slaves who had converted to Christianity, bought by his father, and after [his father’s] death it was his responsibility to find new ones. Sometimes he bought more slaves than he needed.”

The authors note that del Giocondo “bought them regularly.” Combined with the sheer number of “converted girls” he associated with, it seems likely, they write, that “he took part in the slave trade.”

Lisa Gherardini was famously unable to conjure up a fully joyous smile for Leonardo da Vinci. Picture: Chris Radburn/PA Wire.Source:AAP

The authors reel off a list of young girls del Giocondo had baptised, noting that there were simply too many of them for all to have served in his household. At one point, he baptised three “Moorish women” from North Africa and gave them new names.

“They could not have all remained in his household,” the authors write. “Three were too many and one or all of them would have been sold on.”

That said, Lisa Gherardini went on to live the life of an upper-class woman, albeit one filled with the normal hardships of the time, as well as some scandal.

Gherardini became pregnant for the first time soon after her wedding, eventually giving birth to six children, three sons and three daughters, by 1505. Her second child, a daughter named Piera, died at the age of 2, while another died in infancy.

It is unclear how da Vinci came into contact with Gherardini, but it is known that the artist’s father was a lawyer and Lisa’s husband was one of his clients. In 1503, the master painter started on a portrait of the woman who would be his most famous subject.

Her husband’s riches kept her in “an impressive wardrobe and plenty of jewellery,” although you wouldn’t know it from her portrait, which has her adorned in a bizarre array of conflicting outfits for the time, suggesting that da Vinci took liberties with her clothing in order to enhance the painting’s visual power.

Over the next decade, da Vinci spent time perfecting his portrait while Gherardini went on to lead a colourful life.

While less endowed families at the time often sentenced their daughters to live as nuns in order to avoid paying vast dowries, the wealthy del Giocondos sent their two surviving daughters to the convent, even though they could afford to pay off future husbands.

Camilla, the couple’s third child, took the vows at age 12, going by Sister Beatrice in the same nunnery as Gherardini’s two sisters, Sister Camilla and Sister Alessandra.

As it happened, Sister Camilla would prove a poor role model for her niece, as a year later, she became involved in scandal. A public accusation alleged that “On 20 April 1512, four men, armed and carrying a ladder, went to the convent of San Domenico, and having climbed the wall, reached certain small windows, where two nuns were waiting for them ... they touched the breasts of said nuns and fondled other parts of their bodies, not to mention other indecencies.”

The accusation against Sister Camilla and another nun — in addition to two others who were supposedly “watching with rapt attention, their eyes filled with similar desire” — went to trial. The men involved were found guilty, and the women were absolved.

Lisa was almost involved in a sex scandal of her own, when two men from the powerful Medici family — of whom del Giocondo was a prominent supporter — supposedly made efforts to “tempt the honour of Gherardini,” who rejected them.

As the story made the rounds, instead of being angered that two associates made a play for his wife, del Giocondo was concerned about what her rejection of the men would mean for his relationship with the Medicis. He appealed to them, confirming his support, and they assured him the relationship was sound. Between themselves, however, they mocked del Giocondo’s weakness.

Da Vinci died in 1519, and the painting remained unfinished and was never exhibited during his life.

After falling ill in her sixties, Gherardini spent her later years in the convent (which often housed the sick), and died on July 14, 1542. She died in obscurity. The unfinished masterpiece, “Mona Lisa” — or “Madame Lisa” — wouldn’t make her an icon until centuries after her passing.

By 1550, the portrait somehow wound up in the collection of King Francis I of France, and was at some point displayed early on in the Louvre, although Napoleon loved the painting so much he took it from the museum in 1800 to hang in his bedroom. He returned it in 1804.

As the years passed, word about the beauty of the painting spread. In 1857, the legendary novelist, poet and critic Théophile Gautier sang its praises in an essay, stating that: “You discover that your melancholy arises from the fact that [Mona Lisa], three hundred years ago, greeted your avowal of love with the same mocking smile which she retains even today on her lips.”

Nowadays, perched high in a room at the Louvre behind bulletproof glass, “Mona Lisa” is the most valued painting in the world, her secretive smile luring millions of visitors to the museum each year. “Eighty per cent of the people only want to see the Mona Lisa,” former Louvre director Henri Loyrette told The New York Times. But Lisa Gherardini isn’t giving anything away.

China contemplating to ditch dollar for yuan!

USA is in trouble...the writing has been on the wall for awhile. People adopt this currency and the USA is doomed. They won't be able to monetize their debt with quantum easing, mass printing of money. Inflation will go insane.

US ‘Empire of Debt’ will go to war to stop emergence of petro-yuan
Max Keiser
RT : 25 Oct, 2017

The imminent introduction of oil trading in yuan is a very bold move by the Chinese, because the US will not give up the basis of its hegemony – the dollar as the world’s reserve currency – without a fight, Max Keiser, host of RT’s financial program ‘Keiser Report' has said.

The Chinese plan to roll out a yuan-denominated oil contract before the end of this year is a very brave move, since countries who “tried to exit the oil-dollar matrix have met terrible ends,” Keiser pointed out.

“Saddam Hussein wanted to trade oil in Euros and he was killed, Muammar Gaddafi wanted to trade his energy in something other than the US dollar – he was killed,” Keiser said.

China, however, has the resolve and the resources to pull-off the de-dollarization, and besides, it’s backed by several major countries which are “resistant to America’s financial cartel,” namely Russia and Iran, Keiser said.

“Kudos to China for taking this project on and of course they are rumored to be a big buyer in the Aramco offering of their state oil facilities coming down the pike,” Keiser said, referring to the anticipated sales of shares in the Saudi Aramco state oil company.

“This makes sense, geopolitical sense, in terms you’ve got China and Russia and the Saudis looking to escape the US dollar, US dollar hegemony.”

Saudi Arabia was pushed to the de-dollarization crowd only recently by the US itself, which, last year, allowed survivors and relatives of the victims of the 9/11 attack to sue the kingdom over its alleged role in the terrorist acts, Keiser stated.

“There’s decently motivation for the Saudis. They want to float Aramco, they are deeply in debt and they are running out of cash. And they wanted to do an APO [alternative public offering] of Aramco either on London or American exchange, but they prevented from doing so from the legal actions of the 9/11 survivors, who rightly pointed at Saudis as the cause of 9/11,” Keiser noted.

Countries worldwide are tired of funding the America’s “military adventurism by being a party to the ‘Empire of Debt,’ as it’s known around the world – the US dollar,” and therefore, will likely join the de-dollarization movement, Keiser said.

The US financial sector and its military-industrial complex are unlikely to give up the dollar hegemony without a fight, though, as the dollar is both the basis and the main product of America. And the US will use its other favorite tool for it – war, Keiser believes.

“Maybe they will start a war between Japan and China, and maybe they will start a war with North Korea. America will do anything to keep the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency,” Keiser said.

“They will invade the countries, like Afghanistan, they will stop at nothing. Because this is the basis of the US empire. It’s not land-based, it’s not based on material goods, it’s based on rent-seeking. It’s based on landing dollars, getting out income and when countries can’t pay they dismantle the assets and take them over. We saw it in Latin America, South America, this is how America built its empire.”

Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited!

Neil Clark analysed that breathtaking event from today's perspective, and also presented some unknown background information...

A hedgehog down the pants: The lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Neil Clark
RT : 28 Oct, 2017

Fifty-five years ago this weekend the world appeared to be on the brink of nuclear war as the Cuban missile crisis unfolded. What are the lessons that can be learned today about the events of October 1962?

It was the great filmmaker Charles Chaplin who commented that life is a tragedy when seen in close-up but a comedy in long-shot. Perspective is everything. If we take a ‘close-up’ view of the Cuban missile crisis, we fail to see the wider issues involved. We’re also likely to fall for the dominant narrative, which has the Soviet Union as the aggressor and the US as the side acting in self-defense. In fact, it was the other way round.

We call it the ‘Cuban missile crisis, ’ but in truth, it was only partly about Cuba. It was just as much about Turkey, and in particular, the fifteen offensive nuclear-tipped intermediate-range Jupiter missiles that had been provocatively deployed there by the US in 1961.

The Soviet Union felt threatened by them and rightly so. They could if launched in a pre-emptive ‘first-strike,' obliterate entire cities in the western USSR, such as Minsk, Kiev, and Moscow, within minutes.

Moreover, the so-called ‘missile gap’ which Kennedy had campaigned on in 1960 against Richard Nixon, actually existed in the US’ favor. The US had around nine times as many nuclear warheads as the Soviet Union. “By 1962, a million US soldiers were stationed in two hundred foreign bases, all threatening the Soviet Union, from Greenland to Turkey, from Portugal to the Philippines,” write Jeremy Isaacs and Taylor Downing, in their book 'Cold War.' “Three and a half million troops belonging to America’s allies were garrisoned around the Soviet Union’s borders. There were American nuclear warheads in Italy, the United Kingdom, and Turkey.”

Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader in 1962, had to do something to quickly change the situation, or else his country was in danger of nuclear annihilation. Remember President Kennedy had already seriously considered the ‘first-strike’ option. Fred Kaplan, the author of The Wizards of Armageddon, records how on July 13, 1961, Kennedy held a National Security Council meeting. Among the items on the agenda: "steps to prepare war plans which would permit the discriminating use of nuclear weapons in Central Europe and... against the USSR."

America’s aggressive policies toward Cuba gave Khrushchev an opportunity to improve his country‘s security. When the cigar-smoking Fidel Castro first come to power in 1959, sweeping away the US-backed leader Batista in a popular uprising, he had not declared his revolution to be a Marxist one. But his program which involved nationalization and clamping down on the business activities of mobsters like Meyer Lansky, inevitably put him on a collision course with Washington.

In December 1960, the Eisenhower administration had already endorsed a scheme to invade Cuba to topple Fidel. John Kennedy, who became President in January 1961, inherited this ’cunning plan’ and went along with it. The result was the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Blackadder's Baldrick really couldn't have come up with anything more disastrous.

Understandably, Castro now declared a socialist revolution and turned to Moscow for assistance. Khrushchev saw a golden opportunity to “throw a hedgehog at Uncle Sam’s pants.”

An agreement was made with the Castro brothers, whereby Cuba would be a site for Soviet missiles. They would not only defend the island from a US-led invasion- but also in Khrushchev’s own words help to “equalize” the balance of power with the US.

Of course, when the US learned what was going on, there was indignant outrage of the sort US leaders do best. The second best quote from the whole of the Cuban missile crisis (after Khrushchev’s hedgehog one), came from Kennedy when he was told about the missile sites under construction. “It’s just as if we suddenly began to put a major number of MRBMs (missiles) in Turkey! Now that’d be goddamned dangerous, I would think.”'

To which his National Security Adviser, George Bundy replied: “Well, we did, Mr. President.”

Kennedy mulled over his options and decided that a blockade, to stop Soviet ships delivering their missiles, was the best call. Never mind that the Soviet action to ship missiles to an ally was legal and that a blockade most certainly wasn’t. But what to do about the missiles that had already arrived?

The President was presented with plans from his generals for air strikes and a full-scale invasion of Cuba. “But it was estimated that the ten days of fighting tied to an invasion, the US would suffer 18,500 casualties. Kennedy would have to do a deal,” note Isaacs and Downing.

A deal was done, but it was not one which the US administration could publicly acknowledge. In return for Soviet missiles being withdrawn from Cuba, the US agreed not to invade the island and to remove its Jupiters from Turkey which it did about six months later.

The US media hailed a great victory, but in fact, Washington had been forced to make concessions. It's likely that if Khrushchev hadn’t played such a high line in 1961, the Soviet Union would have faced a pre-emptive strike sometime in the 1960s, very probably from the missiles situated in Turkey. The citizens of Moscow, Minsk, and Kiev have much to thank him for.

After 1962, the US knew that they had to tread warily. For the next seventeen years, détente was pursued by both Democratic and Republican administrations. Yes, the CIA continued to plot to overthrow the Cuban government, and of course subvert democratic processes around the world if the wrong candidates got elected, or look like they were going to get elected, but after the events of October 1962, the US was more frightened of directly provoking the Kremlin.

It was only in the late 1970s that the position began to change once again. A pivotal battle as I noted in an earlier OpEdge was between Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, a man of peace who genuinely wanted to maintain good relations with Moscow, and the uber-hawkish Russophobe Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had been appointed President Carter’s National Security Adviser. ‘Zbig’ won, and the results for mankind were catastrophic.

Neocons who had loathed détente began to crawl out of the woodwork. Again there were calls for a ‘pre-emptive’ strike on the Soviet Union.

Mikhail Gorbachev, a genuinely nice man who sadly had learned nothing from history, became Soviet leader in 1985 and surrendered his country’s bargaining chips in return for promises which weren’t worth the paper they weren’t written on.

The subsequent fall of the USSR was toasted by ‘muscular’ liberals and Trotskyites alike, but older and wiser heads knew that with no real counterbalance to US power we were heading for perilous waters. I always remember reading an article by the conservative commentator and staunch anti-communist Peregrine Worsthorne, in the Sunday Telegraph from around this time in which he said that in time people might well look back at the Cold War with some nostalgia as a period of relative peace and stability. He was absolutely right.

With no Soviet Union around to keep them in check The Project for a New American Century crowd got going. The result was two decades of wars and ‘liberal interventions’ which killed millions, hugely boosting the cause of terrorism and leading to a refugee crisis of Biblical proportions. It’s obvious none of this would have occurred if the USSR had still existed, but of course, in the name of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy,' we weren't supposed to say it.

Things have only changed in recent years, as Russia, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, has re-emerged as a global player and a counterweight to US imperialism. Syria is the first place since the end of the old Cold War where the ambitions of US neocons have been thwarted. Aleppo will hopefully prove to be their Stalingrad.

When we look back at the events of October 1962, is that it’s clear the US only cedes ground when it fears what the other side can threaten it with. To get Uncle Sam to stop being such an obnoxious bully, you have to throw or threaten to throw a hedgehog at his pants, to use Khrushchev’s memorable phrase. Being nice, like Gorbachev was, only gets you trampled on.

Gaddafi, like Saddam, surrendered his weapons program and was rewarded with a bayonet up his anus and the cackling laughter of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Milosevic generously hosted ’The Balkans Bull’ Dick Holbrooke offering him his best slivovitz, and ended up being denied the proper medical treatment during his US-instigated show trial at The Hague.

Kim Jong-un, by contrast, tests missiles for fun and shows Washington the finger and his country hasn’t been bombarded. He's clearly studied closely what happened fifty-five years ago and also since 1990.

Khrushchev’s decision to send missiles to Cuba, a country under genuine threat of invasion, was not only legal but also wise. Far from endangering the peace, it actually made war less likely. The nuclear Armageddon that was feared in Cold War 1.0 didn’t occur because the US feared the Soviet response. In fact looking back at 1962 the only regret was that more missiles hadn’t arrived. Then Moscow would have been able to gain even more concessions.

Which brings us back to today. Could a new Russian deployment of missiles to Cuba as the Communist Party of Russia called for last year in response to the Pentagon’s plan to deploy HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) in Turkey be a means of obtaining the removal of NATO from Russia’s borders, and getting US hawks to pipe down?

Put another way, if there were already Russian missiles situated just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, do we think the US would be quite so belligerent in its foreign policy? Merely to ask the question is to answer it.

Follow Neil Clark @NeilClark66

Neocons Have Been Destroying Sovereign Nations for 20 Years

An excellent article from a favorite Russia author pointing out similar patterns in the destruction of Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria.

Neocons Have Been Destroying Sovereign Nations for 20 Years
Neil Clark
Mon, Jul 17, 2017

The author is a well-known UK pundit who writes frequently on Russia.  He is currently running a crowdfunding to sue the Times, one of its writers, Oliver Kamm, and its publisher, Rupert Murdoch, for libel and stalking. If you like this article, please consider supporting this writer.  He is one of the best out there on Russia.

A resource-rich, socialist-led, multi-ethnic secular state, with an economic system characterized by a high level of public/social ownership and generous provision of welfare, education and social services.

An independent foreign policy with friendship and good commercial ties with Russia, support for Palestine and African and Arab unity - and historical backing for anti-imperialist movements.

Social progress in a number of areas, including women’s emancipation.

The above accurately describes the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and the Syrian Arab Republic. Three countries in three different continents, which had so much in common.

All three had governments which described themselves as socialist. All three pursued a foreign policy independent of Washington and NATO. And all three were targeted for regime change/destruction by the US and its allies using remarkably similar methods.

The first step of the imperial predators was the imposition of draconian economic sanctions used to cripple their economies, weaken their governments (always referred to as ‘a/the regime’) and create political unrest. From 1992-95, and again in 1998, Yugoslavia was hit by the harshest sanctions ever imposed on a European state. The sanctions even involved an EU ban on the state-owned passenger airliner JAT

Libya was under US sanctions from the 1980s until 2004, and then again in 2011, the year the country with the highest Human Development Index in Africa was bombed back to the Stone Age.

Syria has been sanctioned by the US since 2004 with a significant increase in the severity of the measures in 2011 when the regime change op moved into top gear.

The second step was the backing of armed militias/terrorist proxies to destabilise the countries and help overthrow these "regimes". The strategy was relatively simple. Terrorist attacks and the killing of state officials and soldiers would provoke a military response from ‘the regime, whose leader would then be condemned for ‘killing his own people’ (or in the case of Milosevic, other ethnic groups),  and used to ramp up the case for a ‘humanitarian intervention' by the US and its allies.

In Yugoslavia, the US-proxy force was the Kosovan Liberation Army, who were given training and logistical support by the West.

In Libya, groups linked to al-Qaeda, like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, were provided assistance, with NATO effectively acting as al-Qaeda’s air force

In Syria, there was massive support for anti-government Islamist fighters, euphemistically labelled 'moderate rebels.' It didn’t matter to the ‘regime changers’ that weapons supplied to ‘moderate rebels’ ended up in the hands of groups like ISIS. On the contrary, a declassified secret US intelligence report from 2012 showed that the Western powers welcomed the possible establishment of a Salafist principality in eastern Syria, seeing it as a means of isolating ‘the Syrian regime’.

The third step carried out at the same time as one and two involved the relentless demonisation of the leadership of the target states. This involved the leaders being regularly compared to Hitler, and accused of carrying out or planning genocide and multiple war crimes.

Milosevic - President of Yugoslavia - was labelled a ‘dictator’ even though he was the democratically-elected leader of a country in which over 20 political parties freely operated.

Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi was portrayed as an unstable foaming at the mouth lunatic, about to launch a massacre in Benghazi, even though he had governed his country since the end of the Swinging Sixties.

Syria’s Assad did take over in an authoritarian one-party system, but was given zero credit for introducing a new constitution which ended the Ba’ath Party’s monopoly of political power. Instead all the deaths in the Syrian conflict were blamed on him, even those of the thousands of Syrian soldiers killed by Western/GCC-armed and funded ‘rebels’. 

The fourth step in the imperial strategy was the deployment of gatekeepers - or ‘Imperial Truth Enforcers’ - to smear or defame anyone who dared to come  to the defence of the target states, or who said that they should be left alone.

The pro-war, finance-capital-friendly, faux-left was at the forefront of the media campaigns against the countries concerned. This was to give the regime change/destruction project a 'progressive’ veneer, and to persuade or intimidate genuine ’old school’ leftists not to challenge the dominant narrative.

To place them beyond the pale, Yugoslavia, Libya and Syria were all labelled ’fascist,’ even though their leadership was socialist and their economies were run on socialistic lines. Meanwhile, genuine fascists, like anti-government factions in Ukraine (2013-14), received enthusiastic support from NATO.

The fifth step was direct US/NATO-led military intervention against 'the regime' triggered by alleged atrocities/planned atrocities of the target state. At this stage, the US works particularly hard to sabotage any peaceful solution to the conflicts they and their regional allies have ignited. At the Rambouillet conference in March 1999, for example, the Yugoslav authorities, who had agreed to an international peace-keeping force in Kosovo, were presented with an ultimatum that they could not possibly accept. Lord Gilbert, a UK defence minister at the time, later admitted "the terms put to Milosevic (which included NATO forces having freedom of movement throughout his country) were absolutely intolerable … it was quite deliberate."

In 2011, the casus belli was that ‘the mad dog’ Gaddafi was about to massacre civilians in Benghazi. We needed a ‘humanitarian intervention’ to stop this, we were repeatedly told. Five years later, a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report held that "the proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence."

In 2013, the reason given for direct military intervention in Syria was an alleged chemical weapons attack by 'Assad's forces' in Ghouta. But this time, the UK Parliament voted against military action and the planned ‘intervention’ was thwarted, much to the great frustration of the war-hungry neocons. They still keep trying though.

The recent claims of The White House, that they had evidence that the Syrian government was planning a chemical weapons attack, and that if such an attack took place it would be blamed on Assad, shows that the Empire hasn’t given up on Stage Five for Syria just yet.

Stage Six of the project involves the US continuing to sabotage moves towards a negotiated peace once the bombing started. This happened during the bombing of Yugoslavia and the NATO assault on Libya. A favoured tactic used to prevent a peaceful resolution is to get the leader of the target state indicted for war crimes. Milosevic was indicted at the height of the bombing in 1999, Gaddafi in 2011.

Stage Seven is ‘Mission Accomplished’. It’s when the target country has been ‘regime-changed’ and either broken up or transformed into a failed state with strategically important areas/resources under US/Western control. Yugoslavia was dismantled and its socially-owned economy privatised. Montenegro, the great prize on the Adriatic, recently joined NATO.

Libya, hailed in the Daily Telegraph as a top cruise ship destination in 2010, is now a lawless playground for jihadists and a place where cruise ships dare not dock. This country, which provided free education and health care for all its citizens under Gaddafi, has recently seen the return of slave markets.

Syria, though thankfully not at Stage Seven, has still been knocked back almost forty years. The UNDP reported: "Despite having achieved or being well under way to achieving major Millennium Development Goals targets (poverty reduction, primary education, and gender parity in secondary education, decrease in infant mortality rates and increasing access to improved sanitation) as of 2011, it is estimated that after the first four years of crisis Syria has dropped from 113th to 174th out of 187 countries ranked in the Human Development Index."

Of course, it’s not just three countries which have been wrecked by the Empire of Chaos. There are similarities too with what’s happened to Afghanistan and Iraq. In the late 1970s, the US started to back Islamist rebels to destabilise and topple the left-wing, pro-Moscow government in Kabul.

Afghanistan has been in turmoil ever since, with the US and its allies launching an invasion of the country in 2001 to topple a Taliban 'regime' which grew out of the ’rebel’ movement which the US had backed.

Iraq was hit with devastating, genocidal sanctions, which were maintained under US/UK pressure even after it had disarmed. Then it was invaded on the deceitful pretext that its leader, Saddam Hussein, still possessed WMDs.

The truth of what has been happening is too shocking and too terrible ever to be admitted in the Western mainstream media. Namely, that since the demise of the Soviet Union, the US and its allies have been picking off independent, resource-rich, strategically important countries one by one.

The point is not that these countries were perfect and that there wasn’t political repression taking place in some of them at various times, but that they were earmarked for destruction solely for standing in the way of the imperialists. The propagandists for the US-led wars of recent years want us to regard the conflicts as ‘stand alones’ and to regard the ‘problem' as being the ‘mad dog’ leadership of the countries which were attacked.

But in fact, the aggressions against Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the threatening of Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela are all parts of the same war. Anyone who hasn’t been locked in a wardrobe these past twenty years, or whose salary is not paid directly, or indirectly, by the Empire of Chaos, can surely see now where the ‘problem’ really lies.

The ‘New Hitlers’ - Milosevic, Hussein and Gaddafi - who we were told were the ‘biggest threats’ to world peace, are dead and buried. But guess what? The killing goes on.

= = =
Selected Comments:

# All those countries who, like Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen & Iran, rejected Anglo-US imperialism in the 1950/60s, have now been vengefully targetted for "regime change".
Since 1946, well over 25m people, (the overwhelming majority of them innocent civilians) have lost their lives to Anglo-US militarism. The 'dirty little undeclared wars' of WHINSEC & the CIA, alone, cost the lives of 6m people.
The US now has some form of military occupation in around 150 of the world's apx 198 countries. That's a level of total world domination that neither Genghis Khan, nor Adolf Hitler, could have imagined in their wildest dreams.

# Psychopaths never change their modus operandi. They can't, it's linked to their brain pattern. They combine a high degree of narcissism and high egocentricity with their psychopathy. They cannot believe that mere mortals - those of us with the ability to feel compassion for others and be directed by it - can actually out think them. The FBI bases it's successful profiling on this fact - that once you have determined the psychopaths pattern, you can use it to find her/him.
The Regime of Generals in America are all, every one, psychopaths, and killers [not all psychopaths are killers. not all have blood lust]. Thus they always follow the same pattern. Look at their "colour revolutions". All the same, down to being absolutely identical. They can thus be predicted and fought, which is what Russia is doing now.
And - looking at the profiles Mr. Clark has provided - which other country are we seeing being subject to this practice right now? The demonisation of the leader, the false accusations, the attempts to foment unrest?? Exactly - Russia.
It seems unbelievable and incredible, but sometimes I swear to God they actually are planning some sort of all out assault on Russia !!

# The only reason Russia has still not been attacked by a "first strike" is due to Russia´s superior advanced military.
That's why US raise funding drastically, makes bigger and bigger drills near hot spots, militarize neighbour countries to Russia, developing the hybrid war.

# Talk about evil rats? two faced fucks? the hated USA places missiles in the shit hole called Romania, a former Nazi siding state, unreal what those vile Americans get up to, they prop-up the vile anti-democracy, anti-human rights Saudi- swine and sell them their best exports, weapons-of-death, junk food, pornography. How long can such degenerate sickos, fat slobs keep up their crimes? their wars, their evils. Divide-and-rule I reckon, the same the Brits used to control their vast empire, the US pay off the big crooks, buy-up nations, war and destroy any who oppose them......THE Great Satan... they are.

# Spot on! The mindset of neocons and Zionists is exactly that of the Nazis: malign narcissism, psychopathy, sociopathy. The problem is, they can NEVER admit defeat nor mistakes, that's why the only option of action or reaction they have is doubling down or more of the same. In the end any psychopath will destroy and kill himself and everybody/everything around him. The Nazis didn't surrender and instead watched their own country to be completely destroyed before they cowardly offed themselves in their bunker. The Anglo-Zionists are probably willing to sacrifice the whole world in a nuclear blitz, fully knowing that it will kill themselves, too.
If they can't have it, nobody should. Just look at the history of British retreat. Where ever the Brits had to leave their colonies behind, they created artificial conflicts: Pakistan vs. India, Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, and numerous tribal conflicts in Africa. It's called "British demarcation". The Yankees are doing just the same. If we can't have it, nobody should. The Anglo-American mindset is the cultural epitome of psychopathy.

# They become nervous if any state:
- Don't have interest on loans
- no central bank or many central banks
- Don't have income tax
- Are healthy
- Don't tax liquor
- Legalize hemp / coca leaves ++
- Allow people to smoke
- Don't vaccinate people (what happens to people in US when they are not vaccinated? We will not know when all are vaccinated -> no one must be allowed to be unvaccinated)

# Democracy alone is hogwash - democracy is a tool, not an end in itself.

What you achieve with democracy that's what matters!

# does a leopard change its spots ??

# The neocons need to be exposed as to who they are and what is their agenda. If they are mainly Jews then we must know what they are up to. They are a mere 2% of the American population and they must not be allowed to dictate American foreign and military policies. Their minds are not America's.

# Donald Trump, the floppiest flip who ever flipped a flop!

# Neocons, Ziocons, cons from every direction and now principally we can trace them and their works. Works always against humanity while wailing
in Wall Street and the City of (OFF) London. 109 countries knew this!
=  = =
AMERICA’S "REGIME CHANGE" OPERATIONS AROUND THE WORLD.
-THESE ASSAULTS were all against governments that did not “cooperate” with the corporations that control the Corporate States of America. Most were against properly elected governments - NOT “evil” dictators.
-Each of the “regime change” operations was 100% motivated by the interests of the PREDATORY CAPITALIST 0.1%.
-Each involved violence, murdering from a few to OVER TWO MILLION INNOCENTS per operation..
-Not one of these countries posed ANY security threat to the Corporate States of Amerika..
-Each regime change/destabilization operation was ENTIRELY FUNDED BY AMERICAN TAX DOLLARS and BENEFITED ONLY PREDATORY CAPITALISTS..
- Each regime change/destabilization operation was IN VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW to which the Corporate States of Amerika is signatory..
-Almost all involved PROVEN WAR CRIMES BY THE UNITED STATES, under existing definitions in international law to which the Corporate States of Amerika is signatory.

IRAN 1946
YUGOSLAVIA 1946
URUGUAY 1947
GREECE 1947-49
GERMANY 1948
CHINA 1948-49
PHILIPPINES 1948-54
PUERTO RICO 1950
KOREA 1951-53
IRAN 1953
VIETNAM 1954
GUATEMALA 1954
EGYPT 1956
LEBANON l958
IRAQ 1958
CHINA l958
PANAMA 1958
VIETNAM l960-75 (TWO MILLION+ DEAD)
CUBA l961
GERMANY l961
LAOS 1962
CUBA l962
IRAQ 1963
PANAMA l964
INDONESIA l965
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 1965-66
GUATEMALA l966-67
CAMBODIA l969-75 (TWO MILLION + DEAD)
OMAN l970
LAOS l971-73
MIDEAST 1973
CHILE 1973 (thousands dead)
CAMBODIA l975
ANGOLA l976-92
IRAN l980
LIBYA l981
EL SALVADOR l981-92
NICARAGUA l981-90 (tens of thousands dead)
LEBANON l982-84
GRENADA l983-84
HONDURAS l983-89 (tens of thousands dead)
IRAN l984 (hundreds of thousands dead)
LIBYA l986
BOLIVIA 1986
IRAN l987-88
LIBYA 1989
VIRGIN ISLANDS 1989
PHILIPPINES 1989
PANAMA 1989
LIBERIA 1990
SAUDI ARABIA 1990-91
IRAQ 1990-91
KUWAIT 1991
IRAQ 1991-2003 (almost two million dead)
SOMALIA 1992-94
YUGOSLAVIA 1992-94
BOSNIA 1993
HAITI 1994
ZAIRE (CONGO) 1996-97
LIBERIA 1997
ALBANIA 1997
SUDAN 1998
AFGHANISTAN 1998
IRAQ 1998
YUGOSLAVIA 1999
YEMEN 2000
MACEDONIA 2001
AFGHANISTAN 2001
YEMEN 2002
PHILIPPINES 2002
COLOMBIA 2003
IRAQ 2003-11 (1.5+ million dead)
LIBERIA 2003
HAITI 2004-05
PAKISTAN 2005
SOMALIA 2006
SYRIA 2008
YEMEN 2009
LIBYA 2011
IRAQ 2014
VENEZUELA 2015 - present
SYRIA 2014-2017 (hundreds of thousands dead)

Google plays big brother role...

Google+social media=CIA/NSA tools

Censorship has increasingly become one of the biggest problems of our time. And we know (((who))) is behind it.

The reason why google is blocked in china is because it serves imperialism.

Google feeds Left population of the America's and Left Style of Europe. Not far left wack.

Welcome to 1984: Big Brother Google now watching your every political move
Robert Bridge
RT : 9 Sep, 2017

Google has taken the unprecedented step of burying material, mostly from websites on the political right, that it has deemed to be inappropriate. The problem, however, is that the world's largest search engine is a left-leaning company with an ax to grind.

Let's face it, deep down in our heart of hearts we knew the honeymoon wouldn't last forever. Our willingness to place eternal faith in an earth-straddling company that oversees the largest collection of information ever assembled was doomed to end in a bitter divorce from the start. After all, each corporation, just like humans, has their own political proclivities, and Google is certainly no exception. But we aren't talking about your average car company here.

The first sign Google would eventually become more of a political liability than a public utility was revealed in 2005 when CEO Eric Schmidt (who is now executive chairman of Alphabet, Inc, Google's parent company) sat down with interviewer Charlie Rose, who asked Schmidt to explain "where the future of search is going."

Schmidt's response should have triggered alarm bells across the free world.

"Well, when you use Google, do you get more than one answer," Schmidt asked rhetorically, before answering deceptively. "Of course you do. Well, that's a bug. We have more bugs per second in the world. We should be able to give you the right answer just once... and we should never be wrong."

Really?

Think about that for a moment. Schmidt believes, counter-intuitively, that getting multiple possible choices for any one Google query is not the desirable prospect it should be (aren't consumers always in search of more variety?), but rather a "bug" that should be duly squashed underfoot. Silly mortal, you should not expect more than one answer for every question because the almighty Google, our modern-day Oz, "should never be wrong!" This is the epitome of corporate hubris. And it doesn't require much imagination to see that such a master plan will only lead to a colossal whitewashing of the historic record.

For example, if a Google user performs a search request for - oh, I don't know - 'what caused the Iraq War 2003,' he or she would be given, according to Schmidt's algorithmic wet dream, exactly one canned answer. Any guesses on what that answer would be? I think it's safe to say the only acceptable answer would be the state-sanctioned conspiracy theory that Saddam Hussein was harboring weapons of mass destruction, an oft-repeated claim we now know to be patently false. The list of other such complicated events that also demand more than one answer - from the Kennedy assassination to the Gulf of Tonkin incident - could be continued for many pages.

Schmidt's grandiose vision, where there is just "one answer to every question," sounds like a chapter borrowed from Orwell's dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, where omnipresent Big Brother had an ironclad grip on history, news, information, everything. In such a intensely controlled, nightmarish world, individuals - as well as entire historical events - can be 'disappeared' down the memory hole without a trace. Though we've not quite reached that bad land yet, we're plodding along in that direction.

That much became disturbingly clear ever since Donald Trump routed Hillary Clinton for the presidency. This surprise event became the bugle call for Google to wage war on 'fake news' outlets, predominantly on the political right.

'Like being gay in the 1950s'

Just before Americans headed to the polls in last year's presidential election, WikiLeaks delivered a well-timed steaming dump, revealing that Eric Schmidt had been working with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) as early as April 2014. This news came courtesy of a leaked email from John Podesta, former chairman of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, who wrote: "I met with Eric Schmidt tonight. As David reported, he's ready to fund, advise recruit talent, etc. He was more deferential on structure than I expected. Wasn't pushing to run through one of his existing firms. Clearly wants to be head outside advisor, but didn't seem like he wanted to push others out. Clearly wants to get going..."

The implications of the CEO of the world's most powerful company playing favorites in a presidential race are obvious, and make the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s resemble a rigged game of bingo at the local senior citizens center by comparison. Yet the dumbed-down world of American politics, which only seems to get excited when Republicans goof up, continued to turn on its wobbly axis as if nothing untold had occurred.

Before continuing our trip down memory lane, let's fast forward a moment for a reality check. Google's romance with the US political left is not a matter of conjecture. In fact, it has just become the subject of a released internal memo penned by one James Damore, a former Google engineer. In the 10-point memo, Damore discussed at length the extreme liberal atmosphere that pervades Google, saying that being a conservative in the Silicon Valley sweat shop was like "being gay in the 1950s."

"We have... this monolithic culture where anyone with a dissenting view can’t even express themselves. Really, it’s like being gay in the 1950s. These conservatives have to stay in the closet and have to mask who they really are. And that’s a huge problem because there’s open discrimination against anyone who comes out of the closet as a conservative."

Beyond the quirky, laid back image of a Google campus, where 'Googlers' enjoy free food and foot massages, lies a "monolithic culture where anyone with a dissenting view can’t even express themselves,"says Damore, who was very cynically fired from Google for daring to express a personal opinion. That is strange.

Although Google loudly trumpets its multicultural diversity in terms of its hiring policy, it clearly has a problem dealing with a diversity of opinion. That attitude does not seem to bode well for a search engine company that must remain impartial on all matters - political or otherwise.

Back to the 2016 campaign. Even CNN at the time was admitting that Google was Donald Trump's "biggest enemy."

Indeed, not only was Schmidt apparently moonlighting for the DNC, his leftist company was actively shutting down information on the Republican front runner. At one point when Google users typed in a query for 'presidential candidates,' they got thousands of results for Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Missing in action from the search results, however, was, yes, Donald Trump.

When NBC4 reached out to Google about the issue, a spokesperson said a "technical bug" was what caused Trump to disappear into the internet ether. Now, where have we heard the word "bug" before? It is worth wondering if this is what Eric Schmidt had in mind when he expressed his vision of a "one answer" Google search future?

In any case, this brings to the surface another disturbing question that is directly linked to the 'fake news' accusations, which in turn is fueling Google's crackdown on the free flow of news from the political right today.

In the run up to the 2016 presidential election, poll after poll predicted a Clinton landslide victory. Of course, nothing of the sort materialized, as even traditional Democratic strongholds, like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan pulled the lever for Trump. As the Economist reported: "On the eve of America’s presidential election, national surveys gave Hillary Clinton a lead of around four percentage points, which betting markets and statistical models translated into a probability of victory ranging from 70 percent to 99 percent."

The fact that Trump - in direct contradiction to what the polls had been long predicting - ended up winning by such a huge margin, there is a temptation to say the polls themselves were 'fake news,' designed to convince the US voter that a Clinton landslide victory was forthcoming. This could have been a ploy by the pollsters, many of whom are affiliated with left-leaning news corporations, by the way, for keeping opposition voters at home in the belief their vote wouldn't matter. In fact, statisticians were warning of a "systemic mainstream misinformation" in poll data favoring Clinton in the days and weeks before Election day. Yet the Leftist brigade, in cahoots with the Googlers, were busy nurturing their own fervent conspiracy theory that 'fake news' - with some help from the Russians, of course - was the reason for Hillary Clinton's devastating defeat.

Who will guard us against the Google guardians?

Just one month after Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States, purportedly on the back of 'fake news,' Google quietly launched Project Owl, the goal of which was to devise a method to "demote misleading, false and offensive articles online," according to a Bloomberg report. The majority of the crackdown will be carried out by machines. Now here is where we enter the rat's nest. After all, what one news organization, or alternative news site, might consider legitimate news and information, another news group, possibly from the mainstream media, would dismiss as a conspiracy theory. And vice versa.

In other words, what we have here is a battle for the misty mountain top of information, and Google appears to be paving the way for its preferred candidate, which is naturally the mainstream media. In other words, Google has a dog in this fight, but it shouldn't. Here is how they have succeeded in pushing for their crackdown on news and information.

The mainstream media almost immediately began peddling the fake news story as to why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump. In fact, it even started before Clinton lost the election after Trump jokingly told a rally: “I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing... I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” The Democrats, of course, found no humor in the remark. Indeed, they began pushing the fake news story, with help from the likes of Amazon-owned Washington Post, that it was Russians who hacked the DNC email system and passed along the information to WikiLeaks, who then dumped it at the most inopportune time for the Democrats.

With this masterly sleight of hand, did you notice what happened? We are no longer talking about the whereabouts of Clinton's estimated 33,000 deleted emails, nor are we discussing how the DNC worked behind the scenes to derail Bernie Sanders' chances at being a presidential candidate. Far worse, we are not considering the tragic fate of a young man named Seth Rich, the now-deceased DNC staffer who was gunned down in Washington, DC on July 10, 2016. Some news sites say Rich was preparing to testify against the DNC for "voter fraud," while others say that was contrived nonsense.

According to the mainstream media, in this case, Newsweek, only batshit crazy far-right conspiracy sites could ever believe Seth Rich leaked the Clinton emails.

"In the months since his murder, Rich has become an obsession of the far right, an unwilling martyr to a discredited cause," Newsweek commented. "On social media sites like Reddit and news outlets like World Net Daily, it is all but an article of faith that Rich, who worked for the Democratic National Committee, was the source who gave DNC emails to WikiLeaks, for which he was slain, presumably, by Clinton operatives. If that were to be true—and it very clearly isn’t—the faithful believe it would invalidate any accusations that Donald J. Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia in tilting the election toward him."

Blame Russia

The reality is, we'll probably never know what happened to Mr. Rich, but what we do know is that Russia has become the convenient fall guy for Clinton's emails getting hacked and dumped in the public arena. We also know Google is taking advantage of this conspiracy theory (to this day not a thread of proof has been offered to prove Russia had anything to do with the release of the emails) to severely hinder the work of news sites - most of which sit on the right of the political spectrum.

Last November, just two weeks after Trump's victory, Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google, addressed the question of 'fake news' in a BBC interview, and whether it could have swayed the vote in Trump's favor.

"You know, I think fake news as a whole could be an issue [in elections]. From our perspective, there should just be no situation where fake news gets distributed, so we are all for doing better here. So, I don't think we should debate it as much as work hard to make sure we drive news to its more trusted sources, have more fact checking and make our algorithms work better, absolutely," he said.

Did you catch that? Following the tiresome rigmarole, the Google CEO said he doesn't think "we should debate it as much as we work hard to make sure we drive news to its more trusted sources..."

That is a truly incredible comment, buried at the sea floor of the BBC article. How can the head of the largest search engine believe a democracy needn't debate how Google determines what information, and by whom, is allowed into the public realm, thus literally shaping our entire worldview? To ask the question is to answer it...

"Just in the last two days we announced we will remove advertising from anything we identify as fake news," Pichai said.

And how will Google decide who the Internet baddies are? It will rely on "more than 15 additional expert NGOs and institutions through our Trusted Flagger program, including the Anti-Defamation League, the No Hate Speech Movement, and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue," to determine what should be flagged and what should not.

Feeling better yet? This brings to mind the quaint Latin phrase, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guards themselves? especially since these groups also have their own heavy political axes to grind.

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Pichai and his increasingly Orwellian company already stand accused of censorship, following the outrageous decision to bar former Congressman Ron Paul and his online news program, Liberty Report, from receiving advertising revenue for a number of videos which Paul recently posted.

Dr. Ron Paul would never be confused as a dangerous, far-right loony. Paul is a 12-term ex-congressman and three-time presidential candidate. However, he is popular among his supporters for views that often contradict those of Washington’s political establishment, especially on issues of war and peace. Now if squeaky clean Ron Paul can't get a fair hearing before the Google/YouTube tribunal, what are chances for average commentators?

“We have no violence, no foul language, no political extremism, no hate or intolerance,” Daniel McAdams, co-producer of the Ron Paul Liberty Report, told RT America. “Our program is simply a news analysis discussion from a libertarian and antiwar perspective.”

McAdams added that the YouTube demonetization “creates enormous financial burdens for the program.”

Many other commentators have also been affected by the advert ban, including left-wing online blogger Tim Black and right-wing commentator Paul Joseph Watson. Their videos have registered millions of views.

“Demonetization is a deliberate effort to stamp out independent political commentary – from the left or the right,” Black told the Boston Globe’s Hiawatha Bray. “It’s not about specific videos... It’s about pushing out the diversity of thought and uplifting major news networks such as CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC.”

In light of this inquisition against free speech and free thought, it is no surprise that more voices are calling for Google, and other massive online media, like Facebook and Amazon, to become nationalized for the public good.

"If we don’t take over today’s platform monopolies, we risk letting them own and control the basic infrastructure of 21st-century society,"  wrote Nick Srnicek, a lecturer in the digital economy at King’s College London.

It's time for Google to take a stroll beyond its isolated Silicon Valley campus and realize there is a whole world of varying political opinion out there that demands a voice. Otherwise, it may find itself on the wrong side of history and time, a notoriously uninviting place known as 1984.



- - -
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is author of the book, 'Midnight in the American Empire,' released in 2013. robertvbridge@yahoo.com

Innovation: waterless cleaning technology!

The Sydney start-up making a serious splash with its waterless cleaning technology.

THIS Sydney start-up is cashing in with its genius waterless washing technology — and in doing so is changing the way we clean our cars.
Nick Whigham
news.com.au
September 20, 2017

 

Farid Mirmohseni and Reza Keshavarzi

A PAIR of Sydney friends and PhD dropouts are cashing in with their burgeoning start-up idea, and in the process are helping to revolutionise the way we wash our cars.

Chemical engineer Farid Mirmohseni, 24, and mechanical engineer Reza Keshavarzi, 29, co-founded the car-washing platform WipeHero which allows users to request an on-the-spot car wash — all without using any water or power.

They like to think of it as an environmentally-friendly “Uber for car cleaning”.

Long gone are the days of indiscriminately hosing down the car in the driveway but washing your car can still use anywhere between 100 to 200 litres of water, equating to billions of litres of water which would be needed to wash Australia’s 17 million registered cars.

On top of that, the process of washing your car at home can lead to harmful chemicals making their way into our storm drains, and damage groundwater and lawns.

Understanding the need to find a better and more sustainable way for proud car owners to keep their vehicle clean, Mr Mirmohseni, with a little help from his dad who is also a chemical professor, spent two years in the research and development phase to create the company’s cleaning technology.

The result it their very own waterless, scratch-free polymer technology that eliminates grime and dirt and leaves a shine.

“If you search waterless products, there’s thousands on the market. But we differentiate ourselves by our product being biodegradable and it’s actually safe for our washers to use it,” Mr Mirmohseni told news.com.au.

“It’s good for the car, it’s good for the environment and also good for the person applying it,” he said, making their product rather unique.

The spray-on solution which the business is built on works by effectively creating a bubble around the dirt and grime on the car’s surface, Mr Mirmohseni said, allowing it to be easily lifted off.

“Once you spray onto any surface ... it emulsifies the dirt and the grime. What that means is it basically forms a bubble around all the dirt and the grime and detaches it from the car’s surface,” he said. “And that’s when we pick it up using a special technique with a micro fibre cloth.

“And because of this detachment, there’s actually no chance of the car getting scratched,” he said.

The video below shows just how effective the WipeHero spray-on solution is.

Starting in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs at the beginning of 2016, the pair launched the business services component of their start-up and have since won contracts with a range of businesses including popular car-sharing platform GoGet as well as a few Sydney Ferrari and Maserati dealerships.

The company has grown to employ about 30 people and earlier in the year received a $100,000 grant from the NSW government as part of a program which aims to support potential high-growth, job-creating businesses.

“This is a great example of how two young Sydney engineers combined their skills and entrepreneurial talent to create jobs and stimulate the NSW economy,” NSW Deputy Premier and Minister for Small Business, John Barilaro said when awarding the grant money.

“It’s this type of fast-growing, innovative company that the NSW Government wants to invest in, to help start-ups like WipeHero grow and create more new jobs.”

Since then they’ve gone from strength to strength and are currently partnering with a major car company in confidential trial to hopefully be contracted to wash their huge fleet of cars.

Currently, the start-up generates over a million dollars in revenue per year from its business partnerships, according to its twenty-year-old founders.

In the last few months, the company has launched its individual consumer platform allowing users to download an app and request a wash with the click of a button. Just like Uber, you simply plug in the location of your car and a trained washer will be dispatched to come and clean it at your home, the office or just on the side of the road.

“At the beginning it was a logistical problem for us, we were getting bookings from Manly to Parramatta,” Mr Mirmohseni said. “That’s why we focused on businesses which have a fleet of a few hundred cars in a location.”

But as the business grew, it started offering individual washes to customers in areas nearby its major business partners.

WipeHero now offers its consumer platform to more than 60 suburbs in inner Sydney and Melbourne and hires a small army of washers in those cities.

An individual wash starts at $29 for the outside only and goes up to $69 for the most comprehensive inside and outside clean.

With the introduction of the app, the company had over 2900 new customers last month, Mr Mirmohseni said.

As the popularity of service continues to grow, the team behind WipeHero seem equally excited about the fact they’re able to spread the message about what they view as the massive amount of water and electricity waste that goes into washing cars. But not if they can help it.

Rohingya in Myanmar are the ‘world’s most persecuted minority’

Why are the more than one million Rohingya in Myanmar considered the ‘world’s most persecuted minority’? Read below to know the answer...

Myanmar: Who are the Rohingya?

Source: Al Jazeera, Posted: 21 Sep 2017

Who are the Rohingya?

The Rohingya are often described as “the world’s most persecuted minority”.

They are an ethnic group, majority of whom are Muslim, who have lived for centuries in the majority Buddhist Myanmar. Currently, there are about 1.1 million Rohingya who live in the Southeast Asian country.

The Rohingya speak Rohingya or Ruaingga, a dialect that is distinct to others spoken in Rakhine State and throughout Myanmar. They are not considered one of the country’s 135 official ethnic groups and have been denied citizenship in Myanmar since 1982, which has effectively rendered them stateless.

Nearly all of the Rohingya in Myanmar live in the western coastal state of Rakhine and are not allowed to leave without government permission. It is one the poorest states in the country with ghetto-like camps and a lack of basic services and opportunities.

Due to ongoing violence and persecution, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled to neighbouring countries either by land or boat over the course of many decades.

Where are the Rohingya from?

Muslims have lived in the area now known as Myanmar since as early as the 12th century, according to many historians and Rohingya groups.

The Arakan Rohingya National Organisation has said, “Rohingyas have been living in Arakan from time immemorial,” referring to the area now known as Rakhine.

During the more than 100 years of British rule (1824-1948), there was a significant amount of migration of labourers to what is now known as Myanmar from today’s India and Bangladesh. Because the British administered Myanmar as a province of India, such migration was considered internal, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The migration of labourers was viewed negatively by the majority of the native population.

After independence, the government viewed the migration that took place during British rule as “illegal, and it is on this basis that they refuse citizenship to the majority of Rohingya,” HRW said in a 2000 report.

This has led many Buddhists to consider the Rohingya to be Bengali, rejecting the term Rohingya as a recent invention, created for political reasons.

How and why are they being persecuted? And why aren’t they recognised?

Shortly after Myanmar’s independence from the British in 1948, the Union Citizenship Act was passed, defining which ethnicities could gain citizenship. According to a 2015 report by the International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School, the Rohingya were not included. The act, however, did allow those whose families had lived in Myanmar for at least two generations to apply for identity cards.

Rohingya were initially given such identification or even citizenship under the generational provision. During this time, several Rohingya also served in parliament.

After the 1962 military coup in Myanmar, things changed dramatically for the Rohingya. All citizens were required to obtain national registration cards. The Rohingya, however, were only given foreign identity cards, which limited the jobs and educational opportunities they could pursue and obtain.

In 1982, a new citizenship law was passed, which effectively rendered the Rohingya stateless. Under the law, Rohingya were again not recognised as one of the country’s 135 ethnic groups. The law established three levels of citizenship. In order to obtain the most basic level (naturalised citizenship), there must be proof that the person’s family lived in Myanmar prior to 1948, as well as fluency in one of the national languages. Many Rohingya lack such paperwork because it was either unavailable or denied to them.

As a result of the law, their rights to study, work, travel, marry, practice their religion and access health services have been and continue to be restricted. The Rohingya cannot vote and even if they jump through the citizenship test hoops, they have to identify as “naturalised” as opposed to Rohingya, and limits are placed on them entering certain professions like medicine, law or running for office.

Since the 1970s, a number of crackdowns on the Rohingya in Rakhine State have forced hundreds of thousands to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh, as well as Malaysia, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. During such crackdowns, refugees have often reported rape, torture, arson and murder by Myanmar security forces.

After the killings of nine border police in October 2016, troops started pouring into villages in Rakhine State. The government blamed what it called fighters from an armed Rohingya group. The killings led to a security crackdown on villages where Rohingya lived. During the crackdown, government troops were accused of an array of human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killing, rape and arson – allegations the government denied.

In November 2016, a UN official accused the government of carrying out “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya. It was not the first time such an accusation has been made.

In April 2013, for example, HRW said Myanmar was conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya. The government has consistently denied such accusations.

Most recently, Myanmar’s military has imposed a crackdown on the country’s Rohingya population after police posts and an army base were attacked in late August.

Residents and activists have described scenes of troops firing indiscriminately at unarmed Rohingya men, women and children. The government, however, has said nearly 100 people were killed after armed men from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) launched a raid on police outposts in the region.

Since the violence erupted, rights groups have documented fires burning in at least 10 areas of Myanmar’s Rakhine State. More than 400,000 people have fled the violence, with thousands trapped in a no-man’s land between the two countries, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).

The UN has also said that hundreds of civilians who have tried to enter Bangladesh have been pushed back by patrols. Many have also been detained and forcibly returned to Myanmar.

How many Rohingya have fled Myanmar and where have they gone?

Since the late 1970s, nearly one million Rohingya have fled Myanmar due to widespread persecution.

According to the most recently available data from the United Nations in May, more than 168,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar since 2012.

Following violence that broke out last year, more than 87,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh from October 2016 to July 2017, according to the International Organization for Migration.

WATCH: Fresh violence forces 18,000 Rohingya to cross into Bangladesh (2:40)

Many Rohingya also risked their lives trying to get to Malaysia by boat across the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. Between 2012 and 2015, more than 112,000 made the dangerous journey.

Prior to the violence that began in August, the UN estimated that there are as many as 420,000 Rohingya refugees in Southeast Asia. Additionally, it said there were around 120,000 internally displaced Rohingya.

Since the violence in Myanmar’s northwest began, more than 400,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, UNHCR said. It added that more than 1,000 people, mostly Rohingya, may have been killed in Myanmar.

What do Aung San Suu Kyi and the Myanmar government say about the Rohingya?

State Chancellor Aung San Suu Kyi, who is the de facto leader of Myanmar, has refused to really discuss the plight of the Rohingya.

Aung San Suu Kyi and her government do not recognise the Rohingya as an ethnic group and have blamed violence in Rakhine, and subsequent military crackdowns, on those they call “terrorists”.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate does not have control over the military but has been criticised for her failure to condemn indiscriminate force used by troops, as well as to stand up for the rights of the more than one million Rohingya in Myanmar.

The government has also repeatedly rejected accusations of abuses. In February 2017, the UN published a report that found that government troops “very likely” committed crimes against humanity since renewed military crackdowns began in October 2016.

At the time, the government did not directly address the findings of the report and said it had the “the right to defend the country by lawful means” against “increasing terrorist activities”, adding that a domestic investigation was enough.

In September 2016, Aung San Suu Kyi entrusted former UN chief Kofi Annan with finding ways to heal the long-standing divisions in the region. While many welcomed the commission and its findings, which were released this August, Azeem Ibrahim, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy, argued it was just a way for Aung San Suu Kyi to “pacify the global public opinion and try to demonstrate to the international community that she is doing what she can to resolve the issue”.

Annan was not given the mandate to investigate specific cases of human rights abuses, but rather one for long-term economic development, education and healthcare.

When setting up the commission, Aung San Suu Kyi’s government said it would abide by its findings. The commission urged the government to end the highly militarised crackdown on neighbourhoods where Rohingya live, as well as scrap restrictions on movement and citizenship.

Following the release of the August report, the government welcomed the commission’s recommendations and said it would give the report “full consideration with the view to carrying out the recommendations to the fullest extent … in line with the situation on the ground”.

On the latest round of violence, Aung San Suu Kyi condemned a “huge iceberg of misinformation” on the crisis, without mentioning the Rohingya who have fled to Bangladesh.

On September 19, she gave a televised address, condemning “all human rights violations” in Rakhine.

She said that Myanmar was ready “at any time” to verify the status of those who have fled the violence in the last month. She did not specify who would be qualified to return and did not elaborate on how the verification process would work.

Her speech was criticised by Rohingya refugees, as well as activists who accused her government of “burying their heads in the sand”.

The government has often restricted access to northern Rakhine States for journalists and aid workers. Aung San Suu Kyi’s office has also accused aid groups of helping those it considers to be “terrorists”.

In January, Yanghee Lee, a UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said she was denied access to certain parts of Rakhine and was only allowed to speak to Rohingya who had been pre-approved by the government.

The country has also denied visas to members of a UN probe investigating the violence and alleged abuses in Rakhine.

What does Bangladesh say about the Rohingya?

There are more than half a million Rohingya refugees living in mostly makeshift camps in Bangladesh. The majority remain unregistered.

Bangladesh considers most of those who have crossed its borders and are living outside of camps as having “illegally infiltrated” the country. Bangladesh has often tried to prevent Rohingya refugees from crossing its border.

In late January, the country resurrected a plan to relocate tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar to a remote island that is prone to flooding and has also been called “uninhabitable” by rights groups. Under the plan, which was originally introduced in 2015, authorities would move undocumented Myanmar nationals to Thengar Char in the Bay of Bengal.

Rights groups have decried the proposal, saying the island completely floods during monsoon season. The UN also called the forced relocation “very complex and controversial”.

Most recently, Bangladesh’s foreign minister labelled the violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar “a genocide”. The country’s National Commission for Human Rights also said it was considering “pressing for a trial against Myanmar, and against the Myanmar army at an international tribunal” on charges of genocide.

Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited a Rohingya refugee camp in September and called on the UN and the international community to pressure Myanmar’s government to allow the return of hundreds of thousands Rohingya refugees.

She said that Bangladesh would offer the refugees temporary shelter and aid, but that Myanmar should soon “take their nationals back”.

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh have told Al Jazeera that the government’s aid thus far as been inadequate, with many saying they haven’t received any kind of government help.

Refugees in Bangladesh have been banned from leaving the overcrowded border areas. Police check posts and surveillance have been set up in key transit points from stop Rohingya from travelling to other parts of the country.

What does the international community say about the Rohingya?

The international community has labelled the Rohingya the “most persecuted minority in the world”.

The UN, as well as several rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have consistently decried the treatment of the Rohingya by Myanmar and neighbouring countries.

The UN has said that it is “very likely” that the military committed grave human rights abuses in Rakhine that may amount to war crimes, allegations the government denies.

In March, the UN adopted a resolution to set up an independent, international mission to investigate the alleged abuses. It stopped short of calling for a Commission of Inquiry, the UN’s highest level of investigation.

The UN investigators must provide a verbal update in September and a full report next year on their findings.

Rights groups have criticised the government’s reluctance to accept the UN investigators.

Human Rights Watch warned that Myanmar’s government risked getting bracketed with “pariah states” like North Korea and Syria if it did not allow the UN to investigate alleged crimes.

In response to the latest round of violence, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of the risk of ethnic cleansing, calling on Aung San Suu Kyi and the country’s security forces to end the violence.

In early September, Guterres also warned of a looming “humanitarian catastrophe” if the violence does not end.

UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein urged Myanmar to end its “brutal security operation” against the Rohingya in Rakhine, calling it a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

Both UN officials said they completely supported the findings of the advisory commission, led by Kofi Annan, and urged the government to fulfil its recommendations.

What is the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army?

The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), formerly known as the al-Yaqeen Faith Movement, released a statement under its new name in March 2017, saying it was obligated to “defend, salvage and protect [the] Rohingya community”.

The group said it would do so “with our best capacities as we have the legitimate right under international law to defend ourselves in line with the principle of self defence”.

The group is considered a “terrorist” organisation by the Myanmar government.

In its March statement, the ARSA added that it does “not associate with any terrorist group across the world” and does “not commit any form of terrorism against any civilian[s] regardless of their religious and ethnic origin”.

The statement also said: “We […] declare loud and clear that our defensive attacks have only been aimed at the oppressive Burmese regime in accordance with international norms and principles until our demands are fulfilled.”

The group has claimed responsibility for an attack on police posts and an army base in Rakhine State. According to the government nearly 400 people were killed, the majority of whom were members of the ARSA. Rights groups, however, say hundreds of civilians have been killed by security forces.

Rights group Fortify Rights said it has documented that fighters with the ARSA “are also accused of killing civilians – suspected government ‘informants’ – in recent days and months, as well as preventing men and boys from flee Maungdaw Township”.

On September 9, the group declared a month-long unilateral ceasefire in Rakhine to enable aid groups to address the humanitarian crisis in the area.

“ARSA strongly encourages all concerned humanitarian actors resume their humanitarian assistance to all victims of the humanitarian crisis, irrespective of ethnic or religious background during the ceasefire period,” the group said in a statement, adding that it calls on Myanmar’s military to also temporarily lay down arms.

According to the International Crisis group, the ARSA has ties to Rohingya living in Saudi Arabia.

The Myanmar government formally categorised the group as a “terrorist” organisation on August 25.

Rohingya ethnic groups.